"How many quests?"

"Five, actually."

"Well, shit, Bob."

Finley had heard of powers like Bob's. He had even heard of gods favoring their chosen heroes with four or more powerful cards. Bobs ranger card made him exceptional, but it was something that one could attain. Bob's pathfinder card working together with his ranger skills made him a force to be reckoned with.

"The obvious one is the assault on Plainsmount. It's a simple one, get in grab the supply, and get out. The thing we need to survive long term is supplies that we'll need to find."

"So your card just told you the name of the city? That's something. Like if I wasn't here, you would know it," Finley said.

As they talked, Finley sketched the local map including Dunnamore and Plainsmount. He pointed to the line between the two.

"There's a very well used trade route between the two places. In fact, we took it until we branched off. We went to this way station."

"Tell me about this town, then."

"This one? Far more than Dunnamore, this was a trade hub. If the Irumian capital is the center of the wheel, this is one of the spokes. Caravans would travel back and forth on these roads, regularly moving goods and trading. There are several warehouses full of hay and other staples of the dwarven diet. And they're positioned on the outside, which would make this less difficult."

"Could we potentially hole up there? How big is the population?"

Finley began to draw a town map in the dirt. He remembered the two main east to west roads as well as the highway that met them in the middle. He marked a wholesaler that he used frequently on the north side. Then he placed the approximate location of all of the card shops in town. Some of the other finer details eluded him.

"Thousands? Enough that they draw in people from far for their festivals."

"And I have to assume that every single person of those thousands are now zombies," Bob said.

"I-I hadn't even thought about that, but yeah it makes sense. Makes me want to turn back to Dunnamore and improve the fortifications."

"I don't think that would turn out well. Then we would just starve in the cold," Anthony said, from across the way stone, "Because winter will be upon us before too long, correct? And zombies aren't affected by the cold?"

"Dwarven zombies aren't affected by it. At least I think so. We could come back after the winter, but they are long here."

Anthony and Bob sat in silence contemplatively.

"So Bob, tell us about these quests," Anthony said.

"Four of them are about killing chosen zombies. The fifth one is about getting supplies."

Finley sputtered. The tea he was drinking was now all over the way stone. He moved to clean it with his arm.

"Now when you say chosen zombies what do you mean?" Finley said.

"They were people like us, summoned from another world. Then they were turned."

"That's what I thought you meant. That is rather unfortunate."

"Am I missing something here?" Anthony said.

"You have to understand that God's choosing to summon Heroes like yourself is a rare thing. I would never expect to see more than one or two. To see 14 of you in the same spot means that something has gone terribly wrong. Now that I know that four chosen Heroes have been turned, that makes it so much worse."

Anthony gave him a heaping helping of side eye.

"I know we're talking about the same thing. But I don't feel that much stronger than you are."

"It's not just about how strong you are. It's also about how fast you can advance. With your abilities the way they are, you can progress much faster in your skills."

"Alright. So tell me about the potential threats," Anthony said, "Are any of the quests you mentioned helpful in that regard?"

"Let me dig into the titles. Alright, the supply one seems like an anomaly. The other four mention the chosen death knights, but little else, though one is apparently in the Irumian kingdom. The others all are in the human alliance lands, the elvish kingdom and the orcish meritocracy?"

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"They got the orcs as well?" Finley folded in on himself, "That's.. how deep does this go? I'm going to need a minute."

Of all the things that elves feared, a working orc populace had been at the top of the list. Though elves lived long and wanted to enjoy the fruits of their labor, they all had one enemy that fought hard against that. For hundreds of years, the orcs of Noveria all fought in bloody wars against anyone that would fight them. That is until they started to get smart and began to fight economically.

The orcs began to create highly sought after artisanal goods, flooding the markets with the items. Over time, the coffers of the common elf and human flowed more and more to the orcish meritocracy as they amassed wealth. This put anyone who traded with the orcs at a disadvantage as they didn't accept gold coins from outsiders, only cards and card pieces. As such, cards made their way out of elvish hands and into orc hands. Then the orcs opened a series of casinos in foreign lands, under the pretense of reparations for years of being invaded by the human alliance or the elvish kingdom.

This continued the drain of capital from elves to orcs. Orc accountants became all the rage as they let elves keep more of their money, though no Tinker would ever accept or solicit such help.

There was nothing that a tinker elf feared more than an orc accountant. And if what his new companions were all saying was correct, then now Finley had a new fear: zombie orc accountants.

"When the gods summoned us here," Anthony said, "Some of us got more information than others. That probably goes double for you Bob. If you think that we need to do a smash and grab, we'll head down to Plainsmount next."

