[OPEN]

[nonvenomous]

WHO: Richard Dickerson, Ellis, YOU?
WHAT: Dirty jobs + some closed starters + catch all.
WHEN: Cloudreach
WHERE: Docks/Lowtown/Gallows/Wildcard
NOTES: Additional starters pending. Action spam and prose are both fine.

Blending in if at the Viscount’s Head Tavern

Alternatively:

Scouting with or bothering him while he’s at Any Other Tavern

Richard has brought his journal with him, as if he expected to be here alone. The fact that he isn’t here alone has not deterred him from opening it and getting to work -- short, sharp strokes of ink on the paper at the point of his quill.

The tavern is as noisy as it smells like it should be, crowded, sticky tables and the stink of salt in the air.

“What would you like to talk about?” he asks, without glancing up from his work.

This doesn’t have to be awkward. If nothing else, the rate at which they’re drinking to keep pace with the local color should see to that.


Wildcard

Throw us somewhere or HMU and we can brainstorm.

Comments

DOCKS [closed - ellis]

[nonvenomous]

It’s too damp to feel warm. Mist from an earlier downpour lingers over standing water, fresh runoff still prattling through gutters into the street. Now they are in possession of classified information, and for Richard’s part -- more inebriated than he’d like to be. The last ferry left an hour ago.

Staggering their exits had seemed the thing to do. For discretion’s sake.

No more than two blocks walk out into the harbour night, Richard Dickerson has been pinioned against a wall, hood thrown back, scraping grime off the cobblestones with his bony face after a brief struggle. He is outnumbered and outmatched. It’s often like this.

There are four of them -- two with sword and dagger to him on the wall, and a third kicking through the scattered belongings of his upended bag.

The fourth is busy nursing a bite wound, right hand gripped hard over left. The sheathe at his belt is empty. Blood wells through his fingers and pitter patters into the puddle at his feet.

He swears under his breath.

bangs open door to this thread

[heorte]

It can't have been very much time between Richard's leaving and Ellis' following. That's the first thing that comes to his mind when he hears the sound of a scuffle ahead of him. To Richard's credit, his assumption isn't that Richard's being mugged, but that Richard's walked into a situation where someone else is being mugged.

Whatever it was, it's gone badly.

But on the bright side, everyone's occupied with their success that it leaves Ellis a clear opening. He approaches at a run, winding up and swinging his mace down onto the scavenging third with a terrible crunch that lays the unfortunate man down to the pavement.

"Let him up," he says, voice sharp, as he steps over the contents of Richard's bag. "If you start running you won't join your friend on the ground."

[nonvenomous]

There’s a final destination quality to the wet one-two impacts of mace to bone and meat to street. On the wall, Richard twists his chin around one way and then the other to see, like a cat caught in a conibear trap. His eyes stand out light against the city muck. So do his teeth, when he finally starts spitting his way through a spell. The language is hissing, unfamiliar.

”Oi! What the fuck, Benny!” shrill, from one of Dick’s captors on the wall, “You’re supposed to be lookin’ out, Benny!” indignant, from the other.

The bloke who’s been bitten -- presumably Benny -- makes a slippery, fumbling grab for the empty space where a blade would go on his belt, finds nothing, and turns to flee. The sound of his boots pelting away down the block is the exclamation point to Ellis’ warning.

The two robbers that remain curse him in unison.

The larger of the pair pivots with his short sword as if to charge in, only to immediately get a better bead on the big picture of who and what Ellis is. His footwork -- not shabby at all -- stutters nervously into a half step back instead. He hesitates to the tune of struggle on the wall behind him, and scrambles wordlessly away to follow after Benny.

In the same beat, the robber still on Richard drops onto his back as if electrocuted, veins pulsing black through his exposed flesh. He screams in the half second it takes Dick to turn and stamp on his face.

[heorte]

The urge to step back sparks. Ellis is alive because of that instinct, that warns caution in the face of the unknown. The black pulse of poison beneath the skin of the man on the ground is unfamiliar, but after a half-second of assessment Ellis steps forward, one hand out to stop Richard before his foot comes down again.

"Let them run."

In a way, all Ellis had done was provide a moment of distraction. That's all it had taken to let Richard gain the upper hand. That's admirable, no matter the unidentified means he'd used to do it.

