For the record, in this world it is a very, very bad idea to spend an evening on the road without someone keeping watch. This time around we made an exception because there were only 2 of us, we are both recovering from recent severe wounds, my own need for heat, as well as being very tired when all was said and done. I’d answered some of Regina’s questions, as well as gotten the answer to a few questions of my own. Our conversation was productive.
As far as how the evening passed from there? It was… An interesting experience, sharing a blanket with a young human girl while inhabiting this body. But, her plan was a success, no fire was required. If she were to offer to share her blanket again, I'd be willing to take her up on it.
I had presumed when she offered to share her blanket that she meant it in the specific and literal sense. There aren't exactly too many mirrors to reference, but they exist, as do reflections in lakes, rivers, and windows. The times I have seen myself are enough for me to know that I do, in fact, look like a Lizardfolk. So I know better than to make more out of an offer like that than exactly what is being said.
In my world if a woman offers to share a blanket with you and there is no other context to the offer, there's a decent chance she's interested in some intimacy; but you truly can't assume it. Unless she makes clear her motive, keep your hands to yourself.
When there is context? Apply a little reasoning to it. There's a pretty good chance that if she's sharing a blanket with you because you’re incapable of generating your own heat, and you don't want to light a fire since that is almost certain to get you killed, an offer to share a blanket is probably literal and specific. To me, it was exceedingly clear that this offer ended at sharing a blanket in the most specific and literal version of the phrase possible.
I guess nobody explained that to herm because the way it ended up working out is that body heat was applied in a fairly direct fashion. Maybe this is just something she was already interested in and she wanted to take the opportunity to run a few tests?
Regardless of the actual reasoning she was using at the time, things escalated not long after we had a blanket covering us. Just because I am less than certain of the reasoning doesn't mean I should pass on some willing companionship. It was interesting, and although there are things about the experience that were awkward and unexpected, as I mentioned a few moments ago, it's not an experience I'd turn down if the opportunity presented itself again. As for her opinion on the subject? Time will tell… Assuming we live.
In the morning, Regina had a couple more questions for me. “Hey, you said before that you had a reason to level up and that you would be going out whether or not you had comrades. Are you able to tell me what that reason is, now?”
“I accidentally told you most of what I know last night. I’d love to tell you more, but I don't have much to go on either. After I died, some.. being. Spoke to me for a bit. I don't really know anything about that being, but because of the way that it communicated, I call it Mental Me. He said that he usually wouldn’t intervene in our fates after we died, but that he sometimes would when he felt bored or wanted to address something. I didn’t know which of the two it was until right as the conversation was ending, where he explained that I had accrued a bunch of karma, and that as a result I should get some rare class options. He said I needed to be very careful with my class choice, and that he didn’t send me here because this world needed a talented baker."
I pause for a moment, watching her expression, but she hasn't said anything and merely waits for me to continue.
"Put together, what he said made it pretty clear that he didn't send me here on a whim or out of boredom. I don’t know what my purpose here is, but what he said at the time means there’s a specific thing I’m here for. It’s also one of the reasons that not only did I not end up as a regular Lizardfolk, I didn't settle for a class like priest or even mage. I believed that I would likely have an opportunity that was at the least rare, as long as I was careful, so I looked for something different, and this is what I ended up finding. As to the purpose though? If I knew what that thing was, I would want to tell you, and if I knew exactly what he wanted from me, I'd hope to be able to tell you that as well, but all I know for certain is that he had a reason to send me, and that he said I needed to be very careful in class selection. Any conclusions beyond that are suppositions and guesswork, not a certainty.”
“At first blush it doesn’t sound very helpful, but that’s actually a lot of information, direct and implied. And I finally know why you keep talking about being a baker.” She wryly replies.
I chuckle and say “Yeah, I suppose you do. Please don’t tell others about anything we’ve talked about until now though. Everyone already thinks I’m insane, and I'll acknowledge they're right on that count, but I don’t want those accusations to get worse. I also don’t know how the local gods would react if it became common knowledge that I was brought here by an outsider.”
“Sure thing, Braza.”
“We’ve been through a lot together, and you know some of my deepest secrets now, as much as I have secrets at least. You can call me Elliot if you want. My name here is Braza, but I still think of myself as Elliot. Just… Maybe not in front of others. Or keep calling me Braza, if you prefer.”
