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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dave_o" data-source="post: 2763386" data-attributes="member: 2933">In a gush of good will I'm gonna extend the character deadline to WEDNESDAY, that is WEDNESDAY December 7. And now I'll post a little teaser as I do for all my PbPs...Thick rain washed over Jabber's Finger and drooled through the hundreds of crevices on the zepplin. It bobbed like a fat bee at Trenchtown's sky port, the thaumaturgical engines bolted to the back whirring, drawing the moisture from the air. Lightning stabbed at the metal rods supporting the air docks with idiot glee. The wise stayed indoors.The lower decks of the vessel were haphazard. Jabber's Finger had previously been a passenger vessel, but the huge, high-pressure boilers and mountains of coal beneath told a story. She was a smuggler, now, designed to haul illegal goods and haul ass in equal measures. A battered leather chair sat near the leering cluster of pressure valves sprouting from the main boiler. It was here Capt. Von Eisenhauer, a balding, portly gnome sat. His hands were carefully bound. He was a known thaumaturge. Bixby did not take chances."Finally nabbed you," mused the shaven-headed halfing walking in a slow circut in front of the boilers, "been on the lam for a damn long while, captain.""It is an honor to be apprehended by the honorable Mr. Bixby," Von Eisenhauer said through a bristly, coal black mustache. He was respectful -- that was a slap in the face.Pulling a mottled hankerchief from within a jacket pocket, Bixby scrubbed at the dark red lens strapped over his left eye. He took a draw off his cigarillo, hot cinder refracting from that eye-piece. "Just your knowin' who I am shows you run in the wrong circles.""I was not aware helping out fellow men was a crime, good sir -- a hold full of grains certainly shouldn't attract this notice." Von Eisenhauer kept his words careful; he did not want to give any impressions of attempting a spell. "Ain't the grain," Bixby spat, the spittle alighting on the running boiler and evaporating in an angry flash, "it's the pistols that was in 'em."Von Eisenhauer coughed, his breath catching in his throat."Now, godspit, we don't need anyone supplyin' Tepoch with a means to cause trouble, do we? 'Sides, odds are they'd all end up dead, anyway. Militia ain't no pushover." Bixby ran a hand over his head, skin rasping in the dim confines of the zepplin's hold. "Treason, too.""Ah, the inevitable end," Von Eisenhauer gave a nod at Bixby's hip where a battered short blade hung, "at least it will be an honorable one, yes? I have heard that you do not believe in firearms, and we can agree that is a death most undesirable."Bixby nodded, good eye squinting as he took a long draw off his cigarillo; he exhaled as he spoke, "Sure don't." The crack of a flintlock rang out as an orange pan-flash illuminated a blue-suited militiaman standing in a shadowy corner of the hold. Von Eisenhauer gagged momentarily as his lungs filled with blood, a faint runnel of the stuff trickling past his mustache and from the flowering wound just below his sternum. The ball made a clean tink as it ricohetted off the ship's boiler."He does, though," intoned Bixby.</blockquote>

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