Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Moderator: Community Team

Post Reply
Teide

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by Teide »

On the shelves, books upon books lined the northern most wall locked behind a counter. Along the western and eastern walls more shelves lined up stacked with collections of herbs prepared every way imaginable to the human mind. Several unrecognizable parts of various monsters and devices lined the shelves with labels in several languages from common to deep dwarven. Skins and scales, powered to whole. Bone and organs, everything an alchemist or wizard could ask for. This place offered it for a price. Elixirs and potions from cure to poisons, nothing too devious or haggard to want. Behind the counter Teide wrote in a large ledger, taking a new round of inventory to show Bill. For all his eccentricities and faults he was good with numbers and keeping her books neat, a task she abhorred. She didn't take his every word at face value but he was welcome to his rantings and such on his time off. There was a certain pragmatism to Teide most were unaware of or mistook. He did well in his job and he seemed happy as a wraith...she didn't actively plan on changing that unless he asked.

In the corner a tall woman over 6'3 of pure lean muscle with generous curves was stacking crates. Her tanned skin and honey gold curls made her lovely even for her size. She looked at the door with intense golden green eyes and sniffed with a keen nose. Her eyes searched but she saw nothing but issued a low growl from his throat. With Nordic features that framed her beautiful and terrifying face she was the sort of woman to intimidate most men.

Teide looked up at Maria's warning from her book. She was everything the opposite of her help. She didn't wear a cloak today. Instead she wore a black horned helmet with bone strung up as ornament on each curve. Black fishnet hung at the sides blending in with her thick but fine raven black hair that she wore loose framing her heart-shaped face. She had a long nose but it suited her small full lips and mischievous eyes. Her eyes were very alarming and strange. The left eye was a burning red with a slit pupil and the right one was an intense emerald green. She had a singular black whirling tattoo an each shoulder and wore an rather eccentric wardrobe. Her necklace was made from goblin's finger bones and kobold teeth. She wore a leather sleeveless top that seemed to be made of leather straps. Gloves of similar leather went up the full length of her arm and connected to the top while leaving the shoulders open. A small single round turquoise stone was set in each glove at the top and she wore a corset that at the bottom flared out into an open skirt *Like the left picture on the banner* She had a curious pair of glass lenses on her face. An intention she borrowed from her colleague a Bravian scholar of some note. When she saw the ghost she gave her a wide smile that showcased her curious fangs of four very long canines. She could bite a person's face off with those but there was nothing but a happy note in her voice. The dark silver skin and sharp ears made her dark elven heritage apparent enough. She looked so childish in her very petite size of 4'7 and very fragile with such delicate and soft features save for the intensity of her eyes.

"Ahhhh Anna Molly. Please come in. Maria get a chair for our guest!"
she instructed the larger woman who went to get a chair with some grumbling. "Don't worry you won't go through. The cushions are full of agate and phoenix down." she gestured to the chair and climbed up a ladder looking through her books, "Would you like some tea?" She grabbed a volume and slid back down the ladder. Taking the seat opposite of Anna, she grinned, "Now tell me. What can I do for you today? A talk or do you plan to take up my offer?"
AnnaMolly

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by AnnaMolly »

Anna-Molly looked around the shop. It was the kind of shop she would have normally passed by without a second look, being more interested in clothing, jewellery and flowers. Her eyes wondered from the box to the jars, and to the curious objects. The latter caused her to turn back to the books with a soft moan. Even though she no longer had a stomach filled with food, she still remembered the gag reflex well enough to actually experience one. She pressed her translucent fingers against her lips and carefully scanned the wall with books from her place near the door.
Hearing the growl, Anna-Molly looked over and spotted the terrifyingly large woman. She hang in the air motionless, hoping the woman wouldn't notice her. It wasn't always a bad thing to be invisible, she realised. Although if she had given it more thought, the woman probably growled for a reason.
Anna-Molly hadn't noticed Teide behind the counter yet, being too taken up by the shop's inventory. Despite the notable appearance, Teide's size and the general strangeness of the shop itself still made her relatively easy to overlook.

