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Googlie
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Commanding Officer, CRYPTEIA
Apr 1999
time: 21:28
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The saloon door creaked, and swung open, ushering in a blast of cool nighttime air. A pungent whiff of kelp with overtones of sealurk wafted in on the evening breeze. The Stranger stood in the doorway for a moment, his large silhouette blocking the flickering light from the outside porch lantern. He was huge.
Conversation in the bar ceased as all eyes looked towards the door.
The Stranger shuffled in, glancing around the bar as he entered, at the myriad of eyes regarding him appraisingly. His rough jacket collar was turned up around his ears and a woolen oilskin toque was pulled low over his forehead, leaving a small gap from whence his piercing gaze swept the room.
Seasoned pirates cowered when that gaze flickered over them, averting their eyes as they saw those of the Stranger. And those eyes. A piercing blue, as deep and icy as the glacier fed lake abutting Mount Planet. An earnestness in that gaze, buttressed by a palpable zeal as the Stranger took in all that he saw marked him as one who led and expected to be obeyed.
He moved to the bar, and the barkeep, with downcast eyes, inquired as to his needs.
“Will you be having a wee something, Sir?” he queried. “We have a fine shipment of xenorum just arrived.”
The Stranger leaned forward, and holding his hand under the barkeep’s chin, forced eye-to-eye contact. The barkeep squirmed in his grip, but was drawn hypnotically to those eyes, his face showing the strain he was under.
The Stranger spoke in a quiet voice:
“I’m looking for the Cuspidore Brownbeard”
The barkeep flinched. He nodded, mute, to a corner where a raised dais held The Captains’ Table, and finally found his voice:
“Up there,” he squeaked. “With Cap’ns Flubber and Hercules. They’re in a strategy discussion about them Cyborgs and won’t like being disturbed.”
The Stranger grunted a ‘thank you’ and released his hold, and the barkeep sagged against the counter and watched – as did every eye – as the Stranger ambled over to the Captains’ Table.
The Captains looked up as the Stranger approached, back to the light so that his features were hidden. But his gaze found them and locked on to the Cuspidore’s.
He reached into the folds of his jacket and pulled out a parchment and dropped it on the table, nodded to the Cuspidore, then turned and marched across the saloon and out of the swing doors into the night.
The Captains looked at each other and shrugged.
The wind brought in by the swinging saloon door had ruffled the parchment open, and it lay on the table. Their eyes were drawn to it as metal filings to a magnet. Finally the Cuspidore reached out and smoothed the parchment, pulling a lamp closer so that they could decipher it.
There was but one phrase ……………….
You could always trade them Doctrine: Initiative
And the signature simply said ............ Googlie
Last edited by Googlie on 16-10-2003 at 10:02
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johndmuller
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Capitol Hill, Colony of DC
Feb 2001
time: 00:28
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Thwack . . . and a dirk is there, quivering slightly in the table, dotting the 'i' in 'Googlie', arriving so suddenly one could hardly tell who had done it. It is an old dirk, with arcane symbols inscribed on the blade, hard to make out though, as the dirk is not very clean, caked with something that seems to be a dark reddish brown in color, streaked a little as if someone had made only a token attempt at wiping it clean while it was still wet.
Somehow, there is a step back in time, or a shifting in space - and the Stranger is back at the table, sitting down, and the blue eyes staring into the Cuspidore's brown.
There are two more dirks now, one emerging from within the folds of a lacy cuff, embroidered with the name "Calico" in golden threads and the other gripped by well manicured fingers residing on a delicate hand, a delicate hand incongruously decorated with a large black hairy-looking spider, emblazoned in red with the single letter "F" on its abdomen, the tatoo runs completely across the back of the hand, a single leg of the spider reaching up a finger, as if attached to the aristocratic looking signet ring, also with the "F" motif, but this time engraved on a coat of arms.
The dirks are being held absolutely motionless in space, or in time, or is it that time is standing still again? ... but motionless somehow, with their points nearly touching the icy blue eyes of the Stranger - and staring into these eyes, looking down their arms as if the dirks themselves were possibly only in the minds of some hypothetical observer, the dirks created solely by the intensity of their gazes, are the dark eyes of Cap'ns Flubber and Hercules, dark, cold and unblinking. Some more people edge toward the door.
In contrast to this scene, the Cuspidore sits there somewhat jauntily, with his boots lying across a chair and a hand partly raised as if about to begin conducting an invisible orchestra somewhere else in the darkness. There is the hint of a smile touching his lips, and he twirls his mustache contemplatively ten or fifteen times, takes a large toke of xenoweed, and . . . and the tableau is frozen, frozen for him too, for what seems like an eternity this time - even the ancient clock in the corner seems to have ceased its erratic toc-ticking.
Finally, and ever so slowly, the Cuspidore moves closer to the Stranger and purses his lips as though to kiss him ('will it be the Cuspidor's kiss of death?', wonders the bartender, leaning forward to get a better view) but no, instead of a kiss, the Cuspidore gentlly blows a smoke ring into the very center of the Stranger's unmoving face, perfectly surrounding his nose, before curling around his head and somewhat miraculously reforming, nearly intact on the other side and continuing on into the darkness. The Stranger remains unmoving, the gaze unwavering, fixed, he is not even breathing it seems - is he even alive - is he one of those half-men, half-machine abominations - is it Googlie himself, or is it one of them?
