Otto of Aquila

Otto is a supplier of the black market of Aquila in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"), a man said to have no surname. Goods reach the port city in limited quantities and are shared out at the harbour, and what escapes the records feeds an unofficial trade; Otto's part in it is to bring costly foods such as chocolate, coffee and honey to the city's high society.^{1 2}

The depot office

Otto, a man of about fifty, works in a glass-fronted office on the upper floor of a large, run-down depot in the merchant road quarter, looking down on poorly paid workers, half-orcs among them. A big rooster sits tied by one leg to his desk, scarred from fighting; the band took it for a champion, and Otto seemed to call it Ejder.^{3 4}

Sticks and Finli brought him a sample of honey. He tasted it, liked it, haggled over the quantity he could take, and shook hands with them on a supply.^{5 6}

Papers and favours

When Sticks looked for a way to run a shop under someone else's name, he turned to Otto, who was said to have opened depots in his own name for smugglers before. Otto told the band that he counted as a war veteran and a disabled man for his tax relief, and suggested registering the shop as a windowless depot to escape several taxes.^{7 8 9}

The bargain they struck let Bruno's new place, given the sign Doktorun Yeri ("the Doctor's Place"), stand on Otto's papers for a yearly fee that covered neither rent nor the purchase of goods. His wish to use the shop now and then as a store was left for later, without a promise.^{10 11 12 13}

The night visit

At about one in the morning Otto turned up at the shop door with drink. To keep from receiving him inside, the band raised a little smoke and stepped out; Otto stopped a passing wagon, handed its driver a purse, and talked business with them inside it over the drink.^{14 15 16}

He spoke of shared funding for a plot of land that came with a map and might hold riches. The plot, it turned out, was a manner of speaking: the venture was to buy a treasure map, find the place and dig the hoard out. Shares and sums shifted as they talked, and nothing was settled that night.^{17 18}

The drink he brought was poor stuff and left its drinkers briefly blind. It was not poison; their sight came back after they made themselves sick.¹⁹

Later

When the band came back to Aquila after a long absence, Otto's shop still stood and Otto himself was still in the city. The shop dog later reported that Otto had looked in at the clinic and gone away again. Called by a message carried by children, he came a few hours later and offered to send a crew of four brothers, paid by the man, for the basement the band wanted under the clinic.^{20 21 22 23 24}