An older man walked through the doors of the Northward Hunters Association. He was well dressed in a neat business suit with a well-polished cane covered in exquisitely carved glyphs. He had a kind face with a pair of glasses sitting on his nose and grey hair parted in the middle. He took a brief look around before strolling over to the small counter where a single receptionist was sitting. Taking a quick look at the small name plate he spoke.
“Ah! Hello there Miss Rosenheart! I’m Drafus Montgomery, and I was hoping to be able to get your assistance in a minor matter here.”
The young lady behind the counter looked up from the paperwork that she had been dealing with. “Of course, Mr. Montgomery. How can the Northward Hunters Association be of assistance to you today? Are you looking to post a job, hire an individual or team, or is there some other matter that we can help you with?”
“Mr. Montgomery, pshaw! Please just call me Drafus!” The man chortled.
“Of course, Mr. Drafus. So how may we help you?” came the dry response.
“Ah well, you see… the other day there was an incident involving a fellow going by the name of Jack Bertrand. He accosted Mr. Carlos Ross-Telipar and caused a minor incident. My job is to look through what his interests were to find out just why this happened. I am given to understand that he had contacted this business for some reason and so here I am.” Drafus smiled. His arms held wide with his cane hooked onto his left arm.
“One moment then sir, let me check my records and see if I have anything noted about that.” The receptionist said as she took out a small notebook. “Do you know what day he had contacted us?”
“Well, I’m not too sure… but, it was likely in the last few days. As the incident with Mr. Ross-Telipar occurred fairly recently.”
There was a brief nod in acknowledgment and a quick flip of papers. Then a brief pause. “Here we are. It looks like he called in the evening four days ago. It says here he had wanted to check on any mission records involving one Ms. Dilacy Fawler.”
“Hmm, interesting. Could I possibly look at those records if you have them?” Drafus stroked his chin.
“Certainly. We keep our mission records public as a matter of course. Give me just one minute, let me check to see if I had already put them aside” Miss Rosenheart stood heading to a small side door. After a brief period of time, she returned with a small handful of folders. “These were the ones that I had located already for Mr. Bertrand, as far as I am aware these should be all of the records that we have that he was looking for.”
“Capital! Are these copies that I may take with me by any chance, or…?” Drafus trailed off, looking inquisitively at the receptionist.
“I’m afraid not sir. If you would like a copy of our records, I can make one for you, though I would need you to either wait until the copying process is done or return later to pick them up.” She responded as she sat back down. She gestured to the side and continued, “If you would like, you are welcome to sit at the waiting table there and peruse them at your leisure.”
Drafus nodded pleasantly. “No worries at all ma’am. I’ll just take a quick look here and be out of your hair in no time.” He sat down at the indicated table and spread the articles out in front of him. After a short while of looking through each of them, he pulled out a small crystal and notebook. He held both vertically above the articles, the crystal underneath the notebook. There was a brief flash and Drafus looked at the inside of the notebook. He nodded his head in satisfaction, snapped the notebook shut, and put everything away.
He handed the records back to the receptionist thanking her for her help. With a quick flick of his fingers, he checked the time and headed out of the office.
Later that afternoon, Jack made his way into the office of the Northward Hunters Association. It seemed his bad luck had broken, at least a small amount. He had managed to nab a filling and affordable lunch and hadn’t had anyone attempt to accost him on his trip across the city. By the time that he had finished making his way there, he felt like maybe, just maybe, today would be a better day than the last few had been.
Walking in, Jack went over to the desk and cleared his throat. “Ahem, excuse me for interrupting your work. I spoke to someone here a couple of days ago. An Evelyn Rose I believe?”
Looking up the young receptionist looked him up and down and tapped the nameplate in front of her. “Rosenheart, not Rose I’m afraid.” A small smile took some of the sting out of her words.
“Ah. I’m sorry. It’s been a rough few days.” Jack winced but soldiered on. “I spoke to you about possibly looking at some records. At the time you said that your business keeps all mission records available to the public?”
The receptionist nodded. “Indeed. Were there any records you were looking for in particular Mr. …?”
“Oh, right. I’m Jack. Jack Bertrand. We had talked about files involving one Dilacy Fawler. You had mentioned that she had done some work with this agency.” Jack held his hand out to shake
“Mr. Bertrand you say?” She nodded and took his hand. “Yes, I had set aside the records that you were looking for then.”
With that she stood up and moved out of the room, returning a short while later with the set of folders. “If you would like you are welcome to look them over at your leisure.” She stated gesturing to the small table. “I can also answer any other questions or requests that you have.”
Jack inclined his head and moved over to the table, setting the folders down in a stack and looking through them one by one. As he looked through everything Jack tried to keep his eyes open for any patterns that they might have. Before getting too far into the requests and reports he turned back toward Evelyn. “Excuse me, I’m afraid I haven’t worked with your organization before. What can you tell me about what jobs exactly the Northward Hunters Association will do? Is it anything and everything? Limited by distance or zone? Only do hunting contracts?”
