Current Quests
The Safety Of Walls: Reach a walled town with Samorn Khantong.
Abandoned Forest Town: Investigate the abandoned forest town Courbefy with local…
Survive Lord Ross: Survive Lord Ross hunting you in this area. Kill Lord Ross for extra…
A cup of tea later and Sam had accepted being a mo phi. She was now fully back to her usual bubbly self.
“We can’t go in unless we know that Ross is not, Yes? Because Ross could pick up essences at any moment and get us killed,” said Sam, looking at Dave for confirmation.
“I think so. Our best hope is that he picks up an essence and gets killed. Do you think we could speed it up with reverse psychology? Just shout at him from a distance, ‘Don’t touch the essence in the cells of the police station!’?” asked Dave with a sigh.
“Maybe!” giggled Sam.
No matter how Dave tried, this was a genuine problem with Lord Ross and his hunting party. So long as Sam’s army didn’t know where the hunting party was, going inside the town was a risk because the hunting party could disturb one of those essences at any moment.
=Sam is right, only Professor Tome and I are truly safe. Unless you both can fly away, Dave, every moment inside the town area is a risk.=
“No,” said Dave. “You’re right, I know Sam’s right. We can’t be in town knowing that at any moment we might have an army of shadows to fight our way through. We need ideas.”
“You’ll think of something!” said Sam brightly.
It was past lunch time. Sam and Dave were contentedly sipping tea, meditating on their experiences.
“I’m out of ideas for now. Let’s relax and just let some ideas come to us,” said Dave. “So far we’ve got, ‘learn to fly’ and ‘ensure Lord Ross can’t touch the essences’. Anybody else have suggestions? Suggest anything at all. Often, ideas that seem silly at first have a centre of truth that we can build a real idea on, come on. Suggestions?”
“We could scare him away!” said Sam with her eyes closed, appreciating her warm tea mug in her hands.
=Yes! A warrior should be terrifying! Progress!=
Sam raised her mug to Tzu in acknowledgement.
“In that spirit, I’ll add ‘convince Ross to leave’ to the list,” said Dave who telekinetically brought a pen to Tome who opened to a blank page upon which Dave wrote the three ideas so far.
=Trick our enemy into taking the essence! Sealing their fate!=
“That’s a good one!” said Dave.
“You can send letters!” exclaimed Sam.
“I can but, so far, I’ve had to save every spell I can to have a hope of getting anything useful done in a day,” said Dave.
They entered into a debate, playing with the good and bad of each idea they wrote down. Sam ended up favouring a strategy of herding the hunting party and preventing them from leaving the inner town area. This was countered by the fact that herding only worked if they didn’t fight. Which they would, and probably win. Tome favoured retreat to a safe distance and communication but this would give Ross either the time to discover the secrets of the town even by trial and error and their hunting party might have the power to survive disturbing an essence if they had enough potions and their fortress essence user had uninterrupted access to their abilities.
Tzu had actually had the best idea of ignoring the whole problem and simply assassinating the hunting party in the night, one-by-one. This could work but it could also backfire horribly because the paper golems, their heaviest hitters, weren’t exactly stealthy and it would be easy to walk into a trap or, more likely, just get stuck in a protracted fight and overwhelmed.
Dave allowed himself to unfocus and let the conversation wash over him. All the ideas had merit, they all had downfalls. Perhaps the strengths of one could cover the weaknesses of another? Perhaps communicate that he knew how to find all the awakening stones and trade that knowledge for freedom? Would greed be enough? Maybe, but Ross might just self righteously break his word.
Maybe the antonym of one plan while also following another? Maybe assassination and taunting communication to elicit a bad emotional response? Maybe get seen making the essences hard to find, thus arousing curiosity and making Ross investigate them? Maybe learn to fly after all? He was pretty sure he could make a paper golem with wings or a hang glider or…
“Oooooooooh,” said Dave in a long, loud voice.
Everyone looked at him.
“I have a very good, insane idea,” said Dave with a grin.
