Redoubtable Downtown Space Abbey - The Leviathan Club

[nimelennar]

The door opens, and Mr. Aaaakzeee St-Patrick-Hartbrooke IIII steps heavily into the doorway, his heels clicking loudly on the jamb; he doesn’t often wear shoes with metal taps, but this particular visit needs to have a sense of drama. His very honour is at stake, and it needs to be shown that this is not a matter he takes lightly.

From a distance, he looks little different than he had the season before, but the feathers that have come in recently have an opalescence about them that the dyed ones from the height of his illness lack, and his posture has subtly improved; the handkerchief in his pocket is painstakingly styled, not having to be pulled out so often anymore.

What is visibly different is his manner; while before, even in his illness, he had an easygoing, almost nonchalant manner about him, his fingers are now clenching and unclenching as his eyes search the room, as an eagle’s might for prey. Not finding who he is looking for immediately in sight, he departs the threshold and enters the room.

The doorbot announces him, pronouncing his name superbly as always, but St-Patrick-Hartbrooke waves the robot’s offer to take his coat away. He will not be here long on this day. He clears his throat, and is gratified to hear a bit of a growl in the undertone – the modifications that had been necessary to allow a Taaa’keee to speak His Majesty’s English had had some unintended consequences, and the tendency to growl when angry was one of them that he occasionally appreciated the effect of.

“I do not know if you are here, you barely-sentient out-of-tune chord from a ballad opera (@manwich), but it hardly matters; if you are here, if you are not, you will hear of this soon enough.”

His eyes still scanning the room, he unfastens his left glove, and begins pulling it off.

“I spoke for you, I toasted you, and lauded your generosity. And then, you deceitful pile of discordant notes from a poorly-made pipe organ, you turned your back on your fellow sentients, on this club, on your mayor, on your planet, and on the very people of your nation. How many will die because of your rapacious greed and careless disregard is an unknown quantity, but it is one that will stain your very soul, and I hope that you feel that stain until the day you are dragged screaming into Hell.”

The glove removed, St-Patrick-Hartbrooke brandishes it.

“Not only have you tarnished your own soul and honour by your deeds, you have tarnished mine, for instead of encouraging people to give more, I took your contribution for granted, and thus some of the blood that will spill from your foul and treasonous duplicity lies on my hands as well. That blood, that stain on my honour, demands satisfaction, and I will have it.”

His eyes narrowed and his teeth bared, he casts the glove onto the floor.

“I, Aaaakzeee St-Patrick-Hartbrooke III, hereby challenge the loathsome sentient who promised, and then secretly withdrew for private investment, more than half the funds requested by the Mayor for the medical shipment to provide relief from the plague to a duel, to the death, on the field of honour. Per convention, the choice of weapons is yours. If you do not answer, I will assume that you are the pusillanimous wretch that I believe you to be, and I will spread word throughout the Empire of your amoral nature, your sociopathic deeds, and your outright cowardice in refusing to settle a debt of honour, through every publication I can find.”

The Space Griffin’s eyes scan the room once more, looking for someone else but not immediately seeing him.

“If Mr. Karekin (@David_Falkayn) stops by, please tell him that if he wishes to clear the stain from his own endorsement of the backstabbing cloud of noise pollution, I am happy to put our own differences aside and would be honoured to have him act as second in this duel. He, or the cloud’s second — should he be able to find any sentient in this Empire that approves of his deeds and wishes to stand for him — can contact me at my apartment.”

His piece said and his point made, St-Patrick-Hartbrooke sweeps out of the club, leaving his glove — and the mortal challenge it implies — on the floor behind him.

[David_Falkayn]

Sir Aaaakzeee St-Patrick-Hartbrooke IIII

I am as shocked as you are at < pleasing hum > 's perfidy. We readily had the capacity to meet the Mayor’s call without a penny from it. Indeed, several did see through it’s ruse and contributed anyway.

In response to your exemplary Leadership, I made the largest single contribution to the Fund. I, too, feel this betrayal deeply.

Thus, I am deeply honored by your offer to be your second.

I accept.

Working together we will right this wrong.

At Your Service,

Mr. Jules Rothschild Karen.

