[ crystal ]

[icasm]

FORM: Sending Crystal
SENDER: Loki
RECIPIENT: All of Riftwatch
NOTES: Sometimes you're bored, with poorly timed insomnia, but mostly it's that you're bored

Alright, I've... several questions, I suppose, and it's quiet, and dawn approaches in several hours, all of which are facts that I cannot stand at the moment. My suffering is your suffering, misery loves company, etcetera, yadda yadda, here we are. Stuff the crystal under a pillow if you like.

One. There's a tavern in the Gallows, now? Do Riftwatch members have to pay for their indulgences or do we have the merit of being able to extract coin from visitors alone?

Two. Say you found yourself in the company of a relatively well-behaved but still... wild creature. As in not domesticated by its own effort or, apparently, anyone else's. It has merely decided that you are its person now.

How does one go about training an adult wolf?

Related to my first query: how agitated do you presume either our fine librarian (Mobius) or his... assistant with arms (Abby, you see what I did there?) would be were someone to read their borrowed books in the tavern?

Comments

[elegiaque]

Probably not, carefully, and don't spill ale on the books.

( helpfully.

she definitely doesn't actually know the specific answers to any of these questions. )

[icasm]

Well, the probably not is hopeful enough. What would be the point of spending the amount of coin Riftwatch gives me for my services just at the tavern it already provides?

[elegiaque]

And we have to serve ourselves, so—

[brennvin]

( A cautious, hesitant hopefulness in her voice: )

You have a wolf? Here?

[icasm]

Oh Astrid, good, you have decided to remain with us after the hideousness of the desert. Yes. I have a wolf, and I have named her Hukommelse, she seems to not mind it, so I suppose the name is hers. She's also... from the desert? An adult, I think. Wolves are so much bigger than dogs, after all, it's a bit hard to tell.

I think she followed us all back here.

[ No, not 'all of us', just you Loki. ]

[brennvin]

Memory, ( Astrid says absentmindedly, not even second-guessing or thinking much about how odd it is that their universes line up like this sometimes, ) good name.

Wolves don’t take training the same way that dogs or hounds do. They’re wild animals, and unpredictable that way, especially if you don’t raise them from a cub. You cannot blame them if you get bitten. But if you’ve earned their attention and respect, then they’re worthy friends.

They can be protective, territorial. If you’re her person, then she might overreact in guarding you from others in the Gallows. Be mindful.

[succise]

(Sounding half-asleep and therefore not even half as irritated as she feels,) Is this something you all do here? Talk to everybody at the crack of dawn?

[icasm]

Not all of us, no, just the more annoying ones. [ He is well-aware he just called himself 'more annoying' than most members of Riftwatch.

Not unkindly: ] Are you new?

[succise]

(Muffled, as if into a pillow.) Wonderful.

(Unkindly,) Yes; I presume you are old here.

[laruetheday]

[ AGGRESSIVELY AWAKE: ]

Good beer isn't free. [ Which isn't to say she's planning on paying necessarily, but she assumes someone should be. ]

And I don't think you can really train wolves. They're wild for a reason. I mean, they're not dogs.

[icasm]

Do you plan on brewing some up, or...?

Dogs are related. They're just... generationally removed from wildness.

[laruetheday]

Absolutely not. But someone will.

Yeah, so maybe you'll be able to teach it to sit or something. But it'll always be wild.

[biggame]

If it's decided you're its person, it's already pretty tame. It might have had a person before you who did that part.

[icasm]

That is a good point.

Do you know how one determines if a wolf is interested in learning commands? Other than, I suspect, merely the try and find out method.

[biggame]

[ Defensively, ] It's a good method!

[ But alright. ]

I've never had a wolf. Only Cab—he's a bear. Bears are less interested in cooperating with anyone than canines are, but I've had him since he was a baby, so maybe that evens things out?

Anyway, I don't know if any wild animals is interested in learning commands. It's better if you figure out what they are interested in, like running or smelling or sleeping, and teach them there are situations where they can do those things they like to do and get something delicious for it.

[dissolving]

Figure well-behaved wild creatures are in this place's mission statement.

[icasm]

I am here again, so I suppose that is as true as anything else.

[dissolving]

Again?

[atonally]

Heard there's going to be a box for coins.

[ Redvers does not especially sound like a hall monitor. He sounds like he's chewing something while he talks. (He is. Elfroot leaves.) But hello, everyone, here is someone who will absolutely get on your case for not paying for your fair share of the beer barrels. ]

Better than telling our funders we're spending their contributions getting drunk, don't you think?

[icasm]

A box for... oh, for the tavern, I follow. [ Took him a second, but that's fine. Fascinating sort of honor system. ]

Definitely better than that, though anyone who has ever been involved in a serious war effort would be rather hard-pressed to honestly dismiss the power of access to inebriants over corps morale.

[atonally]

[ A chuckle. ]

True. But I think even the people with that experience except Riftwatch to be a step above foot soldiers who need to be kept happy to keep fighting well. That isn't how we thought of you—the Templar Order, I mean—when we heard about you.

Before I joined, [ which is a thing he has done now, so that you should be us. But old habits. ]

[favoriteanalyst]

[With that cotton-stuffed mumbling sound of someone still mostly asleep:] Can't you sleep like the dead at the drop of a hat during normal sleep hours?

[icasm]

It's my curse, alongside being devilishly pretty. Insomnia in the night, sleepiness in the daylight.

loki are you sure the wolf isn't your son

[thereneverwas]

[sleepy grumbling]

why would you do this,

yes. she's his daughter. obvi.

[icasm]

For fun and profit though there isn't much profit to speak of.