The Story

Borda quickly steps out of the doorway, off to one side. He surveys the room, giving his eyes a second to adjust to the light. He's medium height, thin-ish. His shoulders aren't overly broad, but they're broad enough to imply Borda is habitually short a couple meals. His face sports a couple of scars and his clothes look as if the only wash they've had is the rain. He slides into one of the chairs and looks around the table. Normally unwilling to speak first, but the nagging familiarity of the faces from the dream pushes him, "Borda".

A tall, strong woman enters the tavern not long after Borda. She wears well-worn leather armor, with a backpack on her back, a shield strapped to her left arm, and a meancing club resting on her other shoulder. She has dirty blond hair, straight and fine, but stringy from sweat and road dust, and pale skin, burned red from the sun. Her left temple features a nasty scar where no hair can grow. Instead, irridescent green scales extend from the area in small patches for an inch or two. Her hands and neck feature subtle hints of similar scaling, though not as noticeably.

She looks around the place, sniffs, and makes a sour face. Seeing some familiar faces, her brows knit in focus and intensity as she approaches the table. She sits in a chair by throwing one leg over the back of it and leans forward onto the table, resting her elbows on the edge. She gestures at the gathered people and says, "I've seen you lot. In ... in a dream. And no, that ain't a pick up line, so don't try it."

"But he did look like a chicken..."

A sour-faced man who looks older than he is enters the tavern, grumbling to himself, but it is his unpleasant smell that announces his entrance to the room. Those closest to the door involuntarily step back as he moves further inside. His eyes immediately go to the flames in the fireplace and the first smile of the day appears on his face. He begins to walk towards it when the man behind the bar interrupts his thoughts with food.

"Have a seat, I’ll bring you a bowl of porridge."

The smelly hermit stops in place and nods his head at the man before looking over the tables for a chair. He does a double take as he sees one table that is slowly filing with people he is sure he saw in that dream. It was warm, inviting, everything this day had not been. Maybe this is what his dream was leading him to.

As Borda introduces himself, the man replies: "Keftar." He then starts to look around the room again and back to the fire when he hears the tall woman talk about a dream.

"Dreams or omens? Who dragged us out of our holes to come here? I am following this stinkin' dream to find out who put it there!"

Wemut sits at the wooden table, her unnervingly clean appearance a stark contrast to the filthy tavern surrounding her. Her pale skin seems to glow with an unnatural luminescence, and delicate mushrooms sprout from her short, silvery hair. Her fingers—too long, too thin—caress a human skull placed prominently before her on the table. Her lips occasionally move in silent conversation with the grinning remains as she periodically pours drops of iridescent liquid from a small vial into the skull's eye socket.

A towering warrior woman, approaches the table.

"I've seen you lot. In... in a dream. And no, that ain't a pick up line, so don't try it."

Wemut tilts her head at an uncomfortable angle, pressing her ear to the skull's mouth. Her eyes widen as she listens to something no one else can hear.

"Oh my! Isn't that a shame. The prince says he finds you quite... appealing." Wemut giggles, then suddenly scowls at the skull. "Shut up! She's not even that pretty. Look at those muscles. Where's her femininity? Not like me... I'm delicate... beautiful..." She strokes her own face possessively before returning to petting the skull with renewed tenderness.

Keftar, and elderly man whose stench precedes him by several feet, also comes to the table, "Dreams or omens? Who dragged us out of our holes to come here? I am following this stinkin' dream to find out who put it there!"

Wemut's nose wrinkles as she fans the air dramatically.

"Speaking of 'stinking,' old man, I believe your dreams aren't the only foul thing at this table." She produces a small perfume bottle from her tattered sleeve and sprays it liberally in Keftar's direction. The liquid sizzles slightly where it lands on the table.

A scary looking man, approaches and introduces himself as Borda.

Wemut makes a peevish nod in his direction.

"I am Lady Wemut, Master of Herbs," She turns to the others."I also had a dream. In MY dream, you were all there too. But you served ME. Fetching ingredients, testing my newest concoctions..." Her eyes glaze over with pleasure at the memory. She points to the big woman "Your muscles were quite useful for grinding bones. And you," she points to Keftar "your stench masked the smell of the rotting things I needed." She turns to Borda and pauses, with a doubtful expression. Then shrugs. "You had your uses."

She smiles widely—too widely—as she raises her mug in a toast.

"To dreams coming true!"

