PM to join [Baroque Bay] The sons and daughters of anarchy (Tarn)

[Tarn Alrenson]

Dovey, an interesting name, not one Tarn had heard before. He dipped his head to the barmaid. He thought her response sounded curt, and understood there were must be many patrons demanding her attention. Tarn usually spent his time in places like this off to the side, just listening, so he was already being more obtrusive than he was used to. Looking back to Tove, he nodded as she refused his offer. Frankly he was relieved, coin had never been an abundant thing for him, and while his enlistment in the Sun’s Birth promised higher wages than he had ever been used to, he didn’t like spending it when it wasn’t necessary. In response to her following question, the corner of Tarn’s mouth quirked up. “What brings me here is chance, I suppose. Though that is an… odd, way of putting it, yes, I was born here. Never left either.” Tarn shook his head slowly. “Sweet sweet Sunberth, where unless you have money to pay for a ship, the only thing that’ll kill you faster than staying here is leaving.” Tarn absentmindedly ran his thumb over the Sun’s Birth brand on his hand. He still wasn’t quite used to it, and his own mention of death brought certain thoughts to the forefront of his mind. Thoughts he liked to keep buried whenever possible. “And what of you?” he asked, “do you also call this lovely little midden heap home? Or did you have the misfortune to think this was a nice place to visit?” Though he didn’t say it without amiability, Tarn made no bones about his feelings towards the city. It honestly wasn’t that much of an unpopular opinion; many people were dissatisfied with the state of affairs. It just so happened that they were more dissatisfied with everything else, so they just let things be. They still griped about it though. That was, unless foreign sailors happened to be in port. Whenever two sailors from different cities met up, it always seemed to be a competition between them for whose home was the best, and when that happened the locals went from constant complaining to praising the glories of the city at the tip of a hat. They were hypocritical, but in truth, that suited Sunberth. It was a city of hypocrites.

[Dovey]

22 Summer, 518 AV
"Speech"
"Others"

That was that, then. They neither of them were going to order any food or drink, and so Dovey had no pretext for waiting around and continuing to watch them. She ought to be on her way, now - ought to go and attend to other customers before old Manowar came along and clouted her hard about the ears.

Ought to leave Tarn the young charmer, of whom she was still suspicious, alone with little miss "People-Say-That-Right?"

But Tove was old enough to look after herself, just like - well, just like Dovey hadn't. Petch. Still, she was probably being unfair to both of them. Tarn was boyish and candid, which were not the traits of a kidnapper. Tove probably wasn't stupid, or else this godsforsaken city - 'midden heap' was indeed an apt descriptor of the place - would already have murdered her. Dovey should leave them alone, leave them to their conversation - except that Dovey herself wasn't stupid she didn't think but Collins had still played her like a fiddle right up until he had his friend crack her on the head with a stick -

Petch!

She couldn't go on thinking like this, behaving as if every man dwelling in Sunberth was as bad as the one who'd kidnapped her. They couldn't absolutely all be, she didn't think. And just because Tarn had been rude in asking her her name, didn't make him a slaver.

And anyhow. (Her stomach twisted.) Anyhow, even if he was one, there wasn't petching much that she could do about it, was there? Not where she found herself now.

So swallowing her feelings, along with any words she might have had, Dovey nodded curtly to the pair and hastened away - the ache of fearful guilt already making itself at home in her gut.



(OOC: I'm gonna bow out of this one for now, guys - the context of the thread just doesn't make sense for Dovey to stick around longer. Thanks for letting me join in with you!)

Boxcode credit: Karin Ironyach

[Tove]

A smile tugged at Tove’s lips, the witty young man never ceased to be witty. Tove enjoyed the company of witty individuals as they often kept conversation interesting.

“Truer things have not been spoken.” She nodded whilst she internally noted how difficult it was to metaphorically ‘read’ Torn. Maybe it was the lovely story-telling or violent yells that often erupted around the two strangers, or the jokes he continuously popped out being either self-deprecating or pessimistic.

“You touch your hand quite a bit, no?” Her gaze dropped down to his hand. The mark was there, but there was little reason to point it out, “Does it trouble you, being a part of such a group? Most would pass judgement upon I imagine…” It was her way of comforting him in some odd way, she cared little for who he associated himself with. It was none of her business. She imagined his mark was just as binding as the chains that still threatened to find her.

“Lack of luck, same as you.” She shrugged, leaning back in her chair as she did so. “I would be foolish to sail from one place to another without doing research on the area. Free men don’t exist in Sunberth, you and I are a slave to the city, no? Any fool who sails here as means of seeking freedom will be sadly disappointed, if they live long enough to even make the realization.”

