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"Heya, Archi!" Elspeth slurred happily at the nervous Watchman. The glass was empty. She'd just drunk one and a half times her weight (and height) in beer. Not a bad start. "Heya, fellas! Siddown, 's a good place ye got here, 's good shtuff." She thought a second. "Well, it's a place. And it's shtuff."

"Are ye a vampyr?" she said to Drake. He jumped back a bit, ready to dodge in case she had a miniature pitchfork, or, even worse, a sharpened pencil. "I mean, vampire," she corrected herself. She had to watch the Feegle accent - she was a city gnome now. "I only ask 'cos of the way ye stepped out o' the shadows, all spooky-like. An' the fangs. An' the black ribbon." Drake still looked apprehensive. "I reshpect that, I really do. Takesh a lotta strength, bein' a Black Ribboner." Elspeth gave a massive, satisfied belch. She admired self-control in others, but didn't see a need for it herself.

Vampires didn't worry her. She was a little concerned about the Watchman with the wild hair and the darting eyes - he looked a bit wolfy around the sideburns, and small mammals such as herself didn't normally get on with carnivores, but she figured that if he ever went quadrupedal and felt like a game of Chase-the-Feegle, she could take him.

Ddar stared at Drake. He had never been around a vampire before. The only time he ever heard about them was from the stories about when his clan tried to do business with one long ago, and it went sour as the vampire got hungry and some of them weren't fast enough to get away. "Hhheee's a vvvampire?" stuttered Ddar as he turned pale and began looking around for something stop the bleeding from the small cut on his thumb, and finally, he just shoved his thumb in his mouth. His other hand went under the table, and he fidgeted nervously for a few seconds, never taking his eyes off Drake. "I hhearrd... hheard... Sssstories! Yes, that's it, stories, about vvvaammpppires," he continued stuttering, and he pulled his thumb out of his mouth and began rubbing his neck, as if hoping some kind of protection from a vampires fangs magically appeared to protect his jugular. "No, Lance Constable Archi, I didn't see anything on my way out here." His eyes still not leaving Drake. He picked up his mug in an attempt to look calm, and it shook like a dingy during a hurricane, spilling most of the contents onto the table. He chuckled nervously as he kept his eyes on Drake. "Bbarkeep! Mmore ale, pplease!" He spun around quickly, his nose knocking over a tankard of beer the waitress was carrying, and his beard took a small chunk of wood out of the chair next to him.

Huh. Camaraderie.

Elspeth had no idea what "camaraderie" meant, but if she did, and if she hadn't slipped on some of Ddar's nervously spilled beer and fallen headlong into the table tent displaying the Bucket's Dailey Speciales ("beer"), the word might have crossed her mind.

As it was, she picked herself up and made a comical face and an unsteady bow. She got a laugh - a small, nervous one, maybe just a twitch of facial muscles - but for a split second she felt a little like she had before she'd left home. She'd always been able to make her brothers laugh.

She missed her brothers. All 517 of them. Yes, even Bigger-than-Medium-Sized Ian. But what was there for it? Stay home and learn the magics from her mother, find a clan and find a man, and then become a kelda, a leader and mother of the Nac mac Feegle and a guardian of the land....

But keldas didn't go up on the birds. It was dangerous, and they were generally too precious (and too pregnant) to take the risk. So there was Ankh-Morpork, where anyone could do anything (and have anything done to them, although the pamphlets mostly left out that part). She'd get Buggy Swires to put her on the aerial squad one way or another. Then she wouldn't have to think so much about the way home pulled at her.

Everyone here's runnin' away from something, she thought. This could get interesting.

"Aye. Just Watchmen," she said.

And glanced toward the door. HAD she seen something...?

"I am indeed a vampire, nontheless. But, my little friend" He said, not realizing how lightly and dangerously he was using the term "I believe a great man, a terriffic man indeed once said that there is no such thing as a vampyre. That's just a vampire that can't spell. But I believe what Archi here said, even if he really doesn't. I have not come here to suck your blo..." a sudden rush of a familiar accent came over him as he was attempting to say the B word. That Uberwaldian accent that is so frightening to some. He decided against the word, and instead "I actually would like to suck something." He said, feeling as much evil as natural, and sucked on his Jolly Sailor. He blew out in the Dwarf's general direction "But I don't think you're in trouble. See?" He raised his hand to show the black ribbon, the black ribbon which has stopped him so many times it was not even funny anymore. He laughed anyways. "I'm sorry, I was only kidding. I haven't had a drop of the... stuff in ages. You're completely safe with me."

