T-Minus One Year: Arzin
~Soldier's luck,~ Arzin thought to himself as the timely spewing (as he thought of it) cleared out the applicants in front of him and thrust him to the front of the long-suffering line. As a soldier in the line of battle, more than once he had stood steady whilest the man in the ranks next to him had fallen to arrow, crossbow bolt, or various varieties of shot. He fully understood that he could easily been killed instead, but he hadn't been -- soldier's luck. This was much the same -- with the spewing claiming the three men directly in front of him.
When "Next!" was called out in a bored-sounding voice from the room ahead, Arzin seized the opportunity and stepped in.
The room had a fire burning in the fireplace, so it was pleasantly warm in spite of the gusty breeze that was coming in through the window (the clerk having thrown open the shutters, undoubtedly in an effort to clear out the foul stench of the spewer and spewees) -- not that Arzin blamed the fellow. ~Only common sense -- I would have done the same thing.~
The ex-soldier took the chair that the little man had imperiously gestured towards. After having sat, Arzin took a moment to look over the man sitting behind a desk. The fellow was not a dwarf, but to Arzin's eye he looked to be smallish and undersized. His skin was pale, as if he rarely got outside in the sunshine -- whether by choice or as a result of the demands of his job, Arzin knew not.
Arzin thought that he knew the sort -- he had dealt with weaselly little quartermasters in the army -- men who used their job to hunker down safely behind a desk whilst others risked their lives in battle. But it served no purpose for the soldier who was dealing with such men to to express their disdain. No, 'twas better to butter up such people -- to acknowledge, at least for the moment -- that they were in a position of power, of control over something that their betters wanted or needed, whether it be rations or placement on the Expedition.
And so it was that the erstwhile soldier answered "Arzin, sir," -- the "sir" affording the other the semblance of dignity that he most likely expected from the applicants who spoke to him.
The pallid little fellow also inquired as to the applicant's background -- which Arzin took to mean "Why are you -- who are obviously an unqualified, sniveling worm -- darkening my door and wasting my time?"
"I have been a soldier, sir, as was my father and his father before him. I have served out my term of enlistment honestly and well, having risen to the rank of Senior Sergeant during the recent Unification Campaign." For some reason, it was considered impolite -- or, mayhap impolitic -- to call the late unpleasantness a "war".
~And now, having been mustered out, I find myself suffering from a grinding boredom. Peace -- meaning, a bellyful of flattering customers with silliness such as "Ah, the coloration of that fabric truly suits your eyes, Mistress Goodwife, and the cut of the dress mightily flatters your figure" -- suits me ill.~
"Background . . . ah . . ." Arzin felt that the fact that he was a battle-tested veteran soldier who hailed from a family of soldiers should be a sufficient recommendation for any person who was reasonably knowledgeable of the ways of the world, but based upon his disinterested expression, the clerk sitting at the desk did not appear to be overly impressed. So, now what?
"I hail from Stony Brook," Arzin added after a short pause. He was confident that the clerk would be familiar with the goodly-sized town that had begun as a mere village in the shadow of the capital, but had grown and prospered over the years.
More boredom . . . the clerk did not even attempt to disguise his yawn. It seemed that this line of explanation promised little. Undoubtedly the clerk would have heard a belly-full of details that mattered not in the slightest to him.
~Why me? It seems that I need to give this quill-pusher a reason as to why I, above all the rest of these applicants, should be chosen to go on this expedition amongst the Bookworms -- and thus to pull me out of the great morass of mind-numbing boredom in which I presently find myself mired . . .~
"Now, I will be the first to admit that I have no magicks," Arzin admitted. He was fairly certain that this was obvious, given his appearance and way of carrying himself. He had decided that he might as well meet the issue head on.
"But I have my letters -- can read and write, that is . . "
~Although mayhap not as well as sniveling little fellows who spend their days doing naught else, and who would be hard-pressed to lift anything heavier than a quill,~
" . . . and it would take a wiser person than myself to know all that might transpire over the course of the Expedition's journey."
"And speaking of that, I can assure you, sir, that as a recently-blooded soldier, I am well-versed in using all manner of deadly weapons and protective armors."
"And why could this be important, you might well ask. By way of response, I would ask if you -- or any person -- know what our mighty mages will find when they alight on the far side of their journey? Might there well be hostile people or creatures awaiting them?"
"Not of a certainty, mayhap, but neither you, I, nor any other man nor woman know for a fact what awaits out beyond the borders of all that we deem familiar."
"And if hostilities are possible, might it also be possible that the knowledge and expertise of a man-at-arms might well be helpful to those who venture forth? It seems quite possible to me that cold steel and shot might reasonably o'ercome unexpected challenges that might, indeed, be resistant to whate'er magicks can be brought to bear under the pressures that require a most timely response to imminent danger."
Arzin sat back in his chair. "I submit, good sir, that magicker or no, the knowledge and expertise that I can offer will make me a useful person to include within the group that shall undertake the Great Expedition."
I have long thought that it is helpful to the reader for me to distinguish between my PC's spoken words and his unspoken thoughts. In this instance, Arzin's spoken words will be in aqua (my having willingly ceded the use of my customary blue to the GM) and bounded by quotation marks, and his unspoken thoughts will be in gray (which somehow seems appropriate for shadowy, unspoken thoughts), bounded by tildes (~).
This message was last edited by the player at 22:57, Fri 26 Jan.