Brews and Bouts (Open)

[Tetreka]

Tetreka nodded enthusiastically on the resolution for buying drinks, "We might have looked stupid, but I'll bet we made enough show of it that nobody would say it." Despite the lack of clean technique or martial success, observers would still have noted that it was a big strong man being violent with a less big yet still strong and violent man.

Tetreka returned the shake with one of his hands, smirking with delight at acknowledgement of his size, "Tetreka re Ahnatep. And you are not so big." When the barkeep had ale in front of them Tetreka took a huge gulp, again managing to get almost as much drink on himself as down his throat.

"You are not so big, but you certainly fight like it." He almost let that thought hang in the air, but he followed up on it. Leaning on the bar with two elbows, Tetreka gestured at him, "How do you fight like that? I've seen swiftness in people of all sizes, but that strength rightly belongs to only the blessed or bulky, are you marked the way that the beast men, the uh..." He pointed at the circle of men, trying to indicate the man Gracen had just fought, "Myrians, are you marked as the Myrians are?" Tetreka didn't typically differentiate between different types of humans, though he as a rule didn't enslave any of them with boats.

Tetreka knew almost nothing at all about magic, and the idea of it giving a man an edge in a fistfight seemed in that post-fistfight moment especially intriguing.

[Gracen]

He stopped laughing when there was ale to pour down his throat, and he had a better time of it than the Eypharian, although his hands were a little shakier than they had been the drink before. He hated when that happened. "I'm just scrappy, I guess," he said, jovial enough. "Myri never took an interest in me, though. From what I understand, she mostly sticks to her own tribe in Falyndar." He had a scar or two from his attempts to visit and track down a certain few someones, but that was another story entirely. "Perhaps your lady friend knocked a bit our your own strength out of you," he added, laughing, into his drink.

[Tetreka]

Tetreka chortled at the word 'scrappy' as it seemed like quite an understatement, "The wills and graces of the gods and goddesses are beyond me - I hear of ones like Myri, patron goddess of savages, and wonder sometimes why my people are so enamored with our lineage." He understood that to be a god was to be powerful, but some of them were just awful and strange - Eypharians, he often thought, were far superior to gods in some respects.

"Perhaps!" He would have liked to ask her about her strength and skill too, "I suspect, because she is not here drinking or making merry, that she may be a Jackal or even a Hawk! She comes not to drink, but to keep sharp her body as a weapon. Or at least I would hope so, if she was just a bored perfumer with a night off, I might start weeping." He finished drinking and spilling the ale that he was currently on, and turned to the barkeep for another; the suspicious look he was met with caused him to place to silver miza on the bar that the barkeep could be more assured that he wouldn't wander off drunk before settling his bill.

"Speaking of what she does, what is it you do, Gracen the Swordsman?" It sounded a bit like he had answered his own question, but then he clarified, "The world is harsh, many men become warriors-" He had to stop and let out a laugh, though he wasn't sure why he was laughing, "Why is it you have?"

Once again hinging his pride on profession of his opponents, if Gracen were to swear on just being a simple perfumer with spare time, Tetreka would have probably wept.

[Gracen]

"There are other gods who bless warriors, I hear," he said after swallowing down more ale. "Wysar blesses the Akalaks. Yahal the Benshira. Uphis in Nyka... Even Krysus would probably bless a warrior, though her gift is said to be dark indeed. "Hmm," he murmured thoughtfully over his drink as he peered at the woman who had so easily bested Tetreka. "Oh. I'm just a bored perfumer with a night off," he said with a straight face. He waited for that to settle in Tetreka's ears before he laughed it off. "No, no, I jest. Just a mercenary. I've the scars to prove it." And some of them showed where sleeves and the neck of his shirt allowed. "Better with a sword than without, though. And the trick to taking you down, aside from a healthy dose of luck, was that you're taller and with all those arms, your center of gravity is higher. It actually gives me an advantage depending on how I attack and how you defend. Strategy, you know?" He grinned.

[Tetreka]

For a brief moment Tetreka thought it was only the weak who needed the gods, but banished the thought from his mind and kept it from his speech; Even if he truly didn't need them, he certainly would be doomed if he caught their ire.

