Letters of the Ledger
Bootstraps and Bourbon
A Ledger Casefile
Chapter 1 — The Big Leagues
The door careened into the wall with a loud crash and a crack that hinted at structural damage. “Someone wanna tell me how the fuck a full grown adult Skinwalker was mistaken for a ‘possessed raccoon’?” Allen demanded, hauling in the large, rapidly decomposing corpse of a humanoid figure by the scruff of its neck. It was haphazardly wrapped in black trash bags that dragged behind him, leaking viscera and bodily fluids as the pissed-off freelancer stormed toward the bar.
The nasty thing reeked of ammonia and weed — an eye-watering combo. The man dragging said corpse didn’t seem to be in much better shape than his quarry. Bloody and beaten, his clothes were ravaged with ragged gashes and dripping red stains that were clearly sustained in the implied dust-up with the ‘raccoon’.
One might think such a scene would cause a ruckus, but here at the Rusty Flask it was just another Tuesday and only served to elicit some chuckles and good-natured jeering from the patrons bearing witness to the display.
“Wrapped up the pet-case then Dessel?” The bartender called, smirking as she poured a pint of shitty light beer, enjoying the outrage of the Ledger’s newest recruit.
The Ledger. The Guild. The Registry.
Officially, it was the Palladian Registry of Unorthodox Contracting. The shit show that Allen now found himself gainfully employed by, operated out of dozens of chapters like the Rusty Flask, or ‘Field Contractor Operations Annex #39’ if you want to get technical, which no one ever did. Not all were as run-down and decrepit as the Rusty Flask, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one more offensive to the senses.
“How the hell did this thing get put in the Certs Bin?” Allen demanded hotly, gesturing pointedly at the smelly sack of body that was now dripping mysterious fluids onto the bar.
The Certs Bin — innocuous-sounding colloquialism that belied the severity of the situation Allen had just survived.
It was the assignment category where the Registry dumped entry-level certification jobs — low-risk, low-pay, intended to prove a contractor could handle themselves without being undone by a stiff breeze. That was the theory anyway. In practice it seemed the Ledger had quietly ratcheted up its hiring standards — if this qualified as a starter case, Dessel wasn’t sure whether to feel proud or fucking terrified.
“Went through proper vetting same as the rest, Allen,” said the bartender — a woman by the name of Mara Eddings — before taking a swig of the beer she’d just poured.
“Nature of the beast, you know that better than most.” she added dryly before topping off the pint and sliding it to the guy who’d actually ordered it.
“Proper vetting?” Allen rasped in disbelief. “Eddy this thing ate half the neighborhood cats and the nice elderly couple in 3B!”
“It did no such thing, Allen — don’t you lie to me.” Mara snapped, eyes narrowing dangerously.
In response, Allen withdrew from a pocket what remained of the old lady that had once inhabited the townhouse he’d found the monster residing in — most of a thoroughly gnawed left hand — and slapped it on the counter damningly.
Without skipping a beat Mara dismissed the counter-argument with unassailable logic, “there were no missing persons reports associated with the case at the time it was posted Allen, quit being dramatic.”
She waved him off dismissively and stepped over to fill another glass.
“Besides,” she added, nodding toward the clearly decayed, weathered, and worn hand now resting on her bar, “that looks relatively fresh. Must have been recent.”
“Can you get your decaying flesh off the fuckin’ counter Dessel? I’m trying to eat here,” grumbled the man watching the argument from behind a burger and fries.
The food looked deceptively appetizing considering the last time the Rusty Flask had a health and sanitation inspection, Jack the Ripper was still making headlines.
Allen shifted his angry gaze to the man who’d just spoken, now taking a bite with a disgruntled huff and an upturned nose. “That was a person, Lazlow. And she’s dead now.”
“For fuck’s sake, Dessel,” Lazlow groaned through a mouthful of meat, gesturing impatiently at the severed hand still sitting on the bar.
With an annoyed sigh, Allen gave up the high-and-mighty act and swept the remains off onto the floor.
“Don’t you leave that on my floor either Dessel. Take it to evidence or take it out back,” Mara warned, finger-wagging as she moved to deliver the drink she’d just poured.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“And then get your ass back in here. I’ll start running up your cert paperwork.”
Further aggrieved, Allen bent, picked up the hand with finger and thumb, and muttered, “Sorry, ma’am. Apparently, you’re disrupting the dining experience.”
Slinging the dead skinwalker over his shoulder, Allen trudged off toward the back door — where the monster and the woman’s final resting place awaited: four cubic yards of green-painted WIN.
—
Upon his return to the bar proper, Allen found Mara behind the counter, tapping away at a computer that looked suspiciously like it was still running Windows 95.
“..ther-fucker, LOAD” he heard her mutter, finishing with a shout.
