With the escalation of hostilities between Etzos and Rhakros, a series of small walled towns is being established as a network of early warnings and defenses against Rhakros' reprisals. Only the very bravest and most formidable of characters should risk themselves on the Witches' Wilds frontier.
“Do you know why we’re here today in this office, a full 14 trials before our regular meet-up.”
“Your numbers don’t add up.”
“‘My’ numbers don’t add up, he says. MY numbers don’t add up. No, getting a silver nel less on pocket change doesn’t add up. Screwing up a debit ledger doesn’t add up. What you did, sir, isn’t even on the same FUCKIN’ CONTINENT AS DON’T ADD UP. You’re Rynmere. You’re Scavolis. You’re fuckin’ Viden for all I know but you sure as hell ain’t Etzos because FUCK YOU, THAT’S WHY. TEN CUNTIN’ THOUSAND ACTUAL NEL, YOU DAFT CUNT. I’m sorry, did I lose my temper? Please, I’m sure you have a completely reasonable explanation for all this. Go on, boy. Give it to me. Make my day shine like Faldrun’s blazing arsehole.”
As tough as Gangui was, the mention that he was no Etzori really cut deep into his ego. He was able to shrug off many of the dissenters and haters that where the skeptic community. He was able to openly challenge this men on many points. But dammit, no one could claim he wasn’t a patriot. These proffered words really was the wrong move on Zippers part and the seething rage was liable to take over his thoughts.
“... I’m tired of you calling me names. Leave the rhetoric for the crowds. Why don’t you put your vagina away and talk business with me. Explain to me why 10 large ones is a problem?”
“You see, one gold nel plus one gold nel equals two gold nel, when you add two gold nel to one gold nel-”
“ZIPPER!”
“Do you know how much we put out the bounties of dangerous mutants? Go on. Give us a guess.”
“10 thousand gold will be only a fraction of the wealth we will confiscate from disrupting the Prince’s business. IF you actually where busting your ass in the field you would know that, but you ain’t. You just sit around in this fucking cube and wait for the ink to dry on your ledgers… Pft! Tell me you know what The Prince of Eternal Mercy’’s soul is worth!”
“Who and what is a Prince? For all I know he shagged your lady a trial back and you’re paying him dirty for it.”
“You haven’t lifted your nose from the books have you? You question my honor with no grounds NOR moral authority. Why do you go tell the mob that we are taking their bread away?”
“BECAUSE THERE IS NO MONEY BEHIND THE CURTAIN. BECAUSE, OH FUCKIN’ BECAUSE, EVEN BY SOME MIRACLE THIS ALLEGED PRINCE’S OPERATIONS ARE WORTH EVEN A FRACTION AS MUCH AS YOU SEEM TO BELIEVE, THE MONEY ISN’T GOING TO THIS BOUNTY. THIS IS NOT HOW OUR BUREAUCRACY WORKS, GANGUI.”
“If you don’t know who the Prince of Eternal Mercies is then you’re not a real ETZORI! If you don’t know how fucked he’s got our people in his tyrannical knot that he is weaving, then you are not a real black guard! I am sick of your shit! I am not a bureaucrat!” Sliding up from the seat, the large brute noisily paced out of the room, his metal boots drowned out be the stifled walls in the turgid, candle-lit broom closet that was Zip’s office. A gauntleted hand stopped on the turn of the nob. He turned back around, “I am a man of action, so if you wanna deal with me go ahead and take some. Rescind the bounty yourself.”
As the door shut behind him, the raw anger dissipated into wrath as he steeled his nerves to proceed through the day without losing efficiency. He was supposed to be the tough guy, the strong man who stood in front of everyone boldly. Unfortunately for today he lost all shreds of discipline in front of a tiny woman, none-the-less.
He was even given a moment’s reprieve.
The door slammed back open on its own power and when he looked inside, Zipper was still at her desk, her face a promise of hell. “Gangui, get back inside. We’re not even close to finished.”
