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

Barrow ota

[thereneverwas]

FIGHT fight FIGHT fight FIGHT

Here he is, the participant built like a brick shithouse and, when he's not smiling, about as scary as one after a night of collective binge drinking. Knuckles wrapped, shirt off, Barrow has already taken down one or two opponents with relatively minimal effort, and he's ready for more-- but if anyone steps in who's too small, or exceptionally female, they might get a shake of his head and a raising of his hands in surrender.

general carousing

Drinking liberally, making bets, playing cards, talking shit: Barrow is someone you want at a party, because he's quick to get loud but exceedingly slow to anger. He can be found here all night, having an excellent time on the whole.

Im dragging the skull in with me on this im not sorry

[reshapes]

The figure who steps into the other side of the ring is, for better or worse, neither too small or particularly femminine. It is, however, hard to say exactly who they are thanks to the cowl wrapped around the fighter's head and shoulders. They're tall, muscled in all the totally human places to be muscled, and if the general shape of their head under the cowl is weirdly and uniformly cylindrical then-- well, maybe that's why the cowl's there. The mean streets of Kirkwall don't always breed to prettiest specimens.

Under the cowl, safely tucked away from watching eyes, is a perfectly average pair of shoulders to go with the rest of the perfectly average body. On top of those shoulders, instead of a head sits an impenetrable jar with a possessed skull in it. But again, that's not important. No one has to know.

Similarly, questions like 'Hey Bartimaeus, how are you speaking if you haven't got a head with a mouth in it' aren't worth asking when he's already gotten to the trash talking portion of the evening: "All right, you big ugly slab. Lets see what you can do against a real fighter, eh?"

A little flat? Maybe. But lets be honest, this isn't really his kind of sport when you get right down to it. He's just doing this to prove a point.

[thereneverwas]

Having been stretching and riling up the crowd with his back to his opponent, Barrow turns around just in time to see the cowl come off and to be utterly, visibly baffled by what's standing in front of him.
He opens his mouth, closes it, glances around, and tries to catch Eshal's eye. Is this... is this a thing they're really doing, does he have to punch a jar,

[saam]

Let it be known that in the case of Barrow-Versus-Jar, Eshal comes down in favor of... Jar.

She makes a gesture with her hands that roughly translates to 'get on with it, then'.

[skulltasm]

"Well?! Are we dancing or fighting?" The voice sounds like Bartimaeus, if he were slinging shade from the bottom of a glass well. Playing to the words, Skull's borrowed body shuffles its feet back and forth rapidly, kicking up the dust from the bar room floor.

"C'mon, hit me! Right in the kisser! The first one's free!" And definitely not worth the cost of fixing your knuckles, Barrow-boy.

[reshapes]

To confirm this - no really, please punch the jar it would be funny -, the body begins weaving forward with that hopping gate and puts its fists up, one held high forward and the other lower and close to the body like an especially vintage (or futuristic; who can say in these troubling times?) pugilist.

[thereneverwas]

Barrow looks from Eshal to the... opponent in quiet dismay, but the people are here for a show, and a show is what they'll get. He takes up a sidelong stance himself, watching with a sigh through his nose while it-- he?-- dances around, waiting for it/him to draw near enough before he making a jab towards the ribcage.

He's not especially interested in shattering his hand today, or cutting it open, depending on how strong the glass is. It's too bad that's not the weirdest problem Barrow has at the moment.

[reshapes]

The blow lands with a smack of skin. The body says "Oof," quite loudly.

Let no one say Bartimaeus of Uruk isn't a good sport.

[skulltasm]

The skull clunks against the inside of the jar, echoing the body's oof a quintillionth of a second late. Hard to catch, even if you're looking.

"That wasn't the kisser."

carousing-ish

[unshut]

At some point after Barrow wins a fight and retires at least temporarily from the ring (shirt optional, thank you), a woman appears alongside him with a spare drink. Fitcher passes it to him, her own mug in her other hand.

"Consider this a thank you from Julius, my debt to whom I can now pay."