But more importantly, Richard's pack and it's contents are still strewn across the pavement. The man beneath Richard's boot has a bloody smear across his face. Ellis points downwards at him with his mace.

"Take your friend and go."

Ellis will have a little regret about that later; he'd come down so hard that it'll be the whole of some healer's night to put back together the shattered mess he'd made of that man's shoulder.

[nonvenomous]

The bloom of adrenaline impulse that drove Dick’s boot down in the first place flashes to Ellis, and quenches on contact.

He’s done.

Bloodied and greasy with fear sweat, Dickerson nods as he reaches back to steady himself against the same wall. Paired fingers pried in deep under the collar of his armor find the papers he stowed there earlier, now damp. He’s still breathing hard, blood roaring in his ears.

Between them, at the end of Ellis’ mace, the last conscious combatant hobbles painfully to his knees, and then to his feet. Blood trickles from his nose first, then his eyes, then his ears.

He claws over into his companion to shake him awake, and together they stumble into the first steps of a simpering retreat.

A dropped pen skitters to the walk in their wake.

[heorte]

For a few moments, there's silence but for the sound of Richard panting, the unsteady footfalls of their retreating assailants. Ellis watches them go as he replaces his mace, then crosses slowly towards Richard.

"How bad?" comes the first question, before he amends, "Will you let me have a look?"

The question about the papers, about what else had happened, can wait a moment.

What language was that lurks in the back of his mind, stalling the bigger questions about what exactly Richard had wrought with what had likely been magic.

[nonvenomous]

“Nothing grievous.” Salt gravels at his gratitude, and prickles in the effort he makes to square upright. It’s very early into this exchange for resentment to taint his relief.

“Thanks to you.”

Up front and at a glance, Richard has taken a standard beating: his lip is split, and there are bloody cuts and scrapes where the prow of his brow, nose and cheek met the wall. Most of the blood is from a knock he took upside the back of his head -- the glistening mat of it egged up and easy to see.

He tolerates inspection visual or physical with the reserve of the freshly embarrassed, ale still sharp on his breath when he finally musters a more genuine:

“Thank you.”

[heorte]

The gratitude is unnecessary, but Ellis doesn't say as much. Between them are two brief points of contact: Ellis's hand on Richard's arm, the brief graze of fingers at the fringe of Richard's hair.

"We'll get you sorted," he says instead, quieter. "Head wounds almost always look worse than they are."

And if they're bad, it becomes obvious very quickly.

"Have you lost anything?"

Or a better question: has anything from his sack broken?

Maybe there's no point in being polite about the whole thing, but Ellis has less inclination to pry. There are secrets he has always wanted to keep to himself, and it seems unfair to demand answers when he doesn't care to offer any in return. He draws back a step, giving Richard breathing room, though his mace still swings from one hand in case a second cluster of robbers decides to try their luck.

[nonvenomous]

It turns out that earnest gratitude at this range is at least as uncomfortable as being robbed.

Fleeting as contact is, Richard prickles into a shiver, tension buckled into an awkward twist of his arm just as he’s released. It’s a little rude -- but more in the vein of a cat wriggling away from a gloved hand than a crocodile snap. Blood is already cooling tacky in his hair and under his collar; he scrubs a sleeve at the pull of it under his chin, and looks down to the scatter of his belongings through the wet and the muck.

His inkwell has shattered, obviously.

“Some coin.”

There are books, a pair of journals, both damp -- he stoops to collect those first. There’s a ruler, a pouch, various academic accoutrement and a wet cloth he turns and crouches to draw up out of a puddle.

He sniffs it before using it to wipe his face, and around the scruff of his neck.

“Nothing important.”

There, with him dropping it (plop) back into the street, it’s easy to see that there is a dagger buried in his back. The grip is stuck in like the butt of a pushpin, pinning his cloak up into boiled leather at an oblique angle. Blood pulses out around the blade when he pushes back up to stand.

[heorte]

There's a split second before the dagger registers. Momentarily satisfied with his assessment of Richard's injuries, Ellis had turned his gaze downward at the sodden collection of items ripped free of Richard's bag. As his eyes raise, alarm passes through him, urgency spiking.

