[Malfazar’s] Where You Belong [Bob]

[Victor Lark]

The noise he made was supposed to be a laugh. Alas, the partially consumed beverage on the edge of his throat turned it part sneeze, part snort, and part spit. His shoulders convulsed with amusement as he moved to cover his hand with his mouth. Like a child scolding another, he interjected, “Rhysol’s not a She. She, in the song, is The Voice. She makes all the decisions. Like a queen, but better. She’s His lover,” he cooed, as if it were some rumor to ridicule, “He gives her powers.”

If Bob had sat beside any other man, even one more drunk than the Lark boy then, he might have been told to shut his mouth and keep his ignorances secret. But Victor, the stupid but lucky fool with a name that granted him some semblance of amnesty from the city’s more trivial offenses, would give no such warning even if he were of sound mind. He did not entirely believe that mere blindness to the God of Evil would cause a person any harm, but if it did, he wanted to find out.

He decided he deserved another taste of ale before he had to answer the rest. A sigh carved a playful frown on his lips. “Petching foreigners,” he muttered as he moved the drink in idle circles against the glass that contained it. “Don’t know anything about anything.”

A drawn-out pause kept Bob waiting, filled with the cheerful humming of ”...ol’ Rhysol’s Ravok!” as the boy struggled to put more words together in his head. When he did, he was amiable; his greater knowledge granted him a happy sense of superiority. He finally removed both hands from his glass to gesture conspicuously. “Yeah, they respect Him. He’s only the God of Everything! Or at least everything that matters. Darkness, and magic, and minds, and power.” Victor did not quite know what Evil was; at least, not enough to pick the word out of his bewildered brain. “And Ravok, of course. He’s the one that makes Ravok the wealthiest, luckiest, happiest city in all of Mizahar. And he gives the Chaon powers. That’s what makes them Chaon. Some people are Chaon, and some are not. Just like some people are priests, and some people are ‘Stryfe, and some people aren’t.”

He stopped a moment to wrap his hands around his mug again, but this time thought to speak first. “But everyone knows Rhysol. He’s the biggest god there is.”

[Bob Barton]

Victor may have had a little too much to drink. Bob could not help but feel guilty, just a little...trying to force the boy to continue indulging in his vices. But he was learning a lot. Getting confused with his newfound knowledge as well. The idea of songs with voices, shes and hes, lovers of queens, Rhysol decisions and power were bouncing all over his head. But the last bit especially sounded very interesting. Maybe Bob got the thing muddled a little but then he had the basic idea.

Some time of silence passed. Only with the Rhysol song in the background. Victor is probably thinking things through. At least now Bob knew a little bit more about this Rhysol person so this was not a total lost. To pass the time he started humming with the tune and swung his body from side to side in rhythm. "Ol' Rhysol's Ravok, Ol' Rhysol's Ravok." Very catchy. If Bob had the time he would love to learn it. Maybe he will ask Victor later. He seemed like a nice person.

Victor's next explanation was good as well. Bob never was really interested when it comes to gods. At least until that Priskil worshipping Akalak told him about Sagallius and the twins helped him back in Syliras. Being the god which made Ravok what it was as described by Victor only made him sound a lot better. No wonder he was popular enough to be referred to as the God of Everything. Bob made a mental note. Rhysol. A god somewhere around the level of Sagallius in the "Bob is impressed meter".

Bob lifted his glass to Victor, hoping to lure him into another toast and get him drinking again. After taking a few sips he leaned forward to Victor. Power...it was one of the best things in the world. "About this Chaon people, what do they do? I bet those priests and Stryfe people you were talking about are loved as much as your Rhysol." Bob starting smiling again. Really, he hit the jackpot. This boy was a goldmine of information just waiting to be picked clean.

The tune was still being carried in the background. "So he is, so he is." Bob answered Victor cheerfully. He might still not know that much about this Rhysol but even now he is curious to want more. He still could not help himself as he started moving from side to side again, humming "Ol' Rhysol's Ravok, Ol' Rhysol's Ravok." Bob isn't even in Ravok yet and he loved it already.

[Victor Lark]

Victor obliged the raised glass with a happy strike of his own and drank. And drank, and drank. He reached for the lifted base of Bob’s mug and pushed on it, to help him see it through. He could not tell if he had even touched it, or if he had tipped the thing over the foreigner’s lapel. All he knew was that he was drinking too fast. He needed to breathe, but he wanted to show anyone who bothered to watch him that he could imbibe as much as the next patron, despite his age.

