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Name:
Jelena Turandot, Pilgrim
Rank:
Convert
Level
1
Status:
4/4 (Giddy and Pious)
Weapons:
Wooden Stave
A tall woman in simple pilgrim robes stood at the back of a pack of a dozen or so new converts from about midway along the pilgrimage route. She had a complexion and features hailing from the high desert, as did the three converts in front of her.
Ahead, wreathed in the warm glow of a low-hanging late-afternoon sun streaming into the sewers at the pilgrim’s backs, awaited a pair of sewer sentries. These guards greeted each party of faithful in turn.
“Hail, travelers! I am…”
Name:
Calaf of Riverglen, Sewer Guard
Rank:
Shielder
Level:
3
Status:
8/8 (Nervous)
Weapons:
Simple Iron Spear
The second figure was some years and levels this young guard’s senior.
“Before you lay the sewers of Riverglen,” Calaf explained with a novice’s eagerness. “Where the Ancient Heroes of Yore fought their first true battle. Now you, too, shall clear out this same sewer. The dire-rats shouldn’t give you a problem so long as you stick to your parties. But if you see anything that your Interfaces describe as a ‘Rat King’ please come back to us and Mister Gorman will take care of it!”
The second, more experienced, guard nodded somewhat inattentively.
Parties walked through and received the same spiel in turn.
“You keep staring at the guard,” said a Japellan girl.
“I am not,” Jelena said in mock protest. “I’m just… excited to begin the pilgrimage.”
The Japellan party, all from a recently converted settlement and all youngsters in their teens and twenties waited next in line. Jelena herself had been the first to convert and had led most of her party through the Branding process. Her rather poofy hair was restrained in a traveler's bandana. Jelena’s right eye was a rusty brown-red, while her Branded left eye had a slight purple tint to it where the inlaid Brand symbol had enhanced her vision with the holy mark of the Interface.
“Hail, travelers!” the rookie guard began again.
“Hey there.” Jelena smiled. “You guard these sewers every day?”
“Um… yes,” Calaf said, implacable. “That is my job, madam.”
The rest of the party giggled.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here to protect us from the rats, good sir.”
New Convert Turandot winked her branded eye. Immediately, the young guard’s cheeks turned rosy.
Special Technique: Charm
Effect: 35% Base Chance of Putting Affected Target Under Your Influence for Nine Minutes and Thirty Seconds.
And on Calaf’s Interface…
Name:
Calaf of Riverglen, Sewer Guard (Jelena’s)
Rank:
Initiate
Level:
2
Status:
8/8 (Amorous!)
Weapons:
Simple Iron Spear
“Ma’am, please be safe in the sewer.” The guard clasped his hands together. “Is there anything you need, Ma’am?”
“I… think we’ll be okay.” Jelena’s own cheeks turned a darker shade.
“Okay, Ma’am. Do call if you need anything at all, Ma’am.”
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The Japellan party continued into the sewers, looking for rats to slay.
“Well.” Jelena exhaled sharply. “That was unexpected. Who knew that such an ability could be available to low-level pilgrims? Back before the baptism I always was able to turn heads with a wink. But here I hardly even had to try. It just sort of happened…”
“You haven’t changed a bit, Jelena,” said one of the younger men.
“I… it wasn’t like I meant to put the moves on him.” Jelena said, suddenly self-conscious. “Ay, I was hoping to avoid this.”
“Going to, like, shoot your shot?” asked another woman from Japella.
“Well, it’s true that I have a bit of a… reputation back home.” Jelena’s cheeks blushed a deeper shade still. “And it’s true I would have considered it some months ago. But… I’m a pious member of the church now. Since I took to the Menu, I have vowed to live a chaste, Menuly life. It simply won’t do to charm every fetching guard I find along the path. Not anymore.”
“Conversion’s turned even Jelena into a pure and virginal maiden again,” another pilgrim said, to uproarious laughter.
