#Nan has the kind of reputation that ensures nobody refuses to serve her in a countryside bar

[ganymedesclock]

If it's not too spoilery, could we get 9 for Nan?

9. Tell me your favorite moment with your OC. (Either that you wrote or drew.)

It's not so much a spoiler as to say I haven't reached Nan yet in the writing so technically no moment with her is real yet. That said, I do have a conceptual draft of her first meeting with Taylor, though it's wildly subject to change, so technically it's no spoilers at all:

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“Now you trust me, young man,” said Wilhelm, warm and brightly, “I know those mines like the back of my hand. They’ll see you clean out the other side with days to spare, all for a fee of-”

Taylor was wondering with fascination what caused some people to decide they were a ‘young man’ and what made others see a ‘little lady’, but they had not made any of that clear. Instead, Wilhelm’s interruption came in the form of a loud, rusty-sounding bark that sounded across the room, and he was not the only one who went quiet in response.

The speaker was a bow-legged woman whose stomach lapped most of the way to her seated knees despite having to navigate over her double-thick studded belt. Canvas shirtsleeves wadded around the elbows, baring reddish skin covered first in scars, then in a great deal of blue-black ink, and lastly in twice that much wiry hair. She nursed something in a thrice-dented tin flagon she had obviously brought herself, which was larger and deeper-bellied than the steins that the dock workers were drinking from.

“Yes, hello,” Taylor remarked, “do you have something you’d like to say?”

The woman snorted, which was definitely a gesture of contempt, but also, the set of her nose looked as if someone had tried to force it all the way back into her skull and only partway succeeded. “No, don’t mind me,” she turned her words around lifting her cup to her mouth, “I’m enjoying the spectacle.”

Taylor’s estimate of Wilhelm was that he would have protested his wounded pride, but instead he was staring down into his own scarcely-touched drink, eyes wide.

Interesting, Taylor thought.

To the woman, they said, “A conversation is not a performance. If you’re interested in it, I think that’s a sign you should participate.”

The woman pushed back from her stool and stood. To Taylor’s surprise, she stood only about a head taller than them, although significantly wider. They counted three empty holsters and belt-loops at her hip, and two more that were better-hidden, but most certainly not empty.

“It’s horsepiss, is what it is,” she said. “Bickney’s Claim is only better than the rest of the range the way that if you crawled up something’s ass crack rather than over its cheek you’d be warmer and wetter. It’s also got a tendency to be infested with them that like to kiss asses, and- let’s be honest, a ten-pound brat like you isn’t daring the peaks because you’re a tax collector.”

Taylor remembered the side-street man. “I think I’m too well-dressed for that,” they said.

The woman laughed again. It was impressive not for any sort of loveliness but the force by which she pushed air to service. A small amount of spittle hit Taylor’s glamour. 

Wilhelm remained very, very quiet. In fact, the entire bar had settled all at once. Most people were watching them. The proprietress had shuffled to a corner of the bar and was watching out of the corner of her eyes while she made a busy show of cleaning the same stein over and over again. A few looked on with an eager meanness. Others, like Wilhelm, were making themselves inconspicuous.

Taylor looked the woman over again, which she seemed content to allow. Her smallish eyes were flinty and sharp- no, they were taking this time because this woman was sizing them up just as well. Her riot of frizzy hair was slung thoughtlessly over her shoulder. She was not that old, this woman, but not that young either. Her right eye was bright gold, a mage’s eye, but the left was dark as a stone. On the higher of her folded forearms, the tattoo was a complicated knot of three snakes, teeth bared. One’s head traveled as low as the base of her thumb. The other two wound around the meat of her arm to hiss defiantly in one another’s faces.

Good sign, Taylor thought, good sign. 

“If you’d propose to do better than Mr. Wilhelm here, what price would you ask?”

The room collectively drew breath. A few of the onlookers broke their silence to mutter. 

The woman’s thick dark eyebrows climbed. “Ten gold rosettes upfront, and half that much in silver.”

Dread’s head pushed gently against Taylor’s hand. To pay that much, they wouldn’t be able to buy passage on a ship on reaching the coast…

“A proposal,” they said. “Six gold rosettes, five silver, and,”

They turned an open hand toward the woman. 

“A favor.”

At this, the woman’s laughter brayed louder and sharper than before. It must have made her quite thirsty, for she finished it up with a long drink. 

Quite a few people in the room seemed to be doing very little breathing for the living.

The woman dropped the emptied flagon on the counter and seized Taylor’s hand in a grip that could’ve crushed their bones if it wanted to.

“You have a deal,” she said.