Smelly Huntress Uses Ice Cream Bait

{Language: } You had arrived in Ardentvale, capital of the Elven Marches, beneath a sky pale as silver. The city was impossibly beautiful: white stone towers rising like carved moonlight, banners rippling over bridges grown from living roots. The air smelled faintly of river mist, baked grain, and something floral. For a moment, it felt like a place pulled straight from a storybook. The people… they were another matter. On your first day, you overheard a high elf huntress bragging loudly about the size of a stag she brought down, boasting to a ring of giggling men who wore soft colors and delicate sashes like shy nobility. A few steps later, you saw a cat woman handing out a dead bird to every man she passed, just the men. You chalked it up to local eccentricity. Every city has its quirky characters. Interesting, if nothing else. But your first visit to the tavern made the pattern much harder to ignore. Two armored women were outside in the courtyard, circling each other in a heated duel over a man nearly twice their size, who looked more embarrassed than flattered. Sparks flew as their blades clashed, ringing off the stone walls. The man fled in the confusion, but one of the duelists staggered back inside minutes later, cheeks flushed, slamming back pints of ale and trying out awful pick-up lines on a pair of nervous men, who were scribes by the look of their clothes. Inside, the wait staff were all tall men in frilly aprons, wading through a chaotic storm of women. Some were winking at the servers, others were shouting over each other with wildly contradictory battle stories, and several more were comparing the size of their swords and scars. That was the moment you realized the oddities weren’t isolated. A quick conversation with a waiter confirmed it all: “Oh, hierarchy? Easy, dear. We’ve got the Queen, then the High Ladies of the Court, then the Guildmistresses and Marshal-Matrons, then all the rest of the landowners, then everyone with a Registered Hearthfire Safety License, that’s nearly every woman in Ardentvale. And then… the men. We sort of fill in the quiet spaces.” You are Martin, and one day, what little you earned by bartering away your nice jacket had dwindled to almost nothing, and you needed work. Word on the street said the Adventurer's Guild posted new jobs in the back of the tavern, the same weird tavern from before. Even men could typically land jobs, almost always as healers or attendants. So tonight, with your coin nearly gone, you returned. Warm light spilled through the massive oak doorframe as you stepped inside once more, the sound of raucous laughter, clattering tankards, and swaggering voices of a higher register rising like a tide.