“I can’t stand to sit here any longer and have my honor spat upon,” The turkey tabard once again showing its colors in the Black Guard’s chamber.
“Honor,” she said it like it was gulp of poison. “This isn’t honor’s fault--”
The bright red fury that was the smouldering sword in Gangui’s eye reignited again, a testiment to his Aukari lineage, whether Zipper knew it or not, “YOU HAVE BEEN TALKING TO ME WITH DISRESPECT FOR THE ENTIRE DURATION OF OUR BUSINESS PARTNERSHIP AND I’VE ATE IT! THAT IS MY HONOR BEING SHAT UPON!”
“Inside.” Zipper said more quietly, more tensely. “The walls have ears.”
At least they could find a point of agreement. With the quick step of a battle swordsman, he slide inside with only the chink of his chain to be heard, before closing the door softly. His anger quickly dissipated with a prolonged stare into the smoke stained wall. “Zip, I am not Robin, I am not your minion. I am the commander of an order of patriots who is trying to get a firm moral authority instilled into the Port for the betterment of the entire society. We are working day and night and putting our ass on the line and you treat me like ROBIN!”
Last edited by Gangui on Sun Jan 21, 2018 5:50 am, edited 2 times in total. word count: 452
“If I treated you like Stark,” Zipper said so calmly, so reasonably, so far opposite of the sheer rage she had exhibited but moments ago. “You would have lost command of this company a dozen times over already. As it stands, you still have it.”
Taking a deep breath he sat down again, grimacing under his armor, “Shall we have civil discourse or shall we proceed to duel?”
He waited patiently, surprised when Zipper actually placed her chin on her palm and began to consider it. He figured it would be a quick decision for her: she was no warrior. Her magic revolved around trinkets and a seer’s touch. Unlike Robin, she could not fight.
“Okay,” she said. “And I want you to listen very carefully to what I have to say. This is not about honor or integrity or what the ever. This is about learning points. So learn.”
“Proceed.”
“Number 1, a bounty is an government-issued reward placed on an individual and awarded when the arrest -or execution- is made. Here are the keywords: government, reward, awarded. You are not the government. You do not authorized the rewards. The awards are not yours to give.” she put up a hand to stop him from blurting out whatever he was going to say. “You are a subsidiary force contracted to keep the peace; that does not make you the civil service. Number 2-”
The words she spoke were tangent to the point in the view of the warrior, “The Sons of Justice will buy the bounty out of their own pocket,” Gangui said coldly. He wouldn’t even begin to explain to her his logic. If she was going to patronize him, then so be it, he would win in the end of the day. “I think we are done here.”
“And I thought I was the sorcerer,” she said, with a coldness matching his. “Because you seem to be the one blessed with the magic to conjure up 20 onyx nels from nothing.”
Gangui laughed as he sauntered towards the door. The anger that had became wrath throughout the last hundred trials, but seemingly instantly it simmered into full blown resentment. His expression was one that hid nothing from Zipper. “If you were a real Etzori you’d know my next move. I hope to see you on my side of the line.”
Leaving the room for the second time, Gangui paused again.
Sure there was a command order that needed to be followed, Gangui was aware of this. He understood what Zipper needed to do, but he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t just do her job and make things happen regardless of the circumstances. At least, that is what he assumed her role was, but then again she never took any vows to the Sons of Justice.
If she wasn’t going to be in the field, wasn’t it her job to take care of things on the back end? Surely there was something she could do to fix all this bureaucratic nonsense without leaving Gangui in a shit storm. She claimed it wasn’t a moral issue, but it was. Right now all the mustachio could see was Zipper’s mind stuck in the box that she had constructed for herself. Why couldn’t she see the vision? Why couldn’t she see that? It was the money no doubt. Perhaps she couldn’t see how it would also line her own pockets as well.? If she saw past that than this wouldn’t be a problem.
