| Item Name | Drop Chance |
| 1-9 gil | 90% |
| Walking Stick of the ______ | 40% |
| Dried Fish | 60% |
| Accountant's Robes | 40% |
| Mother's Guilt | 10% |
The body lay oddly strewn across the ground, limbs splayed in half-realized panic, spine bent over a small stone it had draped itself over in its fall. The bandit's arrow stuck from its back like a macabre flag pole, a mark of ownership. A mark of death.
Heavy boots crunched through pebbly sand as he made his way over to his target, the grating sound echoing loudly in his ears through the silence of the desert witnessing another life lost. He was entertained briefly by the thought that she had likely spent more time worrying about dehydration or starvation than that twanging sound his arrow had provided in the moments before it had pierced cloth and flesh, punctured a lung, shattered ribs, and left her gasping wetly for several seconds before falling still. He'd given her an efficient death, at least.
Kneeling in the hard-packed, parched earth, the man first retrieved his arrow. It came free with a shifting of bone and the wet pop of flesh, and he spent a moment wiping it free of pink lung bits and blood before returning it to its brothers and sisters in the quiver on his back. Next came inspection time, and as he looked over the body, taking in the greyed hair and tail, the subtle signs of age in her slack features, the simple but clean and well-made robes. Not rich, but definitely comfortable in life, which bade well for what he may find.
Knobby hands wrapped in weathered leather took hold of one shoulder and rolled her over, off he rock, and then with the calm, detached manner of a businessman, began to pat her down, searching for pockets or hidden pouches. He briefly considered taking the glasses sitting crookedly on her now-silent face, but the fall had cracked the lenses and bent the wire frames. Their value was mostly slag metal now, and the man had no interest in that.
His hands came away with five gil pieces and a piece of paper folded into a small square. The gil he pocketed quickly, but the paper he kept in his hand for a time, staring down at it, considering. He generally made it a policy not to go out of his way to uncover any personal details about his targets, but perhaps it was the long hours he'd had to wait before this aging miqo'te woman had crossed his sights, or perhaps the way she vaguely reminded him of his own mother (a mean, nasty woman who he'd killed as soon as he had the know-how to get away with it). Whatever it was, the frayed edges of the paper seemed to taunt him, and against his better judgment, he carefully unfolded it, flattening the creases against his thigh before holding it up to the light.
It was a note, a letter, and he nearly tossed it away upon realizing that little detail. He didn't need to know what lovers this woman had had, or what problems, or affections, or anything about her personal life. But again, against his better judgment, he squinted through the overly bright Thanalan sun. The lettering was faded and smudged, hinting at the note's age, but still readable.
Quote:Mother,
No more nagging. No more prodding. No more pretending. I'm leaving and you drove me to it.
If only you'd tried to understand!
The note wasn't signed, but he didn't need to know its author to understand the intent behind it - nor to understand why this woman, walking north through Thanalan all alone, had kept it.
The bandit kept the letter from that day, folded it back up and tucked it safely inside one of his pockets in an absent-minded gesture. Perhaps he felt like he needed to take something more than just a few gil to make this kill worthwhile. Of course he told himself it definitely wasn't because he felt any kind of obligation to the swiftly stiffening body lying in the sands. It would fester and rot and feed the nearby vultures, and he would go on with his life just as he always had. Some day in the future, he may even kill another in this very same spot.
When he did, he may be reminded of the letter, may dig it out from the depths of a pocket he'd nearly forgotten about, may unfold its battered creases, and may read its brief message a second time. It's possible that the next time he hunted, he held off letting lose his already notched arrow, hesitated when he saw grey hair, a weary hunch of shoulders, a face drawn with lines of care and age. And guilt.
***
((Disclaimer: None of the above is canon. Antimony did not die horribly at the hands of some wandering looter! That would be one of the shortest-lived characters of mine ever. The note may not even be real, who knows? Only me, but I'm not telling! x3 ))
![[Image: AntiThalSig.png]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/179079766/AntiThalSig.png)
"Song dogs barking at the break of dawn, lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm; and these streets, quiet as a sleeping army, send their battered dreams to heaven."
Hipparion Tribe (Sagolii)Â - Â Antimony Jhanhi's Wiki
