[Nexus] The Black Dragon's Den XIV

[Artemis97]

https://doc-14-as-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/securesc/pbqgj66dii5k29lb57geppdb53ap58i9/7ibbmkmo2nm22pls3qadcila0v4qaj3g/1577167200000/07118877512368929492/07474053540692006070/0B5bKlQSiirV-dWg2Qk11MXoyTlE?authuser=0&nonce=fb90afkpdfdgi&user=07474053540692006070&hash=863mi6rf287ltfdrjmq5b4agaqcoppse

This old warehouse by the docks and on the edge of the city slums has numerous secret passageways and tunnels leading to it. When you walk in, either from the street or below, you see a freshly cleaned interior that actually looks somewhat welcoming, however, as a seedy hive of smugglers, pirates, and home of the local wererat assassin guild; this is a rough place to have a drink.

The back half of the building has been converted into a set of rooms, used by those who need a bit of privacy, whether to have a private card game, hold a secret meeting, or just to get away from the world while enjoying a dose of some of the more exotic items the Den serves. We don't care what you do here, just don't leave a mess. Just keep in mind, the walls are a little thin back there, and can be listened through (or busted through), so be careful.

The gambling scene is lively here, with craps, three-dragon ante, and darts, among other things. There are certainly not knife-fights held in the ring in the basement. Come early for a ringside seat. Gambling is permitted. Anyone caught betting against themselves will be killed, or worse. So don't do it.

The servers are all NPC goblins. They are: Blackeye, Hooktooth, and Daggernose.
The cook is a goblin woman named Sicklewort.
The NPC bouncer is Gnarl, the orc.

Floorplan:http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/8938/sdenfloorplan3.png
The menu is as follows:

Drinks

Common Drinks
All the common drinks are available in an extremely wide range of qualities, brands, and prices. Just remember- you pay for what you get.

Absinthe
Ale
Beer
Brandy
Coffee
Hard Cider
Kumis (Fermented milk)
Mead
Rum
Tea
Tequila
Vodka
Whiskey
Wine

Specialty Drinks
The specialty drinks are either crafted here or ordered specially from other sources. Normally they are higher class and more palatable, but that is not always the case...
Black Shadow-
A strong concoction guaranteed to send a chill down your spine at any temperature.
Damned Soul Nectar-
Yummy. Damned souls. Perfect for demons, devils, or anyone else lacking a conscience.
Devil Brew-
It tastes good, though drinking it will gradually corrupt your soul to evil.
Drow Spiderblood Wine-
A specialty drow wine with a strong bite, and a hint of spider venom. Alcohol isn't the only thing you have to worry about when drinking it... but it does taste good.
Firewine-
This wine is created in a way that literally leaves the top simmering and flaming. Only recommended to those who have a good fire resistance. However, it is extremely warm and has a fairly sweet taste.
Frenzywater-
You want to know what it is like to see red? Frenzywater will having you raging like a barbarian.
Goblin Thudrud Beer-
A favorite of goblins... but described by others as smelling like a rotten, flaming cow.
Hearth Brew Mead
This is a sweet mead with raspberries, rhubarb and some kind of ingredient that makes you feel warm when you drink it.
Ichor Liquor-
A mixture of blood and alcohol made especially for our vampiric friends. It can be served neat, on the rocks, or specially heated to 98.6 F.
Liquid Agony-
A drink brewed and distilled from the agony of victims, and quite sweet and tasty, but very addictive.
Mindflayer Mead-
A special brew for those squid-headed fellows. Also appropriate for Zombies, or anyoen else who likes the taste of brains.
Mushroom Wine
An Underdark drink fermented from mushrooms. It has a good deal of sugar added to it and tastes sweet, but may cause hallucinations...
Orc Kragg Liquor-
Strong. Disgusting. Manly.
Poisonbite Cocktail-
This brew is mixed of several poisons and rum. It induces extreme euphoria, and will drain the drinker's strength and mental capacities for a day or so.
Rat Mead-
This foul concoction is meant more for drinking games, and less for taste. You'll need a strong stomach to keep it down.


Other

Food
Like the drinks, the food ranges in quality and price... the menu is currently under improvement.
Bread-
Crusty, burnt, soggy, or rotten. It's not your choice. A better bakery is "under construction" in the back. Thanks to a newly built brick oven, the bread is actually quite good now, baked fresh daily.
Dragon Steak-
This tender, extremely tasty steak is excellently prepared, but its source is undisclosed...
Fish of the Day-
The catch of the day, or yesterday... be sure to specify "fresh."
Puffer fish liver-
Tetrodotoxin, anyone? Extreme poison is ahead.
Soup-
Most common soups are available, but pay for what you want, or you'll get something else. Served in a bread bowl.

Mushrooms
Our mushrooms are well acclaimed for their taste and subtle poisons. If you have enemies, make sure they you didn't get something other than what you asked for...
Amanita-
A hallucinogenic mushroom that is fairly toxic. May cause nausea, sensory distortions, mood changes, and loss of equilibrium. Retrograde amnesia frequently results following recovery. Serious poisonings cause delirium, seizures, or comas.
Chanterelle-
An edible but unremarkable mushroom. Available pickled or dried.
Lorchel-
Also known as false morels (due to similarity in appearance), eating these raw results in extreme liver failure or death. Properly prepared, however, they are quite delicious. Available both raw and parboiled (properly prepared).
Morchella-
Also known as morels, these very prized and tasty mushrooms are available raw.
Omphalotus-
This mushroom looks the same as the Chanterelle. It is extremely appealing in smell and appearance, but has a mild toxicity that will lead to vomiting and cramps.
Oyster-
Unlike other mushrooms, this one has no confusing look alikes, and is prized for that quality alone. Served raw or stuffed.
Porcini-
Also known as Boletus ("superior"), the porcini is highly regarded and is served raw or sautéed with butter.
Portabello-
While edible, this is either described as plain or only slightly sweet. Available raw or stuffed.
Psilocybin-
This mushroom is famed for its hallucinogenic effects, while lacking dangerous toxins. Available raw and dried.
Shiitake-
These mushrooms are normally added to ordered soups. Available dried or raw.

Drink Additives
Buy them for your drink, or for someone else's drink... everything goes here.
Doze Pill-
A combination of magical energies and herbs guaranteed to put the drinker to sleep in a few minutes.
Hanger's Drop-
Ask for this in someone's drink to put them six feet under. Commonly means poison, though other methods can be bought depending on the target.
Happy Juice-
As seen in Malleo's shop. Turns the hair pink, and makes the drinker extremely happy.
Wonder Trip-
A mixture of magic and poison that causes extreme hallucinations and delirium which are not directly harmful or toxic.

Other Additives are available, you just have to ask.

Other Drugs
If it doesn't get you drunk, and it isn't a mushroom... we still sell it.
Arhtorvin
A gray powder made by different magic plants, Arthorvin is extremely calming. It is ingested, and numbs emotions and reactions.
Baccaran
A paste made of numerous, undisclosed substances, this is a mild hallucinogen that becomes more powerful as it is used in repetition and increased dosage.
Dreammist
This drug is formed into a tea, and then the vapors are inhaled. It causes incredibly beautiful and wonderful hallucinations that make the world seem dull in comparison. Overdose is extremely debilitating, as is directly drinking the substance.
Devilweed
A tobacco-like substance that is moderately addictive and makes the smoker skittish and more easily confused. Users enjoy it because it glazes over the memories of whatever happens during its effective.
Luhix
A powder made from plants grown in the abyss. It is sprinkled on self inflicted wounds- initially it causes intense pain, then numbs the body entirely. It is one of the most addictive substances known amongst the planes, but overdosing even a little may cause terrible, painful death.
Mertoran Leaf
This leaf is dried and treated. It is not very addictive, but it is cheap, popular, and boosts confidence. Ingested, not smoked.
Redflower Leaves
These leaves are only moderately addictive, but are known to give a boost to hand-eye coordination, making them popular among those who often engage in knife tossing or dart throwing. They are consumed raw and chewed.
Sannish
This blue liquid is made out of unknown ingredients and causes euphoria. It has a tendency to stain flesh and anything else it touches. Overdosing causes intense numbness.

This is by no means the limit of what we can get our hands on, just ask and we'll see what we can do.

Games
As a new addition to the Black Dragon's Den, there is a back room where all kinds of gaming take place. Goblins generally oversee the games and make sure things are fair... but everyone here can be bribed. Best to keep an eye on things yourself.

Card Games
-Coming Soon-

Dice Games
We provide all of the dice used here... unless you slip them out of our sleeve. "Better" dice can be bought with a quiet word and a few coin, though we don't provide protection from those who find out that you've used them.

Coin Pass
This is a simple dice game played with a pair of six sided dice, and is generally best with four or more players.
Each player puts out two coins (generally one type of coin is chosen, copper, silver, gold, or platinum) and then, in turn, each player rolls the dice.
If a player rolls a one, they take one of their coins and place it in the pot.
If a player rolls a six, they take one of their coins and pass it to the person on the left. This continues until only one player has coins, at which time they take the pot.
If a player has no coins left, they have one round to wait for someone to pass them a coin (by roll of a six), after which they can buy their way back in. You can only buy your way back into a game once.

Serpent's Eyes
This game is played with a pair of six sided dice, and a game board in the shape of the world serpent.
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h107/sjunderw/Other/Serpenteye.png
Before the game begins, the number of rounds to play are determined, though the game may end ahead of time, or when one player runs out of coins/chips. Generally people play with a large number of rounds (double digits).
A round is completed once every player has rolled the dice once.
The dice start with the player closest to the seven on the board.
When a player rolls the dice, he does one of three things.
If he rolls any number 3-11, he places a coin on the corresponding number on the board, or, if the number is already filled with coins, they take the coins off of that number.
If he rolls a 2, he places a coin on every number on the board.
If he rolls a 12, he takes all coins from the board.


Warship
This game is played with five dice for each player. The person who rolls first is normally determined randomly.
The goal of the game is to create the best 'ship', where a 'ship' is a straight formed either forwards (1,2,3) or backwards (3,2,1). To create a straight, you roll the dice, and choose anywhere from 0-3 numbers from them. Your first chosen die is your starting number (IE, a number on either end of a straight), the second die chosen has to be the middle number of your straight, and the third die chosen is the last of your straight.
You have three rolls of the dice to form a straight. Whenever you choose one of these die, you remove it from the dice you roll to get the next number.
The game progresses like this:
1) Each player places an amount of money agreed on when the game starts.
2) Each player rolls the dice once, chooses any dice from their roll that they want, then either adds in the money first agreed on again, or passes from the game, but leaves any money they first bet in the pot (Note that everyone can see what die you have chosen, if you have chosen a die already).
3) Repeat the second step once more, then every player rolls the dice once more, and the person with the ship with the highest straight wins. If someone creates a ship one the first or second roll, they still bet, but do not have to roll until the last round (which is only done in case of ties).

If no one has a straight, the winner is based on the person with the highest number set aside (with only players with dice set aside competing). If there is a tie in highest numbers, they go to the second die set aside (with only players with two dice competing). If there is a tie between set aside die, they proceed with the same process into the dice they last rolled (excluding those set aside)

If two people have the same straight, they compare the numbers rolled on their last turn (not including the ones placed into their "ship"). The person with the highest numbers wins.

The winner takes all money in the pot. Generally, more than one game is played at once.

Other Games
These may be more or less 'games' as such... but are just as entertaining.

Darts
Bet on how well someone will throw, whether they can do it with their eyes closed... with their left hand... or if they can dodge a knife- it's all good. There are a few different dart boards, so any number of rings and scoring areas can be played with.

Knife Fights
We hold knife fights here every once in a while, down in the basement. To surrender or death. Place your bets, folks.
-No current list of PC fighters. Contact management to arrage something 'formal.'

Previous Threads
The Black Dragon's Den (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=165827)
The Black Dragon's Den II (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=171233)
The Black Dragon's Den III (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174933)
The Black Dragon's Den IV (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=180536)
The Black Dragon's Den V (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=188036)
The Black Dragon's Den VI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=195805)
The Black Dragon's Den VII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=206103)
The Black Dragon's Den VIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=219840)
The Black Dragon's Den IX (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=229336)
The Black Dragon's Den X (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=243700)
The Black Dragon's Den XI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?301076-Nexus-The-Black-Dragon-s-Den-XI)
The Black Dragon's Den XII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?383134-Nexus-The-Black-Dragon-s-Den-XII)
The Black Dragon's Den XIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?433122-Nexus-The-Black-Dragon-s-Den-XIII)

[Hattish Thing]

The man chuckles darkly, sipping once more at his drink before setting it down delicately. "Mm, my favorite kind." He purses his scarred lips together before leaning forward, causing the chair to creak noisily beneath him, an aggravating sound which results in a grimace to form across the faces of each of the severed heads at his belt.

He looks over the sketch, eyes narrowed as he does so.

--

When he's finished, he leans back, crossing his bulky arms over his enormous chest.

"Location and price per head?"

Shhh, nothing to see here.

[Artemis97]

"Delmah Phor." The red-headed woman explains. "Either in the palace or the temple of Lolth. Both places are heavily watched and fortified. Your best bet would be to catch her when she's travelling in between. As for price..." She shrugs. "What do you want? I don't have endless funds, but I'm not poor either."

[Hattish Thing]

The enormous man's blazing eyes narrow as he retrieves a piece of parchment from within a tome at the side of his belt, setting it down upon the table as gently as possible. He leans forward at this point, listening intently as the red-haired woman describes the situation in greater detail, taking as many notes as he deems necessary.

Once the figure finishes, Arbrim leans back, a brow raised.

"Regular cash will do, standard price per blue-head."

"For the priestess herself, though..."

--

He grins somewhat beneath his bandanna, coughing slightly.

"You have anything special?"

[Artemis97]

The woman grimaces at the sound of his cough.

"I'm no magician, to craft wondrous items." She says. "Cash, gold, jewels. That's what I'm offering."

[Hattish Thing]

The enormous man laughs enthusiastically at this point, the jovial sound echoing throughout the tavern. The noise, unimaginably loud as it is, startles awake several of the sentient heads suspended by chains at his belt, which begin to grumble and whisper in strange languages to one another, clearly disturbed by the sound. "Ah, those will do just fine!"

"Just fine..."

--

His voice trails off for several seconds before Arbrim offers his enormous cybernetic hand.

"We've a deal, then?"

[CosmicHobbit]

A figure fades out of invisibility just behind Oliver and passes over a post-it note.

Do you capture animals? Animals that might be considered to 'belong' to someone?
The person who offered the note is in a hooded brown robe a few sizes too large, nothing visible except that they have four arms and two glowing orange eyes.

Oliver looks down at the note, and after reading it takes out a small notebook and pencil in which he writes a note before passing it to the four-armed figure.

Depends on how dangerous the animal is. Wolf? sure. Ancient dragon? Not so much. However, if it is dangerous, I may do it for some extra money...
Oliver is trying to be secretive, but the grin on his face kind of gives away that he may be getting a job.

[Recaiden]

The four-armed stranger takes the note - their fingers are long and clawed - and scribbles a response.

It is more dangerous than a wolf, but less dangerous than a dragon. It is in Skyside, kept by a noble house.

We will pay a moderate fee for a bit of its flesh and weapon.
We will pay well if it is brought in alive.

Interested?

[CosmicHobbit]

The four-armed stranger takes the note - their fingers are long and clawed - and scribbles a response.

It is more dangerous than a wolf, but less dangerous than a dragon. It is in Skyside, kept by a noble house.

We will pay a moderate fee for a bit of its flesh and weapon.
We will pay well if it is brought in alive.

Interested?

Oliver takes the notes and raises his eyebrows at hearing that it's more dangerous than a wolf, the grin sliding off his face. He writes another note and passes it to the creature.

I am interested, but there are three questions I must ask.
1:What is the security guarding it? I assume it would be on the higher side because it is kept by nobles.
2:What does the creature look like, and what is it's relative size?
3:What would you mean by weapon?

[Recaiden]

If the job were going to be easy, they'd just do it themselves. :smallamused:

The possible patron takes the note and answers each question in-line.

1:What is the security guarding it? I assume it would be on the higher side because it is kept by nobles.

The compound has guards - if any see you they all will know - armed with light energy weapons and high walls. The creature's enclosure is alarmed, but it is allowed to roam freely throughout the compound during the day.

2:What does the creature look like, and what is it's relative size?

A short bat-winged serpent approximately the size of a horse.

3:What would you mean by weapon?

The creature has a unique method of hunting - One of its stingers would be of interest to us.
If it doesn't see you as food, it is quite friendly.

[CosmicHobbit]

If the job were going to be easy, they'd just do it themselves. :smallamused:

The possible patron takes the note and answers each question in-line.

Looking over the answers, Oliver smirks when he reads that it's allowed to roam free during the day. That makes the whole thing quite a bit easier. He finally writes one last question under the others:

What is this Noble family, in regards to not just name but also power, what they usually use their influence for, etc.

[Recaiden]

The customer doesn't have much to write about that.


House Torr - bankers, magitechnology, psychics. Politics - don't know, don't care. Ask in Skyside.

[CosmicHobbit]

The customer doesn't have much to write about that.

House Torr - bankers, magitechnology, psychics. Politics - don't know, don't care. Ask in Skyside.

Oliver reads the note and then nods. He writes a few sentences on a piece of napkin,now that he's run out of paper, and passes it to the figure.

Consider the job taken until notified otherwise. I'll need a way to contact you just in case. I will also need quite a large payment due to the potential danger, preferably paid in jewels or gold, though cash will not be denied. I will require 50% before the heist, 50% afterwards. For insurance purposes.

[Recaiden]

The customer produces a note of their own from a sleeve (napkins? Void forbid they be reduced to that) and responds.

We will offer [modest amount] in gold or a 20% larger value of potions or other alchemical items. Pick up initial payment at [address in the slums] 1 hour from now.
If you need to contact us, we'll be in your dreams.

When the last stroke is added to the note, they take a slow step back and vanish. Apparently just gone, like Oliver's been writing all alone this whole time, though in fact it's just a trick of the senses, and the customer is lurking at the bar once more.

[CosmicHobbit]

The customer produces a note of their own from a sleeve (napkins? Void forbid they be reduced to that) and responds.

We will offer [modest amount] in gold or a 20% larger value of potions or other alchemical items. Pick up initial payment at [address in the slums] 1 hour from now.
If you need to contact us, we'll be in your dreams.

When the last stroke is added to the note, they take a slow step back and vanish. Apparently just gone, like Oliver's been writing all alone this whole time, though in fact it's just a trick of the senses, and the customer is lurking at the bar once more.