Anna-Molly gratefully floated over to the counter in response to the friendly greeting. She glanced curiously at what she took to be Teide's eye protector, and when the large woman by the name of Maria placed a chair behind her, she carefully sat down. She sat down, and it worked. She managed not to wiggle on her seat in victory, but instead pinched the pillow with her fingers, too fulfilled with happiness and wonder to listen to what Teide was saying. She would have never thought she'd miss something as simple as sitting down.
After a moment, she realised Teide was talking to her and looked up "What?" Only to notice the woman was no longer behind the counter. She looked around but in the meantime Teide sat down, causing Anna-Molly to look a bit confused when she saw the woman in front of her.
"I..."
She hesitated. She didn't know what kind of help she wanted. To be alive again, of course, was what she truly wanted. But she wanted to be the same as she used to be before she died. Honestly, she wished she could reverse time so she never would have died at all. Even if she could come back to life, what was she to do? Her body was already buried, and she knew dead bodies were always buried within a few days or they would start smelling bad. She didn't want to return to a body that smelled bad or might be – even worse – decomposing. She looked down and pinched the pillow again, not wanting to think about that.
Even if she could be back to life and her body would be undamaged, people had seen her die. Her family and friends thought she was dead. Would they be afraid of her if she suddenly returned? A translucent memory of a tear appeared on her face.
Anna-Molly didn't know what her options were. Bill said it was fun to be a ghost, but he could touch things.
The silence prolonged and she finally spoke softly without looking up. "Can I have this pillow?"
Teide

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by Teide »

Teide looked at the ghost with soft, sad eyes. Knowing this girl's attachment that kept her from a peaceful afterlife was her love for life itself; not to one person or thing. This was a dangerous attachment for any ghost but for such a naive ghost such as Anna-Molly, Teide feared she could easily fall into the hands of a necromancer. The witch had to be honest from the start. Restoring Molly's body was impossible given two factors. One: the location of the grave was leagues away. Two: In order to reanimate a corpse she would need the living energy of another being and the sweet ghost was much too good for that. The girl yearned for life, love and touch. She was afraid and her astral body betrayed her loneliness and fear in every strand of her soul.

No matter what Teide knew this girl was a pure soul killed in her prime. Still so full of life and promise. You could not fool the eyes of a soul collector. The world was full of spectrums and waves of emotions that in the afterlife ghosts could not fake. So Teide wanted to help her even if she got no soul in return. It was an odd place Anna-Molly had put herself into. As a ghost you were outside the cycle of reincarnation. With the aid of a soul collector you sacrificed that place completely for an eternal resting place. It was the first time she had a pure ghost that did not want to rest in the heavens of her gods.

Teide read the fear in her but pretending to not notice she nodded to Anna-Molly's request for the pillow. An amused grin escaped her, "I can always make more pillows." With a signal to Maria, the large bronzed blonde set a tea cup with a tea that had a golden glow. One for Molly and one for Teide. "Please take a drink. Everything has been prepared especially for my ghostly guests such as yourself. The biscuits are quite pleasant." Blowing on her tea, Teide considered how best to ease the restless girl, "I am sure you have many questions. This is the place where your questions concerning your afterlife and into life may be answered. I have many answers for the right questions and many means to one end. You are safe here and there is no stupid questions nor too difficult because for every question there is always an answer."
AnnaMolly

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by AnnaMolly »

Anna-Molly smiled a little though it didn't reach her eyes. She squeezed the pillow again. "Thank you." With the knife she got from Bill, that made two objects she could touch. She'd hide the pillow in the Myst tavern together with the knife. She couldn't carry the items around out in the streets or it would freak out too many people who couldn't see her.
Anna-Molly carefully reached for the tea cup and smiled again when her hand didn't go through. She clutched it while eyeing the biscuits, but didn't take a sip. She wasn't sure what might happen if she did and she shuddered involuntarily as she imagined the tea might stay visible in her stomach.

She finally looked up after Teide said there are no stupid questions. "Really?" was the first thing she asked. Anna-Molly had left school at the age of thirteen. She never liked school. She wasn't very bright, nor interested in most of the subjects, and the teacher was mean. To him there were stupid questions, mostly those she and some of her friends asked. He got mad when you asked stupid questions, and when you couldn't answer his questions, and when - for whatever reason - he didn't like the questions you asked. Fortunately, Anna-Molly's parents had agreed to her idea of staying home to help out in the weaver shop as soon as she turned thirteen.

