noniad: (Default)
Ortus Nigenad ([personal profile] noniad) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-04-13 04:55 pm

[semi-open] i am the world's poor pessimist | april catch-all

Who: Ortus Nigenad and YOU
What: April Catchall
When: April
Where: Various
Content Warnings: Discussion of death, Harrow the Ninth spoilers

butnotyet: (002)

sheds are very important, you know

[personal profile] butnotyet 2022-04-14 12:03 am (UTC)(link)
[Presumably, those last three labors are not taking place simultaneously — but whether they are or not, there's a tall, slender, pale shadow of a man lurking by the house's back door, adding the occasional waft of a more pungent smoke to whatever other fresh-air post-industrial pollutants (not to mention, of course, spring pollen) are cheerfully drifting through the air of Trench and waiting to fuck with people's lungs, and quite plainly watching Ortus at his labors.

His voice is polished, cultured, the sort of voice that sounds as though it ought to be raised to declaim poetry, or battle cries, or both — with no evident sign that the smoke has caused any damage to it, no less — and it's pitched to carry effortlessly across the yard, for all that it isn't raised.]


Works better when you're aiming at steel, rather than corpi unguii, if you're really looking to nail it.

[God must be so proud of this man who has spent ten thousand years playing Teacher's Pet.]
mehanizovati: (Default)

i hope this is ok!

[personal profile] mehanizovati 2022-04-15 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
[typically viktor isn't a bar person. ok, that's not entirely true, he's hardly against the concept when he has a specific goal in mind but rarely is he in a position where a bar will help him achieve some goal. he could likely find cheaper, better liquor that isn't watered down in a bottle he can bring anywhere he likes, like his lab, for example. where it is quiet and people don't cause trouble.

but lately he'll admit to certain level of aimlessness in quiet moments, ones that sometimes see him at the shore, both to watch the ships and look for scrap along the beach. sometimes that aimless, drifting feeling does not go away with the sea air, and sometimes the trench is an overwhelming place that has that little voice inside go 'fuck it, why not.' in this case fuck it, why not stop at the dingy little bar on the way back? it might even be nostalgic, like the horrible little holes one could find in the undercity where it was so easy to vanish like another stain on the counter as you sat and nursed your drink.

he's trying a beer himself when ortus is brought in, glances over from idly tracing the ghosts of schematics with the condensation of his glass on the scarred bartop before him. the first thing he notices is the skull paint, which... is admittedly a lot to notice, the kind that forces a second look out of a passing glance. interesting. odd, but certainly there is odder. he was nearly eaten by a shadow of himself just the day before, things got weirder.]


Yes, on the cheap side but- [viktor offers a shrug with the answer, tapping his own glass to show hey, he drank some and he's still alive so... there's that going for it.] Sometimes cheap beer is preferable.
lipochrome: (10)

[personal profile] lipochrome 2022-04-15 03:29 pm (UTC)(link)
[ There was a part of Gideon that didn't expect Ortus to show up. A snail with Matthias Nonius energy is a pretty good draw, of course, but it's no guarantee.

Gideon used to cleave up the aged population of the Ninth House into three groups: Harrowhark, Aiglamene, and everyone else. Ortus might be one of the nicer members of everyone else, but it still doesn't change the fact that he probably hates her, and she doesn't especially like him.

But he's here, fallen for the bait, and he's looking at her, which is weird, she never asked for that. (except that she did, over and over again, screaming in her own way for someone to notice) Trust Ortus to make things weird. Whatever. She's got a job to do. Gideon sighs. ]


There's no snail, dude. I just needed a sneaky reason to get you out of God's receding hairline. [ Gideon starts to duck into a nearby abandoned shack, waving for Ortus to follow. ] In here.

[ Once she's confident he's not about to up and leave, Gideon will kick a couple crates together, as if that makes a halfway decent seating area. It doesn't, which is, you know, very Ninth. She sits. ]

There's some things you should know. About God. Since you're living in his area, and all.
mehanizovati: (5)

[personal profile] mehanizovati 2022-04-15 09:44 pm (UTC)(link)
[ah, it's interesting to see someone try beer for the first time, or so it sounds. viktor wonders if he should warn the man beer doesn't really taste good persay, but it's subjective enough maybe the man will enjoy it regardless.

the neutrality tells a different story, though again, maybe the man is the stoic type. the question has viktor consider seriously for a moment, taking a sip of his own glass to double check before offering a nod.]


Hm, typical enough. Beer can vary dramatically in quality and I would say this is firmly a stronger, cheaper beer, very much the type preferred by the laborers you mentioned. I would hardly consider myself an expert in the matter but from my understanding it is less the flavor of beer that is the appealing aspect but the fact it is cheap, cold and alcoholic.