Ddar stared at Drakes hand for a few seconds. "Whoss with the black ribbon?" He asked, the effects of the alcohol slowly wearing off. "Thank heavens I quaffed instead of drink it like they do back in the Uberwald. Nothings scarier than a bunch of Dwarves drinking, and not a drop of ale spilled. They always get real quiet too, and then the fighting starts," he thought to himself. He looked at Wolf as he said, "Komrads!" Ddar thought for a few seconds and decided it must be something similar to what Archi was talking about before, and decided that "Komrads" must mean "Watchmen" where Wolf was from, and waited for him to finish speaking. Ddar relaxed slightly as he shifted his attention between the door and the darkness beyond it, Drake, and Wolf. He then sniffed the air, "Jolly Sailor! I like a good pipe myself. He sat back down, and pulled out a long pipe made from a broccoli stalk and a corn cob*, and stuffed it with some sort of dried black leaf. Once he lit the tobacco, something that smelled like burning, wet, dog hair came out of his pipe, and began circulating around the room, as though it was trying to chase everyone out of the Bucket. This is some baccy thought Ddar as he puffed away at his pipe.



* Its not commonly known that in some Dwarven Clans that reside in the Uberwald, that a Dwarf is not considered an adult until after he crafts his first pipe. Some pipes are fashioned from marble, and precious metals, while other dwarves make do with the much more common cabbage, carrot, leek, or anything else that might not burn. This has led to more than a few Dwarves in the Uberwald to burn off thier beards and eyebrows, often times getting them mistaken for members of the Alchemists' Guild.

"I dinna ken what tha' means," cried Elspeth, on her fourth now and in full Feegle voice. "But tha'll nae stop me drinkin' t'it! Komrads!" Her glass tipped over, drenching her in mediocre beer. She fell forward into the now-empty glass, sodden and giggling.

Through the bottom of the glass she could see her drunken komrads getting - well, more drunken - in a curved, wavy manner. The rest of the bar looked curved and wavy, too. The darkness near the door looked particularly curved and wavy. And dark.

But it was fourth-beer time, therefore time for some spontaneous, very bad attempts at heroic poetry.

"Aye, we in t'Watch, we'll stand together, in the face of any plot..." Her declaiming voice echoed in the glass. The door looked darker. "Plot...."

(OOC: Guys, is it OK if I introduce the ominous plot device that's sitting there waiting to be introduced? Well, it is kind of a plot, but it's not an actual device. 'Cause I don't know the RP protocol - being new to all this - but if you don't do it first, I'll do it...)

(ooc) leave the plot to me, I've actually got it all worked out. It's going to link in with the assasin's thread and everything. I want to get a guild spanning story happening that effects all of Ankh Morpork in someway and maybe some articles in the times. At the moment I'm just waiting on some input from Hallanzil before we can go much further, but I'll go as far as I can now.(ooc)

As Archi stood to get himself another pint he realised he was quickly approaching full bladder copacity. He decided to make some more room before refilling and glanced at the privie door. Brief memeories of his last encounter with the privie in the Bucket floated past his inner eye and he decided he'd find a handy alley outside. All his fears concerning shadows and the things that lurked within were nicely blurred by the fog of intoxication.
"Jus be a moment fella's...an..." He glanced at the gnome, lady didn't quite seem to apply. "Jus be a moment."
The door of the Bucket swung open easily and Archi paused a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark and let the rest of him remember which way was upright. Then he took two steps and tripped over something heavy and slightly soft, like a very big piece of meat.
He was more or less right.
"Oh gods! Somebody call the Wa..." Archi trailed off. That was right, he was the Watch now. He slipped a little in something he couldn't see as he got up and quietly thanked whatever wise power had invented night time.
The body was human, possibly a thief or an assasin or simply someone who liked black. It looked like whoever they were they hadn't liked being stabbed. Someone else had, however, liked stabbing. They'd been quite enthusiastic about it. Instinctively he patted his pockets for a bit of chalk, found none, moved a lifeless arm back to where he thought it had been before tripping over it and stumbled back into the bar.
"Um...I think we have a...um...thing."