“It’s a miracle!” said another.
Jelena frowned. “Hmmph. I’ll be holding you boys to your vows for once as well, good sirs.”
That shamed the other Japellans into silence.
“Besides,” the pious convert Jelena added. “The guard was a little young for the travails of heartbreak and seduction. In another half-decade, he’ll surely mature into a fine young man. But for now…”
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Years later and a few hundred miles away, Jelena Turandot sat about her desert hometown and reminisced. She had her eyepatch off, letting her clouded-over eye and accompanying vertical scar air out in the dry deserts around her hometown.
“Guess he doesn’t recognize me,” the older, more mature Jelena said to herself. “I may be thankful for that. Heh.”
“You met him before,” Enkidu said after a time.
“Every convert would have met him.” Jelena nodded. “Guess I didn’t give him as strong a first impression as I thought.”
The relic huntress giggled to herself.
“Why, I only just remembered the details of that little rendezvous myself,” she concluded and then giggled again.
“You have a soft spot for that guard.” Her companion grumbled.
“Soft spot?” Jelena’s lips angled upwards. “I want to devour that dashing, noble little do-gooder alive. But he’s betrothed and all…”
Enkidu grumbled again, a huffy grunt that indicated he had no time for this nonsense.
“Jealous?” Jelena grinned.
“Never.”
“Good to know~” Jelena donned her eyepatch. “Y’know it took great restraint not to share your embarrassing backstory.”
Her companion gave no response. Jelena chuckled to herself, then sniffed the air.
A strange static filled the air. Downright uncommon for the desert. It caused hairs on Jelena’s arms and neck to bristle.
“Let’s head north. Feel somethin’ coming,” the relic thief said.
Enkidu, the Unbranded, bearded mountain of a man stashed his sword and followed in Jelena’s wake without another word.
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“That was… anticlimactic,” said a convert, Pristine Rat Pelt (x5) in hand.
“Didn’t even take ten minutes,” said another.
“I’m sure the Ancient Heroes had no problem besting the rats either,” Jelena Turandot said. “It’s a historically accurate station on our pilgrimage.”
The party returned through the sewers, an extra level or two in hand and the dire-rats fleeing in their wake. They were among the last parties to enter the pilgrimage station on this day, and so the light through the front portcullis was beginning to fade.
That gate guard from before still appeared in the converts’ Interfaces as: Calaf of Riverglen, Sewer Guard (Jelena’s), indicating that the Charm still had about 30 seconds to go.
“Did you succeed? Is there anything you need?” asked the charmed guard.
“We did fine. Even leveled up,” Jelena said. “Thank you for your guidance, good sir guard.”
The rest of the pilgrimage party giggled.
“Do let me know if there’s anything you need while you’re in town, ma’am,” said the guard.
“We’ll be leaving in the morning. But if anything comes up, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“If this were before the Deacons set up that Mission back home, you’d already have taken him back to the inn,” said another convert.
Jelena shot her fellow travelers a scornful look. “Never mind them. Keep on doing your job, good sir guard~”
The Japellan converts left the sewer, leaving the hapless rookie guard’s ‘Charmed’ status to dissipate of its own accord.
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Calaf walked through the desert, the heat already beginning to build in the midmorning. He had plenty of water to stave off negative status effects.
Countless pilgrims had gone through the sewers in the few short years that Calaf had served as a guard on that first pilgrimage station. If Jelena had converted during that time, they would have had to meet at some point.
This brought Calaf’s memories returning to an incident some years ago.
Was that… the pilgrim from the desert region? A woman, eager, pious, and recently converted. A few years his senior, similar face, brand on the left eye…
Calaf threw his hands up in the middle of the dire-goat path between Japella and Firefield.
It was her all along! The woman he’d briefly become smitten with back on his first month on the job! Gorman had insisted at the time that Calaf had been stricken by some sort of ‘Charmed’ debuff, but Calaf hadn’t noticed one bit.