Oliver reads the note and mouths the words "in your dreams" confusedly. He looks up, ready to ask a question, but sees nothing. He puts away the sign, brows furrowed, and finishes his drink before walking out of the Den to hunt down this address and scope it out.

[Artemis97]

The red-haired woman takes the bounty hunter's hand. She's somewhat worried her smaller hand will be crushed by his, but presumes it would be bad for business to maim your clients.

"Deal." She says. "Let me know if there's anything special you need, I might be able to source some things."

[Hattish Thing]

The man's shake is surprisingly gentle, though the bounty hunter keeps it brief for reasons which are relatively obvious.

He nods silently before exiting.

[Hattish Thing]

At the agreed upon time, Arbrim returns to the battered tavern, halfling assistant in tow.

He spends several moments looking around for his previous employer.

[Earl of Purple]

There's a different person reading the same book in the same corner. Or possibly the same person wearing different illusions. It is the same book, however. This individual is a Vedalken, with blue skin and six fingers on each hand. They're tall and lanky, wearing loose robes. Under that illusion, they are a tall, naked, grey-skinned and genderless Doppelganger with yellow eyes. Under that, second illusion, they're the Vedalken again. After that, they're the doppelganger for a second time, but not using an illusion.

The halfling is a pale-skinned twenty-year-old, or thereabouts, wearing a green knee-length dress and sandals. She's got reddish-orange hair and bright blue eyes, and she's got a large pistol holstered at her side. She moves a little awkwardly, as though she's not yet used to the weight of the weapon.

[Hattish Thing]

Wordlessly, Abrim saunters over to the table, reaching into extradimensional storage to receive a large sack. He sets it down upon the table before sitting down, causing the chair to creak and groan.

[Earl of Purple]

"You have returned! Successful hunt? And you freed the slaves. Well done." The doppelganger will open the bag and look in. "Yes, it's him. Although I thought he had better teeth." The bag is closed, and the doppelganger sketches a glowing shape in the air before him. A thunk follows as a bag hits the table. It's quite a light bag, for how much they're paying him. "Open it if you like. It's all there. Too much to fit in any bag but a magic one."

The halfling- who can't talk in this scene- follows behind, and looks curiously at the doppelganger/vedalken. How'd he know Arbrim freed the slaves? Besides her presence, anyway.

[billtodamax]

A tall woman in full combat armour sits at the bar, 3 empty shot glasses in front of her. Marina Kuznetsova is currently... reminiscing. Although perhaps that implies happier memories than she has. She's remembering at least. Memorializing. It's been a while but... but maybe not long enough. She touches her left hand to her right, inspecting the gauntlet she wore. That she hadn't... always worn. She might appreciate some company?

[Arkhosia]

A tall woman in full combat armour sits at the bar, 3 empty shot glasses in front of her. Marina Kuznetsova is currently... reminiscing. Although perhaps that implies happier memories than she has. She's remembering at least. Memorializing. It's been a while but... but maybe not long enough. She touches her left hand to her right, inspecting the gauntlet she wore. That she hadn't... always worn. She might appreciate some company?

The sound of a chair being pulled over might bring Marina out of her thoughts as a stunning young woman takes a seat next to her, brushing her long curls back and sending a winsome smile Marina’s way. As the bartender turns her way, she points at the empty glasses in front of the memorializing psion before holding up two fingers.

Cursory inspection reveals the raven-locked maiden is dressed in a somewhat incongruously form-hugging dress below a comfy looking winter jacket, a longbow slung over her shoulder and across her torso.

[billtodamax]

Marina looks her over, taking in the dress and the longbow. On the one hand - impractical. On the other... curiously dangerous. Familiar.

I will take your drink off you. She accedes, the small crack in her voice somewhat ruining the cool aesthetic she was hoping to portray. Nothing for it. Carry the act through anyway.

Who should I thank? She quirks an eyebrow at the maiden.

[Hattish Thing]

"You have returned! Successful hunt? And you freed the slaves. Well done." The doppelganger will open the bag and look in. "Yes, it's him. Although I thought he had better teeth." The bag is closed, and the doppelganger sketches a glowing shape in the air before him. A thunk follows as a bag hits the table. It's quite a light bag, for how much they're paying him. "Open it if you like. It's all there. Too much to fit in any bag but a magic one."

The halfling- who can't talk in this scene- follows behind, and looks curiously at the doppelganger/vedalken. How'd he know Arbrim freed the slaves? Besides her presence, anyway.

Arbrim nods ominously before chuckling in an unsettling sort of fashion as the individual across the table makes a remark regarding the subject's shattered teeth, briefly recalling the particularly gruesome sound that the chipping of teeth against the curious metal of his bulky shotgun barrel made. "Yeah, he did. Once. Aheh." He merely raises a scarred brow as his employer summons what appears to be payment.

He reaches for the sack, staring off inside, continuing to absentmindedly speak.

"Ya know, guy told me a few things, that ritual of his."

"That's really why you had me do it, yeah?"

[Arkhosia]

The silent archer smiles as the two shot glasses are set before her, picking one up between her gloves fingers and leaning over as she offers it to Marina much like one would offer a light. As the all-important question is asked, she frowns minutely before raising a finger, slipping a small notebook from her pocket and jotting something down before sliding it towards her. Cantata. I’m mute, sorry.

[billtodamax]

Ah, nono, no apologies. Marina ignores the drink momentarily, reaching out to tip back Cantata's chin slightly. A wound of war, hm? Do not apologise for those. It's only now she takes the drink, draining it in a practised move. She delicately sets the empty glass with its peers on the bar, apparently deep in thought.

[Arkhosia]

Ah, nono, no apologies. Marina ignores the drink momentarily, reaching out to tip back Cantata's chin slightly. A wound of war, hm? Do not apologise for those. It's only now she takes the drink, draining it in a practised move. She delicately sets the empty glass with its peers on the bar, apparently deep in thought.

Cantata blushes slightly as the psion’s fingers touch her face, her amber eyes shining with a bemused expression as she watches her study the scar on her throat. With a silent chuckle, she shakes her head softly, scrawling another remark for Marina to read. Didn’t pay my debts. the woman raises a finger to her scar and mimes it being slight, letting the hand linger at the end before shrugging. It was an older injury, she had paid for her idiocy and no longer felt much hate over it.
As the other woman turned to down her drink and sunk into her own thoughts, Cantata watched with slight concern. Placing a gentle hand upon her shoulder, she quirked her head, raising an eyebrow in curiosity. She didn’t want to pry, but she was intrigued.

[billtodamax]

It is still war.Marina affirms, before the hand rests on her shoulder. Ah, but I am not being very good company. I am Marina, and I have lived in this... purgatory for 2 years now. Whether she missed the point of the gesture or chose to ignore it she isn't sharing her concerns with Cantata.

Cantata... is that Italian? She considers it for a second. Ah, but probably not. So few people come from the same place here.

[Earl of Purple]

"Had he made it to Skyside, the Slaver's Guild would have interrogated him- all of them, really- to find out what they knew and where they should be sold. His knowledge wouldn't have been sold, but it would have been shared. The Slaver's Guild is dangerous and powerful enough without giving its leaders youth and life at the expense of innocents. Because their dealings ensure they have plenty of innocents to expend. You've done the Nexus and other worlds a favour." Most would have been sent to the standard stores, or shipped off-world to be sold where their knowledge, skills or labour would be most valuable. And yes, that is why they paid so much for his death. Normally a murderer sold as a slave is basically handled, but this one was far trickier.

[Arkhosia]

It is still war.Marina affirms, before the hand rests on her shoulder. Ah, but I am not being very good company. I am Marina, and I have lived in this... purgatory for 2 years now. Whether she missed the point of the gesture or chose to ignore it she isn't sharing her concerns with Cantata.

Cantata... is that Italian? She considers it for a second. Ah, but probably not. So few people come from the same place here.

Cantata frowns momentarily, a little disappointed that Marina didn’t take the opportunity to express her troubles. Well, it was always possible the gesture was misread, but she chose to err on the assumption of least invasiveness.

The elegant woman shakes her head, scrawling another message for the soldier. Watching as she reads it, Cantata takes the time to down her shot before ordering another drink.
I’m not entirely sure, but I trace my roots to what I believe you would refer to as Eastern Europe.

[billtodamax]

That admission seems to bring a genuine smile across Marina's face. She motions to the bartender for another shot as he comes past. Ah, then our worlds are not so different perhaps. Hopefully yours nicer than mine. How does a beautiful woman like yourself come from Europe to this world, hm? She leans closer to Cantata, ostensibly to peer over the notebook as she writes. Personally I have my suspicions it's for less scrupulous reasons.

[Arkhosia]

Cantata giggles... well, it's more a pantomime of a giggle, as her condition doesn't allow her to produce the actual sound, but the idea should come across all the same. I'm not from Earth itself I'm afraid, but it is where my heritage can be traced. I'm from Radinov, a planet not too far away in the grand scheme of things, and am simply here to find work and explore. Here her pen pauses, and Cantata glances back towards Marina with an inquisitive look, taking a sip of the White Russian she had ordered before writing a couple more sentences and turning back to look expectantly at the other woman.
What about you? I'm sure you're far more interesting than lil ol' me~

[billtodamax]

Oh, yes. That. Marina's face drops a fraction. The question was in hindsight an obvious direction for the conversation to go. The alcohol must be affecting her.

I am... from Belarus. Vitebsk. Possibly a different earth than yours. We were invaded, and, well it didn't go so well. We fought back - even won many battles! Her speech is stilted and slow. She pauses to take her shot. Just... not the important one. I... a rift opened up, and I was sucked into it. Here I am. She finishes abruptly before calling out. Another please, bartender! Cantata will get the sense that this is definitely not the whole story.

Oh no Marina's being a downer again! :smallfrown:

[Arkhosia]

Cantata frowns, looking towards the woman with newfound concern. She had seen a few fellow adventurers with a haunted look about them, and they always evoked a pang of sympathy. Once again those gloved digits make their way to one of Marina’s shoulders - although this time to pull her a little closer rather than merely offer slight comfort. That sounds terrible, I can only imagine what that must have been like.... Here her pen pauses, and she takes a moment to consider the next words. I grew up in a world long after great war and without such otherworldly terrors. I only have glimpses into what your experiences might have been. Perhaps your time here has been better for you?

[billtodamax]

Marina accepts the embrace without comment, leaning into Cantata and watching her write in silence. Calmer, perhaps. She says after a time. Better? On the whole, I suppose. She doesn't remotely believe what she's saying. She reaches out for her next shot, cradling it in her hand. I have helped some people here, yes, but... The words escape her. How can this replace what she had?

[Arkhosia]

But it doesn’t quite fill the void? Cantata inquires, a glimmer of understanding in her amber eyes. It had become increasingly clear that the slight tinges of emotion she had felt since sitting down were all from this woman, and she was truly starting to ascertain the source behind the amount of guilt and sorrow she felt. Changing pages to continue, her gloved hand rubbed soothingly down Marina’s upper arm. Am I right that you lost something or someone deeply important to you? I know how it feels to lose what makes you who you are - I was a singer once, believe it or not - and I can sense those same emotions in you. Letting her pen rest, she turns to focus fully on Marina with concerned countenance. She wanted to help her, that much was abundantly clear in her gaze and her words.

[billtodamax]

Oh Hilde. Marina's head drops into her hand before Cantata finishes writing, shot returned to the bar. She quietly starts to sob. Any grief that Cantata was feeling from her before this now starts to overflow. It should have been me.

[Arkhosia]

The suggestions of grief tinging Cantata's mind grow to a point that she actually starts to feel it herself, and she has to make a conscious effort to resist it from affecting her too greatly. As the woman beside her starts to sob, the mute leans closer to her, wrapping her arms around her in a warm embrace to try and help ease the depths of depression practically radiating from her. Oh, how badly Cantata wanted to give her more comfort than this! She wanted to tell her that she could not blame herself, that surely this Hilde would have felt the same if she were standing her instead of Marina... but of course, she could not speak, and such words went unspoken. Instead, all she could do was offer herself as a shoulder to cry on, and offer her a small handkerchief she kept in one of the pockets of her jacket.

[billtodamax]

It takes... a few minutes before Marina is able to compose herself. Her eyes are red and her nose is runny - helped by the handkerchief - but she is still a bit of a mess.

I am sorry for that. She manages to say quietly, before sighing. Thank you for the drink, but, I think I will be going home now. She moves to stand up.

[Arkhosia]

Cantata nods, understanding completely. It hadn't been too long ago that she could have been in Marina's shoes, after all. Letting go to let the woman leave, she raises a hand to get her attention before scribbling something down. Tearing the scrap of paper out from her notebook, she hands it to the soldier and gives her a friendly smile.
There's no need to apologize, dear. Feelings do no good bottled up, grief most of all. If you ever need someone to talk to, a shoulder to cry on, a friend to help, don't hesitate to send me a message.
Below these words is a simple phone number, presumably Cantata's.

[billtodamax]

Thank you. She says, taking the note from Cantata and giving her a brief smile. If you wanted to catch up in happier times, my number is <numbers>. With that she'll leave the bar, walking slightly unsteadily - nothing too alarming.

[Lord Magtok]

Let's be reasonable here, Malice. You don't want to get into a fight in the Black Dragon's Den. You don't want to get blood on your nice clean black suit and red tie, or those gorgeous new brass prosthetics. You don't want to take a chance on Intervention stumbling upon your little fistfight, or for the Den's management or patrons to get involved. These sorts of complications are bad for business. Maybe when we're good and established we can take risks, do things that are bad for business, but right now? It's too soon, we're too vulnerable.

"Piece of garbage, dealing in my territory," Malice hisses, casually striding into the Den, in pursuit of a bloody, battered orc twice his size, who runs like his life depends on it. The orc stumbles and limps, only barely managing to keep ahead of man in the black suit, in spite of Malice's leisurely strides. The cuts and bruises along the tracksuit-wearing thug's legs probably have something to do with that. Magtok grabs a barstool midstride, sparing only a curt nod to the bartender before refocusing on his target and dragging the stool along behind him.

No, we don't want any of those risks. We don't want to deal with those complications. We still need to beat the **** out of this orc, though. Doesn't matter if he ducks into the nearest booze pit, thinking it's some kind of sanctuary. The Mordor Street Mad Boyz need to learn what happens when you cross Malice. Everyone needs to know what happens when you cross Malice.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Ah, the Black Dragon's Den.

Krystal remembers Obi-Wan's line about Mos Eisley as she walks in to the tavern. It fits, really.

This wasn't a place Krystal would come to often. However, she had been away from the Nexus for a while. She wanted to reacquaint herself with the way things were being run here. Who was in charge. Which groups had power where. This info was very important to someone that wanted to be a super hero here.

Based on the scene unfolding in front of her, it seems there was a conflict between groups brewing.

She stays by the doorway, clearly holding herself back from jumping in. A few years ago, she would have. Gotta stop the fights, right? Now, however...now she knows that she should wait. See what happens, what's going on.

Plus, she recognizes the guy clearly winning this encounter. He kidnapped her a while ago. She needed to have words with him.

[Lord Magtok]

"Beg. I want to hear it. Plead for mercy, scumbag," Malice demands, swinging the barstool and smashing it against the orc's back, sending the large green fellow tumbling to the floor. The stool splinters on contact.

"Please Magtok, don't hurt-" Magtok? Did that piece of trash just say Magtok?! Well just for that, we're swinging again. And again. And again.

"Malice! I am not that pretender to the throne, I am not that bumbling incompetent, I am not that whiny little antihero, I am Malice!" There. I'm sure he got the idea. Presuming he remembers any of this when he wakes up. Presuming he does actually wake up, I mean. Malice takes a step back, still shaking with rage, and reaches into his pocket for some coins to slap on the counter to cover the damages. He turns around, intent on slapping the money down and leaving when he spots Krystal. Oh. Oh crap. How much of that meltdown did she just see?

[KerfuffleMach2]

Well. That was a display.

When Malice sees Krystal, the first thing he'd probably notice is her expression. Mostly shock, but there's also a bit of curiosity in there. And disappointment.

He might notice some other changes to her appearance as well. Her hair is a bit longer than it used to be, falling past her jaw now. Her eyes, still pure white, somehow seem a lot older than they used to. She's still wearing the combination of jeans, sneakers, tube top, and denim jacket. The exposed area of her chest has a kind of ugly circular scar, about three inches wide, right where her heart is. Malice might recognize it as the kind of damage plasma would do to skin.

So...uh... She seems a little bit uncomfortable with this meeting. Understandable. He's still alive, right? That was kind of a priority for her at the moment.

[Lord Magtok]

"...Krystal. You've caught me at a very strange time in my life. I-" No, no, no. No time for clever quips or references, Malice. Make sure that orc still has a pulse, then talk. Kneel down there, press your finger against his neck, and-yes, okay, good, he lives. For now, at least. He'll probably need some medical attention and there could be quite a few broken bones, but orcs are pretty hardy creatures. We managed to avoid getting any blood on our suit too, which is ni-oh wait nevermind, there's a big ol' glob of it splattered just below the knee. Drat.

"Okay firstly, yes, he's alive. Secondly, his gang deals to children, so I couldn't have that." That's not why you were hitting him though, Malice. He mistook you for your other. The one who had to come back to the Nexus and ruin everything. It was nice being the only cyborg in town with a name that starts with M and this exact DNA sequence. We went years without him around, and even though the Malbots kicked us out of our old lair and we had to start over from nothing, I think we've done okay so far, given the circumstances.

"I uh...like what you did with your hair?" Oh no, you're not getting out of the disappointed look that easily, Malice. You dun goofed up, buddy. There's a broken orc on the floor, and his blood all over your knuckles. She saw you break a barstool against the orc's face and chest, there's no pretending that didn't happen.

Her hair is nice, though.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Krystal nods a bit. Okay. Yeah, can't have that. And she meant it. Dealing to children? That was messed up. Krystal might've done something similar to the guy.

The compliment catches her off guard. She wasn't prepared for it.

Uh...thanks. She takes a breath to steady herself, then looks at Malice with a questioning expression. I think we should talk about some things. Want a drink?

[Lord Magtok]

Malice takes a couple deep breaths of his own to try to calm himself down. He kneels beside the orc a second time, fishes a flip phone out of the clobbered criminal's pocket, and sends out a quick text or two. Was that a back alley surgeon he just reached out to? A cold-blooded warning to other orcs like the former owner of this phone? Informing his own people that their problem has been taken care of? I'm not sure, and I don't think Malice is too keen on explaining himself, since he doesn't say a word about it.

