The Sunk'n Leviathan

A cheer goes up at their arrival. There are a few furrowed brows at the sight of Teya, but most clear up when mentions of a free drink are passed around. Teya spots a group telling tall tales and grins "Get me something tasty." She says to Hans. She had noticed Hilde slipping the coins into his pocket, even if he hadn't. "And make it a pint." She continues loudly, to general roars of approval. She winks at Hans "I'm going to see if I can dig Captain Cloudbreaker out of this mess of humanity." General good-natured insults are thrown back at her from the drunks.

Hans nods at the Princess and moves to the bar as she strides away.

"Firewhisky, and your best spiced mead, sir."

Hans did notice the increase in weight in his pocket earlier. Hilde was good, that was for sure, but not quite that good. Not that he was either. Bah, it didn't matter. He payed the Barman with the Crown's cash, something he never thought he'd never find himself doing. The Seekers life was a strange one.

Taking the drinks, he moves back into the crowd, trying to find Teya and potentially her quarry, the 'good' Captain Seamus.

Teya has found herself some space near the door, and is listening to the tall tales from her new friends she takes the drink gratefully from Hans
"These men were just asking me to tell them an exciting story. Not sure 'the time I spent sixteen hours drunk while on guard duty' is quite going to measure up. Help me out here?

Hans pulls a face, trying to think of something that wasn't (At least to his mind) classified information, while simultaneously being exciting.

"Well, ever heard the tale of Two Hand Revy? She was a master gunner, like myself, part of my inspiration, actually. Anyway, Revy was an infamous pirate, could blow the enemy ship's Captain off his own deck from a hundred feet away with her guns, artifacts of Ancient design. But the interesting thing about Revy wasn't her skill with the gun, it was her ship, the Black Lagoon. It was something she found in an underwater grotto, a ship of ancient and immense power. Its crew were Golems that followed her every order. The cannons loaded and fired themselves wherever she pointed her weapon, but it was fast too. Faster than any wave."

He swigs his whiskey heartily.

"One day, amongst her plunder, she found a magical gem, named the Siren Stone. This stone, when struck correctly, could cause the greatest of storms or bring the calmest seas. However, when Revy used it, she didn't strike it correctly, and the chime of the gem summoned forth the Sirens from the deepest waters. They attacked her ship, pulling the cannons overboard, ripping apart the Golems and finally descending on her for a feast of flesh. Revy, in anger, shot the gem that had summoned these vile and black creatures, and the chime calmed the sea such that it froze, forming what we now know as the Great Northern Ice."

"Of course, the Ice has been there for longer than any can remember, and there are many who say the creatures who tore the ship apart were no sirens, but deformed monstrosities brought forth by the Wave Lord. They say the seas fell silent and no winds blew, as dark shapes moved beneath the surface. The ship creaked and groaned in the water, these beasts of the deep hauling themselves upon the deck, shaped like men but with sapphire scales and gills of a fish. Some stood tall as a troll, scales like armour, turning away blade and bullet, great beastly claws tearing golems limb from limb. Others were smaller, faster, with short sharp talons and pulsing venom sacs. Their anger at the Captain was furious as thunder, for the Lord of Oceans does not sit idly while his storms and seas are tampered with. Once the ship was utterly wrecked, he reached down from the heavens with a whirling column of stormclouds, taking the gem from Revy's outstretched palm and sealing it beneath the ice of the north, never to be held by mortals again."

Seamus pushes through the throng of rowdy Gevellians, tankard in hand, and takes a seat.

"You need to work on your storytelling, my friend. The trick is in the suspense, the description of the tale, it fills the mind of the listener with sights and sounds beyond anything they've ever experienced first-hand."

He looks over at Teya and tips his hat.

"Greetings, m'lady, did I hear you wanted to speak with me?"

Hans waves the Captain off, drinking his whiskey.

"You can use all the fancy descriptions you like, if a tale's crap it's crap, and if it's good then the story will hold its weight. Lathering it with description is for publishing, you need to know the tale is sound first. Besides, we don't all spend our days amongst the ever so eloquent Lanetians and their expansive vocabularies, some of us get stuck debriefing the higher-ups alongside Elves, or telling our tales to Nordmen. They don't like the fancy, they like the solid, the Nords."

