beekeeperofeden

write about that arranged marriage au where jarlaxle is artemis' Treaty Bride and drizzt is the handmaiden who ships them and tries to set them up so hard he accidentally seduces artemis himself!!

and then write that au that ends up with drider!dinin getting lost in the drowish festival of lights and begins with. emotional!entreri who just skipped out on collecting regis' bounty to stay with drizzt giving himself over to the do'urden revenge army in agatha's mask and drizzt's place

(is this more helpful?)

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"write that au where" is very broad. please save me from Eternal Planning and be more specific. (You have five (5) questions to work with)

Edited Date: 2018-02-13 10:06 am (UTC)

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i'm so sorry i have Zero (0) clue how this is done, thank you for your patience

When drider!dinin gets lost in the Festival of Lights, how does he find his way home to his crevasse where he's got his stolen human squirreled away?
Didn't he end up out in the festival of lights because entreri made a break for it
did he ever catch up to entreri
it's been a long time and my attention is split 3 ways, i'm so sorry

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Context: Roughly around the same time as Starless Night. Dinin was driderized but didn't die, and Entreri is in Menzoberrazan but doesn't have darkvision.

-

Entreri wasn't sure how much time had passed. He'd almost gotten acclimated to the lack of light (almost) and it was too much like those days trapped in the mines with Do'Urden. It was vaguely nostalgic, until he heard clicking legs.

He'd tried not to eat anything it brought for the first few days, but realized that without the strength to run or climb, he'd be in the rift forever. And "forever" seemed like it might be measured in days, and just because career assassins weren't expected to reach middle age didn't mean that Entreri was ready to embrace death.

He had the presence of mind to check the shape of whatever dead thing was dropped on his lap. It hadn't taken the creature long to realize he'd refuse to eat anything that had a humanoid face, so it (he?) brought smaller things, things with tails and carapaces. They were still raw, but Entreri had eaten worse. (Not much worse, though.)

Too many legs and red eyes that glowed in the dark -- he hated spiders. He wasn't sure how he felt about the drow half yet, but he suspected that emotion was also hate.

If there were light, he could have escaped. But if there were light, he also could have seen how many spiders (he'd stolen Do'Urden's diary once, hadn't there been anything about half-drow, half-spider monsters in there?) there were, and he wasn't sure if that was a good trade or not.

It was bad enough hearing them. Jarlaxle had been teaching him the language until he ran away, and mockery was the same in every tongue. The other monsters clearly expected Dinin to eat him. Entreri wasn't sure why he hadn't yet, but preferred not to wait until then.

When the soft glow appeared at the edge of the cavern, the signs of the dark city above being embroidered with light, Entreri didn't stop to ask why. He started climbing.

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Triel's glare was uncompromising, as if she expected it to work on him after all these years.

"And you have no idea what it was after?"

"None." Jarlaxle had quite a good idea what the drider had been chasing through the streets of Menzoberranzan. The human -- now safely hidden back in Bregan D'aerthe's headquarters -- had nearly collided with him in his rush to get away from the Clawrift. The story had spilled out of him in pieces, in a flood of confused details that Jarlaxle could only have dreamed of a month previous.

Entreri had no idea why a spider -- or a drider -- would start dancing. Jarlaxle did, and it had taken all of his willpower not to explain it just for the expression it would provoke.

"However, my agents did take the initiative to draw it back to the Clawrift." A rampaging drider was likely to be killed, and Jarlaxle would admit enough fondness for the likeness of his old subordinate to wish it survival.

"With no thought of reward, of course?"

"Only the good of the city. But I would like to encourage their future dedication to civic duty."

She snorted, then nodded in acquiescence. Her rolled eyes as he accepted the payment implied she didn't believe his claims of ignorance (and Jarlaxle would have been insulted if she had), but with her house leading the charge to war, she could hardly afford to alienate a useful group of mercenaries.

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AAAA DELIGHTFUL

OKAY FURTHER QUESTIONS

What's this look like from Dinin's point of view?

-and-

What is the first halting conversation they throw back-and-forth to each other, if Entreri has a fumbling beginner's grasp on Drowish and Dinin has lost most of his capacity for language? Gimme the "me tarzan you jane" deets :3c

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"Food." The bundle that landed on him smelled of rot and acid, and Entreri still wasn't sure if the creature was talking to him or about him.

The lack of mandibles in his neck suggested cause for optimism. He felt at the bundle. It was wrapped in soft thread and was roughly the size and shape of a halfling or a goblin or a human child. It squished unpleasantly when poked it, and a soft drip of fluid spilled out around his fingers. The acid smell grew stronger. He pushed it off his lap and scooted away until his back hit the cavern wall. Bile rose in the back of his throat, and he might have vomited if his stomach weren't empty.

"Food." The voice was more insistent now. The sound of movement, and the dripping bundle was pushed back into his lap. He shuddered and pushed it off.

