Chapter Text
Let me tell you a story about a man called Dunstan.
Dunstan is a member of the City Watch employed to patrol the baroque halls of the renowned pleasure establishment, The Golden Cat. Dunstan’s position is viewed as an enviable one, owing to its obvious perks and charms, although Dunstan found himself immune to them fairly quickly.
The task of ensuring the security of an establishment is sometimes assumed to be fraught with peril. This assumption is incorrect. It is fraught with boredom. Dunstan often found himself bored while working. He was also bored when he wasn’t working, but this doesn’t concern us.
To alleviate himself from such mind-numbing tedium, Dunstan took to what is colloquially known as ‘drinking on the job’. It started off in tiny quantities. First, just a glass. Then, just two glasses. Then - I am sure you follow the pattern. He drank more and more with every passing week.
Create a picture in your mind: A City Watch guard, passed out drunk, slumped on a chair, shielded from the scathing view of his colleagues by ornate screens. One of the women who was under the employ of the bathhouse, sees him, and feels pity for him, in her kind heart. She tries to wake him up. He swats her away drunkenly.
Nobody notices the dark figure crouched on the chandelier.
The masked figure is amused by the sight of the drunken guard slumped on his chair. He is so amused that he clenches his left hand, and swarms of hungry rats crawl from cracks and crevices in the walls, and from the floors and begin to devour everyone in sight. The cloaked figure watches as screams echo in the cavernous hall, while flesh is ripped off bone, and even bone is devoured. Everyone is gone.
Everyone except Dunstan.
The figure is bemused. The screams did not wake Dunstan. The rats did not eat Dunstan. The figure pulls out a pistol, takes aim and fires three times at Dunstan.
Dunstan is utterly untouched.
Now, the figure is angry. He reaches into his pocket and flings a grenade, which lands at Dunstan’s feet. The grenade detonates.
Dunstan is unscathed.
The figure is now utterly livid. He raises his left hand once more. It is time to end this game. He will gain control of Dunstan’s body and force him to throw himself from the balcony. He clenches his fist.
Nothing happened.
The figure does not know what to feel anymore. He is enraged and perplexed, at his wit’s end. He vanishes once more, on his way to perform a double assassination. Dunstan has bested him.
This was the story of a man named Dunstan, who drank so much, he was impervious to the powers of the Outsider.