There is no ill nature in his tone, it's as even as ever. He clearly doesn't like the debriefing though.

"Still, it's always fun to condescendingly insult the pencil-pushers at the guild who like trying to tell us what to do without their realisation."

"Last I heard, the Nordmen loved their rich sagas and epic legends... Unless centuries of oral tradition has somehow dissolved in the months since I was last in the capital."

As he speaks, he absent-mindedly reaches into his pocket and draws out a small black token, turning it over in his palm.

"I do not wish to spark an argument, you of course know your own people better than most. As a traveler I have grown used to the luxury of picking and choosing which tales to tell and songs to hear."

[OOC note - where did that bit about insulting guild officials come from?]

[OOC - Nowhere. Felt like something Divah and Hans would end up doing. Did it a hell of a lot to Pike]

"I'm sure you know a lot about Amran Oral, Captain."

He shakes his head softly, swiveling his drink.

"You'll find the sagas stick to the number of men we've slaughtered and the gore that flies. They're not usually very descriptive of the enemy, only that we killed them dead, really really well. As the saying goes, "Sir, we cannot possibly win, we outnumber the Amranians ten to one!" The Nords aren't the type to mince words, they'd rather mince flesh, whatever the type. Preferably that of Werewolves."

He smirks and drinks

"Of course, if you want a descriptive tale regarding the many diverse and descriptive ways of killing, you'd be best suited to the Shuruti Legends, like that one about Alinara the Assassin, but I digress. We've a Royal Guard here, I think we should show the appropriate level of attention."

The tone is quiet enough so that the whole bar doesn't hear, but loud enough for their already 'aware' fellows from earlier and companions hear.

Hilde is listening to their banter, but in a distracted kind of way. She watches the room, and the other occupants, rather than their companions, safely confident in the Seeker's motives at least. At the mention of the 'Royal Guard' she glances over, but says nothing.

Teya gratefully picks up on the 'royal guard' remark. "Hey, when youre effectively invisible, you'd be amazed at what you see royalty get up to. There was a big punch-up at a concert last month- must have been fifteen blue- bloods scrapping away - and most of em couldn't fight to save their lives" she mimes a slap fight, to gwneral amusement.

Hans smirks.

"That sounds more like Lanet than home. I dare say if anyone had tried any such nonsense in King Olaf's hall they'd have been punted out on their asses."

"Actually, his majesty thought it was brilliant - he couldnt stop laughing, ordered the musicians to play something suitably comic and nearly laughed himself sick before he ordered the guard to break it up." Teya grinned lopsidedly "Course, some of these lanetians just don't know when to stop. Chased one of them three times around the hall before I caught him!"

Hans snickers at the tale, mirth evident on his face.

"Sounds like the Lanetians. He was probably too used to their weak old wine to stomach proper drink."

"I don't know, some of those fortified wines they have there." She lets out a low whistle "Let's just say after a night on their special reserve port, breathing seems remarkably loud." She turns to Captain Cloudbreaker "Actually, that links in quite nicely. I was wondering if you'd be persuadeable into giving me and Hilde there a lift back to Amran? Via a couple of...detours?"

Hilde turns again, curiously, for several reasons. What did she have in mind this time? Where did she want to go? Doubting the Captain would decline, unless he had something particularly important planned, she considered what it might be like to stand on the deck of a flying ship. Or a ship at all, for that matter. Living in Amrania, there was little need for seafaring, having no ocean borders. Not that that seemed to have stopped the Tionese's engineering curiousity...but then not much did.

"I don't think I have anything important that can't be re-scheduled, and It's been a while since I was last in the northlands. Just tell me when you want to leave, my crew should be ready to depart by noon tomorrow."

The Captain pockets the token and stares at nothing in particular for a moment, as if making a mental note of something important, before returning to his drink.

'One of my stops might prove quite a test - I have a wager to win. With a rather unpleasant Lanetian lordling who insisted that no-one could ever sneak through his security. Little twit even had someone taste an apple he picked." There is a decidedly wolfish grin on the princess' face "there are other ways around his 'precautions' but i think dropping into his room might be the most... memorable."