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[Ichabod Hyde]

6 5 - A S H A N - 7 1 8 . . . N A S H A K I

Hot and dry and noisy, Hyde ignored most of it all. Since dawn, when he'd rolled out of bed, to when he'd stumbled down the inn stairs - to the corner he'd claimed since his arrival at the establishment several trials ago - to order a drink and lay against the table's surface - and then another drink, and another, until he had fallen asleep again with glass in hand. He slept through the afternoon against the table, but by the time that people started filtering into the inn's tavern at the start of evening, he had woken.

Alert again, but hardly sober, he peered through the dimly lit corner and refused to budge. He didn't care which hooded rogue figure wanted the corner spot; it was his and damned if he was about to give it up....

...even if he did need to piss. Badly. Hyde glowered at the various people that now crowded the tavern. He knew if he got up, he'd lose his perfect round table that he kept all to himself. He'd lose the nice straight-back wooden chair that was sturdy enough to let him lean back and forth in it while he rocked away the drunken restlessness that occasionally made him think of things he'd rather not bother with.

Hyde ordered another glass of whatever was strong enough to burn his tongue while going down, and he bit at his rough dirty nails while he surveyed the various people. He needed coin. He needed a job. A client. Anything... something. He needed something so he could keep drinking and staying in the inn before the owners noticed that he kept putting off the payment of his tab. The desert was harsh, though, and competition in Nashaki proved steep but he'd just come from Yaralon and how much harder could it be to make nel here than there?

Besides, wasn't Nashaki the hub of commerce? The sparkling gem of Trade in all the world? Some shit like that. Most places liked to claim that type of stuff, but only Nashaki claimed actual patronage of Chamadarst himself. Yaralon and Ne'haer sure had fancy temples to the Immortal though so, Hyde couldn't be too sure about those claims.

Rocked back in his chair, he took a swig of the amber-hazy liquid set in front of him. His warm brown eyes scanned the place, and around them, the smudged black charcoal of what looked like soot but was specifically placed markings to make his eyes seem far deeper set than they actually were. The shadows of a skull, really, as the opaque black filled in the bone structure of his eye sockets.

Finally, he got a lock on someone. A curly-haired pointy-eared... biqaj? Close enough. Probably a biqaj. It seemed like he had wandered away from the others they came to the tavern with, or something. Hyde rocked forward so the chair landed back on the front legs with a small thump. He slapped a hand on the table, loud, over the din of conversation. As soon as the biqaj looked over, he waved in a gesture to come closer.

Hyde waited, and once the younger man had reached close enough, he gestured to a chair and said, "Watch for me? -will be back soon."

It seemed obvious enough to him what he was requesting, while he got up, and took his drink with him. Hyde wandered past the hall corner to find his way to the washroom and back. It couldn't take too long, it wasn't his first time in the tavern after all and it'd take a lot more drinks to get him to not be able to walk down a hallway.

[Saza Moshe]

65 Ashan, 718 ‣ Nashaki

Dion was standing too close to Is’haaq. That tended to happen a lot when Dion was drunk. How his friends had managed such intoxication when they’d supposedly only been in the tavern for half a break… well, it was pretty easy for Saza to suss out the lie there.

Dion’s bright red blood was burning beneath his tanned skin, coloring his ears and cheeks, while Is’haaq looked about as uncomfortable as ever, in the… what was it that the other biqaj liked to call it? Place of ill-repute? Why the young priest-in-training ever joined them on their escapades, he’d never know, but he’d never complain, either.

Fortunately, Dion’s attention was fleeting, flitting between Is’haaq and Saza and the rest of the restless adolescents that’d filtered into the crowded tavern. A few of them were soldiers like himself — the rest were just tagalongs; girlfriends and mooches and whoever else felt the need to latch on.

Saza wasn’t sure if he knew half of their names, but he got on with them well enough. He watched Is’haaq break away from Dion’s side once the latter’s attention was swayed, and offered a small smile when the dark-haired biqaj approached.

