Ashley Alden stares ahead, her body covered head to toe in moleskin and exotic oiled leathers, a butterfly net in her hands. Her mind attempts to wander into the hazy fog that was her memory, back to the secret trips from her great estate, to the bar that was the center of her nightlife. She vaguely remembers a conversation in her half-drunk, half-aroused state, talking to an older man with firm cheekbones and a piercing gaze.

Adventure, she hears him cry out in her mind, but the echoing and the distortion of the alcohol made it hard to understand. Adventure, he repeats. Haven't you always wanted to go on an adventure?

She sees her vision shake in her memory for what could've been akin to a nod. The man makes a wide grin back toward her.

Then meet me at the southern town in Pel, he says. I will show you great adventure. 

Some adventure this turned out to be, she sighs to herself. Ashley reaches up, pulls back at the hood around her head to cover as much of herself as she could. Along with the moleskin and exotic oiled leather suit, she carries a backpack and two nondescript pouches on her belt. One was her coin pouch, with the other a set of thieves' tools. She always likes to avoid talking about the two if she could. Her left arm has a bracer disguising a single knife. She carries no other weapons, having taken them off and left them back at the bar after discovering she was on sewer duty.

Ashley then turns and looks to her other companions. What other poor souls got trapped into doing this too, she asks in her head.

"Ashley," she says to Caelynn, her words dripping with annoyance. The young woman is unable to hide her disgust from being tricked to do this. "I do hope we'll be able to finish whatever it is they wish in good haste. Every second of me trudging through sludge and suffocating in god-awful sewers is a second I could spend doing better things. Like burning to death."

"It sounds more pleasant than taking a step in there, at least."

Ashley looks at Tayla and immediately feels some wrong. From top to bottom, the scandalous-looking girl sauntering toward her screams exotic. She takes a moment to look at her flirtatious eyes, her exposed torso, how her legs ripples alongside her movements. Everything about the sight gives her chills. She tries to determine whether those were the bad kind or the good.

Her eyes narrow at the girl's pointed words, and goes on the defense. "You know, you're right. Quite so," she responds as she confronts Tayla back. "I'm not cut out for the job. I'm not cut out to shovel man manure and push waist deep through someone else's sludge. I was promised something far greater than that, but apparently I was lied to."

She sighs and turns, staring back toward the entrance of the grate. "I was expecting a lot more than cleaning up a sewer, you know," she says, still audible but far quieter and under her breath. Sure, she thinks to herself. You were expecting it while drunker than a miner after sundown, but still.

"I suppose", Ashley says back. She never really did understand the phrase, she thinks to herself. To her, it had as much meaning as 'rain was wet' or 'mastiffs bark'. Of course everyone had to start somewhere. No one started from nowhere; it was self-explanatory.

"I'm Ashley," she calls over her shoulder as she walks to the sewer entrance. The hard, bitter, putrid scent hits her nose hard, forces her to reel back and to retreat back to the others. It was going to be a lot harder than she thinks.

The rest of Tayla's words trickles into her mind slowly, saves itself for future contemplation. On any ordinary day, with her having fun and relaxing at a bar, she might've been far more receptive. But the irritation of being tricked combined with the scant, unsanitary, disgusting nature of the job put her on the edge. "It would be best to finish this and move on as fast as possible," she says, her words a bubbling cauldron of water. "For all of our sakes."

And my sanity, she thinks to herself.

Ashley glances back at the sound of the new arrival, takes a moment to look her over. This was the most exotic cast of people she's seen in a long while, she thinks to herself. It reminds her of those traveling shows that used to come by the estate, the small bands of exotic dancers that her father used to "spice up" some of his formal parties. She usually never attended them herself (nor was she invited), but the curious girl began finding ways to spy on it ever since she was a teenager.

Something about this growing group began feeling off to her. Something different. Again, like the chill that ran down her spine with the water woman earlier, she struggles to determine if the feeling is a good or a bad thing.

"Ashley," the rather short, hide-skinned hooded woman says back toward Delight. "You were tricked into doing this too?"

"I don't imagine anyone is here because they love sewage systems."

Ashley gives a deadpan stare to Wilgrim, then Caelynn beside her. "I do appreciate how humorous the gods like to be," she responds to Caelynn's ironic comment. "Maybe they'll find it humorous when I'm green and pale and sick after this is all over."

She approaches Wilgrim and gives him a nod. "You may call me Ashley, overly... enthusiastic man. As you can tell, I'm nowhere as joyed as you are to be here," she exhales, before fixing the hood of her waterproof sewage gear. "So the faster we clean these blasted pits of grit and slime, the faster I can take you all to drink so we can forget about this horrific experience."

A moment of reflection hits her, and the girl's eyes soften. "I'm not usually a donkey's rear end," she defends herself. "I simply despise being here. With every fiber of my being."

Ashley turns back toward Delight with a raised eyebrow. "In need of coin?" she asks. "No offense, fair maiden, but I do believe there are other, less... foul methods of getting coin. I'm sure you could've easily secured those as you did this."

Easily secured, minus the fact that others might think you'd eat them, she thinks as she looks over the tiefling's appearance. She peeks at the sharp, pointed horns flanking both sides of her head, the pale, blue skin covering every inch of her body, with sharp, elvish-like ears just below her horns. If it was visible (or if she had one), she also glances at the curling tail behind the girl's legs. Ashley herself wasn't one to be racist, but she could see why employers would be intimidated by her presence.

"What brought you to this instead?" she asks.

Ashley pauses in her step, then turns back to Tayla. An eyebrow raises back to her as she gives a third take over the strange, water lady. "Excuse me?" she asks, irritation seeping through her formerly annoyed tone. "You're barking up the wrong tree, Tay-La."

"Do you have the ability to choose who you're born to?" Ashley takes a step forward, feeling Tayla's words bore into a nerve. "Can you control the gods and the fortunes and misfortunes of what your birthright is? If so, I'd love for you to do it to me. Because I didn't have a choice to who I was born to."

"So don't you dare criticize me for what my birthright is. You could've shamed me for being born in a slut's family, and it would've been exactly the same."

She exhales deeply at the end of her rant, then glares off in the distance. Ashley allows herself a moment of respite before turning back to Delight, standing directly next to Tayla. "I apologize for that," she murmurs underneath her breath. "But I hate it when people berate me for my upbringings. Do they think I can do anything about it?"