She thought of which question first to ask.
"How come you have things I can touch?" Immediately the next question followed. "Why can Bill touch things and I can't?" She looked down at her teacup "Will this be visible in my stomach? And the cookies? Why do you have so much weird things here? What kind of thing is that large, growling woman?"
Anna-Molly blushed a brighter shade of white. She got carried away with her questions and maybe even offended Teide's shop assistant. She looked a bit remorseful and hoped her kind new friend wouldn't kick her out of the shop. She clutched the teacup a little tighter, just in case that would happen.
Teide

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by Teide »

Teide's smile reached from ear to ear as she bit off a bit of biscuit and held it in her mouth listening to her many questions almost fearfully to be rejected or scolded for asking them. Teide looked around the whole room from it's shelves of tomes and books to the embalmed creatures, jars of ingredients and potions everything had a use, a purpose but it was her job to find it. "You see this room....this whole shop is merely one result of the thousands of questions I asked and answered. I was never content with one answer because each answer brought more questions and more questions brought more answers...and it has never ended. The world of men is merely an ocean. Men fish and catch what is most common and the swallow end is what they see. Some think that is all there is but the ocean is vast with layers upon layers of life. It is more than salt, mud or fish...there are plants that glow in brilliant hues of purples, reds and pinks because of the slime on their leaves and they glow different colors because each slime is different and each slime is made of smaller living plants with their own use in this large chain within the world." she saw Anna's confusion.

"This whole world has thousands of layers of life and magics at work in it. We don't see it all but we are all connected through the threads of energy around us. Different properties makes all of us what we are, from elf to kobold. Among even humans there are thousands of patterns woven into you that make you who you are and through that soul you are animated and capable of tapping into the different energies that made this world. Some are given the energy of strength and others the magic of elements. Some who dont think they have anything have the energy flowing through their blood for art or music. By asking questions we discover things about ourselves and the worlds we are born into and granted access into it's different layers."


She draws a series of circles encircling each other on her table with a quill she had nearby, "We call these layers planes. When you are born you are given form in the material place here. Your spirit though remains in essence in the spiritual planes. The soul ties this body and spirit together and remains within you. It is your thoughts, your emotions and it gives us access to magic. When our soul tie breaks, the body dies and the spirit is given freedom to it's final destination when claimed by a certain god and judged. That is the regular cycle."

Teide starts to draw a figure. "Sometimes though the soul ties are not completely severed because a thought or emotions remain to strong to cut completely. Without a body that soul becomes a spirit like you are." Teide draws another within the circles, "And sometimes, through magic or a rift of energy crossroads, the formula meant to implement this process are altered. This change in the process brings about thousands of different results. This is why you get skeletons, wraiths, banshees and even vampires....somewhere in the process their natural cycle was altered....and the soul cannot break completely. This is how some souls are reborn reclaimed within the astral planes where the spirits are to reside until they find resolution."

Teide sits back and smiles. She picks up her tea cup to take a sip, "You are the former. A natural ghost so you reside nearly completely in the astral planes which are the layers in between the spiritual ones and this material layer so people cannot see you and you can't touch them unless they have access to the astral planes or some sensitivity. Bill is a wraith, an altercation caused by necromancy and thus his properties are different from yours. He is in the layers between the astral and the material."

Teide allowed all this information to sink in as she finishes a biscuit and drinks more tea to wet her mouth. "Objects can be given certain properties to pass between the astral planes and be consumed or touched by astral beings. They can also be crafted to kill astral beings like the dwarves and elves have practiced. Some materials naturally occur within the material planes like silver for example. I have taken the time to study these formulas and crafted such items for use like this tea...it is made to turn into ectoplasm and fuel a ghost upon contact in the astral plane. Same with the biscuits. They will appear merely as gold light within your body."

