Chapter 4: Aftermath Part 2

Nixen was displeased. They had grabbed the rest of their gear from the room the dwarf was using at the AG inn. It wasn’t a lot. A short-hafted battle axe with an overly large head and a travel pack that could be mounted behind the saddle.

Omara and Winnie had been ready to move as soon as he had informed them a quest had been accepted. The two women had seen the notice come up on their seals and eagerly accepted. They both saw the profit potential was clear.

A possible lower-level infant or developing dungeon, with interlopers present, room and board covered with a retainer, was a good quest. Even if the trip were not ludicrously profitable, it would help.

They all needed a completed quest on the books to advance in the guild. Cato, on the other hand, was hungover and moving slowly. He had been oblivious to the opportunity.

Cato was a lazy bastard regarding anything unrelated to activities that would entertain him, make a lot of money for little effort, or preferably both. Omara had suggested a solution with a spell she had been working on, mental magic.

Nixen had warned her that any mental magic on a sapient was forbidden without consent. She had nodded and dropped it.

Nixen chivvied Cato out of the room he had used while Cato grumbled and held his head. Then, the paladin took a mental inventory of the gear that would be needed and snagged the rogue’s pack to ensure the scoundrel couldn’t come back to the room with an excuse.

He would for sure fall asleep again. He rummaged briefly through the pack to make sure the needed supplies were present, including the caplace. Nixen pushed Cato out the door once the gear was accounted for.

Nixen thought each member could attain the next rank if kept on task to complete more quests properly. Keep your party alive, achieve the objective, and keep the client happy. Growing the guild’s reputation helped the party’s reputation, after all.

Once Omara, Winnie, and Cato were all apprentices, they wouldn’t need direct oversight unless it was deemed required by Nixen. A few more commoners having an entry-level position of authority, with voting rights measured at three-fifths, in the guild would help it as a whole. Nixen thought about that some more.

‘Except Cato, I’m keeping him with me until I can straighten him out some more.’

In the spirit of the apprentice goal, the paladin was willing to push every Gil’die to overcome their flaws. Even if sometimes it felt as if pushing was all the stout dwarf was doing.

Each of the flaws preventing them from advancing boiled down to not providing enough benefit to the guild. That and needing to cap at least one interloper each. Those had been getting more scarce in the past few months.

Most of the advancement to apprentice was based on the cap requirement. Then time in service to the guild. One could reach journeyman rank within a year or two after apprentice by regularly completing the guild quests.

The catch was that certain quests were worth more to the guild than some of the monetary rewards that were brought in. A flat setup fee of gold was given to the guild for each quest. The amount varied based on the quest’s difficulty, which didn’t amount to much when all you could do was fetch quests or minor mob clearing.

Political influence or a reputation affecting the guild positively would help advancement tremendously. The setup fees took care of most monetary needs for the guild’s administration and upkeep. That and the small transaction fee every junior guild member had to pay for damn near every service offered.

Another catch: they could only charge that extra setup fee because of the guild’s reputation for efficiency. Any NPCs could kill some interlopers, but not without the lord of the local area spending more on equipment and training than what the guild charged.

The Gil’dies didn’t care about the setup fee for the quest. It came out of the pocket of who was hiring them. On the other hand, the guild cared about the source of every copper.

Anything found or looted by the party completing the quest belonged to the group who retrieved it. They could give a portion or all to the guild to contribute more.

Catch number three. That extra contribution wasn’t much in the Guild masters’ eyes unless it was affordably precious. If the party gave too much, they wouldn’t be able to provide for themselves the same training and equipment the Lords didn’t want to pay for. Being able to budget as an adventurer was a crucial skill.

Naturally, the Gil’dies could buy equipment from the guild, but the wealthier members usually snapped up the good stuff for their more profitable students. Or by the Noble families.

Catch number too many. The guild didn’t offer discounts until the later ranks anyway as an incentive to keep advancing.

There were some ‘shortcuts,’ but the best way was to do the work. Too high of a reputation, and a group may be called on for a quest they weren’t allowed to refuse. They could be viewed as the only ones capable of finishing it and “come down with the deadsies,” as Master Clemency insisted on calling it.

A good reputation was just a reputation. Real skill was learned with blood and tears, usually.

Nixen had explained this more than once to Cato and the entire group. Omara and Winnie understood why they did so many quests, sometimes for little personal reward, and needed little extra instruction. Winnie was especially aware of some of the costs.

She had paid them with her last group as she was the only survivor of that mortally expensive lesson. Their journeyman had abandoned her group in the middle of a deadly encounter. He had been censured for the action, but that hadn’t saved her other party members.