“Ahhhh!” Calaf shook his head from side to side. “Maybe that’s why I was so quick to trust her. Perhaps I’ve been made extra-susceptible to her fiendish succubus wiles!”
Calaf walked on, grumbling and flustered. His pace gradually slowed. He checked his status screen. There was no sign of being charmed in recent history. Heck, could Jelena even do that without the Menu’s power now? As a ‘special technique,’ it was specific to those who lived under the Interface. An ungodly life denied lapsed followers access to the Menu’s divine skillset.
Everything Calaf had done over the last night and into the morning had been a result of his own will, at least. Letting her go, having some manner of sympathy despite his target having murdered the good Pryor Yordan.
The Stalwart tried suppressing any doubts he may have had. There was no way he could apprehend Jelena at this time anyway. The relics were accounted for, including the Thief’s Lockpicks in his inventory right now. And… loathe though he was to admit it, his experience on the route, particularly everything with Baldr and the church hunters, gave the young and faithful paladin-aspirant pause.
The Holy Church of the Menu was a noble institution selflessly spreading the good word of Menu-based life throughout the world. Without a life ordered by the Interface and experienced via Menu, why, everything would be chaos! There’d be no organizing principle behind society at all. Life would just sputter about unbridled!
Even so, the highest-level church hunters had run Calaf through with a sword longer than he was tall. And not even due to any whiff of heresy on Calaf’s part! And while the sadistic church hunter Baldr had proven himself more than willing to smite anyone, even to save face, Walter might not need much of a reason at all.
The heretical apostate he’d been pursuing for so long turned out not only to have rescued him from the church hunters but revealed herself to not be quite so fiendish a villain on a personal level.
It was the more iniquitous locations from Port Town northward, Calaf decided, that grated on the Stalwart’s noble and chivalrous sensibilities. Yes, when he returned home things would be better. He’d be surrounded by familiar faces amid idyllic countryside, back within hand-holding distance of his beloved fiancée.
Calaf had earned many levels on his pilgrimage thus far. Just one more level would bring him to 40. There, he could reclass into Errant at any shrine. It would represent the midway point on his journey to Paladin. Halfway, that is, in terms of titles and rank. It was less than a fifth of the required XP to reach the top levels, where level-up scaling quickly turned into an exponentially sloped cliff.
Experience north of forty would come slower, each level an accomplishment in and of itself. Many lived their entire lives and never made it to level 50. But having gotten a taste for it, Calaf was now gripped with a desire to see the rest of the pilgrimage route through one day. For with levels came influence in the Church. And if there was some rot at the heart of the church, perhaps Calaf could rise in the ranks to reform the institution from within.
Calaf’s introspective malaise was interrupted when his Interface opened unprompted, replacing the endless desert landscape and obscuring his entire vision from horizon to horizon:
SYSTEM MESSAGE (OVERRIDE): DUSTED OFF THE OLD MESSAGING SYSTEM, HOSS. STOP. WORLD IS WATCHING. STOP. JUST SAY WHAT YOU WANT HERE. STOP.
As soon as it appeared, this message turned ruby red and dissipated in a shattering crash. So disruptive was this intrusion that Calaf tripped over his feet and stumbled to the sandy ground.
“What was…?” Calaf gazed at the Interface Brand on his left hand, inherited from the father who’d died before he was born.
Though Calaf flipped through his Interface, through Menu after Menu, there was no evidence of any such message at all. He checked Stats, Inventory, and even into the seldom-dwelled-upon nitty-gritty of Substats, it was as if no such message ever existed.
Just as soon as the first message had appeared and vanished, a second, smaller System Message appeared before him:
SYSTEM MESSAGE (OVERRIDE): BRANDED OF THE MENU, THE BISHOPS’ SERMONS ARE BUT LI---
Just like the first, this second message disintegrated and proved irrecoverable. Isolated out here amidst the sands, there was little proof that this all wasn’t just some weird mirage.
