Painting the town Red

Mendez, Thesis and Chen find themselves, after a rather wet night, in the remarkably upscale Red Harvest, a drinking den popular with merchants plying the waters of the Furnace Coast. While Chen finds himself listening to the ramblings of a drunken merchant pummeling him with endless and tedious facts and figures of his burgeoning trade empire and how he is going to turn his local trade in a continental operation.  Thesis and Mendez, decide to waste a rather impressive amount of gold at the feet of the two dancing girls, the sisters Hamia and Chandra Dashiella.  Apparently the toast of the the harbour quarter of Febril, they seem to have quite a large throng of on-lookers looking to open negotiations over their virtue for the night.

Amazingly enough, Mendez and Thesis find themselves stumbling to the girls' apartment towards the end of the night. Sharing a meal and some drinks, they chat and exchange stories. The girls tell of their childhood in the south, before they had to flee as local nobles started squabbling amongst themselves, forcing people of their lands as armies of mercenaries rampaged across the countryside.  While dancing is not the best of jobs, it does offer the possibility of catching a rich merchant's eye.