With A Little Help From My Friends

[Duffy]

Time ticked.

It tocked.

Then it ticked some more.


In the great order of all living things everything seemed to be exactly as it should be, and that sort of harmony with life was exactly how a young thief from Scara Brae got his jovial smiles and giggles from...'It was good to alive!' He thought, ambling through the sunny streets and fruit tree lined boulevards.

Until he'd been given a small scrap of paper with a list on it....

His eternal friend and accomplice, Miss Ruby La Roux was not the sort of woman that you trifled with on matters of domestic care. You just didn't. The trouble you'd get into in the below trouser region or the earache department were not worth it, it was better to just grit your teeth and go, vamoosh, do the fandango.

He was glad there was no thunder and lightning, very very frightening.

With a little wicker basket tucked under his army Duffy made his way past the squares and fountains and incandescent destitution that made this city in particular all the more appealing. On his list were roddens, butter, two carrots, a scroll of parchment and vellum, two pots of ink, chocolate for Lilith's birthday and some sort of elven delicacy he couldn't pronounce. It was an easy enough task helped along by the lack of need to actually buy most of the ingredients. Still, he was an honest man, and only made off with what nature had so happily provided, hanging in every tree...all along the streetside...

With a swoop he entered the bakery they frequented most days, the fitter patter of the usual jabber cutting and thrusting their exchange of common rusticities. The baker's son was on duty today, kneading bread with heavy, oaken hands in between taking and returning coin and change alike. "Bye!" Duffy chimed eventually, scooting back out into the early morning radiance and dough filled air, even if it sucker punched you into a heavy storm that very same afternoon.

Time ticked.

Time tocked.

And it usually meant rain.

Without realising he had come so far the Tantalum's gaze caught the front of an all too familiar and mystical shop...the sign above the door was long faded from any past glory it might've had, but it said out loud 'Jacobs and Sons Emporium' all the same, defiant to the world to the very last legs of an old man's empire. It'd been almost four months since he'd brought the katarhna from him, and the other trinkets that had made his journey to and from Radasanth such an eventual parody of a 'great adventure.' He recalled something about 'coming back for more' and thought it time to acquire further means and aid for his trials and tribulations.

Time ticked.

Time tocked.

The blue orb weighing heavily in his pocket hummed. This was a right moment to enter, to cross the threshold, and of course, it was the right time to spend alot more gold. Wandering over the street with determination not to be run down by the hazardous flow of people going left and right, he turned the handle, relished in the bask of it's quaint little bell, and found himself inside in the cluttered gloom.

Time ticked.

Time tocked.

With a cheeky little grin, it said "Hello?"


Continued and requesting Jacob from My Sword Hand Is Singing! (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?p=153730#post153730) but it doesn't have to be Logan in the reigns, long as the man's old and wrinkly!

Expecting this to be fairly long, with a minor sub-quest to help raise a small amount of extra funds or discount from Jacob via means of Ruby and Lilith, should it be okay? This is the last quest I'm doing for Chapter 1 of Duffy's storyline, everything else current and finished comes before this, and except for Saxon's Strange Cases quest, nothing else will be set before this moment.

[Logan]

The all-too familiar sound of the bell at the top of door signaled the entrance of yet another customer. Jacob's head lifted from it's rest, and he was thrilled to see the individual who had entered. While the young lad's name seemed to be faded from his memory, the features and face did not. In the stillness, his chair rocked the all-too-familiar creak, creak, creak.

"What a pleasant surprise," were the only words that Jacob uttered toward the customer. Jacob was, after all, but a simple man. It would serve that simple phrases and greetings would be his modus operandi.

Coming into visibility from the room adjacent to the back of the old, wooden counter was a younger individual. The young man stood a stark, much more colorful, contrast to the older shop owner. The color blue in as many hues as there were colors of the rainbow adorned the young man in his apparel.

His apparel was as varied as the hues themselves. A light, powder blue vest fit comfortably underneath a dark, midnight blue sports coat, and just above a pair of midnight blue slacks. He wore a pair of white gloves with the standard shade of blue known as blue markings. In stark contrast to all the blue, however, was the young man's bright red hair. The young, colorful man placed a hand on Jacob's shoulder as he looked over at the customer.

For the moment he didn't say a word.

