Thar Shaddin

Shann just as quickly lost interest with the situation as he had been drawn to it in the first place. What he had thought might have been an entertaining conflict of interest, much like he had had earlier, turned out to be nothing more than a man and a gnome arguing over over Who knows what.

Unless the place served drinks, which he was beginning to doubt with this talk of random letters and numbers, he really didn't care what was going on or even considered staying around long enough to find out the cause of the argument. He had never been one to get in the middle of problems that didn't concern him and seeing as how he didn't look to gain anything out of this situation, it didn't look as if he was willing to change his tactics anytime soon.

As far as the gnome spatting accusations at Shann and the others, Shann simply took it in stride. "Look buddy, I don't know this guy, I don't know you and unless somebody is buying a round of drinks for the lot of us, I'm not getting involved." He ignored the small metal piece that fell short of its given target and landed in a muddy puddle with a kerplop. For the time being it wasn't worth it to start another fight. And for what? There were no ladies in this crowd, he had not done anything to upset any of these men, there was no point in taking another fist to the face in one day.

Zain had taken the gnomes threats more seriously. He knew that the chances of them making it out of one fight in a day were slim enough as if was, but to be able to walk away from a second in the same day, well he had his doubts about that. He didn't want to draw unnecessary attention to himself, so instead he just quickly and very slowly made his way to the back of the group so that Shann and his new friend could handle the situation or act as a barrier should things get uglier.

Ko was mildly impressed by the level of stupidity displayed by the gnome. Who knew one of the most eccentric and intelligent races could turn to such backward reasoning? It was impressive, in its own way, and he suspected it might be the power of the dirty little village. Best he not stay too long, as well, lest he adapt to that idiocy and start acting like some backward hick himself. But, stupid or not, gnomes could be charmed like the rest, and as long as Ko didn't look at him directly -- just in case, since gnomes were assuredly not known f or their beauty -- he supposed he could settle this.

"Oy, oy lugger, take a breather," Ko drawled out to the gnome, setting a hand on Shann's shoulder and squeezing it firmly before removing his hand and dipping it into his own pocked, sifting for the bishuu dust.

The gnome drew breath to go in on a tirade, and Ko let the bishuu drop from his fingers, where it caught the air and spread out in a brief sparkle. That'd be a hoot if Ko and Shann wound up breathing it. He smiled down at the gnome, staring at the thing's mop of hair (which was actually rather well cared for, if smudged with grease, but since Ko was and had been a working man at heart he didn't begrudge the guy a bit of messiness). "Nah, nah, I ain't got the slaps for ya. None a us do. Sounds like that guy's a dunder iff'n y'ask me. Tch, I wouldn't get caught in a bar with that one, pretty stupid hey?"

The gnome, outraged and insulted by Lawfin, was giving a look at the bystanders that promised all sorts of holy hell and divine retribution if they were trying to sneak one past him, but by centimeters he relaxed at Ko's easy and slurred words, at his carefully sympathetic expression. The gnome nodded grudgingly, and stalked closer to Shann to retrieve the lug nut without apologizing for the attempted injury. "Can't help but get cheated in this town. It was a mistake to come here. Only cretins pass through." The gnome did not apologize for the general insult, either, and the crowd muttered.

Well, this was dry tinder ready to burn. Ko looked at Shann from the corner of his eye, and didn't see the boy. Well, the boy could keep himself damn well in one piece if he was going to sneak away like a coward. Ko restrained a frown, and instead gave a lop-sided smile to the gnome.

"Well well, that's maybe sure, but I can still find my dick to piss with and catch up the ladies' skirts so it's a happy day, hey? Yeah?"

The gnome was not overly impressed with Ko's crude words. There were a few snickers from the gathered crowd, which had begun to bleed its individual members as the promise of a fight slowly dwindled and died. The few that remained were mostly pissed at the gnome for several fuzzy reasons, the lot of them not the brightest of souls and not taking kindly to the gnome's callous words.

The gnome grunted, so Ko continued blithely, "But y'see, we're fresh in and mighty thirsty. Might be you willin' to take us to the good bars in this shithole and we'll buy a round in honor of your troubles, ayeah?"

