![](http://cobalt-company.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/writing:2025-07-22-one-map-two-hypotheses-and-three-ladies/style="margin:/medium.jpg) |
| Details |
| Author: | Athena |
| Summary: | With an imagined time pressure to light a fire underneath her, Natalyah teams up with Mayellen and Aszera to start chasing down the possibilities of how this mysterious map arrived in Stormwind, and what it could mean. With two different hypotheses with very different assumptions to test against the scientific method, the Private Investigations Detective Agency is off to a bounding start. 8k~ words. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Arc: Apex Investigations
As the prophecies foretold, it is Bright and Early™ on the mid-July morning, the sunshine chasing away the last of some tendrils of coastal fog, and the low hum of activity only just beginning its opening notes, and Mayellen Hazan is in the office of the first dedicated, independent detective agency in Stormwind City.
Natalyah is late.
The streets are empty enough for her to risk being seen loping over rooftops as she makes up some lost time, dropping down to the door with the discreet sign PRIVATE INVESTIGATIONS without hitting the ground as the [Levitate] takes hold, and the worgen shimmers into a woman of 5'7". She's dressed for work in a crisp white blouse and dark jeans, with the left side knotted off just below where a midpoint of a thigh would be, and a set of suspenders. Her one shoe is a serviceable, if obviously cheap, boot. On her back is an adorable little plushie worgen backpack.
Her hair is a wild, yet soft, many layered silken blackness around her face, and she wears no make up, freckles visible on her warm brown skin. She sniffs once before she opens the door without hesitation, and floats inside.
"Mayellen Hazan?" she calls, in a voice that has a bit of a Stormwind noble sort of tone, even as she follows Mayellen's scent trail to exactly the office that the other woman is in.
Mayellen's office door opens, and a neatly dressed woman exits, leaning on a cane. She's in trousers and a vest, and her dark brown hair is pulled back in a no nonsense schoolmarm bun. Pale gray-blue eyes look curiously out of a nondescript brown face.
"That's me," she says. "Natalyah Kensington-Whit?" She makes her way over; the way she uses the cane suggests that rather than one weak leg needing support it's a general balance/steadiness issue. She puts out a hand in a businesslike manner. "We've met before, but briefly, and a while ago, so let's consider this a reintroduction. My memories tend to get fuzzy over time if not revisited frequently, so please forgive any gaps in my recollection of that day."
Natalyah raises a brow, but takes Mayellen's hand in stride with the rest of the information.
"Natalyah Kensington-Whit, formerly of the Elywnn Kensington-Whits until my parents disowned me," she confirms. "Published lepidopterist, one of the cursed non-Gilnean worgen, the other hire for this agency, and a Scientist of the Light. I tend to have a sharp memory in general, I never forget a scent I've encountered before, and I appreciate your honesty. Not everyone's willing to admit when they don't know or don't remember something, and it only makes things more difficult in the long run when sharing information."
The more she speaks, the easier it is to hear the cultured Elwynn noble accent mixed with the occasional odd little touch here and there of Gilneas still lingering in unexpected vowels after having lived abroad there for so many years.
"Oh, hey, a fellow disowned daughter," Mayellen says, just a hint of Westfall drawl slipping into her words as she gives Natalyah a wry half smile. "I'm formerly of the Mullbys. Not much of a loss in my case - I prefer this sort of thing to shopkeeping." She sweeps right past that subject then as though it's boring small talk. "I'm glad for your memory," she goes on, "because while I can remember what I need to, I don't always know what I need to remember. Case in point, meeting you previously. And the scent thing - obviously I'm not much use there either. But if you need a summons or to tell if something's fel tainted or some blood analyzed, I'm your gal. Now, if you don't mind me jumping right to business - I assume the Admiral showed you his map?"
She goes to the reception desk and lowers herself into the chair, keeping one hand on the head of her cane.
Natalyah floats over, the ominous hovering of a priestess Scientist of the Light. "That's what I wanted to speak to you about," she says. "I can do more than look at it, and I did. I could smell the differences between the paper and the ink that's not from here, odd scents that mark it as Kul Tiran make. It's one part of being a worgen, and another part of being someone who spent a great deal of time memorizing and cataloguing minute details on the fly — literally." Because butterflies.
"My thinking is that if the person who got this map here is in regular contact with the island, which we don't have any proof of yet, or even just was and used one last contact to slip this through, they would have more of those anomalies around. The scents that aren't from here. But I can't go sniffing everything in every shop or around random places, especially if we're to solve this before the end of the week," Natalyah explains. Wait, the end of the week? Where'd that come from?