Evelyn looked back up from behind the desk. “Well, we do a good bit more than just hunting these days. When the company was founded, it was essentially a unionization of many of the mutation hunters in this part of the city. But over the last couple of decades, as we have become more established, we have branched out. While it is not to the extent of say, the Adventurers Guildhouse, what with their multiplaner presence, we do much more than just the hunting. Now the Association is still fairly minor so we are indeed limited by distance for the most part. We wouldn’t normally accept a contract to kill a mana mutation out in the wilderness to the south of the city but we certainly would for one located in the north or northwest for instance.”
“That’s more than fair enough. I take it then that some of the symbols on the reports here then reflect what type of job it is or something?” Jack acknowledged while gesturing his hand over the records stacked in front of him.
“Yes, that’s correct. We use many of the same symbols that other temp agencies do, like every company, ours has a few purely stylistic differences, but the main body of the symbols remains the same. Beast heads with swords to indicate a hunt, we do a bound scroll for item retrieval or delivery jobs, and a shield for bodyguard work, with the danger or importance based on the number of stars.” Evelyn nodded. “We do have a few other symbols that we mark the reports with, which range from team insignias when accepting quests and turning in reports to if anything of interest occurred or was found during the course of a job.”
Jack thanked her for her help and turned back to the stack to get to work. Looking through the first thing that Jack noticed was that the first two jobs in the stack were both jobs that were sponsored by Dilacy, with the jobs being bodyguard work. The jobs were completed by two different teams judging by the emblems, one emblem was what looked like a golden eye that was half open, and the other was a dark blue horned wolf’s head. Following the second job, however, it was a variety of different tasks all with the same group the one that had completed the second bodyguard request. In addition, none of the jobs were requested by Dilacy. Rather it seemed that she had either signed on as a new member of the group or a temporary addition.
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That trend continued up until the final set of information. That one, unlike all the others, was accepted by two different teams. The team that she had been working with regularly as well as the team that she had first hired. That request was marked with a 4 stared delivery symbol which made it the highest-level request out of the bunch. Jack quickly flipped to the team reports and began reading through them starting with the group that Dilacy had worked with more. The report was handwritten in a rough blocky style.
Mission 48907 Report
Team Wolven Freedom
Iceron 17th 270 CE,
As this is the first time our team has done a four-starred mission, we took numerous precautions before we went into the field. We would be doing this mission as a joint effort with Team Days Watch. They were to be in charge of the retrieval and preservation efforts while our team would be in charge of hunting and protection. This was determined when we first approached their team for working on this job, as they have more experience with doing work in the northern ruins and artifact scavenging. It was estimated that the mission would take between 2 weeks to 2 months.
The journey north was slower than originally thought. We had not done a good job of guessing how much slower everyone would be going with the amount of equipment that was needed for this. The travel time doubled from 3 days to 6. There were some attacks from mana mutations but nothing outside the norm.
After we reached the ruins, a temporary camp was set up on the outskirts. Close enough for us to easily get to the section that Days Watch determined was the most likely to house our target and far enough away to hopefully protect us against any of the dangers of working in the area.
Our goal was to try to catch a mating pair of animals that lived in the ruins to be brought back for testing. We were also going to comb over the area that we would be working in for any other artifacts that could be brought back to supplement the trip. This was authorized so long as it did not interfere with the stated goal of the mission. Samantha told us that this was included in the job as a way to mitigate people going off rails and doing it anyways. She said that by including it as part of the deal it made it less likely for people to just outright ignore the time limits or original task for artifact hunting. It also made it so that if that did happen any artifacts or valuables found would end up as the job poster’s property rather than the team’s.
Anyways at this point, we spent the next few days turning our temporary shelter into something that would as a good defensive location for a few weeks to months. Wards were set up by Clarence and Lalinda. Lalinda set up several elemental wards that would help to defend the camp in case of emergency, while Clarence set up several wards that would discourage creatures and other people from entering the site. He had said something about “altering perceptions so that our camp didn’t appear as part of the surrounding area” or something. When I asked what that meant he said he couldn’t make the whole area invisible but he could make people not see it. Which is the same thing so he made it invisible but not?
Anyways. It was at this point that we worked out our guard schedule for the camp and our scouting parties. As for this mission, both groups had a fourth member, we were able to split everything with someone from each team. We did make sure that the members with the least field experience were not paired up as a safety precaution. As no matter how talented they might be talent isn’t the same as having lived through danger.
We had set each group of two on a rotation of tasks to help both with monotony as well as to allow people to get more experience with everything. Following that the next two weeks went by with little happening. A few traces of animals that might work were found but other than that little occurred.