“It’s going to be another late night,” said Is’haaq, his voice lowered beneath those of tavern-goers and clinked glasses.

“Does seem that way.”

“You’re sticking around?”

Saza shrugged a shoulder. He wasn’t exactly trying to stick around to spend his coin at the bar, and he knew that if he waited long enough, Dion would come asking for just that.

“I can,” he offered, as his darkened pink gaze met Is’haaq’s green, “did you want me t—”

“Is’haaq,” always on time, Dion stepped closer to the two, setting a calloused hand over the dark-haired boy’s shoulder. “Celina wan-wans your advice on som..thing. Go on.”

Is’haaq moved away without a word, smiling to Celina as he approached, meanwhile Dion pointed to Saza, standing closer than the curly-haired biqaj really preferred. He furrowed his brows and glanced down when he felt the other’s finger press against his chest. It was playful, but Dion was… antagonistic, after a certain point. Saza wasn’t sure if he’d reached it yet.

“Get the drink, yeah? Drinks. C’mon, Kalba — nasty tender up there said I was cut off! C’n you believe that?”

Saza couldn’t help the upwards curve of his lips. He pushed Dion’s finger away and said, “go sit down with the others, okay?”

“Mmmyeah,” agreed the drunken human, and he turned with a heavy sigh. Saza had no intention of buying him anything more to drink, but he’d sure take the chance to get away from him and the rest of the group for a few bits. After another glance in Is’haaq’s direction, he took off, crossing his arms over his chest and making his way towards the counter.

He didn’t look around much, blue eyes focused forward… until a sudden sound lurched above the rest and forced his attention to the side. For a few moments, bright yellow irises scanned over a table where a lone stranger sat. The fact that he was a stranger at all was interesting enough to Saza — but then, he’d been away at the eastern fortress for a few ten-trials. He certainly hadn’t monitored every face to walk into the city.

Gaze resettled into a blood-spattered orange hue, Saza stepped closer to the table. His arms uncrossed to rest at his sides, thumbs fidgeting with the pockets of his trousers. What did this guy want with him? He looked human, and certainly older than himself… Saza wondered at the smudged darkness that surrounded his eyes, as well.

“Yeah?” he asked, as soon as he was close enough to hear a response.

"Watch for me? -will be back soon."

The blond biqaj furrowed his brow again, but the older man was getting up before he could refuse. Watch for him… Saza looked around the table as the stranger stepped away, but he didn’t see anything worth watching. He’d even taken his drink with him.

Still, he slipped into the seat with a quiet sigh. His arms were set upon the table before him, bony fingers tapping momentarily against the wood before he got bored of the little fidget. Saza’s arms were pulled back and crossed over his chest again. Blond hair was tucked behind pointed ears. He glanced back at the group he’d wandered in with… but Dion was distracted with someone else’s drink, and Is’haaq was still lost in conversation with Celina. So he waited (quite begrudgingly) on his own, eyes darkening into a signature scarlet hue.

[Ichabod Hyde]

6 5 - A S H A N - 7 1 8 . . . N A S H A K I

There and back. Easy as... walking down a hall and taking a piss. Which, while drunk from a day's worth of throat-scorching liquor and nothing else - wasn't that easy and also involved some purging to clear room for an angry stomach and an abused liver. Hyde didn't bother to rinse his face or hair. He hadn't for trials now. Dirt and sweat and charcoal and even some old blood clumped his silvered hair into defined sections of rigid strands. His hands weren't much better, but he had a different way of handling that: Charcoal. He took out the small bar of charcoal and rubbed at his hands. It left the skin dark, and anything he touched got smudged in the stuff, but it cleared and covered whatever else might be there.

Charcoal-dusted hand around the glass, he made his way back through the hall and glanced around the tavern before he slid back into his seat. He glanced at the biqaj. He coughed, then banished the dry sound with another swig of his drink.

