June 13th, 3AC
A quiet, subdued ring of semi-adults sat in a ring of stone platforms overlooking a central dais sporting a shallow pool of water. Like statues, they sat without discussion or fidgets, lost in their thoughts.
Then the final drum beat spoke, announcing the hour. A moment passed, then the pool bulged downward before leaping up. And up. And up some more. Twisting and twining about itself the plume of water rose to five-plus feet in height before expanding into the shape of a man.
Or the shape of a Timothy, to be precise. Colors bled into the clear water, clouding and solidifying until he stepped off the water. He let his eyes circle the room briefly, taking in the filled second row, but empty first. The new intake wasn’t present.
With practiced grace, the students stood and silently bowed. Holding it for a full second before taking their seats again. It was a bit formal for Timothy's taste, but he'd surrendered with what he hoped was grace. Without respect why would they listen? Without respect, why would he bother?
“Welcome,” Timothy spoke, a sympathetic smile on his face. “I trust everyone had an enjoyable day yesterday?”
The faces in front of him were still mostly pale and gaunt with exhaustion while the eyes spoke of shock and disquiet.
“Sit for a minute, ch-” He paused, then continued. “students.” They were blooded now, they would never be children again.
“You've seen the elephant now, and not the pink one. And you will never be the same. I’d apologize for the loss of your childhood, but I have no more choice in the matter than you.”
“Our world is not so gentle as to allow you power and status without responsibility. And part of that is this next lesson. Because I've taught you how to find, harvest and use mana. I’ve even taught you how to kill with it, and the pleasure of looting what you kill. Now we will talk about something equally important. When not to.”
“Today we talk about The Hunter's Creed. Of two houses, each alike in dignity-” No reaction? Who was teaching these… Oh, right. He shook his head sadly, “Alight, two teams, both filled by mostly decent people and a priceless flower.”
“Fully mature, three measly petals and a pistol are worth 10 in metal, and a single plant can grow as many as three flowers.” Timothy grinned as dollar signs finally broke through the clouds of depression.
“Now, the Dracula Vampira Orchid- yes, that really is its name. No, we didn’t name it that, some old-world scientist did. And yes, he was probably a pompous ass. But for all that, it's deserving of a fancy name. When grown in the wild, untouched by aspects of domestication or gods forbid the hot house, a single petal in a full cauldron of the normal ingredients can give healing potion a blood replenishment effect.”
“It's also one of the few things that can be used to purify Bat meat, though it’s too valuable to waste on anything below top Tier 2. A single pistil in 20 pounds of meat can remove the blood poisons endemic to that species.”
“Now, before the change it took about 8 years to mature. Now it's somewhere between 2 and 4. When the first team found this beauty, it wasn't there yet. The buds were visible, but hadn’t opened yet.”
“They marked the location with a beacon, a stick marked with their personal signs. It's a combination sign and a locator. With your own sign on the stick, you can find your way back. As long as you get close enough to pick it up.”
“Now, not too long after, along came our second set of contestants! I won't get into the debate on whether they saw the beacon, or if it matters. We aren’t exactly kids in a lunch line to whine about being there first. Those are important questions, but not the thrust of this story.”
“No, here the poor dumb bastards not only picked the partially opened flowers, they also dug up the orchid, roots and all.”
The murmurs of shock and outrage that rang through the room gave Timothy some much-needed relief. The murder hobo trend could be addicting. “Now in their defense, they took a chunk of dirt with it. They kept it safe, watered and alive all the way back to Runehold.”
“And presented it to the Green Mother. From their own testimonies under Truth, they didn’t recognize the plant, just the mana density, and not knowing what on the plant was valuable, they took the whole thing. They hoped to get a good price but weren’t going to gouge her. They truly did mean well.”
“Unfortunately, these under-educated contestants didn't realize several things. First, as I mentioned earlier, the flowers are only useful when grown wild. The aspects that any plant grown in a pot gets conflict quite badly with their desired use.”
“And that's assuming you can even get the damn things to grow, a task few indeed are capable of.” Jenney’d been mad enough to spit nails and that team was treated to a paint-peeling lecture on touching things they didn't understand. One that lasted for well over an hour and left the team bruised. Mentally if not physically.
“Second, the plant can regrow its flowers if you're careful with harvesting. They not only didn’t make any coin, they ruined a renewable resource. I won't get into the trouble it caused.” It had been an absolute shit show with accusations of theft, competing with protests that you can't own the wilds on top of grandstanding by a lot of completely uninvolved people who should have known better.
