Fiction Friday: Series 4 - Part 14

Previously:
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13

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Bars in Amarr space are weird.

For one thing, they don't call themselves bars because that has connotations of being "dens of inequity" as found in the regions of the less pious races and the ecclesiarchy would have none of that. So they tend to be referred to by various names such as inns, establishments, taverns, and one of my favourites, prayer meeting houses. As to what god the patrons are praying too that they expect to find in the bottom of a glass, I do not know.

Another weird thing is that you can't appear to be having fun. Look like you're having too much fun and the authorities think you are drunk and thus the establishment that allowed you to get that way is promoting sin and corruption. No, at an Amarrian bar - sorry, I mean tavern - you need to act sober and if you get a little loose in the gums then the host will ask you to leave with two big bouncers at his back.

But the weirdest thing of all is that you have to have a dish of food in front of you at all times while drinking. A drink without food is indulging in sin, apparently, and you had best be going on. So no matter if your goal is to just to get stinking shit-faced you have to have a bowl of Kor-Azorian wings in front of you even if they cost more than three drinks combined.

Hypocritical assholes.

I wonder if those customs are why all the drunkest Amarrians I ever see in these places are so huge around the midsection, what with such rich foods and a very intense need to not be drunk - hard to get a 150 kg man drunk quickly you know.

Oh I nearly forgot: Amarrian bars don't have bars, only tables. Weird, right? Part of that "you can't just be drinking for drinking's sake" deal. Whatever.

So there I was in a prayer meeting house on a station in Pimebeka (I don't remember which one, I was quite drunk that day), with an untouched plate of wedges in front of me that cost more than my last ammo purchase, trying to drown my sorrows of the last three months in a glass of Gallentean pale ale ("got anything harder?" I asked with dirty looks the only answer).

After leaving Nhi'Khuna and Strife Mercenaries behind I had tried to make my own path by joining a null sec alliance called Vae Victus and trying to make a new fortune battling Guristas pirates out in Venal region, but made some errors in judgement and ended up getting my brand new Raven battleship blown out from underneath me by a bunch of capsuleer pirates when I tried to move it out by myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Then when out on patrol I lost a Drake battlecruiser to the Guristas. I was quickly asked to leave the corporation I was in after those debacles. Stupid.

I was nearly out of ISK at that point so I started working for the Republic Security again but then the whole "Project Athena" thing occurred and I left on bad terms with my agent there. So I came to Amarr space where my brother Korannon was starting to make a business for himself heading up some production business that he and Derranna Elkadar started together, but the tension with Derranna is still there so I can't stay around them long.

No friends, no prospects, no money, and a small little Ferox in the hanger. Yep, another beer ale-seller. I was on my third (and trying to figure out where to go to score some blue pills) when a large Civre ambled up and asked "This seat taken, friend?"