Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn Subject: [Dragon's Inn -> Drag On Inn] Jammed in the FlipSide Message-ID: From: hutch@ibeam.intel.com (Steve Hutchison) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1993 02:24:07 GMT It was lunchtime. 'Raelf was simultaneously disgusted and starved - five hours of thrashing around bad ideas with Archmage Dasham had left him in a state of mind where he might even have welcomed a long conversation with Father Lucas. It wasn't so much that Dash had ideas that wouldn't work, it was that they were either repellent, obscene, or cumbersome, and she knew it, and he knew she knew it, and she was just trying them on him to see if he might come up with some different angle to fix the problems. Except that she was being incredibly rude and obnoxious about it - he had to keep a constant guard up, because she kept trying to probe at him, and she had injured two more people in her attempts to convince him to "give her what she wanted." He hadn't even felt like skating down from the Guild Hall - he just walked along the Avenue of Fountains, seething, not even noticing the small scorch marks appearing on some of the cobbles as he stepped on them. Why did she think she could get away with that crap? Finally he came to the familiar door to the Dragons' Inn, and wrenched it open, and stepped inside. Only to stop dead still. Something had moved. This wasn't the right Place. There. That waitress - not one of Rowan's. The man behind the bar, was also not Rowan - oh, he looked the part, but 'twarn't him. He looked deeper, then felt, carefully, slowly, for his focus-staff. It was there, hidden in his hair in its toothpick-sized form. He pulled it out and made it wand-sized. "Hey, good buddy, what can ol' Rowan Littletrill get for ya'?" "A way out. This isn't funny." "What'cha mean?" The blond mage stalked up to the bar, and reached across, gripping the barman's shirt in a peculiar grip that let him twist it tight to his neck. The shirt smoked, but the flesh underneath was somehow unmarked. "What's the big idea?" 'Raelf snarled, "You set a trapgate on the door to the Dragons' Inn. Why?" "Hey, 'Raelfy boy, how you say it, `mellow out'? I didn't do anything that the Inn itself didn't want me to. Now let ol' Rowan get you a drink." "Cut the crap, Alita. You know that wearing a different body isn't going to fool me. You're the same sneaky duplicitous succu.." "Hey-hey - let's keep the names quiet, stud. Tell you what, how about you and me and the lovely lady who waits my tables, have a sit-down over there and catch up on things." The burly barman carefully disentangled 'Raelf's fingers from the throat of his garment, put down the dirty rag with which he'd been not-polishing the glasses. 'Raelf scowled in distaste. The barman led him to a quiet table in a dark corner, and gestured for the waitress to come slaunching over. She sat down with them, chewing a cud of gum and occasionally popping a bubble. "That's a new look for you, isn't it?" 'Raelf asked, pointing to the stringy fishnet top the waitress was wearing. "I thought you were more into leather bondage duds. And living in a jar." "Heh. These were leftovers from the previous waitress." The black lipstick gleamed as the waitress licked her red tongue across her sharp lips. "Yeah, leftovers, right. You look like Aeon Flux. So tell me, `Rowan', whatever happened to the place? I hate your new decor, almost as much as the old decor." He scuffed with one fingernail at a large bloodstain on the table. It flaked off and the bits crawled away. "Well, when William killed himself or that PCD thing or whatever, there was a very confusing time when I wasn't sure if I was trying to keep you or Lancos or Kadrys around so I wouldn't be lonely, then I found this jar, with our friend in it. So after you all vanished, the Entity transported us to its island, and offered me a reward. I run this whole city." "You? In charge of ack-I-renege?" 'Raelf grinned in spite of himself. "Well, what's wrong with that?" "There's damn few people actually LIVING here is what's wrong with that." "Oh no. There's quite the population here. See, when all my memories got untangled, the same things happened here. Sure, the vampires rule the place, or think they do, but there's strict rules. Most people don't get bitten more than once a year, and it takes a special license to create a new vamp. I really don't have to do much, it sort of runs itself, nowadays." "Of course. So it's just a charming little seaport now, eh?" "Don't be sarcastic. The shipyards are working again, they have ships that can sail on the Great Black, the Way-Rune protects them. He casts the spells that keep them from rotting away." "Huh. So what happened HERE? Last I knew, the Drag On Inn was a cafeteria for the long-of-tooth