Another woman enters the bar. The heavy armor she wears creaks and groans with each movement, concealing her slim body almost completely. A spiked flail hangs at her belt. Her hair is red, wild, and stringy, and her wild eyes glint in the light. Her face is twisted in a rictus grin. Some might say she has resting maniac face.

This impression isn’t helped when she bursts out into a fit of giggles. "Yes, yes, yes, the omens were true. They lead me here, and here you are! Together we will spit in the eyes of the Two-Headed Basilisks! Give them a nasty infection while we’re at it."

She sits heavily at the table and snorts. "Merkari," she says by way of introduction.

"Who made you the boss?"

The rumbling is concerning though so Keftar kicks his chair to a door or window to add to the barricade and tries to grab a fiery log for good measure. He quickly looks around for the owner to see if he's going to stop him again from approaching the fire.

Borda stands quickly and starts circling around the crowd as they move towards the door. He tries to stay out of the way while trying to spot the owner.

Merkari cackles as chaos grips the tavern. "They're coming to take me away. Ha ha! They're coming to take me away! Ha ha!" she sings as she stands and readies her flail, swinging it in lazy circles at her side.

Jotna stands up when the others begin to mobilize. She nods with a grunt and grabs the table and begins to drag it toward the door. While doing so, she glances around to see what others are doing and asks a nearby bar patron who looks like a local, saying, "Hey. Who's coming?"

Wemut gasps dramatically when she hears the commotion, both hands flying to her cheeks in exaggerated alarm. When Karg barks his orders, she looks at him with undisguised disdain, then at her own pale, delicate fingers.

"These hands create the most exquisite concoctions in all of Galgenbeck. They are NOT for moving furniture," she announces to no one in particular.

As Jotna begins dragging the table, Wemut shrieks and lunges forward to snatch the prince's skull before it can tumble off.

"YOU BRUTE! Watch what you're doing!" she cradles the skull protectively against her chest, whispering soothing sounds to it. "There, there, my love. The nasty woman didn't mean to jostle you."

When Merkari begins her deranged singing, Wemut turns her attention to the cackling warrior, narrowing her eyes.

"If they ARE coming for you specifically, perhaps you could simply go outside and surrender yourself? That way the rest of us might finish our... porridge... in peace." She glances distastefully at the meager bowl, then strokes the skull's smooth crown. "The prince and I prefer our meals without the accompaniment of siege warfare."

Jotna nods a thank you to the woman who answered. She goes about helping barricade things, moving from one of her fellow dreamers to another, whispering, "the barkeep escaped through the kitchen. We might wanna follow suit once combat starts … I got no beef with the military…"

"No reason to wait," Borda whispers. He moves quietly towards the kitchen.

Wemut's face contorts into an expression of pure indignation as Karg refers to her as "dollface." She raises her chin haughtily while continuing to cradle the prince's skull.

"Dollface? I'll have you know this face has been compared to goddesses, you uncultured thug. My features were sculpted by moonlight and mushroom spores, not some toy maker's clumsy hands."

When Jotna whispers about the barkeep's escape route, Wemut leans closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

"Well, well... you're not as dim-witted as you look, are you?" She tilts her head suddenly, as if listening to the skull in her arms. "What do you mean 'she doesn't look dim-witted at all'? Haven’t we talked about this already? Stop looking at her. Stop looking at other women." She glares at the skull, then strokes its cranium apologetically.

Raising her voice dramatically, she addresses Karg and his crew with an exaggerated flourish.

"Brave defenders! Take my chair for your noble barricade! I shall contribute to our collective salvation!" She kicks her chair toward them with delicate precision, ensuring it slides across the floor without requiring her to actually carry it.

She glances meaningfully toward the kitchen entrance, nodding subtly at Jotna. When Borda suggests they shouldn't wait, Wemut sidles closer to Jotna.

"The sneaky one might be right," she murmurs. "By the time the real fighting starts, this place will be surrounded tighter than a noblewoman's corset. The prince and I prefer not to be caught in crossfires. Bad for the complexion, you understand."

Jotna nods subtly to her fellow dreamers, trying not to draw the attention of the others. "As long as we can do it without them noticing."

Satisfied no one is watching, Keftar picks up a nice log with embers glowing at the end. He gives another unsettling smile at it and whispers back to Jotna: "I know a way to keep them looking the other way..."

He waves the log around a little, but his stomach full of porridge has satiated him enough to not immediately throw the log at the nice dry wood waiting to be lit.

Merkari nods to the others and starts moving towards the kitchen as quietly as her heavy armor allows her. She sings quietly to herself: "Don't be suspicious, don't be suspicious..."