Uz entered the tavern in celebratory fashion, emanating a broadness of affect ignored by his fellow patrons. "What err in Reason's flawless chain, what lurid faery light, tempteth a man from his tight, warm bed, to this drink-sodden plight?" He sang, reeling only slightly.
His fingers found a counter hewn from what seemed to him the most luxurious, ancient, and finely worked wood slab available to human craftsmen. "I desire elderberry, but would accept any wine a fine publican such as yourself has to offer." He sank into a heavy lean, immune to the nearby scowls.
The drink provided (a questionable decision), Uz now set about to the harassment of anyone near enough to receive it. He scanned around for something of interest, passing swift phrenological judgement over the common criminality here. Hungry, sullen eyed. The shingles rash of a city in ill health.
His sweeping analytical gaze ended with a delightful challenge, a man so lumpy and disfigured it was not possible to determine much at all about him from the various ratios of facial features and cranial bone structures that one with such a talent can utilize to form a quick judgement.
Ambling artfully over, Uz made a sloppy introduction. "My friend, you look a fearsome fellow, like you have seen the clash of the shield wall." The man's face was unreadable due to an unfortunate collaboration of disfigurement, a spider's web of ugly scars, paralyzing certain facial muscles,
A nose almost entirely missing, along with his left eye, which he had unmercifully neglected to cover with any sort of accessory. The man's one good eye turned inscrutably toward Uz, and his broad shoulders pivoted at the same time, to confront their interrogator.
Uz ran his tongue along his teeth in a subconscious soothing action, revealing, if only to you dear reader, that some part of him might sense the tension in the dingy drinking hall, though his vibrating pupils still fixated almost as a challenge upon the lone dim bulb that stared back.
A surprisingly soft and oddly up pitched voice emerged from the creature, "Would that were the case my little friend!" Uz sensed some mirth from his tone. "I am merely an irresponsible slave, playing out a mid-life career change." He leaned in close now, paralyzed face wearing the ghost of a smile,
"You see, upon first capture I must have been quite a nuisance, hollering about liberty and spitting at all the noble consumers of servant flesh, browsing as they do in the markets here. Very soon I had made my escape, not bothering to even remove my shackles. However..."
"...quickly I was apprehended by the reeve and his comrades, and marked so I would no longer be able to masquerade as a free man. That is how I lost my nose, and gained this distinctive visage."
"They struck it off somewhat swiftly, at least they tried to." He made a slow pass with his finger, as though it were a stubby blade. "Though good sense would caution most from further transgression, being idealistic, I once again escaped captivity.
"Initially I thought myself very clever indeed, but did not calculate for the distinctive visage occasioned by my missing nose. A brief flight, and captured once more." He sat back in his spoked chair, causing it to sigh as if mimicking his own restful affect. Steepling his hands,
"The slavers were at a loss for what to do, and I found great mirth in their debates, the profusion of rhetoric they laid before each other in deciding what next to do with my insolence. Finally they decided to take my eye, reasoning that a one eyed man might still work,"
"but with a spirit made much dispassionate by the loss of the full glory of binocular vision. This was foolish, of course. Slavers and merchants believe only in the material, and so think that some percentile lost of the sight of our rich world would dispirit a man such as me."
"But I am no petty merchant, I am an idealist, and with no nose and one eye I could still sense, with a more elevated organ, Liberty calling out to me." He stood then, awkwardly. "And so, here I am now! Happier than you could imagine! Once again, untouched by whip or shackle,"
"Chained, not to the tin mine, to the plough, but instead to the galley of open adventure, driven by the salt wind of freedom!" His fist was now raised. "To the juice of the vine!" Uz added, wryly. "Yes! The nectar of unhesitating passion! Imprisoned by my own ambitions!"
Uz flinched slightly at a particularly unstable wobble in the man's stance. His eyes then glazed somewhat as he reflected on the den of delusion and despair he had wandered into. He was again reminded why he hated returning to this, the city of his birth.
Rising, Uz patted the large man on the shoulder, "An excellent story, well told, I feel like I was there shackled right beside you. Fair winds and free trade to you, my friend, I have been inspired to find my own freedom."
Anyway I didn't finish this, but the joke is the noseless man is recaptured before he even leaves the boozer.
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