The gnome softened at the promise of drink, having needed a good stiff one since he'd had the misfortune of waking that morning, so he nodded stiffly and locked up his shop, still muttering. He unwittingly led them the same direction Lawfin had taken, which no one noticed, so it went unremarked upon for the time being.

Lawfin walked back to the entrance of the city, completely forgetting about the fight, only to find that his horse was missing. He thought to himself, 'It was that damn gnome, I know it, doesn't know how to let things go.'

Now left with the option to walk, he decided to stay in the city for a little while, looking for a bar to get drunk at. After walking back, he took his first right, seeing a bar sign a little down the street. The bar looked pretty good compared to the rest of the buildings. No broken pieces or chipped paint. Lawfin decided this was a good place to spend the money he was supposed spend on the machine on beer instead.

Lawfin walked into the bar and sat on one of the several bland wooden stools in front of the bar, not noticing the two strangers or the gnome that had been walking his way before he turned, and ordered some beer, intent on getting drunk, telling stories about how dumb gnomes are to the bartender.

Shann had noticed the way Vex had looked at the boy. He held that look on his face that one saved for those that they despised or detested. It wasn't that Vex disliked the boy, or at least not as far as Shann knew, but it was his actions or lack thereof that had drawn out that look. Shann noticed the way that others looked at the boy and judged him. They saw him as a coward and weakling and although these things may have been true about the boy, Shann didn't like it.

He wasn't one to make a point of the way that others looked at or thought of the boy, those were things he could do nothing about. Well if he tried to do something about it, it would most likely just cause far more trouble than there had been from the beginning, but inwardly Shann just had had trouble dealing with it.

Shann wanted to help the boy. He wanted to somehow fix whatever it was that was broken, and give him the normal life that he deserved, but he just didn't know how to do that. In a way Shann felt almost a fatherly kind of love and need to protect the boy, even though he would never admit it, so when somebody gave off a negative look or judged the boy such as Vex was doing, Shann felt as if it had been directed at him instead.

But he said nothing. Nothing can be done about it.

When the crowd had dispersed and the two opposing sides had each gone their own separate way, Shann, the boy and his dog had followed the gnome. The gnome seemed to know where he was going far better than anyone else in this shithole fishing village, so for now he was the best guide they had to the pisswater booze and ugliest ladies on the face of Eyropa if not all of Pal Tahrenor.

Lawfin had presumably been unaware of his choice in bars when he had wandered the direction he'd chosen. Set prominently at the edge of town, The Oyster Shell was considered high class in the dirty little town, where high class meant you weren't likely to get your throat slit if you fell asleep at the bar, and the floor did not mire shoes in sticky stains; nor the tables cups and mugs. The alcohol wasn't two steps away from swill, and occasionally some poor passing fool was convinced to play music in the surly atmosphere.

Tattered finery adorned the walls, old tapestries and an attempt at glossy wood gone dull. The sort of cozy, seedy, stained den a tasteless pirate might adapt to, if the pirate was poor and the pickings slim. And the women, who frequented the place were the most beautiful in town, though your mileage may vary with that particular statement. But for the town, this was fancy, and the best place to go if you had a few clueless idiots following you who had told you they were going to pay for your alcohol.

So the gnome took Shann, Vexako, and Zain to the bar Lawfin had gone to, and immediately picked his way over to a table. He was not looking for anyone in particular, so he did not notice Lawfin's presence. Vexako, trying to not look at anyone in particular, didn't even know really what Lawfin looked like, so he did not notice Lawfin's presence either. In fact, he was much too busy being disgusted at the bar to really notice anyone.

Ko had been a pirate, years back; it was what he'd cut his teeth on as a kid. He had not been a poor pirate, or a tasteless pirate, and he found the bar's attempt at rough chic to be teetering on the edge of insulting, right down to the barmaid's choices in dress, spilling breasts over the barely constraining cloth, and emitting the sort of smell that made Ko wonder if he could constrain his vomit. He was seconds away from asking the gnome if they might do better in another bar when the gnome looked at him sharply. The gnome was in a fine temper, even with the promise of booze, and was waiting for another opportunity to cause havoc. Ko was being tugged along behind the gnome, finding his good spirits alternately stepped on and shat on, and he took a seat with a telltale slouch, turning his head only to look at Shann.

"Now ain't this a fiiiiiine bar. Let's get some drinks, yeah?"

