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“Oh, right.” Baldr muttered quietly to himself as Calaf climbed up to ground level. “Gotta deal with anyone who saw the thief’s lockpicks.”
Calaf kept the Scout – or whoever’s – lockpicks in his inventory. One thing at a time, he’d survive that once his next task was done. No harm could come to him while he was still in Baldr’s party, at least. He hoped.
The lighthouse beacon beckoned.
Calaf lit it with a simple utility skill accessible to all but the dumbest sword-n-boarders. He gazed for a bit too long into the bonfire that called seafaring craft around the cape and to the safety of the port.
Outside, that minor sheen of the golden barrier was still shimmering. It should allow Calaf to pass so long as he remained in Baldr’s party. Not sure how long that would last.
Ignoring the screams from the basement. Ignoring the singsong humming tune from the torturer rising over the screams. Calaf walked out onto the dunes. He approached the golden sheen that marked the barrier that should reject unwanted intruders – that was keeping everyone trapped in this cage of gold.
There was a new status effect. ‘Queasy.’ A timer counting down until he was overcome with the urge to hurl. He ignored it for a time.
Calaf held his breath. He took a step forward… and passed through the oil-slick sheen. Immediately the sunset grew a bit more vibrant, full of orange hues rather than a muffled golden filter.
Alright, he was free from that butcher’s shop… Calaf immediately called up the Interface and disbanded his party. He kept walking, back into town, through the cathedral district, whose clerics were in a tizzy but too concerned with scrambling for the winds to pay their onetime captive any heed.
Onward, Calaf walked. He walked out the north gate, shadowing the route he’d traveled with Jorge’s party a week ago, now. A few dire-gators slunk about in the water, back to their appropriate level already.
Just past the city gates, the timer ran out and Calaf vomited.
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It was at the first riverside junction that Calaf snapped back to reality and realized that he still had the Scout’s holy relic on his person. Ah, not that he was technically a relic thief now or anything – certainly, there was nobody of any rank left in the Port Town cathedral to accept the return.
Affecting the regional level ranges turned out to not be some intrinsic part of removing the holy relics from their carefully-maintained pedestal – you just choose the item via the Interface and press ‘select’. There’s a list of level ranges – it wasn’t even some special training granted to the church higher-ups or magic used only by clerics. Kind of took the luster out of an arcane church ritual, really.
There was no moon out tonight. Calaf turned inland and walked to the next junction, then spent the night at the tiny trading outpost’s one minuscule inn. If Baldr ever noticed the party union was broken, he never came looking for his lower-level charge or the leveling relic.
Sleep was not a willing thing, coming only with exhaustion. Dreams were forgotten as soon as they passed, with only the vaguest of sensations that they were all somewhat unpleasant. At sunup, Calaf awoke to a revelation.
Jelena must truly have altered the leveling mechanics by accident. Having rejected the Menu and defiled her Brand, how else could she have interacted with the artifacts? She wasn’t lying about that.
Of course, she was still a relic thief, Calaf thought, with a priceless holy artifact currently in his inventory as well.
Calaf curled up, knees in his chest, atop the paltry inn’s bedroll. He mulled over recent events:
The last week of captivity.
The corrupt cleric-thieves and the monastery used to quite literally silence dissent.
That raid on the lighthouse.
Baldr’s skills had been impressive at first. The mark of an expert hunter of the church, skilled in levels and adept at the use of the Interface. He was even high-level enough to customize his spells. And yet the screams, even of those apostates, lingered in Calaf’s mind.
This was not the righteous, holy mission that Calaf grew up immersed in. That monastery was not the upstanding, honorable priory that the good Pryor Yordan had ran. Why, the martyred head of the Riverglen church had been a regular saint, doing nothing but caring for every orphan in the glen. He couldn’t possibly have condoned such a monastery. Couldn’t possibly have condoned working in the same organization as Bishop Cross of Port Town if he’d known what the crooked cleric was up to.
But they were apostates, defiling the thief’s – ahem, the scout’s – good name and using the Menu’s own holy ground for black market thieving activities. Surely a level 70+ ordained hunter would know more about church doctrine than a lowly Stalwart.
Calaf stumbled to the inn’s annex and ate a paltry selection of local breakfast grains. He tipped the innkeeper generously – charity was a trait of an aspiring Paladin after all. Having trudged through that city of thieves where even faith in the Menu was corrupted only made Calaf resolve to stick to his class’s tenants more thoroughly.
What if maybe Baldr was correct? What if those thieves who defiled the church’s good name deserved to be killed so hard their corpses couldn’t even be commended to the crypts? And that man, arm severed and left to bleed out… the just desserts of an apostate? Did Jelena deserve that, or worse?
The road split in four directions, as it did at most junctions. Calaf took a north-westerly path, further away from the main fingers of the river. He spent the day traveling in silence through two more junctions, then turned north.
