Sayeeda gave Niel a skeptical glance but said nothing as she took a seat at the bar. The stool was vaugely sticky which she figured was about par for the course.

"What is the local?" she asked pushing a small metal coin across the slick top of the bar. The bartender and her alien companion were silent for a long moment as they took in her weapons and armor. The alien had a strange odor too- him? it? - something vaguely akin to stale ginger which tickled the back of her throat but she refrained the urge to sneeze. After a moment the woman seemed to relax and reached under the table and produced a large earthenware jug and a none to clean glass. Halfheartedly she swabbed the glass with a cloth and then slopped three or four fingers into the bottom of it and slid it across the table.

"Scotch," the woman said monosyllabic, her eyes still guarded. Scotch was a fairly general term for any kind of hard liquor, Sayeeda had tried variants of it distilled from as more plants, and in a memorable case a fungus, than she could recall. She lifted the glass and sipped the faintly greenish liquor tinge to it and tasted vaugley of some sort of sweet fruit. It wasn't the worst thing she had ever tasted and so she knocked back the remainder of  glass and beckoned for another.

"You are out of your way, there are other bars for spacers," the Alien rumbled in a voice like rocks breaking.

"Not a spacer," Sayeeda responded.

"Soldier then."

"Maybe a soldier," she agreed and took a sip of the second glass of liquor.

"I'm looking for someone, a Xenos scholar named Ferenhall."
[@POOHEAD189]