Duscan

Duscan

sad boi hours
Weaver
Character Profile
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Duscan the Bastard needed no introduction to many of the other pubs, taverns, and inns within the small radius of the inn he lived and helped with. It was him pouring the other business owners drinks, laughing and waving off their invitations and insistence he visit their places of business with a small serve of something with a good punch. The days of repetition were now behind him, and after the week he had trying to wean off Old Bozzy from the grog... Dusc needed a drink he didn't pour himself.

"Gus, why the fuck does this taste sugar sweet?" Duscan made a face, one that showed perhaps it was too sweet, but the bastard actually liked the flavour it gave. It was some pinkish drink, of which Dusc watch it pour from the bottle and into his cup. There was something different to it that he couldn't place a finger on...

"Ah! Quit yer complainin' ya fecking bastard!" Loud, boisterous laughter sounded from Gangly Gus, and his friends that flanked Duscan seated at the bar. A hand whacked his shoulder in good fun, but he scowled at the audible smack! and the resonating sting after it. That was going to bruise, he could already feel it start to! "It's onl' fecking fruit, aye? Little shites called strawb'ries!"

That was the fun, wasn't it? That he being the younger amongst the other barkeepers present, Duscan would be subjected to being the butt to their banter.

No. That was not the only qualification.

"You've gotta taste the shit the ladies like, Pretty Boy! Up sell it to your lady patrons, eh?" Hooted the satyr seated beside him.

Duscan made another face, the flavour on his tongue changing to something like... burned sugar.

He grabbed the bottle, inspecting it. All there was to the clear glass was the pinkish liquid and twine wrapped around the neck. A small tag hung off from it.
"Sunrise tea." Duscan read in a bland tone. "Fuck me, where's the grog in this?" He needed a drink. Ale, cider, mead, even the gods cursed spirits he would take. "This shit has nothing in it!"

"Try again, bastard."

Duscan poured the drink in a new glass, shaking his head the entire time. He stood up from his seat, shrugging off the others that tried to pull him back to his seat, but the Bastard took hold of the freshly poured drink and wandered into the heart of the tavern. "Someone drink this and tell me if they taste alcohol or not, for the love of Gus."

The drink seemed to look almost pearlescent in it's glass, the pink hue something seen at sunrise. It was very sweet, but there certainly was no taste of alcohol's cold presence in the flavour.
 
Vilen had been singing and playing in the corner of the bar since midday - lute in hand, and voice just gravely enough that no one really bothered him with song suggestions. Just then, he was taking a little break, pretending to tune his instrument for a long time with little twists and twangs of the string. His feet, too short to reach the floor, were tucked against a rung of the barstool he sat on. It made him look a bit like a gargoyle perched on the eaves of a building. He grinned like one, too, when the drink was offered.

"Give it here," he said, tucking the lute under one arm and reaching out the other for the glass. Tips had been hard to come by that day, so he might as well drink on someone else's tab for all his trouble.

Vilen took up the glass daintily, between trimmed claws. The pink gleamed like a polished abalone shell. Gingerly as he held it, what he took was not a cautious sip - blush dripped down the glass in thick tendrils as Vilen drained half of it in one go. He expected something floral, but got apples. Warm, waxy apples weighing the tree branches down with the subtle-sweet smell of their ripeness. Not a bit of bite to it.

"Well, what does the little lady think?" Called out Gus from the bar. The black tip of Vilen's tail twitched, just once.

"Shit," he said. Cleared the sweetness out of his throat with a little growl. "Whatever that is, it's worse than alcohol."
 
Duscan grinned, handing over the offered drink and waited for the verdict. He had hopes that the bard — boy, did he always seem to always share a drink with them — would agree with him, that this was merely a ruse being put on by the other barkeepers this end of the city.

He could see it, the reaction of sweetness hitting one's tongue.

"Whatever that is, it's worse than alcohol."

Dusc turned back to his friends, a hand gesturing back at the brave soul that drank the pink stuff. "He agrees!"