“Huh.” Calaf managed, then got back to his feet. “That was… odd.”
With a bit more trepidation than before, Calaf set forth for the dunes and hovels of Firefield. Truly, one step closer to Riverglen…
----------------------------------------
It was still another day or so before the Stalwart’s convoy would come through. With no desire to whittle away his newfound riches at a gambling parlor (again), Calaf instead decided to focus on self-improvement, cultivating a proper, chivalrous pre-Paladin mindset.
Firstly, Calaf consulted some caravan records. He ensured that Talia of Granite Pass and all the other Menu-Branded prisoners from the thieves’ guild hideout had safely left town. The words of Baldr and his hunting party were still fresh in Calaf’s mind, and he shuddered as he spied Talia and three other familiar names on a caravan roster heading south. Maybe Baldr and company were still searching for any last witnesses from the desert hideout where Metzger had met his end. If not, Calaf prayed the prisoners would never encounter another church hunter in their lives. If so, at least the prisoners were out of town. Trackable, perhaps, but far from here.
Calaf returned to the main street, where the pilgrimage crowds had just passed the high-water mark for the season. If that mysterious ‘Systems Message’ had caused any panic or fear amidst the revelers of Firefield there was no evidence of it. There were more people on this street than the entire off-pilgrimage season population of Riverglen.
Even despite the crowds, enough room was cordoned off in a naturally-acoustic divot for a passion play:
“Hark!” said a level 10 Shielder in fake and purely ceremonial armor meant to approximate a level 80 look. “Fair maiden, our journey is nigh.”
A level 8 younger man dressed as a level 75 priestess clasped their hands in prayer. “Oh, brave warrior. I shall accompany you. With the Holy Interface, this god-blessed System we were granted at the southern cavern, we shall surely defeat the demonic hordes!”
Like all Church-educated citizens born under the Menu, Calaf immediately recognized these two figures as the Paladin and Cleric of the Ancient Heroes of Yore. Why, a Bronze Ring of Title-Spoofing allowed their Interfaces to identify them as such:
Name:
Roland, the Holy Paladin
Rank:
Paladin, Most Holy Church of the Menu
Level
10
Status:
24/24 (In-Character)
Weapons:
Prop Sword and Board (x1)
… and:
Name:
Mia, the Holy Priestess
Rank:
Cleric, The Most Holy Church of the Menu
Level
8
Status:
15/15 (Nervous Understudy)
Weapons:
Prop Cleric’s Talisman (x1)
Couldn’t properly spoof the level range of an endgame holy hero; that was the purpose of another, much rarer ring. Either ring would be a heretical form of impersonation were it not part of a Church-approved passion play.
Two other level 7s played the Scout and Battlemage, respectively, as the group set forth from the Riverglen sewers.
Calaf observed from the back of the crowd, hoping that the lessons of the Paladin’s journey would renew his rather strained, borderline-tempted ties to the faith. He watched as the group marched through Deepwood in a highly abbreviated version of the old heroes’ journey. In truth, the Cleric had written down the church’s earliest teachings on the very trees as the party marched through the woods. There were no-such trees to use as props in this desert-based production, so the cast mostly just sang a song about the deed.
At Twelfthnight they sheltered near the romantic hot springs.
Plains Junction had not yet existed in its modern form. But many followed in the heroes’ wakes, accepting the Menu into their hearts and using the nascent trading interface to start the first rudimentary commercial district along what would become the main pilgrimage line.
Port Town was much smaller back then, and the region was less populated. The Scout had led the party through the swamps. While back home, he performed some properly holy and not at all burglary-related tasks, such as land surveying.
The play was in a rush to get to Firefield before the intermission. These local theater outfits always had a hometown bias. But the party of four trudged through a desert vista, the painted background mural matching the surrounding environs for once. As was described in the church scriptures, the party nearly suffered from the Heat Stroke status effect, only to be provided some life-giving Dire-Goat’s Bladder Canteens of Water (Full) (x4) from local nomads.