When he lowered his glass, it was with a fit of coughing and sputtering akin to Bob’s recent struggles with his forgotten pipe. As soon as he had caught his breath, he took another sip, just to disprove any impressions of weakness. Then he set it down and glanced at the swaying song-leaders in the middle of the tavern. Still intent on distracting from his embarrassment, he joined in,

“There’s a sweet young girl, with bold black locks,
and eyes so bright and pretty good rack;
she’s a knife in her fist and it’s in your back
in ol’ Rhysol’s Ravok!”

He turned back to his mug, only to notice that his chugging seemed to have done little to lower it. Clinging absently to it, he turned his eyes to Bob and tried to remember what he had asked. “Chaon...” he mused, “I don’t... I don’t know.”

He could not believe he had admitted that. A great pride had welled up in his fragile sense of superiority, inflated by a false perception of the wealth of knowledge bestowed on Bob. For a moment, he thought was lost completely. His jaw tensed and his eyes flared, and then he corrected himself. “I mean... they curse people. I don’t know how, I mean. I mean, only Chaon would know that, because Rhysol would only tell them. Once I saw one that had all-white eyes!” Impressed at his own story, no matter how brief, Victor huffed and glanced at his cup. After a moment of consideration, in which his head swam in a sickening battle against sobriety, he picked it up again. He leaned heavily from his stool when he regarded Bob to change the subject entirely.

“Did you really only come here because you wanted to?” He asked, both incredulous and amazed. Apparently he had misinterpreted some clever riddle of Bob’s, or maybe he just imagined that the traveller had admitted something of the sort. Victor clutched Bob’s little shoulder suddenly, then pushed off of it to regain his balance on the tall chair. “Where do you come from? You must be really tough, to fight away all the monsters and all.”

[Bob Barton]

Bob was caught by surprise with Victor's sudden move. Who would have expected someone to touch another man's glass. It was blasphemy! The little sips Bob was taking had to be increased to gulps. To make sure that it doesn't spill out. But Victor did it too fast. Bob ended up choking. And when he did he quickly pulled away the mug and slammed it on the table before anything else happened. Spluttering annoyed, Bob asked Victor "Why did you have to do that?" while using his sleeve to wipe off the ale around his face.

Lucky for Victor, Bob was still a little too focused on nearly dying because of his drink to care about Victor's embarrassment. A lot of men he knew would like that, dying with a mug in hand. But not Bob. Since the start as long as Victor drinks, Bob did not care because he still believed that was what would make Victor talk. Only now he had a new rule. Bob did not want Victor touching any drink in his hands. Like the one which was now half full of ale that he did not want to finish.

He listened to the first two lines attentively. About the sweet young girl. Slipping in a question in between the transition to the third line when he leaned forward to make sure Victor heard. "Hey, hey who is that girl?" Then his eyes widened at the end of the verse. "You know what? On second, thought nevermind..." Where did Victor learn this kind of song? It was just so bizarre. Actually not only Victor because it seems like everyone else but Bob was singing it. Hmmmm...maybe. "Does this song hold any meaning?" Humming the tune along with everyone else just so he won't seem out of place.

This time instead of drinking for Victor, Bob drank for himself. To settle his nerves from that song. Taking in a gulp and letting the taste of the ale settle in slowly. It seems that these Chaon people are a secret that even Victor did not know about. Which also means they are important. Important and secret enough to spread around curses?!? Right. Bob will just make sure he will never get near any of them. They sounded a lot more dangerous than interesting. And Victor is probably just overexcited with the eye thing like Bob is right now. "Are you sure? About the all-white eyes. Maybe you were just a little..." What word would suit for this situation. Scared? Panicked? Afraid? No those words would be taken as an insult for most people. "...excited?"

Bob took the hint that Victor did not want to continue with this subject when he leaned forward to rest. "Why can't I want to come here?" Yeah why can't Bob want to go to Ravok? Was there something wrong him doing that? And Bob actually came along with a group of travelers. But he decided not to tell Victor that now that he seemed to be impressed? "Oh you know...just came from Syliras. The people there are boring. Very boring. As boring as the weak monsters I killed along the way. Oh they came, yes they did. But I chopped and slashed right through all of them." Bob started spinning a lie just for Victor. Waving and chopping his hands around as he talked about him "killing monsters".

[Victor Lark]

“No I wasn’t!” Victor replied to Bob’s doubts, indignant. “I saw him! He had white eyes! And he made a man scream bloody murder until he choked on his own voice! It was in front of the whole street, so everyone could see it! I saw it!” Despite all of the drink that had wetted his tongue, it suddenly felt dry. He gulped dry spit and took another swig of ale.