Cato’s true motivation, however, couldn’t be roused unless it was immediately lucrative. Once he caught the sense of actual profit, his ambition kicked in. The epiphany Cato experienced first as a child was easily summed up as, “Wealth is good for your health.”

Nixen sighed as Cato continued to grumble as they entered the stables. Finally, they saddled up their horses and met the rest of the group in front of the tavern. Brynnly was mounted near the two young women, an impatient look on his dark face.

“About time,”

Chimed Winnie as she trotted up to the group on her horse. She was scritching the juvenile owl, Pellet, sitting on her shoulder.

“Thought for sure he would have slipped away from you and gone back to sleep. That was a significant amount of booze he was tying on last night.”

Nixen grunted in response as Cato scowled at the burly woman playing with her owl. Omara, on her horse, spoke up without looking from her tome of spells,

“There’s a spell for that.”

Cato scratched his chin and asked,

“For drinking or sleeping?”

“Sobering you up and cleaning you. Do you want it or not?”

Cato scowled at her but eventually nodded grudgingly.

Omara smirked and closed her book. Then, staring intently at the dark-haired rogue, she started to mutter just as darkly. Cato dyed it black as bouncy blond curls were more eye-catching than needed in his role.

Omara started to weave her slender fingers in intricate patterns and muttered some more ass she cast the spell,

“Applesaucery…”

Cato stiffened as she finished. Then, dismounting from his horse with a look of panic, he jerkily ambled over to Omara’s horse and pulled a suspiciously ripe, green-colored apple from the saddle bags.

He jittered over to the watering trough in front of the tavernApple squishing slightly in his fist. Brynnly and Nixen looked on with amusement mixed with disapproval. Winnie finally gave in and chuckled as Cato babbled,

”Now Omara, I’m sure there’s a spell for everything you can think of. No reason to try them on me.”

“I’m not trying this one out. I made it for this purpose a while ago…you agreed anyway. So I’m helping you learn.”

Nixen gave a frown at this phrasing and made a note to remind her that mental magic was dangerous territory to play around with. She could get them all killed if she wasn’t careful.

Cato cried out as he drove the apple repeatedly onto the top of his head until his face was covered in bits of smashed apple. It slid nastily down the sides of his face and head.

He then took hold of the edge of the watering trough and dunked himself repeatedly in the water. Once he had the appearance of being more awake and the bits of apple no longer splattered across his face, he looked up, gasping for air, at Omara, who was laughing into her hand loudly.

“Was that needed?”

He continued gasping.

“Yes,”

Omara replied,

”You were being saucy.”

Brynnly and Nixen groaned. A grin and bow was Omara’s response as Winnie let out vindictive, belly-shaking laughter in reply.

“Don’t be sour about it! She’s just working out her morning tartness! Hahahahahahaa!”

Cato looked furious momentarily and then seemed to deflate as he wiped the excess water from his face and head. He spoke as he moved to then remounted his horse,

”Fine. If we’re done with that example of why I shouldn’t trust magic, can we get moving? That didn’t help my hangover. Now I’m wet and hungover.”

“You smell better, though.”

Brynnly, underwhelmed by the unprofessional antics he had witnessed, grunted as he nodded to the south road leading out of town and up the sloping hill.

“About four hours for us to get back to Red Adder county if’n we don’t dawdle. We can put you all up in the local inn until morning. I’ll show your party to the site of the mob incursion in the morning.”

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Winnie frowned at the non-descriptive name and asked,

”You don’t know what mobs we’ll be facing? All the quest mentioned was at least ten burrower types. That doesn’t narrow it down much for us.”

Brynnly looked back over his shoulder at Winnie,

“If we had the PCs available to find that out safely, we wouldn’t have hired you lot.”

Winnie and Nixen shared a grim look as Omara flipped her hand dismissively. She went back to reading her book as the group started out.

Cato yawned. Winnie had been with Nixen longer than the other two of their party. So they had some lengthy discussions as they rode. She asked the paladin what types of Lord couldn’t defend their territory properly but could still afford the AG.

They would have to take a measure of the lord or lady after they arrived and see what kind of ruler they were. Nixen tried to explain how the economics of it worked in some counties, but he was a paladin. They were not known for mathematical acuity. At least Jeph’s paladins weren’t.

A ruler made mistakes. However, the circumstances surrounding those mistakes could show some of who they were. Nixen and Winnie could only cast judgment once they had more information about what was happening in Red Adder county.

Brynnly, properly annoyed by this open questioning of his lord’s ability, kept leading the way out of the Guild town and down the road to Red Adder county.

The journey was uneventful to start. Passage of others still appeared unusually light on the small highway leading to their destination. However, it seemed to Brynnly that the day’s heat may not have been why the traffic was so light on his way to the outpost.