“Good sirs,” said the Paladin-actor. “Won’t you abandon your heathen desert-dwelling ways and join us in righteous rebellion against the Demon Lord and his army of Un-Menuly fiends?”
The nomads immediately dropped to their knees and accepted the Brand. Now empowered by the Holy Menu, they took up arms in rebellion against the Demon Lord.
“We travel due north, into the highlands,” said the Paladin. “Where the majority of humanity awaits near the capital, toiling in fear under the demonic regime. From there, we shall march in force against the Demon Lord himself. But first…”
The Paladin turned to the audience.
“… let’s stop in for a bite at Friar Destin’s Dishes ‘n Dungeon Dives.”
“Located conveniently just down the street!” echoed the Cleric and various extras, as a choir.
A curtain wafted down, and the intermission began. The audience began to file out, heading over to the nearby Friar Destin’s location.
Once the intermission was done, the Ancient Heroes of Yore would winter in the pleasant ever-Fall microclimate of Autumn’s Redoubt. They would liberate the Old Capital, Brand the populace to better resist demonic influences, and the martyred Paladin would finally slay the hulking, city-sized Demon Lord in single combat at the cost of his life. All founding duties of the Church were then put onto the Holy Priestess, Cleric Mia, a role passed down through the ages via the holy bloodlines.
And so, the Menu had proven essential to slaying the vile, chaotic demon hordes and banishing them from this world forevermore. Calaf knew the story well – Pryor Yordan had put on a similar, yearly play with a focus on the heroes’ earliest Riverglen adventures.
“Hmmph. That’s not how I remember it.”
A signature, twangy, devil-may-care voice set the Stalwart’s neck hairs on end. His arm brand itched furiously, as did a thin, nigh-invisible scar running from his shoulder down through his chest cavity.
Two figures – a man in somewhat extravagant clerical robes and another in a loose-fitting Battlemage’s long coat marched around behind Friar Destin’s Dishes ‘n Dungeon Dives. Their Interface designations were hardly necessary.
“All the holes in the story. Embellishments. Selective lack of focus on key aspects. It’s a miracle we’re not putting down heretical uprisings left and right.” Baldr laughed.
Calaf tip-toed after the pair, hiding behind the establishment and hoping the stealth and Agility bonuses from the Thief’s Lockpick still blessed him. He eavesdropped, hearing again enhanced by this holy relic.
“You talk too much,” Walter grumbled, like an animal’s snarl. “Whispers are hardly a secure line of communique.”
“And to think, the Shackle, the Lord’s brand as some holy blessing to beat back demons. If those rabble-rousers of Yore could only see…”
“We’ve got a role to play. Until it is done.” Walter’s head lowered.
“Yes, yes. I can play along for another century more,” Baldr said. “If I have to.”
“You won’t,” Walter promised.
The duo disappeared around a corner. Calaf tip-toed up to hug the next wall.
“… even with the latest spate of heresies and relic thievery, the southern Spire will be complete within two pilgrimage seasons.”
“Ah, might as well be a blink of the eye,” Baldr said. “I can wait that long. Hopefully, Klavier will find us some prey up north to tide us over. Our last quarry ran off on us. Didn’t even seem interested in digging further into those relics. Hardly even remember their names… Helena? Janice?”
“The wild man’s stench. I've smelled it before…” Walter let out a snort of disgust before dropping the topic. “As for our next quarry, don’t get your hopes up. It’s just another doomed reformist movement. They’ll be crucified within a season.”
The pair walked north and east into the wide-open desert, where Calaf dared not follow. It was a no-man’s land in that direction, home to not even an oasis or trading post. The hunters had a whiff of conspiracy about them, though there was nothing that indicated to Calaf that they weren’t operating with the full blessing of the Church of the Menu.
Perhaps the faith required more dutiful reformation from within than Calaf first thought.
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