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Sam and Dave woke before dawn the next morning. For safety reasons, they spent the end of the previous day unsuccessfully hunting monsters on the outskirts of the various Courbefy woods and now it was a small trek to get into town but Dave didn’t summon any golems. They had plans for those spell slots today. Very carefully, with everyone watching, Dave used Mail of the Magister to send a letter.
They jogged into town. They met a hungry-looking corrupted giant toad on the way but Sam casually threw her familiar into its eyes as she jogged past and they didn’t slow down until they reached the town hall. Sam and Dave ran inside.
Sam made a magic circle and started summoning skeletons. Dave ran upstairs into a large room with a collapsed roof, stared at his book and made a device.
“Milled for my purpose,” said Dave and watched the contraption print itself into the air. When it was done, Dave put a large pan from his inventory in the socket area he’d made for it.
Sam came up the stairs and looked at the device sceptically.
“This will work?” she asked.
“Should do. Get a skeleton in there to hold up the envelope and I’ll start the fire,” said Dave as he changed clothes into a cultist outfit that he’d kept.
Sam instructed the skeleton to do everything that Dave asked. He had it climb up the collapsed roof and hold open the mouth of a metres-long envelope over a Warming Fire prestidigitation. He left it there then, Dave lit a magic lantern from the kit of the hunting party’s healer he’d looted, put it on a long stick, walked out to the town hall balcony and began waving it slowly to and fro.
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Despite being an early riser, Lord Ross was woken before dawn.
“Hmm? Wha?” he said groggily.
“Sorry Ross,” said Raoul, respectfully touching his forelock, “But we just found this letter outside your tent door and Remy says there’s a lantern light being waved in town.”
“This better make sense,” said Ross testily as he took the letter and read it.
“Ha!” he scoffed. “They’re inviting us to the middle of town to ‘negotiate’. He says he’s willing to trade information for my promise to let him leave. Coward!”
“We’ve been trying to get our hands on the slippery rat for days. Nice of him to invite us to him,” said Raoul and he grinned like a predator, matching the aggressive bear themes on his armour.
“It’s the middle of town, though. How’d he get in there?” said Ross thoughtfully as he paused in the middle of pulling on his armour.
Raoul shrugged.
“Remy says that he never sets off the shadows. It’s only us and only after the first fight. I guess he just found a way in with no fights?”
“That’s probably it. Tell Remy to start scouting, we’ll catch up,” grumbled Ross while pulling on his boots. “But leave everyone else here, just in case they’re luring us away for a raid.”
“I’ll wake up Dori then,” said Raoul, and Ross nodded.
Finally, thought Ross, I can get revenge on that sneak-filth for Rich.
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Half-an-hour later, Sam was standing out of sight in the mayor’s office talking to Dave who was still on the balcony overlooking the town square.
“I definitely saw something,” she said. “I think they’re coming.”
“Yeah,” agreed Dave, “I saw small flashes of light from behind buildings too.”
“Did it work?” asked Sam nervously.
“It’s taken longer to inflate than I’d hoped but the illusion of the sky I cast on it works well so I’ll just keep them talking. I hope.”
Dave felt Sam’s strained smile.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll surround us with walls to buy time if it all goes wrong.
“Will that work?” asked Sam’s small voice.
“Should do. And we’ve been running on should-dos and maybes the last few days so let’s just keep on keeping on,” said Dave in a calm voice.
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Lord Ross listened to his scout’s report.
“He’s just on the balcony with the lantern. I think his girlfriend is inside the place with him on guard duty. All the windows are boarded up and I saw some kind of summoned creature at both doors just staring out. There’s nothing in the surrounding buildings, he’s just there waiting,” said Remy.
Ross nodded and decided the best approach was to pretend to negotiate.
“Then we’ll all come out and walk down the main street together like we’re serious about his stupid letter. Once we’re there, when I give the word, you smash in the doors, Dori, and Raoul can run in. I’ll follow. Remy, you stay outside and kill them if they try to run.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
“Alright!”
“Absolutely.”
They set off walking.