"Yeah, I guess I'll take a drink. I don't have anywhere to be for at least another hour, anyway," the brass bastard shrugs, hoping she'll be gone before then. Nothing against her, but if she's still doing that heroine thing, we're going to have a few problems. We've got too much on our plate to be getting distracted by mixed drinks and feelings.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Why was he texting on the orc's phone? Who was he texting? Krystal shook her head a bit. Focus. Didn't really matter what Malice was doing with the phone.

Yeah, might take longer than that. She goes to the bar and orders herself a shot of Jeager. Plus whatever Malice wants.

It's gonna be one of those conversations, isn't it?

So...been busy lately? As soon as her shot arrives, she downs it.

Yes. Small talk and alcohol. Best way to start this.

[Lord Magtok]

Malice settles on a Devil Brew, one of the edgier drinks on the menu. Not quite as bad as a Black Shadow, I guess, but still pretty questionable. He sips at his drink, in no great hurry to loosen his lips and accidentally reveal some terrible secret to the mutant.

"You remember the MalBots, right? They staged an insurrection, threw me out of an airlock on my undersea lair. I washed up on shore, alive somehow, with nothing but the red robes on my back. That was maybe around three years ago," explains, pausing to check the orc's phone, which I suppose he intends on keeping for himself. "I'm doing street crime now, building up for a big takeover of my old lair. You?" Yes, let's shift the conversation to what Krystal's been up to. Get off the subject of why we're beating orcs half to death in strange bars and onto something less shameful and incriminating.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Oh boy. That was a quick recap. And an easy segue for her.

Well... Krystal takes a brief moment to compose herself. Started doing the hero thing back home. Made a costume and everything. Even built up a small team. Doing that, though... She shakes her head a bit. Now I know how naive I was back when we met. Kinda starting to think your way of stopping the bad guys isn't as bad as I thought. Her blank eyes seem to be staring down at a drink stain on the bar in front of her. But not actually seeing it.

Kinda hard to tell without her having pupils, though.

[Lord Magtok]

"What happened, another Civil War?" Malice thoughtlessly asks, still struggling to see her homeworld as a real place with real people in it, even though it was one of the first places Krystal and whatshername dragged him along to, after bringing him back from the dead that one time. He's read comics and stuff; the idea of Earth-616 being anything other than fiction just sounds silly to him.

"...Sorry no, that was a bad question to ask. Something bad though, right? Something really bad, to make you doubt everything you were doing and think that what I was talking about back then was anything other than nonsense. Krystal, I'd been in hell for six years when you met me. I was not talking sense. I was more than a little cranky, reactionary, and also nostalgic for what I'd been doing six years before these idle hands became the devil's playthings." he spares a glance down towards his fingers, as if afraid they might suddenly become bathed in flames and wrapped around a sinner's throat again. Bad times, those six years. Malice would eagerly do just about anything to avoid revisiting them, short of actually being a good person.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Krystal smirks a bit. No, my world only had one of those. Hm...maybe she isn't from 616...

Her next drink order arrives. Not a shot this time. Just Captain and Coke.

No, see, I didn't say I completely agreed with what you said. Just that I could actually see the logic to it. She grips her glass, not drinking from it yet. I was helping the police go after a serial killer. Found him. And found out exactly what he did to his victims. It, uh...it was bad. Really bad. Hadn't seen anything like it before.

So, I started thinking. Reputation of a local hero didn't keep the guy from doing that. Would the reputation of a villain have worked? She shrugged a bit. I don't know. But compared to what that guy did, your stuff wasn't too bad.

[Lord Magtok]

Malice pauses to check the time on his stolen phone, before shaking his head. "Krystal, back when I was Magtok, before I died, I was a member of AMEN. We had a leader, a Regina Idiotarum, Queen of Idiots, because that's what we were back then, idiots. She was unimaginably bloodthirsty, cruel, and fickle. She had power beyond your imagining, and she regularly made use of it, to hurt me and others, whenever her whims felt it appropriate. I feared her more than I've ever feared anyone. There has never been a man, woman, or beast to strike such terror and awe, and never will be again. Even so, the one time she asked me stop my crimes, to hold back my wicked ways-" Malice pauses to sip at his drink, and try to contain the shudder that goes down his spine. Magtok eventually found ways to cope with these psychological scars. He had friends to help him move forward and change his way of thinking, so that the dead queen no longer had such a hold on his psyche. Malice has never been so lucky. The very thought of physical intimacy, the touch of a woman, still makes him sick to his stomach.

"I refused. I spat in the face of God, Krystal. I fought tooth and nail, not for love of country or some greater good or the safety of a loved one, because I had none of those things in my heart, but out of fury and spite and pride. I knew I would be crushed beneath her heel, I knew I would suffer a thousand times whatever wounds I inflicted upon her, and I did, but still, I fought, and I suffered, because violence is inescapable. Evil will always find a way, even if it's stupid, even if the consequences are unimaginably terrifying. A hero's job isn't to eliminate all evil from the world, but to contain its spread, to keep the body healthy. You can't trust villains to do that; they'll only stomp the bugs that personally get in their way, leave the rest to eat the world alive. Your serial killer either wouldn't have gotten in Dr. Doom's way, keeping their kills under his radar, or they would've said to hell with it like I did, and gone out in a bloody blaze of glory." Malice lifts his edgy drink to his lips again, gulping down most of it in one swig this time. That's not a story he likes telling, even if he got through it without mentioning that part.

"Heroes do good work. They're a vital, necessary part of this world, and your own. I'm not, never was, and never will be." Okay, there goes the rest of the Devil Brew. Yikes, that was a lot to gulp down all at once like that.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Krystal really wants to put an arm around Malice's shoulders right now. Offer some kind of comfort. But, she senses he might not react well to it.

She takes a swig from her glass, then looks to Malice. You just beat the ever loving crap out of a guy because he was dealing drugs to kids. I'd call that a heroic act.

She let's out a sigh and takes another drink. I know that I can't stop all the evil that happens. I get that now. Took me a while, though. And I also realized that the threat of getting caught by some heroes and turned over to the cops doesn't stop some people. But getting caught by villains? She shakes her head a bit. The crime rate of Latveria is pretty damn low.

Krystal finishes her drink in one go.

I just wanted to let you know that, while I don't exactly like your reasons, or your methods, I can't exactly argue with the results. You may be doing it for selfish reasons, but you are helping cut down on bad stuff happening. I can get behind that.

She orders another drink.

So, on a lighter note, what kinds of trouble are you getting into these days?

[Lord Magtok]

There's a long, awkward pause, as Malice tries his hardest to figure out a way to dodge the question. Maybe he should be vague or just lie again. I mean, there's an unconscious orc on the floor, do you think she'll disbelieve you if you say you sell drugs or run a protection racket? We don't have to get into the specifics, just say something halfway convincing. Seriously, she didn't even blink when we said we were doing street crime, so just say something that falls under that umbrella, without getting into what we actually do, and we'll be fine!

"I'm...I uh..." He glances at his drink, but the rotten traitor is already empty, and he can't sip at that to buy time to come up with a convincing lie. "Did you pass by the Children of Abuse Rescue and Education center on your way here? It's a front. CARE's a front. I'm...I'm laundering mob money, I'm selling drugs, I'm doing all kinds of terrible things behind the scenes there, I'm-hey, could I get another one of these Devil Brews, please?" Malice, I don't think she's going to believe a single one of those lies, buddy. You were trying just a little too hard to keep up appearances; I think the jig is up.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Krystal raises a pale eyebrow as she sips her own drink. Man, that eyebrow gets pretty high. She could probably give The Rock a run for his money.

Uh-huh. Right. Sure.

Ya know...somehow, I don't believe you. At all.

She sighs a bit.

Look, Malice...I'm gonna be doing the hero thing here now. And while I'm a bit more lenient towards some crimes, if I find out you're doing stuff to hurt people? Innocent people? I'm gonna come for you. And you won't like it.

And I'd rather find out from you, now, than discover things later.

[Lord Magtok]

"Oh fine, I guess I'll come clean. Krystal, if I had crimes to brag about, don't you think you'd know about them by now?" Malice laughs bitterly, and shakes his head. "If you're looking for some kind of sneaky scoundrel supercriminal, he died like two years ago. Took too many blows to the head, retired, gave up. Nobody wanted to work with the guy who looks like Magtok; too much negative attention. No robots to work with, no money to get by on, every punk from here to Riverside wanting to prove themselves by taking on the cyborg...this worthless punk on the floor is my first voluntary crime, my first fight I initiated in ages. Mostly I'm just waiting to die again. MagClones aren't supposed to live this long and now that Magtok's back, my plan to steal the cave and my name are over." One wonders why he can't just murder Magtok and take the MagCave by force, instead of waiting for the cyborg to die or leave the Nexus forever. Is he really that intimidated by the other clones?

[KerfuffleMach2]

Krystal stays silent for a moment as she seems to think about something. She takes a drink from her glass. She looks to Malice.

Sounds like you need a new job. She smiles. I'm thinking of opening up a comic shop in Inside. Wanna work with me?

Hm. Don't think Malice was prepared for that.

[Lord Magtok]

"You're opening a comic shop? Isn't that kinda like a robot selling smart phones? A dinosaur gas station attendant? A construction firm that only builds fourth walls?" Malice, knock it off. The fact that you're having this conversation with her is proof that you're just as fictional as she is. Besides, aren't you missing the really big, important, much more obvious question here?

"More importantly, why would you want me? The only thing I'm good for is building killer robots and losing fights, and I ran out of killer robot parts a while ago. Is this just so you have someone to cover for you when Intersection flashes the Krystal Signal in the night sky and calls on you to foil Jigsaw Jester, the crazed cluemaster comedian, who's clashing against cops on yet another contemptible crime spree?" Malice almost sounds excited for a moment, with all of that alliteration. He had plans for that sort of thing, once. He'd drown his foes in words starting with 'M,' and everyone would surely recognize Malice as the superior cyborg. Now, if he could just get someone to loan him a few billion dollars and a giant, city-destroying mecha...

[KerfuffleMach2]

Krystal chuckles. Yeah, I'm hoping my, uh, background in this area will help boost sales.

She finishes her drink. And I want you for a few reasons. You know just about as much as I do about the different Marvel realities. Probably more about the others. And, yeah, I need somebody to run the place if I have to go help people. Plus, you could totally put your tech knowledge to use helping me.

Also, she really doesn't like that he seems to be keeping himself in Magtok's shadow. Can't say that one, though. Might scare him away.

So what do you say? Partners?

She holds out a hand, as if to shake.

[Lord Magtok]

Krystal is, like many PCs, a danger magnet. Trouble, danger, and violence follows her wherever she goes. Malice knows this, he knows the comic shop will eventually be met with some kind of crisis or disaster or space nazi street gang of angry gator-men demanding protection money. Trouble will come knocking, and as with every major Nexus emergency, opportunity will be lurking behind it.

That's how he'll get out of this rut. That's how he'll move beyond odd jobs and mundane garbage and psychologically-draining orphanage work. He'll loot her communist robot enemies for parts. He'll keep their super-suits in a secure vault below the comic shop. He'll curate her trophy gallery of fallen foes, put glass cases on all their bizarre and bombastic weaponry and gadgets, and then, just when she's beginning to trust and confide in him, steal it all for himself! He'll take it all, become unstoppable, build himself a new empire from these ashes, become the Malice he always knew he could be!

"...Fine, partners," he concedes, shaking her hand.

That villain stuff's what he tells himself his motive is, anyway. He's certainly not worried about Krystal's psyche, shut up. He's not the least bit concerned about how cynical and tired she sounds. I mean, it's fine for him to be battered and tired and nihilistic; he's the bad guy here. Heroes are supposed to inspire and uplift, to fill the lowly mundanes with hope and joy. She's supposed to be sunny and optimistic and cute. The fact that she's so full of doubt and pain almost makes Malice want to do something, which is weird and uncomfortable and gross, because deep down, he's still a villain, and empathy is still a foreign and nauseating concept to the cyborg.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Krystal smiles as she shakes Malice's hands. This was going to be the start of something great. She could feel it.

Good. Great. Alright. She's grinning widely now, clearly pleased by this.

So, wanna go take a look at the place? Already started setting some stuff up there.

[Lord Magtok]

There's something vaguely resembling human emotion flaring up in Malice's stomach when Krystal smiles. He doesn't like it, not in the least. He does his best to bury it away by thinking about all those villainous plots he could get up to, lurking in the shadows of a superheroine and laying claim to every gadget, weapon, and supersuit Krystal beats out of her foes, calling dibs before Intersection can lock all the best loot away in their evidence room. Yes, that's definitely stuff that's actually going to happen in the future, and not just a lie he's telling himself to chase the other thoughts away.

"Sure. Let me just let someone know I'll be late, and-" Malice frowns, wishing it didn't take so long to text on this stupid flip phone. Who is this 'someone,' though? If he's not doing crime, that's great, but what is he actually up to? "Alright. Not too far from here, right?" You're in a bar, Malice. Everything is weirdly within walking distance of those, somehow.

[KerfuffleMach2]

Krystal pays her tab and heads for the door, shaking her head a bit. Nah, not far. Right where Market Street passes through Metropolis Square.

Man, when did these districts start popping up?

She glances at Magtok's ill-gotten phone.

If you got something important going on, you can come by later.

[Lord Magtok]

Malice shakes his head, following Krystal out the door. "It'll be fine. I nearly beat a man to death, I think that's a good enough excuse to call out sick." I think that only counts when you're the one getting beaten up, cyborg. I suppose it's probably better you don't show up, though. The blood on your hands and booze on your breath would be a little difficult to explain. Most businesses frown upon their employees getting into bar fights right before their shift. I'm sure whatever you're up to is no different.

[bc56]

Someone enters the bar!
A towheaded young man, in his late teens, enters. He seems out of place here. In fact, he looks like a farm hand. There's a thin crusting of dirt under his fingernails, and he's wearing rugged, patched jeans and an old, beat-up T-shirt. He sits at the bar and orders a whiskey.
Perceptive individuals may notice a thin ribbon of bloodred fluid trailing from the back of the lad's sturdy work boot, as well as a faint whiff of sulphur coming from him. Those who are good at reading people, on the other hand, will note that he looks around at the other patrons almost hungrily.

[billtodamax]

Hey dude you smell like dog turds. The woman he sat next to crinkles her nose up at him as he sits. She has a collection of bottles next to her, all of them the cheapest beer that the BDD sells. She's wearing a black tank top and a grey jumpsuit zipped down to the waist and tied up to expose her arms. Her hair is red, tied up in a high ponytail. Take a shower some time.

[bc56]

"Well excuuuuse me! If you worked half as hard as I did, you'd stink too." The lad drinks his whiskey, swallowing it all in one gulp and ordering another.

[billtodamax]

If I worked in the dog turd factory maybe. Violet says, waving to the bartender and holding up 3 fingers. She starts drinking one of the three drinks the goblin brings over. How come some dog turd smellin' dude's drinking in the den. DFI looks more your speed. She says, draining the rest of the beer to punctuate the point, reaching over for her second. A detail I forgot to mention: there's a crude spear resting on the bar next to her, tip made of a shard of glass lashed to a metal pole with electrical wires.

[bc56]

"Hey now. I drink where I want, and I eat where I want and nobody can tell.me otherwise. You got it?" The youngster seems very confrontational. He seems to feel like the woman is disrespecting him, and he clearly doesn't like that.

[billtodamax]

Looks like nobody tells you when to shower either. Violet says, grin spreading across her face. Maybe this crappy night can be saved after all! This guy looks like he might be willing to start a fight! Hell you probably wouldn't listen anyway. Smell reminds you of your mum. Her grip tightens on the bottle of beer she's drinking as she stares dead at him, predatory grin a seemingly permanent fixture on her face.

[bc56]

The young man gets up from his seat, glaring at the insulting woman with fire in his eyes. "You could call me names and you could spit in my face, but you insulted the memory of my mother. I'm not going to let you go without a beating!" If she wanted a fight, she's got one. He stands in a surprisingly well trained stance, as if he is a moderately good fistfighter, but his build, although fit from hard labor, doesn't suggest that he's a warrior. It seems the fire in his eyes has gone out as well, replaced with something else, a seeming dark hunger.

[billtodamax]

Woah, dude, slow down, just a bit of good natured- Violet begins to say, before siezing the barstool behind her and swinging it around in an arc to collide with the farmhand's torso. Whether it connects or not she lets it go and springs backward out of her stool, leaving the spear sitting against the bar. She has a wild smile on her face, lightly bouncing on the balls of her feet.

In the back of the establishment a dwarf puts a quarter in the jukebox (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iymtpePP8I8).

[bc56]

The man ducks away from the barstool, then swings at the woman, his arm seeming to extend to cover the distance between them. If the strike connects, she'll find that it's more painful than it should be, and she might feel a lingering headache or wooziness, since it's enhanced with psychic energy.

[billtodamax]

Violet moves quickly, ducking inside the strike to lesson the force - or at least that was the idea. Son of a gun that hurt. She grits her teeth through the pain and lashes out with the bottle of beer she's still holding, trying to smash it into the farmhand's side. Got something fancy going on huh?

[bc56]

"You could say that." The bottle hits him, and glass shards dig into his body. He bleeds a red substance, but it doesn't seem to be blood. It's far more viscous and smells strongly of sulphur. Violet will start to feel a presence pulling on her mind, something which can be resisted by sufficient willpower. If she's not strong enough, she will start to have trouble remembering things, mainly in the distant past. She might feel woozy, or get a severe headache as well.

[billtodamax]

Violet may not be smart enough to recognise the pulling presence for what it is, but blindly resisting things out of spite is at least 2/3rds of her personality, so the presence will find an unbridled anger blocking it from stealing any memories. Violet is certainly not going to remain still while this is happening - she pulls back with the broken bottle, before lashing out again another couple of times, trying to open up this thing's side even further. Quit messin' with me! She yells angrily, clearly at least aware that the psychic attack is coming from the man in front of her.

[Recaiden]

"Ten gold on the farmboy." Offers a figure bundled up in winter coats to the barkeep. "Whatever odds you've got."

[bc56]

The farmhand smiles eerily, the expression stretching oddly across his face. "Let me think...
No." The psychic force redoubles it's assault. It would be so easy to give in, to let it take what it wants.

[billtodamax]

Heck you! Violet does not say, choosing instead to say something much more vulgar. The presence will find her anger flare up to... almost match it. Edges of her memory start to leak out - an afternoon spent on an alien world under 2 suns with a guy in a leather jacket dropping rocks onto cars on the freeway, a much more exciting evening spent doing unmentionable things in his house, nicking the silverware in the morning before he wakes up - as she lashes out with the bottle again, this time at the farmhand's face. Regardless of whether it hits or not, she'll try and drop her shoulder into him, to push him back (hopefully over a stool or a patron or something, but she isn't picky or really paying attention to the rest of the bar).

