Trog's Tavern CCLII

[Fendrick]

Kuriko, who loves to talk about her studies, gets excited about this question. "Well! I was studying the adaption and integration of cultures into the Nexus! It was really exciting doing all the research into it. It took a lot of work, but it was definitely worth it."

Remembering that she still has food there that is not getting any fresher, Kuriko takes a bite from her food after saying that sentence.

Fendrick is fascinated by Kuriko's studies, and leans in close as he listens to her.

'I am from within the Nexus. While on my adventure I discovered that I used to be a lab rat.
I was experimented on by a deranged wizard who performed a transfiguration spell to make me human sized.
The downside of that is that I'm the only successful experiment of his, so I'm unlikely to find any other man-rats.
But the positive is that as I grew, my brain grew in size and I now have about the same intelligence as an average human. Not that I've been educated at all. I'd love to study, but I have no-one to teach me. I must have been transfigured say... about a month ago. I've been wandering the Nexus since, only recently finding my way to Trog's.
I never had any grand adventures as a lab rat, so I'm excited to adventure more and explore more of the Nexus.'

Fendrick at this point realises that he is babbling, so abruptly stops talking. He sits back in his chair, holding his glass of milk in his right forepaw. He looks at Kuriko, wondering if she'd tell him more about her studies.

[Catalessi]

"You should probably rent a room upstairs, Hidrus. You're looking tired, and if you sleep here you might get robbed. Not that you have much people can search easily, anyway."

"uhh, i guess? i'm not used to this things. maybe youre right. i feel... like i shoud tak... take a break from all this strangeness."

He get up and start looking around in order to find out how to "rent a room". Despite all the sugar in the blood, it looks like he can walk without any problem.

[Murkus]

"Must be a talent of mine. I tried not to make innuendo once, but it was hard. So hard," Ilpholin says with a grin. Though she isn't sure anything involving Adir and Sakura qualified as innuendo or just proven fact.

"I know a little bit about trying to keep too many people happy." Bad Ilpholin. Running AMEN and babysitting is a poor comparison and you know it. "Just wait until they're all teenagers at the same time." Not helping.

Ilpholin takes another sip of her wine, though it hardly seems touched, while glancing at the various people coming and going, keeping an eye out for red half-dragons. "Ah yes, you are supposed to explain this secret job you're getting. Does it pay enough for a family your size or are you or Sakura going to have to pick up more on the side?"

Adir almost sprays a bit of his beer. He's easy to amuse. The stag shakes his head. "Thank Yuri we've got a bit of a stagger going. Though those first three are gonna be trouble..."

The stag is paying a lot less attention, but he's at least casting his gaze around every now and then. "Secret job! Yes! No, no secret. And I think it will. With all the munchkins we don't really have the kind of time to work two." He wags his expressive eyebrows at Ilpholin. "Boss says I'm gonna get a place to stay out of it, actually."

[Deathkeeper]

Sam supports the bird's idea.
"Yeah get some sleep, dude. You could use it." he assures the troll.

[Recaiden]

He get up and start looking around in order to find out how to "rent a room". Despite all the sugar in the blood, it looks like he can walk without any problem.

It's pretty simple. You hand a bartender some money, they hand you a key to a room upstairs. Even if you spent all your money on lemonade, they can probably connect you with a rarely-cleaned bunk in a corner commonroom.

[Earl of Purple]

"Goodnight, Hidrus." Jack won't speak further until she's certain Hidrus is out of earshot.

"Maybe I shouldn't have given him the lemonade. He seems drunk." Jack doesn't drink alcohol for a very simple reason- it doesn't take much to make a bird drunk, and if she shifts form, she's pretty much guaranteed to be drunk if she's had anything alcoholic.

[Catalessi]

"huh, yeah, good 'night'. heheheheheheheheheheh..."

Hidrus heads upstairs, towards the unknown shadows of his room

[Reinholdt]

Adir almost sprays a bit of his beer. He's easy to amuse. The stag shakes his head. "Thank Yuri we've got a bit of a stagger going. Though those first three are gonna be trouble..."