And the less-than-savory practices of the Port Town cathedral. It was because they were corrupted by the thieves guild from within. And the port brought in all those foreign, unMenuly influences. Yes, even the strongest of faiths would be ground down from having to live in such a den of iniquity! Why, perhaps the pilgrimage went through that den of sin and heresy precisely so that faith could come out the other end all the stronger.
It was in this headspace that Calaf traveled, alone, along a path shadowing the wider pilgrimage route. He stopped only once for the night, reusing the remains of a decades-old campfire and cook pit hidden in a rocky outcropping. The beasts of the field were growing higher in level – far too much for Calaf to take on alone. But they wouldn’t dare venture within range of the campfire’s glare.
He awoke again half expecting the outcropping to be surrounded by that thin golden sheen designating the custom barrier spell. But it was not to be, and he did not see another soul on the entire day’s travel. Just a few dire-cows penned in by a stone wall.
Swampy murk had given way to rocky, rolling hills divided up into farmland this far from the river. Sunken-in irrigation canals delineated farmsteads. Indeed, the holy itinerary stated that more people lived in the delta’s hinterlands than in the entirety of Riverglen, albeit spread out over ten times the area. The river brought fertility, which brought farmland and foodstuffs.
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In time, though, the irrigation canals reached their limits. The land grew more arid, suitable for minor grazing by dire-cattle, until it gradually turned too rocky even for that. It was a desert, too far from the sea to get moisture and blocked from rain by mighty mountains running from around the Olde Capitol far to the north to Granite Pass in the southwest.
And it was this desert that was the land’s natural state; the green delta was the anomaly.
Rocky ground and thorny, hardy bushes gave way over a half-day’s march to finer, sandy ground. Too arid for Calaf’s more temperate Riverglen constitution, and the level delta between him and beasts here was a several-level jump from even the highest-level fiend of the marshes. But it was also too dry to support larger predator beasts. He traveled in relative safety, even at night. This was good, as the scorching temperatures of the daylight forced Calaf to seek shelter for an afternoon and continue his journey under the cover of dark.
It was too late that Calaf realized he’d passed the last trading junction some time ago. He should have stocked up on water, but was too far ahead to turn back. He was behind schedule on the pilgrimage as it was.
And so Calaf walked down a dusty barely-there trailhead. Peripheral vision blurred. He was somewhere far off the pilgrimage route, at the edge of the desert, when a status effect began to take hold:
Status: Dehydration (level 1)
Effect: Strength -1, Endurance -1, Agility -1
Then, lights in the far distance. Artificial torchlight in the night.
Calaf kept walking, using this far landmark as a guide. If it were day he’d expect this to be a mirage. But no, it was real. Another night’s walk through the dunes and he arrived, just as the blazing sun was rising, into a tiny desert hamlet.
“Oh? Is it someone new?” Asked a withered old woman at the town’s edge.
“This settlement is…” Calaf could barely talk. “Not on the. Pilgrimage itinerary.”
“I see. A pilgrim then? Seldom get those anymore. Ah, rarely get anyone at all these days, not since the old orphanage closed. Trade caravan should be arriving at the north gate this afternoon.”
This elder clearly liked waxing about the troubles of her town. No doubt wanting some, any traveler to devote their time to fixing all this paltry settlement’s problems. Why, every stop on the itinerary from Riverglen to Autumn’s Redoubt had someone putting in work orders. It was an essential way by which pilgrims could raise money for their journey.
“Where are we?” Calaf rasped
“Ay, why, we’re…” the old lady looked at an empty patch of dirt where the desert sand met a carved-stone hovel. “Huh. Sign’s fallen. It’s in there somewhere.”
Calaf checked around in a pile of sand and eventually plucked out a wooden signpost.
“Welcome to Japella.”
“Japella, huh?” Calaf propped the sign up against the stone dwelling.
Sounded vaguely familiar. He didn’t quite recall where though.
“Hey, Sonny. I’ve got to head over to the well but my knees just aren’t what they used to be. Could I please lean against you as we walk? It’s just in the center of town.”
Calaf looked over the old woman. She had no name under the menu. Unbranded. Still, helping her out was a good deed fitting of a paladin.
The pair walked – slowly – down a dusty avenue that demarked the one major road through this town. All structures were carved out of boulders of various size jutting out of the sands. Likely tips of some buried outcropping. The carvings were old, ancient, even, possibly predating the Ancient Heroes of Yore.
Of course, the only thing differentiating the sleepy hamlet of old Riverglen, the ancient trading post of Plains Junction, and the oasis of Firefield from windswept Japella here was that the old heroes happened to pass through the former for quite some time on their journey. Had they zigged instead of zagged, ventured away from the river’s watershed for a time, it may have been Japella on the edge of the desert that was a sprawling Pilgrimage nexus.