Drinks, yeah, so maybe Ko might forget the utterly disastrous idea of decor.

As to the bar in which the gnome had taken the small group, well Shann was just at a loss for words when he went fishing for something to say about this place. "Certainly nothing like I've ever encountered on all of Darleone. Humans sure do have a way with setting the mood." Some of the patrons that had already sat themselves up in the establishment for a long night of drinking, turned to face the elf and question his comment with their sour looks, but Shann easily shrugged if off. "If you humans have anything stronger than that fruity water my people call booze, than bring some around. "

As true as it was, the elves really did have a poor concept of alcohol and what it took to get a man drunk off his ass. That was one thing that humans truly excelled at. For all the crappy little bars and taverns that Shann had spent night after night since leaving the island, Shann had been able to get shit-faced drunk without having to drink a future in fancy elf wines and ales that did nothing for him.

While he waited for the barmaid to bring their drinks around, Shann thought that he would start up a conversation with his drinking buddies for the night. The gnome he didn't much care for but as he had witnessed on his trip up the coast, their presence this far West wasn't all that common of a thing. "So what brings the two of you to this town of all places? I haven't seen all that many gnomes since setting off from the island, aren't your people located more to the East of here? You don't really seem to fit in much with these fishermen?"

Ko wasn't eager to tell his life story. He didn't even want to talk, though he kept a silly, cocky grin plastered on. He didn't like the way it stretched his lips as he watched smoke curl up over the gnome's head to join the billowing cloud that bumped up against the roof of the place. He still did not look the gnome in the face, nor at the smokers behind the gnome. He all but ignored the kid.

The gnome seemed to take challenge in Shann's easy words. Changers only knew why anyone would take serious interest in the gnome or even care why he was in such a damned backwater -- fools will be fools, in Ko's opinion -- but the gnome took it serious enough that his body language changed. Puffed up fish, Ko thought idly, and wondered if it were Shann's intention to string the diminutive man along. Not a good idea with gnomes. They were vicious when provoked, and they always seemed to have legions of ancient relatives to make life hell when they thought honor or some other stupid notion was at stake. They didn't seem honorable to Ko.

"I deserve better than this shithole." The gnome nodded at Shann like he was agreeing with the other man. Ko snorted at the smoke and wished for some gritty substance to inhale that would spin his head around and spit him out dazed and unaware of the world. He'd already found out the hard way that was a bad thing to do once you'd gotten cursed.

The wench came over, and Ko ordered over the gnome's words. He didn't look, but he thought the gnome gave him a nasty look.

"There'd been a challenge. I had a great booming shop, home, nothing t'want for. I might be the youngest of my brood, but I'm the best. Should be me to learn the secrets, I tol' em. But no, they wanted to prove it. Prove it! I had, already, but pah, what's one more challenge? So the Head set us a task, all of us favored to -- shit, what'm I tellin' you miserable lot for? I came to prove I'm better than anyone. But these nobnuts, they aren't reasonable or intelligent. Tell me one thing, demand another, screw up my orders so I look like the halfwit. This rate, I'll turn out the fool and out goes my reputation. I'm ready to pull out, I tell you, this village is nothing but rusted out junk. They knew it, sent me here on purpose. Changers take the lot of them."

Ko was trying not to snort, to snicker, to give a knowing eyeroll at the implied melodrama the gnome was so willing to whine about the second someone seemed like to listen. He waited impatiently for the booze to arrive, hoping maybe the buzz might drown out the snarling growl of the gnome's voice. What a fucking freak. Blah blah, life is a midden heap. Gnome's own fault for walking into something like that.

He sighed in relief when the booze arrived and the gnome launched into a new round of teeth-bared insults against kin and clan, debasing all of them in turn and with equal viciousness. Ko knew he shouldn't get flat out drunk with so many potential ugly people around, but fuck. He gulped down the nasty liquor like a horse run dry, and ordered more in a loud call when the gnome paused for breath.

Shann listened intently to the gnome tell his story as he waited for his first of several drinks to arrive. Maybe it was because he had lived such a sheltered life on the island that he found it so intriguing to hear the gnome's story, or maybe because he foresaw some sort of possible business proposal presenting itself in front of him. Gnomes were known for their planning, even if what they planned and made with such plans were so obscure that no one other than a gnome could understand them, they made a great many wonderful contraptions that was so uniquely theirs. Though Shann had no experience with such things, he hoped that he could possibly prove himself helpful in other ways.

