2020-11-04 – The poetic dragon – Dwirhian
Nov 9, 2020 17:19:59 GMT
Queen Merla, the Sun-Blessed and jaydm like this
Post by Dwirhian on Nov 9, 2020 17:19:59 GMT
Mavunda has just poured your second drink of the evening and set it on the bar in front of you when the Ettin’s main door opens and lets in a familiar elven figure. Dwirhian greets you cheerfully as she leans her staff against the bar and slides onto a stool.
After she’s ordered some food and drink and spent a few minutes flirting with Mavunda, she turns to you and asks for all the news she’s missed while she’s been away.
Her own news, when the conversation eventually turns to it, is that she’s been in Port Ffirst for a month or so. Most of what she has to say about Port Ffirst is really not about the town at all but about the sea. It’s so enormous, she tells you, and so loud and always moving.
She compares it to the first time she saw the desert, when she was much younger. The desert was terrifying. Where she comes from, she says, they live by a lake that gives them everything, in a small valley surrounded by mountains, always surrounded by friends and relatives, so the sight of such endless flatness, stretching on forever, so empty and lonely and so dry – just looking at it she’d felt a sort of panic and doom.
The sea was… more complicated. Actually it wasn’t exactly the first time she saw a sea. Not long ago she spent a short time on the plane of water, in a sort of floating building, so she’d been under water in something you could probably call a sea. But that was different. It was really just like being under the lake. Water all around and you can’t see very far in any direction. But standing on the Port Ffirst docks and looking out at the grey waves churning and the water disappearing into the grey sky, so far away… It was a bit scary but exciting too, and awesome and humbling and a bit dizzying.
There’s a guy who’s spent most of his life at sea, Dwirhian tells you wonderingly. Literally living on ships in the sea. Can you imagine? She met him at a poetry night in a nice little cafe called the Thirsty Dragon a couple of days before she left Port Ffirst. Do you know it? she asks. They have so many cats there!
She tells you about the people she met that evening: this seafaring man, Ivan, a handsome human or maybe elf-human (she still doesn’t feel she’s quite got the hang of humans and half-humans yet) who was trying very hard to be polite and well-mannered; two small red-haired people, one a musician named Haimish who spoke an interesting dialect of Common and the other a gnome called Camwyna who’d saved something called a ‘multiverse’; and a nice family of halflings (and a rat girl) called the Shortcrusts, although one of the girls said she was called the Countess Pippa-something Flagrante but Dwirhian suspected that might not be completely true. In fact all those people had had a lot of names – at least two, some a lot more than that. How many names have you got? she asks.
This question leads to a lively discussion of names and naming practices in different parts of the world. Dwirhian, it turns out, only has one, which is normal where she comes from. There are only a few hundred of them and each has a name that belongs only to them, so there’s no need for more than one.
Eventually the conversation winds its way back to the Thirsty Dragon and the poetry night. Ivan, Haimish, Cam, and the Shortcrusts were the people Dwirhian met in the queue to get in. There was also the owner, a nice elf named Jane, and a fabulously-dressed goliath called Jessica who organized some get-to-know-you games, and a very patient waiter who had to explain to Ivan and Haimish several times that meat and alcohol weren’t available, and a lovely triton dancer called Elodie, and a tall rude drunk man who barged in during Elodie’s performance, a magic cat, a sad yellow-haired elf man who recited a speech, a minotaur who made lots of percussion sounds with only his voice and cupped hands, and a dwarf named Khazifa who sang a beautiful song about a king and a ‘great keeper’ and some golden wyrms.
Your interest in the magic cat prompts Dwirhian to give what turns into a surprisingly riveting account of the disruption caused by the drunk. The gist is that the man himself, and what he did, were fairly unremarkable; but after Ivan and the ‘Countess’ had stopped him and he’d passed out on the floor, something more unusual happened. Everyone in the cafe stopped being able to speak. Which, naturally, caused a bit of a panic.