His eyes grew wide over the rim of his glass as the foreigner obliged the citizen’s ignorances, soaking up the lies with boyish fascination. What’s boring about Syliras? He wanted to say, What sort of monsters did you fight? How did you kill them? But he had to soak his perpetually parched throat with more drink before he could bother with speech. Just as the ale nearly gave his attention back to Bob, the song stole it away again. As with most bar songs, there were too many verses, often repeated or inserted by some cobbler or wright who thought himself a poet; the next one, though, was traditionally a promise that it was almost done. Victor’s eyes widened as it began. “Oh! Oh!” He said, clutching Bob’s arm to steady himself. “This one’s my favorite!”

“There’s a clergyman you ought not mock,
don’t called him a snake or a fake or a cad;
got a tongue the kind of silver that’ll make you mad
In ol’ Rhysol’s Ravok!”

“Gotta tunna cinna sinna...” He laughed at his own failed attempt, then finally interjected, “Rhysol’s Ravok! ...I never get that one. There’s no point to the song, anyhow. Just stories about people.” Victor turned to his glass. Though it was almost finished, there was still some left. Still, the boy eyed the mug in front of Bob almost possessively.

Despite his pathetic insobriety, Victor remained surprisingly articulate. Part of him wanted to believe he was only pretending to be as drunk as he acted, but the other part was beginning to realize his weakness. He moved his hand from the stranger and latched his fingers onto the side of the table. Pointing with the other hand, he added, “No. But you tell me about stories. I want to know about the monsters. How did you fight them? How did you kill them? You’re so small!”

[Bob Barton]

Victor suddenly got very defensive. It scared Bob just as much as the thought of a white eyed man choking another man with his Chaon powers. Bob just shut up and stared at Victor in shock wondering what to do and waited until he finished and calmed down a little. In a hurry to drink his ale. That must have been a very bad experience to remember if he needed to drown that bit off.

It was a moment of silence after his lie that Bob started to think he might have went too far with his lies. Sure, there was monsters which attacked the caravan he traveled with. Not real monsters, just really big animals with really big fangs which made them look like monsters. And all that time Bob was cowering and hiding away in fear waiting for everyone else to kill the animals. He did kill one, but it was an accident. Not even worth mentioning. Bob was about to try and tell another lie to make things believable when the song saved his hide.

Clutching the arm brought Bob's attention to the next verse. Especially since it was a favorite. Then Bob heard it and started to get a little nauseous. Victor telling him about Chaon priests and white eyes? He wondered if the clergyman was the same. It sounded the same. The way someone can make another person go mad with his tongue. With a lot less enthusiasm than earlier and a lot more terrified, Bob repeated the last lines again as he had been doing since it was the only one he can remember so far. In ol' Rhysol's...Ravok..." Victor was lucky. He got to be drunk.

And the drink really got to Victor. He started mumbling about tunas and cinnamons. "No point maybe, but its fun..." and scary. Somehow everyone makes it seem happy. "Are those people real then?" because if they were, Bob will be doing his best to hide from them. Bob saw that Victor was now staring at his own mug of ale? Hadn't he had enough? Bob had enough information for the day even if it was strange so he did not want to force anymore on the boy. Casually, he lifted the mug up to his lips and started sipping on it. Pacing himself but inevitably he was going to finish it now.

Bob nearly spit out a mouthful of drink back into the mug when he heard Victor ask about how he got here. He thought that the song finally distracted him. Bob slowly put the mug back on the counter and even more slowly turned over to Victor. Trying to buy himself time to think. "Well uhhhh...I had help? Yeah I was with a caravan and we fought off those large wolves." Bob had an idea to say the most direct way that people can believe since lies are just going to dig him deeper into a pit. "I may not look it but I did learn how to use a sword, among other things back in Syliras" That was all he thought he would say unless the half drunk boy wanted to know more. And if he did better to dump more drink into him now. He would forget the conversation the next morning if Bob was lucky enough.

[Victor Lark]

“Bob.” Victor said seriously, moving his hand to the man’s shoulder. He leaned again; the stool was far too high from the ground. His eyes lolled, but once he steadied them, he looked sloppily into the opposite pair of eyes. “It’s a song. They’re not singing about anybody. They’re just singing. About Ravok. Ol’ Rhysol’s...”

His words did not match the mumbling chorus that pervaded his ears, so he decided it was inappropriate to finish. It was a great opportunity to imbibe the last of the ale in his mug, though. He tipped it back with the hand that did not still clutch Bob, bending his neck backward at an inordinate angle. Despite the security of his living cane’s sobriety, Victor still lost his balance for an instant, tossing his final gulps over his shirt. He lurched forward in recovery, pathetically dizzy, and suddenly realized that he did not like being drunk. He could not convince the world to stop spinning, no matter how hard he squeezed his eyelids together. His head was warm. His grasp on his new acquaintance became a vice-grip as he pulled his eyes up at him again.