[Tom_Ratchetcrank]

Oblivious to the scene unfolding at that moment, Tom enters the club quietly and scans the room. His eyes light for a moment and his next few steps suspiciously resemble stumbles before he manages to compose himself. With hands grasping something behind his back he makes across the room with an air of false bravado before losing his nerve half-way through. His retreat in force before even spinning on one heel he heads towards the corner booth he knows is favorited by the Duchess Gummibuns @gwwar He slips something onto the table before sliding along the side of the room towards the door, nervous and avoiding whatever the disturbance between Mr. Aaaakzeee St-Patrick-Hartbrooke IIII and that fellow always bossing Eighth around, Mr. Karekin, is. A look back across the room and Tom disappears back into the street.

[Pogo]

Beans? Common beans!? I simply must have a talk with that boy.

[Nightflyer]

Thank you, my dear Mr. Rounder. Please think nothing of it, it’s a minor bruise–

~she breaks off, coughing delicately into a hankerchief~

–I’m sure it will be gone in no time. I wish I could say the same for this dratted cough. If only we’d managed to raise the needed funds, we might have better medicine for it now. There’s still some hope for next season, I suppose.

~She leans closer to speak more quietly to the felinoid gentlesentient and the Duchess Gummibuns @gwwar ~

Pardon me for my impertinence in asking, but what do you two make of all this skullduggery over the medical funding? What possible reason could that blackguard < pleasing hum > have to secretly sabotage the mission of mercy? Do you think it’s in league with New Prussia?

And is there anything we might do to improve matters?

[gwwar]

[ Duchess Gummibuns responds in a hushed whisper, between sips of strong drink ] What a lumping thought! I have not heard of any sort of treason, but have no doubt his actions were quite malicious. That <pleasing hum> is by far now the leader in terms net wealth, a dangerous outcome. Maybe, it is not quite right in head, and takes enjoys seeing Weatherby in such dire straits. We must be careful, surely.

[gwwar]

Oh beans! I lumping love these! Make sure your lad, gets a nice proper drink. Just use my tab.

[Donald_Petersen]

“There you are!”

“Hmm? Oh, good morning Couthin Carthy. How do you fare–”

[SLAP!!]

[Heads turn discreetly. Well, somewhat discreetly.]

“How dare you?”

“Why… why, I’m thure I have no idea what you mean by that, Carthy…”

[Hushed, infuriated whispering ensues]

“You know damned well what I mean by that, sir. You have gone too far this time, too far!”

“Why, Couthin Carthinogennifer… I do believe you thound a trifle… hung over.”

“I do indeed, and we both know that that is entirely your fault! You knew! You knew what I planned, you saw it in my eyes, perhaps, or perhaps in the steely set of my jaw, the determined squint of my labial pits…”

“I’ve known you thinthe you hatched, Lieutenant, and you’re ath predictable ath the thunrithe. It’th not all that difficult to get the drop on you.”

“You drugged me!! You knew I was determined to override your cruel, selfish, unlizardly set of orders with a private message to the Bartlebot, overturning it all and sending every farthing we had available to the Wellness Contribution Fund, you knew as well as I did that musical geometry is never to be trusted, no matter how harmonious, and you even defied the social order of Weatherby by preventing the express wishes of a True Citizen through circumventing my own circumvention… if the mayor were to discover that I, Carcinogennifer Honeyvenom, the highest-ranking member of polite society by a rather sizable margin, were fed a biscuit laced with tincture of aspsbane by her very own ward, the scandal would rock the colony, and I dare not contemplate the repercussions among the Citizen-Pretender class!”

“And who’th going to tell her? You may be the highetht-ranking member of thothiety now, 'tith true, but only by my hand! Can you imagine where we’d be had I allowed you to carry out your thilly thchoolgirlish thtratagem? We’d be nearly broke, lotht in the midfield of thothiety, bereft of influenthe… we’d be of no uthe to anyone whatthoever!”

“We’re nearly broke as it is! Woefully overextended!”

“But flush with influenthe, my dear! Look around you! We’ve got the motht private booth with the motht luxuriouth upholthtery. We get waited on firtht! Have you notithed that while everyone grumbleth about the duplithitous hexahedron, and that pompouth thpathe griffin thwaggerth in here and maketh a huge thene about calling out the cube for a duel, not one word hath been uttered in any thort of negative way about you, the foremotht and primary benefactor of the theathon! Can you not thee, dear couthin, that thith ith how one winth friendth and influentheth people?”

“By taking advantage of every privilege? By exploiting our resistance to the plague and leaving others to suffer?”

