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open || at a honky-tonk where their boots stomp all night

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Ask and you shall receive. The Houndstooth Grill and Tavern now broadcasts all sporting events on a ton of TV's. I think I kind of love whoever runs this place. For now.
Grand opening this Saturday.
Are you ready for some football? Hope y'all come by. And Roll Tide!

The Houndstooth, while it's been open for business for awhile, now has sporting broadcasts from every world and every time. Of course, the default on the many screens is American football since Jill is such a football fan. But she's willing to search the channels to get at least one or two TV's onto whatever someone wants to watch. The Pub and Grill has a homey atmosphere and serves classic Americana foods like burgers and steaks, every kind of fried foods you can imagine, frito pies, chili cheese dogs, etc. Some nights there's even live music playing at the top floor and a dance floor to get your groove thing on.

While she's finagled Lucy into helping her out on this one day, Jill is sometimes at the bar serving drinks. Sometimes she's behind the piano playing and singing some of that afore mentioned live music. Sometimes she's out on the patio smoking a cigarette. Sometimes she's walking around serving, making sure everyone has what they need. All the time she's watching some football game or another. She's thrilled to have the place here in its entirety.

Stop on by. Bring a date. Have a few drinks and laughs and fun.

ooc: The official grand opening of The Houndstooth. Forward dated for this weekend (October 10th). Treat this as a mingle for Saturday, tag around and have fun.
Get an idea of what The Houndstooth looks like at the Residences and Businesses page.

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Why wouldn't you brag having killed ten dragons? That seems like something to brag about if you live to tell the tale ten times... or any time. She doesn't know much about the differences in dragons. She doesn't know much about the creatures in general beyond DRAGON! But either way, it sounds impressive.

"They don't eat humans? Or is just that the animals are easier prey?" Jill asks curiously.

Jill shakes her head at the last question. "I haven't seen any danger. The odds of both of us avoiding it are pretty slim. Everything seems copacetic. Which is nice cause I'd have no idea what to do if it weren't."

"They do," Alaina admits slowly, "but most humans aren't dumb enough to go near them." Except for her party, apparently, since they went off to kill a bunch of dragons. "The animals are a lot easier, I think. But they don't know to stay away from the roads if there's a dragon flying around."

Most roads are deserted if there's a dragon nearby. Alaina remembers what Crestwood was like before they killed that dragon. Deserted. Granted, it was deserted for a lot of reasons, but the roads were the dragon's fault.

Alaina chuckles at that. "Danger doesn't like to pass up everyone, that's for sure. Sometimes I think it picks and chooses with most people, but it usually likes me. There's a running joke around home base about how unlucky I am to have gone through everything I have but how lucky I am that I'm not dead yet."

"Poor sheep." Jill says dryly, now imagining some sci-fi fantasy horror thing with dragons eating sheep. Baaa. Not cool, dragons. But then again, everything has to eat. Circle of life and all that. Sad, but true.

Jill has no reference for any of this outside of Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings.

"Well at least I know that if there are dragons, someone can handle that." You never know, after all. This world could go bottom's up someday. At which point Jill will effectively go into hiding because how do you even live in a world that's gone bottom's up?

It is the way life is, but when something threatens your territory and your people, you react to it. Humans fight back just as much as dragons or bears or wyverns. Alaina doesn't see anything wrong with protecting people. The dragon would do the same with its young.

Except for the ones that call their dragonlings to help it fight. Those fights were so unfair.

"You handle the.. electricity and I'll handle the dragons," Alaina jokes. Because apparently electricity is as foreign to Alaina as dragons are to Jill.

"That sounds like a deal, even though I'm not an electrician." She tosses back jokingly. She doesn't know what wire does what, just that it works when you push the on button or flip the switch.

"Not much for electricity, huh?" She wonders. "It makes life easier."

"I guarantee you're more used to it than I am," Alaina replies with a chuckle. "I'd never seen it before I came here. We don't have anything like this in Thedas. If my ambassador needs me to read something long and thick, she recommends two dozen candles."

That's what they have. Candles, torches, fire pits. Electricity is new and a little scary to Alaina, if she's to be perfectly honest. Speaking of, her eyes slide upwards to the TV.

"And I have no idea what that thing is--" She nods her head at it. "--or what it's showing."

Oh wow. No electricity. Jill and Lucy would probably die. (Yes, that's overly dramatic. But still.) They're connected to TV, smartphones, laptops, netflix, xbox and such. They're your average modern day young adults. Electricity is essential. Candles are there to make a room smell good.

She follows Alaina's gaze to the TV and then looks back o her. "That's a television. It shows movies and shows and sports, obviously. That TV is showing football." She points to the TV's as she says them. "That's soccer, which is also called football in some parts of the world, and that one over there... ew golf. Someone should change that." Most of them are on some football game or another.

"This is a sports bar. Hence... sports." She finishes.

Alaina thinks she's following what Jill explains, even if she doesn't understand how it works.

