Mischief of Rats

His first impression of Mythrite is that it’s cold. It’s cold and dreary and there was far too much snow for Kaen Kurai to be comfortable. Altogether it was rather miserable. If there was one thing he had learned about misery, though, it was that it loved dark, gritty secrets, so he supposed that this miserable new place suited him just fine. At the very least the people here were easy to read. It only took a glance to tell how wealthy they were or what they did for a living. And sometimes the small stuff like that could make or break a case.
Some of the people around here were even surprisingly decent. On the Journey here he had even met another Drow- or half Drow at least. It was a girl named Brynn Carter and she seemed to be a good person. Not even the kind of toe-the-line and questionable decisions ‘good’ person that he was. It was nice. He had never spent much time with other Drow before. His father was a no show and there weren’t many where he grew up. And Brynn understood. The racism, the prejudice, the stereotypes. She gets it. It makes him want to trust her, despite not knowing her for long. As crazy as it was, he did trust her. He can only hope this isn’t one of those times where his badly placed trust screws him over once again.
He had sorted out living arrangements in what seemed to Mythrite’s armpit, Eronia Minor. His room was dark, dirty, and cramped, but at least he had it all to himself considering nobody wanted to room with a Drow. The rooms last inhabitant had even left him a housewarming gift: a pile of trash in the corner.
Sighing, Kaen gathers it all up and ungraciously dumps it into some bins just outside his door, only for the bins to start hissing at him. Well, not the bins, per say, as he finds himself staring down at a raccoon when he peers over the rim. It’s staring at him with the sort of viciousness that almost seemed to promise it would gauge out his eyeballs and feast on them.
Naturally, Kaen is completely charmed.
He doesn’t have much food left. Only the last vestiges of the rations he took on the journey to Mythrite. Given that the little bugger is currently residing in a trash can, though, he doubts that it will be all that picky. Tempting it out of the trashcan and into his room turns out to be quite the torrid love affair between its claws and his skin. Still, slightly more scratched than before, he now has a new best friend and roommate.
Said best friend is currently hunched in what was previously the trash corner. Turns out that her highness is slightly appeased by food, though, as its glare only promises immediate amputation of any limb that touches it, instead of imminent anopia.
Kaen figures that he’ll call her Mr. Trashman. It’s only fitting.
Lodgings relatively settled, he decides to prioritize his affairs. He has enough money to survive for little while, but finding steady work really should be a priority. It shouldn’t be too hard; small boomer towns like this were practically built on desperation and deception and he was an expert at manipulating both. If his intel on Mythrite was right, there were a few mysterious members of the obnoxiously rich that were just a bit too suspicious to be regular citizens. There was bound to be a story there and it seemed like the perfect place to stick his nose into. Even if it turned out to be nothing, the high-class socialites had enough money to throw around and were vicious enough to use subterfuge to ensure they were always one step above their neighbors. At least one of them would have use of him.
It wasn’t his favorite job, to succumb himself to whims of the rich. Many of them would treat him and others like they were shit on the bottom of their latest designer boots. Most of them were deserving to have some of their secrets bared to the world; they might learn something from it if nothing else. But they were the ones who enabled him to put food on the table for him and his adorable new bestie, and so he put up with it. If he played his cards right (which he always did) he would even end up with an ear to the pulse of their latest drama. And that paid in more ways than one.
High class deceit aside, he was sure there were plenty of people here he would prove to be useful for, he just had to figure out who. He had already started getting the lay of the land, but he needed to know who was who as soon as possible. After that he could figure out what sort of pies he should be sticking his fingers into. One such pie would definitely be the mines; there were plenty of people interested in just how prosperous the mines really were.
Some semblance of a plan assembled, Kaen turns his attention back to his surroundings. His rather empty surroundings. Huh, food and furniture should probably be a priority too. Damn.