“If it’s ok with you, I’d prefer to stick with Braza. Elliot is a bit… Foreign sounding to me, and I’ve known you as Braza for too long.”
“Understood, and that’s fine, I’ve been answering to it for the last decade after all. Thank you, by the way. For everything.”
She smiles, and we grab our gear. She is a bit surprised when I have her show me the bodies of our comrades, and I remove enough of the rocks stacked atop them to remove a finger from each of them. She demands an explanation. My response of course is that material from the original body might make resurrection easier.
I do not have much information about higher level spells to know for sure, only the ones Joaqim and Jim were familiar with and were willing to talk to me about, but even if it doesn't help at all, having a part of their body would not make things worse. It's not like cutting off a finger is more invasive than cutting off the head, which is a standard practice in this world.
We leave the fingers in the carriage, and I pull out Joaqims quicksilver armor to bring with us. We leave the carriage in its current hiding spot and continue on foot.
"Was it hard?" Regina asks.
"Was what hard?" I reply.
"Coming back, being a different species, growing up… I don't know. All of it. Was it hard?"
"Being a Lizardfolk was… A surprise. But the hard part was trying to hold my mind together. Trying to remember the important things; like my wife, my kids, and the rest of the family when my intelligence attribute was only a 4 and I hadn't seen any of them for years. Adding attributes doesn't feel special, at all, but… Everything was just so fuzzy for so long, and it was so hard to remember anything, or think through anything, or pay attention to anything. Trying to retain some of my old sense of self, and reconcile the person I used to be with the person I was choosing to become. That was tough."
"I hadn't even thought of that. Humans start with a low intelligence, too, but we don't really have to try and remember anything old, and most of us end up with an 8 even if we never actually assign a single point into intelligence. It really does make a difference, though, it's pretty easy to pick out the ones who never put any points into it at all."
"Yeah. As to how difficult my childhood was? On my old world I had a pretty good childhood. We were poor, very poor, but it was a pretty amazing family to be born into, and most of the reason we were poor was because of how large the family was. My parents loved each other. A lot."
At this point Regina chuckles, but remains silent and listening.
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"As far as my childhood here is concerned, though? It wasn't a good one. Getting made fun of regularly, getting slapped and kicked for being weak, being neglected to the point I was effectively disowned… But even there, as much as I hated when someone would go too far and break an arm or a leg, it wasn't the actual violence or the social pressure that was a problem, what made it hard was because I had the power to stop it at any time. All I would have to do would be to give in and do what I was supposed to do. If I were willing to let the old me go away, to forget my old family, to put my attributes into strength instead of intelligence… It was a siren's song. Being able to just pick up a warrior class and be able to fight back… Even if I were to lose the first few times I tried, all I actually needed to do was to be able to hurt them bad enough when they started that they wouldn't actually want to start something in the first place, after that the bullying would come to an end. The challenge wasn't in being an outcast or in being a weakling, it was in deciding to be weak when I didn't have to be, and having to reaffirm that as a decision again and again for years on end. But I wasn't willing to give up on my memories, Regina, and when I got old enough to take my intelligence attribute as far as it would go, when I'd done as much as I possibly could to save my memories and recover the majority of my mental faculties if not the entirety of my memory? By then I'd learned that magic was real, and the dead could return to life, and so on."
"Because your home didn't have magic? But what about your technology, you said we'd think it was magic, right?"
"That's right. But even though we could do amazing things, people don't come back from the dead where I came from, Regina. Once someone died, they died, and that was it. One careless mistake or some freakish luck, being 6 centimeters too far this way instead of that way at the wrong time, and everything about that person ceased to exist. Magic is… It's amazing. The day to day lives of people in my world are better because our technology is so much more advanced than it is here. Even a perfectly normal person would have half a dozen ways to communicate, in real time, with people on the other side of the world on a moments notice. But the technology we had can't bring the dead back to life, and even though we could climb into machines that would let us fly from one place to another, we wouldn't be able to fly with just a single person without any sort of devices to aid them, and we couldn't instantly summon hordes of forest animals to protect us, and so on. Technology let us do a lot of similar things, but it isn't magic. Magic has enormous potential, not just for destruction, but for all manner of things which would have been no more than a pipe dream in my old life. So when I finally maximized the intelligence attribute, bringing it up to my racial maximum, I decided I wanted to be able to do things I could never do before. Even if it meant things would be hard for me for longer, I wanted to be able to use magic."