[bc56]

The farmhand is "bleeding" heavily now, both from the gashes in his side and face. "Stop that! That actually hurts!" He yells with force, but he's toppled over the stool he was using earlier. The psychic force abruptly ends, interrupted by the rough fall. "Stay put!" he shouts, and a new force assaults Violet, one attempting to lock her joints and bind her in place.

[billtodamax]

Say uncle! Say it! She yells, tearing her leg forward against the pressure to move toward him. Her movements are janky and slow as she fights against the psychic assault. Friggin' with my brain ain't gonna stop me! She yells, partially for her own sake - her resistance to the psychic assault flares up as she yells it.

[Recaiden]

"Come on, kid! You can't give up that easy!" Cheers the spectator.

[bc56]

The so-called farmhand doesn't reply, instead lunging at Violet while she's vulnerable and slowed down, grabbing at her throat.

[billtodamax]

Violet is grabbed, choking out a swear word as the hand closes around her neck. Her eyes are full of fury and she manages to lash out underhanded with her bottle, trying to further open up his torso. Don't know when to stay down, do you? She hisses through the choke.

[bc56]

"Funny, I could stay the same for you." He takes the hit, and his grip loosens for just a moment before tightening again, but that time might just be enough for Violet to escape.

[billtodamax]

Violet wrenches herself backwards as soon as she feels his grip start to loosen even slightly, stumbling backwards into the bar. She grabs another barstool and tries to smash it into the side of this "farmhand". Why did everyone here have to be weird.

[CosmicHobbit]

Oliver walks in smiling. Well, he was. The second he saw what was going on his mouth dropped open and his eyes went wide. Now, he's not so vain as to be surprised there's a fight. Instead, he's surprised that it broke out before he got there. That'd never happened before.

"Um..." He carefully skirts his way around the fight to the bar. "Can I, uh, get a bottle of whiskey? Preferably one that's on the heavier side, even without liquid in it. Oh, and enough shot glasses to hold all the whiskey in the bottle."

[bc56]

The farmhand grunts with the blow and psychically lashes out again, punching at Violet at the same time.

[CosmicHobbit]

Upon getting his whiskey, Oliver carefully pours it into the shot glasses, and tips one back. What is he up to?

He watches the fight going on, a look of amusement on his face. Maybe the fight not involving him isn't such a bad thing.

[billtodamax]

The psychic attack staggers Violet just enough to stop her from dodging the punch, which sends her sprawling backward into another patron, dropping the stool. The minotaur - of course she didn't crash into someone small and unassuming - seems to take umbrage with her, but Violet couldn't care less. Blow it out your ass. She tells him, seizing his pint of beer and pitching it at the farmhand's head. He rises to grab her but is quickly decked across the face by another nearby patron who has been getting a bit itchy with the fight going on without being able to join in. A group of dwarves (already a rude word away from descending into a brawl at the best of times) start swinging at each other and half the den descends into a bar fight.

A little earlier than usual, but Violet does tend to have a destructive influence on the mood of any bar she drinks in.

[bc56]

The farmhand ducks under the flying glass, leaving it sailing through the air toward Oliver. He then grabs another nearby stool and throws it at Violet.

[CosmicHobbit]

Oliver narrowly manages to avoid the bottle, and his amusement turns to a scowl. He grabs his heavy whiskey bottle and starts trying to use the bar fight to blend in and sneak up behind the farmhand. It's like he'd been planning this from the beginning.

[billtodamax]

Violet raises her arms to block the stool, grunting as it slams into her upraised arms. It doesn't look like it's slowed her down any - she charges the farmhand, and at the last second launches herself into the air, trying to dropkick him.

[bc56]

The farmhand is tricky, trying to grab Violet by the extended leg and throw her at Oliver. It's almost like he knew Oliver was coming without looking.

[billtodamax]

The farmhand will probably get kicked in the chest trying to grab Violet but she's certainly in no position to stop him.

[5a Violista]

A tall woman enters the BDD, looks around, and then waits for a server after sitting. She has long shimmery wings and pale blue eyes.

When asked what she wants, she asks for time to look through the menu. After looking across the room a few more times, she finally decides and asks for a Poisonbite Cocktail.

"Thanks," she says, smiling.

Her name's Cerridwen, she tells the server, in case they need to call it out for her drink.

[Artemis97]

The server today is Raril, stepping out from behind the bar to deliver the drink.

"Here you are, Miss Cerridwen." The drow says, placing the glass down in front of her.

[5a Violista]

"Thank you," the fairy says.

She smiles at the drow.

She doesn't drink it yet. Even if there's any doubt that kind of poison would affect her, why would she drink it? Poison isn't a normal thing people drink. No, she's waiting for someone to offer to drink with her.

Cerridwen, instead, decides to ask Raril something to pass the time. It's a very important question. "How often do you see fights break out here? I'm worried because I'm not one for fighting, but I've been asked to wait for someone."

She looks maybe a little worried? Possibly?

[Artemis97]

"Fights?" Raril looks over at the current altercation as if seeing it for the first time. "About as often as Trog's I suppose, maybe a little less. We used to have a bouncer... don't know what happened to them." The drow frowns, concerned, but shrugs it off. "I'll have to hire someone else."


Seeing she hasn't started drinking Raril asks. "May I join you? I think it would be rude to leave a lady drinking alone."

[CosmicHobbit]

Seeing Violet fly toward him, he steps to the side, but not quite fast enough. He's clipped by her, and falls on the ground, bottle still in hand. Pushing himself up, he abandons any attempt at sneaking, instead electing to rush at the farmhand, bottle raised over his head.

[5a Violista]

The large fae nods. Too bad, fewer fights than she had wanted.

And.

She probably should have started out with something that's not poisonous, especially if this elf wants to drink with her.

She appraises him...and decides he's not as delichandsome as some of the others here. But...if the opportunity comes up...?

"Go ahead," she replies, "I appreciate it."

She wraps her hand around her drink, and then asks, "So what will you be drinking, if I may ask?"

[Artemis97]

Raril slides into a chair across from the fae woman. "I would join you in a poisonbite, but I've got to stay sharp. Maybe later in the night. There's going to be a bit of a party here, for the folks who survived a recent disaster Inside. I will have some spiderblood wine, though. Still dangerous, but less likely to knock me on my back." He allows.

[5a Violista]

The Fairy Cerridwen listens to what the drow says about his drink - and, more interestingly - the party.

That would probably be very interesting to attend, so long as she doesn't drink too much now or grows too weak. In the spirit of drinking, she drinks (for now) a small sip of the drink. "This is a bit stronger than I anticipated," she says.

After setting the drink down, she asks about what Raril said, hoping to learn more about the party: "What sort of disaster? Was it more apocalyptic, or was it more natural? Forgive me for asking, but there seems to be a wide variety of disasters that can happen here."

[Artemis97]

Raril frowns. "Oh let me get you something different, then, if you'd like? We can share the bottle of wine, perhaps?" He suggests.

As for the disaster, "It wasn't natural, but it wasn't quite apocalyptic, either. A large section of the city was turned into some sort of... fighting ground for these other-dimensional beings called Cherubs. They're a sort of Empyrean? I'm not sure what that means, to be honest. I think they're related to the Old Ones. Anyways, a lot of people got caught in their crossfire, and whole sections of the city got sucked out of our plane and into theirs. I almost got trapped in it myself, if it weren't for my wife, I don't know if I'd have gotten out in time. I could feel the air changing, though. Knew it was time to make a break for it. Blasted four-headed thing was blocking our path out and I got separated from my party. It was a mess." The drow shakes his head. "I wanted to give something back to the people who lost their homes and families, and to those who helped them in the aftermath. So free food and drink. It's a small thing for us to do here at the Den."

[Rebonack]

Oh hey look, there's Zee.

In her usual outfit this time rather than her pajamas. Epic battles in pajamas aren't recommended, as far as she's concerned. It ruins the pajamas AND they offer very little protection. Not that her wholly mundane street cloths offer any additional protection, but at least she has spare outfits in case they get shredded. Which they do. Regularly.

She pauses briefly when she spots the fight that's...

Going on?

Kind of?

She waves a hand around between Violet and the farmhand. Maybe dead time isn't so dead after all?

Now, the next thing she spots? Why, it's Raril! Sitting with a fairy of some kind! A Dreamheart sort of fairy?

Golly, she sure hopes it isn't.

Thankfully the Nexus is populated with all sorts of things that call themselves fairies that aren't born of primordial formless creative potential that eternally writhes and roils below the foundation of reality.

Zee walks up behind Raril's chair, drapes her arms over her husband's shoulders, and leans down to rest her chin on top of his head. "Pssssst. Did you make a new friend?" she stage-whispers in a sufficiently conspiratorial tone.

[bc56]

Bar Fight
The farmhand chuckles darkly. "If I can't take hers,.I'll take yours instead." Oliver will feel a psychic force tearing at his mind, attempting to leech away his memories. Such an affliction would wear.off with time, but, if successful, would be quite debilitating in the short run.

[billtodamax]

Bar Fight!

Violet stumbles to her feet a little groggily, grinning like a maniac. She lays out a nearby elf with a right hook, before picking up another bar stool and breaking it over his back while he's down.

She's not... not too concerned over who she's fighting right now.

[Artemis97]

Raril looks up at his wife and smiles. "Something like that." He reaches up to squeeze her hand and then gestures to a nearby seat. "Care to join us? This is Cerridwen. I was just telling her about that big fight we just went through."

More quietly, the drow says to Zee. "How are you feeling? I know you're exhausted. Can I get you something to eat or drink?"

[Earl of Purple]

VwooorpVwoorpVwooorp

When the noise fades, there's somebody standing on a table. They're a young man, rather scruffy looking at that. He's tanned, with brown hair and blue eyes. He's about twenty three or four, with a scruffy beard and he's wearing a battered pair of jeans and a black t-shirt with a bar emblazoned on it, half-filled with white and the word 'Loading' underneath. He's got a satchel over his shoulder and he's holding a red-and-white sphere, from which he summons a spindly plant with two big green leaves and a huge yellow bell-shaped head. That done, the young man looks down at his body to make sure he's all here, and quickly checks to make sure he's still a he- those aliens referred to him as a 'human female', so he wants to make sure the teleporter didn't mess up there.

"This... Isn't my flat. Those aliens... Well, at least I can now buy a car for cheap." Alfred climbs off the table and looks around. "Is there an elf lady around, or did she get teleported somewhere else? I hope she didn't wind up in my flat. That'd be embarrassing, since it's locked and I don't have a spare key." Also, it's a mess.

[CosmicHobbit]

Bar Fight!

Oliver reels back, feeling the force tear at his mind. The farmhand gets a few flashes of memories before Oliver manages to protect his mind. He gets a bank heist, Oliver sipping coffee across from an old GLoG member, and Oliver petting a cat. Some memories are more important than others. :smalltongue:

In the physical world, Oliver grits his teeth and keeps running toward the farmhand. When he gets to him, he'll do what he's been trying to do with that heavy bottle and smash it over the farmhand's head.

[5a Violista]

Cerridwen is a fairy.
Not really the "cute and tiny" fairy that are occasionally common, but a tall "probably taller than you" fairy with shimmery wings that could maybe be mistaken for an iridescent cape or cloak from a distance.
...
And she might eat your text color (and facial features?) if you're not careful. In fact, both her current eye color and text color were not originally hers.
Fortunately, both Zee and Raril have boring text colors so they're probably safe.


Raril frowns. "Oh let me get you something different, then, if you'd like? We can share the bottle of wine, perhaps?" He suggests.
"Yes, sure," she says to the latter suggestion. "That would be enjoyable."

Listening to his description of the disaster, she sympathizes and says, "Oh, that's awful. Things like that shouldn't exist."

She greets Zee with a cursory "Hello" and drinks some of Raril's wine.

[bc56]

Bar Fight

The farmhand seems to have had enough, between the two assailants. He collapses onto the floor with a squelch, dissolving into red sludge stinking of brimstone. The slime slithers across the ground and out under the door, but as it leaves, a taunting voice can be heard, like the sound of baked beans being poured into a bucket, "Thanksss for the memoriesss."

Not the bar Fight

Tethrik enters. The four-armed, bladed demon moves to the bar and sits down. "Two glasses of blood. No, make it three. I've had a strange day. Profitable and exciting, but strange."

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

A vampire walks into the tavern. This vampire is dressed fairly simply. Sneakers, jeans, and a hoodie. She carries a canvas bag over one shoulder. Her brown hair falls past her shoulders. Her green eyes look around a bit, searching for someone. They conveniently pass right over the fight without noticing it somehow.

Instead, she spots Zee and heads over to that table, a friendly smile on her face.

[billtodamax]

Bar Fight

Oliver might find his victory short lived as Violet comes charging toward him, trying to clothesline the man and knock him to the ground.

She's probably just going to keep going until she falls asleep.

[Chaotic Bob]

Somewhere in the vague vicinity of the door, completely ignorant of any people who may or may not be fighting in that area, there is a muffled POP as a towering blob of translucent gray goo the rough size of a refrigerator springs into existence.
After a brief moment, it collapses in all directions in a hideous deluge of sticky, unpleasantly cool fluid and reveals a very uncomfortably wet-looking blue robed man.

Xeni looks somewhere between exhausted, confused, and perhaps the slightest bit drunk.
"...bad shortcut, got it."
Taking the chance to shake a small blob of goo off one arm, he glances around until he spies the other [Cherub Talk] Arena Contributors and begins wobbling in their general direction.

"I'm here! I'm here..."

[Rebonack]

[Cherub Talk]

Zee points at the unconscious elf Violet just clobbered in reply to Alfred's question. Though that might not be a lady elf. It's really hard when you can't see an elf from the front. Thankfully the teleporter didn't rearrange any of Alfred's bits. That would have been awkward.

She'll also shake her head to Raril's question.

"I've had time to recuperate. I'll be okay," she says before turning to regard everyone present. "Okay I don't recognize everyone here. Like those people pummeling each other or that pile of gross goop."

She gestures vaguely at the slime Xeni brought with him.

"But that's alright. I promised you guys answers after the arena popped, but I was just too tired to give them then. So! I'll give them now. Big questions first. Try to yell them all at me at once, I'm pretty good at parsing information that way."

...

Is she serious?

Probably.

[bc56]

Nearby the Cherub Talk

Tethrik is animatedly telling his story to a group of only mildly interested dwarves. "... but when I climbed up the building to catch it, it turned out to be another trap! Blessed thing had set a claymore right at the edge of the rooftop. I barely made it out of there with my head! So I climbed around to the other side, and there it was, running serpentine between the AC units on another rooftop nearby. You know what I did? I chucked a fireball its way. BOOM! I burned the thing to cinders, and then, I took its weapons as a trophy!" He pulls a long silver rifle out of his belt pouch, carved with elegant whorls and spirals. "Isn't she a beauty?"

[CosmicHobbit]

Bar Fight!

Oliver puts his hands in the air. "Yes! I did i-" he says, getting cut off by Violet's clothesline. He gets back up to his feet. "Come on! I thought we were a team!"

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha thinks for a minute, going over what she learned at the arena before choosing her questions.

Is this something we can expect to be happening more often? And what can be done to stop it?

Those seem like good questions to start with.

[Earl of Purple]

Cherub Talk

Alfred and Ben are nearby, but not yet asking questions. "We are talking about the thing in Inside with the four-faced baby-things, right?" Oh, there's a question. But that's really the only one. All he did was panic and run around like a headless chicken, but he's going to be headed to Pokemon Park soon to catch some more.

[Rebonack]

[Cherub Talk]

"To answer your question, Alysha, we-"

Then Zee pauses, leaning to the side a bit to avoid a flying barstool.

She frowns at this, levels a hand now roiling with Glory at Violet, and utters a single word.

"Υπνος"

A flare of living crystal like a halo will suddenly pulse around Violet's head. This may result in the part of her brain that controls the sleep cycle to suddenly get poked, causing her to slump into a deep catatonic slumber.

Zee coughs a bit. "Anyway! To answer your first question, Alysha, yes. Maybe not specifically another arena. It might be a fae incursion, like enchanted groves popping up. Or goblin slavers making raids. Or it might be a copper host empyrean cropping up and forming a cult around itself. I'm really hoping nothing my size or bigger shows up, because I've been really careful not to spread my Glory around and I don't think someone else would be so considerate."

That sounds pretty bad.

"Your second question... I don't know. My instincts are telling me that something is at the root of all of this. Usually both sides of the Eternal Game aren't quite so active in the Nexus. Something must have drawn there attention here. If we can find it and fix it, then hopefully they'll lose interest and look for a more strategic playing field," Zee explains. She sounds... hopeful. Not certain. Not resolute. But hopeful.

As for Alfred's question?

Zee nods.

"I think I remember seeing you. I recognize the bellsprout," Zee says, then offers a friendly smile. "I was the giant weird alien looking dragon that yelled at you."

[Chaotic Bob]

[Cherub Talk]

At some point Xeni tripped over a chair. Somehow, he smoothly transitions this trip into a collapse into the chair that slides it close enough to everyone else that he can totally pretend to have done that on purpose.
Totally.

More relevant to the discussion at hand, it looks like Alysha asked the question he was most interested in: how does one stop this from happening more?
To which Zee has supplied a very unsatisfying "somehow!" answer.
Not really her fault, perhaps, with how potentially massive of a problem this is...but still...
"So, I suppose the question becomes: what sorts of things would be drawing the attention of your kin here?"

[5a Violista]

[Cherub Talk]

The tall fairy-woman drinks more of Raril's wine.
Better be careful, or it might all run out!

She sighs. With all these people around here - some powerful, in fact - it's going to be really hard for her to consume someone's being, soul, face, or even their voice. Especially if she wants to target one of the people sitting right here.

So, instead of that, Cerridwen asks her own questions to Zee. "I understand that all these soulless monsters need to go," she says with a voice that actually isn't her own. "But how can you know you're not also a pawn used by someone else in this game?"

She asks one more question: "How can we know you'll continue to be 'really careful' around us? If something as big as you comes, would you even have the option to be 'careful'?"

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

Tethrik suddenly appears adjacent the table, waving the fancy silver sniper rifle animatedly. "Did you just say four faced baby monsters? I was just thinking about those!"

[Artemis97]

[Cherub Talk]

Fortunately for Cerridwen, Raril owns the bar and all the liquor in it, there's plenty more wine where that came from. Especially the Spiderblood wine, which was a favorite of his growing number of drow clientele.

