The Wessel? Residence

Leaving the manor was fairly unceremonious. John had opted out of speaking to ‘Miss Rhosewen’, mainly for reasons of time. As it stood, he could get home, have a quick shower and get changed, and still make it to dinner at Christie’s without having to rush. Moira’s goodbye had been polite but succinct, and he got the feeling that she had something else she was in a hurry to get to even if she tried not to show it.

Currently, he was walking along a Barrier Alley while looking at the law books he had been given to study. Considering that, as far as he knew, the law of the USA was of approximate behemoth size, he was surprised that they gave this one to him in print rather than on some sort of digital storage. He was even more surprised to learn that the six books weren’t just the parts applicable to private individuals, but the entire legal code of Abyssal Springfield, except for some things specifically between the guilds that had signed the Springfield Accord.

It was still going to take a while to chew through, even with his Perk enhanced reading speed. For that reason, he was being selective about sections for the time being. The first thing he had looked for was about self-defense, as well as the defense of property and relatives.

The rules there were very permissive. There was no duty to retreat, and he was allowed to do preemptive self defense if someone made clear and explicit threats of serious harm. Or if they showed a pattern of attacking him previously or intruding upon his private barriers or personal belongings. Or if they did any of those things to his loved ones. Finally, booby trapping private property was allowed as well, though he was liable if someone that wasn't trespassing or stealing got hurt.

It also defined ‘serious harm’ to include mental attacks and spells that caused involuntary transformation. In summary, he could do more or less whatever he could think of and scrape together the resources for when it came to making defenses for his grandparents and his mom.

The next section he looked at was banned guilds. The Writ had mentioned that a list existed in the general legal code, and given that he needed to find out whether he wanted to join a local guild or not, he needed to take a look at that. The list started with a general clause for guilds that engaged in catching people for enslavement, reanimating sophont corpses, production of Soul Shards, predation on mundanes, or Outsider worship, as well as any that was at war with 2 or more signatories of the Springfield Accord. That was followed up with a list of 33 names of groups which were specifically banned as were any guilds subordinate to one of them.

The Cabal
Krov Proleteriata/Blood of the Proletariat
Hiji zuru ha/Blade of the Rising Sun
Neo Aztlan
Black Velvet
33 Scions
Ash Brotherhood
Blue Mamba Company
The Scarlet Song
Hassasin
Obsidian Growth
Hēishèhuì/The Black Society
BLANK
Riven Hourglass
Frostburn
Brass Hog Syndicate
The Dividers
Scarlet Hand
Order of the Twin Tooth
Society of the Arctic Rune
Unknown Assembly
La Flamme Claire/The Clear Flame
The Whisperers
Red Scales
The Answer
Leviathan Crew
Students of the Indigo Tome
Visage
Jade Needles
Phantom Reach
The Orange Roses
Les Enclavés
Cobalt Brotherhood

The Cabal and the Proletariat guys were familiar names, specifically from Qhila calling them extraordinarily vile. He also recalled seeing the Scions mentioned in the Librarians/Abysspedia’s GRO article and the Japanese one in the article about the Moon Clan. Black Velvet, Phantom Reach and Hassasin felt familiar as well but he couldn’t quite place them. Maybe one of the other articles he had looked at, or talking about smaller guilds with Qhila?

One thing that was kinda notable but not really unexpected was the absence of the Emerald Order. Given that they had been part of the Accord until very recently, there probably hadn’t been time to formally add them to the list. Or maybe the books were just more than 4 days old…

In any case, based on the guilds he did know a bit about, this list was probably populated with ones John really didn’t want to associate with anyways, and it wasn’t in any way a setup that should make his search for a viable guild to join more complicated than it was to start with.

The last bit that drew detailed attention for now was the parts about decency, since Marisa had mentioned those specifically. The fact that she had considered them prudish was outright hilarious. John could think of multiple ways to act entirely within these rules and still get booked for indecent exposure by the mundane police. The general gist of them was that if you were determined to do lewd stuff in public, you had to make it easy for everyone else to opt out of witnessing it. Also, if children caught you in the act, their parents were allowed to punish you, according to how much of an eyeful the kids got.

The parts of it that were specific to GRO territory, and which might have been the ‘prudish’ bits, were mostly about being harsher on engagements that involved 3 or more people. It seemed like the Golden Rose was intent on pushing significantly for monogamy, which seemed like a weird thing to do for a moment before John realized what that implied about the rest of the American, or possibly entire, Abyss.

If John hadn’t been to Brighton Manor first, Christie’s house would have been very impressive. Rationally, he still knew that a large, three story townhouse with a garden was not cheap anywhere and this was an expensive neighborhood to boot. That didn’t stop his mind from reflexively making the comparison to the manor, however, and the Wessel residence just plain lost there.

Wessel was the name associated with the address in online listings, Archibald Wessel to be specific. If Observe considered foster children to be full on family, that explained one of the strange surnames Christie had. Where ‘Chastain’ came from remained unclear.

Barely a minute after John used the door hammer to knock, the door was opened by a middle aged man in butler attire that, based on appearances, could’ve been Reginald’s brother. The man’s name plate had him as Pierre d’Cardin, however, and the rest of it looked perfectly ordinary if a bit high level for a mundane at 25.

“Young Mr. Newman I presume.” That set him apart from Reginald as well. Pierre had a notable if perfectly understandable French accent, while the Brightons’ butler and whatever else had an unmistakably British one.

“Y-” John’s confirmation was cut short when a giant mass of fur rounded the hallway corner with heavy thumps against the carpet. For a moment, John thought that Christie’s foster father was for some incomprehensible reason keeping an actual bear indoors and took an involuntary step backwards.