“You there one of the Menuers, yeah?” The old woman asked, gripping his forearm shoulder tighter still.
“Aye. I am a lifelong adherent to the Most Holy Church of the Menu,” said Calaf. “Traveling the pilgrimage path – before I got sidetracked.”
“Why, we used to get your lot here all the time. Nice deacon came down from that noisy oasis depot over across the dunes down thataway and helped construct a church and orphanage. Think they called it a Mission? A missionary? I dunno.”
The central well came into view. It was not a long walk from one end of town to another at all. Only a few gruff-looking older fellows were there in the shade, eyeing Calaf warily. It seemed the old and Brandless were all that was left.
“You have a church here?”
The old woman hobbled the last few steps to the well.
“Used to. Why, Sister Turandot was a kindly deaconess. Nice local lass, one of the first converts in town. Once she came back from the Pilgrimage she handled all church duties and attracted a few pilgrims on detour to perform something. ‘Side quests’ believe they called it. Alas, the place is a crumbling wreck now. Not quite sure what happened to all that.”
Calaf made a mental note to seek out this ruined chapel.
The old lady continued. “Ah, but now all the young’uns have branded up and gone off to live in that oasis over yonder. Only the old folks what predate the mission remain.”
Age and Infirmity was a bit of a foreign concept for those blessed in the Menu’s light. Levels were more important. An old man at level 80 was still a force to be reckoned with, just as much as a sixteen-year-old who’d likewise climbed to the apex of the tallest spire of the Grand Cathedral at Demon Lord’s Fall.
“Young man. Could you… get some water for me?”
Calaf pulled some water from the well. He filled his canteen alongside several spare flasks of water:
Item:
Canteen (Full) x1
Sealed Flask of Water (x6)
“Huh.” Calaf looked at the bottles of water in his inventory, then to the old woman. “There’s, uh, no option to trade with the unbranded.”
Back in Riverglen all interpersonal interactions were done by the Menu. Why, the Holy Interface was the foundation of all civilized society. And yet, he was unable to perform this act of charity under the menu. The chivalry of a prospective paladin won out over fealty to the Menu; he could always perform repentance later.
Calaf placed three of the water flasks on the lip of the well, which the old woman graciously collected. He took another bottle for himself, dispelling the dehydration debuff that had reached level 2 and begun affecting his charisma as well as further eroding his strength-based stats. Then, he filled up another four bottles to top off his inventory. Should be more than enough to travel to Firefield, once he replenished his food rations.
“Do you have an inn, or perhaps a village general store?” Calaf asked.
“Oh, nothing quite like that. Why, all provisions were run out of the ol’ church,” replied the woman.
“I see.”
“But there is a weekly supply wagon what should be showing up sometime this afternoon. Maybe between noon and six perhaps. They’ll usually allow anyone to ride in the cart on the way back. Not a lot of goods left to haul back from here, yeah?”
“I understand. Thank you for your hospitality.” Calaf bowed.
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There would be some time before this rumored supply cart reached town. So, Calaf explored Japella – what there was to see. Already a small settlement, dozens of stone-carved homes were long abandoned.
Japella’s Church of the Menu was hard to miss. It was the only building made of imported materials – Deepwood lumber, as most of the smaller ecclesiastical buildings in the realm were. The steeple was sunken amidst a ruined pile now, showing signs of having been burnt at some point years ago. The actual chapel had been small, but there was a wing for an orphanage, a wing for a small market done as charity to these tiny desert abode, and a modest chamber above the chapel for the mission’s custodians.
A deacon (not unlike Calaf’s Deacon, still performing missionary duties back in Vault) was always the first church official in line at an unconverted settlement. Their job was only to lay the foundation of the church. The day-to-day operations of Menu-adherent life were performed by a fleet of pryors, deaconesses, and occasionally monks or nuns. According to that old woman…
“Sister Turandot, was it?” Calaf scratched his stubble (he’d hardly had time to shave since Plains Junction) and looked around. “Probably a lower-ranking deaconess. For a settlement of this size, it would’ve had only a single full-time church Sister.
Whatever had happened to this ruined church, he hoped this Sister Turandot was safe and sound.
One day, perhaps when he’d traversed the entire pilgrimage route and renewed his faith in the Menu, Calaf could return and reignite the mission in this forsaken hamlet.
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Wasn’t much of a choice but to wait; he’d be traveling through at night anyway. The old lady from the southern entrance to the village came by with some grilled dire-gecko for Calaf to snack on while he waited.
The cart eventually arrived around seven. Some paltry food and building supplies arrived, though it scarcely seemed enough to sustain the village.
Calaf bought his way aboard with a paltry fee of gold for the cart driver. It would be morning before they set out, but the trip was assured to be safe, free from potential attack by any monsters that were well out of Calaf’s range in this far-flung patch of desert.
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