» Thu Jun 30, 2011 5:57 am Chapter 1:
Dobro Cobanin leans over the bar in the low, cool, murk of the Mershead Cantina, hiding from the tyrannical noon swelter with a glass of cheap wine. The Legionnaire especially loathed Sun’s Height in Senchal, just in general terms of personal proclivities, being himself a corn-fed, sheep-shearing Colovian lad, ‘where the men are men, and so are the women!’ as the old saying goes.
Thin, dusty fingers of sunlight reach into the cantina room from small arched windows along the south wall. Bundles of garlic and eucalyptus hung from exposed timbers in the plaster ceiling to keep away the Ghaa’la flies, the floor thick with silt that cakes onto boots and hems. Owner and operator, Dagbert, a squat Breton missing teeth but claiming Nedic royal lineage, wipes down glasses with a dirty rag while humming the first few bars of Wayrest’s anthem over and over.
At Dobro’s right hand is tent-mate and drinking-buddy Chargook gro-Wogh, a real artist with the two-handed spear who claims to have gorgeous Breton wife waiting for him back home in the Dragontails. Like all good Cyrodiified Orcs he mostly drinks wine, albeit by the jug.
They’re both outfitted in the standard legion complement of leather-backed steel armor, compulsory wear for all the 112th’s enlisted men when dealing with the general public, as per Special Mandate from the Legion’s Legatus, so as to Impress The Enduring Invincibility of Our Glorious Empire In Whatever Passes For Hearts & Minds Amongst These Feral Beasts. They would regard this as humorous if it didn’t mean boiling alive inside equipment ostensibly designed to save their lives.
Mercifully, they were assigned an easy night patrol around the Port Authority. Though even with the sea breeze, it’s still uncomfortably humid in the armor. But at least they don’t often have to deal with the cats, thus do they raise their first drinks of the day in praise of Stendarr. The second round usually goes out to the poor buggers working Out There during the day, either bored and literally baking on a dull rampart beat, or nearly dying of heat-stroke while in pursuit of yet another Suthay fruit-stall-filcher.
A Cathay-raht slinks in through the open doorway, moving to the bar with nearly silent grace despite being of nearly equal with Chargook in terms of mass. Its fur is a creamy orange interrupted with mottled black spots. It wears nothing save for an ample hunter-green shawl drawn around it, concealing the entirety of its torso – the exposure of which the Khajiit regard as the ultimate vulgarity.
It saddles up to the bar, at a right angle to the Colovian and Orsimer. It lays a few drakes on the counter purrs gravelly at Dagbert “This one should like the Arak, in small glass with the water”. Dagbert sweats; The Mershead is found (typically by mistake) at the end of a blind alley in the maze of storehouses and grain magazines of the city’s eastern docks. Its clientele is predominately human, working class Nineist, and xenophobic despite themselves being the xenos – such that it’s normally avoided by the Khajiit.
But the place is nearly dead and Dagbert’s not one to speak his mind when faced with hulking jaguar-folk, and so serves it without issue.
Dobro sniffs the air, catches a whiff of something raw in his nostril that makes his face pucker. “You smell that?” he whinges to Chargook with an armor-plated nudge.
That of course being the familiar odor of Khajiiti cuisinie, in this case: breakfast. The Cats are semi-nocturnal by nature and usually start their day right after noon, with a big family meal. This means thousands of chimneys belching smoke and the aroma of food prep.
Which further means a lot of queasy foreigners, as pretty much all non-Khajiit (Cyrodiils and Argonians especially) find the smell revolting. Dobro is no expection. Usually at the six-drinks-deep watermark he’ll bray that the stink makes the heat almost bearable by comparison.
Dobro’s at the nine-deep mark, working on his tenth, just so we’re clear.
The Khajiit’s ear [censored] but it otherwise makes no response. Chargook isn’t even paying attention, instead staring drunkenly at the collection of scraqes, gouges, and chips in the bar’s oak wood. It seems to him to be a catalog of every possible type of weapon-trauma known to man or mer. A manic zoetrope of drunks attacking the counter with exotic weaponry plays in his head.
“Well, I tell you Char,” Dobro slurs to his partner “I’m [nummit] ready to go back to civilization.”
Chargook grunts in response, still not really listening.
“ Yup. Be honest with you, I been pining for sweet, simple, Colovia. The highlands, the weald, gold coast.”
