Private Tales Death's Inn at The Murky Goblet

[Larewen Dragana]

Larewen sat quietly in one of the less private alcoves of the establishment, toying with a glass of wine and her grimoire opened before her. The blackened pages and eldritch, glowing ink cast a soft glow on the walls around her. The necromancer, like most of the small village's residents, showed no qualms about putting her darker interests on display. It was as close as she could get to Vokroth and still hope to encounter those that might find reason to aid her in her goals of raising the Sunken City from beneath Bayou Garramarisma.

The stench of rot already permeated the wetlands in which the elf and mire's denizens resided, but it was particularly strong around the elf. Especially so for a vampire, considering it was the distinct, sickly-sweet aroma of decay. It originated from beneath the cloth of a glove that covered her left hand from fingertip to elbow. Her flesh was visibly malformed under the fabric. Whatever magic cursed the limb shared a second host upon the necromancer's body: the diadem upon her crown crackled with malevolent energies... and yet still there was something even more wrong with the woman.

More than a simple vampire, more than an aerei elf, the haunting creature that poured over a cursed tome was so twisted by dark, necromantic magicks that one could clearly identify her as an abomination to life by the oppressive aura that encircled her person. And yet still, the verdant and ebon clad woman painted a lovely picture in that corner. A lovely picture that hid a mind warped by a thirst for something far more corrupt, far darker, than simple blood of the living.

Flipping a page with a click of her tongue to manipulate the air around it, she brought her glass to her lips and drank deeply of a dark wine that stank with the coppery smell of blood. If one had a fine nose for identifying such vintages, they'd be able to tell that the elf drank of her own kin from that cup. A small, silver case lay open beside her book and clove cigarettes wrapped in black papers lay upon them. She reached for one, bringing it to pale lips and lighting it with a pass of her hand.

An eldritch stare lifted from her page toward the bar and then swept toward the door as she sought anyone that might look useful enough to entreat.

Hruugen

 

[Hruugen]

The Murky Goblet, Hruugen had let out a private laugh at the name and it was much as he had expected.
Half full of people but every inch of the place thick with must and funk of all kinds. Muddy water, the crisp tang of vegetation determined to seek entrance and the tang of sweat.

In a word, life.

But his keen senses found another note to this aroma. Something was rotten and not just the wood of the floorboards. It was the smell of rotten flesh which he knew well enough. It was not covered in perfume or cleansing scents save for those already present.

He took a drink from the bar and paid promptly then turned to look upon the other patrons. He was hardly picky and ended up with a bitter dark port that felt heavier than it looked.
Plenty of the other people there might be considered smelly or even diseased but he saw no sign of the rotting sickness or the like.

It was then that he spotted a singular figure in the corner, the grey of his eyes landed on her as gently as a moth might and stayed just as innocently.
She was of Elf kind, pale and from her manner distinctly noble in manner and dress but that is where the sense of her ended.
Nobility seldom travelled alone and when they did they seldom looked noble while doing it. Yet she was in all appearance as calm in her surroundings as a spider in its own web.

The port tasted of dark bitterness, thick with iron and slightly warming in the belly and the young Monk decided he liked it.

He would not call himself any kind of detective, not really and he would be the first to admit that he was often wrong in his own mind of others but this woman radiated a feeling of death which he was also familiar with, as animals were. He noticed that even though flies and other things of the swamplands pestered many of the patrons, himself included, they left her well alone.

Nature rejected the unnatural.

She looked up, eyes hungry for something, perhaps she was looking for a friend or an enemy. It occurred to him that he may be the only one there who noticed her or had any inkling of what danger she may pose so he decided to pre-empt anyone else approaching her by doing it himself.

As her gaze swept the crowd he caught it and raised his glass in slow greeting, his thin lips smiling. He looked like a thin thing under his dark robes that hung in the foreign style of the Northlands.
The beads and charms that hung on rope and chord from his waste were of many religions, many ways of worship and all of them tied to death rites.

His appearance usually insighted interest in others, he was hoping this time he peaked this woman's.

Larewen Dragana

 

[Larewen Dragana]

If that was what Hruugen was after, piquing her interest, then he certainly succeeded when he raised the glass upward. She could almost smell his port from where she sat, if she tried hard enough. There were lots of smells to sift through in The Murky Goblet, but it wasn't that that drew her attention. It wasn't exactly his garb either, but rather the funereal accessories with which he adorned his body. Her eyes narrowed slightly, enchanted orbs seeking any threads of magic that might be visible upon them.

