Closed No Place Like Home?

First Contact between Dmitri & Alea

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A city floating in the center of a lake, Ravok is a place of dark beauty, romance and culture. Behind it all though is the presence of Rhysol, God of Evil and Betrayal. The city is controlled by The Black Sun, a religious organization devoted to Rhysol. [Lore]

No Place Like Home?

Postby Dmitri Saratov on January 10th, 2015, 8:45 am

Timestamp: 17th of Winter, 514 AV

It had only been a handful of days since Dmitri had returned to Ravok, but the trip from Sunberth to Ravok had been so exhausting he barely left his NHC room at all ever since arriving. Exhausting as it may have been, he praised himself lucky that the caravan he rode with encountered minimal problems and made it to the Lake City in one piece! Letting out soft groans as he started to wake up, Dmitri rolled around a bit in defiance to his consciousness kicking in and forcing him out of a relaxing dream-state. In the end he couldn't ignore it anymore and pushed himself out of bed, as he looked around, he couldn't help but smirk and think about how his uncle would react if he saw the way he lived nowadays. Only a hint of his former tidyness and routine was maintained after having lived in Sunberth for the last few years.

After cleaning himself up a bit and trimming his facial hair, he put on the rest of his clothes and opened a window to let in a breath of fresh air. There were many things he missed of Sunberth, but the constant pungent odor, or stench better said, wasn't one of them. It was time to kick things into fast motion again, he needed something to do...A job if possible, but he had been so out of touch with Ravok for all this time, Dmitri had little to no idea where to start. Not to mention his fields of 'expertise' limited the types of jobs he could apply for. Even worse, the job opportunities were anything but steady and even hard to track down. One of the downsides of being a more criminally-oriented employee, if you don't have the connections...You don't have much!

First things first, he needed information as to what was currently going on in Ravok, anything that could help him try and gain some coin and action. So Dmitri went to work and clothed himself in the least out-of-place manner possible, for Ravok, which was no easy task considering he mainly owned clothes to blend in with Sunberth's crowd nowadays. Making a mental memo to go out and buy a few new clothes, he put on darkgrey pants and a white sleeved vest underneath a dark sweater to brace the strong winds that seemed be gliding over Ravokian soil. Finishing his attire with his favorite scarf, he closed his room's door behind him and locked it neatly with his privately owned lock's key. At least one routine that was maintained, keeping his things private and stashed behind lock and key, only natural, coming from Sunberth and all...

Turning back around, Dmitri's first thoughts were that he only had limited possibilities to obtain information in his 'foreign homeland', Ravosalamen or his uncle. Neither of those options really appealed to him considering Ravosalamen demanded coin for their overheard rumors, and his uncle...well, Dmitri doubted his uncle would be available anyway. Not to mention he'd probably take up his entire day, forced to share everything he experienced the last few years and vice versa. Sighing, Dmitri was about to go for a walk into Ravok and see where that would lead him, when he heard footsteps walking up the staircase to his left.
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No Place Like Home?

Postby Alea Davenport on January 12th, 2015, 12:20 am

Alea was sick of her job already. After the fiasco of the housing manager learning that she did not know how to handle a broom, rather than giving up, Alea's boss had hunted for other methods to make Alea truly appreciate a clean floor. This time it was a bucket and rag. Unbeknownst to Alea, a more experienced slave had already been through this hallway with a broom to clear out the majority of the dust and grime, but there was still plenty left for Alea to clean. She had been shown on a hallway down below what the difference was between a clean floor and a dirty floor, and now she was being given the "opportunity" to prove that she was not "a completely dimwitted good-for-nothing".

Hauling the full bucket of water up the stairs was exhausting enough. She had to take it one step at a time, hauling the bucket up and setting it with a thud on the stair above, then stepping up with her bare feet slapping wetly (she'd been at this a while already), then repeat. If there was any consolation it was that by now her feet were as clean as the floors, but unfortunately she had never been one to be consoled by cleanliness.

There was a man in her hallway when she heaved the bucket onto the landing. She hoped he moved before she got down that far. She was supposed to work around the "citizens" of Ravok, cleaning their city somehow without getting in their way while they wandered all over, just making dirty again what she had just cleaned. Cleaning was such a futile endeavor.

Her face was a thundercloud as she crawled up the last step (there was no point fully standing up; she'd be on her knees for the next few bells anyway). Ignoring the man the was she was supposed to be ignored, she took the rag and began scrubbing with all her strength at the grime and mildew in the first corner of the floor. She was pretty sure being on a lake was what was causing all this mess; she wasn't sure how water was supposed to fix it. But she scrubbed away with all her might, until her muscles burned from the exertion. She sat back and admired her square foot of shining floor, before gazing despairingly down the hallway that seemed to extend for miles. Knowing there was no escape, she rinsed her rag out in the bucket and started on the next square foot.
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No Place Like Home?