“…”
“Land of Soldiers, Saints, and Illiterate sheep-buggering shepherds. Birthplace of Talos, mind you. Don’t let those hacks in the chapel lie to you. He was born in Chorrol, to chamberpot -cleaners. Whydah’ think they call him Septim, eh?”
“…”
“Righto. Lovely Colov’. Where the sun doesn’t conspire to murder, the bugs don’t outweigh the livestock, and you’re not up to your garters in blood-lung -infested strays that cook what-in-all-likelihood-is-rotting-excrement for breakfast. “
The Cathay-raht growls audibly at this, its ears folding flat against his head.
So Dobro thought it wise to taunt him further with the impeccable logic of a man already half in the bag.
“Oh, whassa matter, [censored]-cat? Y’itching bad? Need a flea bath?”
Dagbert promptly takes the cat’s drakes and retreats to his backroom.
Chargook meanwhile is imagining that a set of what appear to be axe-marks were generated by a bug-eyed Bosmer in the throes of a three day skooma-binge attacking the counter with a hatchet, trying to kill swarms of hallucinated spiders.
“Khajiit do not abide parasites on the fur,” The Cat snarls back “this one should wish that we likewise did not abide them on the soil.”
Dobro scowls, slowly threading his fingers around the hilt of his Legion general-issue short sword. The Cathay-raht tenses at the elbows, his forearms bulging and the intent to pop his claws engraved into his face.
They trade savage glances and down their respective poisons.
An ear-splitting silence fills the room. Chargook would feel terribly awkward if he wasn’t totally absorbed in mentally picturing the lovebird-culprits who delicately carved ‘Thurindil + Isolde forever’ into the bar.
The Khajiit turns to go, spitting on the ground in tandem as per superstitions the breadth of which there simply isn’t time to go into. Whatever the context, to Dobro’s wine-addled farmboy sensibilities, this forms a grave insult.
“Aye!” he grunts at the cat, causing it to turn back with its brow circumflexed with curiosity.
“You would have further words with this one, Empire-Man?”
“Oh, I’ll have words for’ye. Words like: Sword. Stabbing. One. Dead. Kitty.”
The Cathay-raht is motionless. Dobro tears out his blade and hobbles onto his feet with more heavy-booted stomps than should be necessary. He takes a long stride forward. His knees wobble, his whole person sways. The Khajiit pops its claws and assumes a defensive stance, foot-paws wide, the left hand-paw far out front with the right directly under his chin.
“This one will advise you only once, Empire –Thjizzh, It is accomplished with the Goutfang, the Whispering Claw, and many other…how to say…Technique-Of-Struggle. Be wise; cover your blade.”
Dobro snorts derisively as he moves the silvered spatha slowly back and forth, tracing a defensive arc in the air. “Don’t worry, flea-bag” he slurs “I’ll tuck it in up to the hilt in yer furry little tummy.”
Chargook speculates on whether a peculiar dimple in the wood is a Daedric rune or just a particularly gnarly knot-hole.
Hours seem to pass in the span of terse, hostile seconds. The cat’s eyes are gold orbs with black razor-pupils, betraying nothing. Dobro’s own blue-gray peepers are wild and bloodshot, trying to get read on the kitty, some real or imagined hole in his defense. The slight twitch in his forepaws. The rise and fall of his chest with each breath. A flicker in its ear, momentarily distracted by the booming call of a fish-monger out in the street.
The Colovian figures that’s the aural-distraction is the best he’s going to get. So he pivots off his left foot, the start of a lunge, but his legs have other plans. The knees buckle. He tumbles forward, landing hard with a heavy metallic thud. His sword stabs terra firma harmlessly.
Dobro tries to hoist himself up, but the combination of heavy armor and intoxication makes quick and deft recovery impossible, his gauntlets and greaves sliding around in the silt, unable to find even meager purchase. He looks rather like a turtle on its back, only on his stomach, covered in metal, and cursing wildly. The Khajiit just laughs, says something dismissive in Ta’agra, and walks off – spitting as it whirls about-face.
Dobro showers it with harsh invectives amidst the terrible struggle to regain his footing, but nothing quite sticks and it departs into harsh daylight with the valediction “May you walk, with good-footing, on warm sands...”
Chargook is utterly confounded by a long triplet set of claw-marks in the wood. They’re too big to be any kind Khajiit. Besides, they have five claws, not three. Dragons do, it occurs to the Orc, but then they’re pretty thin in these parts. Not really known for being tavern-goers either.
