Nuala was happy to have finally arrived in Hosenka City, a place that was more according to her standards than the towns she’d visited previously. Crocus, the Holy Capital, was beautiful but too overshadowed by the law and the military, Dahlia was simply home and Marigold wasn’t even worth mentioning at this point – she went there to lay low, not to cause trouble but times were changing now and Hosenka was very much what she needed to enjoy herself again. The thief had grown relatively bored of playing the good girl and was in for some fun times and this city was the perfect place for it. Hosenka was vibrant, oriental, colourful and cultural: a massive tourist attraction with many beautiful buildings, spots and without a doubt a lot of underground crime as well.

Nuala snuck through the streets during the evening hours of the day; she was dressed normally, nothing too outrageous and something that concealed her gear such as her weapons just fine, and stopped by the street food vendors to grab something to eat every now and then. She very much enjoyed how populated this place was, because it allowed her to disappear within the masses of people and to do her thing. Nuala was someone who preferred being invisible while she slowly and steadily got an idea of what was going on and who she wanted to talk to. The Captain hadn’t arrived here yet, which was a good thing in her mind. She loved him dearly and of course she missed him as well, but his presence wasn’t required yet.

The Voidling had no intentions of stopping her usual criminal activity, not even for his sake and Kazimir not being around simply made things much easier for her. She could sniff around in peace, build up contacts without appearing suspicious and just overall do her work much easier – the girl still had to earn money after all. That and thievery was kind of a part of her at this point, regardless of what the Nephilim thought of it. It would always be a part of her. Of course there was different ways to get her way into the game, and Nuala was still thinking about how she wanted to do it. Going good was the safe route, it would please Kazimir for sure but going bad was more fun, and hailed greater (far greater) rewards. Deep down, Nuala already knew which way she wanted to go.

Of course her years of experience in this sort of work field allowed Nuala to immediately spot the right places to begin her search for client. She had made a bit of a name for herself already, being a member of Daeva Eye and all that, and she figured that it would most likely help her find some footing in this new town. The places where she wanted to start looking for clients were always something that was easily accessible, had many customers and also made a decent sum of money. Something like a casino, or a fancy restaurant or something exclusive like a club. Those type of establishments always allowed money laundering to happen and it was a good place to start.

Nuala knew that her reputation as a thief and assassin preceded her and that once she made her presence known, someone would probably approach her to see why she was her. For now she was in neutral waters, not aligned to anyone but that could change quickly of course. Frankly, this town seemed like the kind of place where people would be able to make a lot of money if only they were with the right contacts and that’s what she was trying to get at. Nuala had a feeling that she would be spending a lot more time in Hosenka Town in the foreseeable future and so the Voidling made her first move. She walked along the road and amongst the normal city folk, keeping a close eye on all the establishments.

Honestly, there was an abundance of establishments, and all of them were fancy. There were always a few dead giveaways when it came to finding the hotspot of a crime organization however and she wanted to make use of this knowledge especially. It was always either an extra basement, which she couldn’t see from where she was at of course, and an upstairs room. Nuala eventually came along a beautiful large restaurant and she decided to ask around a bit. She noticed that a lot of people were entering, many of them dressed nicely, and they were greeted by the doormen very politely as if they had been guests for a long time.

Of course there was nothing wrong with frequently visiting your favourite restaurant and there was nothing shady about it either, but it could also be a giveaway that the customers were receiving more than just good food here. Another good clue was when this was some sort of closed, separated society that only let certain guests in and not commoners. They sometimes didn’t let people without a reservation in, simply because they wanted to keep it within their ranks. The restaurant seemed very exclusive, so naturally Nuala decided to enter it. She walked up to the butler and he seemed confused since she clearly wasn’t dressed to dine at such a fancy restaurant, especially not alone. But Nuala had her ways. Lowering her black hood and giving him a crooked smile, the woman explained that her name, Nuala of Daeva Eye, was most certainly on the list. Much to her delight that worked out just fine and he led her inside.

The insides of the restaurant were very much what you would expect a normal restaurant to look like: it was quite large and populated, there were a few fake trees and plants located around the desks to decorate the area and overall the place was serving sinese and joyan cuisine and thus the decoration matched. Nuala was quite fond of tacky interior and she had to admit that she quite liked how everything looked. It was somewhat high end, yet still kept classy and cozy, the perfect place to dine. Of course that’s not why she was here, so hopefully the trip would be worth it. By introducing herself at the door with her real name and affiliation, the Voidling hoped that she would be recognized just by that. Her status as master thief was, of course, unchallenged by anyone and even if people wanted to chase after her (especially those pesky military people) they had never been able to catch her in the act. And because of this, she couldn’t be faulted for anything she did.

Nuala was, in fact, very proud to be bounty free. From the looks of it, the Voidling was more than innocent and had never done anything wrong in her life. Of course some of her infamy came from being in the profession that she was in, but it was totally bearable and allowed her to receive good jobs and generous clients. Nuala was led into the restaurant and much to her delight, she was led to a table upstairs. Even though she didn’t match their dress code, no one seemed to mind and she was given a seat in the fancier area of the restaurant. There were way fewer people dining here, all of them were dressed extremely beautifully and all the men were in suits. She could tell with her keen eye that some of them were armed as well, which told her that she had gone to the right place for the kind of work she was looking for.