“Perhapth there alwayth wath thomething to the divine right of nobility…”

“This cannot stand, Ssskidwish.There will be consequences and repercussions, I feel it to the very depths of my cloaca…”

“Take it from an old lizard, kid… that’th jutht conthtipation. Take a crap, have a nap, everything will look fine in the morning. Trutht me.”

[a chair is violently shoved aside]

“Trust you? Never again, Ssskidwish. Never.”

jinglejingleslam!

[manwich]

[MESSAGE FROM TRANSLATORIUM: INCOMING MESSAGE EXTREMELY UNORTHODOX IN COMPOSITION. TRANSLATION INCLUDES MANY LINGUAL BEST-FITS. FOR CLARITY, BEST-FITS ARE DENOTED BY ASTERISK PAIRS. OVERALL ACCURACY OF TRANSLATION: UNKNOWN.]

“I, Aaaakzeee St-Patrick-Hartbrooke III, hereby challenge the loathsome sentient who promised, and then secretly withdrew for private investment, more than half the funds requested by the Mayor for the medical shipment to provide relief from the plague to a duel, to the death, on the field of honour. Per convention, the choice of weapons is yours. If you do not answer, I will assume that you are the pusillanimous wretch that I believe you to be, and I will spread word throughout the Empire of your amoral nature, your sociopathic deeds, and your outright cowardice in refusing to settle a debt of honour, through every publication I can find.”

This is my *house.* Did you come to *play*?.
Do not be sad if you are *other*. We can still have a *party*.
There are never enough *campers*.

Oh, we are so excited for expecting *duel parties*!

[KaraokeBot’s leatherbound ledger ominously floats out the door towards Aaaakzeee St-Patrick-Hartbrooke II’s small apartment]

[Rumpthwaite]

Now, a drink for everyone, who’s feeling a bit under the weather! Too bad we don’t have real doctors and medicine, but we make do.

[ Duchess Gummibuns slides a 100£ note across the bar. ]

[Rumpthwaite nods and harumphs, quietly causing the note to vanish in a subtle flourish as an unusual shaker is presented. Seemingly silver, it glows with an odd color as an olde recipe is mixed, prepared, and decanted. The well-tempered Alces pours several small glasses full of a spiced specialty and sees to it that those bearing either the misgivings of miasma or bruises of badminton are served equally.]

[MrMonkey]

Oh my dear Jean-Rhys @MrMonkey this is just what you predicted. What do you know about the evil hum that the rest of us do not know. I have an incline that you know something about he/she/its past.

My good Lady Elizabeth @Hadley, I can assure you I had no foreknowledge of its actions, nor have I any special knowledge of its origins. Rather, the quite striking particulars of its form have lodged themselves in my mind, such that in idle moments of fant’sy I’m reminded of certain treatises concerning the Philosophical Nature of our worlds as well as others less readily apprehensible. The Maths are quite esoteric, but they suggest, by way of metaphor, that it might be possible for beings to exist simultaneously in any number of Celestial Spheres, and by doing so, gain special insights – or even influence – over events that seem fixed in the past or nebulous in the future from our own more limited frame of reference.

Or perhaps it has found a more prosaic method of subverting the Public Ledger. Rather the more likely option, now that I think on it…

And if one gives credence to the on-dits, one could hardly help notice that solitary sentient being scorned by all of the most prestigious Events of the last season (with good reason, it now appears), in which case its perfidious tack towards vindictiveness seems somewhat less surprising, although scarcely less shocking in its boorishness.

There’s precious little difference between a <pleasing hum> and a damned hum, it would seem.

[Ssskidwish]

The well-tempered Alces pours several small glasses full of a spiced specialty and sees to it that those bearing either the misgivings of miasma or bruises of badminton are served equally.

Ssskidwish, deep into a fourth mug of Ol’ Herpetonian, barely registers the significance of the omission of service tendered to those lacking both contusions and congestion, when it comes to this particular round. “Our time. For once it is our time,” the old lizard mutters to himself.

Er, herself.

Ssskidwish is unused to being mistaken.

[penguinchris]

I confess to some confusion regarding the… condition of the lady Carcinogennifer. Is she surely but a stack of Space Lizards in the proverbial trench coat?

I find her face con-founding, yet fancy she is friendly.

Madam - may I make this seat mine?

[David_Falkayn]

Mr Karekin enters, wearing his best (afternoon) suit.

He clear his throat, and says,

Excuse me, I apologize for being so forward, but I have a request.