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“Oh, they’re coming. Sam, do it!” said Dave over his shoulder. He heard scrabbling behind him, peered into the morning mists and had to restrain himself from fist pumping. All four of the real hunting party were walking calmly down the road to the town square. Taking the long way. Dave leaned the pole lantern on the ledge and tried to stop his hands from shaking as he waited.
“Okay, that’s close enough!” shouted Dave.
They kept walking.
“Stop right there or I’ll summon my golems!”
Ross gestured for a stop.
“Is that what you call your summons?” he hollered back.
“Yes, and I’m sure your scout told you that I do not have them here but I’m actually standing in a summoning circle right now and can have them both out in a jiffy so you stay in the square and I’ll stay here and we negotiate!” lied Dave in a loud voice.
Stolen story; please report.
“Can he do that?” whispered Ross to Dori, the only member of their party with a summon.
“I guess so,” Dori whispered back.
“You have until Dori here summons his elemental to negotiate with me!” said Ross and nodded smugly at Dori. Dori’s earth elemental summon was a very long ritual but its strength and durability would make it an unbeatable asset in the coming fight so Ross was happy to wait.
“Well, I must tell you, I wanted to trade information. I’m certain that you’ve encountered some awakening stones while in the town just as we have. Haven’t you?” said Dave slowly in a loud, clear voice.
“Yes, what of it?”
“Well, I know that you’ve taken exactly six, I have taken twelve and I know where the remaining fourteen are. What do you think about that?”
“I think you’re a liar!”
“Really? How many do you have then?”
Ross grunted softly without taking his eyes off Dave. His hunting buddies took the hint and made a quick count.
“Six,” confirmed Raoul in a whisper.
“Lucky guess! Or you have the ability to see awakening stones!” accused Ross.
“What? Is that even an ability? I’m not sure it’s an ability”
“Yes!”
“Are you sure? I’ve been looking at that index printed by the Magic Society a lot recently. I’ve not seen anything like it! Can you confirm that? What page is it on? Just tell me, I’ll look it up. Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” roared Ross who was no such thing but wasn’t going to be spoken to like that by someone of his standing.
“Oh, sorry. Well I’ll trade the awakening stones and the three essences that are in this town for you, letting me go back to the city for a fair trial!”
“No deal! We can just search the whole town when you’re dead!” shouted Lord Ross with a grin.
“Well, you won’t find the essences so easily. I’ve hidden them.”
The earth elemental constructed itself inside Dori’s summoning circle but Ross didn’t give the word for attack. He just looked at Remy, who had the best aura control, with a raised eyebrow.
“It’d make sense that there’s some essences here. This place is rich enough in magic to make them. You can feel it in your aura,” said Remy quietly.
Lord Ross couldn’t but pretended he could and turned back to Dave.
“Tell me where the essences are and I won’t have this elemental knock you off your balcony.”
“Tell you what, I’ll give you one now to prove my claim! I’ll be right back.” shouted Dave and slowly backed off the balcony.
A moment passed and the shadows under the balcony wobbled in a strange way.
“SCCRReeeaaaaAAHhhhg!” came a familiar echoing scream from every direction as the whole town rose in shadows.
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Dave backed slowly inside. Sam gave him a thumbs up from across the room and ran off, leaving behind a skeleton who was wearing a builder cultist outfit. Dave stood next to the open safe with the corrupt essence in a pose ready to push off the wall. In a single motion he snatched it up and sprinted across the room. He’d already hurtled through the door to the hall before the echoing call rang out.
“SCCRReeeaaaaAAHhhhg!”
Dave threw himself down the hall, pumping his legs as fast as he could towards the decrepit storeroom with the collapsed roof as the shadows went from flickering to shuddering. The shadow creatures ripped into being as Dave dived bodily into the side of a hanging rope net. Sam swung her sickle heavily and cut through a rope tied to a beam below a hole in the floor which was tethering the small hot air balloon to the building. They began floating up.
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In an abandoned watchhouse jail down the road from Dave and Sam, a skeleton received a mental command. It picked up the darkness essence, swiftly turned about, leaned on the door frame and threw it down the hall to a skeleton on the stairs. It ignored the ethereal scream and the shadows coming into being. The skeleton on the stairs threw it out a window where it bounced off the wall of the opposite building and landed on a blanket-sized piece of string mesh. Tzu flew upwards as quickly as it could, away from the forming shadow creatures.