"Wait, the end of the week? Where'd that come from?" Mayellen asks.
Natalyah tosses her hair back from her face, which causes it to float eerily around her face, levitating all around her.
"It was what Siamus said.* That surely the two of us could solve it before the end of the week, while he's spent a year chasing his own tail, and I intend to prove that we can," Natalyah declares, hitting a hand on the desk as she gives Mayellen a wicked looking smile, and an electric light in her eyes. "Are you in?"
Mayellen also hits her hand on the desk, as this is apparently what we're doing, and it seems as good a way to express her feelings as any.
"Fel yes," she says. "I mean, how dare he tell us how long it should take, but if he's going to do that, we can't very well fall short. I don't have much to go on except that I've been trying to figure out how a person could get something to here from Kul Tiras that recently. One thought I had was portal magic. If there's a sympathetic mage on this side somewhere they could have made an anchor. I've been sniffing casually around the Tower - I have various mage contacts in Cobalt Company and through the W.E.B. - but haven't turned anything up. So that's a dead end, so far. Thoughts?"
Natalyah does seem to think about it, but they're fast zoomy thoughts. "Two things," she says, holding up a long fingered hand for each point. "The first is that I could go literally sniffing around. Even if a person would deny the connection, or hide it well, if they had the things they shouldn't, the scents simply could not lie about it for them.
"The second is to wonder on a similar thought of a portal of what about two warlocks, one on each side? You could pass a person through back and forth and who would know? I can't smell any of the fel on the map, but that's not unexpected. Paper is terrible as a scent carrier." She wrinkles her nose in emphasis, as if she's annoyed that paper would do this to her.
"Oooh, do they have even have warlocks in Kul Tiras? I know they have mages, because Jaina. But yeah, that's another way people could be moving back and forth from here to there. I know one of the Admiral's closest friends happens to be a warlock; he was one of my first instructors actually. Tyrrell, the 7th Legion guy. A count or something, out in Redridge, but mostly a 7th Legion guy."
She pauses, frowning.
"I mean honestly I wouldn't put it past him to be summoning people from Kul Tiras to do some obscure devious warning thing for his bestie without directly telling him. Tyrrell is the kind of person who would walk in spirals to get to a place that had a straight paved road."
"I don't know if they had warlocks in Kul Tiras before, but if a place closed off like the way Gilneas did, and someone had any warning or just needed time to get one person through, they might have done it on purpose then. Having lived through the whole Gilneas closing off, I can tell you that some people would have thought of doing exactly that with Kul Tiras," Natalyah says.
There's a storm brewing on her face though, as she considers the other lead. "But a friend of Siamus, just… letting him run around for a year trying to figure it out, knowing that the reason he wants to know is because he truly wants that connection back for himself? You really think this Count would do that? What sort of friend is he, if he would? Would he lie to someone's face if they asked him directly?"
Could she have let Mayellen answer one question before asking several others? Yes. Is this ever likely to happen? No.
"Oh absolutely," Mayellen says without hesitation. "This is a man who would lie for no obvious reason, lie about why he lied when you catch him at it, and all of that when telling the truth would have served him better in the first place. It's like he's allergic to the truth or something. Maybe he doesn't lie to the Admiral, I don't know. But he has absolutely no trouble lying to the likes of me, and he even claimed he respected me at one point, so…" Mayellen shrugs. "The worst of it is that even as good as I usually am at reading people, I can never tell when he's lying. Is that… something you can smell, by any chance? Sorry if that's a stupid question; I don't know how smells work really beyond the basic human stuff."
Natalyah wobbles her hand in the air in a classic not really way. "I can smell things like sweat or other body odors. Way more keenly than before, but it's not like I always know what each scent means. Sometimes I'm pretty sure I can smell fear. If someone's anxious enough, I can smell that.
"But if a person's a good liar, they're not sweating it. And if there are tiny changes in their scent from a good liar, I probably have to be a lot closer to their skin to pick up on them, and then they'd probably be smelling a different way regardless with a giant worgen inhaling their arm hairs." That's an image.
Mayellen lets a little giggle escape her before she remembers that she is a woman of Business, doing Grown Woman Business Things.
"Yes, it's the same as with the visual cues I suppose. If the person isn't at all tense about lying, and has their answers all planned out, then there's no way to tell, really." She sighs, her distaste for liars clear. "Well then. We're starting with a whole lot of chaotic maybes and we've got to figure out how to funnel that down into a clear answer. How should we start? The Cobalt Eye always ran around together, but if we've only got six days we ought to split up, don't you think? Ideas on where each of us should start? I'll just say, anything that requires covering a lot of physical ground quickly, well, that's not going to be me."