“News spread swiftly, and bad news has wings,”

He commented to the party as they traveled. He had an edgy look as he gazed at the woods around them.

“Whatever your party is going to hunt tomorrow, people in the surrounding lands are aware of it and want no part of it. It’s not good for the word to spread this far and fast.

“The NPCs are spooked. At least, I hope that’s why no one is on the road this time of day.”

The party of adventurers glanced at each other. This wasn’t uncommon with more significant mob migrations. A hidden dungeon appearing that threatened more than a small village would also be possible.

News like that was spread quickly, but word had only been passed today about the issue in red Adder. It made little sense that travel would be disrupted. The flyspeck villages between the Red Adder county line and Mediocropolis should have had at least a few farmers returning from a market in the small town.

Nixen replied tersely,

”Eyes on the clock, people, I don’t think this quest will be as straightforward as we hoped.”

The dwarf, Winnie, Omara, and even Cato readjusted in their saddles. They started paying closer attention to the surrounding countryside.

One of Cato’s hands strayed to the small crossbow slung off the side of his saddlebags so he could easily retrieve it. The lightweight weapon seemed to reassure him, or at least lessen the pounding in his head as he cocked and loaded the weapon.

Winnie was whispering to her juvenile owl in a carrying, musical tone. The owl listened briefly then, blinking slowly at the surrounding woods to either side of the road, launched from her shoulder.

It hooted softly and flew to keep pace with the party off to one side of the road. Nodding at the satisfaction that her friend would be helping keep a lookout, Winnie leaned over and snagged the top of a small sapling near the edge of the road.

Its roots seemed to slither free of the dirt without disturbing it. She continued to shape the sapling with her hands, the young wood of the sapling seeming to flow easily under ministrations. It shed its leaves gently as she fashioned the harmless tree into a spear with a wicked point.

Omara put away her tome and withdrew a wand from the satchel at her side. The air around her and Nixen thickened perceptively and shimmered with a soft light as she cast some spell that’s use wasn’t apparent to Brynnly.

Brynnly strung his bow, which wasn’t easy to do when riding. Nixen removed the axe from his belt and hung the loop at its handle over his saddle horn for easier retrieval. The oversized axe hanging from the undersized horse the dwarf rode seemed comical. Until the dwarf was charging with it in their hand, Winnie knew.

Then nothing happened. For the rest of their trip down the dusty road to Red Adder, nothing.

Nothing stirred on the side of the road or in front of them. Winnie and Omara seemed more stressed than upset over remaining vigilant the entire ride back. Nixen and Brynnly weren’t bored precisely but seemed to accept that this was how business was done sometimes.

Cato was displeased when they finally arrived at the village.

“Four hours!”

He raised his voice to the rest of the party as they drew up in front of the small local inn. Winnie fed her owl a struggling mouse she pulled from a pocket before sending the owl off into the nearby woods.

”We rode like harp strings for four hours and nothing!”

He looked to the Ranger and snarled,

“Maybe you’re an NPC ‘cause we rode the entire way here as if there was a real threat. All I see is road dust on us.”

Brynnly bristled before this accusation, but it was Nixen who responded,

”Shut it, Cato! Apologize now! Those NPCs are the ones we’re here to protect. We all were Npc’s once, APOLOGIZE!”

Brynnly didn’t look entirely satisfied as Cato mumbled in what could have generously been called an apologetic tone.

“Sorry.”

Choosing to take the apology rather than murder the sour little shit, he wanted his bed and supper after all; Brynnly nodded curtly to the rogue before turning to Nixen.

”Rooms are paid for. Stable your horse’s yourselves. There should be something left in the pot near the hearth. Mistress Cera is the inn keep and will tend to your needs till the job is done. I’ll be here at dawn to escort you to the site of the mobs.”

Nixen thanked the tall ranger. Then, the dwarf ushered the party to the stables, where the horses were rubbed down and put up for the night.

As they headed into the inn proper, the dwarf pulled the rogue to the side. The dwarf spoke to him in a severe tone as a wave sent Winnie and Omara inside to talk with the inn keep.

“Get your head out of your ass. We are on a quest, and you will behave in a way that reflects well on the AG.

If you can’t, I will have the after-action report show you can’t be trusted with the guild’s reputation. You will not be getting drunk tonight. We have a job to do in the morning.

Is that clear?”

Cato looked furious at the dressing down, but Nixen knew that the boy's reaction would have been bad had the confrontation come out in front of Brynnly. Even in front of the two young women, the rogue’s ego could have become a real problem.

Lazy as he was when there wasn’t money or fun involved, Cato was skilled for a novice with that crossbow and his daggers. He had little inkling of the trouble he would be in if he drew on a fellow guild member, though.