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In the remains of a warehouse, a skeleton in a sprinter’s pose received a mental command. It snatched up the echo essence from the internal tool shed and made a running throw of the essence to the front door. There were echoing screams all around. Another skeleton at the warehouse doors picked the essence up off the ground and, as the forming shadow creatures started tearing the skeleton down, it lobbed the essence onto the roof. Professor Spellbook Tome clumsily picked it up between his pages and inexpertly flew to a large piece of string mesh that had been laid out in advance, tucked the carrying loop over its spine, through its middle pages and began a muddled flight towards the direction it supposed the balloon was in.
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It had taken Dave longer than he’d hoped to take off but thank the gods for Sam’s new Return To The Grave spell. From what he could see of the magic at play, the spell summoned a piece of soul-facsimile which interacted violently with anything that wasn’t native this reality. So as they closed in, she cast shadows out of this realm with a casual ease.
Dave had climbed inside the loose basket properly when something with mayoral robes came into the room. It wasn’t like the other shadows. It was more real. Thankfully, Sam sidestepped the entire issue by casting Cruel Puppeteer. She didn’t have a lot of control but slowed the corrupted shadow mayor to a disjointed type of stumbling walk. Their balloon rose into the air but not fast enough. The mayor grasped the ropes of the net with one arm and began to lift off with them.
Thinking quickly, Dave drew a knife from his belt and Sam threw her beetle swarm into its eyes while Dave cut the rope either side of the mayor’s hand. They drifted into the sky and Sam recalled her familiar. They were still tethered to avoid floating away while Dave’s familiars found their way back. Dave used Epistemology on the shadowy figure glaring up at them.
Corrupted Shadow Mayor. Ethereal. Shadow. Bronze rank. Creatures of this type often are caricatures of real people or things, past or present with properties and abilities that are exaggerated versions of their notable traits.
“That’s a bronze rank monster!” said Dave in Sam’s ear.
Sam looked back with wide eyes.
The second tether was a lot longer, about thirty metres, and tied to a chimney of the town hall. They floated up in their balloon under the power of Dave’s fire prestidigitation which was being fed oil-covered wood by Sam for extra oomph in the flames. As per the illusion spell that Dave had cast on it, the balloon looked like someone, with an enormous paintbrush the width of a large hand, was continually painting the sky onto the balloon’s envelope as it moved. Crude detail but it was enough for this day’s purpose. The idea was that anyone who might be there to look would be too busy to pay attention. Below, Dave could see the hunting party fighting in the square.
The fortress builder had made a good one. Rising out of the middle of the town square was a small, circular fortification. It looked like the head of a rook from chess. Each member of the hunting party was on the raised middle, and hitting off any shadow that managed to seep up the side of the wall.
As they watched, Lord Ross was simply holding an electrified hand inside a shadow to disrupt its form while simultaneously damaging it and then moving onto the next. He suddenly looked at the mayoral balcony and laughed savagely.
“The clothed skeleton just jumped off the balcony,” said Sam.
Dave nodded and let himself have a satisfied smile. That ruse had worked.
The hunting party wasn’t doing too bad. Ross was being mana efficient, the transfiguration essence user was being a casual bear about disrupting shadows until another ally could end them and their scout, who Dave was sure had the glass, light, swift and reflection essences, had cast an area of effect ability that was making an area of ground falsely lit up like the brightest of midday suns and the shadows in it were taking exponentially more damage the longer the lingered inside.
“Think they’ve used some long cooldown abilities?” asked Dave in a low voice.
“I think so,” Sam said with a strange mixture of nervousness and excitement.
“Magics, I dispel and quell,” chanted Dave targeting an area effect version of his Dispel And Quell Magic spell.