"I do know how walking with a cane works," Natalyah says tartly. "I used to have do an entire different approach for my field of study because I couldn't move around easily, especially over uneven ground, let alone while also trying to carry a journal to write in. I used a Void technique named poorly, 'Mind Vision,' that's more about casting sight into someone else's field of vision, so I could see through an able bodied person, and use a combination of reading lips and a form of signed language to communicate at least one way. Now my mobility aids are just different, between the curse and the Light.
"As for where to start, I'd say that we have to think who would want the difficulty and expense of smuggling like this. So, what if we eliminate first anyone who could be selling these things as a person with the most likely reason to want to keep a channel open to Kul Tiras when everything's closing down behind a different sort of wall would be a merchant who would profit most from being able to sell something no one has. Exclusivity is especially a draw to nobility.
"And a person who already had a connection to Kul Tiras before would draw the least suspicion. They could always claim that they had that item all along, just, you know, 'in the back,' the way shops say. You would know much more than I could about who would be likely, or who even could afford a means of transport to justify a sale, especially if they aren't doing it all out in the open. I could tell you if something was old and sitting around as long as they claim, or if it was fresh from a place with all the Not Stormwind Scents."
Mayellen pulls a small journal out of her trouser pocket, palm-sized and bound in heavier paper sewn along the spine rather than leather or cloth. A little flexible pocket sized book-thingie. She begins to take some notes.
"As for footwork, since there's only three between us, I know the person living up above us, Aszera Sunstrike. She's a, oh, what are they called now, sin'dorei or whatever, and also a demon hunter, and she's very physically fit. If we need someone who can do the things of going around quickly all over the place in more than one direction, she'd help," Natalyah says, giving information freely. "Plus she can 'see' energy, which puts another angle of how to identify someone as something they wouldn't tell you straight."
"Oh, that's useful," Mayellen says, pausing in her note-taking as she cannot speak and write at the same time, but still gazing at the book. "I only know a little of demon-hunters from what the W.E.B. has on them in the files. I've not met many in person or talked to them about their abilities. I thought sin'dorei were the Horde ones, though?" She glances up then, clearly genuinely confused and not trying to correct.
"She's Alliance now, and that's what matters. She's sworn in officially and everything, and she's my friend," Natalyah says defensively. "When I was last outside the wall in Gilneas, they were all quel'dorei, and on our side. Regardless of what she might have been called before, she's a good person doing her best and trying to make a home here. She's isolated because people look at her and decide they know everything about her because she's visibly different. She wants to help."
Mayellen nods. "I just wanted to make sure I called her the right thing. I thought sin'dorei was a political term, how we distinguish the ones over there from over here. But I guess she's not quel'dorei anymore either, so I guess I don't overthink it and I just call her… Aszera."
Mayellen gives a small, wry smile, and takes a few more notes. She then frowns at her notes like she's disappointed in them. She glances up at Natalyah, a line appearing between her brows.
"Okay, so you and Aszera can probably handle running - and Levitating - around all over creation asking people stuff. How can I move things along on my end? I guess I can hold down the fort in case new clients come in? You can send me anything that needs analyzing?"
"Just because you can't get around fast or a lot doesn't mean you can't go anywhere, obviously, as you're here. We just don't send you out on the elimination runs that are all physical and most likely wild goose chases, but to eliminate the pool of data. Plus, clearly you can write, which means you can write to merchants that you know of from your family business knowledge, and put out a feeler that we're interested in certain 'rare imports' and willing to pay. Maybe we get lucky that the person comes to us.
"Plus, you're the one with the contacts to the Web warlock thing, or whatever. If we need to eliminate a warlock as a method, obviously you're the one who can find out who might have been in on that sort of scheme. And since either Aszera or I can tell if someone's a warlock no matter if they'd lie about it or not, if there's someone that's suspected but not proven, we could still chase it down."
Mayellen nods, not quite meeting Natalyah's gaze and turning slightly red around the cheeks.
"You're right, you're right," she says. "I'll get started on some letters right away, and if anything comes back from that that looks worth a follow up I'll head right out and have a chat in person. I'm… still kind of getting used to all this." She gestures to the cane. "I spent a while waiting to get better and now it's… figuring out how to deal with things how they are. To be realistic. I don't know how much the Admiral told you about me, but it was poison, just a couple of years ago; someone tried to kill me. It didn't kill me obviously, but it killed some nerves I guess? It's not just my legs. Sometimes I drop things or get weird twitches in my hands or face… it gets worse as I get tired. But my brain is still okay, I promise. Even if sometimes I start slurring my speech a little, everything up here is still going fine." She taps her skull and laughs awkwardly.