crowd." "Well, StrungOut had her baby, and it kind of ate the place, all the old proprietors, customers, everyone. Everyone except Screamer there." The barman gestured, pointing out a very miserable-looking punk-rocker dressed up in a swishy sort of Regency gear, playing a dismal medley of elevator muzak ren-faire tunes on a cheap autoharp. "Took his voice though." "Too bad - he was one of the few good things about the place. What happened to dear baby Nasty?" "Oh, it crawled down to the bay and swam off. Stopped to eat the Bizarre on the way. I wasn't about to try and stop it." "So you just rebuilt on the old site?" "Yeah, it's a hobby. I copied LittleFair's body, pretty good, eh? And when the Entity gave a body of sorts to Noira here, well, we had already decided to take up together, and this place gives her all sorts of intense sensations to feed on. Especially after she learned how to set up the trapgate." "Yeah, tell me all about it, Leets." 'Raelf started flipping his shrunken focus staff from finger to finger, like a miniature baton. "You haven't called me that since you stopped being an elf," `Rowan' smiled. "I haven't seen you in almost a year by my calendar. Go on, you rebuilt?" "Oh. Well, we noticed that this spot likes violence, there's some ancient curses that encourage it, even when the people who come in are peaceful sheep outside. I remembered all those weird spells at that other Inn, the ones that keep violence away, and told Noira, and we decided that the two Inns should help each other out. After a few weeks we figured out how to do the ritual, and here it is. Anyone who walks through that door with true peace in their heart, well, they might just end up in the Dragons' Inn back at Nexus. People who are truly violent, who intend murder and death and such, they try to go in the door there, and they might end up here." "Real cute. What about people who want to get away from their violent sides?" "Hey, nobody's perfect, sweetie." "Uhm. Do you just turn them loose in the Plane of Horror, then?" "Oh no. For some reason they all disappear back to the other side when they go out the door. We don't know why." 'Raelf considered, for a moment. He HAD been mad enough at Dasham to take her apart, slowly, into her constituents. That might have been the trigger. He shook his head. Got to keep centered. An enemy could have caught him in that state, and his lack of balance would have been fatal to one or the other. "So. You want to know what I've been up to. Well, there was some nasty business with an old god, and some other nasty business with a murdering magician, and I got back together with my lifemate. SunStorm and TrueSilver went into a long sleep, then vanished - no trace, not even when I looked backtime for them." At that point a fight broke out in another part of the bar, and Noira rose, smiling a greedy, predatory smile, and went over to help out. "You've got stuff going on. I want to get back to the real world. I'm glad you have the kind of life you wanted to have, Leets." "Oh yeah. Give us a kiss before you go, eh?" 'Raelf gave the burly barman a long, measured look, then a kiss on the cheek. A catcall from the rabble was quickly interrupted by a boot from another of the rabble as the barfight grew. `Rowan' wiped his cheek. "Call that a kiss? Why you still holdin out on me?" "I already told you, a long time ago, you're the wrong species." He ducked the swung fist, rolling backwards into a cat stance, then spun and walked out the door/back to Generica. He looked around. Yep, this was the real thing. ---- [ADMIN] So okay. Over the last month or so, we've gotten some new people, and some old ones who don't remember the rules of the group. There is NO violence in the Dragons' Inn, horseplay maybe, violence no. The place is a clean, high-class establishment, the staff is friendly, except when you cut holes in the roof, but it doesn't really tolerate physical or magical violence in its confines. There's plenty of places in town where that sort of thing is enjoyed, and appropriate. Recently we've had a run of people killing people as part of their "introductory pose", and the people waiting tables portrayed as either insulting the customers or putting on an act of being idiots. And then there was food served with a dirty fork, a thing which Rowan Littlefair would simply never tolerate in his establishment. So this is a proposed "why are these things happening" that won't discard trial posts by new people, that doesn't require their characters to be insane or to be hallucinating. If y'all like it, fine, if not, fine, it doesn't have to go anywhere. If someone WANTS to goof around in the Drag On Inn, let me know, because there's some stuff about the people who run it that you better know before you try doing things to them.