"No." He'd spoken in Common out of habit, and tried to switch to drow. "No."

The monster said something else that Entreri didn't recognize. Entreri shook his head, then realized that even if it could see him, it might not know what the sign meant. "No." he repeated.

He scooted away. The bundle was pushed back at him. Each time it was dragged across the floor, it started dripping more.

The creature repeated itself, more slowly this time.

"Must eat."

Jarlaxle had given him lists of adjectives to memorize. Had "disgusting" been on it?

"No. Old." Also potentially cannibalistic, but he definitely didn't have the vocabulary for that. He could say he didn't want to eat rivvil, other non-drow, but he had the feeling that would only result in him getting a decomposed drow tossed in his lap.

He pushed it off again and pulled his knees close to his chest, reducing available surface area for things to be dropped onto. "I will not eat that."

The creature made a sound that seemed very much like exasperation and left him alone in the dark.

Edited Date: 2018-02-13 11:42 am (UTC)

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Dinin: WHY HAS NO ONE PUBLISHED A "CARE AND FEEDING OF YOUR HUMAN" GUIDE???

oh my gosh bee i love it

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Well Dinin, if you didn't know how to take care of a human, you probably shouldn't have ~~kidnapped~~ adopted one.

[pleased wiggling]

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it was an impulse purchase.... just look at that cute face. makes you wanna bite it..... 🕷

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See, that's one of the things that a "care and feeding of your human" guide would tell you not to do.

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I suppose there are some perks to not having one then... delicious, soft, biteable human.

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Hopefully these are appropriate!

In your Space-opera!AU, how does Jarlaxle get a hold of the Nightmare class ship, if at all? Or since that’s likely to spawn a full-length fic - what does Artemis have to say when this endeavor proves to be (un)successful?

Same AU, does Artemis a weapon analogous to the Jeweled Dagger, in terms of his attachment to it and the ties to his reputation? What kind of weapon is it (presumably a blaster?), what does it look like, and does it have some sort of special effect like the dagger?

Do Dahlia and Artemis meet in the Space-opera AU the same way they did in cannon?

What would it look like if Jarlaxle and Dahlia started a bar-fight together, solely to annoy Artemis? I think this spawned from your Herding Cats AU, but I imagine it’d fit in the Space Opera one too.

(In case it isn’t clear – I really love Space Opera settings (though not Star Wars, for some reason?))

If those don't work, let me know and I shall try to do better!

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(The questions are good!) Ah ha, an excuse to write Icewind Dale era Entreri in all his overdramatic villainy!

I'm going for the intimidation factor rather than the vampiric one, since I cannot think of a suitable way to psuedoscientifically explain a vampiric blaster.

-

Drizzt shuddered as the crackle of fire splashed across his skin, making his muscles spasm. He fell to the ground and tried to find the location of the burn and gauge how badly injured he was.

"Unfamiliar with blasters, drow?" The human's tone was conversational as he knelt to get closer. Drizzt tried to move, reach for his knives, but another wave of pain stopped him. The human -- Artemis Entreri, he had called himself -- twirled the gun with the sort of careless familiarity that implied years of practice. "I wouldn't make much money as a bounty hunter if I could only bring in corpses. It doesn't kill targets unless I want it to." A cruel glint flashed in his eyes. "Most of the time."

Across the hangar, Regis still hadn't moved. Drizzt fought the sinking feeling in his chest with everything he had learned of this human in the past few hours.

It took several times to get the words out through numb lips. "Ly-lying." This man was a professional, a perfectionist. He wouldn't tolerate the kind of error rate he was implying.

Entreri's grin flashed in light. "Perhaps, but perhaps not." He stood up. "I get paid either way, so you'll have to follow me to find out."

He picked up Regis, who was still unmoving, and left. It was hours before Drizzt could move again enough to stand.

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I have 5000 words of drafted spaceship theft. This takes place after that.

-

"Congratulations, you have your ship." Entreri pulled out another wire from the weapons control panel and pointed at the bulletin that had flashed across all the cockpit displays. "Also, warrants for your arrest in three sectors."

The image was grainy, clearly pulled from a soldier's helmet-cam, but Jarlaxle wasn't hard to recognize. He peered at the display critically, tapping his chin.

Then, what Entreri had said sank in. Jarlaxle raised an eyebrow at his -- guide? unwilling accomplice? partner? -- at the human and tilted his head in curiosity.

"Warrants for my arrest?" He tapped the display, zooming in on the other grainy picture, the one that showed Entreri. "Unless that's a particularly dour statue, I believe we're in this together."

It was such an odd turn of phrase that Jarlaxle was very tempted to repeat it. Entreri rolled his eyes. "I was not foolish enough to introduce myself, so their other warrant is for an anonymous human."