The Cuspidore makes a small gesture with his little finger and a blur of white flashes out of the rafters, streaking directly at the unblinking eyes of the Stranger. At the last instant, wings snap open, there is a rush of air and the white blur is stopped now, perched atop the dirk, adding another pair of blue eyes to the stares, these with the kind of distant and almost crazed look about them of one who has been at sea for years, perhaps too long at sea - it is Baretta. Something detatches from Baretta and lands with a moist plop on the parchment. A single word, 'Awwkkk', . . . is uttered.
This time it is the Stranger who will be left alone at the table, as Baretta hops onto the Cuspidore's shoulder and the Cap'ns make their way upstairs, where the music has begun to play again, and the sound of a woman's laughter can be faintly imagined. The Stranger's eyes now return to the parchment, ... and are drawn, inexorably - to the Black Spot.
Last edited by johndmuller on 16-10-2003 at 13:48
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Hercules
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in Tir Na Og
Sep 2002
time: 05:28
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Actually with a tiny bit of editing, substituting Miriam for Cyborgs in Googlies thread and disguising the tech, these twin posts would make a fine entry in the Rec Commons or in a new thread ' On the Waterfront' or 'Tales from the Waterfront'
I think I prefer either of the latter suggestions as they would be great openers for the thread and hopefully the thread would be a public RP outlet for Pirates and others (within the rules).
Certainly since we have met everyone, they can legally post a 'tale'.
What ye say
Last edited by Hercules on 16-10-2003 at 14:33
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Hercules
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in Tir Na Og
Sep 2002
time: 05:28
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No sooner had the Stranger left in the manner in which he came than other Captain's joined the upstairs gathering. Talk turned again to plotting and drinking and wenching. And the captain's marvelled in all the detail at the Cuspidore's smoke ring trick and Baretta's skill.
None of your for'gn gorillas could do that.
The concertina played and the 'hang 'm from the yardarm....' drifted round the saloon.
'nother keg up here' yelled Calico 'and some more them Scuban xenoceegars' .
Then unbelievably a cold chill mist slip't thru the same swing doors and the moonlight faded to a whisper of light.
It was another Stranger, known to some of the Cap'ns, but from Foreign parts and not often seen round the bars of the waterfront.
For those who recognised him, he was well known for wearing a mask, his dogged manner and his slope roofed transport and coarse speech . Beside him, the Cap'ns recognised a local builder, from out of town, known to some as 'the Prof',
The saloon relaxed. 'It wasn't the others....'
But no sooner had it done so, than an ancient bottle (later determined as of early Greek origin), spun across the floor and stopped at the boots of Cap'n Hercules who had come down t' staircase to chat about his parrot problem.
And to talk of lace garment purchases.
Looking up from the spinning bottle to the swinging doors he saw a disappearing pair of heels and heard raucous laughing.
Calico picked up the bottle and with another tankard of xenorum returned to the table upstairs.
'Here look at this'. There was a parchment note protruding from the mouth of the bottle.
They hunched round to look at what might be a treasure map.
In the middle of the treasure island map where there should have been an X
Was the word ' SUCKERS'.
A flock of parrots whooosed out the door.
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Googlie
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Commanding Officer, CRYPTEIA
Apr 1999
time: 21:28
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........... A flock of parrots whooosed out the door..............
and almost undetected, a single parrot snuck in and cicled the bar lazily before settling on a rafter near the cieling.
Almost undetected, because nothing, but nothing, escaped the eagle eye of the Cuspidore. One-eyed maybe, with that sinister patch over the other, but that was more than offset by his good one.
"Well, mateys - yon's a funny lookin' bird, if I may say so," he grunted, waving an arm at the rafter on which sat the object of his attention, head cocked to one side as if listening.
Cap'n Herc chimed in:
"Don't look like one of ours. I wunner if its indijinus to this 'ere planet?"
We'll see" muttered the Cuspidore, in one fluid motion flicking his wrist and sending his dirk unerringly towards the bird.
CLANG
"Ow," yelled Cap'n FlameFlash as the ricochetting dagger almost impaled his hand to the table, as it bounced off the wing of the bird.
"AWWWWWK"
screeched the bird as it took off for a far recess on the rafters close by the roof.
"Harrumph" grunted the Cuspidore, slinging his feet off the bench and laboring to stand. "We'll soon get to the bottom of this"
Lumbering over to a wall he yanked down one of the "atmosphere pieces" - an old tightly knotted fishing net, and in a deft motion that betrayed his old earth lander maritime status, launched it at the bird, neatly snaring it and dragging it down to the table even as it fought furiously to cut the cords and escape.
"Well lookee here," muttered the newly arrived Cap'n Hobbes. "I remember seeing a picture of one o' them things in a fancy magazine that blew onto the deck a while back."
The Cuspidore was examining the catch carefully, as the snared bird watched through baleful eyes. He stroked the metallic-looking feathers of the crest with his dirk, and was surprised to suddely hear a sproingggg and see one eye dislodge and dangle uselessly supported by a gaggle of wiring.
"Well blow me over with a sealurk's fart," he exclaimed. "It's a bleedin' cyberparrot. A little something else from our old friends. Them's not eyes, they're cameras. And that crest - I thought it felt funny - it's a bleedin' antenna."
He scratched his beard contemplatively as he wondered just how much of the material on the table had been photographed and transmitted.
Meanwhile the Cap'ns examined the now docile bird with interest.
Last edited by Googlie on 18-10-2003 at 01:41
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22-09-2003 03:40
))
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ACH!!! My parrot carried off my cat! 
I really need to stop puting up with that cat!
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