[Tarn Alrenson]

Tarn nodded as the girl talked. Few of his conversations nowadays lasted this long. Even fewer did so without breaking into shouting matches. When she brought up his hand he looked down at it, drawing his other hand away. He hurriedly hid it, shifting the hand so the mark was mostly obscured from view without trying to appear too unnatural. “I suppose I do touch it a lot…” Tarn thought out loud, “but nobody’s ever really happy with where they’re at, right? This is no different.” Tarn put on a light grimace. Many of his fellow gang-members seemed perfectly happy reaping the rewards of the chaos the Sun’s Birth had sown, but he wasn’t satisfied with it. Many people did pass judgement on the organization—and hence its members—but Tarn couldn’t blame them in the slightest. Truth be told, Tarn had seen firsthand negative impacts of the gang on the city, and he had heard of truly atrocious acts committed through the grapevine. Sometimes these tales came as hushed whispers, but just as often they came in loud boasts. Luckily, Tarn hadn’t been ordered to do anything too malicious himself. Yet. “Anyway,” Tarn said, “there are plenty of other men like me. You’ll find at least three in this very tavern with no large difference between us. But what you don’t see every day is a girl sitting on the floor in the middle of the common room. I don’t know if you have noticed, but that isn’t too common of a practice around here. What’s your story?” Tarn liked stories. True or not, short or long, he loved them all. Each one was a vehicle through which he could take a step outside his bleak familiar reality and into the unknown, whether it was simply the life of a man who had taken a different trade, or an epic illustrating the adventures of some glorious hero, touched by the gods and smiting monsters at every step. Tarn knew his own life well enough, and it was a welcome distraction whenever he could find the time to ignore it.

[Tove]

The ruckus within the Tavern had faded, Tove’s eyes studied over Tarn’s expression as he spoke of his position. She nodded as he mentioned the lack of peace that an individual has with their position. Never had she thought of it in such a way, the statement made her wonder if she was happy where she was in life. She never really thought of herself as happy or sad, just…Tove?

His question managed to catch her off guard, she didn’t like to speak of herself. She had always been selfish in that way, never giving thought to how others felt. It was not that she did not care about such things as much as she simply lacked an understanding about how the emotions of others work.

“I think you are wrong. You’re far kinder than most of the men in this tavern, well-spoken too.” She knew her attempt to direct attention back to himself would not satisfy the man, so she complied with his wishes.

“Like I said, I was raised in Sunberth. An elderly woman took me in when I was ill, but then she grew ill and it was my turn to help her. She was a strange woman, fancied drink and smoke over her own life, so she died. Now I’m here, talking to you.” She shrugged, a small smile cut her features in half as she spoke. It was not that she found her own past humorous, she just lacked the social skills to know how to express herself when talking to another.

“That about sums it up, so now it’s your turn. You tell me about yourself.” She expected no details as she had not given any herself, just the basics. As she awaited an answer a fight ensued behind the two, a flagon falling to the ground, the contents within splashing onto Tove.

“By the Divines…“ The girl pushed herself up, the suddenness of it all had spooked her. It was best to be cautious of random liquids in Sunberth.

[Tarn Alrenson]

She thought he was kind? Tarn wasn’t quite sure what to think of that. Enough people in this city thought of that as a weakness that the compliment was usually taken with a grain of salt. And well spoken? Tarn had never had a formal education, it was a foreign concept to most of Sunberth’s denizens. He had spent nearly his entire life listening attentively to stories though, from his grandfather as well as anybody else willing to put up with Tarn’s pestering. The practice had given him what his father had called a “storyteller’s cadence” in his manner of speech, even though Tarn had never told a story of his own in his life and hadn’t the faintest idea how to do it well. Tarn listened to Tove’s summary of her life and raised a questioning eyebrow. “That’s it huh? I’d say that’s boiling a lot of time down pretty thin, but I’ll bite. I was just a normal kid—still am, mostly—and then a couple people got killed and I made myself change so it wouldn’t happen again. It’s a common enough tale, that is if you live long enough to experience it.” Tarn snorted, “I guess you could say I’m just a bit of an early bloomer in that sense.” As he finished speaking, Tarn’s eyes were drawn to a commotion behind Tove. A couple of the tavern’s rougher patrons had gotten into a rather heated disagreement, and it looked like it would soon come to blows. Sure enough, while one tall, wiry sailor was gesturing wildly with his flagon of drink, a fist came out of the crowd and struck him in the jaw, sending the man toppling backwards and losing his grip on the drink. The shouting intensified as the wiry man’s fellows loudly demanded to know who threw the punch. Tarn had been in Sunberth long enough to recognize the beginnings of a brawl when he saw them, and he instinctively closed his grip on a spear that wasn’t there. Shyke! he thought. Of course! The one time he left his weapon at the barracks was the time things got violent. His nerves were telling him to get out of the building as fast as possible, but against sense he lingered, his gaze falling on the girl he had been talking to. She had been raised here, so she surely knew how to handle herself, but there was safety in numbers. And, well, skinny girls weren’t known to do well in barfights with crowds of drunken sailors by themselves. The weight of the sword on his hip seemed to tug at him, as if urging him to draw it, but Tarn fought the impression. It was best not to elevate things like this and drawing a bladed weapon would elevate it up into the clouds. He raised his voice to address Tove over the shouts of the fledgling fight, “This doesn’t look good. Maybe we should—” Before he could finish his sentence, a wild elbow caught Tarn in the side of the neck, hard. Reflexively, Tarn’s hand shot out in the direction of the blow, and his grip closed on a thin mop of greasy hair. Tarn’s eyes finally caught up with his hand, and he saw the face of a snarling man, a few years past his middle ages but furious as a young bull. The inebriated sailor reached up and tried to scratch at Tarn’s face, howling like an animal. Tarn ducked to avoid the man’s long and dirty fingernails. One caught him on his ear, and a sharp sting of pain followed. Gritting his teeth, Tarn planted his shoulder in the man’s gut and pushed forward, pumping his legs. A moment later they crashed into a table, and the sailor fell with it. Tarn barely managed to keep his feet, stumbling and bumping into a few other people in the process. A string of angry shouts followed. Shyke!