"Brave for a mortal," she remarked casually when he reached her table. She shifted in her chair, back straight against it. One leg shifted beneath her dark dress, crossing over the other at the knee. She inhaled the smoke of her cigarette deeply. Once, twice, and a third unnecessarily long, rattling draw of her lungs left the stick of clove and tobacco exhausted. She tapped it out into a broken ashtray and left the butt there. Its cherry smoldered in its dying breaths.

A soft sigh, another draw of unneeded breath, and the woman leaned forward, gloved hand flicking toward a chair across from her. She seemed eager to feed into his curiosity and yet the entire time her corrupt stare searched his being for any weakness--any opening she could exploit in his person would do.

Her nostrils flared, taking in the scent of his young blood and a thirst bubbled in the pit of her belly. Unquenchable, annoying, and precisely why the vampire sought a more easily sustained form of undeath: lichdom. Larewen's good arm reached across the table then, shutting the eldritch tome so that its mysteries would remain just that in the prescence of Hruugen: mysterious.

"Though I think foolish is more the word," she murmured. This time, the words were quieter and to herself.

There was something distinctly wrong about the silvery sweet tone of her voice. Poison laced it just beneath the saccharine notes, toxic and not unlike a poisonous arachnid matriarch, ready to strike at any moment. And she certainly was--if this human, or any of those within The Murky Goblet for that matter--sought to pick a fight with her, the necromancer would not hold back in her own defense. She was here for allies though. A single vampire could not raise a fallen city from beneath the deathly waters of the bayou.

 

[Hruugen]

"Thank you!"
Hruugen smiled a bit wider as he sat, friendly and open.

Larewen's sight would find him almost blinding. The artifact about his neck, a simple stone to all others was one of the Guardian Stones, The Light Stone and while seemingly inert to those with magic sight it would be as radiant as its name suggests, eclipsing the more modest affinity of his weapons and charms.
Though she could tell he was protected in ways against simple undead, warded against minor evils and curses.

As for physical openings there were plenty or so it seemed. He sat calmly as though there was no danger at all and while he moved with purpose he was not reserved as some holy men are even as he craned his neck obviously to try and look at the book as she snapped it shut he took no offense. Her privacy was her own and he let his curiosity get the better of him.

"I suppose it would seem brave if you were my first immortal."

He did not catch her hushed addition to her statement and Hruugen was too busy thinking of his last drink with an immortal being. A dragon of all things, though guised as a human woman her power was scarce diminished and he knew then as he knew now that fear would profit him nothing.

As she took him in he took her in also, the details of her clothing and the rich smell of the cigarette, even how she sat told him something.
It told him that he was in the spiders web now and he wasn't getting out until she let him for which the best defence might be politeness.

"I don't get to sit and talk with many women who will outlive both myself and almost everyone else in the world but this makes two and I suppose that makes me more lucky than anything."

Another smile and he took a drink.

"My name is Hruugen, forgive me for I am new to these lands and do not know you. Might I have your name?"

Larewen Dragana

 

[Larewen Dragana]

Larewen raised her glass to her mouth again as he spoke, though the mouthful of wine she'd imbibed caught in her throat when the monk dubbed himself lucky. She swallowed heard and then passed a rush of air from her mouth to clear her airway for further vocalization.

"I'm not entirely sure I'd call that good fortune," she mused aloud once she found her voice again. The elf rotated her glass in her hand, swirling the dark red fluid around in its bowl. Her gaze lowered to its tannins, watching as the blood that thickened the wine slowed its progress back to the bottom of the glass. Finally, she drained the last of it and returned it to the table. One hand raised to flag down a passing barmaid as she regarded the human.

For a long moment, she considered whether to provide the male with simply her name or her title and as she did so, she let Hruugen's query hang unanswered in the air. "Larewen," came the answer at length as she finally opted for simplicity. "Though my name is not one a babe should know. My time passed long before your ancestors walked this world."

As those words left her lips, her nose wrinkled, and a strange look crossed her face. It was cringy, the way her words sounded. Even to her own pointed ears. She sounded as old as she was, as if she'd forgotten what life felt like--and she had!

"More bloodwine?" a curvaceous creature that passed as human asked, suddenly popping up amidst the small mingling crowd. Larewen lowered her hand and responded with a lift of her chin, nothing more. With a half-shrug, the unnamed woman disappeared once more to fetch her patron's drink.

Larewen leaned forward then, ungloved hand extending in the direction of the other's throat. "That is a lovely piece. Where did you get it from?"

Hruugen