Postby Alea Davenport on January 24th, 2015, 12:32 am

The push and pull of the rag became a rhythm for Alea. She eventually found a pattern in which she would scrub moderately for a first pass, giving her screaming muscles a slight rest, then do a few passes of hard-as-she-possibly-could elbow greasing. She figured, if the grime didn't move while she did that, then it wasn't going to, no matter how hard she scrubbed. Besides, she had a long way to go today, and she did NOT fancy crippling herself to bring on tiny fraction of it to absolute perfection.

As she worked the familiar pattern, her mind drifted away. It was not anything in particular that she thought about. At first her mind fantasized about what she might get for dinner than night. She was working hard and, she thought, not doing a terrible job, unlike some other days. She felt like she was starting to get a handle on whether a day's work would be good or not. Usually it depended on her mood, but sometimes whether she knew well enough what she was supposed to be doing was an important factor.

These thoughts took her as far as the first apartment door, which was not so bad, considering how long she'd expected it to have felt. The man who had been in her way had long-since vanished. So absorbed in thought was she that she had not even noticed him go.

Cheered by how bearable her day was so far, she sunk back into her thoughts, this time sending them a little further. She had been feeling differently lately than she had for the past year, and yet, "different" was more familiar than the listless state in which she'd performed all her slave chores previously. It felt like coming back to herself again. She supposed it had started the day she'd seen the Jamoura, Bor. He reawakened memories long buried, and contrary to her expectations, the good memories outweighed the bad. She still hadn't delved back into the bad ones yet, and her mind instinctively flinched away from them.

Still, thinking about the Spires, and how she ended up there, led her to think about why she'd ended up there, and here for that matter. It had all started when she'd left her home. Not to escape the terrible consequences of the storm, as her parents had. No, she'd left before that fateful day. She left to see the world, to collect experiences outside her reclusive town, and perhaps even to make friends who appreciated her disinterest in, ugh, formal training. (By which she of course meant both school and martial training for the militia, which every adult citizen of Denval had been required to be a part of.)

Alea almost snapped back to the present out of an ancient sense of boredom, but another part of her vaguely recognized what was happening. In the Spires, for reasons that weren't important at the moment, Alea had undergone a bit of "meditation training". It had been cut short, also for reasons that weren't important at the moment, but Alea had learned just enough to recognize the vague, 'wavy' feeling she was in. It felt halfway between waking and dreaming, and coming out of it would definitely be like waking up. At the time, Alea had resented the training, but now it was making her mundane, tedious work pass almost without her noticing. She was aware of a choice, and as she subconsciously rinsed her rag in preparation for another section, she chose to dive back into the dream.

She was back in the present, but unlike before, she had the weight of her whole past behind her. She had spent the past year in Ravok as half of herself, barely functioning enough to keep her body alive. It had been necessary, at the time. She was heartsick a dozen times over, and completely incapable of taking care of herself, or her money. In her mind, she had never really been a slave, she was only...hibernating. Sleeping, recovering, cooperating, doing what she needed to do until she was herself again.

So what did that mean now? As things were going, she was stuck in Ravok, and her "owners" weren't likely to let her go anytime soon. Besides, she was too out of practice to plot something so dangerous and radical. She did not even have any real friends, and without those, what would even be the point of leaving? She would just end up in the same position somewhere else.

Her thoughts dead-ended there, and, no longer able to sustain her stream of consciousness, she looked up. To her surprise, she was about three-quarters of the way down the hallway. And her knees and dress were soaked and grime-splattered. The bucket was a foul shade of black moss.

Now that she looked back, the last little stretch was slightly less clean-looking than the earlier sections of the hallway. It wasn't too much she'd have to re-do, but it would definitely need a clean bucket of water, maybe a clean rag too. At least her muscles had stopped aching. Somewhere in the past couple of bells, they'd actually gotten used to the repetitive motions. With a sigh, followed by a grunt of effort, she picked up her bucket, leaving the rag in the grimy water, and carried it down the far set of stairs.
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No Place Like Home?

Postby Alea Davenport on March 1st, 2015, 5:25 pm

As Alea was about to bring her bucket to the lake, she heard someone call her. "Slave! Come here!" she heard in a voice that was trying to sound imperious, but was a bit too young and much too strained to pull it off. Alea put her bucket down in a corner and went in search of the voice.

