Jubjub’s Den of Iniquity
My my, brethren. You’re a friend of a friend, salt of the earth type, one malchick of few. You’ve a badge and a handshake. I got a word from the street for your ear: bend it my way. When I think of all the good time that I’ve wasted…
When you talk about the bright lights of downtown Shattrath City, you’re not in the same scene as underside Orgrimmar, where the rogues rule by the glow of the bonfire. Even Undercity has joints, live and kickin’ despite the eerie, green ambience. We all know Silvermoon… candle and lamplight, lush, gauzy and silky, permissive…
Nar, down Shattrath way the lights are John Law himself. Naarus and their business, bunched up with their more corporeal lawlings, the Draenai. Roll a dice outside of Lower City and you’ll wake up in Terrokar with a magic moth taking an unhealthy interest in the back end of your eyeballs. Even in the dregs with the outcasts it’s hard to make a living as a card sharp, a loose blade, an evening lady, what have you. Poor Grifter’s been trying for months, but he’s a regular con-troll; no subtlety, just soap-on-a-rope and critter protection charms. No wonder they’re all over him like bootblack on a pantomime voidwalker.
Now I say life’s hard, but nothing’s beyond a real entrepreneur. Lower is big and getting bigger –refugees draining down to into the city through those big tunnels, coming down out of the damn skies: rainwater and runoff. The lights and the blueskins are opening doors, but only so many as is plain to see — they’re quarantining the poor away from the top levels, and spaces are opening up, dim ones with just the right lack of light. Motley mercenaries in patchwork armour, sellsword mages for hire, explorers, conjurers, witches, warlocks, dealers, demons and angels.
Let me tell you about the Den. Everyone who isn’t holding a torch is welcome at Jubjub’s.
There’s a grooved line cut into the Lower City floor, starts round the marketplace. Burned in patches, uneven, deep or shallow, sometimes breaking up for a time. You can tell you’re on the right track when it goes against the grain and across the carvings. Duck under the canopies, behind the carts, down the alleys, past the cellar holes and peeling doors and the shrunk-up blanket shapes of the dispossessed. Thirteen paces past the Scryer’s Bloodthistle Emporium, and the gouge vanishes in a dead end passage. Look back at the strangled city, choked with harrowed souls and bankrupt hope. No doors, no holes, no ladders, no snakes, nothing for you but evaporating promise and coalescing disappointment. Now, eyes up, malchick. You’re two steps from a shaken-up Sen’jin Slammer with cerise paper parasol. Take the door on the left. What do you mean, you can’t see it? You ever hear of the Ethereum? Now you know what that humming is. Close those eyes and open that door.
Now, a big room, still dank and cramped on account of the company. Two of the Barrier Hills’ finest, Grog and Sixeyes, are on duty all hours of business. These guys don’t take home a wage to Momma in the village, they get paid in hawkstrider joints, rough pallets and job satisfaction. Grog, obese even for his breed… some kind of Ogrish paragon, the boy’s got three wives in the sticks. No wonder he ran away to the big city. Club in hand, brain in decline – born to the bouncing profession. The thin one, speaking relatively (they’re brothers after all) is the smarts of the triple act. The eponymous eyes are shared amongst two brainboxes and one outlandish pair of bone-rimmed spectacles. No-one’s ever bothered to ask whether they’re glassed or empty; Jubjub probably knows. Six’ll do the interrogating, hope you’ve got a password, a name, a bag of gold, a khorium bar, some fresh Devil Lotus. Merchandise, influence or currency are your ticket inside. Lack thereof is your ticket to a broken bone, stacking with each reapplication, and an ignominious visit to an uninhabited pond in Zangarmarsh. Be grateful for small mercies: there are some mean spirited fish out there.
If you can pay, you’re a client. That means you get the door opened for you. First thing you’ll see is the bar, dead ahead. It’s lower than the rest of this floor of the establishment, a sunken arrangement. Those long, broad stairs lead up to some special events, I can tell you. But you’re thirsty. Walk straight ahead, keep your eyes on the bar, you might not make it otherwise, distractions abound. The Den isn’t what I’d call a demonic joint: you don’t get a six-armed back rub or a wingtip sole-tickle. A few of the employees have a trace though, meaning Jubjub must source them from some pretty marginal locations. Budding horns, strip of a tail, extra eye here, there, who knows where? Catch one with yours and signal them over, it’s just like any busy place, but with a crowd like this you better exert a little more chutzpah than otherwise to get service.
The bar itself is a curious arrangement. It’s salvage from an old church or something, full size organ, pipes and all. Guts are gone with the keys and pedals, but the structure’s sound enough. Up in the gods, faceless employees titrate ogrebrew, rotgug, grog, moonshine, scouring the tubes down to a foaming skull-flagon. The vessels are an indulgence, museum pieces, no drama there… I worry more about what’s coming down those pipes. For the fastidious among us, stick to the bottles: there’s a vintage or two lurking about in the cellars but don’t try asking for one until you’re regular. Count yourself lucky you get to break the seals on the bottle yourself.
