THE FIRST RULE ABOUT FIGHT CLUB IS THAT THIS ISN'T FIGHT CLUB

[saam]

WHO:Eshal and EVERYBODY, you're all invited. You don't have to have expressed interest oocly or icly before now to participate!
WHAT: The first inaugural Riftwatch underground boxing tournament... thing.
WHEN: Feel free to hit this up whenever, presumably it's taking place at various times over the month.
WHERE: The back room of the Boar & Bat pub.
NOTES: Violence! Gambling! Anything worse than that, I'll let you know.

The back room of the pub is no special beauty, but it's workable. A dirt floor, a bar with drinks and a bartender, and a circle drawn in the middle with chalk. Eshal is on the side, acting as referee for matches, and moving through the crowd in between bouts. She's convivial, crassly cheerful, and, at 6'2", impossible to miss.

But perhaps most notable is the sign stolen from the front, and pinned to the wall, in clear view of the crowd. Beneath it, someone has scrawled into the wall: LEAVE SOBER.

(credit to Beka for the wonderful sign!)

THE MATCHES

It's time to fight! The rules are simple, as outlined by Eshal and her booming voice at the beginning of every match:

No kicking. No punching below the belt. No hitting while they're down. Stop when the referee says so. First person who can't get back up after a five count loses.

She also introduces each participant to the crowd. She gives their name (or whatever name they gave her, if you want to go under a pseudonym), and a fact about them, perhaps ...a little made up. Nothing terrible, but always something to spice up the match. Are you fighting an elf? She may imply you have something against elves. Are you rich? She may imply your opponent has a grudge against Hightown. Little things.

(Feel free to godmod what she says as needed for comedy or plotting, but keep in mind it wouldn't be outright derogatory or obviously insulting. Just some slight implication to spice things up.)

THE BETTING

Are you a bookie? Are you making bets? Time to make some money.

Feel free to handwave who's fighting or who's the crowd favorite, what the odds are, etc. Don't get too bogged down in the details. Just remember: People love betting, and bookies get a cut. It pays to know the odds.

For those betting? Sometimes you win big. Sometimes you lose. Try and be polite about it.

THE SPECTATING

It's time to just sit back and watch the fight. Boo or cheer. Who's your favorite? Your least favorite?

Or maybe you're here for another reason. Gossip, making connections, pick-pocketing... Plenty of people here, plenty of connections to make... or you could just get drunk.

IN GENERAL

Hey, just have fun. In the future, there might be signups or more complex structures for the fights, but for now, let's just be chill and punch each other senseless.

Top level and comment around, fight whoever you want or handwave; there are presumably NPCs fighting and betting, make them up as needed for your threads. Please note if you're okay with threadjacking and etc.

Let me know if you need Eshal to step in as a referee (PM, whatever)! And note: She will not be fighting, just making herself very visible as the ref.

Comments

flint, ota

[katabasis]

pretty as.
Spite? Please, he hardly knows the meaning of the word. And as he'd said to the event's organizing - if he cared to watch people punch one another for sport, he hardly needed to look farther than the crew of his own ship.

It must therefore be every kind of happenstance which finds Flint in the back room of the Boar & Bat somewhere toward the evening's halfway point, having taken a seat practically beneath the posting with his own face and name on it. The floor of the makeshift ring is flecked with spit and the cast offs of bloody noses, and there's been enough drinking done and punches thrown that the volume of the assemblage has risen to be heard like a muffled shout from the street. Exactly when and under what circumstances he'd manifested there and who he might have arrived with are all unclear, but he has possession of both a bottle and cup and so clearly his reputation with the barkeep can't be as bad as all that.

Or maybe it's worse. Or maybe--

Crack! say knuckles and flesh. A whoop rises from half the spectators with the right betting sense. Flint pours himself another glass from the bottle.

wildcard.
(he's not fighting any of you losers, unless your name is luwenna coupe)

[saam]

At some point, Eshal finds him. She'd kind of been looking for him, since she got someone to read the sign, laughed her arse off, and stole it.

The fights have been good. It's been amazing to be back in her element in a way that doesn't rile up that old panic. As a result, she's a bit sweaty, a bit bloody, but completely alive. It's clear in her eye, her voice, even the way she holds herself. She feels electric.

She finds Flint, finally. She stands there, staring for a moment, face stuck in a greedy grin. "Good," she says in a voice she hopes Flint recognizes. "I was hoping you'd be prettier than the picture."

[katabasis]

Yes, well.

Even if he didn't, it'd be hard not to connect the dots. She's tall enough to be visible while announcing the matches from the room's center even over the heads of the baying crowd and from the margins of the room. He might know next to nothing about Eshal Fazon, but even he would bet it unlikely that she would surrender the management of her ring to someone else.

Qunlat in the mouth hardly means qunari in the four feet broad and horns sense.

In the ragged light of the Boar & Bat's back room, it's hard to say exactly what the line of his mouth is doing behind the shadow of his beard. But his grip on the bottle as he refills his cup is easy and he certainly sounds entertained.

"I see your project is going well."