"Thanks." So quick and so gruff, inaudible and yet there it was. The expression on the grisled man's face, while he scratched at the stubble at his jaw, proved a mix between- was it disinterest? boredom? annoyance? whatever the mix, it was impossible to tell except that his lips were downturned at the corners and his eyes slid an intoxicated-slow gaze at the people in the tavern with almost purposeful refusal to look at the guy who'd kept the table for him.

It seemed he was bound to ignore, least until he offered, "Drink?"

...and pushed whatever was left of his own drink, glass smudged with the charcoal shapes of his fingers, for the stranger to consider. He made a sharp gesture toward a nearby wench (server? Hyde couldn't keep up with what he was supposed to call barmaids anymore). And as much as Hyde hated making conversation, he forced himself to speak again.

"Y' lost something?" Hyde coughed some to the side, then rubbed at the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand - smudged with a gray swath. His heavy accent almost showed through. An accent from a continent across the sea. "Can find it. For nel."

[Saza Moshe]

65 Ashan, 718 ‣ Nashaki

The weird man with the dark eyes didn’t end up taking too terribly long. It was still longer than Saza liked to wait – especially when it came to strangers and random table-holdings – but it wasn’t unbearable, and he spent the time looking around the inn’s tavern at all the different faces inside.

Most of them he knew; he wasn’t close with many, but he at least knew their names, or their faces, or he’d heard about them through someone else. One of the older humans at the bar owned the little… what kind of shop did he own? His name was at the tip of his tongue, but it evaded him still.

Saza leaned back in his chair and considered that maybe, just maybe, Mister-random-shop-owner would be nice enough to let him stay in the shop to sleep. He’d work for it, of course. He just didn’t want to spend the coin on a room at the inn, and he already knew that the others wouldn’t leave him alone for long enough to sleep outside.

He was still in the process of debating it when the table’s previous occupant returned. It wasn’t his actual return that alerted Saza to his presence, but the cough that cut through all the other noise and demanded his attention. Saza turned his head and looked over the older man with a steady red gaze.

Did he look… even dirtier than before? Or – what was on his hands?

“No problem,” the biqaj replied quickly, though the man had looked away from him already. Saza leaned forward until his arms and chest pressed against the edge of the table. He tried not to stare, and managed for the most part, but curiosity came naturally to the young blond. The older hadn’t dismissed him, not explicitly anyway, and yet his gruff expression had taken on an almost agitated air.

“Drink?

Saza raised a brow. The drink that was pushed towards him was regarded with a suspicious red glance. The offer itself wasn’t concerning – Saza wouldn’t claim to be used to anyone giving him drinks, but it’d happened before, if Dion counted. No, his concern stemmed from the fact that he’d just watched this strange human take the drink down the hall with him, and it was smudged with something dark, and he felt like he needed a drink before he could even accept this one.

So of course the curly-haired youth reached out and grabbed it. He inspected it for a moment longer, and then brought it to his lips, after spinning it to find the cleanest spot. And gods how it burned, enough for Saza to grimace as he swallowed it – but he followed the discomfort with another quick swig, and then pushed what remained back to the table’s other occupant.

“Uhh,” Saza cleared his throat. He’d just asked if he’d lost something, but the biqaj couldn’t determine his sincerity. Straightening up his posture a bit (although not enough to make a big difference), he shook his head and said, “no. Don't have much stuff.”

He didn’t have many things in the first place, so he didn’t think he was in too much danger of losing anything either. It was irrelevant – what interested him more was strange smudging over the older man’s skin, and was that an accent? Had he misheard? Saza prided himself on knowing more about the world than Dion, or Is’haaq, or any of the rest of them; he was lost as to where the man could’ve been from. Or maybe it wasn’t an accent that threw him, but some sort of language barrier?

Saza glanced over the other’s expression again, friends forgotten for the moment, with an unintentional frown upon his own features. As gruff as the guy seemed, he’d never been afraid of asking questions for the sake of learning…

“What’s all that?” he asked first, and lifted a hand to gesture at his own eyes rather than the human’s. “The stuff around your eyes. Is there a reason for it?”

