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Sivetrys's adventuring party meets the blue girls
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"Ah! Yes, I did, I also took the liberty of putting a hold on both of the sizes you're looking into. You owe me," he pauses to go check his records, "3,050 kingsblood pieces for the holds for them both. Kingsblood being the local term for the gold kind of coin, dwarves happily keep to Absalom currency standards for trade reasons. No interest for the first week, because I am very understanding of the emergency, but I'm afraid that if you take longer than that it will be 10% per week from then on."

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"That's such a weird name for a currency?? They want to deal in blood???"

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"Metaphorical, not literal, but dwarves take monetary matters deadly seriously, so it's rather apt, I think."

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Zan nods, apparently unbothered by his gruff demeanor. "Got it, thanks. I expect to be able to pay you back later today, and will annoy you about the logistics then, if that works for you?"

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"It does," agrees Jubilost, who foists over two official pieces of paper that each denote that the holder has put a down payment on a diamond of painfully, dwarvenly specific quality, size, cut, and general use for spellcasting.

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... Huh! This is really quite nice of him, and downright Economically Risky (for Jubilost). Normally he'd insist on waiting for repayment before handing those over. ... Possibly he doesn't want to talk to dwarves anymore. ... Yeah, okay, nice and self interested. Fair enough.

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"You'll be able to show those to the ushers in the gem cutting quarter of Goldgate, the arcane marks will do fine for their authenticity. They will be able to direct you to the associated artisans." Begone, foul bits of paper that could make him associate with dwarves some more! You will not be missed. "You might be able to find someone else that can provide the Resurrection diamond for cheaper or quicker, but by then I'm afraid my patience had quite run out. If so, you can cancel the holds without too much trouble, recouping most of the money with only a minor loss. 25 kingsblood each, for each hold."

He does not think they're going to be able to find better deals than he did, but they are, as always, welcome to try.

(And he really does not want to deal with dwarves anymore.)

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She accepts the slips with a solemn bow. "Thank you, Master Narthropple, for your time and effort and also for the loan. Please let me know if you need anything from King's Crown."

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... Okay, Jubilost is a little weak to flattery and good manners. He preens. A little.

"You're quite welcome. I don't need anything from there at this time, but thank you."

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Yesssss she's Winning! 

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(To everyone besides Luto and Sivi she appears to be a normal and restrained amount of happy, though.)

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(Awwww. Seeing Zan be so herself is relaxing.)

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(It's also very cute! Plus, Zan seems to have figured out that, under his gruff demeanor and gnomish fascination with debate and rhetoric, Jubilost is a softie. All is well, and Sivetrys is so glad their parties are meshing so well on a personal level.)

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Zan flies up the shaft with Luto and Uma behind her. It's tempting to people-watch (the people are sooooo interesting) but Uma's infusions (and her own flight) puts them on a clock. She's never been to Highhelm before and she's delighted about it. 

(She's met and worked with individual dwarves, of course, but most dwarves live in dwarven societies and so the ones that you meet outside of them tend to be non-representative! And now she's going to be able to build up a baseline to better understand them in retrospect...)

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Umakhi is mostly here to make sure Zan doesn't get cheated and to answer technical questions, but it's nice to stretch her wings (and be Above and Not In the crowd below.)

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Zan told her that it was okay if she wanted to stay at the inn with Linzi, but Luto wants to stretch her legs! And it's been a while since she's had reason to fly.

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And before long, the three of them make it up to King's Crown and can head towards and then into the temple of Abadar there.

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The Abadaran temple is predictably marked with a key, gold on silver, and inside there are serious-looking well-dressed dwarves going hither and thither with important-looking ledgers and nice anonymous boxes. Signage in all the likeliest languages will point them to the correct desk.

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Zan has language magic if they don't have Celestial! She approaches the desk with a polite (but muted - all the dwarves she's met have been less smile-y than most human cultures) smile.

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A tooth-hiding customer-service smile greets her from within a beard. "Good day, how may I assist you?"

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"Good day! I'm here to negotiate and hopefully execute the conditional sale of a very valuable item that I would not feel comfortable selling on the open market. I don't have an appointment and am willing to wait if that's more convenient or much cheaper." 

The thing that made Abadarans click for her was a cleric that they worked with in Mwangi, who explained to her that to them, payment is a way of making illegible and complex social trades and favors legible, systemizable, Law-compatible. It's still unintuitive (and frankly, rather unaesthetic) to Zan, but she understands it, and that means she can interface with it.

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"Do you have a loose estimate of the order of magnitude of the value of the item which you are willing to disclose at this time?"

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Umakhi, without looking up from the book she's reading, whispers her estimate in Tianji. (Zan can decide how she wants to present the info; that's not Uma's job.)

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"Our own assessment is that the object in question has a fair market value on the order of a hundred thousand kingsblood pieces," she says brightly.

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