The stag is paying a lot less attention, but he's at least casting his gaze around every now and then. "Secret job! Yes! No, no secret. And I think it will. With all the munchkins we don't really have the kind of time to work two." He wags his expressive eyebrows at Ilpholin. "Boss says I'm gonna get a place to stay out of it, actually."

"Yuri? Who is that?" Or what. It just doesn't sound like Llolth at all.

"And I'm not horribly surprised. A lot of people here seem to live where they work. Seems like a cultural idiosyncrasy." More so PCs than NPCs and it's probably not as many as Ilpholin is thinking. "But WHAT is the job? What are you going to be doing?"

[Deathkeeper]

Sam nods.
"Yeah, sure seems like it. Maybe it's a sugar thing with those people. I got no idea."
Sam has no real problems drinking, being of age by many places' definitions and with his physique and bio-engineered systems can go a very long time before he starts to feel tipsy.

[Earl of Purple]

Jack's also old enough to drink, it's simply that, because she mostly sleeps on rooftops and in abandoned attics she finds by flying, she doesn't think it's a good idea to do regularly. Particularly because as she changes size, the percentage of alcohol to blood also changes.

"Yeah, maybe. It's nice lemonade, though. I hope he settles in." Jack takes a gulp of lemonade, before changing the subject from the refugee troll. "So what is it you do, Sam?" Jack's curious.

[Deathkeeper]

"I'm a chef. I used to cook for a fancy-do restaurant in Riverside but it was...not really the kind of thing I liked making. So now I cook for MERC. A good thing too, because they'd been eating junk." Sam says with a shudder. Really, it's a wonder Dipsnig and his crew are healthy ordering takeout every day for years.

[Earl of Purple]

"Really? What kind of things do you cook?" Jack's interested now. The Clattering is low-tech, and surrounded by trees, so fires are a little risky. There's a central fire pit and communal meals, plus whatever individuals can scrounge up on their own.

[Deathkeeper]

"Oh, lots of things. Soup, roast, sautes. I like hearty things, but I don't want to get my boss into an unhealthy diet so I try to balance things. Goblins eat odd things though and I've had to learn how to cook cave rat." Sam muses.

[Earl of Purple]

"I've eaten weirder. I'm not as human as I look. I don't know if you heard me talking to Hidrus on the subject?" Or indeed her transformation into a jackdaw shortly before he came over to talk. Because they're both quite clear indications of her inhumanity.

[Deathkeeper]

"I didn't, but you smell like a bird, so I was pretty sure that was the case." Sam says casually. Really, it would be rather pathetic if he didn't have a good sense of smell with such a huge nose.

[Earl of Purple]

"Yeah, I'm a shifter. Half human, half jackdaw. Except that's not how it works. I'm neither, I just look human, except when I don't. I travelled to Inside in bird-shape, and ate like one too." Jackdaws are mostly vegetarian, but will eat carrion and insects. "Mum could have picked a better name than Jacqueline when the surname is Door, though." This, incidentally, is probably the first indication of her gender. Unless Sam's nose lets him tell a male bird from a female one. If Sam makes any sign of amusement at Jack's name, she'll scowl at him.

And Jack does actually have human blood! And some jackdaw, too. They can interbreed with humans/jackdaws, but the offspring take after the mother.

[Deathkeeper]

"Jack, my last name is Bacon. It doesn't get more rough than that." Sam says with a laugh.
Really though people make fun of his name constantly.

[Murkus]

"Yuri? Who is that?" Or what. It just doesn't sound like Llolth at all.

"And I'm not horribly surprised. A lot of people here seem to live where they work. Seems like a cultural idiosyncrasy." More so PCs than NPCs and it's probably not as many as Ilpholin is thinking. "But WHAT is the job? What are you going to be doing?"

"Um. God. Sort of," Adir rolls his hand. He raises both to wave them theatrically. "Supposedly his blood made the Gilded Green. The forest me and Sakura are from. Apparently he's pinned to his throne by the claw of the thing that did him in, never able to die, getting his juices everywhere. I've never seen him, though."

