Becky returned to Gomi when the snowcaps of the Dead End Mountains began to spread farther down its slopes and the forest changed from a canopy of green to shades of red, yellow, and orange. Hans found that he needed a long sleeve shirt, at least, to keep out the chill most days. The Druid needed no such comforts, riding into town on Becki’s back with her intimidating dwarven arms and shoulders bare.

Hans saw a blanket-wrapped body strapped to the back of the warthog, and he got the feeling that meant bad news.

“Hope you’re jonesing for something weird, boss,” Becky said, coming to a stop in front of the guild hall. She lifted a corner of the blanket to show Hans her find.

Again, the monster looked like a cross between a squonk and a gnoll, but instead of dividing the two species down the middle like their first specimen, this chimera had three squonk legs and one front gnoll paw. Patches of dark brown fur blotted its back, making it look like it suffered from a terrible case of mange. Its face was the most deformed with a partial gnoll snout and an upper fourth of its head missing, like someone had sliced diagonally from the crown of the head to the top of its other ear. There was no space for an eye to grow on that side, and the other eye was fogged like it was blind. But the missing monster pieces weren't wounds, they just hadn’t grown.

“Told you,” Becky said, standing back with her arms crossed. “Should I save my report for the next town hall?”

“I don’t think we need to do anything that formal yet,” Hans replied. “The threat hasn’t worsened, and we don’t have anything definitive to report. Well, unless you do and you’re just keeping me in suspense.”

“No, you’re spot on as usual. I watched the flower patch like you asked. Took two weeks, and I woke up to a small field of purple flowers. They grew overnight. No seedlings or sprouts. One day it was rocks, the next it was flowers.

“As for this handsome devil,” Becky continued, pointing at the chimera on Becki’s back. “I found it yesterday morning. The flowers thinned out while I was asleep, and this guy dragged himself from the middle out. Was dead before it got out of the patch.”

Making sure he understood, Hans asked follow-up questions. Curiously, there was no trail into the flower patch. It was as if the chimera was dropped in the midst of the purple blossoms, crawled a few paces, and then died. Becky confirmed that the situation was as unusual as it sounded. She waited a few more days to see if anything else might happen, but all she observed was the flowers changing again.

One morning, the blossoms were gone without leaving a single petal behind, so Becky packed up the mutant beast and came back to Gomi.

“Whatcha thinking?” Becky asked.

“Can you keep what I say between us? I don’t want to scare anyone by guessing at causes.”

The Druid promised to keep their conversation a secret.

“I got really into researching other planes for a bit a few years back,” Hans began. “The short version is that some planes are easier to access from specific points in our world, like an overlap. There was an infernal connection like this, and demons came through in a constant stream, like they had broken down a door or something. Took a crew of Diamond mages to seal it off again.”

“I see why you’re worried about scarin’ people. That’s scary as shit.”

“Yeah. It definitely is. Only a few cases have been recorded though, so that’s probably not what we’re dealing with, but that’s the best explanation I have for why it seemed to appear from nowhere and die.”

“So the flowers are a sign there’s one of these planar overlaps?”

Hans shrugged. “Maybe? Like I said, links between planes are incredibly rare, and all the cases I read about had monsters pouring through like it was an invasion. The one-every-few-weeks pacing is really odd.”

“Want me to stake it out some more?”

The Guild Master thought about that, staying quiet so long that Becky glanced around uncomfortably. “No, I don’t think so, but I am worried an actual threat could appear or come through or whatever is happening. Can I ask you to surround the patch with traps, or would that put too much wildlife in danger?”

“Nah. I have a spell that lets me basically leave a note for critters if I need to. I’ll make sure they know to stay away from that area.”

“Interesting. I didn’t know Druids had a spell like that.”

“Most don’t. It’s something I worked out myself.”

Impressed, Hans added, “I think that’s the best we could do for now. It doesn’t make sense to keep you locked down to one place, and I can’t imagine you enjoy it either.”

“It’s the most awful thing. Makes me feel caged.”

“Beyond the traps, maybe swing by occasionally if it makes sense to?”

Becky said that she would, and she said she could use her spirit hawk to check on the site from afar. The spell did have a range limit, but it was several miles, giving her a wide radius of where she could be far from the flower patch yet still keep tabs on it.

He took one more look at the squonk-gnoll hybrid and was glad to know it would be buried soon. Seeing this would give most of the kids in Gomi nightmares. It might even give him nightmares.