"I think we can start off with a recon of the town from a distance. I would say, myself and the monks could slip in, grab whatever cards we can get out hands on and then slip out the opposite way, drawing attention," Bob said.

"Or we could just not draw any attention?" Anthony said, kneeling down next to Finley, "Hey, are you alright?"

"I'm-I hadn't- before you told me that the orcs were affected, I guess I didn't get the whole scope of what's going on. How did this even happen?"

"Well fuck," Bob said.

"What's that?" Anthony turned awkwardly from his kneeling position.

"Another quest."

---

Stella and Sophie were going through the food supplies and taking notes.

"It looks like, with fifteen people, assuming that the Elf and Dwarf eat about as much as we do, we'll have enough for a week? Does that jibe with what you're thinking? There's a lot of potatoes here," Stella said.

"That's good. I don't know how this is going to work long term, but I think that we're going to need to start planting crops somehow. If we can put a little plot of dirt on the back of the wagon, then I can make sure that it's watered. Finley probably knows more about planting, but we should be able to take some of these potatoes, and make more."

"Finely said that he had a woodworking card. We should ask him to make us a planter. Though, dirt would be heavy, wouldn't it? It would probably be best if we put it in the center, like how the barrel of water is. Oh shit, we should fill that up before we go."

Stella set down her chalk piece. She'd been tallying up how many potatoes they had on the way stone.

"On it, boss!" Sophie said, "Can you turn the barrel upright and I'll-hmmm. I need a pitcher or something. Or a bucket. Ah there's one on back of the caravan."

Sophie walked over and grabbed the two buckets from the back of the caravan. Both were empty and needed to be cleaned a bit. She handed the other one to Stella and they walked over to the river.

"I think two trips will do it, Sophie. Then we'll be topped off."

Stella leaned in close.

"How are you doing?" She said.

"Honestly, I feel more like myself today."

"I hear you," Stella said, pausing once they got to the river, "Some real rest will do that for you."

Two of the monks were taking turns jumping into the river and rating each others dives. Blessedly, they were across the river.

"No, I mean, I feel more like myself than I ever felt on Earth."

"Right. Uh, are you okay?"

"Yeah, but I have some questions that are a bit sensitive. Something that I didn't want the boys back there to overheard."

Stella had seen that look before and embraced her.

"There's no secrets between sisters. What's up?"

"So I think that uh-Do we have any paper products?" Sophie asked, her voice near a whisper.

"When you say paper products," Stella said releasing her, "What do you mean?"

"Well, uh," Sophie gave her the look.

"Oh! You know what, I had no idea that could even happen now. You'd think that being summoned to another world would take care of those kinds of problems, but no, I'll uh- how urgent is it?"

"Pretty urgent. Like I don't want to jump into the water, but also I do so uh, help me out."

"I got you. Us girls have got to stick together, alright?" Stella said.

Sophie blushed.

"Yeah. Got it. Middle earth level tech for a woman in need."

"I'm sure I'll be going through the same thing shortly."

Sophie finished washing her bucket, then filled it with cold clean water. She exchanged it for the empty one, repeating the process.

"Anyway, I think we should work on our stealth skills today before we go anywhere, Sophie. What do you think?"

"Once this inventory is done, then yeah. I think we can work on that. Provided that there aren't any other big hiccups."

---

"Alright, so here's the plan. We're heading to Plainsmount, which is the nearest large city en route to the capital. Finley has provided us with a good map of where the three card shops in the city are as well as the shipping warehouses. Our primary goal is to get more supplies. Our secondary goal is to find any survivors, and extract them, as well as any cards. We're going to send in a team to smash and grab anything we can from the card shops in advance. They'll meet up with us on the southern side of Plainsmount, or the northern road leading back here if something happens. We're not heading in there to fight zombies. I repeat, our purpose is not to fight them, but if we can lead them away, that would be great. It's unclear how intelligent they will be. Bob?"

Anthony handed the pole to Bob.

"Mork has given me a special ability to locate all of the chosen zombies- the death knights that are responsible for taking care of the undead legions. There are four, including one that is within the borders of the Irumian kingdom. Based on what we know, I'm going to try to see if what we do affects these chosen zombies, or if they attempt to move on us. We don't think that the zombies will be working too hard to find us out in the wilderness, and as you've already seen, we can find a way to hide ourselves out here. Not if we're followed by ten thousand of them, then we might have a problem. Though we might be able to outrun them, we need a more permanent solution."

"We're open to ideas," Anthony said, scanning the crowd.

"Are there airships here?" Sonya asked.

Though it was a general question, she looked right at Finley.

"What's an airship?"