"I heard about goblin raids happening not too long ago. And those Bhargests that I got into a fight with." The drow frowns. "What's this glory thing you're talking about?"

[Rebonack]

[Cherub Talk]

"Nice save," Zee whispers to Xeni. "And really, that's a good question. Usually hub realms like the Nexus aren't that high on the list. But they still hit us for That Day in spite of that fact. I'll admit I'm... not really an expert on the finer details of the Eternal Game. I've mostly just been winging it so far with good results. It helped that there were nearly three thousand of me to begin with. Putting myself back together again took a long time and a lot of effort."

She ponders a bit. "If I had to wager a guess? There's probably a McGuffin of some kind. It's always a McGuffin. I know the code for really rare or special Icons are hidden in hub realms sometimes, just to make them more enticing. Or... I guess the prevailing hypothesis is that it's to make them more enticing. We didn't make the Eternal Game or the rules for it. We just kind of... found it."

Which makes it all the more mysterious.

Then Zee frowns at the fae. "You shouldn't call Alysha a soulless monster," she says in a firm tone. "That's rude. And besides, there are some vampires that still have souls."

Even if souls are terrible faerie nonsense. Zee understands that they're important to lots of people, even if they're awful things to be stuck with.

"And I'm not a pawn. I'm a player. I'm on the leader-board and everything," Zee retorts. "And you can't know that I'll continue being careful. Nothing I can say will convince you. But ask around Town. Ask if Zee the barmaid from Trog's did everything in her power to help keep the Nexus a safer, better, more joyful place. Because I have a reputation. If you won't take me at my word, then at least let my actions speak for me."

She frowns at question number three. "If another bronze host shows up in the Nexus intent on causing trouble then any damage I would cause by cutting loose while unbound would be incidental compared to the damage an actively malicious Glory, Dominion, Hymn, or Season would wreak."

Raril's question is a lot less nettley.

"I learned a bunch of stuff while I was the Empyreum for the last... um... seven years of your time. I learned what I'm supposed to be. A Glory of the seraphim. It's my rank, sort of. It's also the name for my power manifest. Imagine my lifeshaping ability for a moment. Now imagine that it would be leveled against not only everything in proximity to me, but everything that can perceive me. We dodged the bullet on that one, actually," she says somewhat sheepishly. "I've been growing into my new rank. Stomping all over those cherubs was the last little push I needed for the final spurt of growth. Even seeing or hearing me while I'm unbound is hazardous, now. My power manifest is relatively benign, helpful even if you don't mind weird mutations. But imagine for a moment, say, a Season aligned strongly with time and entropy dropped into the Nexus. You catch a glimpse of it and you decay into a heap of dust and bones."

She lets that sink in for a moment.

[billtodamax]

Bar Fight

Violet laughs in Oliver's face, before reaching for another bar stool. They are the best weapons.

I'm the winner baby! That's how it... the halo springs into existence around her head and she staggers forward toward Oliver. How it gooo... She slumps forward, likely colliding with Oliver as she falls stone cold asleep.

She snores.

[Artemis97]

[Cherub Talk]

"A Season?" Raril echoes. "Something bigger and scarier than you?"

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha sticks her tongue out at the fairy. Definitely not soulless. Can't have a Keyblade if I don't have a soul.

And she does have one of those. Not visible at the moment. But several people saw it!

She turns back to Zee. You keep mentioning a game. What is it? And why is it being played?

[Chaotic Bob]

[Cherub Talk]

"MacGuffins and Icons, huh?"
Xeni ruminates on that a bit, while Zee explains her way through everyone else's questions.
All the general info they're asking about is interesting in a general sense, but he's been of mind to get to the core of problems lately. Skirting around the edges just leaves more people to die.
Usually people you care about.

"You may want to elaborate on that Icons thing. Or at least, how they are in any way recognizable. If we can find it ourselves, I would assume we can either destroy it or deposit it somewhere less dangerous for the general populace.
Like a black hole."

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

"If something is attracting those things, we could throw it even further than a black hole. I've got a ship with a dimensional drive, we could throw it into another universe. Maybe a dead one, so there'd be no one for them to kill." Tethrik suggests.

[Earl of Purple]

Cherub Talk

Alfred blinks when informed Zee's the giant dragon he saw, since she looks nothing like that now. "I headed to you because of panicked logic." He admits. He doesn't have any other questions, since all he really wants to do is avoid this sort of thing in the future. And fetch a few cool pokemon to help him if that proves impossible.

[CosmicHobbit]

Bar Fight

Oliver just pushes Violet off of him, then stares down at her on the floor. "Like I said, I did it." He looks around the bar, and sees a different fight going on. He just shrugs and goes back to his spot. "I'll have another whiskey please."

[Rebonack]

[Cherub Talk]

"Something the same size as me, but in a different order," Zee replies to Raril. "Probably scarier, though. They can manipulate things like time and space and motion and entropy the way I can manipulate life. It's really hard to fight something that can lock you in a closed time-loop."

Very, very hard.

Next question!

"Okay, yeah, the Eternal Game. That's probably important," Zee says with a nod. Zee came equipped for what's about to follow! She pulls a little container of bubble fluid out of her pocket, unscrews the top, and blows a soap bubble. It begins drifting lazily through the Den, iridescence dancing on its surface. "Okay, so, bubbles. We'll say the inside surface of the bubble is the Waking World, where we are right now. And the outside surface is the Dreamlands, where souls go when they dream. Those are the two faces of the world. The space inside the bubble is the Empyreum, where I've been the last seven years. A place of absolute reality. The space outside the bubble is the Dreamheart, the realm of primordial formless creative potential."

She holds out the little bubble wand and catches the drifting bubble.

"The Empyreum and the Dreamheart are too fundamentally different to ever interact, so where they meet there's a sort of... mingling. Kind of. Without actually touching each other. It's weird. But from this confluence arises something that's less real than the Empyreum but more real than the Dreamheart. A place where possibility grows and changes, but where reality holds it in shape. A physical world. A world with rules in place we didn't make. The Eternal Game. Now the next question is, why play it?"

Zee gives the bubble wand a deft flip, causing the bubble to shrink ever so slightly. "Whoops, looks like the Dreamheart just won that session. It gobbled up the Dreamlands, pulled the Waking World down into a new Dreamlands, and just bit a chunk out of the Empyreum to make a new Waking World." Then Zee flips it again, this time the bubble growing a smidgen. "Victory to the glorious Empyreum that time, the Waking World just got pulled into the heavens, the Dreamlands became the new Waking World and form was imposed upon the Dreamheart to birth a new Dreamlands into existence."

She glances around the table, making eye contact with each person in turn. "There are other reasons. Everyone has their own reasons for being here. But the big reason? This is a battle for survival. The Dreamheart doesn't want to get forced into permanent form, or at least it sure seems that way. I'm not certain if it can really want anything. And people in the Empyreum don't want our home getting yanked out from under us. It doesn't help that this is less a tug-of-war and more a race to the finish line. Once a certain threshold for otherworldly weirdness is met, this session of the Eternal Game ends and the next session begins."

Then she holds up a hand to belay any suggestions on how to stall the game.

"And those 'other reasons' are why just leaving the Game alone isn't an option. 'The only winning move is not to play' doesn't work here because the Game is full of incentives. The Dreamheart can live in reality vicariously through fae and faeries, adding new souls and experiences to itself. Empyreans can only grow and change by getting involved with the Game and the creative potential it embodies. And all it takes is one fae or empyrean messing with things and any semblance of a truce is broken. I know we've tried it in past sessions, but it never really works. Someone always spoils it and then the race is back on."

Zee offers Alysha a small smile. "Probably not want you wanted to hear, but it was a good question."

Then she nods at Xeni. "They're distilled ingots of the purest essence of the Empyreum or Dreamheart. They just kind of... pop up inside the Eternal Game. I'm not sure if anyone really knows why. We use them as currency back in the Empyreum. I think they get used like that down in the Dreamlands, too, among the fae. You can trade them for other stuff, or you can use them yourself for the power they hold. I don't think I would be able to describe them in any way that makes sense, but if you find one you'll know. Believe me."

They're some serious otherworldly mojo.

"Maybe someone found out there's a big trove of them in the Nexus somewhere, and now jerks are doing awful stuff to uncover them," Zee suggests with a shrug. "Usually sudden interest like this suggests a treasure hunt is going on." Then she nods a bit more. "They could be moved, yes. A black hole probably wouldn't be a great plan. It would be pretty easy for an ophanim of the Season host or higher to just pop in and grab it," she taps her index fingers together a bit, looking vaguely sheepish. "Umm... I could probably use them, of course. For stuff."

Yes.

Stuff.

Surely to be used for completely wholesome stuff and things.

"Or mortals can, too. They can be used for some pretty amazing magical doohicky crafting. That doesn't actually use them up, though, and paints a giant bullseye on the head of anyone wielding them. There might be a way to destroy them, though. Cast them into Mount Doom?" Zee gives her head a little shake at Tethrick's solution. "Heat death never actually happens," she says. "I mean, it's hypothetically possible. But it never actually happens. A universe without observers comes unwound and the Dreamheart gobbles it up. That would just be feeding a HUGE trove of power to the fae."

Zee catches Alfred's look and grins. "I lost a lot of weight since yesterday."

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha thinks on all of this. It was a lot to take in. She was used to multiple worlds. But this was...different.

Does each side come from one single world? Like, do the fae have one world, and the Empyreans another? Because I could probably lock their connections to other worlds. Might not he permanent, but it should last a while.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Cherub Talk]

Ah. The Icons will keep reappearing.
That doesn't help.

And seems complacency will doom the world to one side anyway.
"Troubling information."
Gee whiz, Xeni comes in with the understatements.
"Zee can't take the artifacts either, even as a self-declaring neutral, since she's an Empyreal creature. It would probably still be a power balance tip."
Nothing against Zee, but she is technically part of the problem here.
Not that any other fantastic ideas are immediately presenting themselves.

So he thinks, quietly, for a bit, considering this information and Alysha's next question.
Brainstorming random ideas. Silly idea. Crazy ideas. Impossible ideas.
Anything.

He'll be quiet for a bit.

[5a Violista]

[Cherub Talk]

The fairy looks back at the tongue-sticking vampire. "I wasn't talking about you," she says, returning the gesture.

Anyway!

The fairy has a solution to Xeni's problem!

"There's an obvious solution to that, you know," she says. "Since the only way for reality to continue is if the game keeps on being played without either side dominating."

"Whenever objects are found, half of them go to this thing," she says, gesturing at Zee, "and the other half are given away to the fae. It's the only way to keep one side from dominating."

Obviously, the woman has no ulterior motives, and it's a reasonable solution that makes sense.

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

"We can use the ingots to create super potent magical weaponry, right? Couldn't we use that to fend off the attacks?" Tethrik suggests.

[Rebonack]

[Cherub Talk]

"Not really worlds," Zee replies after a few moments of though. "You're thinking like... universes? Settings? Kingdom Hearts stuff, right? Lock the heart of the world to keep the gooey black gribblies out?"

Wuh.

Another person who knows about Kingdom Hearts?

"The Dreamheart and the Empyreum aren't really worlds. They're more like... oh! Remember the bubble analogy? How much of a bubble would you have if you took the space inside it and outside it away?"

Then Xeni makes his declaration. "I am and it would," Zee confirms. "But that would put me on better footing to help, too. If the trove were rich enough it might boost me a big jump toward the next host advancement. The stronger I am, the more I can help. And if worse comes to worse, the more people I can invest in so they'll survive the world burning." She looks really uncomfortable with that idea, though. "That would be a last resort, though. I don't want to see my home burn."

The fae is given a rather sour look. "Like I said before, it's a race. Not a tug of war. One side getting half of the loot would still shove the world two steps closer to disaster instead of four."

Also? She doesn't trust fae.

At all.

Especially fae that may or may not be looking for an excuse to eat the souls of one of her friends.

Then another suggestion from the four armed demon!

"That would be possible, yeah. And it could really help. But anyone holding those weapons would be a prime target," Zee explains. "Did anyone hear the cherubs use the term 'creep' to refer to you after you tried fighting back? That's the term for anyone inside the Eternal Game that actively resists. And as awful as it sounds, the Game incentivizes those people being eliminated. So not only would you be a prime target, you would be carrying around a valuable Icon, too."

She gives a little hum. "If it is some giant trove of Icons, then finding a way to destroy them might be the safest bet. There might be something about them at the Philip Memorial Library. Barring that, I can log out and search around a bit up in the Empyreum to see if anyone has ever tried destroying an Icon before. I doubt it's a common thing to do, since it's basically like tossing money into a volcano for giggles."

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Arena]

Alysha seems slightly confused by Zee's question to her.

Wouldn't the bubble still be there? Just, like, in a vacuum? Or something? Cause you're taking away what's around the bubble, not the bubble itself? And I wouldn't be taking away anything. Just cutting off access. Like shoving them in a room and locking the door.

At the mention of creeps, Alysha nods a bit. Yeah, they called me that. I figured they were just being rude.

[Rebonack]

[Cherub Talk]

Zee kinda titles her head to one side, looking puzzled. "Vacuum? But I didn't say anything about the-"

Then she shakes her head.

"No, sorry, that was my mistake. Bad analogy. I need to remember that I don't think about this stuff the same way you do," she apologizes. "The short answer is that there would be no bubble anymore, or at least nothing that would be recognizable as a bubble. Even if you somehow could dissect existence like that, I don't think you would be doing anyone any favors. The Dreamheart is the source of all dreams in both a literal and figurative sense. The Empyreum is the source of the four Ideal Forms that give definition to everything that's real and concrete. If you sealed those away, what would be left? A world without imagination slowly unwinding with nothing to hold it together?"

Zee pauses for a moment, allowing Alysha to consider that.

"Even if the world didn't start coming apart, there would still be consequences. If you sealed the Nexus off from the two sides of this conflict, then everyone who's asleep? Their souls would be trapped in the Dreamlands. They wouldn't ever wake up. And the people who are awake wouldn't ever be able to dream again. Someone who's soulless like me? That's normal. I don't dream. But you keep a soul trapped inside of a meat-brain for too long and it starts crawling up the walls."

That sounds pretty bad.

"And sealing off just my side? Well, what happens when the universe doesn't know what the gravitational constant is supposed to be anymore? Really bad stuff."

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

Tethrik responds to the claim that ultrapotent magic weapons would just make someone a target. "They would if we made swords or something, but that's thinking too small. What we should do is make nuclear missiles."

[5a Violista]

[Cherub Talk]

This time, the fairy-woman talks again, to another speaker here.

"And how would you hit them with a nuke?" she asks Tethrik (with the voice that was originally not hers), because it's a very important question. "Just have this thing here carry it in to The Empyreum?"

I mean, not that that's a particularly bad idea...but she doubts Zee would go along with it.

"On that matter," she adds, "aren't nukes just used best as a deterrent rather than an actual weapon? As is, these things are only currently interested in warring with the fae. Would you risk adding all of us as a war-target as well?"

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha nods her head a bit at Zee's explanation. Yeah. That does sound really, really bad.

And then nukes!

Alysha gives Tethrik a horrified look. Nukes!? No! Way too dangerous. Nu-uh. That's not happening.

[Artemis97]

[Cherub Talk]

Raril, who's been listening and digesting for now, latches on to something Zee's said. "What do you mean, you're soulless?"

[Chaotic Bob]

[Cherub Talk]

So no world divorce.
That's worth knowing.

The nuclear weapon discussion is somewhat interesting, but there's going to be a bunch of logistical problems with sending an item from our reality into two places of fundamentally different realities. Would it work at all, let alone stay in one piece?
But it at least goes in the direction that Xeni suspects this is going to have to go: violence.
"If you have an example of an Icon, or something akin to whatever energy they have, I could look into trying to divine some locations."
Without looking too closely at them and replicating a Hastur situation, preferably.

And another thought.
"Are there moderators, or organizers for the 'game'?"

[Rebonack]

[Cherub Talk]

"I would rather not be a delivery device for weapons of mass destruction since I like remaining un-exploded," Zee points out. "And the process of apotheosis, translating something from the Eternal Game into something that can exist in the Empyreum, is kind of tricky on that front. The Empyreum isn't the sort of place you can just plane-shift to. It's different on a very fundamental level. Like... hmm. Kind of like a character from a book leaping out of the book and into the real world."

Sounds like no one is a big fan of the magical nukes scenario.

Then Raril asks a really valid question!

"Empyreans don't have souls. That's a Dreamheart thing," she replies. "I'm conscious. I'm self-aware. I have a will of my own. I have coded information that specifies my memory and personality. But those things are all consequences of my composition. What I don't have is a metaphysical, immaterial and yet with all the properties of energy, fantastical ghosty thing with will and consciousness and personality information all imprinted on it somehow piloting me around like a meat-mecha. Because that's impossible. And impossible is the realm of the faerie."

She gives a little shrug. "It isn't a big deal. It just means I get booted out of the game when I die. I can get back, but it's expensive for something as big as me. That's way better than getting all of my personal information wiped for reincarnation or absorbed by a god or tormented forever and ever in a lake of fire and brimstone or tossed into a pit full of spiders or left to wander a misty expanse of gloomy darkness until I forget who I am."

There are plenty of undesirable things that can happen to souls.

Arguably there are some nice things that can happen to souls, too, but Zee figures the risk eternal torment kinda outweighs the potential benefit.

"Hmm?" she hums at Xeni's question. "Oh, sure, hold on a sec."

And then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out nothing.

Nothing that could also potentially be anything.

A roiling mass that gives a vague impression of water and darkness, flickering images dancing across it of all possible things and more than a few impossible things. It could be the size of a softball. Or the size of an ocean. Physicality doesn't appear to be one of its strong suits. Looking at it for too long gives that warm, fuzzy, heavy feeling of being at the edge of a dream. It is without form and void.

"Tohu wa-bohu. An Icon of the Dreamheart," Zee says, balancing the object on one finger. "I picked it up earlier after vaporizing a bunch of barghests. Not sure what I'm going to use it for, yet."

There's a nod to that last question. "Soooort of? There's a... umm... something. That the Watchers discovered. Watchers being mortals who are in the know about the Game and are working to forestall the end of the world, which is something I can get behind. So! The thing. They call it Koth. Or it calls itself Koth. It's... definitely something. You probably noticed Mister Mop Guy invoke it if you were around him long, Xeni. Whatever Koth is, it's hidden from prying eyes. You can't find it on the outside of the Game looking in. But if you're in here and someone who knows what they're doing invokes it at you? Oof. You'll feel it for sure."