"Stop moving," he says, though they're going to have to start moving right away if they're doing to do anything about the injury. Ellis would have assumed the armor had stopped the blade if it weren't for the blood, spreading thickly outward. Richard's lack of reaction isn't reassuring. Shock does that to a man. Ellis knows this.

"Your back—" Ellis starts, then gives up, pulling off his own cloak. "I won't remove it, but I can staunch the bleeding. We'll have to go directly to the infirmary."

Which Ellis will shuttle him to, if need be. He's already prepared to sacrifice the cloak, reaching to turn Richard accordingly to get at the injury.

[nonvenomous]

Stop moving. Richard stops moving, books and supplies stacked semi-neatly in his hands. His gloves are dark with the sop he’s been pawing around in, his pause expectant.

Putting together context clues in this state is a big ask.

It takes him a moment of reading Ellis up and down for him to crane a look under his elbow, and then back over his shoulder, mild but direct in his disobedience. He angles himself away from that first reach as he replays what he remembers of the fight for himself -- scuffling feet, the pop of finger bones between his teeth and the dull pang in his back.

“Mm,” he says. That does make sense.

“The ferry has gone.” Logistically speaking. Also: “I would prefer not to have this included in official reporting.”

[unshut]

Fitcher has not brought a book with her. Candidly, she's brought very little outside of her sparkling personality, a small belt knife, and a modest sum of drinking money (she has stopped carrying more on her person, as the temptation to indulge in dice or cards tends to be ever present in certain Kirkwall taverns and boredom makes a willing victim out of just about anyone). With only the subject of drink to occupy herself, she has promptly forged ahead and contrived to already be on her second cup of suspiciously flat ale.

"Anything but news of the war, I suppose. I don't know enough about boats to keep up with the dockside gossip, and I've never been to Orlais and so can hardly be expected to know anything about the front line effort there." There is a bard - the playing kind - there on the far side of the cramped tavern. It's too loud to hear what performance they're attempting, but she's trying very hard to read the lad's lips. "We could always play a traveling game. 'I see something starting with the letter T'; 'It's that terrible beard over there,' and so on. Something like that."

[nonvenomous]

“Is subjectivity allowed in this game?” Richard pauses in the scratching of his pen, brows briefly knit in doubt of his own spelling. He leans back a few degrees to better see. “I might rate the same beard as ‘passable,’ or even ‘mediocre.’” A single match could take hours.

When he finally looks up to her, it’s in mock challenge of the logistics.

He strikes through what he’d just written, lays the pen across its well, and reaches for his cup.

He’d kept up with her well enough for the first round, but is already falling behind in the second, breathing deep before he sips. It’s fine.

“I was thinking it might be interesting to catalogue the nature of the unusual dreams experienced by some among our number over the winter. To review for any throughlines of concern.”

Definitely not just to have a three ring binder of everyone’s personal baggage.

[unshut]

Her head comes eagerly around as if on a swivel. The cup is set aside.

"I had no idea you were so interested in arcane scholarship, Richard."

[nonvenomous]

Oh, ok.

“I had no idea you were.”

He pauses the beat necessary to unhitch himself from the thought of pressing into that instead, and sets his cup aside also.

“I wouldn’t consider it arcane study so much as an attempt to identify the intent, if there was one.”

GALLOWS [closed - loxley]

[nonvenomous]

Loxley will be coming home to the Gallows tonight -- Richard has gone so far as to inquire after any messages received to the contrary.

It occurs to him late into the night -- as he sits and wastes away at the table in their shared quarters -- that a last minute missive could still come through with the last ferry. Loxley might have found his way into somebody else’s bed in Kirkwall, or been arrested for vigilantism, or anything else sufficiently dashing. He, Richard Dickerson, the human rifter, probably wouldn’t receive word until the next morning.

The corked bottle of ale he’s staring at past the raised edge of his book doesn’t have the answers.

Neither does the garter snake winding between candles and empty cups. He waits for her to start winding down one of the table legs towards his cot to lift her back to his collar instead. You know, somewhere it’s safer and more normal for a snake to hang out.

”A few more pages,” he promises her, in abyssal. Then he’ll call it a night and weigh out whether this can wait another month or two, actually.

