The Mystic, The Mages tavern of Daroon

[Avylina]

The Mystic was a tavern in Daroon that was just outside the Academy. It was a common hang out for mages and apprentices. Because of this reason Avylina decided to spend her time there. She was well underaged for the Tavern but she was aloud to enter because of her generous donations. Also when she was in the tavern she got her own special table on the wall with the the window. It gave her a good view both outside and in.

Avylina would spend her time painting various people she saw and would sometimes trade painting for magical potions or other various items. Because she was still young and not yet considered a master artist, her works were not yet valuable. She basically just got by on her skill and people liked art of themselves.

Today was a slower then normal day. The tavern only had a few patrons in it and outside the streets seemed emptier then normal. Avylina sat alone at her table starring at 2 cups of tea. She had a blanket canvas beside her and a brush in her hand. She had nothing of interest to paint. She instead was dipping the back end of her brush into one of the cups of tea and stirred it. She looked into the cup and kept making the tip of the brush glow. It was very small and faint so it could only be seen looking down in the cup. Everytime she made the brush flicker, a very tiny amount of tea disappeared.

Avy knew she really wasn't suppose to just cast spells. She was still unlicensed and she felt going to the academy would ruin her reputation. She also found it more exciting to just learn from mages who were willing to sell their secrets with her.

[Segu Baezar]

(OOC: Previous Post: Entering Daroon)

There were quite a few people in the tavern. It wasn't just mages in here, of course, there were also ordinary folk who frequented the tavern because it was of interest to them. And there were the typical bevy of apprentices, taking a break no doubt from the work their masters had set them upon.

From his table against one of the walls, Segu watched the various patrons, trying to spot the girl he'd seen in his vision. The one he had met here. But he didn't spot her right away. Instead he noticed an old man with a long beard and a very tall pointy hat covered with stars. His robes were long and blue and had similar stars upon them. He carried a huge wooden staff tipped with a t-shaped perch on which sat a large blue bird with a black beak. The bird stared around the room while the old man counted coins out of a leather pouch that he'd extracted from the belt at his waist.

"Five, six, seven," said the old man to the barkeep. "There you go. That ought to do it. And make sure it's cooked with revantee sauce. I want the whole thing smothered in it. My wife likes the flavor."

"I'll tell the cook," assured the barkeep. "You come back in three hours. It will be ready then. You want foobar beans too?"

Shaking his head, the old man made a face. "No, certainly not. Foobar gives me the wind something fierce. Just the meat, thank you."

The bird suddenly took this moment to bleat out, "If it looks like a mouse, you can eat it!"

"That's right Charlie," muttered the old man. "You can eat the mice."

"If it's shiny, then leave it alone."

The old man nodded and smiled at the bird. "Yes. I don't want you eating any more jewelry, you pest. Mother doesn't want to dig through the bottom of your cage again."

The barkeep laughed. "Has Charlie been eating jewelry again?"

The old man rolled his eyes. "You have no idea. I'd never keep a bird if it was up to me, but I made a promise to an old friend."

"If it looks like a Drow Sorceress, then sound the alarm," declared the bird.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked the barkeep. "There aren't any Drow above ground. They can't handle the sunlight. And they're allies of the Dark Lord."

The old man shrugged. "How would I know. I wasn't the bird's original owner. It belonged to a Master named Ebocar Findaros. There's a long history. This bird is really really old. As far as I can tell, it doesn't age."

Segu, hearing this, looked closer at the bird. He had known Ebocar Findaros. He was a member of the council once, and a royal pain. Segu could never stand the man. He had been a conservative and had been opposed to the spreading of certain magical arts. The old lout had wanted to keep all the younger mages in the dark about a whole slew of combat techniques. If it had been up to Ebocar, the entire tome of Ignius Ascertum would have been locked away, and fire magic of all sorts would have become unknown for generations.

Segu got up and walked over to the bar where the old man was standing, addressing him directly. "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear you. Did you say the bird once belonged to Ebocar Findaros?"

"Why yes," said the old man. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason, really," said Segu. "I just wondered if you shared Ebocar's feelings about the Ignius Ascertum. He never agreed with the teaching of it."

"Ah, you remember that from your history do you?" laughed the old man.

The bird suddenly started flapping its wings and appeared very excited. "If you see Segu Baezar, then poop on his head," declared the bird. But, before he could fly off the end of the old man's staff, the old man put his hands around the bird's feet and held it in place. "SQUAWK!"

"Sorry about that," chuckled the old man. "You must look like someone the bird used to know. He's very old, and I think he might be a bit senile."