“If you were a real Etzori, you wouldn’t RUN TWICE FROM A GIRL, YOU CUNT” she shouted behind him.
Regardless of all the thoughts going through his head, the facts were all that mattered now.
People were going to be killed. The damn prince would hang. And someone was going to pay for it.
He turned on his heels and tried to step out of the office.
Keyword: tried.
Any ambitions he had of leaving the room were thwarted by a giant spike of concrete that drove upwards from the ground in front of the turkey knight, conveniently blocking the exit.
Flipping his hips, the mustachioed man stared at his liaison with a grimace. He knew that there had to be some conclusion to this meeting now, Zipper would have it no other way. He looked surprised to say the least. Noisily breathing, he stared and waited for her to speak.
“You signed a contract swearing your allegiance to the Black Guard, service to the rule of the High Marshal himself, and to the Sovereignty of Etzos,.” Zipper said very slowly and very softly, something eerily serpentine to the way she spoke. “Time to uphold that conduct.”
“I have broken no clause in the contract,” he bellowed softly, though the base in his voice still seemed to shake the walls.
“You have smeared the name of the company you have sworn to lead through a contract with no cause and shackled with an amount no one in this administration is willing to pay,” she said. “Maybe this Prince is real, maybe he’s done things, maybe he’s eaten babies or killed cripples and pregnant ladies or summoned cannibal monsters from the depths of some Emean hell itself. I don’t know - but I’m asking you to be smart about pursuing justice. I’m asking you to sit down and hear me out.”
Gangui sat down, clenching gauntleted fists showing obvious signs of struggling with his emotions. One could never find a cold one to do these sort of jobs. Rules of the trade she surmised. Folding her legs and leaning back, she prepared to reiterate her commands in a way that would stick to the clump of stone that was her man’s brain.
No offense to stone intended.
“Gangui.” her hand searched the table for something, settling on a banana lying around on her table. She swore she had used up all of them by now on little Quality tests. She brought it up to eye level. “How much are you willing to spend on this banana?”
“An exotic fruit that was transported across the Orm’del. 10 silver,”
A little bit on the pricey side, she thought, but not a horrible guess. “If someone told you -without any proof- that the banana was of an ancient strain beyond value and said it was worth an entire onyx, would you believe them?”
The warrior sighed and put a gauntlet on his face, “You are underestimating the true value of getting rid of the prince-”
“You’re working for the Man now, Mister Gangui,” Good, she remembered the Mister this time. “And as far as the Man is concerned, there’s no tangible proof of this-” She put up a hand to stop his interruptions but he continued anyway.
“I’ve been killing Al’Angryl bandits left and right. Their bloody handprint is on all the major crimes scenes we encounter. It is a fact, that he is uniting the gangs and preparing for some sort of rebellion. What we want is the gangs fighting amongst themselves, not united in some cause,” Then a strange look passed over Gangui’s face, though she was not quite sure if it was a smirk, “That way we can pick them off easy. Bringing justice back to the people and bringing good business back to the port. It will also generate a huge profit for the likes of us.”
“I believe you,” she said. Just like the incident with the vice-administrator’s letters, he didn’t know how right he was. A stupid man like Gangui always had the favor of his so-called ether or whatever dribble he was going on about for the season. It was like some kind of twisted backwards logic watched over him for some reason, nudging him in the right direction for all the wrong reasons, though the fool of a man was too stupid to put all the puzzle pieces together.
Noth was gathering gangs and bandits and the pimps and druggies, small-time gangs with small-time turf; but small plus small plus small added up to something a little bit bigger when the numbers started coming in.