“But out of that troubled soil, a great plant grew. You see, the jungle is a vast place. Filled with a wonderous variety of valuable plants. If it's not impossible to recognize them all, then it's damn close. Much less have the skill and knowledge to harvest them properly or to guess their worth.”
“What hunting team has time to sit in a classroom to learn herbalism? To spend who knows how many hundreds of hours memorizing the thousands of known species? It’s not likely, is it? Nor is it their style. To survive out there, you think, act and react fast. There isn’t much time to sit and go through a long list of plants.”
“It’s no surprise then that they have a bit of a locust mentality. Any and everything that has large mana concentrations gets plucked on the go, and sort it out later. In their defense, density of mana and meaning are a good indicator for value, and if no one ever picks them to check, then we'll never learn what’s available.”
“Even if a team recognizes the plant, and knows it isn't ripe yet, few have the skills or knowledge to determine when it will be ripe and they can’t sit around and wait. Then like in this case, what happens if someone else stumbles by? Person or beast? Many a short-sighted person has figured a low price for a half-ripe plant is better than the full price for nothing.”
“And while that attitude is understandable, it’s also incredibly short-sighted. Those herbs aren’t just for individual benefit, they are a resource that our Holds desperately need. And that brings us back to the Hunters Creed. It's a compromise between practicality and long-term husbandry.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“It starts with The Greenmother’s Herbal being distributed at cost to every Hold and continues with free Herbal training. Some memorization, regrettably. But more about plants in general. How to interpret the mana and meaning that make them up, and how to see where it is concentrated. How to tell when it’s ripe or will ripen. How to safely and with an eye towards the future, harvest it. And if all that fails you, how to record as much as you can to sell to someone who can.”
“And in exchange for all of that, you all will agree to a gentleman's agreement to abide by the code.”
“You can read the exact details for yourself later, it's on a stele at the exit of every Hold and Threshold. But I'll hit the highlights:
If you don't know how to do it right, don't do it at all.
For plants that you have to uproot, you need to leave one in four.
If there is only one plant, and it's not an annual, then you can harvest a piece of it, like a flower or some leaves. Avoid harming the plant and leave something to grow back.
If you aren't knowledgeable enough to do any of the above, then you can mark it and either sell the location or pay an expert to retrieve it with you later.”
“Now, if you are like me, you immediately want to know how we can possibly enforce such a code. The answer is, we mostly don't. It's a gentleman's agreement. That means it’s not enforced by lawkeepers but by shopkeepers. And teammates. And barkeeps and all the other little jobs that make life pleasant between fights.”
“If you see someone pick or in possession of an immature herb, or an immature anything valuable, you get to call foul. And if Truth supports you, we all blacklist the SOB.”
“There is a small portion that does involve law-keepers, though it's up to each hunter group to bring it up. If you're out and about when you see a plant with a beacon on it, you can still harvest it if it's ripe and time-sensitive. But you need to both declare it and discuss it with the team that did the marking. Since they didn't return to harvest it on time, they lose ownership, but depending on the situation you might need to hand them a portion. Again, it’s a very hand-wavey thing. You can’t just put a stick on everything and collect.”
“For that matter, we regularly find old beacons from teams that have moved on. If the enchantments on it have faded, then they no longer have a claim.”
“It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. And it represents a commitment to better the community instead of a cutthroat nickel and dime behavior.”
“Going back to our story, the lost value of those wasted Orchids wasn’t just the coin. The ripened plant could have saved dozens of lives and offered growth opportunities to a few more. It's a promise to our future not to waste such opportunities again.”
“Considering you are part of that future, I hope all of you will give it your active support. Destroying resources isn't something any of us can afford.” Timothy hid a sigh. If they only knew how many people he had to get on board to teach this lesson. It was a bit too close to politics for his oaths to allow without permission.
“Now, it's not just avoiding waste either.”
“We, a large number of Origins myself included, protect and preserve rare species. From plants to dangerous and nasty beasts. Why? Because of enchantments. Materials that relate symbolically to a spell can greatly empower enchantments and we don't know which materials will be the next gold rush. So like me, I hope you will preserve them, just in case.”
“Of course, that doesn't mean you can’t hunt or harvest. It doesn’t mean that we need thousands of plants or beasts. There’s a trick if you’re good enough.”
Timothy waved a hand and projected the area around his hands outward, like a zoom function for sight. Then pulled out a chunk of rock and a deeply dished pottery bowl, well covered in runes and geometric patterns.
