The militia unit Galen rode with could never have been fast enough to stop the raiders who’d hit Gastusad Manor. By the time a rider had reached the militia outpost, before anyone had been sent for the full militia force, it had already been too late. But for a moment, Galen envisioned what would’ve happened if his four-man unit had arrived before the enemy had fled. Four militia—Galen and the two other trainees plus Macond, who had all also dismounted and stood with Galen in the midst of their huffing horses—would have had to face who knew how many attackers.
With wooden 1d4 spears.
The weakness of his weapon didn’t really bother Galen. He’d spent enough hours huddled around a table littered with character sheets, pencil stubs, and beer bottle caps masquerading as tokens on a gridded paper map to understand that you had to start weak to really appreciate how strong you could later become. The anticipation of all the cool things you could eventually do was part of the appeal.
Galen was, however, indulging a sour attitude which stemmed from the way this game had plucked him from his dead end life full of responsibilities that shouldn’t have been his and plopped him down into a backstory where he had a dead end life full of responsibilities that shouldn’t have been his.
Whatever happened to the go-to orphaned brooding loner stereotype? No strings, free to wander at will and become the hero I was always meant to be. I couldn’t have lucked into that?
Galen only half meant it, of course. Of course he’d loved his parents and siblings—his real ones, the ones who’d been dead before any choice of his could make a difference. But this in-game family of his character’s, it wasn’t his real family—they weren’t even real people. And he’d been over living at the whim of other people’s guilt trips a long time ago.
So what the System probably expected Galen to be feeling and thinking right now, standing in this clearly dangerous situation, was how his beloved parents needed him, safe and alive and back home again after his first stint of citizen’s militia duty was over.
So much for that. All Galen felt for the moment was a vague irritation that, despite the appeal of the Redemption Wars premise and the amazing tech supporting it, despite the fact that he was indeed alive in some sense and the game had saved his life, he still felt tied to expectations that he didn’t want to be tied to.
What I wanted was an escape. I don’t feel escaped.
To take his mind off the family the game had gifted him with and that whole minefield of what he did or didn’t owe them, Galen tried focusing on the more immediate situation.
Flames gnawed at the wood-fronted buildings. A line of survivors formed a bucket line from the cistern to the largest of those buildings, but Galen thought they might as well have been spitting at the fire. By the time the devouring flames were done, all that remained, if they were lucky, would be the enclosing outer stone wall that the building had been constructed against. They needed a fire hose or, barring that, some kind of mage with a “dump water” spell or whatever.
Macond Chanaw stood slightly forward of the three militia trainees. The green and brown of his tabard matched the trainees, but a heavier green border marked him as a full-timer. Macond kicked aside a chunk of broken and splintered planks which littered the ground around them.
That used to be the gate.
“Brinafa, picket the horses.” Without looking, Macond held his reins out behind him.
Short and stout and with an upturned nose that made him look every bit as conceited as he truly was, Macond seemed paler than usual in the crimson gloom just inside the stone arch where the manor’s gate had once been. Galen didn’t like Macond much, but some consolation could be found in knowing Macond was the one responsible for figuring out how to deal with this mess.
Commander Farsafe and the full force of the militia would be coming, of course. That was good. This was not a thing one person could handle alone, even though Macond at least had been trained and had some experience.
Sure more than the other three of us could manage.
Except Brin, maybe. Brin might’ve been all right. Macond was, of course, sending her off to picket the horses. But just because Macond didn’t recognize Brin’s worth, that didn’t mean it didn’t exist.
Brinafa Lelende was probably the same age as Galen and Danto, the third recruit. A long braid of deep brown hair swung against her back as she took Macond’s reins and then reached for Galen’s and Danto’s as well. If Macond’s request annoyed her, her face didn’t show it.
Brin turned and led the horses away. The slow thump of multiple hooves retreated up the dirt path they’d followed from the main road.
“We should do something. Shouldn’t we?” Beside Galen, Danto Shalb wavered uncertainly. Beneath the blond curls which spilled across his forehead, Danto’s brown eyes had gone wide. The way he asked the question indicated he didn’t truly want anyone to say yes.
Can anyone blame him?
Bodies sprawled like broken dolls across the courtyard. Galen understood, with a sick thrill in his stomach, that the churned mud through which they all walked had been created by blood as much as by the previous night’s rain.
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Living people moved among the fallen, tending wounded or weeping over the dead. There, Galen did see a sign of magecraft, a rosy aura around a plump woman moving through the injured, pausing here to set her hand on someone, there to reach into a bag over her shoulder and produce a bundle of herbs which she pressed against wounds or set onto tongues.
But she can only save those who aren’t already dead by the time she gets to them.
Danto wore a bag similar in design to that of the healer moving among the wounded. Over the course of the training montage quests, Galen had learned Danto was a novice at someplace called Voshell’s Favor—the narrator had explained that Voshell was a local goddess and the Favor was apparently a temple or chapel or something like that.
So Danto’s a cleric or some other kind of healer, I guess. Always good to have one of those in the party.
Before, when they’d been idly watching the road north of Chanford Falls from the wooden platform of the guard post, Danto had filled the down time by tying up gathered herbs into tidy packets which he’d placed carefully into that satchel, alongside an assortment of cut cloth for bandages and salve tins and other props meant to make the whole alchemy or potion-crafting or whatever seem more realistic, Galen supposed.