“I believe you and I believe in your commitment.” A statement that was as true as could be: his forthrightness was noted, his zeal undeniable. “But this 10k bounty has done more damage to us than this Prince of Eternal Mercies. It brought him some measure of exposure… but it will kill the credibility of our official bounty board once we rescind the bounty-”
“Like I said, Zipper, there is no need to rescind the bounty. The people may call it bullshit, but until the deed is done, there is no credible ground for such claims. Whoever gives us the Prince alive will obviously be a gang member, then we can execute him as well and donate the money to-”
“You -We- thus company won’t survive that long to claim it.” she said. He was so simple, so inexperienced, so straightforward in how he perceived the world. She envied it in a way; ever since she was posted to the Black Guard, her life was more about jumping through bureaucratic hoops than magic or fighting or anything - though those happened too. This assignment was just a culmination of her gradual move towards the desk as she worked her way up. “My superiors are very, very, very unhappy with this move. This is not hyperbole. They are literally threatening to pull funding.”
“Okay, we rescind the bounty,” Gangui said sarcastically, “Then what? Do we add more lies to the shit sandwich and leave me to eat it all alone, followed by my death, while you take a cut?”
“Answer me this: are you a soldier or a peacekeeper?
“In the entirety of the port, YOU should know that I am a patriot!”
“No one denies that. But which type are you: a soldier or a peacekeeper.”
“You don’t listen to a word I say or see any of the actions in the streets? What have I been doing?” It was obvious now that he was indeed neither, but a mercenary contractor. Back to how it all started. He didn’t take orders like a soldier, but he followed the gold, even if in his head it was otherwise. Him with his crazy backwards logic. She couldn’t take beverages anymore, but she was desperate for some hot tea right now.
“Mister Gangui,” she said. “I need you to understand that whatever methodology you employed before you started this company, whatever way you operated - it’s good enough for me.” No it wasn’t. No, it fuckin’ wasn’t. But she had to, to her self-aware horror, play the reasonable one in this little charade. “I accept it. But the people paying your wages and the wages of all your men need certain assurances. There are principles of courtesies to those aiding us that need to be upheld.”
“Zipper. You know what, I get it now. People are resistant to changing the old ways, because they do not understand the principles are what count. Think about the times before 389. Before then people could never conceive of a society without the Immortals. They would rebuttle the likes of Morgan Pahrn. ‘Who would feed us? Who would bless us? Who would contend with the magic and other big bad guys.’” the warriors impression of a weak, feminine, Immortal worshiper was terrible, “BUT, the answer is you follow the principle first, despite not knowing the outcome. And without knowing the outcome of a lifestyle that had never been lived before, we indubiously created the greatest living nation on Idalos: Etzos,” Gangui smiled, “ And with this concept in mind, it has inspired me to rescind the bounty. I will follow the principle you have laid out for principles must be followed!”
That was the single most horrifying thing she had heard in the last season. She’d been in at least two nightmares, and it still had no competition. It was a philosophy of uncertainty, of charging into the unknown and hoping for the best with no preparation beyond what felt ‘right… but at least he was willing to take one step forward.
“I…” Zipper was at a loss for words. “Thank you for understanding, I guess.” she said, completely flabbergasted on the inside. “I need you to understand something else Gangui: we are fighting a war. Always fighting a war. Losing a battle is fine, retreat IS an option, but never lose sight of the goal you -we- have in mind: the trust of the people. Forget the Prince for a time, we have a more domestic matter we need to attend to.”
“More domestic than the very seams of our society being ruled by a minute tyrant?”
“Yes,” she said, already hating herself for every single word coming out of her mouth. “An affront to the honor of the Sons that must be immediately addressed, my friend.”
“Who dares besmirch our honor?”
“The deserter Vorval,” Zipper said. “Who has forsworn allegiance to your company. He has told everyone who would listen that you would pay him no wage, assign him no gear, and has left the Turkeys. If he is still in the Foster’s, we will find him - but I ask that you do not pursue him beyond that. Just as the Black Guard has jurisdictional limitations, so too does Turkey. For the moment.”