"And there are already warrants out for you in more than three sectors already?" Jarlaxle guessed at the other reason Entreri might be blase about this development. Entreri eyed him for a moment, then shrugged, as seemed to be the reaction every time Jarlaxle revealed how much information he'd dug up on Calimpshan.

"Well, if we wish to keep this ship long enough to destroy anything interesting, we will need to get the weapons unlocked." Jarlaxle leaned against the panel and looked down at Entreri, who was surrounded by pieces of the system.

"If you wish to do this yourself, you are welcome to."

"No, I'm more than pleased by your work. Simply curious about how long it will take." The stealth system was what had drawn him to this ship, but there was no denying that the plasma cannons were very, very pretty. But unless Entreri could get around the security systems locking them, they were nothing more than expensive hull decorations.

"Faster if you would help." Entreri held a bundle of plastic-coated wires out to him, not looking away from the panel he'd pulled out. "Strip these."

Jarlaxle grinned and put a hand to his belt in delight. "Now? Abbil, if you needed moral support you could have just asked."

Entreri did look at him then, and Jarlaxle enjoyed how bad humans were at hiding their emotional reactions. "The wires, Jarlaxle. Strip the casing off the wires. And keep your clothes on."

Edited Date: 2018-02-14 02:47 pm (UTC)

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Haha! Oh Artemis, by this point you should know better than to say 'strip' anything! Although maybe someday he should just let Jarlaxle do it and then go after him with a wet towel. :P

I'd actually managed to forget just how over-the-top Artemis was in the beginning, which is amazing since he did chase Drizzt basically -everywhere- for a while.

These are wonderful! Thank you for sharing!

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He'll have plenty of chances. (I don't know what it is about Crime In Space that's doing it, but the flirting went up a notch as soon as I tried to get them to steal that ship. It's interfering with all the crime I'm trying to write.)

Early series Entreri is fun. He's just so damn joyful about his villainy.

Thanks for showing up with prompts! I utterly adore this format for writing/storytelling. (I might play around with a few more of the questions when I have time. btw, you only asked four questions, technically, so you've got one left if you want it...)

Edited Date: 2018-02-15 02:40 am (UTC)

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Hmm... so it took me a bit to think of something, and I ended up with two and I don't know which to post. One's in the Herding Cats AU and could potentially be a heavy (and long) conversation, and the other is an entirely new AU, which I'm not sure you really want! I'll go ahead and write them out, but definitely feel free to ignore them! :P

In Herding Cats, how would they all respond should one (or several) of them at some point realize they would like to have children? (Presumably this happens rather further into the future than current period (and assumes they're all living together?), and I suspect Drizzt is the most likely person to want kids.)

Alternate option - modern college AU. What are Jarlaxle and Artemis's majors, if they should somehow both be attending at the same time? Or not, I'm just curious what you'd think they went to school for, if at all.

(This one stems from the 'over-dramatic villainy' comment above that immediately made me think "Wow, yeah, he'd fit right in with the theater majors I knew.")

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(I have thoughts about the Herding Cats one which are still trying to congeal into prose.)

You're not getting a prose answer to this one, but for college AU...

For Artemis, my first instinct was to go with math, but I'm really digging the theater major idea. Going into theater is hard, but Entreri (especially early-series Entreri) is arrogant enough to be sure he can do it and ambitious enough to try.

(But he's got a minor in mathematics because of that scene in Silent Blade where he spends literal hours making up games with dice. Admittedly, it's when he's waiting to ambush someone and doesn't have many options, but like. Books are thing. Cards are a thing. This nerd chooses to analyze probability.)

Unshockingly, he gets along fantastically with Jarlaxle, who is at least an honorary theater major.

Jarlaxle has been at this college for six years and changed his major seven times. The first two years were on mommy's money, the rest have been paid for by quietly taking over the local drug cartel, which he now runs out of his suspiciously nice off-campus apartment.

Jarlaxle's majors so far: pre-law, political science, philosophy, theater, business and marketing, fashion design, history, and global studies. He's about three semesters of focused coursework away from a general Communications Studies degree, but no one expects that to happen.

Drizzt is doing Environmental Studies and Zoology. He and Entreri meet in a gen-ed philosophy class where they are instantly, loudly, and eternally at loggerheads. Jarlaxle is also in this class and appreciates the show so much he starts to bring Artemis coffee because he "accidentally got two".

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I really need to go back and read Silent Blade again, I have no memory of that scene. Or at least not of what he was doing, I remember the waiting. Regardless, I do so love the thought of a theater major with a math minor - not a combo you think of normally, but it fits him well!

(I just realized - he also immediately notes the high degree of cheating happening within seconds of entering the Copper Ante. He really is a math nerd! That's adorable!)

Jarlaxle's college experience sounds a lot like my early years (changed majors 4 times in three years) except I bet he's still a straight-A student.

I feel like Artemis would really dislike a philosophy class and I can't decide if that makes it better or worse for everyone else in the room? Good thing Jarlaxle's amused, at least!

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