30 - Smokery Pt. 2 [Cherno]

She had watched him get rejected by two other stalls, in the dismissive manner that one would use on a legless hobo asking for spare change. He looked somewhat shady; just the sort that might know something interesting. So, Krahe let him in. There were multiple empty bowls on the table, one of which he took and replaced atop the hookah, filling it with his own herb. Krahe handed him the hose, taking the moment to get a look at what he had put into the bowl. Thin shavings with streaks of dark greys and purples.

[DRIED SABBI ROOT]

[Status:]

Bad (Low Quality)

[Details:]

Habit Forming C2

Inhibition Release D3

Stress Release C1

Stupefaction E3

When offered a drag, Krahe refused: “Eh, not for me.”

It tasted tobacco-adjacent, but acrid and sour, even by comparison to to the most horrid SynthbaccoTM. She chuckled at that thought. That TM wasn’t a trademark; instead, including it as part of the title had been the brand’s attempt at convincing people that a two-hundred-year-old government project they had resurrected was in fact a proprietary product. The sad part was that it had worked, and their monopoly on their horrid product went uncontested for thirty years.

After some time, when he had smoked around a third of the bowl, the Sabbi-smoker made it clear that its effects had taken hold on him. His demeanor changed in a way rather akin to a good-spirited drunk, and his gaze leered down across her chest and to her hips, then a bit to the side. His eyes bulged out as he uttered: “What’s that, izzat…”

Catching himself, he glanced left and right, then leaned in, sputtering smoke into her face as he whispered: “That a Pattner repro on your hip? Damn, looks like an original at a glance… Can I take a look? Shit, sorry, I shouldn’t ask.”

Before she could even respond, he already leaned away from her and took a long drag, sighing on the exhalation.

“So uh, what kind is it? I could get you some Dregshot and Thaumine Powder on the cheap if you wanna buy, but I’d rather not have your blood on my hands if the gun blows up…” he wheezed, still clearly trying to keep his voice down, and somewhat succeeding in that pursuit.

“No clue where it came from, took it from a dead man,” she lied.

“Well, you could always buy one bullet and text-fire the thing with a vise and a string, couldn’t you?” he suggested, wheeze-laughing as if he’d just told the funniest joke imaginable. Then, the hysteria vanished from him and he took another drag, once again melting into his seat as verbal incontinence made a whole lot of interesting info leak out of his mouth: “Those Pattner guns… They’re basically indestructible. It may seem unenchanted, but the reason is that they’re built to deal with any bullshit that you put through them. You make an enchanted gun, you better be goddamn careful about what sort of ammo you put through it - sometimes even the wrong kind of metal can play fuckfuck games with your enchantments. But a Pattner? A Pattner will shoot fire, ice, lightning, water, curses, one after the next, without jamming, and you won’t even have to clean it afterwards. Good fuckin’ luck finding a modern gun that can take that kind of abuse. Bissler’s weird mutant guns are the only copy-cats that even come close to the Pattner originals.”

“Tell me some other piece of interesting trivia and I might consider taking it as your payment,” she grinned, making a very real request seem like a joking one. Intoxicated as he was, though, her guest took it seriously.

“I’m curious about the big man around here; Mr. Damrus Hashem. Y’know, best to know who you don’t want to screw with,” she guided him.

“Hashem? Oh, where to start… Oh, I know, those rings of his,” the baldo lit up, dipping his little finger into the smoldering mass of roots atop the hookah. He smeared the tar-and-ash mixture on the table, drawing a stunningly competent approximation of a hand bedecked by three rings; one on the index, and two on the ring finger. The first was a large plate with a spindly star, while the second had a pyramidal gem, and the third was a plain band above the pyramid-ring.

“The Crimson Star, and the Amber Pyramid. That’s red and yellow. These are the symbols of Hashem’s power, both as a mafioso and as a thaumaturge. He’s got a nice revolver, too; looks like a… I dunno, some kind of Bullstopper, a hundred types of those things out there. Four shots, big bullets, real powerhouse, but you can tell it’s a muzzle loader by the ramrod and the solid-backed cylinder with ignition glyphs where the cartridges would sit.”

“What of the plain ring?”

“It’s not real. The design is indicative of the ring’s power; it allows Hashem to double a thaumaturgy cast while the ring is active, or at least it seems that way. The copper ring vanishes once the artifact’s power has been spent, and reappears when it is ready once more. He’s… Not the sort to spill what kind of abilities he has willy-nilly. The Amber Pyramid just happens to be the one he uses so often that someone managed to target it with a sufficiently powerful Appraisal to penetrate his Anti-Appraisal measures.”

Fighters of increasingly eclectic nature came and went, and once the bald-headed man was finished smoking what he had brought, he bid her “Zabye” and left, making his way to the bar. There, he bet a hundred DDs on someone named Palehead. Krahe thought nothing of it, seating the bowl of Cassia back atop the hookah and replacing her own mouthpiece. After burning the memory of the bald man’s drawing into memory, she smeared it away with her bare hand and burned it away with a flash of Thauma. No harm came to her; the Wards of her right palm took the punishment, making themselves known with a puff of ash that vanished as quickly as the tar-flame.

It wasn’t long before Krahe got to see a belt-user actually use that thing. After his name was called, he rose up from a nearby booth and approached the pit. He was pale, short, and thin of figure, with pitch-black skin, straight, snow-white hair, and soft facial features. Even his irises were grey, so she inwardly attributed him the nickname “Monochrome”. His belt had a slot on one side and a lever on the other. He slotted in a canister with caution stripes and pushed the lever down; accompanied by a somewhat unsettling cacophony of sounds, the belt itself spoke in a gruff, metallic voice: “WARNING: High velocity. Explosive pressure. Stand free.”