Natalyah doesn't laugh back, leaning over the desk to put a hand down on it, more of a fierce light in her eyes. "Just because it's different now doesn't make you any less than you were. I know that, and I'll remind you of it if you need to hear it from someone who knows what it's like to not get around like other people.
"And I know what it's like to survive something that leaves you wildly different than before. When I get upset or angry, I can't control the change, and sometimes… I scare people," she admits, a curl of shame around her shoulders. "Sometimes it makes people act differently around me because of it.
"I'm not going to treat you like you can't do things just because sometimes you get twitches or brain hiccups, but I'm also not going to pretend that you can do everything you could before the same way, because that's denying reality. But I know that it doesn't make you helpless or unable to help, you just need to do it in different ways, even if you have to find creative methods. So, when it comes up, you tell me your limits and limitations, and I'll tell you mine. Deal?"
Mayellen gazes at her for a long time, her overcast eyes solemn. Then she slowly nods. "Deal," she says. "I guess we should tell each other anything else we need to know about each other now too, huh? Just get it all out of the way so we can focus on business and no surprises? You probably already know I'm married to a worgen, I feel sure the Admiral would have brought that up. I don't know if he said, we have a daughter. April. She's four months old. Jonas does most of the caring for her now, because he knows I need to work."
"He did, yes," Natalyah confirms. "You may or may not remember my boyfriend, Lathrik. He is — was a City Guard, and that's why he was working at that crime scene. He's recently joined the army, and so he might not always be around just any time. But, if we need to use information that would be something the Guard might have, like tracking down if someone was a suspected smuggler, I'm sure we could still ask. His parents recently returned to the city after a very long absence and a lot of terrible things, and I look after them when he's not around, especially his mother. They live on this street, several buildings over."
Natalyah pauses to consider any other relevant information, and then tosses out casually, "Also I'm allergic to bananas, and the color pink."
"No… pink… bananas," Mayellen pretends to write in her journal. She taps the pen against it. "Got it." She looks up and smiles. "No allergies here that I know of. Not crazy about pink either. Or bananas, but not because allergic, they're just… mushy and stringy at the same time, which is a very bad combination in a food. Are Lathrik's parents elderly?" Mayellen asks curiously. "Or do they have conditions that need looking after? Jonas's mother lives with us, but she's more on the caregiving side of things, at least for now."
"It's more complicated. His father's very fit, and he wants to work, but he's spent the last twenty years basically living in the wild chasing down trying to rescue his wife from Twilight's Hammer where she's been until recently. His mother is still healing from that experience. She's most non-verbal at the moment," Natalyah explains honestly. "But it's not something we're exactly advertising around, not after all that's happened with that cult and the city, for obvious reasons. She doesn't want to hurt anyone, and she is getting better, but she needs care to recover as much as she can. So, sometimes I might be there on slower times."
Mayellen nods. "That's the nice thing about having a group working here," she says. "Which will probably get larger with time. We can all take care of what we need to and not have to sit here round the clock like we work at a bank or something. Or a general store," Mayellen adds dryly. "It's the same with April - she has good caregivers while I'm gone, but if she ever does need me for something, well, 'April before May,' when it comes down to the choice. But I don't expect it to come up often. She seems used to having Dad there all the time - usually in worgen form, because that's important to me - and Grandma - and then I'm there in the evening to sing to her off key and read her books she doesn't understand in the slightest." Mayellen giggles. "Anyway, my point is, we all have people we care about and lives outside the work, and I think we can do top quality work without giving up everything else, if we support each other."
Natalyah nods, and there's a moment where she blinks a little harder with shinier eyes at the revelation that Mayellen and Jonas deliberately make sure the baby is used to her father's worgen form.
"Exactly," she says. "All right then, we have knowledge at least a little of the other and what we can do, and what else we have to be responsible for. And we have our first hypothesis to prove or disprove." Natalyah swings her backpack around, and opens the little worgen plushie to take out her own notebook, and slide the pencil out. She flips to an open page, and writes quickly.
"Hypothesis one: the person who got this map here is a merchant who set up a method to regularly smuggle goods from Kul Tiras back and forth to make a profit, and someone on the other side of this blockade used this to get the map here.