She found it in a small office, attached to a boy who couldn't have been much older than her, and was likely younger. He had red hair, which reminded her of Valerius, and she wondered if he was some relation. The office had every available surface covered in stacks of paper and parchment, to the point where the only way to navigate the floor was to tip-toe across using the tiny bare patches.

She peered in from the doorway and asked wearily, "Did you need something?" The boy motioned vigorously for her to enter, which she did after dubiously eyeing the the nearly swallowed floor.

He waved a piece of paper at her and said, "Take a look at this, and see if you can tell me what's wrong with it." Again, he was trying to speak with authority, but Alea could hear the waver in his voice, and the look of anxiety in his eyes. He was definitely nervous about something.

Alea took the paper slowly, giving the boy a puzzled and slightly suspicious look. She glanced at it, and saw a list of numbers, with a few words on the side. At first glance, it was nigh incomprehensible, but she notices a symbol she recognized to imply mizas, so the numbers might have been money. Perhaps it was a bill of some sort.

"What makes you think there's something wrong with it?" she asked carefully, stalling for time, and hoping he might drop a hint. She had no idea why this was happening. Was she being tested in some way? Or could this be an excuse for the boy to play torment-the-slave?

"The amount the patron paid doesn't match what I calculated," he said. The imperious tone was fading from his voice, as if he'd forgotten about it. He still had that anxious look though, and it occurred to Alea that he might not know the answer himself.
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No Place Like Home?

Postby Alea Davenport on March 1st, 2015, 5:37 pm

Alea turned her attention back to the paper, trying to make sense of it. "Hmm," she hmmed, biting her lip. She absent-mindedly sat on a bare corner of the desk. Based on the large number at the bottom of the page, it looked like the boy was trying to charge thousands of mizas for what couldn't be more than a season's worth of expenses. She wasn't sure how rich people lived, but she didn't think patrons of the NHC had that kind of money.

After a few moments of despairing confusion, she decided to try tracing the numbers back, looking for the first point where they delved into the fourth digit. She compared that to the previous number. There was a lot of scratch work in the margins at this point, but what she noticed was that the two number looked almost the same, except the last digit on the larger number was cut off on the line above, and written in as silver mizas.

She did not recognize the operation that was happening on that line, so she pointed to the % symbol, and asked the boy, "What does this sign do?"

The boy peered at the symbol, and a flash of sick uncertainty passed across his features. But he quickly composed himself and said in a practiced condescending tone, "That's the percent sign. That means that for every cent--that is, every miza--you have to add the number before the sign: in this case, ten."

The boy seemed so sure, and yet the explanation puzzled Alea. If that were the case, why not just call it per-miza? And wait, ten mizas for every one? That sounded an awful lot like an operation she barely remembered from her childhood education: multiplying.
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No Place Like Home?

Postby Alea Davenport on March 1st, 2015, 6:11 pm

Alea's unmoving puzzled expression stared through the boy, making him shift uncomfortably, as she pulled up more memories from her brain. Percent...percent...per cent...cent is a hundred...per hundred! It's not ten per one at all! It's ten per hundred!

She grabbed the slate and chalk which was lying abandoned on one edge of the table. She wanted to check her guess before she declared her answer. She wanted to know she was right, and be able to prove it. The number she was starting with was 465 mizas. The first bit was the easy part. There were four one-hundreds--it was right there when you said the number out loud: four hundred sixty five. That mean ten for each, four tens. She was pretty sure that was forty, but she counted on her fingers just to be sure. She had ten of those, so she just had to count them four times. She had a vague ides she could use a similar trick with mizas and get faster and more accurate results with bigger numbers...but she didn't exactly have the monetary stones to play around with.

She wrote 40 on the right side of the slate, to keep it distinct from the 465. But then she got stuck for a bit. What did she do with the leftover 65? It wasn't a hundred, so she couldn't get a 10 out of it. Should she just get rid of it, and have 40 be her answer? She wasn't sure of the specifics of how per-cent worked, but she was pretty sure math didn't usually let you just ignore parts of numbers.

It hit her like a lightening flash. Parts! 65 was part of one hundred, just like other numbers were part of one! She had run into a problem with parts just recently; it couldn't have more more than, oh, two years ago. (It was funny how it could seem like threes lifetimes and just yesterday all at once.) She remembered figuring out that .5 was half of one the way five was half of ten. And .25 was half of that. Of course, these numbers had all been printed on weights, which made it easier to check that she was right, and they were all halfs, which made it easier to understand.

But 65 wasn't half of anything...or was it? She tried multiplying it by two, but the number she got wasn't helpful, and she was running out of room on the slate, so she abandoned the tactic.