"So, if we were in Thedas, something that would be shown on one of those would be dragon hunting." Yes, that is a legitimate sport among the nobles of Orlais. "Except, I'm pretty sure the nobles would just sit around filming the dragons and making up their own attempts at actually killing anything." At least until Alaina and the Inquisition got there. Maybe Frederick would like that. Seeing something recorded would give him a lot to work with.

"Can you go back and watch something over again or is this the only time?"

It's okay not to understand how it works. Jill doesn't really understand the mechanics of it either outside of a general sense. Mechanics aren't her thing. Music is. Making yummy alcoholic beverages is. Maybe those things don't seem important, and the bar tending probably really is not important, but the music is very important to her.

"Oh yeah. There are shows about hunting too. Surviving in the wild, stuff like that." Of course, the dragon thing is odd. But Alaina's getting the gist of what this place is for. "Wrestling is a thing too. Sometimes we get big crowds here for big wrestling matches they show on TV."

She smirks. "Your nobles would probably be what we call commentators. The voice overs you hear on the games? That's commentators talking about what's happening and what the coaches should do and what they did wrong. Blah blah..."

Jill glances back at the screens. "You can record a show and re-watch it. But that's for personal use. Here we just stream live feeds." Looking back to Alaina, she studies her a moment. "This probably all seems crazy to you, huh?"

Alaina isn't a bard, but she has known people who were. Leliana, for instance. Josephine. But bards in Thedas aren't all about being musicians and singing in taverns, especially in Orlais. They can be used for much, much more. Things like fighting other bards and taking care of affairs for their patrons.

Then again, Orlais tends to be an extreme in a lot of ways.

Alaina laughs at the idea of the nobles being commentators. It's half true. "They would be the first out there to stake their claim at 'killing' the dragons and the first to leave the actual fight to someone else. Then, at court, they all talk about who did the worst job, who should never have been allowed near a dragon, and who got eaten. It sounds like the perfect thing for the Orlesian court to talk about for the next year."

Maker's breath, she will forever be grateful never to have to return to court. Once was enough, especially playing the Game with the stakes as high as they were.

"It is a little crazy," she agrees. "But I've known worse. If it's not trying to eat me, possess people, or bring up the dead walking, I think I might like it."

Yeah she is... not actually kidding about that.

"Well you know, as long as their opinions on the matter are heard, whether they're right or wrong, why should they help?" Jill laughs a bit, a strange sound coming from Jill as she does not often laugh. Yes, she knows that they're talking about two different things. But somehow, they're also strangely similar.

Of course Jill isn't quite sure if Alaina is kidding about the rest or not. It's hard to get a read on her. And she knows that people are from all different places where anything is possible. It's just beyond her own reality.

"It sounds like you live an exciting life. You might get bored here." She only half jokes. Because what must it be like to go from fighting dragons to a sports bar?

Alaina chuckles in response, nodding. "That sounds like the nobility, all right. Spending all day and all night talking to each other about nothing and analyzing every word that's said. Oh and don't forget the complaining. If they aren't complaining about what went wrong and who did what, then they've been replaced by demons and we need to fear for the fate of the world."

Alaina's delivery is typically pretty dry, but the way her lips curl upwards, like now, is usually a good indication of when she's joking. Despite the fact that people being replaced by envy demons is actually a real concern. One did try to impersonate and replace her, after all.

"And people wonder why I don't talk to my family much anymore." Alaina doesn't really like the nobility and all their games. She might joke around with the best of them, but she much prefers people who tell her things straight and don't play the Game. She hates the Game, even if she is very good at it.

Good enough to dance the Allemande, after all.

"I don't know about that. These television things might keep me occupied for a few days. The appliances in my house for another week. I'll just hire you to come help me figure it all out," she jokes easily.

"Pretty much. The sky is falling and everything is done wrong all the time. Nothing ever goes right." Jill adds with a smirk and shakes her head. "People like that like to hear themselves talk. Even when things go their way they find something wrong." Just listen to the announcers on the television. Or the nobility in Alaina's world, it seems.

"I can help. No hiring needed." Jill would be happy to help really. And Lucy would be so proud of her for making a friend that isn't Lucy herself. That rarely happens. "Though if you want more familiar things apparently all you have to do is think about them. This place... it seems to know what you want and give it."

Alaina laughs. "That's it exactly." It's funny how some things never change, even among different worlds and cultures. The nobility always complains and those below always suffer until someone like Alaina comes around.

"You would?" Alaina is almost surprised. It's the sort of thing she would offer freely, even before she was asked. It's nice to hear that the same will be offered by others here. "The problem with that is that now I'm thinking that we're all just dreaming in the Fade or I've been taken over by an Envy demon and believe me, those are not options anyone wants to live through."

Granted, the last time she'd been taken over by an Envy demon, things had been a lot worse and she'd had Cole to help. She glances around, almost as though she expects him to turn up.

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