"The job is a knighthood. Like, I am being literally knighted by this giantess who calls herself the Empress, and I'll be doing knightly things," Adir watches her reaction and swigs his drink. "Ah. I guess I'll be helping expand her, uh, dominion in one way or another."

[Earl of Purple]

"That is quite rough, yeah." Jack does smile a little, but good naturedly, rather than humorously. I, meanwhile, admit that half the idea for Jack came from the name Jack Door. So, y'know, she'd probably not like me much.

"What is it that birds smell of? My sight's good, really good, and my hearing's not bad, but my sense of smell is no better than a human's, or maybe a bit worse." Jack's nearly envious that Sam has better senses, but realises it probably balances out somewhere.

[Reinholdt]

"I didn't know you and Sakura were from the same forest." Ilpholin didn't even know Sakura came from a forest. Clearly they should talk more. Though it seems fairly obvious. It's not like Sakura was a cactus dryad after all. Those dryads only pretend to be cuddly, but you'll always regret it.

Ilpholin is left staring at Adir in disbelief. "We'll practically be neighbors then," the nymph says with a level of uncertainty in her voice. "I'd have to admit, I never thought you'd be willing to go that far. Expansionism is a dangerous business. Though maybe not as dangerous as raising seven kids."

[Deathkeeper]

"Birds just...smell like birds. It's hard to explain smells. It's got a certain thing with the oils on feathers, maybe? " Sam tries to explain, but he has no idea how to put senses into words.

[Earl of Purple]

"I... Kinda guess how that might work." She's thinking maybe he can smell 'birds' and automatically knows what the smell is. Like how she turns into a jackdaw- she doesn't know how she does it, she just does it. "Except, right now, I don't have feathers." Which makes that guess a little haphazard.

[Deathkeeper]

Sam isn't really sure how to respond to this."Well maybe you just have the same stuff on your skin as you do when you're a bird. I dunno."
I realize that simply assuming that Jack smelled like a bird was probably godmodding but it doesn't seem to have caused any problems so we'll just be continuing.

[Earl of Purple]

I'd have mentioned it, if I had a solid idea as to what Jack smelt like. I know that Natalie smells like whichever form causes the least panic in whatever's smelling her (unless she's in the shape of a predator; then she smells like whatever she's shaped like to anything that shape eats; and in the form of something prey, she smells human to predators... Unless the predator eats humans), but I hadn't thought of anything for Jack. So smelling like a bird works.

"I suppose. Maybe it's because of what I am. Humans have oil on their skin, just like birds have on their feathers." It's all natural self-cleaning type stuff, I think. "Thank you for answering my questions, but now I know you better than you know me. Is there anything you want to ask?" It's a little awkward, maybe, so I think it's probably bird etiquette not translating well.

[Deathkeeper]

Sam looks puzzled at Jack.
"Does it really matter? We're friends, aren't we? Why does it have to be even?" he asks, though those are all questions in and of themselves.

[Earl of Purple]

"Because we've only just met, and I guess it doesn't matter." It's just her player's running out of subjects to talk about.

[Deathkeeper]

"Well where do you live anyway? You don't just have a tiny nest in a chimney somewhere, do ya?" he says with a chuckle.

[Earl of Purple]

"No, but nearly. There's a building not far from here- an old house. It was converted into flats ages ago, but the developers missed the attic. When I found it, the window was open. The stairway down has been bricked up, so I'm pretty sure I'm secure up there. Before I found it, I did roost in trees and on rooftops. No nests, though. That would have sent the wrong message to the real jackdaws." She's lucky she can take the best parts of both human and jackdaw shape, because otherwise she'd never have been able to get her satchel up there.

[Deathkeeper]

"Well if you're ever in Riverside and need a roost for a night come find me. We could fit a little bird somewhere. he offers.

[Earl of Purple]

"I've not been to Riverside. The Clattering's closer to Inside, the glow from the city is visible from the tallest trees, some nights. I'll keep it in mind, though. And I hear there's a bar for people like me to meet and socialise." Not exactly like her, but she's close enough for the patrons and staff at Weird William's to accept her, should she find the place.