Re: carousing-ish

[thereneverwas]

The shirt has not been recovered, because why bother? He won a fight, he's about to go back in for another one, and that's a lot of effort that he doesn't feel like undergoing just to be considered decent.
Also, it's hot in here.

He takes the drink with a smile, raising it to clink against Fitcher's in greeting before he downs half of it in a single swig.

"Seems you made the right call."

[unshut]

"What can I say; I like to think I have a good sense for these things." Nevermind that she'd spent the last evening of cards dashing her way into a truly wretched amount of debt with the peers at the table. This is fighting. It's a different game all together.

With a crooked, flashing grin, Fitcher takes a slug from her own drink.

"Will you take another fight, and can you be convinced to throw it?"

[thereneverwas]

"Throw it? What do you take me for?"

He downs the rest of his drink and sets down the cup, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth as he turns to her.

"...against who?"

[unshut]

Good man.

"Someone you seem rather evenly matched with, or to have a slight edge over obviously. I've no idea what that means when it comes to this crowd though," she remarks, surveying the potential fighters. "Who do you think would be best?"

[thereneverwas]

"Maker, I don't know." He wipes his hand down his face, drawing his fingers over his scrubby beard, weathering the new intake of booze as it slams into his brain.

"But I've never done a day of someone else's work in my life." He claps her firmly, affectionately, on the shoulder. "No women unless they could kill me, no kids." He has the utmost respect for scrappy female combatants, but weight classes are a thing in modern fighting for a good reason.

[unshut]

"So our options are the big Avaar woman who, I should note, really does seem like could do it. Kill you, I mean."

She takes a prim sip from her mug. Just saying. You're a big lad, Barrow, but you're not that big.

[thereneverwas]

He angles his head to look over the indicated person, narrowing his eyes in scrutiny. Then, after deliberating, Barrow shakes his head.

"It'd be an insult to throw," he decides. "Look at her. She'd kill both of us if she knew."

here for carousing

[tender]

His next round is intercepted and delivered by a somewhat rumpled Derrica.

"You could have fought me, you know," she tells him, though she comes down well within both categories: too small and exceptionally female. Her tone now is mostly teasing as she claims the stool beside him. "I'd have been better sport than the jar."

[thereneverwas]

His hand has since been bandaged and splinted, but Barrow still holds it close to his chest, for once looking the part of the bad-tempered bruiser as he scowls out at the room from behind his mug of ale. He is clearly unamused by the comment about the jar (which he punched, of course), but his moment of unbridled rage has passed.

"Most would," he grunts, and takes a swig.

[tender]

"It was a thrilling match," she promises, conciliatory.

Perhaps now is not the time to needle him for waving her out of the ring. Derrica studies him for a moment, then points at his splinted hand.

"Is it serious?"

[thereneverwas]

Another grunt follows as he brings his hand in front of him, looking it over with a sigh.
"Nothing a little magic couldn't handle," he mumbles, "but for future reference, if they insist you punch a jar.

...don't do it."

[tender]

"I'll remember that."

Is the jar going to be an issue going forward? Derrica considers and discards the possibility, satisfied with the idea that the mysterious jar-headed fighter will continue to be someone else's problem. She holds out her own hands instead, beckoning.

"Do you want me to repair it for you?"

[thereneverwas]

"What, the jar?"
It takes him a moment to realize what she means, and Barrow remembers that mages can just be everywhere these days, doing their thing. He considers.
"...if you don't mind."

His hand is extended to her.

[tender]

"I think the jar is fine, unfortunately," Derrica tells him as she takes his hand into her own. "But here, this is just—"

Warmth spreads from her palms. It seeps into Barrow's hand, settles in the bone. There is a sensation of melting, and pressure, and then Derrica's hands lift and the pain is gone. She looks quietly satisfied with herself.

"There. As if nothing ever happened."

[thereneverwas]

A sigh escapes him as the healing power moves through his hand. Barrow hasn't been healed by a mage in years, and hasn't had the opportunity since leaving the Circle; it's not like one can just walk up to an apostate and ask them to fix a knife wound.

When she's finished, he extends his hand to flex it, smiling quietly. "You're too kind," he says, and sounds like he means it.