A new craze has hit the town.
Following the appearance of a giant foreign merchant fleet bearing all kinds of strange goods. The local townsfolk entered a frenzy trying to scoop up all the strange wares to get ahead of the others.
At the same time, said merchant fleet has also been buying up quite a lot of trinkets.
In a rented out warehouse, a conversation in foreign tongue was taking place.
"Captain, how much longer do we need to stay here?"
"A few more days, there's still a lot of the crew tied up out there. Let them gather intel and have fun."
"If by being tied up, you mean spending night after night in brothels, they need to come back now. Head doc is going to have my head if we return with unknown STD's..."
"Don't worry, She'll be busy studying the unknown diseases. At most they will be detained in quarantine as test subjects. They know the risks, at least I briefed them about the risks..."
"Hah..." A defeated sigh comes out as the Captain stares at her with a shit eating grin.
"Relax, both of us know that we are all being watched in the shadows. Hell, I can even feel the stares right now. This is no time for setting up a intelligence black house yet." Captain Jack reassured the woman.
"Then why the hell am I here then?"
"For observation duty. Did you not get the memo?"
"I did, I thought it was a joke..."
"Vic, you of all people should know that the old man doesn't joke around..."
"Not to you and your ragtag group of guys." Vic responded. "He's quite the prankster during and outside of work. It takes us a lot of effort to determine if his orders are jokes or not..."
"Then that's a you thing." Jack laughed. "As long as we get a place to stay and food to eat, don't care what he does."
The two haven't been idle during this conversation, Captain Jack has been making a audit sheet of all the things he and his men have bought. As well as the interesting things Vic has been showing up with.
"Well, we've got what we primarily came here for." Vic announced as she ticked off the last item off her sheet. "A 'world map'."
"We spent an arm, leg, and kidney for that. You better make sure you get value out of that thing." Jack snorted as he hammered a box shut. "Also, see if you can make a list of all the names everyone is using. We can't use our callsigns here anymore. It's going to give us away, make sure you send it back to the admiral."
"Already on it. I always thought those callsigns were stupid."
"Hehe, stupid or not, it helped us get by didn't they?"
"Also 'Jack'? Are you trying to get our cover blown?" Vic reprimanded the man as he failed to stifle his laughter.
"Why not? He was originally of the east India--- trading company. It suits our mission."
"You and your fucking nerds..." Vic grumbled. "Well I'm going back to the ship and consolidate everything, remember, we have a hard deadline to return by."
"I remember, you get your fragile ass out of here and let the grown men play."
"You mean children." Vic retorted, shoving a middle finger at him as she left the warehouse.
"What a feisty one..." Jack muttered as he rubbed his chin. "Time to find that inspector and take him up on that invitation."
—
"Are you serious? The town was attacked just a few days ago?"
"I swear! On the watchtower I swear!"
In a rowdy bar, two men could be seen drinking to their hearts content amidst the chaos going on around them.
Barmaids swinging beer around and dodging and smacking wandering hands weaved through the crowd.
Bragging competitions, arguments, exaggerated stories, and fights filled the air with noise making simple conversation almost impossible.
"Our entire knight squad got deployed!" The inspector exclaimed to Jack. In a quick moment of clarity, he quickly clarified something. "This is a once in a lifetime situation by the way."
"Really? Do you not suffer attacks from the monsters?" Jack asked, pretending to be drunk and fishing for information while stuffing the inspector with more alcohol.
"We have the adventurers guild to thank for that." The inspector replied, a little downcast.
Noticing the shift in mood, Jack quickly changed topics and asked which night houses he preferred staying at.
This goes on till midnight where Jack noticed some of the bouncers throwing out passed out drunkards and the beer maids cleaning up the place.
Shaking awake the inspector, he picks him up by the shoulder and helped lead him back to his quarters.
Once he made sure the inspector entered his room, Jack then started heading back to the docks to retreat into the captains room on the ship.
Ticked off by the people shadowing him, he decided to keep up with the drunk act and stumbled all over the place.
A quick 20 minute trip soon turned into a one hour ordeal.
Once he made it inside and was certain that no one was watching him, he then set up the long range radio and started making his report for the day.
He confirmed the rumors about magic existing, in addition to monsters that usually appear only in fantasy novels. However, he made a note that further investigation was required since these were words coming from a drunk man.
Once he finished his report he flopped into his bed and immediately fell asleep. As the ship fell into silence, a small submersible was launched and traveled back to the gate, slipping through a vent and traveling back to a hidden base camp in the 'frontier' as termed by the locals.
There, the contents of the submersible was retrieved containing the 'world map', which was then sent back to the carrier for analysis.
The whole town fell into gentle slumber, unaware about the undercurrents stirring about.