After trooping down the narrow spiral staircase that led to the subterranean level that contained the morgue and a few high security, anti-magical holding cells for particularly dangerous prisoners to await transport. There was a pervasive chill down here, the kind that always materialised when the dead were gathered in any sort of numbers. To do with spirits and closeness to the afterlife Arcturus had once been told by a particularly boorish scholar.
The silver gilded vault doors to the Morgue were locked tight. A necromancer of even middling skill could cause significant trouble as a result of illicit access to a place like this. The watch station morgues were one of the few sources of un-cremated corpses in the city and the rest were even more heavily protected that these.
Arcturus pulled out a cigarette case, marked with a crest of a snake wrapped in combat with an Eagle. He offered the girl one, she refused and he pulled one for himself. Lighting it with the enchanted firestrike he found in one of his pockets and taking a deep drag he turned back to the recruit. "Might wanna relax a bit recruit, we'll be waiting a while." He told her. Her back was stiff and her eyes roving, likely on the lookout for superior officers if her recruit school experience was similar to his own.
"Are you sure you should be, um... Smoking down here s..." She trailed off again, cutting off another sir. "We are uh, underground after all."
"Nah, S'fine. There's spells for that, keeps the smell of bodies away, it'll keep the smoke away just the same." She looked admonished, like he had given her a scolding. "Cheer up" he told her "Think of it like an off duty period. I'm not gonna scream in your face if you drop your posture a little bit. Why don't you tell me about yourself, where you from?" He asked her not because he really cared but as a tactic to settle the jumpy recruit down. He found that once someone was talking about something familiar, like their home, it usually eroded any nervousness or doubts.
"Uh, I'm from Edhel. Up north near the Stave." She started out hesitant, but found her voice as she went on. "From a small town that used to be a mining village about a century ago." A small town that far north would be right under the ice sheet, Arcturus mused, but proximity to the Stave explained the sylphic heritage. "There's not much Mithral left though, so now we mostly fish and trap to get by. We sell pelts, Seal and Walrus mostly, to traders in exchange for luxuries about twice a year..." Artcurus decided he'd best cut her off fast or she'd still be telling him about her back-country village when the mortician arrived.
"That why you left then?" He asked. "Can't be much in a small village like that for an up and coming youngster like you eh?"
"Sort of" She responded. "After Pa passed away there wasn't really anything left. I thought I might try being an adventurer you know? But I washed out before I even did my first quest. The stories make it looks so glamorous but alot of it is drudging, dragging heavy packs for hours before sleeping in the dirt and doing it again. And that's before you even see an enemy or a monster. I'm no soft city girl but that was still a little much for me." She had really come out of her shell now, starting to treat the detective as an equal. "At least being a guard I'm doing monotonous tasks every day on a salary and mostly not risking my life. Not yet at least." Arcturus smiled dimly and allowed her to continue, nodding or asking a follow up question when she needed a little prompting.
Almost exactly an hour later the pair were joined by a bustling, sallow skinned individual wearing a dark grey robe. A cursory inspection revealed him to be a Necropolitan. Unlike most of the thirteen nations the undead were not outlawed in Orthond, rather they were welcomed. The practice of raising unwilling or unsentient undead was illegal, of course, as was enslaving a free undead with domination magic; but the simple act of living an unlife was accepted by the majority of Orthonds population. This particular Necroplitan bore no tell tale signs or violence or reanimation so it seemed likely that he had been a natuaraly occurring undead, not uncommon this close to the death tainted lands of Armistice, or that he was born this way. Some people were simply closer to the border of life and death and, after being still-born, awakened as Necroplitan babies. They grew to a certain point, often appearing in the human mid-twenties, and continued on until their animating magic degraded or they were slain by illness or malaction. He had pale grey skin and eyes that went from whites to the unnaturally large pupils of ancestries with low-light or darkvision. His fingernails were neatly trimmed and his hair was black and seemed greasy, but Arturus thought it was deliberately slick to keep it out of his face rather than just unwashed. He spoke with a quiet, measured cadence, with an accent Arturus thought to be from across the ocean somewhere. "Good morning Monsiure. Madame Lystring." He gave each of them a restrained half-bow. "The good sergeant has informed me of your request. I had just finished the autopsy after being called to my post early. I went to take my breakfast, my apologies for the wait." He went to a ring of keys on his belt and effortlessly selected the correct one, inserted it into the lock of the mortuary door and flowed inside. Arcturus stood and followed, giving a nod to the recruit.
"Come on then." He said roughly. "I figure you might as well sit in on the case, even learn a thing or two about how a real law officer does his work."
"Yes sir, thank you sir" She stifled a yelp, expecting a redress that never came. "I appreciate the opportunity to study under someone so... acclaimed as you."
The body was lying on the slab as they entered, covered by a sheet. "I found marks on the face, neck and upper chest consistent with choking." Said the brisk Necropolitan. "As I expect you read in the report, asphixiation was the cause of death. I did notice something interesting that I doubt you already know, however." He looked at the pair that followed him in expectantly, as if expecting them to be impressed. Arcturus was not, this was the man's job after all. The recruit looked dutifully surprised, but he couldn't tell if it was genuine or feigned. He gestured for the Coroner to go on. "Usualy in a case like this there would be other injuries. Strangulation by hand is a slow death and the victim had fingerprints all over her neck. I would of expected bruising and damage where the victim would have fought back but surprisingly everything except the head and neck are free of marks or cuts that I would have expected to see. There is an amount of flesh, humanoid of some description, under the victims fingernails but it seems unnaturally decomposed. Almost as if whoever did this was dead and rotting."
"Certainly a possibility..." Arcturus mused. The raising of the dead was a closely monitored activity in the city. If an unlawful reanimation had occurred in order for an undead to be created the bureau of magical ordinance would have a record of the spellcasting. "But that doesn't explain our victims lack of defensive wounds. Do either of you know of an undead that could strangle someone without the victim fighting back?"
"A shadow? Or something that can mesmerise its victims?" The recruit piped up. "We learned about undead classification in recruit school. Necromancers can also reanimate individual body parts, so it might have just been a hand? They have a name for that I think..." Recruit school seemed to be a damn sight better than it was fifty years ago, Arcturus thought. That or he skipped that particular lecture. With the rising number of undead moving to Orthond from other nations though he wouldn't be surprised if it was a new Class.
"In that case, we need to head to Up-side." He stated.
"What's in Up-side?" The girl asked back.
"Alot of things." Came the detectives sly remark. "But in this case we need to visit an old friend."