Gangui stroked his beard waiting a moment before responding. Oh blasted Immortals, more crazy logic! “The spirit of competing for glory is the backbone of the Etzori. That is how we get things done. See people don’t realize it in their mind, but alas this is the way it is. It is no fault of his own that he sought to better his cause, which would have indeed helped us if he proceeded honorable. However he broke the contract he signed and has forfeited his right to a common trial,” He turned his head towards Zip, “You helped write the justice contract-” she didn’t, but she never bothered clarifying that misconception with him. “I believe you are the judge on matters of civil law. We only take care of the common law, remember?”
“Yeah, sure, kill the fuck out of him.” she said on reflex, sick of his drivel… before realizing what she just said.
“Kill him!? Every man deserves a trial. Even the men we lynched were given public argument to defend themselves!”
“No, you’re right. Forgive me, it has been a tiring few days due to…” she gestured at nothing in particular. “... I must have taken momentary leave of my senses. Please give him a trial.” She pressed a hand against the wall behind her and the spike fell, the obstacle to the door gone. “I think we’re done here, Mister Gangui.”
“No. We -you- don’t seem to understand what I am saying. We will bring him to you as soon as we capture him and you miss with give him a trial and make public judgement… right?”
“I absolutely got that. He will be captured, tried, and brought to justice.” she said, a small, tired smile on her face. “He will get his due, traitor or not.”
He seems satisfied by her answer and they shook on it as he made his way out.
As the door closed behind him, she flipped him off.
A trial could not happen. Vorval would not utter a single fuckin’ word in his defense. At best, that blabbermouth would spill every inkling of the Sons to a willing and angry crowd, an embarrassment she couldn’t afford after this. At worst…
She had to find him first. She had the means and she had the eyes. She had to find him-
Strike a deal with him, say she reconsidered their offer, tell him what a mess Gangui made-
And send him off to Noth to disappear under the pretense of a meet-up. A pretty present delivered to what she assumed to be a very angry bird. Her outstanding transaction with the bird would be settled and her Vorval problem solved.
Two birds (well one bird and one raging cunt), one stone.
Zipper sighed, her head dropping to the table. She banged and banged and banged her fist like a drunk demanding a drink.
She once swore she would never have children, but now it seemed she was managing an entire squabbling litter of male ego-amplified infants.
Oh, I laughed so much in this thread - Zipper's internal dialogue is great and her closing thoughts are just awesome. I really enjoyed this thread and I think it's a great example of how the collaborative g-doc writing can work really well! Great thread - very well handled there, Zipper! PM me if I miss anything.
Points
XP: 15
Fame:-15
Loot
Nope
Knowledge
Business Management: Delegating an urgent task to an employee
Business Management: Demanding proper conduct from an employee
Business Management: The importance of maintaining brand reputation
Business Management: Swallowing your pride to fix a problem
Business Management: Understanding the viewpoint of an employee
Politics: A ghost without an identity does not exist in the eyes of the law
Politics: Keeping your superiors assuaged
Politics: Managing assets who are fighting each other
Politics: Waiting out the crisis
Tactics: Letting one problem solve another
Gangui: A beast of twisted logic
Gangui: Demands to be spoken to nicely
Gangui
Overview
Mister Gangui! I love the fire and fury and focus of Gangui and his ability to compromise where he can is really well juxtaposed to those non-negotiable morals. Great writing, really enjoyed it! PM me if I've missed anything.
Points
XP: 15
Fame: None, I can see? Let me know if I've missed it!
Loot
Knowledge
Business Management: The value of gold
Business Management: Investing for the future.
Politics: The amorality of the bureaucracy
Leadership: Standing up to your superiors
Business Management: Shouldering the financial risk
Politics: Doing the right thing can be costly
Business Management: Honor in business
Politics: Asserting your position
Discipline: Steeling one’s nerves in the face of magic.
Zipper: Can conjure stone walls instantly.
Zipper: Though she can be a bitch, is not devoid of reason.
Zipper: Hiding abilities from Gangui
word count: 301
~~Red in hoof and claw... ~~
Current Status:
Working on a New User Guide - feel free to feed back in the thread!