[Earl of Purple]

Cherub Talk

"So... Can you still die in the Empyreum? Since we didn't kill the cherubs when they came here, could we... Or you, I guess.. Go there and kill them to stop them coming back?" Honestly this is all far more technical and confusing than Alfred's used to, and references a lot of things he has no experience with. Magic, for example. And nuclear weaponry. Honestly, he doesn't even know much about pokemon, and he's got one of those.

Ben, meanwhile, is wondering if he has a soul. He started as a collection of pixels on the screen of a mobile phone, and remembers coming into existence and being those pixels for a few seconds before Alfred tripped and found himself here, with Ben in a real plant-body and experiencing the real world from a perspective considerably freer than the views out of a couple of cameras.

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

"If the icons are aligned with either one or the other, what happens when you combine opposing icons?" Tethrik thinks he has an idea.

[5a Violista]

[Cherub Talk]

The fairy can't think of any more questions.

So, instead, she takes more of Raril's wine. And then lowers her voice, mostly so just he can hear her. It's a lot easier because they're sitting next to each other. "So what do you think of all of this stuff?" she asks.

[Artemis97]

[Cherub Talk]

Raril frowns and drops his voice. "It's confusing, and threatening, and I don't like it. However, the Nexus has stood for a long time, bouncing back from apocalypse after apocalypse. We've survived before, we'll survive again."

The drow takes a long gulp of his spiderblood wine, and briefly considers taking the poisonbite cocktail that was sitting on the table. He was sure Zee had a soul when she was last around. She'd been very devoted to her own god, for that matter. What had happened?

[Chaotic Bob]

[Cherub Talk]

Well now we're getting somewhere!
An Icon and a potentially important figure.

Xeni is sort of careful about his studying of that Icon, trying to eyeball it mostly through his peripheral vision. Which is possibly unnecessary, but he's become a tad bit gun-shy about staring down eldritch beacons of any sort lately.
Which is more careful than he's being about more abstractly reaching out to feel for any particular energy output the Icon is giving off.
"Is there any chance I could borrow that for a bit, to study? Er, somewhat literally. Is it even possible for someone not in your Game to interact with safely?"

He would very much like to take it away to an isolated environment for a little while, to experiment with. Mostly in an effort to see if he can whip up some divination mojo that everyone else could benefit from. A little bit to perhaps unearth any other potentially valuable properties for or against the Dream-folks.

This seems like a potentially easier starting point than the other option: Koth hunting.
"So Koth is an internal Game figure, rather than one of you? One way or another, it would probably be worth establishing some line of interaction there."

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha stays silent for a moment. This is all a bit much for her to process right now.

Not being able to think of any more questions yet, she waits for Zee to answer the others.

[Rebonack]

"Can we die? No, not really," Zee replies as she fiddles with a stray lock of hair. "For this to make sense, you have to ask yourself first why anything dies. It's because you guys are made out of lots of teeny tiny parts that aren't alive. And those parts make really little things that are alive, but are just part of a whole that will fall apart if the whole isn't supporting it. Rearrange the living or non-living parts too much and you haven't got a person anymore. But empyreans aren't like that. We're fractal. It's turtles all the way down. You manage to smash an empyrean to bits, and you've got a whole bunch of it instead of just one. Except smaller and angrier."

That doesn't sound like much fun to deal with.

"Empyreans can eat each other, though. But the one that gets eaten doesn't die. They just become part of whatever ate them, subservient to their Will. If they stay together long enough, the distinction between the two gets pretty fuzzy. But if that empyrean ever got totally atomized, then the beings that got nommed would be freed to go skittering off on their own to start over again. Most of the mes that got dumped into the Empyreum before K'rax got exploded were eaten. I spent most of the last seven years hunting down the things that preyed on them and gobbling them up to put myself back together. It was like a really lethal scavenger hunt."

Fun!

Zee shrugs at the demon's question. "Nothing as exciting as you might be imagining. None of them really oppose each other. It's more complimentary. If they did oppose each other then this thing should be melting my hand off," she says, raising the Dreamheart icon a bit higher.

At Xeni's question, Zee looks slightly uneasy. "Umm... just to be clear," she says as she holds it out toward the mage. "This is like someone saying, 'hey, can I do some experiments on that priceless gemstone you've got there?' I would really like to have this back when you're done please don't get mugged by any fae."

She'll give the Icon to Xeni. The transaction is all rather abstract. She doesn't actually hand it to him. He just kind of... has it now. It's weird. "The Watchers use these things all the time to make magical swag. They're safe in about the same way working a forge is safe. Just be careful, okay?"

Zee nods at that last question. "Koth definitely isn't one of us. Whatever it is, it's something inherent to the Eternal Game. Or, well, I suppose it's possible it might be a third external faction that we haven't ever noticed for mysterious reasons, but that seems kinda unlikely. The dichotomy between reality and unreality already covers pretty much everything."

At this point she glances around the table. "So! It sounds like we're all mostly up to speed, right? And we have a few avenues of inquiry. Figure out what everyone is after here in the Nexus. Locate said something. Find some way to secure or destroy it. Sub-quests, research Icons a bit and maybe try to figure out who or what Koth is. And of course blowing up any fae or empyreans that are causing trouble."

That seems like pretty much everything, right?

[5a Violista]

[Cherub Talk]

There's no point in just leaving the cocktail there...
...meanwhile, the large fairy drinks even more of his wine. Probably the last of it.

To the drow, she says, "Yes, I'm sure you're right."

Her voice picks up again so all the other people can hear it now. "That sounds like a decent plan. Excited to do my part in it."

Makes sense that she'd be willing to help out, right?

[Earl of Purple]

Cherub Talk

"Um, I'm going to leave it to you guys, because I survived more by luck than judgement. I'm not suited for this kind of thing at all. I hope my questions helped, though. I'm... I'm going to go to PokéPark and catch some more. Ben's good for day to day stuff, but... But if something like that occurs and I'm stuck in it, I'm going to need something heavier." Ben's not exactly a low-level pokémon, but he's a flower. Most of his moves aren't very widely destructive- all he'd have been able to do is maybe entangle a cherub, paralyse it, poison it, put it to sleep or shoot it with seeds. Nothing very fatal, and all of which would have gotten him labelled a creep and therefore a higher priority.

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

"I'm on team 'blowing stuff up.'" Tethrik isn't going to wait for permission on that one. He loves blowing stuff up. "I have some ideas for destroying these things too."

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha glances over at Tethrik. Just be careful about not causing harm to innocent people. Got it?

She turns back to Zee. I'll help you find whatever it is these guys are after. Got a few ideas how to secure it, too.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Cherub Talk]

Xeni wants to say something snide about the value of lives over pretty baubles, but he actually likes Zee enough to bite his tongue.
She did give it over in the end, after all.

Much more productive to just take what he's given and get to work.
Which does sort of lead to a rather distracted reply to Zee's final confirmation of things:
"Sure, all clear. Everybody have fun with their...stuff."

This mage is gonna be right here for awhile.
Tinkering.
Mostly just trying to get a feel for what the Icon is a little more. Try to pin down some sort of commonality in its energies that he can use later for tracking and locating of others.

A rather abstract process that will probably take awhile and result in not a lot of paying attention to others from him, for a bit.
That's what the mouse is for.

[Artemis97]

"Right, serious stuff over with for the day." Raril decides. He gestures to the goblin behind the bar, who disappears into the kitchen, before returning with some co-workers and trays of food. Fresh bread and a pot of soup follow, along with plates, bowls, and utensils. Drinks will be served up to order, but were on the house.

The drow, meanwhile, picks up the poisonbite cocktail on the table and downs it in a long swallow.

[Rebonack]

[Cherub Talk]

In really, really simple terms the Icon is pure creative potential. It is the capacity for growth, for change, for creation. It could be an idea, an object, a new flavor of Fox Cola, pretty much anything. It's like having the raw stuff of dreams right there in your hands. With it, you could probably make your dreams come true. If you're into that sort of thing. It is primordial chaos in neat little packet form.

Fairly nifty, right?

In poking at the Icon, Xeni may be struck with the realization that everything appears to be derived from it in some capacity or another. Because everything arose from the same source, didn't it? How many stories of creation begin with the gods rising from the chaotic primeval waters and then shaping the world? Or... y'know. Being the world. In the case of Gaia. This creates a problem, though. If Xeni's wanting to use the Icon to track down others of its type he'll find that it's fingerprint is on literally everything. So it's less like looking for a needle in a haystack and more like looking for a rather large needle in a heap of normal sized needles. Very, very pointy if you're not careful.

"It sounds like everyone has some ideas," Zee says with a nod. "And one of those ideas is, don't try to save the world on an empty stomach."

She gives Raril an appreciative smile when her soup arrives. Yay soup!

"The Philip Memorial Library is probably a good place to start searching," Zee continues between spoonfuls of soup. "I would help whoever wants to go there to search, but the Librarian would probably chase me out with a broom. Sometimes smaller otherworldly types can slip in, but I'm pretty sure he would notice me. AND he's a Watcher, I think. They're pretty cagey about outsiders, but I think if you can prove to him that you're just trying to prevent the world from being eaten, he'll be willing to help. If you can prove that you can help prevent the world from being eaten without getting eaten yourself, then he'll REALLY be willing to help."

More soup is eaten!

"And of course there are faeries and empyreans lurking around causing trouble. Those would probably fall into the 'blow things up' side of the plan."

[Artemis97]

[Cherub Talk]

"I wouldn't mind a nice trip to a library." The drow muses, his head buzzing now. "Can't be worse than Abrajin's old place. I think I still have my library card." Raril digs through his pockets and pulls out a card. It appeared normal, except that one side had his name on it, the other side had the library rules, and the other side showed his book limit, which was the equivalent weight he could carry before his spine snapped.

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha nods to Raril. I'll go with you. Haven't been to a library here. Also, these things probably know us on sight, so traveling in groups is better. Then we have backup.

The vampire seems excited to visit the library.

[Earl of Purple]

Cherub Talk

"Wait, seriously? You think they know what we look like and want us dead or removed or whatever? Is that likely?" The first two questions are directed at Alysha, the last at Zee. He just wants to go back to his moderately boring life, not dragged into a quest to save the world from hideous mutant baby monster things.

Although the free food is appreciated, as he didn't get much shopping done earlier.

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

"That doodad is a blob of creative potential, right? Could we use it to make a device that detects more of them?" Tethrik muses. He's about to volunteer for one of the searching missions, although he's not quite sure which.

[Chaotic Bob]

[Cherub Talk]

Xeni is still not paying attention to anyone. He's lost in that weird mage introspective place.
Currently he is exploring the possibility of just looking for the purity of the specific brand of chaotic creativity the thing represents, or perhaps particularly dense regions of space like it.
Sure, everything may have traces of it, but there tends to be a difference in visibility between an ember and a flame.

At some point, a mouse crawls out of his shirt and helps itself to the closet drink.

[Artemis97]

"I don't know if they'll have marked us. Those Bharghests messed with me because I got in their way. Same for that Cherub. I think, without some Fae or Empyrean in us, we're under their radar." Raril suggests, but he looks to Zee to confirm.

That mouse better be careful, the wine on the table is the poisoned spiderblood wine favored by drow, and there's the little remains of the poisonbite cocktail too.

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha shrugs a bit.

Maybe. But the two I faced? One of them started using sun grenades. And I didn't even do anything to reveal that I'm a vampire. Somehow they knew.

Alysha gives a slightly concerned look to everybody there. So, why not play it safe and assume they know? Means we can prepare better.

[Rebonack]

[Cherub Talk]

"I don't think we're marked. That's a side effect of the Arena. People who fight back are marked as 'creeps' and become higher priority targets. But now that the Arena is over that designation should be gone," Zee explains.

That should reassure Alfred a bit.

Especially since he and Ben didn't actually fight back.

"As far as making stuff with the Icon goes..." Zee gives a shrug. "I'm honestly not sure. Empyreans usually use them to induce growth and change in themselves. We're kind of static otherwise. We don't really build things with the Dreamheart ones. That's more of a Watcher thing."

Another reason to visit the library!

At the mention of sun grenades Zee perks up a bit, "Oh! Well, I can tell you why that happened. We can get some basic information on people inside the Game just by looking at them. Like, you're tagged as a vampire hero."

That's sort of weird?

[Earl of Purple]

Cherub Talk

Alfred is very relieved by the knowledge he's not tagged, and is now a little curious about being 'tagged'. "What do I come up as?" He's hoping it's something impressive, but expecting something boring. Like level two peasant, or something. Or 'human dogsbody', that seems like it'd fit.

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

"The human kid brings up a good point." Tethrik says. If Alfred is insulted by being called "kid," Tethrik doesn't care. He's most likely more than 10 times Alfred's age. "If we know what a given beastie knows about us, we know what weaknesses of ours they'll target and what strengths they'll try to mitigate."

[Rebonack]

Zee squints for a moment before offering a rather apologetic smile to Alfred. "It's nothing very important. Or informative. Just a descriptor of your species and what you do. You're a human beastmaster, apparently? That just means you command pets."

Or a pet, currently.

But it could become MORE pets in the near future!

Then she glances over at Raril and Xeni.

"And, ah, would this be a good time to talk to both of you about the circumstances surrounding Karaglen?" Zee asks.

She figures it would be a good idea to explain what was going on there.

To Raril, because he needs to know why Zee is a mom all of a sudden.

To Xeni, because he was more or less Karaglen's guardian.

[Chaotic Bob]

The mouse looks up from his attempts to safely navigate the drow's peculiar tastes in drink, and then stares at Xeni for a moment.

"I, hm, what?"
Who looks away from his contemplations with a somewhat perplexed look, then blinks and focuses in on Zee.
"Oh, yeah. Pretty interested in how you got around that when I couldn't."
Which isn't meant accusingly! Genuine curiosity.

[Artemis97]

Raril was pleasantly buzzed at the moment, and offers a half smile and a "hm?" to the question. "Is that the little silver wyrmling?"

[Rebonack]

"The little silver wyrmling, yeah," Zee replies with a genuine smile all her own. "She basically lived at Trog's for quite a while. I kept her fed. Talked with her. Gave her advise. I loved Kara, she was my adorable little friend. The day before That Day went down she found a sword that was possessed by a very VERY unpleasant daemon. I was going to take it from here, since allowing a child to keep something like that is reprehensibly irresponsible. But then, well, you all know what happened next."

Lots of doom.

SO MUCH doom.

"K'rax got blown up, I got dumped into the Empyreum, and then I was left watching Kara getting slowly corrupted. I was totally helpless to do anything about it," Zee recounts, her smile fading. "So... I resolved that I could keep track of Kara. And find a way to help her if I ever made it back to the Nexus."

The smile falls even further.

"She got... really bad. And then she died. Really, really thoroughly," she says, her sad look turning upon Xeni. Not accusative. More... shared pain. "But not thoroughly enough to totally get rid of the daemon. It came back with little bits of her stuck to it. And it was slowly building power back up by murdering people in the Nexus and devouring their souls."

Which is awful.

"I came to Kara when she was in control, praying in the garden at Inari's. I took her and the daemon by surprised and delivered a venomous bite; an ontological toxin I had concocted to utterly rend the daemon down to its basest conceptual components until all that was left were mere inklings of ideas. I seized Kara's consciousness and used the archive of her I had saved from that last night to weave her body and identity. There... wasn't much of her left. I had to use some of myself to put her back together again," she says, touching a hand to her abdomen. "So... she's my daughter, by blood and by heart. She's just as she was before that daemon ruined her. As she should have been from the beginning."

[Artemis97]

Raril considers this, frowning a bit as Zee goes over the sad parts of her tale. He remembered That Day, and it wasn't fun. Clearly he wasn't the only one affected.

The Zee explains Kara is her daughter, now. The drow's eyes bug out a little. "Oh...huh." He blinks. "Well, alright then." Raril scratches the back of his head, thinking. "That kind of reminds me, um, I have a daughter too! From back when I lived in Faerun. Her name's Aly'ithra. I didn't even know she existed until she came looking for me, now Danube's got her mitts on her. Don't know what to do about that." The drow frowns again. "Yeah...more kids... weee?" He chuckles nervously, hoping Zee wouldn't be upset by the news.

[Chaotic Bob]

This is bringing up a lot of terrible memories that he had been drinking away not too long ago.

Tracking her to a foreign realm.
Finding her at the end of a trail of tyrannical war-crimes.
Conflict with the adventurers.
The Unnaming.

Xeni rubs his forehead and stares at the table for a few moments, debating whether or not to snatch some more of that alcohol.
"...I see..."
So, ultimately, in the end, Zee slew the abomination that was left behind and fabricated a replacement.
He's not sure how precisely he feels about that, but it isn't inherently negative.

Isn't this essentially what most resurrections are? Fabricating a replacement of the person lost?

Though there is a loss here. Of the "purity" of what Karaglen was, and a loss of most of her life. Sure, most of that life had ended up kind of terrible but it was still her life.
And now she's not purely herself, either, being mixed with Zee. That's not really terrible either, though it raises...concerns, it's just different.
Better to be part Zee than mostly daemon.

In the end, Xeni decides to swipe the drink that the little mouse is experimenting with.
"I have more questions, but I need a minute."
For alcohol.

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha sat in silence, listening to all of this info. There seemed to be way more significance to it for some people than others. And it was a lot to take in.

She would start heading to the library. Except she was supposed to go with the dark elf fellow. And she also didn't know where the library was. Sure, she could probably find it eventually. But why wander around like that, when he probably knew? So she would wait for him.

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

"So if she's a 'hero' (that's awfully vague), and he's a beastmaster, what am I?" Tethrik believes firmly that all information about your enemy is good information, and information about what information your enemy has is doubly so.

[Rebonack]

Zee gives Raril a kind smile. "I know. I was keeping an eye on you as well," she says. "Getting to peek at things is a privilege we can earn. I mostly used it to keep tabs on you and Karaglen."

Then the demon asks a question!

To which Zee glances over at him and gives a little shrug.

"It isn't that big of a deal. It just says-"

And then she vanishes.

POP!

Huh.

Well.

That was unexpected.

[Artemis97]

Raril blinks at the spot where his wife had been a second before.

"Uh... Zee? Zeee...?" He waves a hand through the empty air above her now vacant chair. Oh dear, she was gone. Not in an explosion but... what if she didn't come back?

The drow starts to panic. He jumps up from his chair and runs to his office, getting zapped in the process because he forgot the counterspell on the lock. "Gyah!"

He returns a moment later with a large mirror which he lays flat on the table, and then he starts scrying. Where was she?

[Chaotic Bob]

Well, that at least gets Xeni to stop draining his glass with such vigor.
Though Raril freaking out about it is...not really helping his urge to start again.