“Think that computer might have some viruses, Eddy. Probably all the porn,” Allen ribbed.
Mara turned a withering glare on the contractor as the screen froze again.
“You’re right, Dessel. Guess I’ll have to send a requisition to the central annex for your credentials,” she replied with lethal calm.
Eyes widening in horror, Allen quickly changed his tune. “Ah—y’know what, I think Bob wanted another pint. I’ll just grab that for him while you do your thing!” he said hastily, scurrying behind the bar to do just that.
Allen had been a frequent flyer at the Rusty Flask since he was a kid (sans-drinking, of course, until a respectable age) and it wasn’t uncommon to see him lend a hand when things got busy or rowdy.
While Mara administered some percussive maintenance to the ancient device, Allen made himself useful — restocking, pouring, and bringing her current with the needs of her patrons, all while tidying himself up as he went. He probably needed an ice-pack and a butterfly stitch here or there, but he’d do anything to keep her from abandoning the credentialing process, which would have meant a months-long bureaucratic detour through the soul-sucking annals of the greater R.U.C.
“I heard Gates left loopholes for ritual sacrifice in the troubleshooting process,” Allen said as he shuffled up to Mara’s side. Handing her a burger and fries, he added “perhaps if you devour this in ole Billy’s name?”
“Thanks...” Mara replied distractedly.
*Ding*
“HAH! GOT YOU THIS TIME, YOU FUCKER!” She shouted, animated, as the record submission finally went through.
Acting quickly lest the system change its mind, she tore through the directory until the contractor licensing screen populated.
Breathing a sigh of relief, Allen shuffled off to the locker-wall, grabbed a fresh shirt, then poured himself a beer to await the birth of bureaucracies' latest mistake, his new contractor certification.
The so-called ‘possessed raccoon’ he’d just forcibly pacified had served as Allen’s final certification contract — qualifying him as an F-tier contractor, with all the associated rights, liberties, and indignities that came with it. I.e., no more hand-holding, fewer nonsensical hoops, and a marginal reduction in paperwork and color-coded tape.
The Ledger mostly ran on whiskey, grit, and raw spite — but it still bent the knee to government regulation and oversight.
Officially, it was the Palladian Registry of Unorthodox Contracting — a semi-legitimate government agency tasked with handling all things magical, monstrous, or just plain inconvenient to normal civil infrastructure.
In practice, it was a clearinghouse for dangerous jobs nobody else wanted to touch, staffed by burnouts, curse-slingers, hedge witches, and a little bit of everything in between. It answered to many names, but most knew it — often disparagingly — as the Ledger or the Registry.
There were Ledger chapters all over the country, each occupying its own unique stage of entropic decay. The Flask — Field Contractor Operations Annex #39 — was neither the worst nor the best. It just happened to be home.
Allen Dessel’s stomping grounds of old — the streets of Palladia — had borne witness to many a mystery the Ledger would later quietly clean up in the name of public safety.
Most folks remained blissfully unaware, despite the Registry's utter disregard for secrecy. Hell, one of the freelancers who passed through recently had practically wallpapered the neighborhood with ‘monster-hunter-4-hire’ posters, directing prospective clients to find him here at the Rusty Flask.
He got his ass kicked by the locals for attempted job poaching of course, but keeping the secret? Non-issue.
Magic, the mysterious, and the malefic happened all over, all the time. No point trying to hide it really — especially since the average-joe would happily mistake a fireball for a gas leak. The textbooks called it “passive obfuscation” for whatever that’s worth. In essence, most people just rationalize away anything that lands outside the established parameters of the mundane.
There was actually a pretty interesting thesis tucked away in the dustiest corner of the Palladia Legal Library titled “Dimensional Diffusion and the Decimation of the Dragons: A Fae Study in Cognitive Suppression” that argued the passive obfuscation field was artificial — a Fae construct, allegedly implemented as a conservation effort on behalf of the dragons — but I digress.
The point is, “Ignorance is bliss” is quite literal when it comes to magic and the mundane, and it takes a special sort of someone to see the world for what it really is. Plenty of theory on how that happens out there as well — but no more distractions!
When the hour was approaching midnight, Mara found Allen face down on the bar, hand curled around a sweating mug of swill, snoring gently, and bleeding lightly onto the countertop.
She slammed the Contractor Certificate down next to his head hard enough to wake him — which, to her satisfaction, worked perfectly.
“Ah—the fuck, Eddy?” Allen sputtered, jerking upright and nearly flinging his beer.
“Congrats Dessel. F-rank at last. Welcome to the big leagues.” Mara said facetiously.
Hand-to-heart like a jilted American pioneer’s wife, Allen recovered enough to reply, “About damn time,” and took his paperwork in hand, inspecting it warily.
