Well as it turns out the only place to get ouzo is aforementioned bar, so I’m out of luck for a week or so. In the meantime, I was able to lay my hands on some craft akvavit from upper Norway, so that’s good enough.
Anyway, back to brawl night.
Lucy was feeling guilty at not having remembered. I was feeling very confused, but all the same welcomed based on Wilkin’s behavior. And the bar was about to become the sight of brawl night, which apparently involves contests of wits which tend to devolve into spirited debate.
As it turns out, contests of wits could be almost anything, from bluff dice to ‘you’ll never believe this’ to trivia to riddles and even to the standard bar games that are good for getting a drink off someone.
What makes it troll/orcish is that it’s pretty common to get punched over it.
Oh and the most important game - Drink That.
Depending on your tolerances, Drink That can be nigh impossible or downright close to deadly.
For Lucy, being a djinn, she’s a kind of impossible opponent for Drink That. For me, being a baseline without even half of the tolerances of any of the beings in the bar, I know now that Drink That requires me to have a referee on what the other folks want me to drink.
And before you ask, college was long enough ago that I do not handle my alcohol that well (not that I’ve ever been that good at it other than the usual pint or four).
So naturally, Lucy and I were the pair to beat in Drink That.
Anything that I couldn’t drink (aka would be lethal or highly poisonous other than just plain alcohol), Lucy would drink solo. Otherwise, 50/50 split.
So where’s the ‘wits’ you ask? Well, Drink That is played in conjunction with the other games. Each round you win, you’re subjected to a round of Drink That. Naturally this means that the better your wits, the more you drink, and the more likely you are to not be so full of wits. You can of course refuse to drink, but that’s something of an automatic forfeit.
And trolls and orcs are pretty naturally competitive, so they’re not one to take the loss easily. But then, neither am I. Too many rounds of Monopoly in my background.
So Lucy and I finished our drinks just as the feminine singer lowered her voice by about two octaves and two social classes to call out “BRAWL NIGHT” almost as a kind of belch.
I’d not actually bothered paying her much attention, but she was an orc. Built similarly to the door attendant, but sans camouflage so her heavy-set almost Amazonian figure could have given Lucy a run for her money. That said, the singer was a kind of polished red. Not like Wilkins who had been more a kind of ruddy red color, but more like the kind of red that you’d expect to find in a ruby worth more than you’d make in a good year. Maybe a garnet, but part of that might have been a trick of the lighting.
Lucy and my first opponents were a pair of trolls. I’d like to say that I remembered them, but alas, by the time we’d reached the evening, all I can distinctly remember is that they were trolls.
We settled on the basic bar game of penny pick up, where whomever picks up the last penny loses. Since we were playing in teams, Lucy and I won handily, both trolls already being halfway into their cups.
Winning resulted in a hearty slap on my arm (which ended up bruising the next day) and a lava flow, which Lucy rather graciously accepted and drank quickly. The trolls were a bit put off that I wasn’t drinking, but when I pointed out that I was just a baseline Seer, they seemed to understand (which is to say that they took it for what it was, words, but seemed all the more determined to make me drink something).
So we played another round which Lucy and I won again. Lucy got the hefty slap on the arm this time and she punched the particular troll in the shoulder, earning a guffaw from the troll in question. This time, we got a pink martini, so I could tell it was aimed at me, in a kind of trollish humor, but I had zero problem drinking it right away. It was rather tasty, but I can’t remember what was in it.
Our opponents headed on and someone else arrived in their place. The aforementioned singer. Meanwhile, one of the first ‘spirited debates’ was happening on the far side of the room. Strangely it seemed rather well confined to just the two beings involved without the expected splintering of tables, chairs, or glasses.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
The singer was by the name of Martha and before we asked, no she was not related to Wilkins, she’s just a similar color. The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but looking back it was rather obvious.
“So what brings a Seer and a Djinn to my lounge?” she asked, the far less feminine voice appearing to be her norm. It contrasted rather sharply from the rather fine dress she was wearing (which was something out of classic noir film).
“Good drinks, good company, and a personal victory,” I settled on, the pink martini already making itself felt.
“Fair enough, but on brawl night? You must be a braver or more foolish Seer than I’d have suspected,” Martha smiled, her distinctly orcish smile broad and toothy.
“Why not both?” I prompted, having already figured out that this too was a kind of contest of wits, albeit not entirely like the aforementioned lighter banter.
“Why not both, indeed. So tell me - how is it that you came to be a Seer?” she challenged me.
