<div class="floatright">(https://i.imgur.com/XxNDpK4.jpg)<br/>Smits</div><br/>Lise followed the two guardsmen well into the small hours of the night, well past the first bell of the morning.  The men, one young, one her age, were genial enough.  The younger one spoke more frequently and casually, but the militiaman that was about her age seemed quiet and introspective, paying much more deference to Lise than the first who seemed to be much chummier.  It was after their sixth pass of the Blooming Rose that Lise finally decided to break off from the pair, it had been a slow quiet night and they'd had nothing more to do than wake a few drunks and send them on their way instead of sleeping in alleys where they'd likely get mugged or robbed fore too long.  She told them to continue their rounds and she'd report favorably on the pair to Sgt. Kae which seemed to put both of them in good spirits as they part ways.  She watched them continue on down the street before pushing into the doors of the Velvet Rose.<br/><br/>Immediately her nose was assaulted by a bevy of exotic smells.  Floral smells of lavender and rose, spicy scents of sandalwood and myrrh, fruity scents from wine being consumed as well as the specter of spilled glasses.  But below it all a heady earthy musky scent, that of flesh, sweat, sex, passion.  A large half orc, stripped to the waist and with leather pants below, a heavy iron banded cudgel hanging from his belt, sat on a stool in the room she entered.  It was a small room, no more than five feet per side with thick and heavy weighted curtains opposite the door she'd come through.  The bouncer, as it was clear that's what the halforc was, looked her up and down, and despite his muscular brutish frame there was a keen spark of awareness in his eyes.  He thumped one hand on a large standing closet next to his stool and said,<strong>"Welcome to the Bloomin' Rose.  It's fifteen silver to go through the curtain.  That'll buy ya entrance and an eyefull, an nothin more.  All weapons stay here or ye go right back out the way ye came."</strong>He tapped the side of his head,<strong>"an don't worry, Smit's a trig one, got a memory like a taut bowstring.  Ain't never let no one walk outta here wit' somethin' that tweren't what they walked in wit."</strong><br/><br/>The half orc held out his hand, for weapons or coin it wasn't clear, but likely it was both.