"So… To back up the story a little, you'd get beaten enough to have your arm or your leg broken? And that wasn't a one off from an alcoholic dad, that happened repeatedly?"
"Yeah, Lizardfolk are pretty physical. A broken arm sucks, but not as bad as a broken leg when no one wants to help you with anything. Honestly though my ribs were broken more than anything else, and I hated when those broke even more than when it was a leg. It's miserable to have every breath you draw cause pain, and to not be able to breathe unless you are sitting up. At night, when you're trying to sleep, that's so much worse than the other fractures I've had. But… I mean… It's just the body. Within a few weeks you're good enough to take another beating; albeit you need to protect the parts that are still damaged, and with magic existing in this world, you don't have to worry as much about things like when they take it too far and puncture your lungs when shattering your ribs, or having the bones set wrong, because it's always possible to fix it. In a world without magic, I would've been permanently crippled from having had so many of those kinds of injuries. But magic is real here, Regina, and I still find myself in awe that I'm able to use it at all, no matter how bad at using it I am."
"You're pretty amazing, Braza. Most people who have a childhood like that… They get resentful, and they get mean, and they give in and take all their hatred out on people that can't fight back. You've got a level of emotional resilience, a type of strength that the willpower attribute just doesn't measure. You… I know…" At this point Regina goes silent, and a strange, thoughtful expression crosses her face, as though she's thinking about saying something else.
Eventually, it seems that she decided not to as her expression turns businesslike, and she instead says “So how are we going to handle this? What do I need to do?”
I'd been planning to ask her a bit about her childhood, and maybe point out that I'm a pretty horrible person when it comes down to it, but since she decided to change subjects I realized the opportunity to do either of those had never existed in the first place.
“My plan hasn’t really changed much. We go somewhere in the vicinity of the encampment, but out of sight. You pick a place to ambush from. I dress up as an orc, and at the last minute before I leave, I set you up to be able to wear Joaqims armor. Once complete, I waltz in there like I belong there. I move around for a while as discreetly as I can and try to figure out where the leader is and how he is addressed, then I come in and make a report, casting suggestion at the same time, and say he should personally investigate it. From there either I go with him and try and steer them wrong if it’s a massive contingent, before disappearing and fleeing via invisibility, or if there’s a chance of success I bring them to you. You’ll see me before I leave so you should know what I look like and hopefully won’t shoot me by accident. If we succeed, we try not to kill him and instead bring him back to Diamond Lake. If we fail, we'll be dead so I see no point in worrying about what will happen from there. Maybe failure leads to a fast death, maybe a slow one, but failure means death all the same.”
“This is insane. Do you really think dressing up in some stupid outfit can make you look the part of an Orc? You have a TAIL. A big one. And your face? This isn’t some minor cosmetic change, your facial structure is wildly different. And that’s far from the only problem; you’re casting a spell directly in front of and targeting their chief, with who knows how many onlookers? You’re wandering around an encampment without knowing their rank structure or how you’re supposed to address their chief or what protocols would be appropriate for getting an audience or what the reporting format would be or… Or anything. Nothing about this is a good idea. Please. Let’s go back. Or at the least, let me be the one to go in there instead, I’m a different race too but at least my skeletal structure is vaguely similar to theirs… I don’t want you to die too. Not you, too. Please.”
She starts off strongly, but the end of her mini rant, Regina’s densely freckled features have scrunched together, and her face has fallen completely. I think she might be on the verge of tears, and by the last word it comes out so softly I can barely make out what she is saying. It's actually pretty heart breaking.
