Topic: Voyage of the Narwhal

Alain DeMuer · Date: 2008-10-12 12:27 EST

DeMuer Exports Warehouse IV, The West End

The old trucks rumbled out of the warehouse each minute one at a time, a slow parade of brown and olive drab military surplus, each laden with wooden crates, each container emblazoned with the silhouette of a goat dancing on its hind legs - and Alain DeMuer, House leader and businessman, watched them go, cool and impassive. The smoke from his hand-rolled cigarette melded with foggy breath on the cold autumn early morning while he thought about his rapidly expanding venture.

"Monsieur DeMuer..."

At the timid voice, Alain looked to the side, then ahead. "Yes, Zacharie." He knew what this would be about.

"They, ah... want more of the Isla Roja blend." They, meaning the species that had been buying increasingly more of the exotic coffee blends Alain had been importing into RhyDin from the likely infinite realms that connected there. The species was addicted to coffee - caffeine gave them a special thrill - and Alain was not sure he had ever heard the name of their species, or he had forgotten. It was not important. He buried his fists in his pea coat pockets, arched his neck into his upturned collar. The autumn had been so warm so far, and he was not adjusting well to the cold.

"Isla Roja is blockaded, Zacharie."

"Yes, Monsieur DeMuer."

"We were lucky to get..." Alain looked to the side again, at the thin man standing beside him - an accountant of sorts for the House. Genius with numbers. "How much was it again?"

"Only a quarter ton, Monsieur DeMuer."

Alain blew smoke again. His throat felt raspy... He would have to cut back again, return to living by Cassie's rules. He hated the thought of it. "It is blockaded, and the separatist government is isolationist anyhow. Running the blockade is out of the question - I don't want blood in this business." He looked again at Zacharie, again at a departing truck, and grimaced. "As little as we can manage, anyway."

Zacharie hesitated. Alain narrowed his eyes, and the accountant spoke up. "We, ah, we could always slip by... uh... unnoticed..."

And Alain smiled, slow and faint, blue eyes misty as they watched the sun rise through the fog. "You know what they call that."

"Yes, Monsieur DeMuer..."

"They call that smuggling."

The two were silent, that last word hanging in the air between them. It had been lurking in the shadows of Alain's business ventures ever since his involvement in shipping. He knew a few of his freighter crews smuggled on the side, packed exotic highly-taxed or banned goods in with some shipments of coffee and beer, dropped them off along the way. Alain had made his rule known - no human cargo, and nothing political, and he would pretend no smuggling happened at all.

He didn't see a single crown of it, anyway. And it kept his freighter crews happy.

It was where the young man had gotten his start. Alain had smuggled arms during the civil war in Nouveau Bretagne, and he had been a smuggler, mercenary, and occasional thief his first six months in RhyDin City. He knew the business, and how dangerous it was. He also knew the allure...

...and this was different, he told himself. This was bypassing a politically-motivated blockade and sneaking around an isolationist government in order to obtain an exotic blend of coffee. It was far-removed from RhyDin City... and it would bring a little excitement into his tamer business ventures.

"Find me a submarine," he said to Zacharie, dropped his cigarette, and walked out of the warehouse.

Alain DeMuer · Date: 2008-11-05 23:36 EST

The Narwhal's Pen, South of RhyDin City

Alain's arrival in the long boathouse on the coast south of RhyDin, where the scattered docks and fishermen's shacks grew sparse, went strangely unnoticed, but the attention of the Narwhal's skeleton crew was not on the perimeter, nor the single rusty door on the side near the waterfront. Zacharie had run two hours late, and Alain had come to claim him. On his left was an Aurkindar, orc-like but cunning, cradling a sawed-off shotgun halfway out of his coat tucked into his belt - the man himself, Alain, was armed lightly as usual and kept his weapon concealed, his concern for his own safety apparently extending no further than the escort he arrived with.

The rusty door swung shut after them, the doorway deformed on an incline, and the hinges and frame were noisy. Three weapons clicked as they were turned his way - another was under the chin of poor Zacharie, who was surrounded by men and women in the uniform of the poor laborer class - stained jumpsuits and old wool caps and patches on their jackets and pants. Alain did not appear as interested in them as the submarine beyond them.

The Narwhal sat in the water, whose choppy surface lapped noisily at her flanks. She was very long for what she appeared to be, a late diesel submarine, and her strange namesake was at once apparent. At her bow was a metal extension, black unlike the coal grey of the rest of her, curved like a wicked anvil or the face of a train engine, but filled with streamlined holes and adorned in what had to be runes. The propeller and the area around it were in a similar state. On her deck, not far from the gun, were crates that had paused in the process of being unloaded (perhaps upon Zacharie's arrival), and beside them was what could only be the captain of the ship.

"Mr. DeMuer." He spoke with a familiar gravel that only experience too long for his years could lend, and his eye had a knowing cunning to show for it - the other was gone, replaced by a black eyepatch. Grey had not yet touched his hair, but the hardness of his face said it should have already, and would soon. His name was Ulysses Michael Atren IV, the son of a Catholic half-elf mother and an atheist scholar for a father, and he approached the gangplank with as little regard for Zacharie and his crew as Alain seemed to have. "Detective... Y'know this place, ah, a li'l outta your jurisdiction." He grinned and limped up the gangplank without danger of toppling into the water.

"I'm not here for a case," Alain said, approaching as well. The Aurkindar relaxed, and so too did the crew, shoving Zacharie away, who was quick to move to the Aurkindar's side. "I didn't send my accountant as a front. I'm here about a blockade... and your sub."

It was enough to get Ulysses to frown, enough to give Alain that degree of control he needed. "You wanna blockade ran through?" His steps were slower in approach, but not for the lack of interest in his face - his feet expressed a caution the rest of him was not willing to indulge. Sources told him DeMuer hadn't been involved in the black market in a big way for going on two years. "Guns - drugs - bodies?"

Alain grinned when he drew close, and offered him a cigar at the same time he gestured to the door outside, a better place for a nice, private business chat: "Coffee."