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Mar. 30th, 2016 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kendraticmethodOghren reached for his drink and missed. Maybe he'd had enough.
This was always a tricky question. If he drank a little and stopped there, his inhibitions went down and he was more emotional. This was fine in some situations. In others it could lead to confrontations with severe consequences.
Lethal consequences, once. And it had been implied if this happened again, the death might be his own.
Pfah. As if he cared, really.
But he did care about getting enough revenge on dwarven society. Dumb fuckers just having babies. Never thinking if they should ask the babies if they wanted to be born.
The warrior caste was his privilege and his prison. Within it, his only real hope of getting even with dwarvenkind was a long, successful life. Full of people who hated his success. People whom his ever continued breathing was rubbing their noses in a revolting fact. Reminding them that he was the gadfly they couldn't squash. No matter how much they wanted to.
Of course, if he drank a bit more, his focus narrowed to the here and now. His sense of humour, always sensitive to the absurd, grew stronger. But the problem was it also made him forget why he had to care about various types of self control. So it was important to get through this stage and keep drinking. To that point that he tended to feel the way most of the people in the room felt.
Yet at the point, he was very easy to manipulate, even for a drunk. And that was a dangerous state for any dwarf of status to be in. Much less one who'd stepped on so many surprisingly delicate dwarves toes.
However much dwarves styled themselves tough and rugged, it was usually a lie. They were just a bunch of preening, self obsessed fops. Set an Orlesian bard listening at the door into a dwarven party somehow held in Vas Royeaux. The fucker wouldn't be able to tell by the words or the tone that it wasn't just another bunch of petty, poisonous palace pusfaces.
So the only solution was to keep drinking. Until everything seemed distant and hazy, kind of funny and sort of adorable. It felt like he was the big brother in a room full of endearing younger siblings. He had had one brother he'd doted on. Grew up to be a prick who wouldn't talk to Oghren anymore. But he wouldn't deny he'd loved him as a boy.
The problem was if he kept drinking, he'd black out. And booze didn't always go to his head at the same rate. The more drunk he got, the more important it was to know how much he'd had. But the harder keeping track became.
Yes, drinking was a bit of a battle itself. But being sober in the company of other dwarves would also lead to fatal confrontations. And being sober alone was intolerable for someone who hated himself as much as he did.
Ah well, tomorrow he'd get to go disembowel some darkspawn. That was the one time in is life when things were almost good. Good enough to put up with the drinking and the not hitting people who deserved hitting parts. So he could endure the sickening stupidity and hypocrisy which Orzammar was built upon more than mere stone.
Still, sometimes he could tell he was on track to that sweet spot in his drunkeness. Those were the good nights.
Except when dwarves taught him however low his expectations of them, they could sink lower still.
He shook his head in disbelief. He was far more shrewd than people gave him credit for. But he was reasonably sure he'd just heard something awful. More awful than typical for being around dwarven warriors.
It was almost as if the alleged ancestors heard his request and the speaker repeated themselves.
This was always a tricky question. If he drank a little and stopped there, his inhibitions went down and he was more emotional. This was fine in some situations. In others it could lead to confrontations with severe consequences.
Lethal consequences, once. And it had been implied if this happened again, the death might be his own.
Pfah. As if he cared, really.
But he did care about getting enough revenge on dwarven society. Dumb fuckers just having babies. Never thinking if they should ask the babies if they wanted to be born.
The warrior caste was his privilege and his prison. Within it, his only real hope of getting even with dwarvenkind was a long, successful life. Full of people who hated his success. People whom his ever continued breathing was rubbing their noses in a revolting fact. Reminding them that he was the gadfly they couldn't squash. No matter how much they wanted to.
Of course, if he drank a bit more, his focus narrowed to the here and now. His sense of humour, always sensitive to the absurd, grew stronger. But the problem was it also made him forget why he had to care about various types of self control. So it was important to get through this stage and keep drinking. To that point that he tended to feel the way most of the people in the room felt.
Yet at the point, he was very easy to manipulate, even for a drunk. And that was a dangerous state for any dwarf of status to be in. Much less one who'd stepped on so many surprisingly delicate dwarves toes.
However much dwarves styled themselves tough and rugged, it was usually a lie. They were just a bunch of preening, self obsessed fops. Set an Orlesian bard listening at the door into a dwarven party somehow held in Vas Royeaux. The fucker wouldn't be able to tell by the words or the tone that it wasn't just another bunch of petty, poisonous palace pusfaces.
So the only solution was to keep drinking. Until everything seemed distant and hazy, kind of funny and sort of adorable. It felt like he was the big brother in a room full of endearing younger siblings. He had had one brother he'd doted on. Grew up to be a prick who wouldn't talk to Oghren anymore. But he wouldn't deny he'd loved him as a boy.
The problem was if he kept drinking, he'd black out. And booze didn't always go to his head at the same rate. The more drunk he got, the more important it was to know how much he'd had. But the harder keeping track became.
Yes, drinking was a bit of a battle itself. But being sober in the company of other dwarves would also lead to fatal confrontations. And being sober alone was intolerable for someone who hated himself as much as he did.
Ah well, tomorrow he'd get to go disembowel some darkspawn. That was the one time in is life when things were almost good. Good enough to put up with the drinking and the not hitting people who deserved hitting parts. So he could endure the sickening stupidity and hypocrisy which Orzammar was built upon more than mere stone.
Still, sometimes he could tell he was on track to that sweet spot in his drunkeness. Those were the good nights.
Except when dwarves taught him however low his expectations of them, they could sink lower still.
He shook his head in disbelief. He was far more shrewd than people gave him credit for. But he was reasonably sure he'd just heard something awful. More awful than typical for being around dwarven warriors.
It was almost as if the alleged ancestors heard his request and the speaker repeated themselves.