[saam]

She lifts her hands up in an expansive shrug. "I know how to work a crowd. People like distractions. You add 'em up..."

She snaps her fingers, gesturing to the excitement around them. "The fights before were so rigged, nobody could care. These people are new. Interesting. People do not like change. But they do like new things."

[katabasis]

"Ah, novelty," he says, lowering his attention to fill the cup. "Thus each man ever flees himself."

It's said with the self-effacing temperament of a man who knows he's being both a pretentious asshole and that he's not exactly immune to the implication. He's here, isn't he? Righting the bottle, Flint looks back to her and offers the mug.

"Is it offensive to assume you won't mind sharing?"

[saam]

Eshal smiles, and turns so she can lean against the wall with Flint, stooping a little to meet him better in the noise of the crowd. "Didn't you know?" She says with a laugh, "under the Qun, we share everything."

She takes the mug happily.

ALSO: i do what i want

[kalt]

"You're the captain who isn't supposed to be in here." The resemblance to the poster is un-fucking-canny. Perhaps, based on her show for the evening, it might seem as though "the Princess of the Avvar" was here to make something of that. Her entirely languid approach, however, belies this.

"Did you come to keep an eye on things?" her smile is easy to take as insulting.

[katabasis]

Then it's a good thing he isn't easily insulted. Flint squints up at her, pausing briefly in the act of refilling his cup from the bottle. It's a very summary examination - short to the point that it may as well border on disregard. He tops off the cup and rights the bottle.

"I came here to have a drink."

[kalt]

"Exactly where you weren't wanted," she supplies, on his behalf. She toys the rim of her own drink, making it spin on its base. The liquor disinterested her, it was really only a mild distraction in the face of so much otherwise interesting stimulation. She also appreciates his general disinterest in her, it both pleases and nettles. That he's above gawking at her in wonder and maybe fear, but also she doesn't like to be ignored. It makes her burn hot under her skin.

"Are you going to fight?" Soft questions, still probing the edges of things.

[katabasis]

"I don't think so." This said over the rim of the cup, a half beat before he takes a drink from it. His attention has strayed past her to the bout, then slides back. "Will you be going again?"

He'd seen her last match. How could he not? She's a big woman - hard to miss the swings when they originate from over most people's heads.

[kalt]

She glances at the ring over her shoulder, cursory through a loose fall of dark hair. She observes the energy of the crowd, they still mostly seemed to be having fun. Which she finds a terrible shame.

"Maybe."

If she feels they need to be riled, if she feels they need to see some real blood, some real damage.

"It's fun enough."

[hornswoggle]

"It's a charming likeness," John says, lowering himself down beside him. "I'm thinking it would look well in your cabin aboard the Walrus."

What John does not say is that this night has been good for the men. Flint must know as much; they've both been very aware of the restlessness among the crew. What hunting they do is not quite enough.

He holds his cup out as someone shrieks in the ring. That's going well, it seems.

[katabasis]

"Is it?" His smile amounts to a crooked pull at the mouth's corner, but there's a distinct dark humor the spreads through to the other lines of his face. "I hadn't noticed."

The trajectory of the bottle alters to accommodate the second cup. It's some inexpensive spirit, acrid enough to cut summer heat and the sweat smell of the public house's roiling back room.

[hornswoggle]

John chuckles, low enough to be lost in the clatter and scuffle of the crowd around them.

"Planning on getting in the ring?"

The kind of question John knows full well will be answered with a no.

"I think you'd get fair odds. We could make a bit of coin."

Is this a glimpse into John's past or just the way his mind has always works? Hard to say. Harder to get him to confirm one way or the other as well. He splits his attention, Flint in his peripheral vision, eyes on the ring.

hello

[limier]

"Not so bloody as Minrathous," This underground fight club doesn't have Nell in the ring. She doesn't wait for invitation to sit, the bottle in her own hand crooked toward him in greeting. "She has a hand for it."

Her expression is steady, for someone drinking without a glass. Without uniform, either, or sign of rank; anonymous in the trappings of Kirkwall's idle. She could be anyone, if anyone walked like a soldier and smelled like spent lightning.

Not anonymous. Just striving.

[katabasis]

"I wasn't there." In Minrathous, with the Inquisition. As if he's never seen a fight there and doesn't know how bloody it can go.

He could make it sound like the very end of a very short conversation if he wanted to. There are other tables she could choose to occupy. There might even be someone here she hasn't hit in the face that she might loiter at the elbow of. But there's no point to the pettiness of it. She left; he didn't. So:

With a nod to Eshal where she stands, broad and ready to intervene, at the fringe of the fight, he starts to say-- Something. Then the woman in question barks something at someone and it carries, so he amends to, "And the voice."

[doneisdone]

"GO ON," barks a low woman's voice, punching a pointed fist in the air as she plunks into a seat nearby, crossing one skinny leg over the other as she begins to thumb through a veritable pile of betting slips. Teren is doing well for herself tonight.

Glancing to one side just to make sure nobody's going to try and lift her winnings, she catches sight of Flint and smirks. "Thought you weren't allowed," she observes.