The fortress blew away in an ethereal wind, the bear turned back into a man, the baking sunlight zone turned off and Lord Ross’s lightning hands became normal hands. The shadows mindlessly moved in on the bewildered hunting party who, to their credit, didn’t panic and circled together back-to-back, fighting with weapons that were temporarily non-magical, trying to open dimensional bags that were momentarily just cloth and mentally checking what abilities they had active.
The corrupt shadow mayor stepped outside and started bearing down on them. Lord Ross, who had his lightning fists return to him, readied himself to receive this new threat with his friends by his side.
With them all so close together, Sam threw her beetle swarm at them, letting it crawl over their faces. She hid her face with her hands as they started yelling in fear. Even so, Dave saw she couldn’t help a small smirk of satisfaction.
Over the roofs, Dave saw Tzu leading Tome back and he decided to cut the second tether before anything climbed it while they waited. It was an almost windless day in Courbefy valley and Sam recalled her swarm while they drifted ever so slowly higher and away from the battle as Tzu and Professor Tome delivered their packages.
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When the battle drifted out of sight, Dave cast The Clairvoyant Eye Of Transvection and made a mobile magical sensor close to the roof of a building on the town square and his senses whipped suddenly to that location.
The battle had moved from the square. There was a long earthen wall from the middle of the square to one side of a door of a sturdy-looking brick building. Dave guessed that the fortress confluence user had made the wall once he’d got his sight back so they would only be attacked from one direction while fighting to the building. Smart move.
He flew the eye closer and down a little over the fountain. It looked like the shadows were milling about and getting in through other doors and windows while the hunting party was tearing up internal walls to place them over windows and doors to restrict ways in. Their magical abilities and weapons had come back so they’d taken potions from their dimensional bags. Their health, stamina and mana was all above half, although varied greatly.
Even with their smart decisions, Dave looked around and saw at least a thousand shadows swarming in and when he saw three bronze ranked monsters in the crowd, knew they wouldn’t survive. Dave flew his eye to each to get a good look.
The mayor was a corpulent figure in robes of office and when Dave selected it, he saw that it was generating an aura. He read the tooltip. Aura of corruption. Any tool or item that the creature touches in the aura becomes less effective. So, not only was it bronze rank but hitting it with your weapons made your weapon worse. How would that work with the transfigured bearman? Dave guessed he’d find out.
He flew the eye over to a shadow-man in manacles, Corrupt Shadow Prisoner, who was a little away in the crowd. He had sunken eyes which seemed to accuse those it faced. While Dave watched it, staring soullessly into the building the hunting party was in he saw their scout lock eyes with the shadow prisoner and freeze up. It only lasted a moment before the bear shoved the scout away from the window.
Nice. A paralysing gaze.
Even further away was the last bronze ranked monster; Corrupt Shadow Tramp. A lanky looking shadow with a mane of tangled hair and beard to match. It moved faster than the other shadows, almost with an energetic spring in its step. Also unlike the other shadows it didn’t use the main streets. It slipped through cracks in walls, hopped in and out of windows and vaulted over derelict fences.
Dave took his eye back to the building that the hunting party were using as a last stand and rested his eye high in the air as they bravely held out the iron rank shadows. The shadow mayor was already at the building and pulling boards out of the door that the fortress essence user was holding closed.
Dave watched and felt his body release tension as the shadow prisoner put its face to the door and froze the fortress user momentarily, forcing the hunting party to abandon the main room as the mayor busted in.
They fought their way up the stairs of the building in a well ordered line and looked to be holding the rickety remains of the second floor well enough. Dave was unwilling to move his eye anywhere it might take damage, that’d end the spell, but he saw the shadow tramp vault through a hole in the roof.
Dave moved his eye to the hole in the roof and saw the aftermath. It looked like the tramp had landed, kicked the bearman down the stairs and was engaged in combat with Lord Ross who was screaming for the fortress user, Dori, apparently, to make a wall over the door. Dori, in turn, was screaming to give Raoul a chance. He guessed that was the bear man’s name.
Dave heard something behind him and noticed that a shadow-child was climbing the roof behind him and so, moved his eye up enough that he wouldn’t accidentally be touched by a shadow. He could still hear the desperate struggle inside. Ross was clearly being beaten down by the bronze ranked tramp.