Nixen would have to fix that. As Cato puffed up and opened his mouth with an expectedly stupid, shortsighted comment, Nixen interrupted him.

“Open your ears and listen, Cato. I should have addressed this when you joined. I figured your uncle already had. Stop being an asshat.

Your safety, the reputation of the guild, and completing the job. Those three things, in that order, are what matters to a party member that is worth keeping alive.”

Cato opened his mouth angrily to interrupt.

“No, shut your mouth and listen. I am trying to teach you how to make money.’

Cato closed his mouth. His shock at the change of what he had thought Nixen was going to say plastered over his face like a cranky pet being sprayed in the face.

“Good, you seem to be listening. But, on the other hand, you seem driven by money. So who gets the best-paid quests? Parties that are alive to do so with a good rep.

Anytime you let a party member get hurt, it gets out. Anytime you piss off or slander an NPC, it gets out. Anytime you fuck up a quest, it…gets…out.”

“I thought paladins weren’t allowed to swear?”

“We can, for the right cause. Now, don’t interrupt anymore. I’m not done.”

If you do those three simple tasks, you will get better and more lucrative quests, and the cycle repeats. Advance in rank.”

Get to apprentice? You can then be in a party without a journeyman if you want. Lower fees, get a bigger share per member. So, more money. Faster advancement if you show you can be trusted without someone babysitting you. Partial voting rights on guild policy.”

Get to my rank? You can then start multiple parties if you want the headache of managing more than one. This means a kickback from the guild on top of a share of any successful quest rewards any of your parties gets. Get a better say in the guild’s policies and full voting rights. You get the right’s to more significant headaches but bigger rewards too.”

Nixen rubbed their temples. They were trying to cram an incomplete overview of guild policy into a single conversation, which usually took months or even years to sort out the finer details and etiquette. Finally, Nixen stopped rubbing their temples, almost finished with the lecture to the obstinate boy.

“Master? Well, they have far more duties required of them. You don’t need much detail beyond knowing you can sponsor newbies at master. The guild will give you more kickbacks if they keep advancing. And you are more than a few decades away from that, so focus on now.”

If you live, you make money. Does your party live? You make money.”

Get a bad rep for yourself or the guild? Then, no one will work with you, and your quests will never again go beyond cleaning stables because you…won’t…be…trusted.”

Nixen fell silent, glowering at the boy.

Cato wasn’t a lousy adventurer for a novice. But that chip on his shoulder and the bad habits he had started to portray would get people killed. So it was better to address these issues now.

The other skills of the rogue Cato wanted to be were being worked on. Some of Nixen’s tips as an experienced adventurer were helping him learn the very basics. His uncle had taught him some of the sneakier stuff before asking Nixen to take him on—a kind of informal sponsorship deal as a favor.

Cato recognized, surprisingly, his fault as he thought to himself,

’The lilliputians right. They are being an ass about it, but how can this help me?’

His mental hamster wheel visibly grinding away with squeaky noises as it turned, Cato responded to Nixen’s lecture,

“Alright. I’ve been an ass today. I’m sorry. Won’t make excuses neither. We get back to the outpost. You dock my pay half and set me up with Master Clemency for punitive training.”

Nixen stroked the beard flowing over the breastplate protecting the robust but short frame of the dwarf and replied,

“Now, why would I reward you with something you want for bad behavior? Even if it were for punishment, Master Clemency’s training would still be an introduction to a guild master.”

I can arrange that if you can keep it professional on this job. For full pay docked, not half. I’ll need to pay Master Clemency for his time.”

Cato considered this and then asked,

“And if I can’t?”

Nixen grinned in a way entirely inappropriate for a paladin,

“ You’ll get an introduction to a master still, and your pay will still only be docked half, but punitive training will be with Master Ian. His payment will be your despair.”

Cato blanched,

“That’s not fair! He’ll murder me!”

Nixen responded calmly with a sweet tone,

”Then do what we both want, sugar. Try to stay sober tonight. Master Ian can be a bear of a teacher.

Remember that our members are supposed to protect each other at almost any cost.”

The dwarf and the rogue headed into the inn, with the rogue loudly pleading for mercy and the dwarf with an air of a judge that has passed a sentence and will not allow further evidence to sway them.

Or precedence, or even the heartfelt plea for requested clemency. As they entered the inn, the door swung shut behind them, and the sounds became muffled from outside.

Several miles down the road, the way the party had come from, the underbrush for hundreds of yards rustled. They swayed like many bodies were brushing against them, moving towards Red Adder county.

Tomorrow would bring what it would bring for all involved, as for the job that awaited them in the morning. The consequences, short-term and long, would be determined. A majority of them nasty, entirely unforeseen by most of those involved.

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