Oh, also awful for actually quenching thirst in a meaningful way. [a pause and he says,] I've always thought it tasted terrible, in truth.
mehanizovati: (30)

[personal profile] mehanizovati 2022-04-15 11:51 pm (UTC)(link)
[frankly being mistaken for a necromancer would amuse him and not particularly surprise him either, now that he's met palamedes. he'd also be much less surprised about the skull paint, as he's come to understand vaguely that bones seem to be a bit of a thing in that universe.

for now though he just nods along to that assessment, offers,]
Where I am from they have liquors that taste more like if turpentine could rot. Truthfully this is very much a treat in comparison.

[he lifts his glass in a mock toast to those disgusting drinks in the undercity, another sip himself and a shake of the head as it goes down.]

Viktor- no family name, another oddity of my home. It is good to meet you- I hope it isn't rude to say you seem like you are having eh... a bit of a time at the moment. I hope the beer is at least a distraction.
megatheorem: (031)

making a sharp left directly into ortus' business

[personal profile] megatheorem 2022-04-16 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
[By pure coincidence, the most direct path from Palamedes' unmarked bunker and the looming face of God's Own House includes passing through a copse of scraggly, haunted-looking trees, the dramatic emergence through which should only be fitting for scions of the Empire of the Nine Houses: dark, somewhat haunted, inexplicably not coming down the street like a normal person.

For Palamedes, it's just annoying, but not so much that he's going to go around and waste the extra few minutes. It is thus that he appears in view of God's Own House and Some Guy's Own Shed, ostensibly on a quest to walk into God's kitchen and see if literally anyone else is around who can lend him a spatula: yanking the hem of his gray cloak off an errant thorny bush, and with leaves in his hair.

So he's taken just fine to living in a place with real plants, one could say.

He comes to an ambling stop not when he sees Ortus - he gazes fairly overtly at the hulking shape of a man marking a shed as he starts his way across the property some 50 feet away - but rather, when the realization dawns, he veers back to the shed proper with a more businesslike step. The kitchen can wait.]


The other Ninth; I'd heard you were here. [three whole Ninths looked upon with his own eyes, amazing!!] I'm the Sixth Warden. What's this you're doing?

[Boy, Ninth tastes are something else, huh.]
mehanizovati: (3)

[personal profile] mehanizovati 2022-04-16 08:32 pm (UTC)(link)
[oof, that already sounds like a lot to deal with. death here was such a different beast, pun not intended but allowed, and horrific in ways viktor is still grappling with himself. there's a lot to unpack about 'my bones would labor in service,' but packs that one away to maybe question later.]

You mean to say you died in your world and were brought here? [that's his guess, which he hadn't even considered being an option here if that was the case. did that happen to him? did his lungs give out without him realizing in singed's lab?

not something he wants to think long about, in truth. in fact he takes a sip of beer in retaliation of the thought.]


It is... hm, it takes time to adjust to how little reality really conforms to what we thought, doesn't it? A squid, of all things. [his lips thin and he takes another sip.] I try to take comfort in the thought that something about who we are as people is powerful enough to survive into... being a squid.
megatheorem: (193)

[personal profile] megatheorem 2022-04-17 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
[Luckily for Ortus, Palamedes' near-obsessive attention to detail does not make him a mind-reader; he can catch the briefest shade of some other emotion under the paint, but with absolutely no context about Ortus Nigenad other than he is Ninth (and he writes some manner of Long Works), it ends there.

Perhaps Ortus is merely relieved his visitor is not, like, some kind of weirdo. Like God or something. Never mind that thought, for now. Palamedes returns a brisk nod, tilting to one side to see better the, ah, adventure with the chalk Ortus is having.]


Palamedes, [he offers, belatedly, and then,] You've identified an alarming number of concerns. Have you considered replacing the whole thing?

[Not that he knows anything about architecture, but he can count chalk marks in a hurry, and wow. No offense.]

I think chalk might be sturdier than some of this wood, actually.
killtime: (pic#12062979)

[personal profile] killtime 2022-04-17 10:55 am (UTC)(link)
[ She's been known to frequent this kind of shithole — the kind where the booze is barely potable and the smells are highly questionable. Andy blends in well with the questionable crowd, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke and throwing back the maybe-beer with the ease of a seasoned alcoholic.

The large, black-clad fellow had gotten a cursory glance from her when he first sat down, but she'd practiced her habit of minding her own damn business — at least until she caught that hesitant question. It earns a second look, her eyebrows lifting ever so slightly towards her hairline, giving her a vaguely skeptical look. Finally, with a light huff of breath that's half-amused:
]

Barely. [ With a twinge of wryness: ] Not much of a drinker?

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