"Ladies and gentlemen of the crowd, may i please have your attention? Yes? Thank you."
"Now not many of you may know this, but outside the walls of our city there lurks a deadly beast, whose vicious incursion has been terrorising our countryside for weeks now. You may have heard of this creature, in tales passed down from your Mum and Dad, tales of its killing breath and glistening scales--"
"What? No, its not a dragon, its a vapor serpent! Even as our finest fighters and jarl are on their quest to slay one of the big lizards, its smaller yet just as deadly brethren has slipped in, and begun wreaking a havoc of its own. Crops die of thirst, animals reduced to so much skin and bones, ponds and even small lakes all but disappear overnight wherever it ventures! Were it to attack the city as we are now, deprived of our best soldiers, weapons, and armour, Zyarhelm would fall into chaos under its scalding mists."
"Just picture the scene in your mind: Running through the streets, the air around you covered in thick, billowing mist, clutching the hands of your loved ones as you help them over pools of boiling water. A street over, you hear a scream, but knowing theres nothing you can do, you keep walking and hope it wasn't someone you knew. Suddenly, the temperature begins rising, and you hear a hiss from the fog in front of you, and as you press into the cover of a nearby building, hoping, praying, it doesn't see or hear or smell you, you think to yourself: I wish this wasn't happening."
"Well, ladies and gentlemen, I promise that i can make that wish, a reality, with the help of this pendant i hold. Whats that? How? Well, let me tell you a little story first."
"You see, some ways south of here is a little village that goes by the name of Kerace. My old grandmother, bless her soul, lived there before the family moved here, and she told me the time they were attacked by a vapour serpent. She had been leading a pair of oxen, trying to save them from the boiling clouds, when the vapour serpent had slithered out of fog in front of her and opened its mouth to eat her. Just as she thought she would have been snapped in half, her necklace, of which i hold before you now, lit up, and the vapour serpent jerked as if hurt. Whenever she went near it, it retreated further, and she eventually ran it out of town. For you see, this was no ordinary pendant: it had been given to her by a nymph of the lake, who had not only wanted to save her own home, but prophesied to my grandmother that it would one day save a great city."
"Ladies and gentlemen, i believe that that city, is this city."
"Now, at great personal cost, I found an enchanter who could replicate the effect, so if you could please form an orderly line, i'd be more than happy to begin handing them out. Just ten electrum is all it takes to protect you and your family from the terrible vapour serpent, and insure the survival of our lovly city. Here you go, thank you, here's yours, there's yours..."
"Huh? Yours has a sticker? Uh, hold on a moment, just give me that. What? Look, its clearly not the jeweler's logo, it was made by water nymphs, remember? The jeweler probably based their logo off of the water nymphs, thats why its confusing. Don't ask me why, go ask him yourself, I'm busy saving all these good people from horrible deaths, so could you just bugger off already? Ok, bye."
"Where was i? Ah, yes, here you go..."
