Post by Kara on Jan 21, 2022 17:58:21 GMT
NAME: Kara Mackinaw
SPECIES: Werewolf (augmented)
OCCUPATION: Vampire’s Thrall, Enforcer
DATE OF BIRTH: 2394
PLACE OF BIRTH: Cheyenne Mountain Complex
HEIGHT: 6’7”
WEIGHT: 300 lbs
EYES: Yellow
HAIR: Black
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: shrapnel scar on her left hip, engraved golden collar, brand/marking of a vampire sigil of three bats on the front of her right thigh
Kara in formalwear with thrall mark and collarBIO: Kara was born in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado, the stronghold of the remnant US government fighting a small if long-running insurrection to reestablish human dominance of America. In a twist of irony, the Cheyenne government had amended their “humans first” ideology when they’d turned their rank and file soldiers into werewolves a century before. Kara was born a werewolf into this military class and raised from birth to serve. Although Kara was on the small size for a werewolf, her aggression and natural athleticism earned her the honor of being selected to serve in the infantry. Her first assignments out of the base complex were against roving bandits or travelers who came too close. Kara killed her first enemy, a member of one of the human bandit gangs, on her eighteenth birthday, an experience which she remembers in graphic detail. After further proving herself during training and her first firefights, she was chosen for the elite presidential guard and given additional augmentations to increase her physical abilities. It was in this environment that she first learned to bow and scrape for her “betters,” though after a life of heavy indoctrination, learning that the President of the United States was a flabby, hopelessly senile old man left her feeling disenchanted. She kept her silence as the President mindlessly signed executive orders handed to him by his grandson or his generals and rambled about retaking the long-abandoned White House with vast, imaginary armies.
Increasingly cynical, Kara rapidly became bored with her honor guard duties and sought a return to active combat. After guarding the president long enough to attain the rank of sergeant, she volunteered for a black operations unit. Unlike her past combat duties, these missions often saw her unit posing as mercenaries or other factions, mounting false flag attacks, conducting raids for technology or other assets, assassination missions, and other asymmetrical warfare. These missions were more to Kara’s liking and fueled her appetite for adrenaline, but her life changed during a longer reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering mission that saw her unit infiltrating a town and blending in with civilians. In spite of her training, Kara found herself truly baffled. It only became worse when her squad took her to a bar and introduced her to liquor far beyond the illicit moonshine made in Cheyenne. As confusing as these things were, by the end of the mission, she’d developed tastes for fast cars, tobacco, alcohol, and the freedom to dress and act as she pleased. When the mission ended, Kara volunteered for another and then another – any mission that would let her indulge. She took things further, even breaking the rules against fraternization. She visited clubs and sex shops, opening a world of kink that was beyond her imagination. Her behavior did not go unnoticed. Kara was repeatedly counseled by her superiors and threatened with the loss of her rank and position. Given that this would mean the loss of her liberty, she barely held herself together, at least for a time. But more and more, she felt like an outsider and she’d begun to flirt with ideas of deserting and perhaps seeking out a life as one the mercenaries or bandits that she’d pretended to be. Even after getting counseled, she was still a black ops operator and still given considerable leeway. It would be all too easy in her opinion to slip away.
This would end with a reconnaissance mission where Kara was part of a fire team that was watching a horde of gnolls, occasionally taking pot shots and setting up decoys to lure them in the direction of an elf settlement. But after a particularly adept gnoll spotted one of them laying mines, a massive firefight began between the four black ops soldiers and the gnoll horde. Isolated and with little fire support, the firefight rapidly devolved into a scrambling, days-long retreat. Kara was severely wounded and separated from her fire team. When the gnolls came for her, Kara tried to kill herself with a grenade, figuring that she would be gruesomely devoured or tortured for information, but her nerve failed her. She was taken alive and, much to her shock, the gnolls healed her to the best of their limited abilities. Though this was hardly a mercy – the gnolls made it clear that she was to be sold as a slave and given her poor condition, it was likely to be to a corporate scientist wanting a Cheyenne werewolf for experimentation or a shady dealer interested in harvesting her augmentation. Kara was horrified but defiant, fighting even despite her injuries, but finally, she met the one who’d bought her – a beautiful vampiress named Lady Talisa Dolingen. Kara knew about vampires and the danger that they posed, but the first time that Lady Talisa touched Kara, it put her at ease, soothing her even amid pain and fear.
