[@POOHEAD189]

"Showing yourself on a human world," Virgil said rhetorically, smoke wafting from him. "You must be lost, or someone worth of note. Or you're looking for something. Or maybe someone..." He took another drag from the cigar, before he dropped it onto the ground. The heel of his boot crushed it into the dirt. 

"I'm thinking if you're looking for something done, you're willing to pay a handsome price. Question is..." Virgil lifted his head a bit, allowing some of the sun to illuminate his face. He had a chiselled jaw, and an impressive handlebar moustache. "What's making you do it here, and not asking any of your own kind?"

Teeruk flinched on unconscious impulse at the rather abrupt confrontation, his eight limbs flickering at the same time and his mandibles clacking together as he eyed the human. He had neither expected to be so abruptly questioned (his own people were a rather neutral race in the last great war after all!) nor to have to explain himself – the man with the impressive facial hair was correct though, he [b]was[/b] here with a purpose, and he [b]was[/b] looking for a resource that was more prevalent on Taenarum than anywhere else in the galaxy; he only wished he had come armed now.

“You think this issss a human world?” half-coughed the emissary, one set of limbs waving around the square without much thought, “where do you think [b]you[/b] are?” It was a solid enough question, even now there were at least a hundred different species on this planet all after the same thing, and although it was nominally in human space it did not belong to either of the giants of the galaxy. That was exactly why people made their ways here.

“What I am doing here, silly human, isss the ssssame as any other employer!” There was a sharp edge to the tone of the slightly irritated diplomat, not used to the heat or to such brusk treatment from strangers, “and I will have you know that my own people are less warlike than any found here.” His Humanitas was good, almost flawless, but what could one expect from a trained mediator, “now...what can I do for [b]you[/b]?”

All eight eyes – blacker than a ravens feather – swivelled to peer at Virgil, and although it was impossible for Teeruk to pull of what humans called a 'smile', he had a good and disturbing go at it anyway.