You get caught

Making sure the old woman is busy clearing up the mess, you quietly double-back and approach her desk. Grabbing her abandoned quill, you start altering the pages of her ledger, turning numbers and letters into detailed, crude pictograms. Wishing to make the Traveller proud, you become absorbed in your work, attempting to fill the whole tome with rude images.

You have just finished turning one of the d’s on the page into a perfectly drawn dick when you feel a hand latch onto your wrist, yanking it away from the ledger with ****. Looking up the hand’s owner, you see the once-kindly gnome’s face now furious scowling at you. “What in the nine hells do you think you are doing young lady?” She thunders, her eyes unable to see what you were drawing from down below.

You nervously pick up the ledger and pass it down to her. Her eyes go wide as she stares in disbelief at your handiwork.

“Young folk have no respect these days!” She hisses through gritted teeth. You begin to try and make excuses, but she ignores you and drags you by the wrist over to her office door. Despite her age and stature, she has an iron grip and pulls you along almost without effort. Once inside, she pushes you into a wooden chair and begins muttering to herself. Realising too late that she is about to use magic, you begin to push yourself out of the chair, but your whole body locks up in paralysis.

“I bet you are too young to recognise me, girl. Before I retired and started this bath house, I was once the captain of the guard. My name is Amalda Knotwise. Before I cleaned it up, this whole city was drowning in smugglers and **** dealers.” Amalda leans right into your face with a fire in her eyes and her sweet-granny smile now replaced with a fiendish grin.

“I don’t normally like to brag, but I became extremely good at extracting information from these criminals about their hideouts and networks, and when I was done with them, they rarely ever went back to a life of crime.” She pulls away from you and begins rummaging through her cupboards, looking for something.

“To make someone who feels bold enough to commit a crime in broad daylight, I have found that the best method of punishment is to make them feel powerless. To teach them that they are not above everyone else, but in fact below everyone else, like worms.