Some might consider it a breach of etiquette to speak of such matters with a stranger, but you've no reason to deny the captain of a story - and as a yet young man, from a peaceful and stable realm, there is but one thing you can think of.

"Though it is no tale of war, I've no doubt that my time in the Universitat Impériale in Mascaloma to be the most interesting of times, before I had embarked on this campaign."

"Ah, I've heard of it. It is no cheap or easy task to gain entry to this school, I have heard."

"Indeed, Captain Demaro. To enroll oneself in the Imperial University requires either great influence or vast wealth. Indeed, save for those wealthiest of burgher sons from the lineages of bankers and commercial magnates from Bagra, my inheritance as Viscount in a Princely State was of no great notice. It was only the unordinary wealth of Uharta, and the honor of Grandée that made it so my enrollment was possible."

You stop for a moment, taking a sip from your goblet of wine.

"Mascaloma is a city of unending sprawl. Without a doubt, the largest of the human race. Hundreds of markets, thousands of taverns...to be a young man of the blood, with great wealth in his pockets and weeks away from the prying eyes of one's parents...it is not hard to see how many of my colleagues held little control over themselves. Under the law of the crown, students hold the status of the Clergy. That is to say...they are all but immune to common crime. Only a tribunal of the church may condemn them."

"I've already heard of the lot. Common ruffians, is the word around, dueling and drinking and doing as they will upon the cities they infest." says the captain, rubbing his beard. Around you, men continue to drink and eat, engrossed in their own conversations.

"You've no error there, captain, though it be the sons of merchants that are the worst of the lot. They've no Noblesse Oblige binding their reputation. I had met a band, once, who had no greater love than bringing others into their petty fights. One eve, I had been in a tavernhouse, studying a book. They had approached me, claiming my studies of Agrastus to be outdated and irrelevant, calling me an Antiquarian. When I had told them it was their nature as mere exchangers of money that stopped them from understanding the finer works, the lots drew their knives! Drunk as they were, I've no doubt they would not have had the good sense to stay their hands."

"So what had your lordship done, then? Cut down the bastards as they should have been?"

"Nay, Captain. I'd not had carried a weapon, back then. It was this campaign where I first claimed a life; though what I did was as close as one could get. When the man approached, I slammed by drinking glass on the cur and ran. As I've heard, the shards had cut so deeply upon him he went blind on both eyes."

"Hah!" Lucon laughs, slamming his tankard on the table. "It's what a merchant bastard deserves. Thou've a great spirit, milord..."