Operation: Roll Out

[initiates]

Date & Time: January 31st - February 4th, Present Day Exsilium Time
Location: Neo Las Vegas, in what formerly was called Turkey.
Characters: All Transports!
Summary: Transports have been sent to Neo Las Vegas to gather information on the origin point of the United Earth and the UE AI. Conference sabotage and the rest is expected and invited!
Warnings: Gambling and alcoholic beverages quite likely! Please PM the mod account for anything else.

By day, the landscape isn't desert, precisely, so much as it is dry. Winter's settled in and found in the biting chill of the wind when it finds you standing on the street. Hovercars and taxis thrum down the cobblestone streets, cavorting and honking like a noisy crowd of inelegant, overweight geese. Men walk by on stilts half in make-up, on their way back to their stage for the next night. Walks of shame are taken proudly in this district, one of the few approved and sanctioned vacation zones in the United Earth.

Evidence of law enforcement can be found all around, but they seem altogether too pleased to be there too. Talk with any one of them about crime rates, and they're liable to laugh at the idea. Those who come to gamble know the house is rigged to win. It's not about making or breaking the bank -- people whose funds dip too low are politely escorted back to their rooms and given a set of normal playing cards -- but it is about enjoyment.

Of the flesh too, and it'd be difficult to find anyone working in Neo Las Vegas who suffers from modesty, or anyone visiting who seems unwilling to politely ask visitors and staff if they'd like to keep them company for the night. In fact, Transports may find themselves needing to turn down multiple such requests! The refusal is always taken well. These are people looking to have a good time, and that's all.

No chance taken, nothing gained, right?

At night, the city really comes alive, the lights in all the hotels and casinos turning the Neo Las Vegas Strip into a carnival of sensation. Drinks and recreational drugs are freely passed around, men and women engage in a variety of sexual and other hedonistic excesses without regret, and the beautiful interiors and ostentatious or playful exteriors of the buildings hide and reveal a rich tapestry of events, delectables, and desires waiting to be fulfilled.

Neo Las Vegas is a fun place, and it is a safe place, and it is Where the Conferences For Our Future Are Made. Playtime is on, gang.

Comments

[deadelfwalking]

[Koltira slides into one of the booths. The menu is written in fancy script on distressed parchment paper, laminated, and tucked into a small leather book that stands upright on each table. The cocktails all have names that reference old medical practices, with sections for each humor (sanguine, choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic).]

No recompense needed. I'll look after you.

[stonefaith]

Mm, I like a chivalrous man.

[ Bariyan takes the seat opposite, and the menu, too. He spends a long time flipping through and carefully reading each cocktail's description, before settling on a Trephination. Which sounds like a good time.

Choice made, Bariyan puts the menu back and folds his hands over the table. ]

Have you been spending all your time here in bars?

[deadelfwalking]

[Koltira opens a billfold, full of cash from exchanged tokens.]

And the gambling halls.

[The waitress comes by, and Koltira just gets a scotch, neat.]

[stonefaith]

Of course. [ Bariyan props his chin up on one fist and contemplates Koltira. ] I didn't take you for a gambling man.

[deadelfwalking]

[Koltira leans over the table. He knocks down his shades a notch; raises both eyebrows.]

What kind of man do you take me for?

[stonefaith]

A good man. And a miserable one.

Which seems to be a common disposition, amongst your sort.

[deadelfwalking]

We can hardly help it.

[The waitress returns with their drinks. Koltira downs his scotch in two gulps, and asks for another before the woman is ten feet away.]

This helps, though. A little.

[stonefaith]

You should grab more before we leave, then. [ Bariyan nods to Koltira's wallet. ] Unless you're planning to spend that all tonight.

[ Bariyan happily takes a sip of his drink, which is a great deal more colorful and visually interesting than Koltira's. Mm. It's tasty. ]

Is it just the pain, Koltira? I know-- I hear that it's enough to drive any man to drinking, but is that all?

[deadelfwalking]

[He intends to grab as many as he can. He's already halfway through the second scotch before he replies.]

