Hunters Anonymous (OPEN)

[righteously]

WHO: Dean & Open - Mingle it up!
WHEN: late May
WHERE: the Horizon - Roadhouse Edition
WHAT: Starting a Hunters Anonymous Support Group
WARNINGS: drinking and murder, mostly.

( It starts out with just a couple of people. Dean, obviously, because it's his bar. Eventually Geralt, followed by one of Geralt's other hunting buddies — and then another, and then before you know it there's a handful of hunters all swapping stories about the crap they've seen out in the wilds.

It's about the time Dean makes to take out a notebook and honest to god start writing some of this crap down that two things hit him — First, this is actually really freakin' useful. Second, it feels right. The Roadhouse here may be fake, but this is what the real one would've been like. This is what it was meant for. This is the most real this place has been since he got here.

So he runs it by Geralt, and puts out an APB.

Harvelle's Roadhouse is officially open for business — and not just of the drinking variety.

Mind the jukebox. )

NOTES: This is an open mingle, so feel free to top-level below! The idea here is to open up the Roadhouse for hunter-types to use as a central meeting place or base of operations for anyone who desires to, so feel free to use it as a backdrop for any threads whenever. Obviously non-hunter people are welcome to see the message and wander in whenever they want, too! Info on the Roadhouse can be found here. Hit me up at paingravy for anything you need any time.

Comments

[gynvael]

No. [ Not soldiers. They are far from soldiers. He studies the knives embedded in the board. ] Monsters overran the Continent once. We were made to kill them. These days...

[ These days, there's been little to kill. Monsters no longer infest the Continent in every corner, lurking only in darkened woods and overgrown paths. But he isn't there anymore, is he? He's here. More to hunt in Abraxas than there ever was back home. Making a living has been simpler. Existing as a whole has been simpler.

He picks up his drink. His foot rests on the seat of a chair. He's never asked, precisely, what Jesper means by Grisha, but it isn't difficult to guess from what Jesper's already told him. An ability he possesses that he's been hiding most of his life. Something like a mage, though not quite. ]

We are what we are. [ It reminds him of Ciri. Her desire to run from what she is. Jesper is right: it doesn't ever go well. ] How long did you hide it?

[itookashot]

What happens when there aren't any more monsters? You all retire?

[ Jesper knows that is very unlikely so it's somewhat of a joke. Geralt isn't the retiring sort. And he knows he went on to be a hunter here, obviously, so he has no reason to stop. He doesn't seem to like what he does though, not really. Maybe it's because he was made to do it, rather than chose to do it. Jesper got to choose his path, well, choose is a rough version of what happened. But he could've gone to school and been a good boy. As if. ]

Mum died when I was seven. She was training me. Someone came by not long after to tell my father I could go train, but he said I didn't have the gift so they wouldn't take me away.

[ He remembers it well. Colm asked if he wanted to go, but there was no way he could agree to do that. He was a child, and his father needed him. At that point he was grieving and couldn't do most things for himself, Jesper had filled his mother's shoes with the hunting and cleaning. He is older now, he understands what an unfair position both of them were in. ]

I used to play around with it but he made me promise to stop. So I'd say I didn't use it for around seven years, until I met Kaz. He must have noticed my aim was too perfect.

[ Jesper smiles at him playfully, a comparison to the more serious way he's explaining. He twirls the knife between his fingers, which is not the type of thing powers can really do, so this part is all skill. ]

The thing is, it makes you sick when you don't use it. We didn't know that.

[ He can't believe that his father would still have forced him to hide it, if he knew what it was doing to Jesper. ]

Sometimes people get physically sick, some people get mentally sick.

[ Considering Jesper looks incredibly healthy, it seems pretty obvious which one he ended up. ]