While you get settled at the bar, let me tell you about the proprietor. You’re already in possession of his name, rare for his kind. Names got power, as the cliché goes. Imagine your typical sidekick imp. Wide mouth, to fit the teeth and talk. Ears rough like bark, twitching, tuning in to anything but commands. Sunken eyes, watching from within like a billiard ball fixating you from a pocket; maybe a spark in them which reminds you they’re stuck close to a brain. So far, so Nether. Beats me if it’s magic or basic grafting, but his skin isn’t a maelstrom of pocks and ragged edges, just fine-wrinkled like wet sand patterns from tide-out time. Then you get to his bespoke attire. If you ever had an unlucky break, and got to trading insults with a netherling, you’d know an absence of taste when you heard it. That’s why I’m glad those creeps burning a path after their dark masters all over Outland are usually bare-breasted. Jubjub’s different. Between the clean cut squares of his bleached-felhide net jerkin, his flames wriggle almost harmoniously. Matching waistcoat and trousers in black netherweave, cut well to fit, always immaculate. Some jewellery that divides opinion: a reminder of his hoards, or secret wards against enemies only he knows? One ostentatious diamond stud, big as a fingernail, draws the eye to his lower left fang. He adorns his claws with inscribed, heavy rings of dark iron, fel iron and khorium, and baubles of gold, mithril and eternium hang from those head-wings he’s got. Anyway, you’ve got the general impression, a class act, turned out well, knows his stuff, distinctive, atypical. He’s often on the premises, so chances are you’ll get the chance to meet him if you end up here regular.
The gig is spread over three floors. The one you’re on now handles catering and refreshments, bar down here, up top mess hall west half, fine dining east. They’ve got some good soups brewing, but keep your eyes off other folks’ grub. Some things keep kicking long after they’ve been served at table. In each corner there’s a stairwell with big, broad tombstone-steps, more museum pieces. They should stick up a few signposts with vices and their corresponding arrows, because you can find most of the stuff you’d want to relax with in one corner or another. Downstairs is towards the dark, first up is a hall filled with a hundred three by three doors, stacked up in the walls. Some of the hot spots in the basement aren’t for an unsuspecting malchick on their first visit to Jubjub’s, let your imagination do a little work. I’ll give you a primer to the saunas and soft rooms another time. Surmounting another flight brings you to the gaming rooms, a real coin-collecting op for Jubjub. Wheels, cards, dice, snail racing, pet fighting, knifey-knifey… the list goes on, and there’s plenty of space for innovations. You can idle your youth and fortune away here like waiting for your mates while high on blackened basilisk, and many, clear as day, are doing just that.
Now’s your chance to scope some of the barflies. Half the vets of the East Kingdom Wars seem to be drinking their retirements away in this place, oftentimes myself included. Counting from booth number one, first on the left as you enter the bar, round five spaces to six, you can make out through the intimate darkness a figure who’s more recognisable through stature than profile. Hard to recognise outside of armour, but that’s the very same Ace hanging in portrait-form throughout Stormwind and whose likeness hangs inconspicuously, in pendant form round many a lady’s neck. He’ll have company. Back at the bar, you’ll see one gentleman drinking alone. I once saw him rip hellfire through hordes of Black Rock orcs, kill an enraged tauren in hand to hand combat with his mageblade, command a unit of disciplined ‘locks on a path of destruction and conquest. It doesn’t take many guesses to work out how power like that comes and goes, pacts, pacts and more pacts. In the end though, it was weakness that strikes down legend and layabout alike: bartered his soul for the love of a blood elf aspirant. Now Seniath is the thrall and his protégé wreaks havoc through Outland.
There’s a lot more fame round the venue, but let me get back to Jubjub. History isn’t a thread, or even many threads, at best, it’s innumerable chains of gaseous, heterogeneous stories, doubling up and contradictory. How does an imp end up running an enterprise of this nature? Rumour has it he killed his master. Found him dead drunk in a bordello with two elf boys, finished him off with a sharpened letter opener. Took all but three gold pieces for the soul to pay the ferryman, flogged and traded his trinkets for favours, freedoms and capital, and set up shop in downtown Shattrath. Don’t know how a little guy like him gets out on his own, but I guess if you’ve spent the best part of eternity in the company of demons, you know a thing or two about contacts and contracts. I’ll hold my hands up though, the Packrats couldn’t do a better job of fostering such ill-repute, and they had debauchery down to a fine art. They say he learned from the best, and one thing’s for sure: Jubjub’s got it all worked out.
All this time you’ve been looking and listening, the drink’s cooling in front of you and the coins are long overdue. Just tell them to put it on my tab. The name’s Skep.