"Deterrance?"

The lanky Ralphio repeats. If there was amusement in his tone before, it's all gone now.

"Do you think it worked? Are you here because you wanted to see how deterred I look? If you feared reprisal from those admittedly armed folks who showed up at the door on Montaglio street, you thought they weren't deterred enough when walking away trying to save face for their incompetently loud burglary, that shooting and stabbing at them was going to make them so afraid of you that I wouldn't have to spend the next twelve hours restraining the survivors from showing up and throwing fire bombs through the bloody windows? Rats get deterred because they're cowards, Taalia Giovanni; and even then not for long. Tileans don't get deterred; they get delayed. They retreat like they have to and come back with a knife in their teeth."

He exhales. A little of the humor crawls back into his demeanor, and he looks at Cestié with an exasperated lift of his eyebrows.

"These young ones. All piss and vinegar. Signorina Giovanni, if I had my men chase you out of here and in the process Maso or your young friend - what's your name, Signorina?"

"Bella-"

"If Bella got killed in that process, would you feel deterred? Or would you not instead steel yourself, gather all your pride and violence, and decide, like the corn says to the stomach... 'I will not be deterred'?"

He lets the rhetorical question hang in the air for a moment, before speaking up again.

"Not to say the whole thing wasn't a c*ck-up. It shouldn't have happened. No one should have even been there. Augusto's friends, trying to solve a problem a stupid way. Godsdamned swamp skimmers; and stupid kids making it worse."

However little he thinks of your rationale, Ralphio seems to appreciate your passion; and does not, in fact, seem particularly keen to issue reprisal executions for the killing of the thief. He paints you a picture that illuminates the corners of what went wrong that night.

Augusto Cestié was captured in a skirmish with swamp skimmers. The Weevers thought him dead until they received a barely legible ransom note demanding a truly stupefying amount of gold that proved the writers, even if literate, were not particularly numerate. At this point, two things happened. Firstly, Ralphio reached out with his contacts to find someone capable of leading a small group to recover Augusto - someone with, as he calls it, 'the night eyes'. And Augusto's callow young friends took it on themselves to try to make some big scores quickly to raise money - not to pay the ransom, but to hire some mercenaries from in the city to go out and get Augusto and bring him back, killing of the skimmers that got in their way. The young thieves' plan was to start by burglarizing Augusto's family store, since the key to it was still among his possessions they had in their stash. After that, a number of additional ambitious robberies would have happened - but you send them home after failing at the first hurdle, and with one less young fool to make their efforts.

"Damn children. The Tungusco clan of swamp skimmers base on the west side of river delta; right up against the deep swamp. You won't find mercenaries willing to risk it; the skimmers will more than likely outmaneuver them. Any rescue effort is happening tonight, under cover of dark so their scouts can't see it; by first light of morning, the ransom expires and it'll be too late. But none of the bloody rat catchers want to lead a party through the dark - too much chance of encountering the skaveni in their own domain, they say."

The story is about the most distressing one that could have been offered, for Maso. His grandson is out in the west swamps at the mercy of strangers... strangers accustomed to living next to an impenetrable deep swamp full of skaven.

"Then I'll go after him. Tell me where the Tungusco clan is." He offers with little hestiation.

Ralphio is reticent. "Like hell you will, old bones. I'll bet if I pull down your collar I'll see a fishbone tattoo. If you get caught, there's no denying who sent you. And at your age, I doubt you have the night eyes to navigate a swamp in the dark night without breaking your neck."

Spoiler: OOC:
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There you go. Set you up for a nice dramatic pronouncement, if you want it. Alley-oop!