"Assumptions we're making include 1) that this was not a one-time thing, 2) that this person is a merchant, 3) that they are selling these goods for a profit, 4) that their method may be magical in nature to bypass a blockade or whatever, and 5) that they are here in Stormwind." She puts down a decisive period on the last. "Which means we have to examine what data we get as we try to prove or disprove our initial hypothesis." She looks back up at Mayellen.
"Perfect," says Mayellen. "I like things nice and orderly. I can start with contacting the people I know in Stormwind. Luckily most of the merchants that my parents had good relationships with still think better of me than my actual parents do, probably because they had no particular expectations about what I owed them when I grew up. So I can send out some letters to them letting them know that a friend might be interested in Kul Tiran goods, and do they know anyone who has ways of procuring such things. It's not treason or anything; it's not like it's the Horde, so hopefully they won't clam up if they do know something. They know little Mayellen wouldn't be trying to trap them into anything."
"And it's not like you're asking about how they're getting the goods. You just want to know if they have any," Natalyah adds. "Meanwhile, we should get a second, different hypothesis to test with other assumptions, and maybe get someone else with fresh, different eyes on the same thing. I'm going upstairs to get Aszera, so we can talk about where we might be going today, if we can start at least taking a look at some obvious places, and maybe she'll have something she knows that we don't."
It's not a request or a suggestion; it's a very direct statement. It doesn't seem likely that Natalyah is used to asking for permission so much as deciding things.
Mayellen just nods and takes some more notes, seeming content to sit at the reception desk and see what happens next.
Natalyah lopes up the stairs to Azsera's apartment door in her worgen form, as she shifts directly into her human form with a Levitate after the last bound upwards, drifting so close to the door with the motion that she has to put a hand out to stop herself from colliding with it. She uses that hand to knock, a swift and demanding tap, tap, tap.
The lepidopterist turned detective's energy is much as it was in the Highlands — that growth of the Light having woven itself into her core energy and the curse she carries, leaving at least a general good guess as to who the figure on Azsera's doorstep is likely to be.
It isn't long at all before the door opens, and Aze is already smiling when she comes into view, wearing a loose sleeveless cream blouse that shows her tattoos, and brown trousers and soft boots.
"Natalyah," Aze says by way of greeting. "How are you doing?"
Natalyah is presumably wearing clothes as well. She at least doesn't seem naked.
"I'm fine, but a better question is probably what am I doing, and that's gathering you and dragging you downstairs. We have a mystery from Siamus, a deadline of a week to prove ourselves, and a hundred things to do," she says, dumping out the information like a bag on a table.
"Downstairs?" Aze asks, her voice brightening. "You mean, for the whole detective thing, right? I'm in. What's the mystery? Or wait, that's for downstairs talk. Who all's involved so far? Let me grab my jacket."
It is August and Aze most definitely doesn't need a jacket. Nevertheless, she vanishes for a few moments, then reappears in the doorway wearing a light leather one that leaves only the marks near her collarbone visible — and only that if you're paying attention. She's ready to go.
"It's just Mayellen and myself at the moment, but we might need more. And I'll show you what it is, and our current hypothesis to chase down," Natalyah explains, shifting to her worgen form to get down the stairs again. She bounds down the entire thing in a single leap, landing and then floating back up into her human form once more, sweating visibly — well, to seeing people visibly — and a little breathless, as she opens up the door to the office, and calls out to Mayellen, "She was at home!"
Mayellen rises carefully from her desk, not using the cane.
"Hello," she says, very professionally. "Mayellen Hazan."
Aze laughs as Natalyah leaps down the stairs, and then she seems to accept that as the Team Method. With a focused expression, she jumps down the stairs after her, landing a little heavily and absorbing the impact with bent legs.
Aze then steps over into the detective agency doorway and says, "Hello! Aszera Sunstrike, pleased to meet you.
"Has Natalyah filled you in on the puzzle, and the plan?" Mayellen smiles amiably. "We've got six days to find an answer, so we'll need all hands on deck, as the Admiral himself might say."
"No, just that there's the time limit, and that it's for Siamus," Aze says, moving into the office. "What's the puzzle, and why the rush?"
"It's a mystery of delivery, and the rush is that Siamus dared us to do it in under a week,**" Natalyah says, as she floats ominously through the office to grab hold of the map, and spread it over the desk as she talks.