The look that Tetreka gave Gracen about being a perfumer was filled with such pure contempt that if weaponized might have cut down a hundred men. "I'm not sure if the scars mean you aren't a very good one or you've had mistakes to learn from." Tetreka smirked pleasantly to himself, managing to drink without spilling for once that night before continuing to speak, "You know, my brothers always used to tell me to keep my knees bent and weight low. At the time though, they were both a foot or more taller. Didn't make any sense to get any lower." He rubbed his face for a moment, trying to make a drunk mental note on how not to be beat up on by smaller men.

"I didn't think there was a lot of work for mercenary perfumists to do. Are you working for any men in the city now? I may know them." The question was less about fraternization through shared associates and a little more about knowing who to avoid for fear of competent swordsmen, though his tone of voice was at that moment deceptively friendly.

[Gracen]

"Mercenary swordsman," he corrected. There was Izdihar and other connected folk, he thought, and none of them would like him to go spreading their names around, he was sure. And so he just smiled and shrugged. "The people I work for don't like loose-lipped strong men, and I need to make more money. Best not to upset them." He didn't want to disappear, or have any more obstacles between him and his hit list. "What's your trade?"

[Tetreka]

Tetreka nodded sympathetically - he had worked as hired muscle once, and it was certainly not a job one went around bragging about.

"I am a slaver." Tetreka usually called it being a 'debt collector' but with drink in his system, he was not so careful about the words. "The hardest part is usually just finding non-citizens worthless enough that nobody will miss." By non-citizen he meant anybody who wasn't either Eypharian or Dhani. While Dhani didn't enjoy the same protections under the law that Eypharians did in regards to being taken as slaves, they were all just inherently very dangerous - until he became less averse to poison or having his torso crushed, he would leave them alone.

"So it is mostly humans, that I go after. You may have noticed a stark lack of humans in the city who are either homeless or beggars - they are very easy pickings for those of us who take slaves." Tetreka was gauging how Gracen acted very carefully, if the notion of having those of his blood taken slaves was inherently displeasing to him.

[Gracen]

Grace was a man of the world. He nodded in simple acknowledgment. Now he had a blade in hand, he was less worried about defending himself should the Eypharian's goodwill wear off, and he had the distinct impression that he had worked his way into Izdihar's good graces well enough that he could send word of imprisonment and she would deal with it. Of course, he would owe her, but better her than an impersonal slaver. "I should think it would be easier to collect and breed Kelvics," he said. "Generally less independent, created for servitude, and they breed more quickly than humans." Of course, most didn't live as long as humans, but favorite slaves could be bred to each other for future generations of servants. At least, that was how he would have done it.

[Tetreka]

"Maybe that is how things are done in Talderas. Or Sunberth. In Ahnatep, slavery is a social institution that ultimately all benefit from; the masters from work done, the slaves from care taken and skill gained. Core to that, a slave must be able to some day buy their freedom; this idea of breeding slaves, it is more personal than I care to get." Being born into slavery sounded especially awful, "I will admit they sell well though, for being animals. Saw a teeny tiny dog kelvic sold the other day, apparently when it isn't voiding its bowels on floors and beds it cooks and cleans. It went for a quite a bit more than the average farmhand." Kelvics were not 'people' so far as Tetreka was concerned, though if asked to differentiate between a Dhani going from snake to human and a kelvic gong from bear to human, he would have been at a loss for words.

Thinking about work was making his brain work carefully - he drained his mug, yet managed to spill absolutely none of it. "If I had work for you, hypothetically, would the notion of enslaving your brethren bother you?" Tetreka was acting as if all humans were inherently close to each other, though he hoped for an answer that would leave Gracen as an exception.

[Gracen]

The mere human just smiled and shrugged his shoulders; being from neither of those places, he didn't rightly care how their slave trades worked, nor how they worked here unless it was information that helped him make money and not become a slave himself. Being a slave would seriously curtail his reign of terror, or, rather, his candy assed attempts at revenge. Justice! He meant justice. "I have no brethren," he said, smiling into his cup. If any remained, they were probably the three people he meant to kill. An enemy could be more intimate than a lover. Sometimes.