Opening Gambits V - Conclusion.

Jonathan Chess stood in the parlor room of the Goldgears family.  MacLhir and his wife sat nervously on the gnome-sized couch, waiting for Chess' report on the whereabouts and status of their daughter, Varissa.

"There is no easy way to say this; I found your daughter.  She is dead," Chess explained, a stoic expression on his face.  Mistress Goldgears buried her face in MacLhir's shoulder, and Chess could hear the sobs, see the grief wracking her small body.  MacLhir put his arms around his wife, and simply asked Jonathan "How?"

"As you may know, your daughter had taken up the study of arcane; her teachers all said she had an immense talent for it," Jonathan continued.  "What you probably had not been told is that she had also taken up the study of the Fel Arts."

"I see," MacLhir ground out, his voice as cold as the weather in Coldstone Pass.

"She had taken up the study in Stormwind, at the request of certain parties," Chess lied. "These parties asked her to study demonology so that she could join an organization called the Veiled Hand, a sect of corrupted people who serve as spies for the Burning Legion, based in Duskwood, in Darkshire.   She managed to gather evidence of their perfidy, and they killed her for it."  Chess handed a letter, sealed with the royal seal of Stormwind.  "This report will confirm all I have said."

Jonathan had spent hours on the forgery of the false documents; he had stolen the paper from the SI:7 stationary supply, and painstakingly copied the seal from the numerous outstanding arrest warrants available in the Stormwind Royal Archives.  Jonathan felt bad about necessity of the deception, but he would have felt worse telling them what had really happened.

Jonathan had discovered that Varissa Goldgears had joined the Defias Brotherhood, and had tracked her to a deserted apartment in Moonbrook.  He had confronted her there, after having killed the Moonbrook Thugs which had guarded the building.

The apartment was a small dilapidated garret in a semi-abandoned building, near the entrance to the Deadmines mining complex.  The bottom floor was used as a flophouse for the homeless and dispossessed of Moonbrook.  Varissa had spent little effort on redecorating, apart from a long, low table which held a complex array of alchemical equipment.  Jonathan looked the setup over; he was adept at the distillation and concoction of venoms and poisons, but what she was brewing as another order of magnitude in complexity, and some of the substances gleamed in the darkness with an eerie Fel glow.  Whatever she was making for the Defias Brotherhood, it was likely corruptive and deadly.

Jonathan had found Varissa asleep on a tiny pallet in the far corner.  He had shaken her awake.  She had been grouchy and resentful, but had initially assumed that Jonathan was a member of the Defias Brotherhood, given Jonathan's preponderance of black leather.  He had swiftly disabused her of that notion, saying "You parents sent me, Varissa.  They are worried sick, not having head for you those many weeks."

"Oh yeah?  That's a stone cold tragedy," she had said, her voice cold.  "They always want to know what I'm doing, who I'm with... they treat me like a child.  So the Void with them!  Now you - get out, before I have my Defias friends put you out!"

Jonathan didn't correct her assumption that there were any Defias within earshot that might respond to her call.

"Before I go, at least write them a note.  It would be a simple kindness, to let them know you are well.  Can you at least do that much?"  Jonathan asked, although he did not expect her to actually comply with his request.

"Oh Fel no... I'll tell you what - why don't you tell them I'm dead.  After all, they're dead to me!" the gnome warlock yelled.  "Tell them they can stuff themselves into a Gnomeregan tomb and rot! Better yet, why don't you crawl in their after them!  Now get out!"

"Yeah, I'll tell them you are dead... but I won't be lying."  Chess had garroted her from behind before she could cast even the quickest spell.  He had left the apartment in haste, after destroying whatever she had been working upon, so that he would not have to breathe the fumes from the wreckage he had left behind.  Chess had taken her notebooks, and found notes about the Stormwind garrison and stockade, and that she had been working on a new version of a Plague of Undeath.  Jonathan was not sure what the Defias had planned, but he dropped the notebooks off with SI:7 the next day, as well as gathering his supplies for the forgeries he would produce to support the fiction he would report to the Goldgears family.

Their daughter may have fallen to the corruption of Darkness, and taken up with scum like the Defias Brotherhood, but the truth would have brought her parents nothing but disgrace and pain.  Sometimes, a lie was better - and more merciful - than the truth.