Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

“Standard-issue old fashioned gang warfare, far as the news has reached yours truly,” Miirszyx opines from behind his cards before he slides a large marker into the middle of the table. “A delightful ingredient this cities flavor’s been missing, if my opinion interests you. You planning to call, then, darling, or is all this for me.”

“A fine choice. Now, then, the flop. As I was saying, time was you never knew where the next shiv was coming from in the Darkwoods. You’d see jaluks walking around with their cheeks stitched up from ear to ear, or half their face nearly melted off from the acid. Back in the Syndicate days - violence isn’t even the word for it… Well, I have to call that, don’t I? You’re not going to buy me out of the pot with whatever bunk you’ve got under there.”

“So in my judgment that’s all that happened. Some of those Har’ol gangsters finally decided to get serious, learned a little Darkwoods history and made their move like Zee would have done. Go out on their own. And what do we all hear? “Massacre in the Dens”. “Bodies stacked to the cavern ceiling.” It’s merely that the cities forgotten what action feels like, it’s nothing to get so worked up about. I applaud them, whoever did it. Restoring the feeling.”

“Well, you weren’t bluffing at all, were you. Perhaps you should have been, though, take a look at these. Yes, well, I’ll take that then. And here’s something for you then, dealer, keep the Aces coming if you don’t mind and I do prefer the Diamonds to the Hearts.”

Somewhere in Darkwoods...

Well, I’ve got a bag on the rivvil with half a tail then, you can see the spirit in her good eye. To place? No, to win, you tart, when have I ever bet a fighter to place.

As I was in the very midst of explaining, we were emerging luxuriously from the Broken Goblet and rather astonishingly it was raining which is when little orbs of water fall from the night above. So she says to me, “But Miir, the water will ruin my make up.”

How does a jaluk like me respond to such a thing, you might ponder to yourself? “Then walk between the rain drops, rivvil.”

Oh what, this old thing? My jacket? Yes of course it’s the same material as the scarf - are you blind or merely stupid? Well, I haven’t the first idea. He told me it was the fur of a werecrocodile - I didn’t have it made, I won it. In the Gate, naturally.

We were standing on this great big tower right in the heart of it overlooking the marketplace. Looks rather like ours if you cast Feebleminded on everyone. So we’re up on this brick tower, decent architecture for up there, I’ll admit, watching them race horses around the marketplace. Horses are a small breed of hairless dragon - oh you know what horses ‘actually’ look like congratulations why don’t you go get me a drink then while I finish this story.

So I’m there consulting with some old horticultural friends of mine and they said let’s watch the race. No, not the study of (germbag), you astonish me, who in the realm would go to the surface to study (germbag)? Get yourself some water and coffee, honestly. No, it’s the study of trees, fascinating, really, did you know if they get large enough they can eat an entire rivvil child? I won’t bore you with all that I learned about wooden boards, suffice to say I returned nearly as rich in knowledge as I did in new fur coats.

Yes, well I’m opening a sideline. I’ve got a few svirfs chained together in my basement and they’re going to mass produce me some slave bunkbeds out of trees. Studies by local (germbag)-ticulturalists show that a slave who sleeps on lumber can work three more hours than one who sleeps on stone. Think of the efficiency! So as soon as I get some of that red lumber down here, we’re getting right to work. Tell your friends, if any of you have any in the slave-owning class.

Yes, well, off with her head I must suppose. Probably would’ve fought better if she opened that other eye once or twice. Can’t win them all. Here’s your money.

((OOC: As a hint, (germbag) is the censorship of a brilliant, if the author says so themselves, wordplay on 'horticulturalist'))

4 AM in Darkwoods

“Well, splendid card really but the other high rollers and I had been talking among maybe getting some fresh blood down here. Not like that, no, I merely look like a handsome bat but I assure you it’s just merely coincidence.”

“What I mean to say is this is the third time this week Guralznok the Rivvil Hammer has taken his fall in the fourth round, and even the tiefling grandmother-daughter battle royales are getting stale. It's profitable but why not find some exotic talent? Yes, well, stay savvy. The next card might have some new attractions once my legalitians have had a chance to do their rhetorical magic.”

“It just feels like everyone’s getting into excitement but me, you know. New faces every day around Mist Lake asking the most bizarre questions about exotic sexual positions. Yes the ladies can do that but it costs extra and honestly I’m sending a tanarruk slave to supervise. I scarcely remember, cast it from my mind best I could, something about windy I believe.”

“And all manner, breed and stripe of new trade. I know I mentioned that little sideline I was setting up in bedding for the help but even in this I have been outdone. Only the other day I was having a tipple in the ole Undy Val where I made the fortunate and deep pocketed acquaintance of a cabbage merchant. No, not a euphemism at all, the very lettuce of the night above. Had the whole marketplace seeing red. Customers were piling their bodies on top of each other trying to get their orders in.”

“Fixed you say? Fixed? I have never been so complimented in my little life. To think a humble dobluth such as myself could fix a fight such as this? I guess it’s true: all you jaluks from Darkwoods want to be me, a little.”

“Bet on Guralznok did we? Yes I don’t know what’s gotten into him recently. His blood moves fast but his hammer seems to slow down at the most inopportune moments. Tell you what, I’ll refund your bet if you can answer my riddle:”

"It’s fluffy and puffy and comfy as sin
You sink when you walk but you’ll never fall in
No chairs, no tables, nothing rigid in sight
Just soft little boulders cozy and light"

“Cheat? At cards? We don’t do that here, darling, but if you’re not playing to win why’d you sit down? Perhaps ‘Pontoon’ is more your speed? No? Well ante up then.”

“As I was saying, it has recently come to my attention rumor has arisen in these very slums that yours truly was not born in the traditional sense but emerged fully formed from a particularly pollinous mushroom deep in some terribly dark cavern.”

“While I admit this would go quite a ways to explaining from whence my preternaturally good looks and luck are derived, it is plainly the patter of fools as anyone who knows anything knows that I would never be caught dead in some dank dark cavern. My clothes are simply too expensive for such spelunking.”

“Rather, I have people for that, although I am terribly disappointed in them recently. If little old I wants to purchase one more than a dozen osquip-loads of cabbage, capital in hand, and throw a few chips at a logistician then I’ll be damned to a particularly unfashionable abyssal plane if I don’t expect to be bathing in sweet cabbage water ten cycles later.”

“I pay my people for results, not more problems, but all I’m hearing is the latter. Hells does a jaluk like me care for a demolished silver mine? Mines are for slaves. They tell me they are where precious metals are found but I’ve always had good luck with too-trusting gamblers like you lot.”

“In any case, apparently some awful silver mines gone and given up the ghost. ‘Enough is enough’, says the mine, and now it is no more. Quit on the spot, closed up shop like some bankrupt blackjack dealer, and now my cabbage empire is at a precarious crossroads. Surely I can not be the only jaluk whose very entrepreneurial livelihood has been cast into doubt and despair by this closure, and surely I’m not the only one who is shocked that the conclave could allow something so disruptive to happen.”

“I can only hope, I suppose, that the same fortune that keeps blessing me with straight draws will eventually draw me some straightforward way to get my cabbages down from the night above.”