But the idea about halfs wasn't bad. Half of a hundred was fifty. And if she followed her per-cent logic, half of ten was five. So to keep going with ten percent, she could apply five per-fifty, as it were. She quickly subtracted 50 from 65, and moved it over to add to the 40 in its per-ified form of 5. She now had 15 remaining of the left, and 45 so far on the right. 15 out of a hundred, or even out of fifty was tricky; it didn't divide easily into either one. But she was on a roll, and not about to give up now!
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No Place Like Home?

Postby Alea Davenport on March 1st, 2015, 6:29 pm

She had taken care of the 65 by taking a big chunk out of it. The biggest chunk of the 15 would be ten. So what was ten out of a hundred? It was hard not to get confused with all the tens floating around. She shook her head to clear it and refocused. She made a third column in the middle, to see what the percents were. So, first had been per-hundred, which was ten. That was the original ten. Then had been per-fifty, which was five. Now it was per-ten, which was...oh this was hard.

But, fifty was five tens, right? If forty was four tens, which she'd established earlier, that made sense. So if 50 was five tens, what was 5 five of? Well, asking the question like that, it was fairly obviously one. So, plugging that back into the little chart she'd been making... one per-ten, she had one ten, so that adds... one miza to the final answer! It seemed like an awful lot of work and confusion for such a small addition, but now she had 46 total and only 5 mizas left on the original number.

She almost felt like she knew what she was doing now. Ten mizas on the left was one per-ten in the middle. 5 mizas was half of ten...just like .5 was half of one... and now that she was in mizas, she remembered about there being 10 silver mizas in a gold miza, and everything started making a crazy kind of sense. So half a gold miza, or 5 sm per-five mizas. So her final number was 46 gm and 5 sm.

But wait, hadn't there been some silver mizas on the original number? She hadn't written them down with the 465, because they hadn't looked attached, but now that she had reconciled the numbers and the money together, she realized it was part of the same number. There were 3 sm on the original number. There were ten copper mizas to make a silver miza, the same way that there were ten silver to make a gold... so did that mean the percents worked the same way? She was too tired to check, so she just assumed it would be correct and stuck 3 copper mizas onto her answer.
Last edited by Alea Davenport on March 1st, 2015, 7:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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No Place Like Home?

Postby Alea Davenport on March 1st, 2015, 6:49 pm

She handed the slate to the boy with her final answer circled. "I think percent means per-hundred, not per-miza. I got 46 gm 5 sm 3 cm out of 465 gm 3 sm." Looking at the identical digits that had no different except being moved to the left, Alea could swear there had to be an easier way to arrive at that conclusion, but her brain hurt too much to think about it just then.

The boy took the slate, and the original piece of paper, scribbling calculations the purpose of which were beyond Alea's grasp. Suddenly his face lit up in an astonished expression. "That's it! It works!" The boy looked like he might have tried to hug Alea if the table hadn't been in the way. After a few ticks he seemed to compose himself, and he said in that silly tone that artificially deepened his voice, "That is all, you may go."

Alea complied, a little annoyed that all she got for breaking her brain over the boy's mistake was...well, nothing really. When she got back to the bucket, the large woman who was her immediate supervisor happened upon her. "Are you still not done with the floors? You slow idiot, what's taking you so long?"

She looked like she was in the mood to deliver a swift kick, but Alea was faster. "I was helping that boy in there with the numbers!" she said urgently, pointing dramatically at the office she had just left. She had no idea how long she'd been working at the math, but it must have been a while.

The large woman frowned doubtfully and said, "Well, finish your work before you try doing someone else's job, eh? I doubt an insubordinate slave like you could be much help with the important business of running this establishment."

Alea grumbled, but was too tired to argue, and so she refilled her bucket and got to look forward to heaving it back up to the staircase. On her way, she overheard the woman talking to the boy. She paused to eavesdrop, but not for very long. If she were caught, it would make her day even more unpleasant. She did get the impression that the boy often made mistakes with the paperwork, and the large woman was surprised that for once it was correct. Alea left with a smug smile, which only faded when she realized how unlikely it would be for her to get the credit. Petching Ravokians...
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No Place Like Home?

Postby Nemesis on March 15th, 2015, 4:19 pm

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Alea Davenport
Skills * *
Bodybuilding * +1
Cleaning * +1
Mathematics * +3
Observation * +2
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*Mathematics: Percentages
*
*
*

*
*
Consequences, Injuries, Expenses, and More!
  • None


Dmitri Saratov
Skills * *
None * N/A
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None

*
*
Consequences, Injuries, Expenses, and More!
  • None


__________

  • Dmitri's part was retconned, apparently.
  • Lovely thread, Alea - loving the way she works through her problems!
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