Lady Talisa carefully nursed Kara back to health and, much to her shock, Kara rapidly found herself falling in love with the vampiress. She was young for an immortal, her hands were cold but soft, and her personality was strong-willed and dominant, though gentle in a way that Kara hadn’t thought possible. She was doted upon and treated as a treasure. And then, when Kara was back on her feet, Lady Talisa shocked her by telling her that she was free to leave as long as she promised to tell her commanders who had saved her. Lady Talisa was well aware that the Cheyenne government would likely be generous to ensure her silence about the embarrassment of one of their elite needing to be saved by a vampire. Kara, however, had no interest in leaving – not to return to Cheyenne and not even for the prospect of freedom. She asked to stay with Lady Talisa and was told bluntly that if it was her wish, she would have to join the coven as a thrall. Kara wavered, until Lady Talisa made it clear that she would be her “personal thrall,” serving as her bodyguard, bedwarmer, and pet. To Kara, it sounded perfect and she eagerly accepted.
Lady Talisa took Kara back to the Dolingen family coven, a great underground palace shared between the extended family, a few dozen lesser vampires, and their thralls. Even before being allowed to set foot inside, Kara was put through a binding ritual and Lady Talisa took her first taste of her blood. The Dolingen family sigil was branded onto her right thigh using a treatment to turn her fur white, cementing her new status, and a gilded collar was locked onto her neck. As painful as it was, when Lady Talisa showed the collar to Kara, explaining that its runic markings identified her as a vampire noble’s favorite companion and it was connected to a ring that Lady Talisa wore, allowing her to track and contact Kara, the ritual only deepened her feelings. In the coven, Kara was kept close to Lady Talisa, rarely leaving her side. But even as a thrall, Kara found freedom among the vampires. They were shameless about nudity and sex and Kara was allowed to engage in kinks that she’d once thought unthinkable. The other vampires usually treated Kara as a pet or playmate rather than a slave, finding her fascinating. Even other thralls treated her with deference and Kara felt more like one of the vampires than a thrall. She took part in bacchanalian parties, drinking sweet wine and sharing war stories before parties became rampant orgies, sometimes with Kara at the center.
But there was a deeper purpose to Kara’s revelry. The Dolingen family had decided to invest in a series of night clubs in Wayward City and needed a suitable ambitious vampire to run them. Lady Talisa, ever the Machiavellian, put Kara on display to prove a simple fact: she had taken one of the most dangerous creatures from the wasteland and dominated her completely, turning a proud warrior into an even prouder thrall. With Kara now wrapped around her finger, she would also have a deadly daylight guardian and assistant – one who had no interest in politics or even getting paid for her services. The family elders agreed and decided that Lady Talisa would head up the family interests in Wayward City. For Lady Talisa, being able to finally get away from the bickering of her family would give her future prospects beyond petty bickering in the coven. And with her new pet beside her, she was confident that she could carve out a territory from rival vampires.
Kara had barely been a thrall for a month when she and her new mistress moved eastward. She was disappointed to be leaving the coven and the new friends that she’d made, but as a loyal thrall, she offered no complaints. Kara donned clothes, drew weapons of her choosing from the family armory, and set off on her new adventure.
The world outside the coven was one that had always seemed foreign, but now, it was all the more baffling. Bandits she could deal with – it was the common people who scared her. She encountered hostility that would’ve once been unthinkable and dropped back into old instincts and military training. Strangers mocked her or pitied her or even tried to rescue her, attempts that she rebuffed. At Lady Talisa’s advice, she began to cover the collar that she’d once been so proud to wear. Their arrival in Wayward City gave her the momentary hope that it would be more tolerant, but even here, she understood that vampires were widely hated. The cutthroat local vampire community was a far cry from the Dolingen coven which, even with politics, remained tight-knit – something that became abundantly clear to her when their armored limo came under fire from a hit team. Lady Talisa was often distracted and Kara was put to work running errands. After a month of rarely being out of arm’s reach and staying close even on the road, being alone, even for a few hours, felt crushing to Kara.