Then he got a good enough look at the creature’s head and realized what the name plate also spelled out: It wasn’t a bear. It was a huge, shaggy dog. Bartholomew, as the fuzzy behemoth was apparently called, was a Level 31 Hound. Recalling that ‘beasts’ were rated only on combat ability, that made this thing significantly more dangerous than the rat ogres or the fungus boar. An assessment that John really didn’t doubt.

Still, now that he had a moment to actually look at it, the dog’s demeanor seemed more excited than threatening. Thus, despite how deadly his abilities judged it to be, John’s initial fear when it appeared was quickly fading.

“Down, boy.” Two simple, authoritative words from the butler made the canine stop on the spot and killed what remained of John’s alarmed state. Clearly, the dog was well trained in addition to being friendly. In a much calmer fashion, it walked the last meter to the door and stuck its head out to sniff at the Gamer. Then it started wagging its tail and trotted off back into the house.

The butler was looking expectantly at him and it took John a moment to remember that he hadn’t actually answered the question. “Sorry. Yes, I’m, uh, Mr. Newman.” Calling himself that felt decidedly weird.

“Good. The Young Mistress awaits your arrival in the second story sitting room, first door on the right.” Pierre consulted a pocket watch while John took a moment to figure out that ‘Young Mistress’ was Christie. “Dinner will be ready in 7 minutes.”

“Thank you.” John inclined his head towards the butler, then proceeded up the stairs. Meanwhile, he took his first proper look at the interior of the house. The walls were paneled with wood up to about waist height, then off-white wallpaper with a geometric pattern in shallow depressions from there. Ceiling and floor were wood as well, with most of the latter covered by carpeting in muted red, blue and purple.

The upstairs hallway was decorated with landscape paintings in frames that matched the wooden panels, but John didn’t linger to look at them. Instead, he followed the directions and found a room lined with bookshelves holding two recliners and a small table. Christie sat in one of the chairs with a book that, judging by her fingers on the page, was in braille.

She was wearing a simple, cream colored t-shirt and a knee-length dark blue skirt that had ridden ‘up’ enough to show a little bit of thigh between it and her striped knee socks. It was his first time seeing her in anything other than the shades and much too large school uniform she wore at Ashcroft. By his best estimates he had mistakenly concluded her to be decently attractive beneath all the intentional obfuscation.

The truth was that John had utterly underestimated her appearance; she was downright gorgeous. The lack of shades unveiled the delicate porcelain features of her face in full, soft symmetry put into an adorable expression halfway between concentration and fascination. Even knowing what it meant, the milky discoloration of her brown eyes felt like a touch of something exotic rather than the discomforting impression that blind people’s eyes were often stereotyped to give off.

Wearing fitting clothes also gave John a much better view of her figure and proportions, which could best be described as ‘overflowing hourglass’. Her breasts were a bit bigger than his estimate and beautifully perky for their size. A waist narrow enough that drawings of her would prompt the internet to ask where her organs were flared gloriously into wide hips, from which the outline of her form flowed into plump thighs. Despite going only a little bit past her knee, the one fully exposed sock showed a delectable hint of thigh squish.

No wonder Vanessa had decided to target Christie for expulsion from society. All the shy girl needed to be a severe threat to Vanessa’s position as the most desired girl in their year was the confidence to let the world see her as she truly was. Sure, the cheerleader might still have Christie beat for raw sex appeal, when you factored out Vanessa’s personality anyway, but in terms of beauty, the blind ravenette was the clear victor. And John was honestly not sure Christie couldn’t win the sex appeal ‘discipline’ too with the right choice of clothing.

John wasn’t sure how long he spent enthralled, watching as her fingers trailed down the pages of the book and her expression showed subtle shifts in response to what she read. Only when she paused and coughed lightly was the proverbial spell… well, not exactly broken, but weakened enough for John to reclaim the use of his voice. “H-hi Christie.”

“John?!” Christie’s surprised exclamation was followed up by an emerging blush and an apologetic tone, “I- I was going to meet you at t-the door, but the time must’ve slipped away from me…”

John couldn’t help but chuckle. Losing track of time, now that was a familiar feeling. “Don’t worry about it, the butler let me in and told me where to find you. What are you reading?”

“Dune. Mr. W- Father recommended it a while ago and… I heard that- that it had been made into a… a video game.” While asking successfully pulled her attention away from being apologetic, her blush only intensified as her voice started faltering towards the end of the sentence.

Had she chosen to read that book in order to connect to his other hobbies? That was super sweet. He would definitely have to actually play that game now, even if the RTS genre wasn’t his favorite and the game was supposed to be kinda dated. Before he could say anything to that effect, a bell rang from elsewhere in the house.

“Oh, dinner is ready.” Christie put a bookmark in the book and placed it on a table next to her, then reached for her shades next to the book. Before she could pick them up and put them on, however, John interrupted her with a hand on top of hers.

“You don’t have to wear them for my sake. You can if you feel more comfortable with them, of course… but I think your face is too pretty to hide.” As that last part slipped out, her blush went from medium intensity pink to full tilt tomato. ’Goddamit, John, you were supposed to not hit on her! And why the fuck am I this smooth when I’m trying not to, but a complete mess when I work myself up to try flirting with someone on purpose?!?’

Gaia: It could have something to do with more than doubling your Charisma since the last time you tried on purpose…

“Umumumu,” Christie voiced an embarrassment sound, that he had previously seen her soundlessly mouth, and tried to hide behind her hair, while the melodious laugh from the Laugh Track Button sounded from John’s pocket despite the thing sitting in his inventory. The complete lack of a reaction to it from his blind friend suggested that the latter sound was in John’s mind only.

A few moments later, while John was still trying to figure out how to get her to calm down enough to lead the way to wherever dinner was served, the butler stepped inside.