Pyotr swaggers in and signs the contract, taking a seat.
The argument breaks out and Phineas sits aghast, looking back and forth between the inexplicably daring, adventurous looking chamberlain, the suddenly belligerent but seemingly sober dwarf, Laura, and the robed alchemist who seems to have fallen asleep leaning back on a chair. They bicker back and forth, exchanging insults, and then the threat of a duel. Phineas makes a sort of choked sound from his throat, the sound of a man who desperately wishes to intervene in an incredibly awkward situation but cannot seem to find the words to do it.
The tense situation escalates. Voices get louder, gesticulations more animated. All of a sudden, it comes to a head as, simultaneously, the dwarf paces across the room to grab the chamberlain-adventurer and Laura breaks into a completely deadpan stream of consciousness, speaking loudly to be heard. She recites a litany of bizarre claims all strung together ranging from being the childhood friend of a man a good fifty years her senior to having been his best friend in spite of them meeting only five years ago and corresponding almost entirely through letters. It's like Waiting For Godot in miniature as she speaks in a deadpanned uninflected stream while the dwarf lunges to seize the adventurer's collar [5 vs 1] and yanks him forward. The chamberlain topples into the dwarf, soundly smacking his chin into the small drunkard's pate and howling with pain and outrage. Laura babbles as they dance and twist in an awkward grapple towards the door.
It is as if Phineas Cladoc awoke this morning only to step into a surreal nightmare world populated by inexplicable clowns who cannot have come from his own.
"ALL OF YOU SHUT UP, IMMEDIATELY!" Phineas jerks to his feet, lets out a noise somewhere between a grunt and a shriek, and [5] flips the enormous room-spanning table on it's side. The floor shakes and an entire row of chairs (plus Laura and Falvar) scatters, crashing against the wall. "Just BE QUIET! SIT DOWN AND COOPERATE LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE!" he bellows, with a surprising amount of bass for a man his size. He walks over to where Drubjarred and Phineas are wiggling just before the threshold of the door and grabs both of them, [6] yanking back hard. The flopping ne'er-do-wells fly into him and the three of them end up sprawled on the floor with a decent distance between them.
At this point, Drubjarred, Phineas, and Pyotr are lying on the floor in front of the door. Laura is [5] standing near the tipped over table, having narrowly managed to dodge out of her chair and escape any harm, and Falvar is [1] not actually visible to the casual observer, because he is unconscious and buried under a pile of chairs. Pyotr's jaw hurts and he bit a small hole in his tongue.