Was that a rude question? It didn’t feel like one – but he supposed it could’ve been a bit intrusive. Leaning back in his seat again, Saza offered, “sorry. You find lost things, do you?”

[Ichabod Hyde]

6 5 - A S H A N - 7 1 8 . . . N A S H A K I

The awkward kid with the yellow? - no, red? no, orange... no, it was red? biqajs were such a headache sometimes. The awkward kid with the colorful eyes had kept the table for him. He didn't know why the kid was staring at him, or why he was staying at the table. Regardless, he'd done what Hyde wanted and warded away anyone grabbing the prime corner table. That earned the kid a drink. Hyde wasn't an antisocial sort. Not that he considered himself that way. He just didn't like talking. There were plenty social things to do that weren't talking, though.

Like drinking.

When it came to a toss-up between drinking and talking, Hyde would put up with the latter if it meant the former. He could do the former all on its own though, but the latter by itself? That was something he didn't care for.

He didn't watch while the youth grabbed the drink, inspected it, then swallowed most of it down. Instead, Hyde leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes to feel the world sway and ripple around him. A few more drinks and it would spin. He heard the footsteps of the barmaid and without opening his eyes, he raised a hand with two fingers to silently order a couple more drinks. The footsteps turned and went the other way.

Hyde heard the scrape of glass against the table surface: drink pushed back.

He opened his eyes, still leaned far back in his chair, and peered at the biqaj who claimed to not have much stuff. Claimed, but it was believable enough. Boot pressed against the table edge, he leaned the chair legs against the floorboards with the weight of his body. He squinted at the youth, when he tried to figure what the questions were about. His eyes? Oh, he knew what that was about.

Before he had a chance to figure out an answer, Pointy-Ears apologized and asked about something else.

One of Hyde's eyebrows raised in an askew quirk of an expression. He pressed his weight forward into the boot against the table edge, then back again before he cleared his throat. He reached into his pocket, then tossed the hard chunk of charcoal onto the table in answer for the first questions. Then he grabbed a small tin where he kept the mixed charcoal, soot, dyes, and creamy paint base all together to last around his eyes - and he threw that next to the charcoal for the inquisitive youth to also look at.

The wench - hardly a youth, but not quite older and otherwise, not worth a description for how plain she was - set the drinks down and said, "I'm going to need to see some nel, honey, if you're going to want any more than these."

Hyde squinted at her in a similar way that he had squinted at Pointy-Ear's questions, then frowned when she slapped at his boot to get him to stop leaning the chair back like he was. He removed his boot and lowered the chair so it was upright again. Hyde picked at a spot between his gray-smudged teeth with his thumbnail, and shrugged.

She sighed, glanced at Saza with a slight look of familiarity.

"I find lost things," confirmed Hyde in a gravelly voice. He picked up and finished the first drink, then hacked a wad of spit into the glass before he handed it over for the wench to take away. As soon as she accepted it, he picked up one of the new glasses and swigged a mouthful of the straight liquor.

It wasn't until she'd finally walked away that he muttered, "Not only things. People. Bodies. Pets."

[Saza Moshe]

65 Ashan, 718 ‣ Nashaki

Not so quick with answers then. Saza noticed the squint of those dark-ringed eyes but he wasn’t all that sure what it was for. It didn’t seem to him like he’d done much wrong, or at least nothing to warrant major annoyance – so maybe the man just had one of those looks. Or, the youth figured, he was just drunk and didn’t care.

Whatever the truth was, he was leaned back in his chair again by the time a few dark items were set upon the table. Retrieved from the human’s pockets, Saza couldn’t believe he just kept the hard charcoal in there loose – but then he glanced up at his face again, at the smudges near his mouth and all around his eyes, and he dismissed that disbelief.

Seemed to him that this guy was just weird. He leaned forward and a bony hand reached out to touch the charcoal, then the tin with the dark mixture of something he wasn’t sure he should touch, but he did anyway. Lips pulled into a pout, he touched a finger to the mixture and rubbed against it with his thumb. It was… creamy in texture. That made it worse.

