Logs:Traditionalists
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| RL Date: 27 October, 2014 |
| Who: Edyis, N'vad |
| Involves: High Reaches Weyr |
| Type: Log |
| What: N'vad explains a weyr's traditional purpose. |
| Where: Riders' Lounge, High Reaches Weyr |
| When: Day 4, Month 2, Turn 36 (Interval 10) |
| Weather: Steady, today's snowfall sticks, creating dunes on the bowl floor. |
| OOC Notes: Feel free to edit/add anything I may have forgotten or missed. Backdated. |
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| Riders' Lounge, High Reaches Weyr(#1803RJ) About as high up the bowl wall as it is possible to get before hitting clear sky, right up against the rim, this ledge is tiny, narrow and not terribly inviting. Though angled towards the sun, there's not enough room to properly stretch out, and that same angle ensures it receives the worst of bad weather, with no shelter whatsoever. From above, there's not even an obvious passage inside, as if this particular ledge is, in the end, nothing more than a natural outcropping. It's only from atop the ledge itself that the cleverly concealed entrance becomes clear, angled into the stone as it is. Inside, there's a cavernous space, more than making up for the stinginess of the ledge. There's one large main room, and a much smaller back room that could probably be used as a bedroom - if this weyr were in traditional usage. Instead, the main cavern is largely filled with a collection of mismatched tables and chairs. Towards the back, there's a bar made out of old, recycled wood, manned during peak hours; there's plenty of alcohol on display behind it, though most of it tends towards the cheaper end of the range. Old, but still impressive, hangings cover the walls, all depicting scenes of High Reaches in glory. The back room has been turned into a storage area, with several cases of whisky and a variety of other spirits ready and waiting. A strange pipe contraption comes through the ceiling and towards the stone floor, where a large bucket sits beneath it. A lever turns on water from the pipe: fresh rain or snow, ready for drinking. It's still early in the evening, and the lounge is busy as usual. A group of Savannah riders in the back caught up in a game of poker, though there are riders from most of the wings in force tonight. Perched at the bar, having just ended her shift sits the newest waitress, nursing what looks suspiciously like a cheap beer and generally keeping an eye on the room, a ledger laying open as she scratches a few new entries in. At some point or another, a bit back, N'vad arrived in the company of several of his wingmates. Men of a certain age, as it were. Drinks are had; much talking ensues about some really fiddly details of formations, in which N'vad gets to take center stage while explaining The Way They Do Things Back Home. This passes for sociable, evidently. But soon enough, someone makes excuses about getting back to a nag of a weyrmate, someone has dawn sweeps, and before long it's just N'vad, leaning on his cane on his way up to the bar, setting an empty glass down beside Edyis. "Too late to get another? Didn't figure on seeing you up here." The once scribe smiles, slipping off her stool to fetch the bottle of what the man had been drinking. "Technically I'm off duty, but since you asked so nicely..." She offers with a grin, filling the glass on the table, before recapping the bottle and placing it back on its shelf, before returning to the other side of the bar. "Just started a few days ago actually, it's a little different than what I am used to, but it isn't a bad way to earn a mark." "Reckon you don't often hear weyrfolk talking like that--earning it." It's bourbon, for the record, like that matters; N'vad would probably drink anything else as easily, but a man of his experience has habits. Moving might disrupt some of them, but by no means all. "What were you up to before this? Remember you said something about taking a liking to history." "I worked the records room, still do at least once a seven. It was time to give up the knot though, you can't advance terribly far without formal training in the hall, and by the time I started working there I was already too old." She explains with a soft chuckle, adding in the next set of figures to the ledger. "So I checked in and picked up a few shifts here, feeling it out at least until the spring." N'vad makes a face, there, a creasing of forehead with a wrinkling of nose. "Apprenticeship's not for everyone. Not even for most folks, reckon. Wasn't for me, anyhow. Spent my younger years throwing folks out of bars for misbehavin'." That for a moment draws his gaze towards the exit, and the expression turns into more of an ordinary frown. "Wouldn't do to get too literal with that up here," he muses. "Don't reckon one advances too far pourin' drinks, though." Edyis laughs, "Wouldn't that be a sight? A little thing like me tossing some burly brownrider out on his hindquarters." Lifting her glass to her lips, and taking a long pull, "You are right of course, it isn't where I want to be forever, but for a turn or two it might not be a bad way to bide my time until I figure out my next course of action. Besides, you hear all kinds of things when you are the one pouring the drinks." She points out with diplomatic aplomb. "Tendin' bar is the best place for a gossip." It could hold a fair measure of disapproval, but N'vad's tone is as usual pretty flat, and the best one could say is that there's a twitch of amusement at the corner of his mouth. "Few Turns from now, you'll have settled down with some nice fella, work will seem like less of a priority. Usual way of it." It's mention of a "fella" that causes the young woman's eyebrows to lift suddenly, leaning in in an almost conspiratorial tone, "Not sure if you've noticed, but it doesn't seem like weyrfolk really settle down. Unless - you are offering?" Her tone jovial, as the glass is set down, and she scans the lounge again out of habit before those dark eyes return to the bluerider. "The good ones are already taken, and the rest don't seem the sort to be tied down." Grinning around her glass. A hand waves this concern away. "More wild-oat-sowing, maybe, but you look around--most folks still pair off, most folks still end up with families. Human nature." Evidently that last quip is not serious enough to even warrant an answer; N'vad takes a drink, instead. "Give it a coupla Turns, the fellows your age will be more serious-minded. Takes 'em a bit to come around. You'll see." Again it must be the fella's her age part that has her bursting in cheery laughter. "I'd put down good marks on that bet, I think you are also forgetting there is the question of whether or not I'd let myself be caught by some young stud with family on the mind. Not that I am against reproducing all together, mind you. Kids are wonderful, it's all the messiness involved with making them that has no appeal." She sighs dramatically. "I'd bet a month's wages if you talked to me two, even three turns from now I'll still be as single as the day I was born, and all the happier for it." This warrants an eyebrow-raise, but N'vad's comment is mild enough: "Reckon that might be. Well, if it's your work you care for, hope you'll find this opportunity useful in workin' out what it is you mean to do. This'll keep your evenings busy enough." By way of example, he lifts his glass, finishes its contents, but doesn't actually make any comment about another. This much hasn't been enough to slur his words, but it's surely been enough that any man would be feeling it. "Happy's what matters." Edyis chuckles in agreement. "I think I can work on happy." Closing the ledger as she finishes the last of the book keeping, "For now I will settle for not bored." Edyis replies, downing the last of her beer and slipping back behind the bar, though not out of earshot. "The same philosophy applies to yourself you know." "Wouldn't call myself bored," N'vad says. He finally properly settles on a barstool, if just to take the weight off for a bit, making the sort of noise people don't usually realize they're making when something's sore. "Back in a proper fighting wing, even if nothing to fight proper just now. Don't see as I've any room to complain."