Segu frowned. Wasn't that just like Ebocar - seeking revenge from beyond death. "No problem," he told the old man. "I'm sure the bird will find someone else to poop on eventually."

The old man smiled, tipped his hat, and then departed the tavern, saying, "I'm sure he will. And it will probably be my wife."

[Avylina]

Avylina poked her head out from behind her canvas. She enjoyed watching the bird called Charlie. That bird had been around as long as she could remember coming to the Mystic. She had several paintings of the bird back at her home, but she was never very good at capturing the awkward silliness of the bird. She thought about perhaps starting a painting with the bird in the owners clothes. It could be interesting. As she watched the bird return to the owner she caught a glimpse of the man talking to him. He was new, and Avylina noticed a certain flare or fire in his appearance. She hastily placed a clean canvas on her table knocking the unfinished one over. She then rifled through her paints looking for the all the reds she had. She pulled out enough red paint used to paint the enitre hue of a fire. She began to hold them up matching them to his robes to get a quick reference in her mind. She couldn't quite see his eyes and though it was not always important to paint eyes, Avylina always like to stare into the soul of the person through their eyes. Shifting from out of her seat she got up and made her way to the counter to get a better look.

"Excuse me, but do you appreciate the fine arts?" Avylina softly asked the red mage. It was more of an icebreaker so they did not find her creepy staring into their eyes right away.

[Segu Baezar]

Hearing the voice, Segu turned around and found himself face to face with the young woman he'd seen in his vision. This was it, the junction point between what might be and what would be. It always shocked him when he hit these points, but he calmed himself. His eyes only displayed his surprise for an instant, before he swept the stunned look away and smiled. "The fine arts," he repeated. "An interesting question. Not the one I had expected from you, but certainly interesting. I suppose the answer would have to be yes. I do have an appreciation for them." He bowed. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Baezar... Segu Baezar. I am, or once was..." he paused. Telling someone that he served the Governor of Forwell had once been a point of pride for him, but not anymore. The current Governor of Forwell was probably not someone that anyone would be partial to. In fact, it would probably raise a lot of questions that he wasn't ready to answer and no one would believe anyway. "A student of the Arcane Academy here. Tell me, what is your name?"

He was interested, of course, in finding out why it was this person was here. There had to be a union somewhere - a reason for fate to bring them together. He was here for a reason. The visions always had a purpose, even if he couldn't figure out what that purpose was. The goal was to try and discover that without screwing up the end result, assuming that pathway was favorable.

[Avylina]

Avy looked into his eyes as he introduced himself. It was to say the least very strange. She could not grasp them. They seemed both dark and fiery at the same time. It registered to Avy that perhaps he was at a conflict of passion and his soul was trying to reach out. Avy could picture this fiery mage losing a long time lover and is extremely emotional over the ordeal and is trying to reserect her though the use of forbidden magic.
Avy stopped looked down to the palm of her hand and gently raised it to to her forehead and gave herself a bump of reality. She was letting her fantasy get away from her and she stopped herself.
"It is a pleasure to meet you Segu. I am Avylina Jophan famed artist and magic apprentice. You have caught my eye Segu and I wish to capture your fire on the canvas. Your eyes tell me you are quite the mage, and your clothes tell me you prefer the fire element. But do not think of me a psychic. I spend my days studying and painting the magic and the people that use it."

Avy made a slight bow in respect of Segu. She then gestured for him to come sit at her table.

[Segu Baezar]

She was an artist and an apprentice, thought Segu. He wondered what type of magic she studied. There was a union between art and magic, one that he'd never explored. It was fascinating to him, and he was curious.

Taking her offer to join her at her table, he nodded to Kamora to let her know where he was going, and then went to sit with Avylina Jophan at her table. Pulling out the chair, he did came down lightly on the old bonemelding and put his hands on the surface of the table. It was scared with names and runes and signets from the generations of people who'd sat in here, half drunk, no doubt, and etched on the table out of boredom. Segu felt them and thought about the people who might have carved them. Some of them would have been born, lived, and died while he had been flying through space, a victim of Nagros' magic.

"It's been a hundred years since I've seen this place," he confided in Avylina. "I'm somewhat out of touch with reality right now. Have you ever been somewhere that you've been before but it's changed from what it was? That's what this place is like for me now. It seems like only a few years have passed, but people have lived out their entire lives during my absence. The sensation is... a strange one, I must admit." He looked at her equipment and asked, "Is what you paint magical? Or do you use your magic to assist you in your painting?"

[Avylina]

Avy was very pleased with Segus line of questions. She could feel that he understood the connection between her proffesions. She was a little confused about him being over 100 years old, but she encountered a few elves in her time so she did not dwell on it to much.

