I Don't Even Know

Four men sit in a dim tavern, smoke ringing their heads. The tavern is dim because they are the only ones left, even the bartender has gone to lay his head to rest. The ash of a hundred cigarettes lies thick in their ashtrays and each of the men has the stubby remains of one clamped between their lips. The cigarettes are made of Keltin or Baccaralt leaves because tobacco does not grow in this strange place.

Their eyes are hollow, lifeless things that peek up over strange and alien hands of cards at one another. Those hollow eyes convey age and disinterest, not stupidity. Though these men appear to be nothing more than their late thirties, their eyes speak of age and experience at odds with their scarless and middle-aged faces.

These men are a cross between hardboiled detective and space pirate. They wear beaten up trench coats patched with the hide of a deranged Lacerat they slew in the bar they now sit. Their guns are mundane in origin, but rifled and jury rigged to accept ammunition that uses fresh Saevoi blood in lieu of gunpowder. They have not tasted beef or chicken in ten years, or a thousand, or a hundred. When they do remember to eat, it is something once strange, but now as mundane to them as beef or chicken once were. When they recall that they should drink, it is an alcohol brewed upon the shores of the city they now dwell in.

The city. These men dwell in a city on the edge of oblivion. A crude busted rock, a remnant of an ancient planet now gone to ruin. The city is a broken thing, part ancient fortress of stone and part city on the edge of the future, all gleaming steel and bright lights. This strange city built of all times and places sits upon a sea of seething chaos that roils below it. The sea of chaos fills the city with life and wonder and monstrousness.

These men are immortal, because this is not their world or their time. These men have not known peace or comfort in ten years, or a thousand, or a hundred. These men are unrelenting and unforgiving slayers of things that go bump in the night and would do harm to the innocent. These men are Darkest Night Detective Agency, and they still draw breath in an alien land.

Music: Night City - The Sword

Music: Space Pirates - Alice Cooper