Lucy seemed rather silent at this point, uncharacteristically for her, having apparently decided that this was a challenge between myself and Martha.
“And how is it that you came to being a lounge singer?” I countered.
“Years of training and a lousy job market,” Martha said flatly.
“One too many times caught outside by lighting,” I answered, matching her flat tone.
She seemed to consider this for longer than I’d have expected, sitting back slightly.
“And how is it that you find yourself with him?” Martha rather pointedly asked Lucy.
Lucy’s face screwed up for a moment before taking the meaning.
“Good neighbors and good friends only. It’s not every day you meet someone who can see who we really are and still find it perfectly normal,” Lucy decided on, apparently trying to decide on whether or not this would be a win or a loss as far as a Drink This would be concerned.
I’d say a predatory look crossed Martha’s face, but that’d be false. Just a look of acknowledgement of Lucy’s comment and then a kind of mental dismissal. Of what, I have no idea.
“What brings you so far from your clan?” I prompted.
The look on Martha’s face was one of momentary shock at my knowing about orc clans, but it passed just as quickly as it came.
“Education and a desire to be somewhere where it’s not family everywhere I look,” she said simply.
“Ah, the Alabama problem,” I threw in there as a bit of a dig, but didn’t wholly mean it too harshly.
“Something like that. And what brought you to this area? You do not speak like a native,” she turned it back on me just as quickly.
“Work and a love of cold weather,” I admitted.
She raised an eyebrow as if to suggest that this seemed like hardly enough reason to come here.
“But I suppose with becoming a Seer, I’ll probably change things up a bit. At least on the work front,” I pressed.
“I’m surprised the Council didn’t offer you residence in Ottawa then,” she replied.
“They did. But I thought this area was more to my liking for now. Besides, then I’d have to update my address and deal with moving and who wants to go through all that?” I gestured broadly.
Martha took the motion as an opportunity to grab my right hand and hold it with her own for a long moment.
Her hand was rougher than I’d have expected for a lounge singer, but that’s also apparently the norm for most orcs.
She seemed to concentrate for that long moment before releasing it and nodding.
“I hope you do well as a Seer then,” she said, gesturing to one of the wait staff, a comparatively thin troll who was probably only just 30, to bring Lucy and I each a tall mudslide.
Lucy practically bounced in her seat at the mention of the drink and seemed to watch the bar for said mudslides approaching like a cat watches a particularly incautious mouse.
Nothing else was really said over the course of the few minutes, but several more ‘spirited debates’ broke out and so as a small group, we watched from our safe distance. It wasn’t clear what was the cause, but it seemed friendly enough since one of the opponents was pummeled into the floor, picked up and slammed back down, before being picked up, dusted off, and a drink thrust into their waiting hand.
Our mudslides arrived and Martha rose and walked away.
“She was clearly hitting on you,” Lucy flicked my nose with a kind of painless fire bubble, greedily drinking her mudslide.
“Maybe, but you know I’m terrible at all of this sort of thing. In the time you’ve known me, how many dates have I managed to go on?” I countered.
“Not enough and that’s entirely my point,” she stuck her tongue out for a moment and then dove back into her mudslide.
Sadly, it was after this point in the evening that it starts to dissolve in terms of what I recall. I had the same problem in college, which is more or less why I don’t drink like my roommates did/could.
What I can say is that I had a roaringly good time, apparently being talked into doing the orc version of karaoke, which could be an entire chapter unto itself, so I’ll let you work that in your imagination. Troll karaoke is beyond me, being more like a mix of Gregorian chant, Mongolian throat singing, and something that I’d swear is either a bear or a volcano.
Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about a tab, because I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t have been able to sign a check in any case.
But alas my final mis-step of the evening? Or shall I say, the morning after? I woke up snuggling Warren.
No, that’s not a mistype.
According to the mostly impervious drinker Lucy, I got it in my head about halfway home (hooray for having a walkable town) that Warren was adorable when he was changed and I clearly needed to give him brushies (even though it was nowhere near a full moon).
We arrived back at the building and between knocking until Warren answered the door, a bit annoyed obviously and Lucy doing the equivalent of ‘he’s your problem until morning’, Warren decided to be practical and just deal with it.
He was the little spoon.
And that was my first adventure to a troll and orc bar.
I’ll hopefully get back to some of the more recent stories once I text Martha on when the next brawl night is and once I deal with my roommate, the latter of which will be either very interesting or very boring.