“Anyone know what this is?” Timothy tossed the rock to his left, grateful that he'd thought ahead enough to make it a small rock when Owl caught it with his chest. Scrambling the boy snagged it before it hit the floor, glanced at it for a moment then, confused spoke. “It's a common rock? Granite?”
“Yes and yes. As common as can be. Toss it back please. Good. Granite is plentiful and easy to find. But imagine for a moment that this was the last chunk. The last piece of granite in existence and I need granite to cast some special spell.”
There was a great deal of doubt pushing against his skin, no surprise. “Have a bit of patience, this isn't an easy trick.”
Holding the rock in one hand he placed two fingers from his other hand into the bowl, and closed his physical eyes, dropping his will into the Field. He took his time descending, no need for nausea.
Bit by bit the threads, swirls, rapids, smells and a thousand other seemingly random inputs slid through his mind's eye, before being discarded, filtered out by sheets of glowing runes that expanded from his mind palace. Eventually, leaving only the simple rock and the bowl that contained it.
This close it spoke to him, of Durability, Construction, Stone and Indurate. He could see the bits of mana that flowed together in an unbroken whole. Not blocks that could be assembled, but a naturally formed, interconnected flow of its own.
Many minor aspects peeked from behind that latticework. They were numerous and difficult to detect much less measure. Too difficult to do off the cuff, but that's why there was lesson prep.
At least it was just granite. He'd built with it, enchanted it, hell even cooked on slabs of it! He knew this stone. And that knowledge, of its aspects and its story, was what he dredged up. Forced to the front of his mind.
Then he carefully teased out a thread of stone mana from the background clutter. Easy to do when they were in an underground stone room. He split it, dragging a portion into the bowl to sit while he carefully transformed some of the rest into durability and the aspect of time he often called Indurate. Bit by bit he teased out pieces of mana and either directly added them to the construct he was stewing or transformed them in a cascading series of sub-constructs.
Frequently referring back to the original stone to validate his efforts. Till at last, maybe five minutes later he released his focus and carefully drew back. Slowly ascending out of the Field and back into the real. Then at last he opened his eyes and removed his hand from the bowl. A bowl that now contained a BB-sized chunk of granite.
Timothy looked around at his shocked class, suddenly proud of them. After several minutes unsupervised, they hadn’t been screwing off or asleep. “Mana and matter are linked, remember. Where one goes, the other follows.” While that was true, it undersold the difficulty of shuffling from one to the other. And unlike the elegant E=MC^2, the amount of mana a particular bit of matter was linked to changed from one moment to the next.
You had to really understand both to pull this off. To an exhaustingly detailed degree. A flawed understanding wouldn't create flawed material. It would just fizz out or explode in your face. It was perfection or nothing.
“Now, you might say that's a lot of time for a tiny amount of material. And you would be correct. We can speed it up a bit by destructively using related reagents. A similar stone or material more closely aligned with the desired aspects. But even then, it's still a time-consuming, painfully tedious task.” He looked around seriously.
“And a hard one at that. It's far more efficient, in mana, time or coin, to just buy the material. Pay someone else to find and harvest the plant rather than spending a week or even a month synthesizing it grain by grain. Even for rare materials. Ignoring the fact that you still have to study them enough to understand, the more complex they are the harder it is.”
“Still, if this is the only way to get a rare resource that is desperately needed, then we make do. As long as we have a sample, and the skills to study it, we won't have spells become obsolete due to a lack of materials.”
“Now, I'm sure one of you is thinking it. I know I did. Why don't we have an assembly line of guardians in the basement somewhere producing metal coins?”
He waited a moment as heads nodded up and down the room. “Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Understanding is key and that means Pathfinders only. Guardians don't have the perception to see the material on the level needed. They can’t, not won’t, can’t study them as they would need to.”
“For that matter not all Pathfinders can manage it. So unless you want to be the one stuck in a basement somewhere, try to protect our resources hmm? I'll also point out for those of you who are suddenly considering making a few metal coins for pocket change, don't.”
He grinned, his eyes darting from face to face. Stopping when he spotted a few familiar signs. Petulance and mulishness mostly. “I could give you some morality tale. How faking currencies can crash an economy, starve the populace and whatnot. And that's all true. It's also beside the point. You're not good enough to pull off granite and metal is an order of magnitude harder.”
“Anything complex enough to be valuable is. And frankly, by the time you are capable, you’ll have many other better ways to make coin.”
Timothy grinned at them. “And that idea right there is half of why the Hunters Creed works. We make it easier and more profitable to follow along than to break it. You might want to think about that before you start writing up arbitrary laws for your eventual Holds, hmm?”