[charmoffensive]

Eventually, the peaceful silence gives way to footfalls loud on wooden flooring, and the scrape of a key in the lock of their room. On the field, Richard knows Loxley to be quiet when he wants to be, not just lightfooted but in the silent and patient care he takes with a troublesome lock. Existing in the same living space gives him new insights into how he conducts himself when their lives aren't actively imperiled.

The door swings open. It's been raining for much of the evening, but most of it had slid right off treated leather by the time Loxley enters the room. Careless noise aside, he is returning sober -- a dark ferry ride in this weather will have a bracing effect even if he had been drinking -- and in decent, if weary spirits.

"One day," he says, upon spotting Richard by the table, "I'm going to open the door to riotous revelry. Or perhaps a dead body, throat sliced open, that we'll need to dispose of in the harbour."

He sets about shucking off his coat.

"Just for a change of pace."

[nonvenomous]

What Loxley opens the door to is the sight of Richard sizing him up immediately for sobriety from his seat at the table. When the score there is higher than expected, he performs a second sweep -- more comprehensive.

Checking for injuries.

“You won’t.”

For Dick’s part, he’s dressed down for the hour, book closed and placed aside. His jacket is open over a loose tunic, and he looks leaner than is typical without benefit of the usual armor or cloak to bulk out his frame. He is not wearing shoes.

Something stopped him when he was nearly ready for bed, and sat him down at this table instead. His head turns to follow Loxley’s shucking.

“I need to speak to you.”

[charmoffensive]

The sound Loxley makes in response to this first bit has a bit of a never say never tone to it, hanging up his coat. Unbuckling his belt and the heavy blade that hangs from it, which he gathers in a bundle around when Richard states that this evening has more structure in it than Loxley's own plans of light chattery en route to bed.

There are no visible injuries, but there's a little caution in his movements for what is likely to be a stock standard bruising beneath his light leathers. He sits, and stiffly crosses an ankle over his knee so as best to unbuckle the sheathed dagger strapped there.

"That sounds ominous," he says. "If it's that any of our party members have arrived, tell me in the morning, if you'd be so kind."

[nonvenomous]

“It was intended to.”

For all that his expression is impossible to read, he makes clear note of the dagger Loxley is working to unfasten at his ankle. His eyes are clear, and kind more by virtue of the spark and color than they are the crow’s feet that frame them.

There is bruising, also -- a few scrapes still healing over from a recent scrap in Lowtown. Nothing new, or surprising.

“I’ve been lying to you,” he says, once he’s looked up again. “My name isn’t Richard Dickerson.”

[charmoffensive]

Leather slithers out from buckle and Loxley looks up at Richard, a pause before he goes and sets his dagger down on the table next to the tangle of belt and sword. Incidentally, this is how negotiations are conducted in the underworld -- at least, the corners of the underworld that are simpler and governed by blades.

But there's the beginnings of a smile on Loxley's face as he says, "But it's such a strong name," before he decides that Richard isn't fucking with him, and the humour is shortlived. "What is it, then?"

[nonvenomous]

“I know,” Richard waits for Loxley to settle his dagger before he reaches to lift the ale between them by the neck, “that’s why I chose it.” He twists out the cork, and chokes up on the bottle to pour himself a cup.

“My name is Zseiless.”

None of the sibilants are silent.

[charmoffensive]

Concealing names isn't, in Loxley's books, such a terrible thing. That he adopted a new one and has used it ever since doesn't feel like deceit, and Richard's ties to the underworld might nudge his imagination in that direction. There are a great many reasons one might assume a different identity.

That's a weird name, though.

"Zseiless," he repeats. There is a wariness thrummed through his manner, now, but more bracing for impact of more information. "That's unique."

[nonvenomous]

Dick sets the bottle back between them, within Loxley’s reach. He places the cork down after it, eye contact cool and direct.

“It’s a Yuan-ti name.”

And so not very unique at all, actually.

“Snake people,” he adds helpfully, just in case.

[charmoffensive]

Loxley takes the bottle of ale, pouring his own glass. That there is no strong reaction immediately means that he has to make a History check think to what he's ever heard of Yuan-ti, about 'snake people', but--

"You're not human," he concludes, but says it a little like he's testing to see if he's got the wrong end of the stick, here. Maybe he was raised by snake people.