But the other men laughed, and Dusc scowled at them. He turned back, looking at the devahni. Those words played in his mind again, and slowly, perhaps on the precipice of realisation, he began to clue into that something was not quite right.

"Worse, of course!" Guffawed Southside Allan. "It's fucking fey wine, ya bastard!"

They were set off again, and Duscan began to grimace. "Fucking fey shit." He cursed. The bottle was still in his hand, and he lifted it up to inspect it again. Faintly, words began to appear on the tag.

Drink.

"Enjoy your night, Bastard. You and your new friend can take the bottle. Now that you have had a taste, you will not be able to resist drinking more until the bottle is empty." Explained Allan, for Gangly Gus was too lost in his hysterical laughter to explain.

Fey wine. Of fucking course, it had to be that. Sweet, but held a flavour that was different for everyone that tasted it.

Duscan shook his head. "I can resist it." Came his famous last words before his mouth seemed to grow drier with each breath he used to speak. Alarmed, he raised his gaze to Vilen. Oops. He had brought someone else into his mess, and he could only hope they were good sport to go along with it. Duscan shook his head, slowly, as if to say no, no I was wrong.
 
That lanky mongrel Gus wouldn't stop laughing, turning red with the gasps of air he bellowed through. Vilen didn't recognize everyone else at the bar who guffawed along with the joke, he hadn't been in town that long. But he got the gist of the prank that had been played on the youngest of them and now, himself. Barkeepers seemed near as cruel as bards when it came to fooling their own.

"As far as fairy curses go..." Vilen started. He watched the hume in front of him inspect the bottle. Read the deceptively simple tag tied to its neck. "...this one ain't so bad, is it? Not like it's hard to drain a bottle, between two people."

Would this really be different than how Vilen spent most of his nights in town? Usually all he wanted to do was drink away the middle-dark hours with good company, regardless. The drinking part was taken care of. He squinted at his newfound companion, trying to assess the goodness of him.

The kohl round the man's eyes was running, and looked like it had been drawn on too thick to begin with. But other than that he seemed reliable enough.

"Unless, we start seeing things."

Vilen blinked at the sudden thought that overcame him. Lots of things he didn't want to see no more.

"Shit," he said. Took another swig from the glass in his hand without thinking. Set it down empty on the table next to him. "You don't think we'll start seeing things, do you?"
 
Something pitiful and doubtful collected deep within himself, not knowing a definite answer, but he reckoned his guess was answer enough.

"Fuck me." The long, grating sigh was the confirmation his drinking partner did not ask for. Dusc needed a drink, and luck would find it that he returned to his glass and began refilling it with the fey wine. The lads and shitheads were still laughing, and Duscan was in no mood to deal with their antics. Invite him out so many times, the one time he was able to, this happens.

"Come on mate." Duscan nodded to a table tucked away by the wall. "Let's go be miserable over there."

Finishing the bottle would be piss easy, especially between two.

Once seated, he set his glass and the bottle onto the sticky table. Trouble was, he knew this table had been wiped down, but he tried not to think about resting his sleeves onto the surface. "Duscan, the Bastard." He added before moving to offer a hand to shake. "May as well make introductions if were are going to battle through this together."

Trickery was nigh, for the reasonable assumption that they both could finish the bottle was well and good, but the fey were known for all sorts of enchantments that gave them the reputation for fuckery. The lower the bottle reaches, the longer it would take for them to finish it. They would find that pouring more glasses would not change the level of liquid.
 
Vilen had no qualms about getting off his high stool and following the man to a quieter seat. Except that when his feet hit the floor he veered too far to the left, the lute banging against the corner of something with a hollow twang. Tail swished far to the right to balance a head that was already starting to swim. He straightened himself and resumed his mosey over to the chosen table.

"Vilen Blackhart." Two darkly lit names together made for one gloomy corner of the bar. The pink of the feywine sparkled brightly between them.