Now, Danto clutched at the worn leather satchel slung over his shoulder which contained all those allegedly helpful components and potions. But he didn’t move to use them.
“Stay right where you are.” Macond also did not move so much as a single step closer to the chaos swirling through the courtyard. “Whatever you do on your own time, you’re on militia time now. You follow my orders.”
With a crash, one building’s upper level gave way, spewing sparks and flame as what was left fell in on itself. The handful of people closest to it scattered away from the threat.
Like Danto, Galen felt like someone should be doing something. But one more person on the bucket brigade wouldn’t change the fate of these buildings, and Galen knew nothing as useful as the kind of medical assistance Danto could provide.
Wait for orders. Do as you’re told but nothing more than that, no matter how difficult that may be.
One night a couple of years back, through the perpetual haze of weed smoke that hung over their gaming sessions, Galen’s buddy Xander had leaned across a table strewn with empty bottles and scattered dice and told Galen to stop riding people’s asses about doing things his way.
“You think you know everything, man. People don’t want you to fix their shit. And if they do want their shit fixed, they should be fixing it their own damn selves.”
That had pissed Galen off. Sometimes you did have to step up and handle things, because no one else was going to. And what were you going to do, just let one idiot player charge off doing dumb things and bring a TPK on the full party? Wait until your parents’ laziness got their kids taken away by social services?
“Galen. Man. Something’s got to give. You’re using yourself up, and you’re barely even a legal adult.”
After Galen had cooled down, he’d acknowledged that Xander might have a point. He’d been working on staying in his own lane. But the fact remained.
Sometimes you had to do something because no one else was going to.
But the someone in this case is the militia. So just keep it in check and let Macond deal with it.
“Mudders.” Macond spoke the single word abruptly and with undisguised disgust—not that disgust was an uncommon feature of his speech.
Macond Chanaw was a lesser noble in an offshoot of the Chanford family for which Chanford Falls was named. Galen knew all about it because his own voice had been feeding him the lore from day one. At first, still in shock from the whole dying and transitioning into a new body ordeal, he’d only paid the slightest attention as the narrator rattled off details he wasn’t sure he’d need to know.
Galen was accustomed to GMs who slung chunks of exposition around, so he’d just taken his usual approach to dealing with it. He let the deluge wash over him and listened just enough to hopefully recognize when a name was repeated later. The repetition would let him know if a name or fact might be important. Titles and names had rolled past—Lord Ganac Chanford, assorted non-lordly nobles with names like Dindale and Chanaw, and a gaggle of others Galen hadn’t heard since.
Macond was one of the non-lordly gaggle. He’d spent the past week reassuring his three charges during their training that even without an official title, he was leagues above any social standing any of them might ever attain.
This disgust, though, came out even more harshly than usual from Macond’s round little mouth. He was staring at the ground, at bodies which Galen had been trying his best not to look at too directly in the moments since they’d ridden in and dismounted. Galen had looked instead at the knocked-over barrels and emptied livestock pens. A broken-open grain bag scattered seed across the muddy courtyard. A lone hen, unperturbed by the scene’s chaos, pecked at the spilled grain.
Now, Galen forced himself to see the rest.
Many of the dead were men in tunics and woolen leggings and women wearing kirtles and aprons. Galen glimpsed a figure small enough to be a child, arms flung forward toward an unmoving woman beside him.
Instinctively, even knowing that at some level what he was seeing wasn’t real, something dark and hot bubbled in Galen’s gut.
All his childhood, Galen had dreamed of adventure and excitement, of escaping from the yoke of responsibility he’d placed on himself because his parents couldn’t or wouldn’t take it upon themselves. Redemption Wars had provided him with an Origin of Storekeeper’s Son, neatly tethering him to an IC family business with an unending stream of things to be lifted and hauled, counted and valued—a yoke of a different kind but still responsibilities he didn’t want.
Galen had read his entry into Chanford Falls’ mandatory militia service as the requisite excuse to run off and become an adventurer. This adventure, so far, didn’t feel very good. It felt, as promised, very realistic, so Galen couldn’t fault it there. It was just that, under the circumstances, it was almost too realistic.
Galen held his breath until the sick sensation in his stomach settled. Then he made himself look again.
As many dead from the manor as there were, many other bodies wore far different garb, coarse clothing of woven reeds and no boots or shoes whatsoever, only bare feet caked with filth. Their hair was shaved close against scalps or worn in caps of matted curls. Clusters of black feathers and streamers of white moss adorned their hair and their rough clothing.
One of these, closer than the others, was what Macond looked at with a curled lip.
“Mudders?” Danto shuffled a half step back, bumping Galen. “From The Meres? Here, across the river?”
Galen waited for the narrator to weigh in. It didn’t disappoint.
The Meres—quite literally “the lakes”—is a name which encompasses the land east of the Mindet River. The Meres are a much wilder land than the fertile farmland and forests here in the Mindet Valley on the west side of the river. On the river’s east side, bogs and marshes wind between the murky namesake lakes. “Mudder” is a derogatory slang term for any of the tribes of Meres-folk who populate the region.
The mudder Macond was staring at stirred, suddenly. Alarm trilled up Galen’s spine. Involuntarily, he shuffled one foot backward, as Danto had done before.