"A year ago, Siamus got a package while he was away, delivered to his house with the strange designation of 'Stormwind Fallon,' the sort of distinction someone from Kul Tiras would make he says, and no return information of who sent it, let alone why. This paper is a map of Kul Tiras, and what's strange are three things: that it's updated from after the Cataclysm, or so we assume, and has a mark on it where his grandparents' land would be that seems to be a message to him, and it arrived after Kul Tiras put up some sort of a wall of no communication.
"He wants to know who sent it, and if they have any current contact with the islands. Right now, our first elimination hypothesis that we'll try is a merchant who set up some sort of back and forth sometime around the closing off, knowing that the goods would be extremely valuable, who has been probably passing off these goods as something they had in storage, rather than advertising their back-and-forth with the islands. That this person collaborated with someone who wanted to get this map to Siamus.
"It makes five assumptions though that we have no proof yet of: that this wasn't just a one time thing, the person doing it is a merchant, that they're selling goods they're smuggling in, that their method must be magical — arcane or fel — to be instant and not reliant on ships, and that their base is here in Stormwind City.
"So while we eliminate those possibilities, we need to also consider a totally different hypothesis that makes other assumptions, to best collect data to arrive at the real truth," she concludes, spreading long fingered hands over the map to hold it down. "Now, first things first — can you see anything on this map that we can't?"
The map is only a bit of parchment. It omits no strange and unusual magical properties.
"If we can do this," Mayellen says earnestly, "if we can wrap this up in six days? He'll praise us to the skies. We'll have to hire six more people just to handle all the cases that will come in."
Aze nods along, listening to Natalyah's explanation of the case, the constraints, and the current assumptions. Then she seems to straighten a little further at he'll praise us to the skies, and she flashes a smile at Mayellen. "I'll do my best."
Gesturing to the map, Aze continues, "Nothing magical here, so if it is arcane or fel, it's not something in the map itself. I can wander around and scout the market, but probably most of what I'd pick up would be unrelated. I bet a lot of merchants use some kind of magic."
"And I can scent out anything that isn't from around here. This map for example, I could tell you it wasn't made here or least not with any techniques from here. The paper and ink smell different, and I couldn't be fooled by even a good forgery of someone using different materials. But like you, I can't just sniff everything all around, or too broadly, so we have to start somewhere specific, hence our first hypothesis to prove or disprove. Mayellen knows merchants and warlocks, and so we can start getting a list of who would be likely from those groups, and you and I can check both if someone's not who they say they are, like a Kul Tiran or a warlock," Natalyah says, that electric energy of hers.
"But that's how we've thought of how someone might do it. So, let's say you only know that this map arrived here somehow. How would you maybe do it, or someone with skills that you know of that might be able to be used to get a map from one place to another that isn't just simple and legal like on a last ship with a regular whatever they call it, list of things, sort of solution," Natalyah asks.
"Hm, if there were regular ships going back and forth, even restricted — but I'd guess there aren't," Aze says, running a finger along the map. "And you've already considered the arcane and the fel. Naga? That's one idea — they don't need a ship. Not really on great terms with the Admiral right now, though, I'd guess, since Vashj'ir. But any sapient sea creature could work. Rogue airship, maybe, dropping it from the sky. A little one might go unnoticed."
"Hm, not an airship perhaps," Mayellen says, "but some sort of… balloon? Even that, though; Stormwind would be too alert. Gryphon riders patrolling constantly. Unless it landed elsewhere. I'm thinking too linearly. It could have landed in Westfall for all we know and then been brought to Stormwind on foot by someone who knew just what pile of goods on the dock to put it in. Light, we just keep making our search wider instead of narrower…"
"But that's part of the way it works, even for butterflies. You can't actually be sure where one is native to when they have migratory flight patterns, and sometimes that means tracking them over ridiculously long distances just to check," Natalyah points out. "This was put in a pile of goods on the dock? Like someone slipped it in?"
Mayellen nods. "But the Admiral and his… assistant or whatever she is, they already covered the obvious. Talked to all the dock people, the courier who brought it from the dock to his house, all that. So unless someone they already talked to was lying — which they'd just to do us as well - that's a dead end. They didn't have any information that was helpful, according to the Admiral."
"Hm, that might knock out the naga theory," Aze says. "That wouldn't go unnoticed in Stormwind Harbor." Aze taps her finger against the map. "Is there any chance that what they communicated was the information, and someone in Stormwind drew the map? Someone who knew the techniques of Kul Tiras."
"Who in Stormwind would know what Kul Tiras looks like after the Cataclysm?"