By trial and error Dwirhian discovered that music could still be played and heard, and then Cam found that although speech was silent, singing was still audible. So, singing to each other to communicate, the group tried to help Jane handle the situation (after persuading Haimish to stop playing an increasingly manic jig on his bagpipes that was only making people more anxious). Some of them calmed their fellow customers while others investigated the problem. They found that one of the cats, a young black and white one, was a person enchanted and trapped in the form of a cat, who said that the drunken man had stolen the key to their tower. The Countess then managed to find the key, which the man seemed to have dropped, and gave it back to the cat.
At this point, Dwirhian says, people became able to speak normally again (though Ivan carried on singing for a while anyway) and Jane and Jessica managed to get the evening back on track. In answer to your questions about what exactly had happened, Dwirhian says she isn’t really sure. As soon as the cat had got their key back they teleported away, and the unconscious man (who had been put outside to sober up) had woken and wandered off by the time the group came out of the cafe. They did find a couple of clues: a note signed with a paw-print saying ‘Come get me at the Thirsty Dragon, you asshole’ and a wand that can magically affect an area so that no non-musical sound can be heard and whose effect can only be cancelled by another, unknown, artifact. The note and the wand seemed to have been left behind by the tall man, so Dwirhian’s best guess is that he’d taken the cat’s tower key and possibly the wand too, the cat had challenged him to come to the Thirsty Dragon for some kind of confrontation, the man had activated the wand as he was being tackled by Ivan (maybe accidentally), and the cat had used the linked artifact (maybe the tower key) to end the spell.
After setting aside the remnants of her finished meal, Dwirhian spends several minutes excitedly showing you the goodie bag that she got at the cafe and telling you about the silly poems that she and the others wrote together for the poetry competition. She describes how the Countess, under the stage-name ‘Idari Shortcrust’, read them out, with Dwirhian sitting at the back of the stage improvising some background music.
By this time one or two other familiar faces have joined the two of you at the bar and the conversation turns to other things. Eventually Dwirhian stretches and slips down from her stool, explaining that she wants to get a good sleep so she can be fresh for some fighting at the old warehouse tomorrow. With a hug here, a pat on the shoulder there, a wave of the hand in the direction of the studious green-haired figure in the corner, she bids you all good night.
After she’s ordered some food and drink and spent a few minutes flirting with Mavunda, she turns to you and asks for all the news she’s missed while she’s been away.
Her own news, when the conversation eventually turns to it, is that she’s been in Port Ffirst for a month or so. Most of what she has to say about Port Ffirst is really not about the town at all but about the sea. It’s so enormous, she tells you, and so loud and always moving.
She compares it to the first time she saw the desert, when she was much younger. The desert was terrifying. Where she comes from, she says, they live by a lake that gives them everything, in a small valley surrounded by mountains, always surrounded by friends and relatives, so the sight of such endless flatness, stretching on forever, so empty and lonely and so dry – just looking at it she’d felt a sort of panic and doom.
The sea was… more complicated. Actually it wasn’t exactly the first time she saw a sea. Not long ago she spent a short time on the plane of water, in a sort of floating building, so she’d been under water in something you could probably call a sea. But that was different. It was really just like being under the lake. Water all around and you can’t see very far in any direction. But standing on the Port Ffirst docks and looking out at the grey waves churning and the water disappearing into the grey sky, so far away… It was a bit scary but exciting too, and awesome and humbling and a bit dizzying.
There’s a guy who’s spent most of his life at sea, Dwirhian tells you wonderingly. Literally living on ships in the sea. Can you imagine? She met him at a poetry night in a nice little cafe called the Thirsty Dragon a couple of days before she left Port Ffirst. Do you know it? she asks. They have so many cats there!