He wiped his finger off on his wrist, leaving a gray streak behind. The barmaid had approached the table, wordlessly beckoned over by the older human, and he softened his expression to offer a slight smile. It turned awkward as his eyes flitted between her and the strange man, who had taken to picking at his teeth rather than replying. The drink that’d been set before him was pulled closer, and he nodded in polite (if slightly annoyed) agreement to the barmaid when she looked at him again. He knew that look – if this weirdo didn’t pay up when he needed to, then it was on the blond.

“I find lost things.”

Saza had almost forgotten that he’d asked. It drew his attention away from the girl, and he took a swig of his drink. Burned just as much as the last one… but at least he’d expected it this time. It still was enough to make him scrunch up his nose, and his blue eyes squint in protest. The man spat into his old glass before he reached for the next. Charcoal-smudged glass hesitantly taken, the serving girl took her leave, and Saza stared down into his drink for a moment before he realized that the man had spoken again.

Quiet, and gruff, and… Saza didn’t like that he’d separated people and bodies into two separate categories but he was going to leave that alone. He’d only ever seen a lifeless body once, and he wasn’t interested in thinking about it much.

“Right,” and he was quiet for a trill or two, before asking, “where are you from? I can’t place your–”

“Kalba!”

“–accent. What?”

Saza turned in his seat to call out in question. That had been… Dion? No, Dion was with Celina now, and Is’haaq was with those two older girls he couldn’t remember the names of. It was another human that called out to him again, short and stout, and that began walking over before Saza could object.

“Kalba,” repeated the boy, who might’ve been a few arcs older than himself at most. He was out of breath already, just from the little jaunt across the tavern floor.

“Come on, we’re gonna play some games.”

And by that, Saza knew he meant we’re going to act like we’re playing games but we’re really just going to drink a lot and pass out.

“Or are you… busy?”

Saza followed the boy’s gaze as it landed on Charcoal-Man, and he shook his head.

“I’ll be there,” he assured the older boy, and motioned for him to go. The curly-haired biqaj pushed out his chair and stood, drink in hand. The seat was pushed back into the table before he glanced at the older human again, and reached over to push the charcoal and tin back to him.

“Thanks for the drink,” said Saza, and he gave a genuine smile, “if you need your table watched again, I’ll be around. Hope you find some work.”

With a dip of his blond head, the young soldier turned around, and sipped at his drink as he returned to his friends.

[Pig Boy]

Ichabod

Experience: 15 no magic

Knowledge:

Skill Knowledge
Resistance x3
Detection x2
Linguistics: Common x2
Intimidation x1

Non-Skill
Biqaj
Nashaki

Renown: none

Skill Usage: Appropriate to level

Loot/Losses: none

Injuries/Conditions: none

Saza

Experience: 15 no magic

Knowledge:

Skill Knowledge
Detection: Signs of disinterest
Detection: Hygienic habits (poor)
Detection: Meaningful glances
Resistance: A stronger drink than expected
Resistance: The taste of straight liquor
Etiquette: Remaining polite in an odd situation
Etiquette: Determining rudeness vs. misunderstanding
Discipline: Waiting at a stranger's whim

Renown: none

Skill Usage: Appropriate to level

Loot/Losses: none

Injuries/Conditions: none

Comments: For what seems like a simple meet & greet in the darkened corner of a tavern, this was interesting. Ichabod's character is presented in a rich and interesting way, his desperation at finding a job and keeping his spot seems very important, and the narrative conveys his desperation very well. I find it interesting that Ichabod keeps charcoal around. But I guess every good drunk has their anti-hangover tricks. Or is it because he's afraid someone will poison him? I'm not sure but it was interesting the way it was left to chance.

Saza and his group of friends were interesting to read about as well. with the way they just happened through there on a social outing. Saza seemed weirded out by the strange drunk begging for a job. I found Saza very relatable, as if I was approached by someone like this, I'd think he was weird and walk away too.

Great writing all, enjoy the points/knowledges/etc.

If you have any concerns about this review, please PM me about them.