"Didn't seem intentional...but I don't think that's how she's really died in the past."
And then Raril comes back with a scrying mirror. Something which elicits a bit of alarm from both Xeni and the mouse on the table.
"Hey, Raril, maybe you shouldn't..."
Do not scry her! What if she has returned to her home realm? What if she is unshielded? Your mind is at risk!

That second voice is a telepathic one.
From the mouse.

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Well.

That was unexpected.

Alysha blinks a few times, staring at the spot Zee just occupied. She had no idea what to do here. She didn't have any idea what just happened, so she didn't know what she could do.

[Artemis97]

Raril stops his scrying attempts and lets out a snarl, gripping the edge of the mirror tightly. He was shaking, and soon was sobbing.

"I just... I just don't want to lose her again."

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha quickly stands up so she can give Raril a comforting hug.

Don't worry. We'll find her. Okay? She'll be fine.

[Earl of Purple]

Cherub Talk

"Beastmaster?" Alfred looks at Ben, and the bellsprout looks back. "He's a plant. Not a beast. That's why I'm allowed to keep him in my flat. He's officially a houseplant, not a pet. My landlord has rules against pets." Which would limit Alfred to grass-types, probably smaller ones. Though he might be able to get rock-types, as pet rocks are officially an ornament.

Then there's some information about family stuff, which Alfred turns out as he eats the meal that was ordered for him. And Zee's disappeared. He frowns at that, but doesn't know anyone here well enough to offer any real assistance, and if she's teleported somewhere he has no way to track her.

[Chaotic Bob]

"Hey, I understand. But let's not freak out just yet."
Xeni is a bit more awkward about this comforting thing than Alysha is. No hugging here, mostly just uncomfortably staring around Raril.

Mostly because he was interrupted in the middle of his own moping and still hasn't really sorted that out.
"Maybe it was a...game thing, or something. Something came up and she has to deal with that before she comes back?"

[bc56]

Cherub Talk

Zee
Vanishes?
Tethrik seems surprised. After a pause, he finally says, "Bless." He looks around. "Alright. We don't know when she'll be back, so we're going to need to do this ourselves." Comforting people isn't his job. He definitely doesn't know how to do it, and he didn't pick up on the social cues. "We should split into teams. One to research the game and the icons, one to stop any more outbreaks, and probably now one to find the... whatever she is when she reappears. Actually, that gives me an idea. Do you have anything of hers? Something with her scent or essence on it?" Tethrik asks Raril.

[UncleWolf]

Drinking Sorrows Away

"Blaaaaaaaaaaaaah..." Nora moans, head on the bar. All she wanted to do at the moment was drink away the horrific image of a prison guard exploding in front of her and no amount of booze seemed to be helping. Well, that wasn't all she wanted to do. She also wanted to finally gt some companionship for a night. But there were problems with that...

"Why is it that every guy I find is convinced that I'm out there to suck out his soul or utterly uninterested in a one-night fling?" She wonders aloud before turning on her stool to face the bar. She's obviously a bit buzzed, the whiskey in her hand her second glass. She's dressed in what she considers stylish and attractive attire which means she's dressed in a nice sleeveless white blouse and bellbottoms. It puts a lot of her copper-brown skin on display and serves to help show off the gently pulsing blue lines of nannites. "Know what, yeah! What's the deal with that, huh?!?" She all but shouts at the bar. "Why is it so damned hard for a gal like me to find a guy? Are y'all scared or something?!?" She certainly sounds grumpy.

"Do I just need to shout I'm loose and needy and have a fully stocked liqueur cabinet at home?!?"

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Keep it down, would ya?]

Somewhere a little further down the bar from Nora, surrounded by a rather impressive pile of large empty bottles (and some smaller ones, and a handful of glasses), Gustav had been taking a quick nap. Not from being overly inebriated, mind you, though he's certainly got a bit of a buzz going...more that he didn't want to face going outside again just yet and he was highly unlikely to be thrown out after buying quite so much from the bar. There's a rather shiny and valuable little gem sitting in the till now that means he probably still has a bit of credit to spend if he wanted to.

But after Nora's performance he's certainly not sleeping any more! His typically flamboyant outfit safely hidden beneath a cloak for now, he's roused with remarkable speed and turns to stare at the voice, raising an eyebrow and glancing at the collection of unfinished beverages in front of him. "Psst, bartender, a cocktail glass! And that bottle! And that one!" With a deft hand and remarkable speed he swiftly mixes half a dozen drinks together, finished with a slice of lemon, and sends the drink down the bar with a gentle flick to bring it sliding to a halt right in front of her. All done out in the open with at least two sets of eyes on the glass, just in case anyone thinks he's up to something. He's putting on a show. He wants to be watched.

A quick touch of shapeshifting to appear hopefully a little more appealing to her, and he slides his stool back slightly in time with the glass sliding to a halt beside Nora, flipping the hood of his cloak down to reveal long, flowing, radiant red hair, brilliant yellow eyes, and a flawless grin that'd give the cheshire cat a run for his money. As for the drink? Bright, fruity, and exactly the same shade of red as his hair - that has to be deliberate. "Well, I imagine quite a few guys would be scared by a lady so willing to speak her mind. But right now I'd say that'd be their loss and my gain, because I'd be very happy to take you up on that offer."

[Morty]

[Drinking Sorrows Away]

"It really sounds like you hang out with the wrong kind of man," says a dusky-skinned young tiefling approaching Nora from the other side. Fayyaad is wearing a dark shirt with a sleeveless jacket over it, his tail lazily sweeping behind him. "People in the Nexus really do have trouble taking things at face value, though. Something about this place does it to them. Far be it from me not to answer the call of a distressed beauty, but it seems someone already has." He doesn't seem at all bothered by it, though.

[UncleWolf]

Not So Sorrowful Now

Nora actually looks a bit surprised when she sees not just one, but two men taking up her challenge. She takes a moment to look down at her drink and then up at the two before shrugging, tossing it back, and delicately taking the newly offered drink as well. "I'll be completely honest. I didn't actually expect anything more than possibly a bouncer throwing me out." She admits as she takes a sip of the new drink just to try it. "Maybe I ought to do this more often." She adds with a small shrug before offering her free hand to each of the two. "Call me Nora. And don't fret, I'm not selfish. There's enough of me for two or more." She promises.

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Save the Sorrows for another day]

"Ah, a fellow gentleman I see." Gustav takes the offered hand from Nora while running his eyes over Fayyad briefly - while a little part of him might've liked to get acquainted with Nora and her drinks cabinet on his own, he's certainly not going to complain about the tiefling joining them. After all, they're both very easy on the eyes. "Well, Miss Nora, you may call me Gustav. I would suggest you perhaps don't make a habit of this particular method of acquiring some company, but I can't deny it's worked very well this time. And the gentleman opposite me i-is quite right, it wouldn't do to leave a lady in distress unanswered."

[Morty]

[Sorrow no More]

Fayyaad's eyebrows shoot up. Well, this is going to interesting places really quickly.

"My name is Fayyaad ibn-Haashid al-Zafar, but 'Fayyaad' is fine. As forward as the suggestion is, I don't see anything about it that I don't like. I do enjoy the company of men. I suppose it's your lucky day, then. Most of the time, the bouncer scenario would be far more likely. That, or a flock of men one would rather not look at too closely."

[UncleWolf]

Is it an African or European Sorrow?

"Okay. Two guys interested in me and each other? I'm either too drunk or not drunk enough to believe that." She declares before throwing back the mixed drink completely in one go. After she sets the glass aside, she looks between the two before waving a glowing hand around her own head with a muttered spell. The booze vanishes from her eyes and she looks at the two again before grinning and wrapping her arms around their shoulders to pull them into a light embrace. "Right! Okay! I've needed an excuse to crack open my century old bottle of scotch anyway. Gustav, Fayyaad, if you two truly are interested, how about we blow this place and proceed to do that elsewhere?" She asks, a rather dangerous purr coming to her voice as the glowing lines on her body begin to pulse more rapidly in excitement.

"And to share a rather expensive and good looking bottle of alcohol for a night. I promise to savor that as well as the both of you."

[Artemis97]

[Cherub Talk]

Raril stiffens a little at the hug, not used to the gesture, but quickly relaxes and seems to appreciate it.

The drow takes a deep breath and his expression becomes carefully neutral. "Right, you're right. We need to stay on mission." He mutters a remove poison spell over himself, counteracting the effects of the noxious poisons in his drink. "We were going to the Library?"

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha will take a step back and nod, some small amount of concern still on her face.

Yeah. I think I'm gonna follow you on this. Mostly because I'm still not exactly sure what we're looking for. Or what this library is like.

[Artemis97]

[Cherub Talk]

"It's an old place. Well, the library is old, not that it's been around for a long time, but longer than most places in the Nexus. I know it specializes in lore on things from beyond our realm. The Far. Elder Evils. Stuff like that. There should be something on the Empyreans there, if not the Fae." Raril explains. "Hm... I don't know what kind of critters frequent the place. Probably a few fishmen at the very least. Probably someone like that Janitor we met at the Arena. Wards that protect your sanity would be a good idea."

[Gnrlshrimp]

[Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Sorrow]

"It is perhaps a little more hasty than I'd usually be. But, what can I say? You've caught me in a good mood." As Nora puts an arm round his shoulders, Gustav reciprocates with an arm round her waist. He raises an eyebrow at the rather casual display of magic, both in cleansing away the alcohol instantly and the pulsing glow across her body - more than just a pretty face, it seems. "Fine scotch, fine company, and a lady who seems to be full of surprises. How could I say no? Please, Nora, lead the way."

[Morty]

[Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Sorrow]

Fayyaad throws an arm around Nora, and his tail wraps its way around her waist.

"I do love people who know what they want and get it," he says. "No use dawdling and delaying a good thing, is there? I'm ready when you are."

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha thinks for a moment.

Hm...don't think any of my protection spells will do that. Not unless it's an active attack. However...

She holds her right hand out to her side. There's a flash of light, and suddenly, she's holding what appears to be a giant, old fashioned skeleton key. In the shape of a banjo. With a lily pad by its head.

This keeps the sun from vaporizing me. Should help keep me safe from mental effects.

[Artemis97]

[Cherub Talk]

"Alright, then. Shall we go?" Raril asks, heading for the door.

Next stop the Howard Philip Memorial Library!

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Cherub Talk]

Alysha nods eagerly.

Yeah! To the library!

She is clearly excited for this.

She'll follow Raril out the door.

[Recaiden]

A certain private investigator, whose name has yet to be revealed (and he'd like to keep it that way, thanks), slips inside, holding the door behind him - for a moment - so that Oliver can get in easily. He looks like an ordinary guy - coat, fedora, olive skin, black hair, one of those faces everyone feels like they recognize. He's not, actually. He's the very idea of detectiveness, alloyed with theft, style, a few other things, and then dusted in powdered foreign culture. But let's just act like he's a normal guy.

He scans the room without turning his head and scowls. Huh. And he'd thought his local contact was exaggerating the seediness of this place. But no, it's everything he was warned it would be and more.

[CosmicHobbit]

[Private Investigation]

Oliver walks in. He's on the chubby side, with black hair and pale skin. He wears a black sweatshirt and jeans. He is also not alloyed in anything, let alone dusted.

He leads the detective to the counter, where he sits down and quickly orders a coffee. Can't be tipsy if he's discussing a serious case. He then turns to the detective and says, "Lemme get to the point. Earlier when I said I used to be notorious, I was referring to the fact that I used to pull off heists. Bank robbery, train heists, one time I even stole a peacock from a zoo! They used to call me The Obese Offender."

He looks down at himself, then looks back up. "I, uh, got skinnier. But that's not the point. My point is that if you need somebody to scout out people or areas, or if you need a highly trained professional to retrieve evidence, I can do it." He thinks for a bit, then goes on, saying, "For a bit of money, of course. I hate to profit off of this, I'd love to just do it for free, but MERC will be expecting a cut. Don't worry though, it'll be something like 5% of what I would normally charge."

[Recaiden]

The detective sits down beside Oliver and orders some tea.

Not the right time for coffee, not yet.

"I have heard of you while brushing up on this place."
He raises an eyebrow.
"Justice and expenses enough for you, basically? Let's see, at your normal prices-"

He withdraws a crumpled paper from his coat pocket, and unless some magic or weird coincidence interferes, when he unfolds it the paper will contain a list of Oliver's last five jobs, what he did and how much he was paid. After looking it over, the investigator nods.
"I think we can afford that. I don't usually subcontract these things, but then I don't usually work in this world. What do you want to know first?"

[CosmicHobbit]

Oliver's eyes go wide upon seeing his five most recent jobs. He shakes his head, as if to clear away doubts, and says, "Well, what I'd like to know first is which you think has more security, this cult or the cartel, and whether you have any information regarding where they may hide evidence, any inside spies, etc." He takes a sip of his coffee, then continues on. "We'll be at a significant disadvantage if we have nothing of that sort, though I can still probably find something. It'll just take more time."

[Earl of Purple]

Somebody new enters, looking around curiously. They're a woman, wearing a pair of pink combat trousers and a long yellow coat, hanging open over a pink-and-yellow chequered skintight top. A full-head clown mask with green rubber hair, an exaggerated red grin and a long nose, though the eyes have been replaced with pink lenses. They lean on a pink-and-yellow striped walking-stick, and look around for whoever posted on the Wall.

[Hattish Thing]

[Wall Advertisement Meet-Up]

As the door leading into the Dragon's Den opens wide once more, a warm wind blows throughout the tavern, causing sand and dust to coat the surrounding entryway in a dry, reddish grime. All is silent for several seconds before a sudden gust of sand and grime washes over the entrance, dirt and sand wafting up into the air as if thrown about, forming the outline of a vaguely humanoid shape.

The shape swiftly coalesces into a figure, clad all in a dark and tattered duster. The skeletal figure is practically drowned in black fabric, with a tall, wide-brimmed hat set atop his head. A white collar can be seen wrapped around the figure's neck, partially hidden by a scarf. A gunbelt has been tied around his waist, and a bandoleer rises up to a battered pauldron.

With gloved hands, the skeletal figure approaches the front of the bar, several gold teeth rattling as the undead instinctively ground his teeth, a nervous tic of a sort. A cigarette lolls between his teeth.

"This the place, what written on the wall?"

"Here for... deeds, n'such."

--

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/465985906139070502/548411517645750295/20190214_043409.jpg

[Lord Magtok]

Wall Advertisement Meet-Up

Just here to check out the competition, Malice assures himself. Only going to do some light spying, maybe report back our findings to Krystal, and then get out. We're not going to get involved in a sinister criminal enterprise. We're not going to build our way back up and reclaim our rightful place as the Nexus's greatest supervillain. We're not. We have something stable and comfortable and secure in our life right now; we don't need to go putting that all in jeopardy just for the thrill that comes with brazen disregard for the laws of gods and man.

The third fool to come investigating that Wall ad is Lord Malice, a cyborg much like his more famous clone-brother. Whereas Magtok has that silvery-gray chrome, however, Malice's prostheses are clad in a bright yellow brass, much like the instruments of a jazz band. He had his red robe dry-cleaned just for this occasion, and a piece of duct tape laid across the mouth of Grigori Rasputin, the disembodied head in a jar he carries along with him. He didn't want to bring Grigs, but the Mad Monk knew where he was headed, and is an enormous tattletale. Only way to get through this stupid nonsense without getting ratted out is to bring Rasputin along with us.

"Yeah, what the preacher man said. Dastardly business, something to prove, so on and so forth," Malice remarks absentmindedly, still lost in thought, wondering what a skeleton priest is doing here. What is he, some kind of Día de Muertos monster? A minister who was shot dead but sold his soul for revenge? An ordinary skeleton who ran away from his necromancer master and developed a keen sense of style? I suppose they're not nearly as bizarre as the pink and yellow clown monster, though. Really, pink and yellow? Is that the kind of fashion sense expected of supercriminals these days? Ugh.

[Arkhosia]

Wall Advertisement Meet Up

Malice might find a familiar face here; Cantata steps into the building, raven locks pooling around her shoulders and over the white collar of the green jacket worn open and over a red dress. The mute woman's amber eyes scan the group with an amused sort of interest. She wasn't really the villainous sort, but work was work. A job intended for a less-than-benevolent crowd just meant the crew would be more... interesting.

[Recaiden]

Oliver's eyes go wide upon seeing his five most recent jobs. He shakes his head, as if to clear away doubts, and says, "Well, what I'd like to know first is which you think has more security, this cult or the cartel, and whether you have any information regarding where they may hide evidence, any inside spies, etc." He takes a sip of his coffee, then continues on. "We'll be at a significant disadvantage if we have nothing of that sort, though I can still probably find something. It'll just take more time."

"Cult has more security, no question."
"No spies. Either would see through any of my usual informants. We'd need...someone like you."
The detective considers his teacup, not yet drinking any.

"The cartel's known to be really good at covering their tracks, but there's an ex-member kicking around somewhere who might know something. The cult would surely keep any incriminating information in their giant skull fortress."

[CosmicHobbit]

Nodding, Oliver says, "So long story short, the cartel would be easier to get information from." He takes another drink. "I can blend in. Always been been more of a criminal type than religious. So, will we start immediately, or do you have any other information that would be useful when dealing with the cartel?"

[Recaiden]

The detective takes a sip of his tea and lays out what else he knows.

The cartel, they had motive, opportunity, means. The only reason they might not be guilty is that they don't kill people. "Well, don't kill proper folk. They'll kill humans just fine." he clarifies. So killing someone with a cursed knife, even their hated enemy Chartreuse, that would be a couple lines crossed. There are two of them with real power: the boss and Logru, their chief enforcer. Then there's a bunch of wanna-bes and hangers-on. (who could still be dangerous). Like he said before, the waterfront arts area is the district they run in, though they're also supposed to have a hideout in North Forest somewhere. They do kidnapping, smuggling, sale of controlled items, etc. But it's not just for money. They're after something else, some particular magic.

"And that's about it."
"It might raise too much suspicion for both of us to be sniffing around at once. I'll check up on the cult, and meet you back here when you're ready."

Sound good, Oliver?

[KerfuffleMach2]

[Wall Recommended Meetup]

A fifth soul arrives for what was promised on the wall.

The woman stood just under six feet tall, with a figure that tended to draw a lot of attention with little effort. Her shaggy hair hung just past her jawline, and it was clear that she used to dye it bright blond, but was letting it grow out in its natural color of black.

She was dressed in black work boots, a small pair of dark grey cargo shorts, and a blue dress shirt, untucked, with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and only a single button closed.

Her hazel eyes took in the scene before her, a smirk on her face.