She tells you about the people she met that evening: this seafaring man, Ivan, a handsome human or maybe elf-human (she still doesn’t feel she’s quite got the hang of humans and half-humans yet) who was trying very hard to be polite and well-mannered; two small red-haired people, one a musician named Haimish who spoke an interesting dialect of Common and the other a gnome called Camwyna who’d saved something called a ‘multiverse’; and a nice family of halflings (and a rat girl) called the Shortcrusts, although one of the girls said she was called the Countess Pippa-something Flagrante but Dwirhian suspected that might not be completely true. In fact all those people had had a lot of names – at least two, some a lot more than that. How many names have you got? she asks.
This question leads to a lively discussion of names and naming practices in different parts of the world. Dwirhian, it turns out, only has one, which is normal where she comes from. There are only a few hundred of them and each has a name that belongs only to them, so there’s no need for more than one.
Eventually the conversation winds its way back to the Thirsty Dragon and the poetry night. Ivan, Haimish, Cam, and the Shortcrusts were the people Dwirhian met in the queue to get in. There was also the owner, a nice elf named Jane, and a fabulously-dressed goliath called Jessica who organized some get-to-know-you games, and a very patient waiter who had to explain to Ivan and Haimish several times that meat and alcohol weren’t available, and a lovely triton dancer called Elodie, and a tall rude drunk man who barged in during Elodie’s performance, a magic cat, a sad yellow-haired elf man who recited a speech, a minotaur who made lots of percussion sounds with only his voice and cupped hands, and a dwarf named Khazifa who sang a beautiful song about a king and a ‘great keeper’ and some golden wyrms.
Your interest in the magic cat prompts Dwirhian to give what turns into a surprisingly riveting account of the disruption caused by the drunk. The gist is that the man himself, and what he did, were fairly unremarkable; but after Ivan and the ‘Countess’ had stopped him and he’d passed out on the floor, something more unusual happened. Everyone in the cafe stopped being able to speak. Which, naturally, caused a bit of a panic.
By trial and error Dwirhian discovered that music could still be played and heard, and then Cam found that although speech was silent, singing was still audible. So, singing to each other to communicate, the group tried to help Jane handle the situation (after persuading Haimish to stop playing an increasingly manic jig on his bagpipes that was only making people more anxious). Some of them calmed their fellow customers while others investigated the problem. They found that one of the cats, a young black and white one, was a person enchanted and trapped in the form of a cat, who said that the drunken man had stolen the key to their tower. The Countess then managed to find the key, which the man seemed to have dropped, and gave it back to the cat.
At this point, Dwirhian says, people became able to speak normally again (though Ivan carried on singing for a while anyway) and Jane and Jessica managed to get the evening back on track. In answer to your questions about what exactly had happened, Dwirhian says she isn’t really sure. As soon as the cat had got their key back they teleported away, and the unconscious man (who had been put outside to sober up) had woken and wandered off by the time the group came out of the cafe. They did find a couple of clues: a note signed with a paw-print saying ‘Come get me at the Thirsty Dragon, you asshole’ and a wand that can magically affect an area so that no non-musical sound can be heard and whose effect can only be cancelled by another, unknown, artifact. The note and the wand seemed to have been left behind by the tall man, so Dwirhian’s best guess is that he’d taken the cat’s tower key and possibly the wand too, the cat had challenged him to come to the Thirsty Dragon for some kind of confrontation, the man had activated the wand as he was being tackled by Ivan (maybe accidentally), and the cat had used the linked artifact (maybe the tower key) to end the spell.
After setting aside the remnants of her finished meal, Dwirhian spends several minutes excitedly showing you the goodie bag that she got at the cafe and telling you about the silly poems that she and the others wrote together for the poetry competition. She describes how the Countess, under the stage-name ‘Idari Shortcrust’, read them out, with Dwirhian sitting at the back of the stage improvising some background music.
By this time one or two other familiar faces have joined the two of you at the bar and the conversation turns to other things. Eventually Dwirhian stretches and slips down from her stool, explaining that she wants to get a good sleep so she can be fresh for some fighting at the old warehouse tomorrow. With a hug here, a pat on the shoulder there, a wave of the hand in the direction of the studious green-haired figure in the corner, she bids you all good night.