More and more, Kara focused on rituals of kneeling and submission, fearing that her mistress might see her as a thug rather than her personal thrall, but with so many others around, the opportunities are infrequent. She feared that she and her mistress had begun to grow apart, especially as Lady Talisa worked to finally get their first night club open. Kara hopes that once she does, she might once again have a space where she can reveal her collar and once again be her mistress’ favorite. Because in recent days, Kara has begun to fear that her life as a thrall has begun to resemble her life as a soldier of Cheyenne – a life of boring tasks where she must hide herself away. She even dreads that she might stop feeling the connection to Lady Talisa that she’s always felt; that even the binding ritual might fade and she will no longer be able to think of Lady Talisa as anything more than another commanding officer.
In her most vulnerable moments, Kara looks at her collar and thrall brand in the mirror, wondering if she made the right choice.
TALENTS & ABILITIES: Kara has extensive training in a variety of both new and old weapons. She tends to favor gauss weaponry for power, reliability, range, and Cheyenne soldiers’ cultural belief that “a real weapon puts metal in the target.” As a werewolf, Kara benefits from great strength and excellent senses, though her vision isn’t much better than an augmented human. Kara has undergone extensive training in unarmed combat, both as a soldier and as a vampire’s “daylight guardian.” Her augmentations are tuned to favor endurance over speed and stealth, which allows her to pad along at a moderate pace for dozens of miles without tiring, and she has very high pain tolerance, with her augmentations further accelerating her healing. Kara also has training as a tactical driver and moderate skill at repairing weapons and equipment. Although she has no patience for hacking, her augmentations can allow her to interface with military technology such as weapons, armor, and military vehicles. Additionally, Kara’s ritual brand serves to ward psychic attacks, particularly those that seek to control her (obviously, this doesn’t apply to Lady Talisa).
FLAWS: In general, Kara is a loyal thrall which has come at the cost of her initiative and self-preservation. Threats to Lady Talisa can make her act impulsively, more like a guard dog than a trained fighter. When away from her mistress, however, she struggles. Kara is immature, jealous, easy to distract, and prone to anger when she doesn’t get her way. Her personality is overindulgent and she’s a very heavy drinker, particularly when under stress or when bored. Kara is also unable to transform due to her augmentations.
RP SAMPLE:
The bar in the ancient town of Friendly was the closest thing that the town had to a high roller joint, with a stained yellow and black carpet and wall displays of dusty sports memorabilia from long defunct teams that harkened to the sports bars of Old America. Kara smelled sour of hundreds of years of spilled beer and reeked of the sweat of its dusty patrons. Hours after the last of them had gone home for the night, she could still smell them. Kara took another drink of her moonshine, by now used to the foul taste that reminded her of antiseptic wipes. She was supposed to meet her mistress’ contact, some road captain who was to guide the convoy on the last leg of Wayward City, but he was hours later. Her mistress had already gone to bed, seeking shelter from the rising sun in her armored car.
Barely a week ago, she’d been sitting by the underground falls in the Dolingen’s great palace, lounging atop a pile of pillows while clad in only her collar and gilded chains, sipping sweet red wine and watching nymph-like vampiresses dart through the water with the grace of lithe sharks. It reminded her of the ancient Renaissance paintings in her school’s electronic textbooks. The censors had covered the nudes with black bars. But there she could look at them as freely as she wished – and be looked at in return. There was no shame in it.
She put her empty glass on the bar. When the bartender, a wizened old man with a yellowing beard, came to refill her drink, she noted the bartender was staring at her collar. She pulled up the collar of her leather jacket, trying as best as she could and failing to hide it. It disgusted her. Her collar was her pride, yet now she found herself wondering if it might be smarter to keep it concealed under a scarf, if only to avoid hassle. And as the bartender leaned in, his ancient stench cutting through the fading rose perfume combed into Kara’s black fur, she knew that hassle was coming.
“Ma’am,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Far be it from me to question what you did to end up with vampires, but if you want out, my brother’s got tools to cut off that coll-”
It hit her like a whip. She jolted up to her feet. Instinctively, she grabbed her collar to protect it. But her other hand went to the pistol holstered on her hip. It was a Ruger Orcslayer, a great stainless steel brick of a gauss weapon made to kill even the most stubborn greenskin. The bartender raised his hands, taking a single step back.
Kara snarled, leaning into the bar. “If my mistress heard a word of that bullshit, it wouldn’t be five minutes before you’d beg for the bullet.”
“I can imagine, miss,” said the bartender. His tone of voice was barely excited, as if she’d told him about a leak in the ceiling rather than threatened him with torture. “But how about we make this one a triple and leave the imaginin’ to clearer minds?”