[Tove]

Tarn had reciprocated the simple explanation of his own life story. It annoyed Tove though she had little room to complain. She stored his information in the back of her mind in preparation to retrieve it when the conversation steered in that direction once more. She nodded, her eyes having occasionally darted to the patrons around the two as the patrons clutched the fabric of their competitor’s clothes in the hopes they would be stilled just long enough to land a good punch. It was a show of dominance, a strange dance that often resulted in broken limbs and bloodied faces. Sometimes even death.

Sunberth was unkind to the youth, Tove agreed to that much. Even those who roamed the city freely had been just as much a mental slave to Sunberth as those who were physical slaves. Sunberth raised sociopaths and criminals alike, instilled with the criminal mentality that they had been raised with. Tarn seemed different though. He spoke in a way that radiated hope of some kind. The air around him was one of change rather than one of festering ideas. He was an ocean amongst ponds- in some weird metaphorical way.

Tove wiped at her pant leg in the hopes of keeping the ale from drying upon her skin. Her calm demeanor shifted rather quickly, enraged eyes on the hunt for the fool that had dropped their tankard so carelessly. The wave of bloodied fists and angered jeers had only grown however and the careless patron was hardly obvious to the naked eye.

Tove had turned to view Tarn a moment too late. A madman attempted to claw his face. His dirtied fingers tearing the skin upon his ear. Tarn seemed to have the situation under control though as he clutched the man’s greasy locks upon his head.

To help or not to help, had been the grandstanding question at that moment. Tarn was friendly, maybe even a beacon of light. It would do her well to befriend such an idealistic man yet she had not been so desperate as to risk her neck by helping him. He had been raised in Sunberth, learned to survive its streets and locals alike. He was more than capable of handling a drunk without the help of a lanky Kelvic with little-to-no fighting experience.

Her eyes darted towards the exit, or more so the crowd of patrons that stood in her way of leaving. The situation left her frustrated as well as overstimulated. The yelling, the blood, the booze, it all bombarded her senses. At first, it had been easy to ignore but without pleasant conversation, it seemed to fill her head with no filter or escape.

“Damn it…” She muttered, her words even inaudible for her. She made her way back to her sober drinking buddy once more in the hopes he knew an alternate way out. Maybe the fighting had only plagued the bottom floor of the tavern. Unfortunately, she hadn’t made it too far before her path was blocked by a rather beastly looking man.

He stood at an impressive height with an even more impressive set of muscles. The flesh upon his face was rugged and ridden with rashes and burns, his dark hair dreaded with little ornaments scattered within the tastefully matted locks. His dark eyes were not locked on Tove despite his presence before her, no he appeared to look at something behind him rather than at her.

In a moment’s notice, she felt herself being forcefully pushed aside which in turn resulted in a loss of balance on her end. She felt herself falling as she attempted to make sense of the situation. Her natural reaction was to turn her body to face the ground so that she would be able to catch herself with her arms rather than to allow her face to collide with the hardwood flooring.

She felt the grit of the floor press against the palm of her hands, the stinging sensation masked by her adrenaline. Her teeth clenched together to keep herself from biting into her tongue, a lesson she had learned through many failed attempts to catch herself when she found herself colliding with the ground.

She had lost her focus whilst falling, her mind disoriented as she managed to regain her footing. Her eyes flashed back to the wall of a man that had blocked her path as he violently punched the man who she could only assume had been the one to shove her aside in his pursuit to reach the other man.

She then cast her eyes back to Tarn who had seemingly won the fight between himself and the greasy madman. The man lay atop one of the tables whilst Tarn stumbled back into other patrons. It was time to go. Once she had made her way to him, her dirtied fingers wrapped around his wrist.

“We should go, like, right now.” Him being a member of the notorious Sun Birth lead her to assume he was capable enough to shove past a couple of patrons, and if not, he could at least fight back if someone were to be angered by the shoving.