Nuala had seated herself by the table and ordered some beer and some dumplings to go with it. She really liked dumplings so this was a win win situation. While she waited by her food, she pretended not to be interested in any business and usually things didn’t happen that quickly anyways. The Voidling looked around, studied the menue for more interesting food items and when her beer finally came, she took a big sip. She had to admit that it was pretty good and that this place was definitely not just for show. The food they served here was good and that’s probably why they were able to launder so much money in first place. At least that is what she assumed was happening here, of course Nuala didn’t actually know. She was just basing all of her assumptions on year long experience.

Her food came and she began to munch away at her dumplings. They were honestly very delicious and she liked it very much. While she was eating she decided to use her extra good hearing to see what everyone else was talking about. There were five other tables next to her own, that had people sitting on them and she focused her hearing on every single one of them to find out what they were talking about. Turns out all of them were talking about business, especially the two tables that had only men sitting on them. They were going on about some trade deals that were more than shady and even mentioned the pirates in Hargeon, which led Nuala to believe that they worked in import export. Now, this wasn’t a surprise at all. Some of the people even spoke about personal stuff, but Nuala wasn’t interested in that.

There was one table that had three women sitting on it, and they were speaking about business as well. There was something about their conversation however that told Nuala that it was used to mask something, the topic they were actually speaking about, and before the Voidling knew it she had already found her first associate. All of the ladies were dressed in beautiful, expensive clothes and had jewelry adorning their skin from head to toe. A lot of money was, more often than not, a good indicator for corruption, especially in a shady establishment like this.

It seems that the woman had noticed her as well and Nuala could tell by their conversation and how it had changed. They were speaking in a different language now, one the Voidling didn’t understand but that didn’t matter to her. Because she just kept eating her dumplings and eventually she was sent over a bottle of expensive joyan alcohol. That alone was a sign that she was being requested by the ladies, and of course Nuala was happy to oblige. For today, the Voidling was only here for conversation anyways. She was new in the area and wanted to see what kind of people she could meet and grow accustomed to.

Perhaps even earn a new customer to go on a job and earn their job. A lot of work was delivered by word by word, which meant that once she had a client and did a decent job, chances were they’d simply recommend her to their friends. Once that happened, the circle would continue and Nuala would receive more and more recommendations, eventually being able to widen her circle of customers. Eventually the customers would find out that she was considering working for someone they didn’t approve of, such as an enemy or a rival to their business, and increase their ratings to keep her loyal to them. it was simple business really, but it worked every single time. She profited from this as much as her customers did, so no one here was really in any position to complain.

As the night continued, Nuala was invited over to the woman’s table and allowed to join enjoy their conversation. Turns out that all three of them were widows whose husbands had died under uncertain, and yet super horrific circumstances and that fact alone was already impressive to the Voidling. They certainly knew how to get rid of a nuisance and she liked that. Over the years the three of them had build up their own little imperium, and they were always happy to hire new skilled assistants, such as Nuala herself, to continue their reign. After some idle conversation Nuala came to the conclusion that their work ethics very much matched her own and that she would be happy to work with them.

After hearing them out, Nuala learned a lot of valuable information about the three women. They were all from sin, and had a lot of experience with obvious criminal acts. They were a part of organized crime and apparently there was plenty of that in Hosenka Town. This didn’t come as a surprise to the Voidling, who had already prepared herself for this. She could and would be a part of their group, considering that this was all very beneficial to herself. Nuala had plans to help the guild dominate here in Hosenka and to do that, they needed some underground influence as well. Of course the normal citizens couldn’t and shouldn’t know about this illegal interaction, but they would in the best case scenario never find out. it was important to Nuala to have a functional and working business relationship with her clients first before she started anything rash so she decided to find out what kind of items and things were in their interest in first place.

Being a thief and all that, it was of course important to Nuala to know what kind of items these women wanted to have stolen. Some people focused on art theft which is something that Nuala could do but wasn’t really fond of. Paintings were usually large and difficult to carry, which made the entire process of stealing them very difficult. Then there was of course other kind of arts like pottery, rare vases, old urns and god knows what else. Those items were often valuable but also very easy to break. Clients really loved those items but Nuala wasn’t too much of a fan of stealing them because carrying them out and then from a to b without breaking them was very much a hassle the Voidling couldn’t be arsed to handle, at least not if she could make that choice.

Nuala was able to be very picky due to how much experience she had and because of this, she only took jobs that were comfortable. The reward here was that they were also often high risk, but the item itself that she had to take long wouldn’t prove much of a problem. High risk, high reward so to speak. Her favourites were of course gems and beautiful jewelry, diamonds and everything shiny all together. In fact, Nuala was pretty much like a normal woman in that regard and much to her delight, the ladies sitting at the table agreed. Since they were all so dressed up, they of course had a preference for fine jewelry as well and since this was something Nuala was able to do for them as an entry contract into their whole organisation, the deal was pretty much set and the Voidling had successfully made some new underground associates.