With a swig of his first drink and the difficult process of swallowing it rather than spitting it back into the supposedly-clean glass, Shann slapped his hand down on the table to draw the attention of the gnome away from his story momentarily. He had also been told that once you get a gnome going it's hard to get them to stop. "What you need to somebody to help get your affairs in order. You said they were messen with your orders? Well that's no good for business. What you need is detailed instructions, You need to get the product to the people." He grabbed the glass out of Zain's hand because the boy showed little interest in drinking the thing anyways and well it saved Shann the time it would take to get a refill and he placed it on the table to his right. "You need to get this product to those that can use it." So he placed the glass in front of himself. "You do this by properly documenting everything. You make a sale, you order a part, you ship a product, you document it."

He took another drink from his glass. This time he tried to ignore the foul taste that gave off the hint of dirty dish water-diluted ale by breathing at his nose. When he placed the half-empty glass back on the table he added. "That's how you conduct business."

Zain wasn't really all that displeased with his uncle for taking his drink away. Well, maybe just a little. He saw the way that others looked at him. He knew that they were drawing their own conclusions as to why the boy was not being aloud to drink or why he didn't speak up and voice a sense of displeasure by the act. He was clearly old enough to be drinking and it was not like the bartenders in this village would prevent the boy from doing so if he held the bishani to pay for it. Maybe he was less of a man for not drinking? Maybe he was being excluded from the group by not doing so, or maybe Shann had his reasoning for not letting the boy drink.

Whatever the case, the boy sat there quiet as ever and took in the sights, what little of them there were. he was half tempted to wave the cloud of smoke away from his face, but he knew all too well that that was just another way to draw attention onto himself. He was uneasy about the way the locals glared at the table. he overheard a few whispers about gnomes and elves and not trusting the lot of 'em, but again he said nothing. Zain was an observer at heart and while the conversation and drinking went on around him, the boy was content with scratching the soft spot of fur behind his dog's ears.

It was all Ko had to not clap his hand over Shann's mouth. Encouraging the gnome, doubtless, would end only in not being able to get rid of the gnome, and Ko had been looking forward to travelling with the handsome elf. Gnomes were annoying, pesky creatures who talked far too much and would make any prolonged journey the stuff of nightmares. But, he didn't wish to draw undue attention to himself, so he simply chugged down the next round that arrived at the tail end of Shann's words. Foolish words. He resisted the thought of groaning.

The gnome, aware at the fringe of his attention of Ko's surly disregard for his story (gnomes being intelligent sentient beings, moreso than the humans themselves), in turn ignored the man and focused on Shann, who was certainly much more intelligent himself. Still not as much as the gnome. "And I, Jinhuff Trizinkaff, am supposed to dumb down my exquisitely detailed manuals for these illiterate nobsnozzles?! No! I think not!" Then the gnome, Jinhuff, was gulping the swill too, and coughed upon swallowing it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, suddenly looking rowdy.

"I am leaving! And you. . .you are taking me out of here!"

Ko spewed alcohol across the table, where it spattered the floor and everyone else, too.

"Like hell!" He snapped, and stood, pointing at the gnome with a shaking finger, "I need t'get to a magic user, and I saw him first!"

After finishing his first drink, Shann started in on the one he had taken from the boy. He told himself the quicker he chugged the first few, the quicker he would reach that point in which he no longer cared how bad it tasted. He was well on his way through the second drink when the next round arrived.

He realized when the gnome took the conversation in a heated tone, that he had not worded his proposal in such a way that the gnome would understand. In that he was foolish. "No, no I didn't mean..."

The next thing he knew, the conversation had taken yet another unexpected turn. The gnome suddenly wanted to part the establishment without even finishing the latest round and the other guy, who Shann couldn't quite remember if he had gotten a name from, stood up began to shout at the gnome. If he was correct, the two of them were fighting over him. Well that was unexpected.

Several locals in all manner of drunkenness, turned their attention to the odd group yet again. The bartender looked as if he was about to give them the boot at any moment. The woman who had brought them their drinks had disappeared behind a counter and didn't look to be returning any time soon with more.

Fuck, well there goes getting drunk.