It irritated her that the threat hadn’t scared him. Clearly, the bartender was used to hosting rich if dangerous patrons. But Kara knew that her mistress wouldn’t be happy if she made a mess. She nodded, sitting back down slowly and putting her hands slowly in her lap. She placed a golden coin from the Dolingen family mint on the bar. Out here, it counted for more than any electronic currency.
“Thank you,” she said, sitting up straight. “I appreciate you hosting me all night like this, sir.”
SPECIES: Werewolf (augmented)
OCCUPATION: Vampire’s Thrall, Enforcer
DATE OF BIRTH: 2394
PLACE OF BIRTH: Cheyenne Mountain Complex
HEIGHT: 6’7”
WEIGHT: 300 lbs
EYES: Yellow
HAIR: Black
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: shrapnel scar on her left hip, engraved golden collar, brand/marking of a vampire sigil of three bats on the front of her right thigh
REFERENCE PICTURES:
Increasingly cynical, Kara rapidly became bored with her honor guard duties and sought a return to active combat. After guarding the president long enough to attain the rank of sergeant, she volunteered for a black operations unit. Unlike her past combat duties, these missions often saw her unit posing as mercenaries or other factions, mounting false flag attacks, conducting raids for technology or other assets, assassination missions, and other asymmetrical warfare. These missions were more to Kara’s liking and fueled her appetite for adrenaline, but her life changed during a longer reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering mission that saw her unit infiltrating a town and blending in with civilians. In spite of her training, Kara found herself truly baffled. It only became worse when her squad took her to a bar and introduced her to liquor far beyond the illicit moonshine made in Cheyenne. As confusing as these things were, by the end of the mission, she’d developed tastes for fast cars, tobacco, alcohol, and the freedom to dress and act as she pleased. When the mission ended, Kara volunteered for another and then another – any mission that would let her indulge. She took things further, even breaking the rules against fraternization. She visited clubs and sex shops, opening a world of kink that was beyond her imagination. Her behavior did not go unnoticed. Kara was repeatedly counseled by her superiors and threatened with the loss of her rank and position. Given that this would mean the loss of her liberty, she barely held herself together, at least for a time. But more and more, she felt like an outsider and she’d begun to flirt with ideas of deserting and perhaps seeking out a life as one the mercenaries or bandits that she’d pretended to be. Even after getting counseled, she was still a black ops operator and still given considerable leeway. It would be all too easy in her opinion to slip away.
This would end with a reconnaissance mission where Kara was part of a fire team that was watching a horde of gnolls, occasionally taking pot shots and setting up decoys to lure them in the direction of an elf settlement. But after a particularly adept gnoll spotted one of them laying mines, a massive firefight began between the four black ops soldiers and the gnoll horde. Isolated and with little fire support, the firefight rapidly devolved into a scrambling, days-long retreat. Kara was severely wounded and separated from her fire team. When the gnolls came for her, Kara tried to kill herself with a grenade, figuring that she would be gruesomely devoured or tortured for information, but her nerve failed her. She was taken alive and, much to her shock, the gnolls healed her to the best of their limited abilities. Though this was hardly a mercy – the gnolls made it clear that she was to be sold as a slave and given her poor condition, it was likely to be to a corporate scientist wanting a Cheyenne werewolf for experimentation or a shady dealer interested in harvesting her augmentation. Kara was horrified but defiant, fighting even despite her injuries, but finally, she met the one who’d bought her – a beautiful vampiress named Lady Talisa Dolingen. Kara knew about vampires and the danger that they posed, but the first time that Lady Talisa touched Kara, it put her at ease, soothing her even amid pain and fear.
Lady Talisa carefully nursed Kara back to health and, much to her shock, Kara rapidly found herself falling in love with the vampiress. She was young for an immortal, her hands were cold but soft, and her personality was strong-willed and dominant, though gentle in a way that Kara hadn’t thought possible. She was doted upon and treated as a treasure. And then, when Kara was back on her feet, Lady Talisa shocked her by telling her that she was free to leave as long as she promised to tell her commanders who had saved her. Lady Talisa was well aware that the Cheyenne government would likely be generous to ensure her silence about the embarrassment of one of their elite needing to be saved by a vampire. Kara, however, had no interest in leaving – not to return to Cheyenne and not even for the prospect of freedom. She asked to stay with Lady Talisa and was told bluntly that if it was her wish, she would have to join the coven as a thrall. Kara wavered, until Lady Talisa made it clear that she would be her “personal thrall,” serving as her bodyguard, bedwarmer, and pet. To Kara, it sounded perfect and she eagerly accepted.