A clown, a skeleton, and a cyborg walk into a bar... She chuckles a bit. I'm already glad I decided to sign up for this.

[CosmicHobbit]

Oliver nods. "It would raise suspicion for both of us to be poking around." He tips back the rest of his coffee, then says, "See you once I've figured out some stuff, then."

[Purple Eagle]

[A Bad Enough Dude - Wall Advert]

The door opens and a lean muscular figure with Polish-Mexican facial features, dark brown eyes and short black feathered hair flies in. Any visible skin is brown-skinned, and the rest (most of arms, most of legs, most of sides of face, groin) is covered in raven blue-black feathers. Sprouting from his back are two blood red-feathered wings which are lined with tiny runes, and most people who look at them for too long will start to feel despair.

His feet are powerful and birdlike, with talons befitting a harp of his stature, and clawed birdlike hands, one of which rests on his currently sheathed sabre, Misery. The scales on his hands and feet are red-tinged, like his wings. He's clothed in dark green armor.

Rozpacz steps forward and rests against the bar. When he speaks, his voice is scratchy. "The Wall directed me here."

[Recaiden]

The detective nods and heads for the door, leaving an empty teacup and some coins behind.
Oliver has a lot of possible avenues. Could ask around here, could try to join this cartel and investigate from the inside, could try to track down that former member....just to start.

[CosmicHobbit]

Oliver puts some coins on the counter, then heads out. The former member seems like the best place to start. A name or place of residence is all he needs.

[Recaiden]

Luckily both are available.
The name the detective gave for the former member is 'Yone Gonzales', and they live in a dimensional anomaly south of the city. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?570990-Home-24-A-house-in-this-market&p=23738522&posted=1#post23738522)

[Ashen Lilies]

[In Sandy Silence]

Waiting for our villains are three women, who're sitting together at a table together, two of them with cups of whiskey.

The first is a tall, tanned middle-aged human woman with red and gray hair, cut short except for a long tail at the back. She's got a tough, wiry build and a stern face lined from harsh weather and experience, and is wearing a gray and brown coat, loose breeches, and soft, knee-high boots. Resting against the side of her chair is a small hide buckler and several short spears, though the woman herself is still wearing a knife on her belt. Wrapped around her neck is a lowered head-scarf like garment, as well as a black dust veil, which is also lowered - fortunately for everyone inside the room, though they might not know how much danger they'd be in if it weren't.

The second woman is also red-haired, though with dark, coppery skin and even taller and more powerfully built than the Aiel woman, with heavy, upswept eyebrows and a prominent hooked nose. Her dress is also much more flamboyant than that of her drab companion - loud green and blue harem pants, heeled slippers, a halter top, and shoulder pads, all richly decorated with gold and turquoise. A pair of scimitars rests against her chair, in easy reach, and she speaks with an animated tone in comparison to her companion's watchful focus, occasionally slapping her glass against the table for emphasis.

The third woman is covered from head to toe in plain white robes, completely invisible, with even her eyes hidden behind an opaque white veil hanging from the front of a tall headdress. The top of the headdress sweeps backwards and upwards, as if draped over a dragon's horns, with slim golden chains hanging looped over the top and sides, from which dangle an array of golden pomanders, heavy with the scent of spices and incense. A belt of gold is also cinched around her waist, and she alone sits without refreshment, small brown hands folded demurely in her lap as the other two women converse.

When the clown walks in, the Aiel woman looks surprised, taking in the newcomer's garish ensemble with a look approximating concern and befuddlement, though she gives the erstwhile villain a careful once-over nonetheless, showing enough respect to treat her like a possible threat.

The skeleton receives grim acknowledgement from Aiel and Gerudo both; the white-robed woman shifts slightly, sending her pomanders a-swaying oh so slightly, wafting scented smoke around to cover up the dark-clad figure's caustic aura.

With Malice's appearance, the Gerudo seems to have a shock of recognition, and guffaws, elbowing her gray-clad companion. What's actually said isn't distinct enough to be audible, but sends the Aiel woman into a brief, uncharacteristic peal of mirthful laughter, before she goes back to her careful vigil.

Her appraisal of Cantata might be slightly more thorough than regular caution might merit, though. The Aiel woman's hard gray-green eyes linger ever so slightly too long over the curves of that red dress of hers: something that isn't lost on her companion, who hides a brief smirk behind a sip of whiskey.

Ivaz's appraisal is a lot more open, with the Aiel woman's eyes instantly jumping to the region... just above Ivaz's one single done-up button, let's say, but she quickly smiles and leans up to whisper something to the other woman, which causes the Gerudo to laugh herself, the sound short, sharp, and powerful over the general hubbub of the bar.

When the final person enters, the white-clad woman tips her head slightly, inclining her veil towards the Gerudo, who takes this as cue enough to slam her hands against the table.

"So! You're all those who answered to the summons, oh? A wise decision! The opportunity we were sent to present shouldn't be missed!"

[Earl of Purple]

In Sandy Silence

The clown will sit, if there's a chair available, and stand nearby if not. She'll move the chair sideways, so she could potentially stand up and move quickly if needed, propping the walking stick against her leg.

She looks the three ladies, and her new colleagues, over as well. Her full-face mask makes it hard to tell what she's thinking under there. She pays most attention to Cantata, but it's not entirely clear why. "Then I am glad I will not miss it." She sounds a bit muffled, by the mask, which is frustrating. She'll pull the bottom bit up and over so her mouth is free, and repeats herself much clearer. Her skin's quite dark; Indian sub-continent, probably.

[KerfuffleMach2]

[In Sandy Silence]

Ivaz approaches the table, grabbing an empty chair and dragging it along the way, ignoring the slight protest of a patron behind her. She gives all of the gathering members of this meeting a quick, analyzing glance, taking in their appearance and making quick judgements. Once at the table, she spins the chair around and seats herself in one smooth motion, swinging her boots up and onto the table, leaning the chair back on two legs and folding her hands behind her head. This helps show her casual attitude towards this meeting, and also shows just how tight that shirt is.

Her expression is slightly amused by everything she sees. But her eyes are very focused on the three women that called this meeting. Especially the Gerudo woman.

Welp. Let's hear the sales pitch, then.

[Hattish Thing]

[In Sandy Silence]

If the skeleton had eyes, he would have rolled them towards the cyborg so erroneously addressing him as "preacher", rather than by his official title, or at least, what he assumed once was his official title. Rather than complain, however, the Reverend merely clamps his stained teeth down upon his loosely rolled cigarette, drawing deeply despite a lack of breath, before releasing a particularly nauseous cloud of black smoke. The smoke itself seems to burble out from within the depths of the skeleton after drawing in, slipping out through what once were his facial orifices.

Lazily, the figure wraps his long, bony fingers upon the edge of a chair, pulling it out before adjusting his blackened duster and sinking into it, pulling closer to the table. The gunslinger breathes in one final dose from his cigarette before rolling it about through his fingers as one would a bullet, a casual display of dexterity topped off by some sort of sleight of hand, for the joint promptly disappears upon reaching the skeleton's palm. Leaning forward, elbows upon the table, the figure merely lowers his head and begins to listen intently, face mostly concealed by his enormous hat.

He takes the time to glance towards the woman in white in particular, the light flashing off of his numerous gold teeth in a way that suggests a grin of a sort, chuckling a little, smoke spewing forth.

"Don't care for the smoke, eh?"

"'Poligies, ma'am."

[Lord Magtok]

In Sandy Silence

At the sound of laughter, Malice's remaining human eye twitches, and minuscule flakes of coal spill from his fingertips, drifting harmlessly to the floor. It's faint, so much so that Malice himself has never noticed it before, but there's a possibility that someone more attentive and inexplicably focused on the cyborg might see it. Unlikely, though. Everyone's attention is on the three women who brought them here, not some petulant tin man twisting and writhing on the inside, smoldering with carefully concealed fury.

Our visage should inspire fear and awe in the peasantry, not chortles and bemusement. This is Magtok's fault. Never mind that Malice himself has been back from his imprisonment in Hell for years now, that he helps a superheroine run her comic shop, that the most nefarious thing he's done in months was crash his other's Halloween party and incessantly blather on about nothing at some deaf girl bother. No, this is clearly Magtok's fault. Malice couldn't possibly have done anything to damage his own reputation.

It doesn't matter, though. We will prove to them all that Malice is a name to be spoken only in tense whispers and terror-stricken gasps. We will be the supervillain this Nexus needs, the devious menace that society so sorely deserves, the lord of all that is contemptible and malevolent. We are Lord Malice, and that Gerudo woman and her Aiel compatriot will forever remember that laughter shared together as the first few melodious notes of the dirge that is to be their undoing. We will-

"Ммф!" Rasputin grumbles, making a noise roughly analogous to that one would expect from someone trying to speak with tape over their mouth, but in a Russian accent and in a sealed jar of formaldehyde. It's just enough to take Malice out of his petty revenge fantasy, bringing him back into reality instead of that silly imaginary world where people have any reason to take him seriously. He scowls, shakes his head, and presses a button on the underside of the jar, causing a set of spindly robotic crab legs to unfold from the bottom of the jar, permitting Grigori to clamber up onto Malice's shoulder and watch the proceedings from a much better vantage point, instead of being lugged around in the brass-plated baddie's arms like some stupid prop. There, that seems to be enough to silence the stupid disembodied head for now.

Once that's settled, Malice remains standing upright, refusing to take a seat even if there are any left available. To sit at their table would imply a sort of respect or trust towards these strangers that simply does not exist. This is not a meeting of equals, whatever the others might think. This is a meeting of Malice, Cantata, Father Bones, some shmucks, a gigantic six-foot turbo-thot, and a clown, in descending order of importance. We do not soil our reputation further by sitting with creatures such as these.

More importantly, sitting down would also give Rasputin's pincers a chance to pinch someone's face. We probably shouldn't let him do that.

[Arkhosia]

Shady Sands Silence Sector?

The Aiel's wandering gaze is responded to with a playful little smirk and quirk of the eyebrows as Cantata notices it, as if inviting them to try her luck with further flirtations. She's open to it, assuming they want to pursue something after-hours. But for now... well, now it is time to discuss business. That is the attitude with which the freelance saboteur takes a seat, legs crossed and amber eyes focused on the trio with an attentive gaze. They only waver when Ivaz takes a seat, cringing minutely at the sheer unprofessionalism of it, and a teasing smirk flits across her lips as Malice finds himself the victim of mocking laughter.

[Purple Eagle]

[In Sandy Silence]

Rozpacz steps towards the three women, noting each woman's appearance. On closer inspection, there's a thin streak of grey on his otherwise black hair, and his hard lined face is on the old side. His eyes slowly roam across each of the three women, his depressed eyes taking in their features and actions.

He doesn't move when 'White-white' slams her hands on the table, but it is only after she's spoken that Roz takes it upon himself to look upon the others present as they react, his eyes lingering on Malice and on the skeletal gunman. Malice certainly doesn't inspire any fear and awe, just a curiosity most would call morbid. Perhaps he senses on an instinctual level this one's desire to spread misery and chaos, a goal he can agree with.

About the same time Malice is jolted out of his fantasy, Rozpacz realizes he's smiling evilly, pleased by the vibes he's getting from Malice. Silently clearing his throat, he semi-successfully returns to his stoic gaze, this time with a hint of a smile playing on his lips.

He refuses to sit, choosing instead to fold his clawed hands in front of him. He doesn't need to be sitting to make himself comfortable. Besides, standing eliminates the added step of getting up should this turn out to be a waste of his time. Not that he thinks that'd be a problem.

"Go on."

[FireFox]

A redheaded woman wearing a thick blue robe in the style of a wizard--or somebody who doesn't understand the difference between pajamas and traveling clothes--walks in off the street. She orders a Hearth Brew Mead and takes a seat at an out of the way table with an ash tray. After an appreciative sip of the warming drink, she settles in and looks around the room while digging through her purse for her cigarettes and lighter.

[Morty]

There is one person there that the red-headed woman might find unusual. A bald woman with pale skin, bluish around the eyes and ears, wearing a buff jacket of strange leather and riveted with black metal. There's a straw hat on the table next to her and she's calmly drinking simple tea. When looked at more closely, it's clear that she's quite tall and very muscular, and that her eyes' deep blue color reminds one of a bottomless depth.

[FireFox]

The wizard and/or slob produces a gold cigarette case from her purse, but fails to find a lighter. As she places a cigarette between her lips, she studies the tall woman nearby. A dockworker, perhaps, but in all likelihood someone who looks like that in a place like this is some sort of adventurer. Probably has heard some good rumors and is definitely worth talking to, the redheaded lady thinks, but first she's in desperate need of a smoke. The perfidious theft and/or misplacement of her lighter is only a minor setback, for she possesses numerous esoteric secrets and commands terrible arcane power. All she has to do is draw forth a tiny bit of energy, channel it using subtle movements of her fingertips, and kindle a little flame in the air before her. She has no idea what went wrong in which of those steps, but suddenly there's a fireball loudly bursting in her face, catching her robe ablaze. "AAH! Stupid futuēns בן-זונה βάλλ' εἰς κόρακας!"

[Morty]

The bald woman seems to have caught the attention she was being paid... but then this red-headed stranger catches fire. She was evidently trying to perform some magic that didn't work. She reaches out with her hand and suddenly some water condenses out of thin air around the redhead, trying to douse the flame. It's not much, but hopefully it's enough.

[FireFox]

Between the water and the panicked flailing (okay, just the water), the fire is put out before it can do more than singe the wizard's robe and immolate whatever nice first impression she was hoping for. She takes a deep breath and a deep drink of her mead to compose herself, then relocates to her rescuer's table. "Thank you for your timely assistance. It seems that there is some malevolent presence, be it demonic or fae, at work here that caused my magic to surge out of control." She smiles and offers a hand. "Tovia Solomon, at your service."

[Morty]

The bald woman seems to hesitate a moment before shaking Tovia's hand. It might be that she's not entirely familiar with the custom. Her handshake is brief, but firm.

"My name is Calm Reed. I'm not used to these lands yet, so I can't say if there was indeed a presence here." She doubts it, but she's being polite. "I'm just glad the fire was small enough to put out easily."

[FireFox]

"A pleasure to meet you, Calm Reed." Tovia scrutinizes her more closely as she sips her drink. "New to the Nexus, then. What kind of place are you from?"

[Morty]

"That depends on how precisely we count," Calm Reed says. "I was born in Bittern, on the Blessed Isle, in a land some call Creation, but mostly just... the world. My homeland is a place of wonder, but of a rather different kind that you find here. And you... strike me as a Nexus native. Or at least someone who has been here far longer than I have."

[FireFox]

Well, that shines a bit of light on those blue eyes and the water conjuration now, doesn't it? The wizard leans back in her chair and tries to remember if the elemental empowered guys were superheroes fighting the evil celestial guys or if they were all possessed by demons of different types. "I have read about that world. And you guessed right: I was born here. Or... close to here. I've only ever lived in Inside, Riverside, and the League so I guess I'm close enough to count as a Nexus native."

[Morty]

"Have you? I have been told I'm not the first Dragon-Blooded to come through here," Calm Reed says, unsurprised. "Not the first monk, even. League... that would be the Good League of Good, wouldn't it be? I've gathered information about other places after joining Vigil. I haven't been to there or Riverside, though."

[FireFox]

"I dunno about dragonblooded monks, but a long time ago Inside got flooded with the undead. Some sort of war between two superpowered madmen who came here from Creation. One of those sunshine lunatics and his evil twin or dark mirror nemesis. Abyssal? Infernal? I don't know the difference, honestly. I'm an amateur scholar of many different planes and magical systems, so my knowledge is wide but shallow." Tovia takes another drink and frowns. "Yeah, GLoG. Quiet little camp in the woods for reforming villains and mad scientists. And Riverside is more stable than Inside. Well. The buildings don't appear and disappear to and from other worlds, they just get blown up by monsters and armies. Predictability is a form of stability, isn't it?"

[Morty]

Calm Reed frowns.

"A sunshine lunatic sounds like one of the Solar Anathema, but this is the first I've heard of an 'Abyssal' or 'Infernal'. Some Anathema devilry I'm not familiar with, maybe. I've heard there was a massive battle for Riverside shortly before I'd arrived. I would have loved to take part, had I been there. As it was, my service in Vigil so far has brought me to Inside. Including a pack of zombies and a cultist on my way there."

[FireFox]

"Yeah... that was... a bad time for the city. Really made me rethink where to raise the kids. But I'm glad to meet a zombie-fighting, people-rescuing hero." She raises her mug to the VIGILant monk.

[Morty]

Calm Reed's lips quirk slightly in a smile.

"That's what a monk is meant to do. Now that I'm stuck away from the Order, Vigil is the next best thing. I can't say I blame you for being concerned about your children with all that. The League seems like a good place for them, though, from what I've heard. Not that I'd know much about it."

[FireFox]

Tovia's brow furrows as she tries to think how to give a polite explanation without going into the finer details of that huge awkward personal mess. She'd probably be better off completely making something up; the truth about clones and apocalypses is some heavy stuff. But she goes with some vague opinions for now. "GLoG is definitely a great place for children, or at least it was when I was last there. In general. Not for mine specifically, maybe? We'd end up causing trouble for the nice people there. Say, do you have any siblings?"

[Morty]

Calm Reed doesn't give any sign as to whether she noticed Tovia's hesitation.

"I have two," she says. "No too many, but after my older brother and I both Exalted, it was largely considered enough for my fathers. Then they decided to have another child when I took the vows."

[FireFox]

"Have you ever looked at your older brother being all smug and disgustingly immoral and thought about holding his head under water until the last gasp of arrogance bubbles to the surface? That's the kind of trouble I'd hate to cause." Satisfied that she's made her point in a totally normal and proper way, the wizard finishes off her mead with a smile. "What vows were those?"

[Morty]

"The vows of a monk," Calm Reed explains, pointing to her bare scalp. "Which includes celibacy and becoming part of the Order, rather than my House of birth. As for my brother... well, I can't say I have. Us Water Aspects can't drown, you see. But I have contemplated many things." Appropriately enough, she segues from talking about being a monk to contemplating the murder of her brother like freely flowing water.

[FireFox]

Sounds like regular monk stuff, Tovia thinks to herself, just with elemental powers instead of epistemology and pea breeding. "Are you still in the Order or does it conflict with Vigil? And did things with your brother get worse before or after you took the vows?"

[Morty]

A faint grimace flashes on Calm Reed's face.

"As far as the Order is aware, I'm on a mission. They might be aware that my ship sank by now... but not that I found myself here afterwards." She takes a sip of tea. "My brother was happy enough to see me join the Order and get out of his way, as he saw it. He must have seen it as a victory on his part."