"There's no need to be fighting over me now. We're all men here and as far as I know, none of us are hiding a pussy in our pants. So why don't we all sit down and finish our drinks."

The bartender seemed pleased enough with the statement and had his girl bring another round to the table.

"So why don't we calmly discuss our next step then?" Shann addressed Ko and patted the now empty seat beside him.

Self recrimination did wonders for outbursts, and it took less than a minute for Ko to feel it kick him in the brainpan. Shann's easy words took care of any other desire to be nasty, and he couldn't help wonder what had come over him. Yeah, sure, he had no desire to charm the gnome (more like get rid of him), but he wasn't doing himself any favors by acting like a brat. Yeah. He slid closer to Shann, where the other man had patted, and gave him a slick smile.

"Whoopsies, got ahead of myself some. Forgive me being. . .exciteable." He said the last to the gnome, who looked a mixture of alarm and indignation.

"I'd better hopes for you." Jinhuff said, feathers all sorts of ruffled.

Ko kicked himself mentally. He allowed his smile to broaden, but only after he'd downed more booze. Nasty ass booze. "I don't know where you'll need goin', master gnome, but I've been lookin' for a magic user. A skilled one. Got some business need taken care of and while not urgent it's best not waitin' around, hear? 'Course, if you're headin' in our direction I wouldn't object t' bein hired." Oh, how quickly he automatically assumed Shann was with him. The boy too. Of course.

The gnome made a face and sipped, sipped, on the booze as if considering. He jiggled one of his legs. "And where is this direction headed to?"

From the bag that Shann had dropped down beside him, before taking his seat, he pulled out a rolled sheet of parchment and handmade cigarette. After instructing the others to raise their glasses and clear the table, Shann unrolled what appeared to be a elvish map. On the far left would be the island of Darleone, a point of reference in any elf-made map. From there would be a small stretch of sea, Eyropa, Tian Xia and part of the upper half of Setkhantos. The map was somewhat off as it's proportional size of Darleone was somewhat larger than it probably should have been.

Shann was the first to place his drink down, right on top of Darleone, hiding it from sight below the foul tasting brew. His finger ran the stretch from the small chain of islands now connecting his glass to the Eyropean archipelago. Up through Corezo he travel, stopping only briefly at several little unmarked dots that he had made upon the map. his finger stopped somewhat North of it's final dot, in an unmarked location, and he figured he was close enough. "I would say that we are somewhere around here." Then his other hand traveled East over vast stretches of unmarked map to one of the few marked locations on the paper. In a slightly South, mostly Eastern line from where his left finger rested, his right index finger came to rest over a dot with a name written out in an elven language. The dot sat right above a bay, connecting it to the sea and thus making it an easy trade spot with Darleone by sea. "I believe it is pronounced Keltaris in your tongue, have you heard of it?"

The boy looked almost nervous as he looked to his uncle, queasy and upset. The boy wasn't accustomed to travel, he wasn't made for it. The vary thought of uprooting, moving great distances and only temporarily staying in one place was hard on him. He had a hard enough time just coming out of his shell long enough to form a relationship with a person to an extent that he would talk to them. Shann still didn't really know how to handle it. He didn't know what if anything could be done about the boy, so he just tried to reassure the kid. "It's a city, bigger than this place, more people but probably some elves too. It's right on the water. They have a large dock that trades with places all over the world. I oversaw a lot of importing and exporting from Aelali sai Aesydae both go and come from there."

Ko snorted a disdainful laugh as soon as he saw what it was Shann had unrolled. He gestured largely with his beer towards the southern part of Eyropa's coastline. "That's wrong." He said flatly, and snorted again. "There's tellin' when maps're lined up by landwalkers."

He was silenced by the gnome's shut up gesture, and he huffed to himself and gulped the piss poor beer since Shann apparently had something to say that didn't have anything to do with mapmakers. He leaned forward to watch Shann's tracing finger, as did the gnome, and he noted with a slightly tipsy leer that the other man's fingers were clean and straight and pretty like a boy's. Or a noble's. That second thought leeched some of the fun out of imagining what those fingers might do, and out of nowhere he compared them to her fingers. . .