Quest Complete: Collect Becky’s report on the flower stakeout.

New Quest: Find a practical solution for a planar leak. Bonus Objective: Find a solution that uses only resources available in Gomi.

***

Rain came more frequently now, and Hans knew that rain would soon be snow. As yet another day of classes was canceled, he set to work on his winter curriculum. Galad had mentioned to him that he intended to push as many of the new tusk children to guild classes as possible. He hoped it would help them make friends and cut down on the isolation that usually came with winter. Hans agreed, and he wanted their experience to be perfect.

He knew, broadly, what he planned to teach, but how to teach it was a critical question. Not only did his lessons need to be educational, they needed to be entertaining enough to satiate a room of children locked indoors for a long winter.

On his list of material to cover was basic spellcraft, monster identification, Guild history, and fundamental bushcraft.

That last item would require him to gather materials now as finding them beneath a few feet of snow would be difficult. For that reason, he considered cutting it from the winter curriculum. Those kinds of skills were easiest to teach outside where they would actually be used, that was the same for topics like identifying and harvesting ingredients, and learning to read tracks and trails. You could do a little studying behind a desk, but the real learning put dirt under your fingernails.

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Guild history was easy. Kids loved stories about adventurers and battles and magic. He could do that handily without a lesson plan.

Monster identification would also be relatively easy for holding the class’s attention. In previous posts, Hans devised a process where he taught about a batch of monsters–what they looked like, how big they were, where they were found, what they ate, what their tracks looked like, what abilities they had, and any habits that made them memorable or distinct from other monsters. Then he would tell a story featuring one of those monsters, and challenge the kids to identify the creature based on clues in the story. Even Hans had fun with those lessons.

Teaching children basic spellcraft was hard. Always. Though hand movements and incantations were part of casting a spell, a huge portion of the cast was driven by how the mage “moved” mana, which happened entirely within the caster. In a combat class, Hans could help a struggling student by watching their form and giving them advice about what to change. There wasn’t a “hold your arm higher” equivalent for spellcasting. Not that he knew of at least.

He could describe how it felt to move mana, the tricks he used to improve, and the tips he gathered from more experienced mages. From there, success or failure was up to the student and their willingness to practice.

Adults were easily frustrated. Kids doubly so. An hour of sitting mostly still and failing over and over wore on even the best students.

If he was lucky, a few of the children would be able to cast Create Water by the end of the winter, with supervision to stay within the kingdom’s laws about children practicing magic. He had searched for teaching aids, ways to slowly ramp-up the difficulty while keeping the student motivated, but was unsuccessful. If such techniques existed, no mage was willing to share.

Quest Complete: Design a winter curriculum.

Ramp-up the difficulty…

Hans had an idea. For months, he mulled how to safely train students to fight on uneven terrain and made no meaningful progress. Every variation he considered had a high risk of injury. Since injured students couldn’t train, that was unacceptable, but not every instructor would agree.

When Hans was focused on improving his hand to hand skills–boxing, kickboxing, and grappling–he spent a good bit of time with adventurers who had chosen the Monk class. One of their training tools was a course of posts buried at varying heights with spaces in between. Their tops were never larger than a diameter of 12 inches. Several posts wide, students would start at one end of the course and travel to the other, trying to improve their speed with each run, each step launching them to the next post.

Once students were advanced enough, they sparred on the posts, having to keep track of both their feet and an opponent.

Watching Silver and Gold Monks dance expertly from post to post while throwing kicks and blocking punches was mesmerizing. As cool as it looked though, Hans saw plenty of injuries. In one week, two Apprentices and one Iron broke their jaws when they slipped and fell on the posts. The next week, a Silver broke their arm.

The instructors who believed in survival of the fittest saw no problem with that. For Hans, he believed it was the instructor’s job to make their students fit. Putting the survival part first seemed backward to him.

He once visited a school for Rogues that stretched a fishing net a few inches above the ground and had their students spar, forcing them to step carefully to avoid tripping. That method was safer than the posts, but it still broke a few ankles, more than Hans was willing to accept.

In another facility, he saw a patio paved with bricks, but the height of each varied. Sometimes the difference between two bricks was less than an inch. Other times, it was a 12 inch drop from the highest brick to the next nearest brick. That one had the same problem as the posts and the net, and falling on brick was brutal. Hans heard teeth scratch against stone, and he vowed to avoid hearing that sound ever again.

