Dinner with Lucius Lucinor

[Sil­ver­town, 6-26-1024]

A large black raven perched on the shrine to Gelix near en­trance to Sil­ver­town squawks at you “Tonight, tonight. North end at Lu­ci­nor House. Din­ner, din­ner. Lu­cius Lu­ci­nor ex­pects you at dusk, at dusk. Squawk!” and takes flight.

Lu­ci­nor House turns out to be the most bizarre struc­ture in Sil­ver­town. Three tow­er­s, one pink, one light green, the oth­er bright yel­low sup­port a cen­tral sec­tion twen­ty feet from the ground. As you get clos­er you no­tice the paint or what­ev­er it is shifts hues and odd­ly re­flects the set­ting sun. You see no en­trance the path sim­ply ends un­der the sus­pend­ed sec­tion. Reach­ing the end of it a bright or­ange light suf­fus­es the area and you find your­selves in a par­lor even more gar­ish than the ex­te­ri­or.

Strange smells fill the air and odd sounds echo down the hall­s. The decor is lav­ish, ex­pen­sive, and se­vere­ly clash­ing. You rec­og­nize fur­ni­ture styles, rugs, art­work from all over the known world and oth­er­s, strange and un­fa­mil­iar to you. Many Pelosian mag­i­cal trin­kets are about. Pro­vid­ing light, cool or warm breezes, mas­sag­ing pil­lows, etc. Ser­vants re­al and ar­cane bring re­fresh­ments and tend to your oth­er need­s. Your mind strug­gles to cor­re­late the com­fort­able posh sen­sa­tions with the ab­surd ca­coph­o­ny of col­or, smell, and sound.

Sev­er­al large por­traits dom­i­nate the wall­s. They de­pict the same in­di­vid­u­al in var­i­ous pos­es and ap­par­ent ages. The styles very from ab­stract shapes of col­or to what must be mag­i­cal­ly en­hanced re­al­is­m. And in each one the sub­ject is dressed in bright, lav­ish, and ut­ter­ly clash­ing cloth­s.

The raven flut­ters in and lands on a gilt stand near the door “I pre­sen­t, present Lu­cius Lu­ci­nor”

And in strides a frail man of mid­dle years. So gaunt his skin ap­pears to be stretched around a skull sev­er­al sizes too large. You rec­og­nize him as the from the paint­ings not by his face which is de­pict­ed more healthy and hand­some than re­al­i­ty but by his cloth­s. Many lay­ers of fine silk in bright green and yel­low, a blind­ing pink cloak that trails for sev­er­al feet be­hind which he flings about with a flour­ish far too of­ten this evening. Lu­cius him­self is wear­ing nu­mer­ous rings and bracelets en­crust­ed with jew­el­s, has a nose ring (of sol­id di­a­mond he an­nounces lat­er), long man­i­cured and paint­ed fin­ger­nails and is hair­less. No eye­brows, head, face, or arm hair. A state­ment of fash­ion he claim­s.

The din­ner is sump­tu­ous but dis­turb­ing. It is served with mixed matched sets of ex­pen­sive din­ner­ware. Ser­vants bring and re­move dish­es at ran­dom the desert ar­rives in the mid­dle and leaves be­fore Ian can try it. The wine is plain, the wa­ter tastes of cher­ry liqueur. It be­comes clear that you are here to tell Lu­cius about Vervigis’ lab, specif­i­cal­ly what was found with­in. But the con­ver­sa­tion does not go so well. Lu­cius’ pompous, su­pe­ri­or at­ti­tude and balk­ing at re­quests for pay­men­t/­trade ag­gra­vates sev­er­al char­ac­ter­s. It is still an un­for­get­table and pleas­ant din­ner al­though no “busi­ness” was com­plet­ed. But as you are leav­ing Lu­cius lets slip that Vervigis did have oth­er “in­ter­est­s” in the east­ern bad­land­s. And if you should find some­thing of ac­tu­al val­ue you know where I live.