Natalyah shakes her head. "No one for sure. And it doesn't perfectly fit well, but it's part of that unknown that we can't completely rule out if this is an elaborate forgery. But either way, if there was an original information of the map, or someone just made this all up, then we have to ask how would someone try to make it also seem like it was made in Kul Tiras, and not just make it with Stormwind things if they were copying it or making up a thing? The paper and the ink aren't from here, that's absolutely certain. It would also mean whoever was doing the forgery, if it was one, wanted Siamus to believe that it's real. But that's its own question that we still don't have an answer to: is it accurate? No one else has a map we can compare it to, so we can't actually know.
"But, even if we assume that it isn't actually from Kul Tiras, if they were putting together a forgery, they'd be doing it with things they got from the islands, so it brings us full circle back to someone who has access to all those things, and had them at minimum before the last remaining trade routes closed off. Our assumption in our first hypothesis includes that this person is still doing it. We can't be sure of that. They might have all this paper and ink already, and this is a one off for some purpose we don't know yet. But that's back to finding out who has or had Kul Tiran materials to work with," Natalyah concludes. "And then how they got it to Siamus."
Aze nods slightly. "Then we're pretty settled on it being a physical thing moved from one place to the other. We've talked about the merchants in town and the workers in the harbor, but what about the ships that came in that day? Maybe a Stormwind ship met a Kul Tiran ship out on the water, took on the map there. Seems like a lot of trouble just to send him a map, which brings us back to why? Was there anything on the map that would have convinced Siamus to take like… a certain stance in the House or something?"
"That's what I asked him, if there was something he might have done differently having the map, but he said no, nothing except that he's been tracking it down, and obviously wouldn't have done that if no one sent him one," Natalyah answers. "I don't think sailors wouldn't gossip about meeting a Kul Tiran ship in the middle of the ocean. And thinking in terms of shipping is thinking like Siamus, and what he probably already thought of, and chased down himself. He’s very good at this. We have to think outside the box to something he wouldn't have thought of already."
"The most obvious message from the map is just, 'your grandparents are dead, or ruined.' It specifically marks a place his grandparents lived, a place which is now apparently underwater. So we can also ask ourselves, who would need the Admiral to know this? It's easier for me to narrow down who would logically send it - someone from his family back home - than how the hell they managed to do it,” Mayellen says.
"But we can't even confirm that the map is real, let alone why the mapmaker wanted Siamus to know what it's saying to narrow it down. And just because he didn't do something that someone might have wanted him to do — like, sail to Kul Tiras to go see for himself and who knows what when he ran into whatever block they have up — doesn't mean someone didn't have a goal. Just that it failed," Natalyah points out. "Finding out how it got here will tell us a lot about if it's real, and who must have sent it."
"That's intriguing - that someone might be trying to get him to return to Kul Tiras. Now it makes me wonder if some of his House opposition might be involved."
"House opponent, or maybe even someone in Kul Tiras who wants him to come back as an ally?" Aze suggests, with a little shrug. "But as for the how… if I were going to try something like that, I'd definitely use intermediaries. I don't have any special skills that would help me transport a thing from Kul Tiras to Stormwind. And then for warlocks, obviously there's the Nether, and mages have their portals."
"Right, that's our first place to look. We find whoever made sure it got into that pile here, because they have a way to get something from Kul Tiras that a man like Siamus can't manage with all his ships and things. And while we work on our first hypothesis of a merchant here with regular ways to sneak in something magically to Stormwind, and have been using it to profit, we'll try to think of some other way, or see where the data leads us," Natalyah says, opening up her journal again, and writing down several notes.
"If it's political or personal, and Siamus didn't do what they wanted, then you'd think they would try again with something else. It doesn't sound like they have, or Siamus hasn't noticed it, which seems unlikely. He's too smart and good at puzzles." Natalyah knows this personally. "But if it's that they can't, because this was a one off, we might not be able to easily trace them back, but that it still makes it much more likely that this person who received it on this end is either Kul Tiran themselves, and for some reason doesn't want Siamus to know it was them, or someone from here who had a very strong link to the islands to do someone one last favor."
"So we should sniff around any Kul Tirans as well?" Mayellen asks. "Are there records we can find of who's from there and now living in Stormwind? Only ones I know are House Fallon people and one hunter type in Cobalt."
"I can keep watch for certain kinds of people from Kul Tiras," Aze offers, turning her face down towards the map. "But people could easily slip by me."