Raoul never came back up the stairs. Dori did eventually put a wall over the door into the room but it was too late. There was already a bronze ranked monster inside and a small trickle of climbers and a couple of shadow cats added to their problems.
When the shadow mayor used its bronze rank strength to break through the wall, the scout, whose name Dave never learned, shot out of the hole in the roof, glowing with gold rank power, rising up on a rainbow of light. He must have taken a gold spirit coin. Half of his face was a mass of bruises and he clutched at his side but he still skated down the side of the rainbow light at great speed but to no avail. As he attempted to flee, shadow dogs chased and snapped at his ankles as he went by, still slowing him precious moments.
The scout disappeared from view but Dave kept him selected in his HUD and watched while his gold-rank buff wore off and his health bar dripped down to nothing. The noise from inside the building became an eerie silence.
After a minute of silence watching the shadows disperse. Dave went inside the room and saw the bodies of Lord Ross, Dori and, at the bottom of the stairs, Raoul. He let the eye spell end.
“Got ‘em,” Dave said to Sam.
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It was a quiet morning at the café upriver from the Hohenzollern Bridge, the golden light from the rising sun reflected on the Rhine, casting a soft glow over everything. Across from Dave, Ai Zhang had her sketchbook open, her pen moving fluidly as she captured the bridge’s structure in idle strokes. Dave watched her for a moment, admiring her beauty. Her silky, black hair, pert lips – the way her face scrunched in concentration. Adorable. She sketched as a hobby, one of those skills that Dave found remarkable. The ability to capture the world in a way that the human mind could somehow understand but which couldn’t be expressed as a mathematical model or statistic fascinated him.
“You’re thinking. What’s up?” Ai asked, looking up from her work. Her eyes narrowed slightly, a small smile curving her lips—one of those smiles he hadn’t quite figured out yet but was pretty sure meant concern.
“I submitted that lab report I’ve been talking about for the last month, and because of it, they’re probably going to lose their funding,” Dave admitted, tapping his fingers against the table. The words hung in the air for a moment. “And it’s not fair.”
Ai paused her sketching, tilting her head slightly. “Was that the nanoparticle delivery thing? You said it was interesting?”
He sighed, bringing his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
“The fundamental science is but scaling it to a treatment is hard. Ironically, it was the quality of their work that gave me such good numbers. They were meticulous, transparent and made everything accessible. Because of that, I could clearly see that their results weren’t statistically significant.”
He sighed, took his first sip of his untouched coffee and gazed over the river for a moment. Ai smiled patiently at him with a single lock of hair bouncing playfully beside her face, waiting for him to continue.
“But the suits took one look at my report and pulled their funding.” He shook his head. “Nevermind that three other labs have such bad record keeping that I can’t get a trend from anything they’ve done for the last five years. But that’s why they haven’t flagged any issues.”
Ai set down her sketchbook and leaned back, kindness in her eyes.
“Can’t you explain that to your boss? Isn’t that part of your job?”
“I tried,” Dave muttered, staring into his coffee mug. “Nobody wanted to hear it. It was like once I gave them something, all the suits were falling over themselves to do something about it. It was just… like blood in the water for the sharks. I wish I’d never handed it in.”
“Now you know,” said Ai with a sly smile. “Don’t give the sharks blood.”
Dave sighed and nodded.
“I just wish I didn’t sabotage the good lab’s work before I learned what my report was going to be used for.”
Her silence lingered for a moment before she reached across the table to pinch his cheek affectionately.
“It’s cute that you care!”
“Of course I care,” said Dave, grimacing. “I’m working for the people I should be working against.”
“Can’t fix it now!” said Ai, her voice gentle but firm. “You did good. Other people used your work to do bad. No more blaming yourself. We’re going to have a good day!”
He blinked, then chuckled softly.
“You’re right.” He gestured at her sketchbook. “Pass me a bit of paper, I’ll do a terrible stick figure of the bridge with you.”
“My future regrets,” whispered Ai, already handing him a spare sheet.
Dave grinned as he took a pencil, taking his first step beyond finger painting.