“My name is Lark,” he said, frowning. “My family... has some good reputations. You might not die, if you say my name.” His expression lifted into a brief smile, maybe suggesting the joke or maybe offering some encouragement. It fell as soon as it had risen, and Victor’s eyes dropped again. “But you won’t need it, tough man. Swordsman. Tell me about the wolves—” He did not have the chance to express his excitement in the prospect of the story. He only slouched forward, face colliding with the moist cloth on Bob’s chest before he suddenly tumbled onto the hard wood far beneath his stool. He was not conscious long enough to feel any pain in the landing.

The surrounding drinkers did not notice. They were too busy singing the last verse of their hearty song, swinging their glasses at each other and swaying in the lost tune.

“And there’s a fine ol’ city in the middle of the loch,
watched and ruled by the greatest of the gods!
He loves us and protects us against the odds:
It’s ol’ Rhysol’s Ravok!
Ol’ Rhysol’s Ravok!”

[Bob Barton]

Victor started to look worse, a lot worse. And when he said that it was just a song, Bob let out a sigh of relief. As long as he didn't meet anyone like those in the streets he will be living happy and healthy. What was he thinking. A nice place like Ravok having people like those roaming about? The thought of that was really stupid.

"Hey, hey. Are you alright?" feeling the pressure the boy was putting on his body while trying to keep up. Bob was not that ignorant to know what was going on. After hanging out in countless inns and with drunks he knew that Victor had too much to drink. But it was only one mug...for him and two for the boy. He did not even foresee that it will have an effect like this.

Pulling Bob in really got his attention for what was going to be said next. Lark? Wasn't his name Victor? Oh wait...Lark must have been his family's name since he talked about it next. What good would that be for Bob except for the new fact that it was a family with good reputation. Alright, maybe it was some good information he got out of him even if saying not die was not too reassuring.

"Wolves? Its noth-..." before Bob could think up of an excuse to make things more believable so that people won't start giving rumors that he is a hardened killer, Victor started looking unstable. Bob saw Victor's head coming forward and held out his hands to try and catch him. Then ewww, he pulled back his hands when he felt the ale which was dumped all over the boys shirt earlier. Opps. Maybe he shouldn't have done that seeing that he dropped on the floor next.

Bob looked around the tavern confused on what he should do now. Everyone was still singing and being happy so a collapsing drunk shouldn't be anything new. He turned to the front to ask one of the workers what he should do. But all he was told was to take care of his own friend and not waste space in the bar for any potential customers.

But who was Victor Lark to Bob? They only just met and Bob did not know anything about him. Like where he lived so he could not do much. But there was a sense of responsibility from the fact that he was pushing the drinks on just to test something he heard. Then he remembered one of the last things the boy told him. Lark apparently was a reputable family here. So it might not be too hard to find the boy's home and try to get in the good books of an influential family.

Quickly he tried his best to lift up the drunk from the floor. Boy was he heavy. After struggling to get him to stand upright he put Victor's arm over his shoulder and his own arm on Victor's waist so that at least he can try to carry him out. How can a man of Bob's size do this? That will be one of his best kept secrets. "Yeah, yeah, yeah I am going to ol' Rhysol's Ravok right now to get this drunk home..." he thought while listening to the rest of the people in the tavern singing. Slowly he headed out of the tavern and out into the streets asking around for Lark, but the nerve of some people. Ignoring him was one thing but asking him to go to a pet store was something uncalled for. Hopefully either his home is nearby or someone else who knows his family can help Bob on the way to lighten his load.

[Verilian]

Victor Lark +1 Observation +1 Interrogation +1 Intimidation +2 Singing +2 Storytelling Lores: Overpaying for a Drink, First Taste of Alcohol, Toasting to Rhysol, Song: Rhysol's Ravok Bob Barton +1 Acting +3 Interrogation +1 Singing +1 Storytelling Lores: Failing at Smoking, Lie and Deny, Manipulating a Drunk, Song: Rhysol's Ravok, Toasting to Rhysol, Lore of Rhysol (Poor), Lore of The Voice (Poor), Lore of the Chaon (Poor), Lore of the Ebonstryfe (Poor), Contact: the Lark Family You Question My Logic? : XP explanation goes here. Notes:I loved that song. I'm totally going to add it to the lore.