"I know of another family who didn't know Siamus until recently, and they might know more common folk, although some of them were actively avoiding other Kul Tirans. Siamus can probably pull records of official immigrants," Natalyah assumes, having no idea how these things work as a civilian. "But whoever the receiving person might be — or if this is a person who snuck out of Kul Tiras and is now trapped on this side of the block, because it's an assumption that the sender and receiver are two different people — they knew to put that map in the pile, and knew it would get to Siamus. But they haven't come forward. So, they had to have known enough about Siamus to have it there, but they might be deliberately hiding from him."
Mayellen eases herself into the chair at the reception desk, slowly, carefully, and starts taking more notes in her little pocket sized book.
"That's a thought," Aze says, considering. "Maybe the person smuggled themselves, and the map is just a thing they brought with them. But then, they'd be hiding because Siamus knows them, and would know they came here after things were blocked off. If that's the case, maybe they'd come forward if we could figure out how to signal that it's safe."
Natalyah lights up more with this new angle. "You're absolutely right. It's certainly something to try if we keep running into other dead ends looking for an intermediary if the data starts pointing that there simply wasn't. I mean, whoever did this at the very least did it against Kul Tiran laws or whatever. When I was in Gilneas, they left the Alliance, and I didn't advertise who I was so I wouldn't be kicked out while I was still doing my research on the Zebra Longwing. I even changed my accent sometimes. After the wall came up it was even worse. They were vicious in keeping that wall where no one could get anything in or out. It was because of the worgens, but still.
"A person might fear that either they'll be handed over back to Kul Tiras, or that someday they'll be charged with a crime if that block ever comes back down." Natalyah lets the map start rolling itself up as she takes her hands off it. "We can't do it to start, or we would tip off if the person who got the map here is a smuggler or some malicious sort. But maybe that's another thing to consider as an angle to look at, if someone started living somewhere around here around the same time the map arrived."
Mayellen nods and keeps writing. One can almost hear the whirring of gears inside her skull, but for the moment she says nothing further.
Aze listens with curiosity to the Gilneas description and says, "If it does come to that, maybe you'd be a good person to try to reach them, then. But for a starting point…" Aze pauses. "What do we do? Go around the harbor and the market looking for unusual energy or smells? Maybe one of you can check immigration records?"
"We might as well today, to at least give it a look in our ways, and maybe ask if anyone at the docks can point us at anyone openly selling Kul Tiran goods from 'before' the block," Natalyah says, emphasizing the quotations in her words as well as with her fingers. "While Mayellen gets more inquiries in writing to merchants about Kul Tiran trade goods they maybe don't put out as their regular offerings. It's possible that the hypothetical person who smuggled this also keeps things out in the open, but in case they're being discreet for exclusivity to sell only to high bidders, and to hide what their real inventory is, they might only be willing to sell to those 'in the know.' With the hypothetical merchant seller, they have to be obscuring how they're getting their goods. So, we're looking to lure a smuggler out of hiding.
"We could ask Siamus for the record information, but either way we should start narrow and broaden only if we fail to find our answer per population, although we at least now know where we're going broadest with a hypothetical immigrant," Natalyah says, holding up a finger for each part. "Any known Kul Tiran merchant, any merchant at all in the city, any Kul Tiran who legally immigrated, and then any Kul Tiran who might be in hiding anywhere in the world that isn't Kul Tiras."
"I'll check with both Ference and Tyrrell about any Kul Tirans who might be trying to slip under the radar in either of their networks," Mayellen offers. "If I tell either of them it's to help the Admiral, they won't hesitate."
"Good idea," Aze nods. "I can also ask at the estate next time I'm at the orphanage, but probably asking the Count directly makes the most sense. I'll just grab my cloak and glasses from upstairs, and I can wander around with Natalyah. I don't have to be that close to note something that's off. I can't always tell you what it means, but I can report anything out of the ordinary."
"Oh, yes, if either of you can make the trek out to Drakewatch in person, that might go better than my writing," Mayellen says. "I know Tyrrell's not on duty with the 7th at present, and sometimes his letters are deliberately oblique, and following up to try to pin him down is so much more time-consuming when not in person."
"Then that's what we'll do. Aszera can talk with him, and if she doesn't get it from him but thinks this Count knows something he's not telling, we'll try something else." Natalyah jots down her last notes, tucks her notebook back into the worgen plushie backpack, and sets it back properly on her back.
"I'm ready whenever you are, Aszera," Natalyah declares, practically buzzing with energy, floating ominously towards the front door. "One week, one mystery. We can do this."
*Narrator: It was not what Siamus said. It's what Natalyah heard.
**Narrator: Again, Siamus did not. Natalyah understood it as one.