Searing 25, 122
The Saint Cherikof Public Club
The Public Club, as the people who had spent enough money to be members called it, was named after a doctor and, in his honor, built to the highest standards of sanitation.
For example, it was well-known that breathing in too much city air could result in the contraction of consumption, so the Public Club had been constructed a hundred miles east of Gel'Grandal and its smokestacks and factories, accessible only via private train or dismal back-country road. Likewise, it is useful to remember that open air and high ceilings are essential to proper aeration, to which end the entire structure was built of the green marble known as serpentine, quarried abroad and brought back to the Imperium by freighter at enormous cost, and built with double-high floors. As for exercise, it is well-understood that undue exertion ages a gentleman prematurely, and so the hallways were practically awash in servants to ensure that the members and their guests were not inconvenienced in any medical or practical sense.
Finally, of course, it is plain to any member of the medical community that many terrible ailments fester among the impoverished populations- as such, there were none of those permitted here either.
An annual membership to the Public Club was prized among the inhabitants of Gel'Grandal. The combination of great expense and inconvenient location made it a perfect way to casually announce that your family's fortunes were burgeoning, and the opportunity to connect to some of the most influential courtiers of the Palace of Spires probably made the membership a bargain for the purposes of a great family. Valentin's family, however, was not a great family, and he could never have afforded a membership on a government wage, not without an incredible volume of embezzlement.
Instead, he simply turned up from time to time and told the concierge that OIR was conducting a surprise inspection; a mutually beneficial fiction which rewarded hard-working government servants with the occasional weekend getaway far above their station and permitted the Public Club a certain leeway when it came to providing their membership with... duty-free entertainments.
Although he was happy to impress himself upon the Public Club's hotel services, Valentin nevertheless tossed the small fee to the boy standing at the entry to the Public Club's shooting gallery. The large range, located just before the curtilage of the forest preserve, was technically a charitable entity, set up by the founder of Saint Cherikof just before the man died in agony from an infected gallbladder, and so the payment for entry and use of the facilities was minimal, and the staff were experienced and professional. Valentin liked that.
The Range had a variety of rifles which could be borrowed for a coin, but Valentin took his position at a booth with his pistol instead. He wasn't a hunter; if he needed to make a shot at long range, he wouldn't have a rifle at hand.
BANG! BANG!