The offered hand was taken with little ceremony. People were supposed to figure things out about each other from a handshake. Vilen's hands were cold and dry, and the pads of his fingers were firmer than a hume's. He'd already decided that he liked Duscan the Bastard, so he didn't dig in with his claws.

Duscan's palm was a little sweaty. No great sin.

"It don't have to be miserable, ya know," he said in an attempt to be less grouchy. The grumble of low voice and the glower of red eye helped him none in this attempt. "We could play a drinking game. Let's see, there's Truth or Drink, Sixes, High Weaver..." He listed, avoided naming the games that involved cards.

Vilen wasn't any good at cards.
 
Duscan's brows rose up at the sound of Vilen Blackhart. It was far better than Duscan the Bastard, and hells, he would hate to be next to him if pretty broads were flirting and asking for their names. He knew which name alone would score a few hours with a woman.

Unconsciously, Duscan sat up in his seat that gave him the optimal angles to show off the muscles he had. They weren't as big as they had been when he vainly put himself to work in Veya, but here? He was eating less and drinking more.

"Could never finish a game of Truth or Drink, I always end up very drunk and still going, or I say fuck it and take the ladies I play with somewhere quiet. Or maybe that was.... Drink or dare..." His thoughts were escaping him. Dusc ran a hand through his curls, his face moving to resemble a state of confusion as he mulled over the differences. "There is a very high chance I was pretending to play either of those games."

It had been a good move that yielded a high count of success for him.

"Alright. Let's not play that..." He had no idea what sort of questions to ask someone he wasn't trying to sleep with. "Let's start a new game. We're fine blokes that are capable of doing that... right? Yeah, fuck... we are! We are!"

Dusc refilled their glasses, no longer resisting the pull of the fey wine. He sculled his drink, a man without fear of this pink fey fuckery called wine. "How about we... um... fuck, I thought I had an idea..." The spurt had been there, and the next moment when he needed it, gone.
 
A chuckle crackled out of Vilen as his new friend confessed to usually being distracted during parties.

Not because Duscan had said anything particularly funny, but because Vilen was finding it difficult to imagine how one bluffed their way through a simple asking game. He was beginning to realize that Duscan might not be very bright. At least the hume was alright in the brawn category. Let him sit there and keep posing prettily. Vilen could pick up the slack and come up with an idea. Except, it was getting harder to think. All the noise and lights and movement in the tavern around them was starting to speed up. Or slow down, he couldn't tell.

Vilen did what all bards did when they were stumped. Leaning back with his lute in his lap, he strummed a half-remembered riff and let his mind wander to the first few words he could find that rhymed. It took a few repetitions of the melody to get anywhere.

Then all of a sudden a terrible, sharp-toothed grin spread across Vilen's face. He slapped his palm against the strings, silencing them for the big reveal.

"Dead, Bed, Newlywed," he announced in singular epiphany, a perfect title for a brand new game. Now all he had to do was decide how it was played. What do those things have in common? Dead, bed, newlywed... "Three fates that always chase the beautiful and the rich. So it's a game where you figure out who-gets-what-fate in a set of three."

Now, wait... how were they supposed to decide on things? And where did the drinking come in? Vilen was beginning to lose the plot. Another drink would help him get there, he thought as he reached for his freshly refilled glass.
 
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Duscan brought his cup to his lips and made what should be an unattractive face, but on him, made him look handsome and confused.

"How about... we do that... but we choose some unlucky persons and the other has to guess who they would want dead, would bed, and would be a newlywed with... each one wrong... we drink?"

He shrugged, thinking that would be simple enough. A game he would play rather than pretend he was following along.

Dusc sat up straight, not noticing that he swayed side to side a little before righting himself.

"Her, him, and... him."

The woman was a regular patron among the bars in this side of Crorefell. He didn't know her name, but Duscan thought he would give his new easy something friend to start... Duscan frowned. New Friend to easy? Easy friend to start? Another drink, another moment for Vilen with the Blackest Heart to guess.

The two men Duscan pointed out was a mercenary drunk off his arse and a dark and broody male elf drinking his ale and reading a book.
 
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