“The first place I go to whenever I enter a new place is the tavern. Getting a drink is a time honoured tradition. What? Information, oh yeah, that’s important too I guess.”~Dun Stonethrow, Dwarven traveller
Bernin entered the tavern with little hope. She had been to cities for most of her life and spoke to many citizens that explained the nature of the wilds. It hadn’t massively influenced her or so she thought. Still, she felt a sense of trepidation when walking into the tavern. It looked to be barely standing with exposed nails and misshapen planks visible from the outside.
The inside of the tavern was a complete scene change for Bernin, she had expected there to be maybe a few tables and chairs, maybe even a bar. What treated her in the tavern was a space completely filled with tables and chairs, so much so that she wondered how the servers even got to some of them. It was relatively empty at this hour, there were 4 other patrons inside, with the assumed proprietor behind the bar. Bernin made her way over to him, the rotund man stood with his back to her. As she approached he broke the silence.
“Hold on for a minute, I’m installing the new cask. Please take a seat and get comfortable, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Bernin did as instructed and sat down on one of the stools. It was hard, but comfortable. It wasn’t the worst one she had sat on by far. For one, this stool wasn’t wet. Taking a look around the room, she took in the other guests. Some were just focussed on their meal, one however, was also looking at her. The woman in the corner made eye contact with her, soon after breaking eye contact and going back to her meal.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
The proprietor was back and greeted her.
“Ah, good afternoon. What can I get for you? A room, some lunch?”
“No thank you, I’m actually planning to move on today. My employer wants me to go to ‘Rock and a Hard Place’. They even gave me a tracking compass. However, it appears to be out of range. I’m hoping that someone here can help me on my way.”
“Ah yes, A peculiar village. It’s not that far, but I've heard that mages cannot find it due to the area. It interferes with magic as they say. I’ll go grab you a map, I believe we have one that is reasonably up to date.”
As he made his way into the back Bernin heaved a sigh. She knew, intellectually, that the north had many magical issues due to the ruins, but she hadn’t expected to run into something like this, so early on. Magical interference was a difficult thing to quantify and had many applications. Bernin even had a spell that caused it, it was taught to any battle mage. While countering spells was usually a difficult process due to the inherent issues of knowing what element to cast to counter the cast of the opponent. Causing a burst of interference might even explode the spell onto the caster, doing massive damage. It wasn’t her favourite spell, but she had used it to great effect over the years.
She wondered what an entire valley of interference would do. Maybe it was time to practise some more, she had to be prepared. This did bring up some questions about the mage that would settle there though. Why would someone choose to live in a valley where even the most basic spells could fail.
“Sorry to disturb you, but I overheard you. Are you planning a trip to ‘Rock and a hard place’? If so, I would love to hire you for the trip. A competent mage is never a bad idea.”
The woman in the back had walked up when she was in thought. Maybe it was a good idea even, after all, who said no to some extra money.