It is in the pain, in large part. But it is also the -- [He pauses. He stares down at his glass, his lips thinning, his whole expression darkening with shame.] -- the hunger. The desire to hurt. And the punishment of our bodies when the desire goes unfulfilled.

[He knocks back the rest of the drink.]

Misery is encoded into this curse. It infects our perspective in all things.

[stonefaith]

[ Bariyan nods, looking somber for the first time tonight. He takes a drink to compensate. ]

I'm sorry. I wish I could help. But when even the Light hurts you -- it leaves us at a loss, you know?

[ Bariyan laughs. He likes death knights. He's got a weakness for them, as his companions say. But part of this obsession is born out of desperation, out of the knowledge that for all the death knights he's met and befriended and loved, not a single one has come out any better for it. No worse, either -- just the same. Grim. Resigned. Wretched.

Bariyan feels for them, these casualties of the Scourge, but try as he might he can never seem to touch any of them. A whole army of souls beyond his help. Still he follows them, sorrowful, distressed, hoping forever to someday soothe their pains. ]

[deadelfwalking]

The Light is painful. But it stitches our skin back together, regardless.

[He's on his fourth scotch by this point.]

Bariyan, I have been away from Azeroth for years now. I have spent that time among the living, for the most part. It has helped me. Because of it, I have more anchors to draw on than I ever had before.

[He lifts his glass.]

I am sure you have been that anchor for others of my kind.

[stonefaith]

[ Bariyan smiles wryly and lifts his own glass in return. ]

Ah, but we living are temporary anchors, at best. Weak and fragile and short-lived. [ Bariyan nurses his drink and reexamines what he's just said. ] Some short-lived, anyway.

[deadelfwalking]

Not everyone I've met is still with me. [He thinks of Blue, so recently gone; he thinks of Liadrin, and of nearly everyone else from the City. He thinks of Aileen.]

But their memory remains.

[stonefaith]

[ Bariyan bows his head and smiles. ]

Your good conduct is a testament to that.

But ghosts still make for poor companions.

[deadelfwalking]

[Koltira stirs his drink with his index finger; ice rimes the sides of the glass.]

My conduct could be significantly better.

[He drinks.]

As for companions, I take what I can get.

[stonefaith]

So could I. Self-improvement is a war that we're all fighting, commander.

[ Bariyan's drink is pretty, and it also hits hard. He's already feeling woozy. That, of course, is a sign that he ought to knock back the last third of the drink in one go. ]

Don't say that! That makes it sound like you're settling. I'll have you know I'm the highest-quality companion a man can get, round here.

[deadelfwalking]

[Koltira thinks their self-improvement paths are pretty different, but he's much more concerned with Bariyan's blood alcohol level.]

Yes, crusader; you are quite lovely. Too much so to be left alone, given your drinking habits.

[stonefaith]

[ If Bariyan had elf ears, right now they'd be perking hard enough to hurt. But he doesn't. So he just sits up straight instead, leaning across the table to grin at Koltira.

He's caught, for a moment, on what he should respond to: the compliment, or to the slight upon his alcohol tolerance. So he settles for something that could be a response to either. ]

Say that again!

[deadelfwalking]

Pardon?

[stonefaith]

[ Dammit, don't ask for clarification, that makes things so hard on Bariyan. He stalls by signaling the waiter and getting another drink -- this time he just opens the menu to an arbitrary page and points into the middle, which lands him an 'Enkoimesis'. It's a rather alarming green color.

He takes a long drink, and that helps clarifies his mind some. ]

What did you call me?

[deadelfwalking]

[You need to slow it down, brother.]

Indiscriminate in your drinking habits.

[stonefaith]

No, no no. The thing before that. [ Bariyan waves his hand. He can feel his face heating up, but he's not that drunk. Or so he thinks. ]

[deadelfwalking]

Hmmm. [Koltira sips his drink, casually.] I can't recall.

[stonefaith]

[ Bariyan stares. He's being had, he thinks. So he lifts his foot up, and kicks Koltira under the table.

Then he scoffs, and takes another drink. ]

[deadelfwalking]

[Koltira winces, though it's just for show. He drains his glass.]

You should not mar such a lovely face with that expression.