She fetches the bourbon listening as he speaks, nodding. "They seem to be a rougher crowd, but not a bad bunch." She pours slowly, filling the glass again, before corking the bottle and shelving it. "Any wings you've noticed aren't in shape?" "Wouldn't be my place to say. Think this thing about folks practicing a Craft is a bit of nonsense, but used to hear folks talk about it back home, too." N'vad's eyebrows tell more about his disapproval than his tone does. "Few younger folk really take any of it serious. You don't remember Thread, it's just a story. It's our job to keep taking it serious right up to when it comes back, whenever that is." "A good point I suppose, can't exactly count on another comet either though. I imagine there's a balance somewhere between tradition and finding some way of justifying the weyr's existence to the holders during thread free time." This is posed hypothetically, more than a statement of personal belief. "So there's a question of what riders are meant to do when there isn't thread falling, sort of frees up a lot of time unless maybe you filled it with drilling I suppose." Just one shoulder to lift, there--half a shrug. "Does it matter? Comet comes or not, Red Star's not going to stay away forever. If we don't stay ready, we don't train the next generation to stay ready. Eventually you have people whose grandpaps didn't know what Thread looked like and they're doing a brisk business in hauling goods about with their dragons and nobody knows how to do formations because it didn't seem important." N'vad may have spouted these exact words verbatim in the past; they sound like an old, familiar refrain. "What we're meant to do is be ready until it falls again. Nothing wrong with drilling, anyhow."
"Folks manage one way or another. Managed first Pass, one way or another. Lose a lot more lives when you're not ready, though. Good men died." N'vad pauses, here, to toy with his glass. "And women. Good people." There, at least lip service towards the equality of it. "Holders, well, good reasons I'm glad that lout's not bronze," with a jerk of hand out towards the ledge. "Not my problem to manage. We have some thinner Turns, maybe. Reckon maybe we let them know that if they don't pay this Turns, they owe double next time--and if they aren't paid up by next Fall, we start cutting back on coverage." Edyis mms at that. "Cutting back coverage means nothing without the presence of a genuine threat; an interval is what, usually 200 turns, barring a rogue fall? You would hurt the weyr more with that sentiment. Thread takes root in a stand of forest, or farmland and gets left unchecked? Nabol's issues with Rone were a good example of what happens when you mess with the people who grow your food." Deaths bring a touch of sobriety to her expression as she picks up the next glass ready to be dried and begins to work at it with a dishtowel. "To each their own ideals I guess." She points out setting down the dried glass and moving on to the next. "Same principle as a fire break--moment it hits where it can't feed, it stops." N'vad draws an imaginary square around his glass with the index fingers of each hand. "Protect people, protect staple crops." He's stopped really looking at her, though; his eyes are on the bar's surface, like it's suddenly become considerably more interesting. Finger stabs at a spot to the left. "Tillek becomes a problem, anywhere relies overmuch on fish for trade goods, anywhere doesn't grow at least part of its food local." The voice has settled down to a gritty mutter. A circle around a knot in the grain, towards the right. Surely this all means more in his head. Finally he finishes off the contents of his glass and sets it back down on top of whatever that knot was. "No matter. Ain't things for a girl like you to be concerned with, anyhow." Does that smile become strained? Possibly, but whatever it is in her expression flickers away. "I hear something to that effect somewhat frequently these days. What should a girl like me be concerned with then, I wonder. If not the inner workings of the world she lives in?" This raises N'vad's eyebrows significantly, like he's genuinely surprised at the question. "Your life? Your work? Diplomacy ain't my job and never was, tend not to think on it. Reckon I can't work leather well enough to make my own boots, no matter how many pairs of boots I wear. Can't carry a tune in a bucket, that's for Harpers. I had to understand everything, wouldn't have nothing left I had time for." There is something about that, which strikes a chord with the young woman, who begins laughing brightly. "A truth I know all too well. Though I fear, it still doesn't stop me from trying." She tilts her head setting down the last of the dried glasses and wiping her hands. "Still the right person for the right job, and someone who can focus solely on that function, you make an excellent point N'vad." "Mm." It's a noise, also something like a concession, like this is the best he can do towards overt gratitude for complimentary comments. N'vad, having more trouble having an excellent point than not? Something like that. "Speaking of jobs, ain't gonna be up at any reasonable hour in the morning if I don't get to bed soon here," he settles on, instead, straightening. Edyis nods, wiping down the counter still chuckling to herself. "Pleasure as always bluerider. Have a good evening." Setting about the other tasks her new job entails. |
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