[Duffy]

Duffy blinked. Expectation had that funny way of freezing you when it wasn't getting what it wanted. What it expected to be behind the counter was an elderly man, of questionable disposition and state of mind, but what it clearly had before it, was a younger and more alert counterpart like a puppet master behind the familiar old man's face. His youthful skip and amble came to a very jerky and sudden stop. A wry smile tucked up the corner of his lip, the sort that tried to hide being caught in the act.

"Hello there!" He put on his best tradespeak, the one accent he enjoyed using, as it conveyed a false sense of knowing what you wanted, how much you were going to pay at most and when you wanted it signed, sealed and delivered. It's a shame he sounded like he was born in the slums, he could've gotten so far in life otherwise, Ruby often joked at his expense.

"I will be most honest and deliver my disappointment. I was expecting, and forgive me if I am presumptuous here your father to be alone. You must be his son, then?" Carrying shaky confidence across the room with him, Duffy stepped deeper into the claustrophobic and busy innards of Old Man Jacob's shoppe. He had been here not altogether that long ago, and purchased the very same blade on his back and the various trappings that had accompanied him on his journey to Radasanth and the adventures that had awaited him. Being a kind man and of his word, Duffy had returned to make a further purchase, as he said he would.

"We had dealings not, three months ago I believe," he tapped his chin and made a great show of being aloof and stuck in tangient thought. "But perhaps you can help me sir?" He stepped right up to the counter this time and deposited the basket full of food and other domestic goods to his left, whilst sliding out the katana with his right in a non-threatening shing!

"I wish for this blade to be bound in a metal capable of magic resistance, if such a thing is possible, or if you know of such techniques or of someone capable? If it is not, then perhaps a new blade would suffice, providing the handle is kept. I treasure it most dearly, and some resemblance of it's former self must remain in it's new form. What say you?" He fluttered his eyebrows and slid over an apple from the basket as an honest offering, a sweetening topping to what he hoped would be an already bountiful gold filled pie.

[Logan]

Jacob rocked in his chair as he cracked a smile. He watched Duffy interact with his son, Jameson, and couldn't help but recall his own youthful vigor long since lost to time. Jameson had moved behind the counter as he allowed Duffy to explain himself.

He had been informed by his father, Jacob, that Duffy held some interest, but he had no clue what it was. As he listened to Duffy, he kept an eye on his dad in the corner in his rocking chair. As Duffy concluded his monologue, Jameson began.

"Sir, I do believe it was my father with whom you previously entered into transaction. He is the patriarch of our humble and modest family, and I am the son as you had correctly ascertained."

Jameson looked down at the blade. He recognized it as one Jacob had ordered as a novelty blade from a friend out in the depths of Salvar's mountains no more than four months prior. He never knew why his dad had ordered it. It seemed quite useless to most.

At Duffy's request for a better metal, Jacob finally stood and moved toward the counter.

"Bud, we ain't possessin' any of the metal yer askin' fer, but we have sum ordered. M'be ya might wanna go with my son here to our supplier n' pick up tha ore for me? I'll make it worth yer while."

Jacob smirked again. They had been out of Prevalida for a few months, and the shipment had been delayed for some reason he wasn't told. He was originally going to send just Jameson to pick up the ore, but he had received word from Logan he and another would join his son for the trip. He wasn't even certain why Logan had contacted him about it, but he knew if Logan had come calling there was a reason hidden somewhere.

He also figured the psion wouldn't mind much if Duffy tagged along. Perhaps the two might form a friendship. Perhaps not. If nothing else, the party of four would be in for a short little trip. If nothing more, they would be in for a whole lot more.

[Duffy]

Duffy listened to the pair of them divulge their offer and gracefully bowed in acceptance. Prevalida was something he was keen on, and he had to maintain the momentum he currently held in attempting to forge Lysander's Blade as it had been written in the play from which it was sprung. Belief is the key to unlocking reality, a wiserman than Duffy had once said.

"I will need to be goin' back 'ome to collect me things like, when, where, what and how will we be goin' 'bout this 'business?'"

The Narrator commented in Duffy's ear about his cliched accent, and the thief blushed. "What I mean to say," he slipped back intor tradespeak, "is what are the exact details of our traversing?"

The dust settled in the shop at last, and the troupe master relaxed, placing his basket of various domestic goods on the edge of the counter in order to limber his elbows and click his fingers in the cool air.