Then Teide turned to looked at Maria who growled in response to the question, "Maria is a Worgen Werewolf." she chuckled.
AnnaMolly

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by AnnaMolly »

Anna-Molly listened quietly when Teide began to answer her many questions. She relaxed when she realised the woman didn't smile because she was about to laugh at her stupidity, but because she might enjoy answering questions. She looked around when Teide mentioned the items in her shop. So she had many questions and tried to answer them all. And doing so, she had only found more and more questions. That much Anna-Molly could understand from the story. She quietly wondered if asking too many questions would cause a person to become as eccentric as Teide was. Maybe she shouldn't ask so much. Or maybe it wasn't such a bad thing?
She turned back to look at the tiny woman and squinted her eyes a little. A lot of what she said went far beyond her understanding, but she tried.

Her attention was drawn by the figures Teide drew on the table surface, and she smiled briefly as she remembered drawing on tables was one of those things that drove the school teacher absolutely mad. She quickly forgot about that though as she stared at the circles, trying to comprehend everything Teide said. "I'm a ghost because my thoughts and emotions are too strong?" she asked. She wondered what those were, other than a desperate longing to be alive. Anna-Molly shivered imagining she didn't have those thoughts and emotions and might have ended up in the afterlife with the Mages and other dead people, away from everything she knew and loved.

She eventually took a sip of tea and smiled when she felt the warm liquid inside her. It had been such a long time, and she never paid much attention to how nice it was when she was still alive. She bit into her cookie and gasped softly when she realised she could actually taste it. Or did she just imagine it? It didn't matter. She took another cookie after finishing the first one and winced when she heard the word werewolf. Creatures like that were one of the reasons parents in her town didn't want their children to go into the Myst, ever.
"Why does a werewolf work here, aren't they dangerous? Doesn't she scare your customers away?" Anna-Molly asked a little nervously. She was ready to jump up and hide behind Teide if necessary.
Teide

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by Teide »

"Your emotions are too strong to properly rest and Maria is reliable. If my customers are too weak-willed to handle a werewolf than why would they come to a Magic and Alchemy shoppe owned by a witch?"

Teide smiled with wry amusement and they had a lovely tea for the rest of that evening. The time came quickly for Teide to close up the shop and she gave Anna Molly a pillow some fine china for ghosts and the tea and promised her a fun trip to the Fourth Circle. Which in time they did take and had a lovely time except when Teide got put ina pink frilly dress and dragged shopping but it was her first encounter with a near group outing on the town. Bill and Shin came with them and everyone had a fun time.

------------------------------
((Time jump to May))

Time has passed since then. Business has been good and Bill has fully committed to his work as a Bookkeeper. He's good at it so there is no reason for him not to be there in the shop. Maria still works at the counter and Hakon, a norse viking that ended up in Secfenia threw a rift is her delivery boy now...poor guy didn't have a chance challenging her. Alexis is constantly reading Teide's books in a corner of the shop and life has gone by as normal as it could ever be. There was that incident with the Rose Queen and her trip to Old Kiene...a couple sea monsters but otherwise normal. Teide attempts to keep Alexis and Theo away from the politics of the town or old enemies of their parents. She wanted them to grow up prepared for what laid ahead and trained them vigorously while still trying to allow them a faintly normal childhood. On this day she was wiping the glass that tucked away embalmed assorted collections and whistled. Of course she was always ready for visitors of every kind. She was always happy to have Anna Molly visit again or customers.
Silence

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by Silence »

Alder checked the position of his knife in its sheath up his arm and then dispelled all thoughts of it from his mind. He wasn't technically here to make trouble, but... well, he didn't know what to make of Teide's attitudes into his digging into where she probably thought he shouldn't... especially not after he had found those graves destroyed. Well, one problem at a time... just how did you enter the workplace of a sorceress who was borderline insane? Should he knock? And just a year ago, he wouldn't have even thought of entering any building anywhere... involvement with the community... the best and the worst choice he had ever made.

After a moment of standing before the door, probably looking a bit stupid, Alder placed his hand to the left hand door and prized it open a crack. It was the sorceress he was here to see, not the butcher. When nothing exploded, he poked his head into the building and glanced around... all things considered, the place looked about how he expected it to. Strange jars with things floating in... check. Bits that looked like they had order but that he couldn't really pick out the order of... check. Things that made him wonder how they even existed... check.