Lady Talisa took Kara back to the Dolingen family coven, a great underground palace shared between the extended family, a few dozen lesser vampires, and their thralls. Even before being allowed to set foot inside, Kara was put through a binding ritual and Lady Talisa took her first taste of her blood. The Dolingen family sigil was branded onto her right thigh using a treatment to turn her fur white, cementing her new status, and a gilded collar was locked onto her neck. As painful as it was, when Lady Talisa showed the collar to Kara, explaining that its runic markings identified her as a vampire noble’s favorite companion and it was connected to a ring that Lady Talisa wore, allowing her to track and contact Kara, the ritual only deepened her feelings. In the coven, Kara was kept close to Lady Talisa, rarely leaving her side. But even as a thrall, Kara found freedom among the vampires. They were shameless about nudity and sex and Kara was allowed to engage in kinks that she’d once thought unthinkable. The other vampires usually treated Kara as a pet or playmate rather than a slave, finding her fascinating. Even other thralls treated her with deference and Kara felt more like one of the vampires than a thrall. She took part in bacchanalian parties, drinking sweet wine and sharing war stories before parties became rampant orgies, sometimes with Kara at the center.
But there was a deeper purpose to Kara’s revelry. The Dolingen family had decided to invest in a series of night clubs in Wayward City and needed a suitable ambitious vampire to run them. Lady Talisa, ever the Machiavellian, put Kara on display to prove a simple fact: she had taken one of the most dangerous creatures from the wasteland and dominated her completely, turning a proud warrior into an even prouder thrall. With Kara now wrapped around her finger, she would also have a deadly daylight guardian and assistant – one who had no interest in politics or even getting paid for her services. The family elders agreed and decided that Lady Talisa would head up the family interests in Wayward City. For Lady Talisa, being able to finally get away from the bickering of her family would give her future prospects beyond petty bickering in the coven. And with her new pet beside her, she was confident that she could carve out a territory from rival vampires.
Kara had barely been a thrall for a month when she and her new mistress moved eastward. She was disappointed to be leaving the coven and the new friends that she’d made, but as a loyal thrall, she offered no complaints. Kara donned clothes, drew weapons of her choosing from the family armory, and set off on her new adventure.
The world outside the coven was one that had always seemed foreign, but now, it was all the more baffling. Bandits she could deal with – it was the common people who scared her. She encountered hostility that would’ve once been unthinkable and dropped back into old instincts and military training. Strangers mocked her or pitied her or even tried to rescue her, attempts that she rebuffed. At Lady Talisa’s advice, she began to cover the collar that she’d once been so proud to wear. Their arrival in Wayward City gave her the momentary hope that it would be more tolerant, but even here, she understood that vampires were widely hated. The cutthroat local vampire community was a far cry from the Dolingen coven which, even with politics, remained tight-knit – something that became abundantly clear to her when their armored limo came under fire from a hit team. Lady Talisa was often distracted and Kara was put to work running errands. After a month of rarely being out of arm’s reach and staying close even on the road, being alone, even for a few hours, felt crushing to Kara.
More and more, Kara focused on rituals of kneeling and submission, fearing that her mistress might see her as a thug rather than her personal thrall, but with so many others around, the opportunities are infrequent. She feared that she and her mistress had begun to grow apart, especially as Lady Talisa worked to finally get their first night club open. Kara hopes that once she does, she might once again have a space where she can reveal her collar and once again be her mistress’ favorite. Because in recent days, Kara has begun to fear that her life as a thrall has begun to resemble her life as a soldier of Cheyenne – a life of boring tasks where she must hide herself away. She even dreads that she might stop feeling the connection to Lady Talisa that she’s always felt; that even the binding ritual might fade and she will no longer be able to think of Lady Talisa as anything more than another commanding officer.
In her most vulnerable moments, Kara looks at her collar and thrall brand in the mirror, wondering if she made the right choice.