"By water and stone." He muttered to himself, angry he had let himself get trapped into thinking about . . .that. He shifted his anger towards Zain, and at the expression the younger man made. Now there was something that wouldn't be any fun at all, no matter even if his fingers were pretty as Shann's. But he had earned himself a few questioning glances with his mild curse, and he too smiled at Zain, but his was tainted with sharp edges and sarcasm.

"No harder than liftin' a maiden's skirts, little boy. Though I 'spose you might know more about keeping skirts down than up."

Jinhuff made a small snorting noise that could have been a laugh, but any cynical listener would have heard the sullen scoff for what it was. Jinhuff was verily unimpressed with Vexako.

"'N what, fishbait, I been up and down these coasts, think you'll find better 'n us t' haul your sweet virgin ass around?"

"Best watch your tone with me! You're nothing but a vulgar, uncouth vagrant; if you think you'd come out of a tumble with me unscathed you'd best be thinking again." Jinhuff growled back, seemingly unaffected by Ko's lazy bristle.

But the sailor turned pirate turned hustler turned cursed wanderer only hooted laughter, and quenched his bitterness with a drought worse still.

"Keltaris!" He boomed the word so it carried above the general noise, and leaned his arm companionably on Shann's shoulder. "Been a long time fer me. If it's by sea, though, I can help with the passage."

He didn't know if he should be happy or wary of the thought of the sea, for one never knew when one might run into old. . .friends. He shrugged and downed the thought with his alcohol, and shared a soppy smile around the table.

According to the map, traveling by land might be the quicker route, but traveling by sea would probably be easier and well it wasn't like he was in any real hurry to be anywhere else at the moment.

"Could you arrange travel by sea? Do you have the contacts for that?" He didn't turn to look at the other man for the moment, but instead spoke to him while to fished around in his pocket for a match and something to light it with. After successfully creating a spark by running the thing against the underside of the table, he brought it up to his mouth and lit the cigarette he placed in the corner of his mouth. "I know some people back on the island but they can be of no use to use here."

He took in the sweet taste of the hand-rolled tobacco as he tried to think of the next course of action. First of all, if they were going to tempt to board passage on a boat they would have to find somebody in the possession of a vessel larger than that of the fishing boats he had seen lining the docks on the far side of town. He knew very little about boats, ships and the like, but he knew enough from his his time working the docks that nothing that small would last through the kind of trip they were planning.

On top of that, Shann wasn't quite sure what to think of the man now touching him. It was in no way in a groping or fondling action that would immediately make him push the other man away, but he still kind of got that feeling from the man, besides the earlier comments he had made. He was one to joke around with another man, but when it came to taking one's pants off and hoping in bed with another, Shann was purely a ladies' man. He was uncomfortable with being so closely confined with other men like he would have to be a small fishing boat.

"I doubt any of the locals would have the sort of vessel we are looking at, I would think our best bet would be heading South down the coast towards Corezo unless you have a better idea." Again Shann traced the path with his finger along the map. The action was done more for the boy than the others, but it drew their attention nevertheless.

Zain noticed the way the human looked at him, and the way the man looked at his uncle. It wasn't hard for the boy to guess the man's intentions, he had lived with Shann for years now and had seen that same look on his uncle many times before when trying to pick up on women. A part of him wanted to warn his uncle that he might not know what he was getting himself into, but Zain remained quiet. He downcast his eyes when the other man smiled at him and continued to stare at the map. The map helped him to feel connected to the world around him. He liked marking the places they had gone and tracing their path backwards towards the home that he had left. It made him feel as if he wasn't completely lost.

The dog helped too. From beneath the table, Zain's dog rested his head in his master's lap and licked his hand when he stopped his rhythmic petting routine.

"I've sailed afore." Vexako said, eyes roaming somewhere above the table before they settled back on the map. "I add my lot t'Corezo. No way I'd take any o' these junkheaps, not for money or nohow."

The gnome looked perplexed, and he settled back in his chair, eyeing the map and Shann. "Tell me, you are in charge of this person?"

"Hey!" Was the extent of Ko's input, until he got an eyeful of the gnome and prudently snapped his gaze away and sulked in his seat. "Sorry to sink your flagpole, mate, but none boss me 'round just yet. An' I know a port t' find us a ship." This was said to Shann, "We gotta pound feet down t' Corezo, a day or so away. Long as priss-bottom don't slow us."

The gnome's snarl brought only a mocking grin to Ko's lips.