Hmm, maybe he should stop glancing around the room like an idiot and actually walk into it. That was what normal people did after all. And since he was here, he might as well announce himself. No point in standing here waiting, that would convey a sense that he was willing to take Teide's terms, and the chances were that those would be a trick or two and then a pat on the back goodbye without him learning anything... maybe he was being a bit paranoid about this, but this was a subject that made him paranoid. He didn't know why, but everything about this creature he hoped to learn about put him on edge.

"Hey? Anybody here?"

Actually, maybe he should have checked if there was anybody in the room with him before asking that, but the things arrayed about the room were taking far too much of his attention for him to muster up the observation skills to do something like that. All in all, this was not the best start... well, maybe she was just going to be helpful rather than cryptic or elusive. If that was the case, no harm done, right?
Teide

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by Teide »

"Come on in Alder." her honey-sweet voice called from behind the counter. She popped her head up and smiled. She seemed so friendly and harmless. As she walked from behind the counter her red and green eyes were quite at ease watching him with wry amusement at his shifting glance as the shop filled with tomes, potions, and every oddity one could imagine was designed to both unnerve those who entered and intrigue them. In another way it was for Teide to psychologically dominate those who entered and it was working. She gestured to the visitor's table she always had set up.

"Take a seat. Would you like some tea or cookies?"

Teide wiped the cleaning formula from her hands and rubbed them with a rubbing alcohol she kept by the counter. There was little in her demeanor that was alarming save for the unnerving shifting aura she had always possessed to keep her unreadable. Her skin was flawless of it's usual runes though she wore a necklace made of finger bones and more jewelry on her horns that hung the tiny bits of human knuckle bone. A one shoulder sleeveless top of soft dark leather keep her modestly with a skirt of similar material. Another string of bones accentuated her small hips. Still this tiny delicate woman did not seem menacing just a bit creepy. It was the intentional study of every small detail to Alder hidden in those eyes that betrayed a coolly calculating mind. Indeed she was a borderline sociopath...for there was a confident narcissism to her that any practiced person could catch. The door clicked behind him as he stepped in and set off a ward. Runes on the walls and door lit for a brief second then disappeared. Complicated and invisible the runes indicated he was now her 'guest' whether he would want to b or not. Teide too had grown up on the streets. Her exposed limbs and back revealed the scars and burn marks all over her body that only showed under the light of her potions. It would be hard to know which way she could go but for now she was the obliging hostess and the hardness in her curved smile hinted he should be polite.
Silence

Re: Tricks & Giblets imaginarium: Butcher Shop and Alchemy

Post by Silence »

Alder jerked his attention away from the trinkets aligned around the room. Maybe he would be able to study them later. To the very keen observer, what remained of the starved boy's muscles twitched uncomfortably as he looked at Teide. Every one of his smaller entities was now observing her, bar a few which were habitually on watch duty, keeping his sense for danger active to some degree.

"No... thankyou." Alder sat down on the chair that was offered. "Woulda gone teh the tavern if I wanted a drink... plus I don't have anything on me teh pay yeh... we gonna, yeh know..." he made a vague motion in the air, almost fraying the loose threads of the filthy rags that covered "just chat or what? I mean, we both know why I'm here right?"

Alder took a coin from his pocket with his left hand and a bug of some brown species that he didn't recognise off of the rags that covered his legs. He allowed his mind to focus on the coin as he had done when he was first learning to send it from one finger to the next, while observing the beetle out of the corner of his eye. It was just a theory, but maybe if he kept his thoughts distracted on several things at once, he would be more difficult to mind read.

That done, he crossed one leg casually over the other and leaned back on his chair so that it was only supported by the back two legs. He knew full well that this woman was very very dangerous, but who cared? Not knowing what he needed to know could be even more dangerous, and it wasn't like she was trying to kill him right now. He doubted that she would do something like that.

"Novajen... unless some guy has been interceptin letters and sending them back teh me... in which case, I have bigger problems... say, are those human bones? In fact, doesn't matter if they aren't, something about that's gotta be not quite right... ah, never mind... doesn't matter like."
Post Reply