TALENTS & ABILITIES: Kara has extensive training in a variety of both new and old weapons. She tends to favor gauss weaponry for power, reliability, range, and Cheyenne soldiers’ cultural belief that “a real weapon puts metal in the target.” As a werewolf, Kara benefits from great strength and excellent senses, though her vision isn’t much better than an augmented human. Kara has undergone extensive training in unarmed combat, both as a soldier and as a vampire’s “daylight guardian.” Her augmentations are tuned to favor endurance over speed and stealth, which allows her to pad along at a moderate pace for dozens of miles without tiring, and she has very high pain tolerance, with her augmentations further accelerating her healing. Kara also has training as a tactical driver and moderate skill at repairing weapons and equipment. Although she has no patience for hacking, her augmentations can allow her to interface with military technology such as weapons, armor, and military vehicles. Additionally, Kara’s ritual brand serves to ward psychic attacks, particularly those that seek to control her (obviously, this doesn’t apply to Lady Talisa).
FLAWS: In general, Kara is a loyal thrall which has come at the cost of her initiative and self-preservation. Threats to Lady Talisa can make her act impulsively, more like a guard dog than a trained fighter. When away from her mistress, however, she struggles. Kara is immature, jealous, easy to distract, and prone to anger when she doesn’t get her way. Her personality is overindulgent and she’s a very heavy drinker, particularly when under stress or when bored. Kara is also unable to transform due to her augmentations.
RP SAMPLE:
The bar in the ancient town of Friendly was the closest thing that the town had to a high roller joint, with a stained yellow and black carpet and wall displays of dusty sports memorabilia from long defunct teams that harkened to the sports bars of Old America. Kara smelled sour of hundreds of years of spilled beer and reeked of the sweat of its dusty patrons. Hours after the last of them had gone home for the night, she could still smell them. Kara took another drink of her moonshine, by now used to the foul taste that reminded her of antiseptic wipes. She was supposed to meet her mistress’ contact, some road captain who was to guide the convoy on the last leg of Wayward City, but he was hours later. Her mistress had already gone to bed, seeking shelter from the rising sun in her armored car.
Barely a week ago, she’d been sitting by the underground falls in the Dolingen’s great palace, lounging atop a pile of pillows while clad in only her collar and gilded chains, sipping sweet red wine and watching nymph-like vampiresses dart through the water with the grace of lithe sharks. It reminded her of the ancient Renaissance paintings in her school’s electronic textbooks. The censors had covered the nudes with black bars. But there she could look at them as freely as she wished – and be looked at in return. There was no shame in it.
She put her empty glass on the bar. When the bartender, a wizened old man with a yellowing beard, came to refill her drink, she noted the bartender was staring at her collar. She pulled up the collar of her leather jacket, trying as best as she could and failing to hide it. It disgusted her. Her collar was her pride, yet now she found herself wondering if it might be smarter to keep it concealed under a scarf, if only to avoid hassle. And as the bartender leaned in, his ancient stench cutting through the fading rose perfume combed into Kara’s black fur, she knew that hassle was coming.
“Ma’am,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Far be it from me to question what you did to end up with vampires, but if you want out, my brother’s got tools to cut off that coll-”
It hit her like a whip. She jolted up to her feet. Instinctively, she grabbed her collar to protect it. But her other hand went to the pistol holstered on her hip. It was a Ruger Orcslayer, a great stainless steel brick of a gauss weapon made to kill even the most stubborn greenskin. The bartender raised his hands, taking a single step back.
Kara snarled, leaning into the bar. “If my mistress heard a word of that bullshit, it wouldn’t be five minutes before you’d beg for the bullet.”
“I can imagine, miss,” said the bartender. His tone of voice was barely excited, as if she’d told him about a leak in the ceiling rather than threatened him with torture. “But how about we make this one a triple and leave the imaginin’ to clearer minds?”
It irritated her that the threat hadn’t scared him. Clearly, the bartender was used to hosting rich if dangerous patrons. But Kara knew that her mistress wouldn’t be happy if she made a mess. She nodded, sitting back down slowly and putting her hands slowly in her lap. She placed a golden coin from the Dolingen family mint on the bar. Out here, it counted for more than any electronic currency.
“Thank you,” she said, sitting up straight. “I appreciate you hosting me all night like this, sir.”
If nothing else, between the presidential guard and service in the coven, she’d learned to be polite. As she picked up her glass, finally, she heard the bar door creak open.