It was about five weeks into the job that something interesting occurred. While out scouting through the ruins Vander and Totis found a strange item. It was a small part of something and it couldn’t be directly affected with spells to determine what it was. It also would cause minor hallucinations in anyone interacting with it. As something strange like this could or would be valuable it was brought back to the campsite and put away in a magic-free zone. This was just the start! Following that more and more of those small fragments were found in a variety of sizes! The smallest was about the size of a grain of sand and the largest was about the size of half a hand. All of them were brought back and stored carefully as well.
After a couple more weeks of scouting to find a mating pair of animals and finding more of the pieces, the den of a pair of mutated cats was found. From the signs around the area, it seemed like they were a mated pair and had holed up for winter. They were perfect for our needs.
This was followed by days of watching the den and figuring out the best way to capture them safely without causing too much harm. Eventually, a spell trap setup was configured around a smaller den entrance and most of the others were quietly collapsed.
We had everyone attack the den to chase the cats to where we wanted them to go. While there were some minor injuries nobody seemed too wounded. The cats went into the traps and were unable to escape. We then bound them in the special ropes and cages that had been given to us as part of accepting the job. Job successful we packed up our camp making sure to secure the animals and artifacts found and headed home. The journey home was slowed down by us not having prepared food for the animals. We had a small amount of meat left from hunting around our camp and we were able to find some other animals and mutants to hunt on the way back. However, this made us take several detours to hunt.
In the end, we made it home safe and sound with everyone and everything accounted for.
~Vander Daven
Jack rubbed his chin as he set down the report. From what this was describing while Dilacy might have been one of the wounded on the final job it wouldn’t have been enough to cause any complications. Taking a quick look over the second report which was written in extremely embellished handwriting, all the important events were noted as the same as in the other report. It was when he had gotten to the end of the report that Jack found something that fully caught his attention. It was written and submitted by Carlos Ross-Telipar. Jack was so startled he jerked upwards smashing his knees on the table as he stood.
Evelyn’s head jerked up at the sudden noise and she called out in a worried voice. “Is everything okay?” She stood up from behind the desk to see what had caused the commotion.
Jack called over to Evelyn, holding up the final job request “Yes, Sorry about that. What can you tell me about the teams that use these emblems? Teams Days Watch, and Wolven Freedom.”
Evelyn paused “What exactly would you like to know about them?”
“Anything you can tell me.” Jack quickly pressed.
“Well let’s see. Days Watch is a four-person group with having just added a new member from what I remember. Their group consists of Samantha Relos, who is a human, Sunny, a macorsian, Totis, a formorian, and their new person Carlos Ross-Telipar, who is somehow related to the Telipar branch in town. What exactly I’m not too sure.” Evelyn tapped her chin and tilted her head back as she tried to remember.
Jack cut in, “I’m guessing Sunny and Totis are nicknames? From what I remember about the naming habits of those cultures they can be a mouthful.”
“Yes. Sunny’s full name is The Sun That Breaks The Clouds, and Totis’s is The One That Is Sent To Find Good Food And Bring Good Tidings.”
“You know I have to say I’m impressed that you can remember all of that without having to look through any information.” Jack chuckled.
Evelyn looked embarrassed. “I… It’s… It’s not that I have a great memory for people. In this case, I can remember them because it is one of the more unusual groups, plus they did just work with Wolven Freedom.”
“Why would that have made a difference?” Jack queried.
Evelyn laughed weakly as she started “Well…”
It was at that moment the door slammed open, and a tall mountain of a man with a huge bushy beard and a clean-shaven scalp came barreling into the building. Bellowing with a deep voice as he did so. “Eve! We’re back! And we brought some good grub with us!”
As the large man stood in the doorway a beautiful lilting voice came from behind him. “Clarence, we all know you can’t resist letting the world know where you are at any given moment. But please move your ass out of the way. It’s fucking cold out here.”
With a booming laugh, the huge man moved into the lobby seeming to take up most of it without trying, part of his body still blocking the doorway. Shoving him out of the way a lithe young woman came in through the entrance next.
Without a moment’s pause, she continued on to behind the desk and picked up Evelyn in a massive hug. “Evie!”
With a slight blush on her face and embarrassment clear in her voice, Evelyn cried out. “Do you have to do this every time Lalinda?”
“Of course!” The woman stated, squeezing Evenlyn tighter.
Laughter came from the doorway as a lanky man with light-colored hair came into the room. “Lala, you know how Eve gets when you do it in front of strangers. Let her catch her breath and settle back down.”
As the door closed behind the lanky fellow, Eve, still held captive in the woman’s arms with an embarrassed voice squeaked out “As I was going to say, it would make a difference because these lugs are my childhood friends. Say hello to the Wolven Freedom.”