"Well mister Segu I don't quite know about being someplace I've been before, but sometimes I do explore the fantasy world in my paintings and it's never the same twice." Avy reached into her supplies and pulled out a paintbrush that looked very aged. There were knicks and scratches all over it. The bristles were caked in paint of various colors that messed into a faded yellow. "Though I don't actually use magic in my paints, I can feel the magic coarse through them in a sense. This brush was used by my ancestor and it resonates with magical energy. However there is not magic enchantment." Avy handed the brush to Segu so he could feel it's energy. Many mages could feel it's energy but were always curious about it. "Perhaps you met the brushes original owner. She was alive 100 years ago. The great Avyonelix Jophan, playwrite, ambassador, artist, and musician. She lived here in Daroon and in Forwell, before it fell to the dark lord." Avy paused and sighed for a moment. "I actually started my magic training so I could return to Forwell in hopes to retrieve some of her lost works. But my skills with a brush far exced my abilities with magic so I have a long way to go."

Grabbing another brush she began to start her painting of Segu. She kept her eyes fixed on the Mage and took notes of the details. "If you need any thing in Daroon I can get it for you. In exchange I like to request wisdom of magic."

[Segu Baezar]

Segu chuckled at that thought. "You can request anything you want of me, but that doesn't mean I can provide it." After he'd said this, he was immediately regretful. It probably sounded rude, which hadn't been his intent. He'd only wished to convey the limited nature of his own knowledge. Feeling he needed to clarify this, he continued, "I'm focused on the element of fire," he explained. "It's been an obsession for me, ever since I was a child. So there are only rudimentary skills I might show you beyond my talent with flame, and those are things you could learn from any mage."

Segu felt the brush she had handed him and closed his eyes. He was not telempathic and had no magic for sensing an objects history, but he let his fingers tell him the objects story anyway. The brush was heavily used, it had been handled with skill, and the person who had once held it had known tragedy and sadness. That was the impression he got. "I didn't know the person who used this brush," he told Avylina, handing it back. "But I think that she was sad. Not miserable, mind you, but depressed due to being forced to live within circumstances she did not herself create. She was waiting for something that never came to her, and as a result, she could not move forward. Her life was stunted by something that she loved for what it was, and hated for what it had done to her." Segu shrugged. "That's the best I can do. I don't feel any kind of energy beyond those sensations, but then, as I explained, I'm attuned to fire.

"Perhaps if you painted fire, the energy of the brush would become more perceptible to me?" he added. "Why don't you tell me of Avyonelix Jophan. What happened to her?"

[Avylina]

Avy reached across the table to take the brush back. She did not quite understand what he meant about her ancestor. She tried to remember her families stories about her. "Well more then a century ago Avyonelix was born in Daroon and moved to Forwell after the death of her husband. She was still very young, about my age when she moved there. She helped revive the arts there during turbulent times and brought back the theater. She earned her fame through the theater and remarried to a Master Monk. She was elected as a goodwill ambassador to Daroon and helped spread culture and trade between the two cities. When the Invasion of the Dark Lord took place she moved her family back to here and died shortly after. There is a statue of her outside the main theater here." Avylina stopped to think if there was any more to tell. There were lots of minor details left out but she thought she got the general idea.

She took the brush and stuck it into some of the paints she has set out to paint fire. She put them on the canvas and began to paint a fire inside the outlines of the robes of Segu. The paintbrush was not really suited for painting anymore and the color was not applying as Avy intended. Though she felt something very strange about it. She could feel a sense of warmth radiate from her hand. The sensation grew stronger and stronger until it felt like the fire she painted was actually real.

She pulled the brush away to gather more paint. As she approached the fiery colors on the painting once more the heat grew very strong and she was forced to pull her hand away dropping the brush. She gazed at her finger tips to see if they were burned but they looked normal.

"The painting feels like its burning. Your not casting any spells on it are you? It was starting to feel like I was about to shoot a fireball from my finger tips if I continued."

[Segu Baezar]

"No, no, of course not," replied Segu. "I try not to waste water if I can avoid it. I'm not sure what you're feeling. Can you describe it further?"

He found it very strange that she placed so much significance on the brush. Perhaps it was an artifact that she was unaware of. Or could it be that the object itself had gained its dweomer through extensive exposure to arcane energy that was of its own right more than slight and less than vacant? "The arcane wind can do strange things," he told her. "It would not be the first time that flights of fancy have flown on ephemeral wings to alight momentarily on the tips of mundane things poking like branches through the ethereal veil. Our world is not solid to them anymore than theirs is to us. To them we are shadows, and to us they are ghosts. So be careful with your brush, it could be the perch for something native to the other realm. It may even be someone's home."