I would like to engage the sole Barrister to make a careful review of < pleasing hum > 's numerous sketchy land titles. I will of course defer if someone else has a greater need for the Barrister, but I hope the Club will let me press forward.

Thank You.

Karekin makes a small bow, and moves to a private room.

[Hadley]

Jean-Rhys @MrMonkey you are so wise. Do you want to write the advise column for my newspaper?

[Pogo]

Mr. Karekin you are a man of action, indeed, and as such a man after my own heart, yes you are! I say jolly good! Such piratical behavior deserves not but a full broadside fired on the roll, to strike between the wind and the water, as it were, but you, sir, a fine gentlesentient, rightly take the honorable first shot across Its bow! I shall be proud to stand the line with you, sir, and add my cannon, er, well, what cannons I might come to possess once I have a deck beneath my feet again. But until then, consider Capstanturnbuckle a friend who shall assist by whatever means are available!

in a whisper
[er, Tom, go and polish the silver plate brightly, might be time to head back to the pawnbroker for the funds to acquire another ship.]

[Nightflyer]

I agree. Whatever choice of action is made should be undertaken with discretion.

What do you say, Mr. Rounder @ghoti?

[ghoti]

Well, my dear ladies, I do believe something untoward is afoot.

Perhaps when I find Dick, he’ll be able to be of some use, investigatively speaking. That lad’s a wizard when it comes to research and so forth. It’s downright spooky how he finds things out…

[MrMonkey]

Do you want to write the advise column for my newspaper?

[Jean-Rhys beams.]

I say, Lady Elizabeth, what a cap–, cap–, kaaawfffff…

[Her pneumatics stutter and briefly seize, the color slowly draining from her cheeks as she waits for the fit to pass. An indicator light turns amber. Almost as if by magic, Rumpthwait appears and places a small glass of the specialty at her elbow.]

I most urgently thank you, Rumpthwait!

[She gasps, and then pours the entire drink directly into a previously sealed intake valve. There is a brief whistle followed by a soft, sharp pop, and then her whole frame visibly relaxes. A single puff of ochre-tinted mist drains from her vents, smelling faintly, yet distinctly, of fresh-baked brownies and lagoderm flatus.]

Lawks, that’s soothing! Duchess Gummibuns @gwwar, I am in your debt for the dram.

As I was saying, Lady Elizabeth, that sounds like a capital idea. You honor me with the offer. However, between this damnable cough, my duties at the University, and my own researches, I fear I could not give it the attention it deserves on a regular basis. Perhaps I could contribute a guest column, or two, instead?

If you might find such an arrangement agreeable, simply provide me with a selection of questions from your readers, and I will endeavor to answer one or two with what grace and wit I can muster.

[David_Falkayn]

Mr Karekin’s recent Letter to the Editor of the Weatherby Times was rejected as “too long.” So it is being posted on the Leviathan Club bulletin board.

Sir –

As Weatherby’s Better Connected know, I am enthusiastic about the possible presence of Sentient Sandfish here on Weatherby. The possibilities for such an development to enhance Weatherby’s standing throughout the Galaxy are immense. To realize this potential, we first have to know which of our fellow beings are sentient, and in what manner.

Karekin fisheries already operates the largest commercial “catch and release” operation on Weatherby. We explicitly tailor our policies to take a “Do No Harm” stance toward organisms we suspect may be sentient. However, such an assessment is challenging given the current state of our knowledge.

Thus, I was thrilled when Commander Piker of the United Federation of Oceans and Seas (UFOS) joined us with his “ward” Ensign Crusher. I have made multiple overtures to Commander Piker of the UFOS for assistance, and thus far, I have received only dilation and delay. In addition to offering the complete capacities of Karekin fisheries, I have made available the the full analytical and genetic services of Eighth, a Landau, and that offer, too, has been rebuffed.

That is highly suspicious, as Karekin Fisheries is the largest fishery in the New Territories. Why did Commander Pike start his investigation with the smallest fishery and one known to be run with minimal oversight?

And now he delays, again, even though by his own estimation he has reason to believe aquatic sentients are being slaughtered as we speak.

We have a formal Names for this Behavior on Weatherby:

Accessory to Murder.
Negligent Homicide.
Sentientslaughter.

Should sentience be identified with our fellow beings here on Weatherby, I will insist that the full weight of our esteemed legal process thoroughly examine Commander Pike’s conduct.

At Your Service,

Mr. Jules Rothschild Karekin