But ramps might be the right compromise. He could modify a section of the training yard with small, gradual hills with enough of a grade that students would know when they made a mistake, but not so steep that making a mistake broke a bone or split a lip. That method might even be safe enough for a kids’ class, but he’d test it on adults first.

For a moment, he thought about grabbing a shovel and getting started right away. But it was still raining. With a sigh, he settled for sketching the concept instead.

Quest Complete: Brainstorm ideas for safe approaches to training on uneven terrain.

New Quest: Expand the Gomi training area to include ramps for footwork drills.

***

The next refugees arrived in back-to-back groups of three. One group was all children, with the oldest being a girl who looked about Gunther’s age. She held the hands of her two brothers. One was so young he was still learning to speak. The other group was a trio of tusk teens, all boys. None of the children in either batch had parents. Their parents had either dumped them on the street or passed away unexpectedly, leaving the kids to make their own way.

The group after that had seven tusks, two families who traveled together. Luther had stayed behind in Osare, but the tusk who guided those families to Gomi seemed to think more groups of this size would be following shortly.

Mayor Charlie found Hans in the alchemist shop, talking with Olza about teaching a basic potion as part of the winter curriculum. A jar of dried purple blossoms sat on the counter between them.

“The rumors are growing,” Charlie announced dejectedly. “It’s sounding like tusks defecting to join the orcs isn’t a story cooked up by bastards with big mouths.”

Hans and Olza frowned. They both had hoped that part of the problem wasn’t true as well.

“There have been a few pogroms nearest to the fighting. I don’t know specifics, but they were certainly bloody. I don’t understand these city folk. If you’re afraid your neighbor might turn against you, why give them more reasons to?” The Mayor shook his head.

“We’ve helped a lot of people already,” Olza offered. “And we’ll get to help more.”

“I know. I’m upset about the people we won’t get to help.”

Neither Hans nor Olza could argue against that feeling.

“Anyway,” Charlie said, “I wanted to update you two. I’ll let you get back to your work.”

When the Mayor had gone, Olza stared at the door. “I don’t understand how or why tusks are defecting. I’ve never met a tusk who felt anything less but unbridled loathing for orcs.”

“Same,” Hans said. “I met a Bronze tusk once who filed off his tusks, by hand. Himself. He hated that he had monster blood in his veins and didn’t want to see signs of it in the mirror.”

Olza grimaced. The two sat in quiet for a moment. Sighing, Olza returned her attention to their discussion of the purple flower. “Okay. The connection between planes is an interesting theory, but I’m not aware of any ingredients or mixtures that have extra-planar traits or effects. That doesn’t mean the flower doesn’t have those traits. We just don’t have anything to compare them to.”

“Of course not,” Hans grumbled. “Why would any of this be easy?”

“Sorry.”

“No, don’t be. I’m just complaining. If you think of anything, let me know?”

She nodded.

***

A letter arrived with what could be the second to last caravan Gomi would see until spring. Snow hadn’t arrived yet, but the townspeople said winter “felt” close. All Hans could feel was that it was cold, and he wasn’t looking forward to it being colder.

He opened the letter in private.

Hans,

I’ve sent a few packages to you. I hope they arrive before winter.

The orc attacks are getting worse. These aren’t greedy raiding parties. These are soldiers following orders with sophisticated tactics. Word is they travel with orc mages as well. I don’t mean one out of 10,000 like you’d expect. I mean two to three in each unit.

The defectors… it’s like they suddenly turned feral. A few of them are low level adventurers with good reputations and well-liked by all accounts. One of them had an adopted human daughter and a steady business. He left all of that behind overnight.

You should also know that D is gathering support to have you removed. I didn’t think he’d find it, but he has high-ranked backers. I’ll do what I can.

Be careful.

-Theneesa

The letter had arrived with the caravan rather than guild mail, but Theneesa still obscured her meanings just in case. When she said “packages,” she meant tusks. When she said, D, she meant Devontes, the Platinum-ranked adventurer and Hans’ former pupil.

Hans hoped the tusks made it before winter, and he hoped Devon didn’t.

***

Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

Mend the rift with Devon.

Complete the manuscript for "The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers."

Identify the unknown purple flower from Olza.

Protect your place in Gomi and maintain control of the Gomi chapter.

Find a practical solution for a planar leak. Bonus Objective: Find a solution that uses only resources available in Gomi.

Expand the Gomi training area to include ramps for footwork drills.