“Hey hey, who are you talking to?” I confidently reply. “If ever there was a lizard that could pass as a pig, I’m the guy for the job. I don’t fight fair, and I’m not the least bit too proud to run away if I’m identified early or if one of the spells I need fails. I’m not you. Contrary to what you think I'm not even a good person. I agree that in almost every way, you’d be a better choice. But first off, I don’t want to lose you either, second off, the person who performs the ambush has to be skilled enough to stand a chance at beating them so you are needed here more than in there, third if you get caught you don’t have a way to even try and escape, and fourth, it would be almost impossible to convince him to expose himself if we didn’t use magic, and fifth, you don’t even speak their language, how are you to convince them of anything? I know very well how amazing you are, but if you’re the one that goes in there, you’ll definitely die. Actually, you might not die right away. Consent isn’t a thing with Orcs, the women they capture spend whatever life they have from then on pumping out offspring for their armies. And if that’s not enough, even if they just capture you rather than killing you, I’ll probably be joining you soon because I’ll end up trying to rescue you. Don’t make me do something stupid when I’m in a rush; that’s when my class performs the worst. When I can calculate the risks and plan things out, I’m pretty good at doing the impossible, in either life. Being higher level and having better gear would help a lot here, sure, but we wouldn’t be here in the first place if we didn’t have a reasonable chance of pulling it off.”
She does not seem particularly comforted, but she does not try and talk me out of it anymore. We both know this is probably going to get us killed. Even before the last battle, I had only expected us to have about a 50% chance of success from start to finish. If we had Jim, Joaqim, and Bucky, our odds would be downright favorable if I could pull the leader with only a handful of followers out from their camp.
With just me and her though? Even if I can separate him from everyone else, he is likely to be able to overpower the two of us. And he probably will not be coming alone. Expecting him to bring no one at all with him is pure folly. Damn it. I need a better version of my plan, but I do not have materials to make any more schematics or magical items.
More than that, I was unconscious or laid out for 2 days. I’m not sure how long that wolf patrol was expected to be gone for, but since they were small in number I can’t help but think that it was a routine patrol intended to cover a short distance, and courtesy of their wolves I would expect that their absence has either been noticed, or will be soon. Perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps yesterday or the day before, there is just no way for me to know with the information I have available.
We close on the camp and Regina selects her ambush location, there’s a small rock escarpment overlooking a fairly open stretch land, with multiple low hills between the Orc encampment and us, about 20 minutes north of their encampment. Since access to the escarpment would involve traveling a hundred meters or so to either side of her preferred location, she should have ample time to try and rain death upon anyone approaching. It's not a "good" ambush site, it's a great one.
Once she has selected her location, I spend a couple hours putting my disguise kit to work, making myself look surprisingly similar to them. At least, I think so. Even taking such precautions as wrapping my tail around my stomach and binding it in place, with layers of stretched leather and padding between me and the world, Regina feels my disguise is poor, and we try again from the ground up, eventually resulting in a more passable, roughly Orc looking, form.
It took an inordinate amount of material and I look more fat than husky, but with the exception of my face on the second attempt I really do look rather orc-like. When I put on my hat of disguise and apply its illusion to help smooth out the features and generally look more lifelike and less like a walking prop, even Regina admits that she’d confuse me for an Orc and would have to look very closely indeed to determine I wasn't one.
I carefully mark in my mind where Regina will be, and then we get as close to the encampment as we can without being seen. I use my Divine Inspiration schematic to boost my operate magical devices skill, then I use my Competent Crafting schematic to boost my armor smithing skill, then my manufacturing schematic to re-forge Joaqims armor to fit Regina, and I help her into it. I need the Divine Inspiration casting to support my suggestion spell once I get inside the camp, so dragging her out of position was required to be able to rely on my buffs for both refitting her armor and my suggestion schematic.
As I suspected, although she says she is only proficient with Medium armor, she can wear and use quicksilver full plate adequately, though she is not enthusiastic about doing so. I ask her to what degree her mobility is hampered, and she says it is noticeable, but she is far more mobile than she expected to be. She might not be as good of a shot as she was in her studded leather, but she should not be too much worse. Wearing her dead comrades’ armor is clearly a bit freakish for her, but she is mentally and emotionally resilient, and more than rational enough to recognize that this is a net benefit to her.
I continue into the encampment, while Regina returns to the selected ambush location. When it comes into sight, I activate my Competence schematic to boost my bluff skill. Hopefully, I can get the information I need and execute the plan before the duration of my Divine Inspiration expires, but I cannot not bring myself to risk Regina any more than I absolutely have to. My quicksilver armor wasn’t enough to save Bucky or Joaqim, but there was no doubt that it was significantly superior to studded leather when it comes to keeping someone alive, we just had the misfortune to be forced into a fight that we had no business winning. Here's to hoping that history doesn’t repeat.