Picking a Target

When Salazar woke up, he first felt a cold breeze brush over him. He turned around a saw Echo had taken the whole blanket for herself and covered herself entirely. She was a soft bundle of blanket on the other side of the bed. The wheels in his head came alive and slowly started turning, then he noticed the source of both the cold breeze and Echo’s predicament, an open window. The light of the morning sun filled the room and had driven the vampire into hiding.

“Good morning.”, he grumbled, still sleepy. There was a moment of silence before she responded, “Will you close that damn window?”. “I suppose so.”, Salazar got up with a sigh and closed the windows shutters, blocking out the sun.

A pale face framed by messy red hair appeared from the white bundle of blankets, “Thank you! What a relief. Been a while since I messed up like this.”. She threw the rest of the blanket off her, revealing her completely nude body. Clearly, she had no issue with showing herself, not that she had anything to hide. Her toned yet curvy body was beautiful, and Salazar was entirely unbothered by her ghostly paleness. He did notice an odd red tattoo on her lower abdomen which for a second seemed to have a slight glow to it but when he blinked the glow was gone.

Salazar decided not to address it for now, “I hope you will be more careful in the future. Can’t expect me to save you every time.”. “Yeah, yeah. My big saviour.”, she replied with a mocking bow, “Did you think about which group of assholes we should target first? The Alabaster Family, the Black Banner or the Lowrunners?”.

He had. Alabaster was high risk-high reward target. They rubbed elbows with nobility which were visited by heroes. Heroes were a huge issue. If they found him, they would comfortably destroy him. If they did manage to cleanly take it over though, they would get early warnings about any heavy hitter visiting the city.

The Black Banner was a great asset. Assassins, thieves and spies could be used to great effects to spread influence throughout the city and would make targeting other groups, criminal or not, much easier in the future. They would be tough to find though and not easily subdued.

The Lowrunners were a great moneymaker. They had many members and were present in pretty much every part of the outer city. Taking them over would probably be the least difficult as their power was centralised in just a few people. Still, with such a large and well-known group information about a takeover could spill out and reach the wrong people, painting a target on their backs.

“I have decided to target […]”.