[Closed] The streets of Londinium. 22/Feb/2020

[Rook]

Grey clouds overhead, it rained this morning and will probably rain again tonight. There aren't that many people out and about. A wet day and a cold wind is enough for many to seek out the simple pleasures of a warmth hearth and hearty meal over getting things like the shopping done.

Still, people need to eat and some market stalls are open even today. Fresh produce brought in from the farms around the city and hot food are always good sellers since a lot of adventurers cannot actually cook.

There are plenty of reasons for either staying in or going out, so the streets are about half as crowded as they may be on a nice day, but there are still crowds where the food or ingredients are good or cheap.

While travelling through the streets of Londinium, it’s mostly peaceful until raised voices and heated tempers pierce the calm. The exact nature of the dispute is lost in the street noise.

The sound of fracturing wood clears the street for meters around and brings matters to a point.

A stall in the market has been overturned and bruised produce scatters the ground. Considering the stall was original bolted to a wall, it hasn’t survived the process.

Now a mere meter of empty space stretches between a huge adventurer whose wild-eyed face is as red as his drawn ruby greatsword and and the lander storekeeper whose anger is quickly turning to fear in the face of naked illicit violence.

---

Word Count: 250
Tagged: Random Encounter

[Gwylligi]

London. As someone who came from wales, London had always been somewhere that he had dreamed of going. Griff wasn't a nerd, but he had a million and one things that he wanted to do in this city. The lavish musicals that stretched all over broadway, the art museums, the wonderful parks, and then there were the things that his parents wouldn't end up dragging him to. Not only that, but he had always wanted to go to the places that they filmed that Sherlock show that his mother had obsessed over so much whenever she was home. Maybe it was a weird bunch of reasons why he wanted to go somewhere, but all he knew was that it was a long standing wish.

Now that he was actually here, he wasn't entirely sure it lived up to his hype. Admittedly that was because it was filled with guys that were obsessed with an online game and smelled like they hadn't taken a shower since they got into said game, though the fact that he was pretty sure there wasn't more than 1% of the people in the entire game who had taken the performer trait and thus there was a very low likelihood of being able to catch a game. Not that he cared, because wherever there was a large amount of people, there was something that Griff cared for a lot more than any broadway show or any location of television shooting - Adventure!

Walking around (walking - after three years of being a cripple, he was never going to get used to walking around as if he had never lost the use of his legs), he found himself passing through the market district in an attempt to replace those old weapons that he started with. He was a warden so he needed to get weapons that most people would consider a little outside of the norm. Even with the people of the land having designed this class, he still knew that very few people among them actually understood how it worked, or even what guns were. As such, asking them to make a new one that actually had decent firepower would be akin to asking a man in the saharan desert to get you some ice cubes.

Still, the longer that the city thrived, the more actual players that had shops around here and the more people that he knew that he could go to for stuff like this. He still liked to deal with the people of the land more than the other adventurers, since the people of the land often had weird and unexpected viewpoints on issues, but he knew that he could probably rely on his fellow adventurers more. He could certainly rely on a select few of them to be absolute assholes to everyone around them, just like they did on 4chan. The only difference here was that they were able to be held directly responsible for the bullshit that they pulled.

One such act of bullshit was an adventurer who had just caused a mess pointing a ruby broadsword at an innocent stall owner having already turned over his stall. The man who was guilty of this pointless act of brutality and vandalism looked like a wild dog, and as much as Griff would love to make friends with this guy, he knew that it wasn't going to happen in a situation like this. So, instead, he just raised his pistol into the air and fired a single shot that cut the rabid man off before he could say anything, making him turn his sword towards him.

"Settle down there, big guy." Griff struck a weird figure, standing there with his gun pointing directly at the man's face, exactly between his eyes. His welsh accent was obvious in the way that he spoke, and his confidence was clear in the very fact that he wasn't wearing the slightest bit of armor. Though, weirdly, there was no aggression in his body language. It just seemed that he was attempting to stop a potential fight, aiming to prevent someone who was as easy to victimize as a person of the land from being abused again.

"You're making a scene in the middle of a public space, and I'm sure you don't want to make yourself look bad in front of so many people. I mean, you're smart enough to realize exactly how many people would dive on you like hyenas on a corpse were you to continue being mean to this nice young gentleman over here, right?"

WC: 761
AC: 3

[Rook]

The crowd who had been on edge scattered like rabbits at the shot.
A lot of the subtlety in Gwylligi’s voice was lost to shouting.

Still his composure standing up Ruby was undeniable. The large guardian had to stop for a moment to grasp the situation. His eyes crossed a little staring down the barrel of the gun. Ruby wasn’t familiar with the weapons in game, he didn’t know if his innate defence statistic would protect him.

“Ahgsthgf” Ruby choked out something that sound like it was strangled by anger in his throat. “This cabbage headed Lander swindled me! He took my money and sold me rubbish!” He pointed an angry finger at the place the merchant who, still pale was inching away so as not to become collateral damage.
He went a deeper red from embarrassment than he had from anger moments before.

And then there was a dawning of thought in the man’s eyes as the adrenalin let his rational mind back into the picture.

He had nearly killed this lander, over a couple of measly gold. Death was nothing to him, but it would end the lander entirely. He had chosen to be a protector, but somehow he had become a bully.
To face it, or embrace it… the choice lingered in his mind.

Had there still been a crowd, he would have had to embrace it just to save face.

In the distance, the Imperial Guard were on their way. To mete out their own justice.

---

Word Count: 250
Tagged: Random Encounter Gwylligi