Current Quests
Justice For Courbefy: Find justice for the victims of the corrupt mayor of Courbefy. Use…
Chosen Of Knowledge: Escort Hugh on his journey to becoming a fully awakened iron…
Healer’s Materials: Gain Healer’s favour by donating alchemy ingredients to the church…
Wine tour: Vineyard wants you to try the different wines in the Megève area.
Acquire Follower: Dominion wants you to gain another follower.
Chosen Of Hero: Travel north to Lake Auvernier, find the chosen of Hero and recruit…
Dave and Sam woke up at sunrise to find that Hugh had already picked up all of the equipment and food that they’d ordered yesterday.
“I should have told you,” said Hugh. “I don’t need to sleep or meditate anymore. It’s a racial I got from the life essence.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Dave. “I read your abilities. I guess you’ve just been staying up all night reading?”
“Yes, It’s great! I get so much more done but yes, early this morning I just wandered out and just picked up everything.”
“That’s nice of you,” said Dave, grinning up at Hugh. “Pretty keen to get out of town, eh?”
Hugh nodded with an uneasy look coming to his face.
“Well, let’s get out. You ready, Sam?”
Sam had been brushing her hair and blinking sleep out of her eyes. She shook her head.
“No, I want to wash my face,” said Sam blearily.
“Ten minutes?” asked Dave, switching into his armour from in his HUD.
“Yes,” drawled Sam, doing a double take when Dave was abruptly dressed in his new cuirass and helm. He’d taken the time to write a couple of macros last night to switch his most common armour and clothing sets. He’d also solved three financial crimes which he’d written up and put in an envelope for Bell to pass to the watch. His new ‘reveal that which is disguised from you’ ability evidently interacted with his HUD and highlighted the relevant parts of the text in much of the town’s finances where anybody was hiding something.
Dave made a strong cup of tea and went outside to enjoy it with the predawn light and memorise his spells for the day. His directed lightning bolt spell was still nowhere near complete so that wasn’t an option. He mentally shrugged and as the first rays of dawn crested the horizon, memorised a Comfortable Cabin, and Origami Golem and four Origami Mount.
Dave did a double take as a quest notification appeared in his text box and chuckled as he read that he’d succeeded and been rewarded with one hundred iron spirit coins for not killing anything yesterday. Shaking his head and smiling, Dave cast three of the mount spells and kept watching the sunrise. Sam and Hugh came out a couple of minutes later.
“Double checked we have everything?” asked Dave.
“And we got you a… pastry!” said Sam, beaming her happy smile as she produced the sweet, baked good from behind her back.
“Thanks, Sam,” said Dave, taking a bite and enjoying the buttery, chocolate-filled taste of the chocolate twist. Sam took out her own pastry and led her origami heidel over to a step so that she could mount it easier. Hugh and Dave stored their pastries in their teeth while going through the very physical process of mounting their heidels.
After a quick stop at the adventure board they picked up some contracts. Dave mentally accepted quests for pretty much everything that sent them north. After Dave explained that there wasn’t any punishment for abandoning the quests and they may as well have them on hand just in case, Hugh did the same. Using his new map to guide the way, Hugh led the mounted party out of the northbound Megève gates at a trot towards their first Adventure Society contract. Both Dave and Hugh were going over their map abilities mentally assessing routes that ended at their destination; Forel. Although, Dave thought, it would be easier in the second half of their journey to just follow the well travelled main road to Mattenhof and then strike out west to Forel. He opened his mouth to ask Hugh what he thought of the idea when a different question came into his head.
“What do you see when you use your map?” Dave asked Hugh.
“It’s like a parchment that comes in front of my face and there’s ink dots to represent people near me except that I can make it a bit see through. Like yours, yes? But yours is made out of lights in front of your eyes?”
“Yes, although I’d say more like light put directly in front of my eyes.”
“Doesn’t that hurt?” asked Sam, following the conversation as best she could.
“No, it’s more… Oh! I know it’s more like an illusion. Actually. Uh, yep! Hang on, I’ll show you on paper… There, that’ll about do it.”
Dave handed over the picture he’d just inked out with his printer-like illusion cantrip. It was cartoonish and simple but it got the point across with a faded world and a clear map superimposed over the top with his HUD clear.
“Oh! That’s great,” said Hugh with his whiskery smile. “Mine’s just like that bit,” he pointed to the map part,” except without everything else. I can see everything clear, it’s just that bit is hanging in front of me. The rest is your heads up display, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s mostly measurements and buttons that I like. I can use it to quick switch gear that I’m using and-” Dave tried to switch from the wand he was holding to a Molotov cocktail he’d made out of the bottle he’d found in the trash and some lamp oil. Except, it didn’t switch and an arc that ended with a stylised oblong popped up on his HUD and he instantly knew that activating this ability would cause the molotov cocktail to fly along and smash at the end of that arc and cause a fire in the stylised oblong. “ - and use consumables straight out of my inventory. Which apparently includes offensive consumables. Wow! I really need to go over my abilities again now that I’m not so stressed. Hey guys, new ability. Not only can I use consumables like potions from straight out of my inventory, I can throw consumable items like fire grenades straight out of my inventory without my hands.”
“Can we see?” asked Sam, curiously.
“Not here, it only works on consumables and I don’t have anything I want to waste. Or, anything around here I want to set on fire.”
Hugh was frantically pulling out a notebook where he wrote down interesting outworlder facts. Dave mentally flew a pen above the book for Hugh which he took with thanks.
“Perhaps you could throw the grenade in the air and catch it again?” said Hugh.
“You want me to throw a fiery grenade in the air and catch it again? While riding a heidel?” Dave raised a playful eyebrow at Hugh and Sam gave her widest smile. Hugh’s brain caught up with reality and he boomed out his laugh.
“Yes, don’t do that,” said Hugh, knuckling his moustache to suppress his laughter.
“Maybe we can find something at a village we pass through and rig up some kind of disposable throwing device?” said Dave, thoughtfully.
“Dave, you can make one,” said Sam through a satisfied smile.
“Nah, I can’t,” said Dave, sighing. “I tried but the water I put in to test them leaked out pretty quick and I’d burn myself.”
“But now you don’t need to touch!” announced a happy Sam.
“Hey, yeah! That might work. I can definitely test the ability with water bombs like that. Still, I don’t want to make anything dangerous because of spillage. I’d feel safer if they didn’t leak.”
“Cover the inside with tar or resin,” said Sam, nodding. Her smile was still shining brightly.
“That’d be nice but I can’t make paper with coatings. Only the paper portion,” said Dave, still resigned.
“So,” said Hugh in a resonant, sceptical voice laced with humour. “You can make a small, cardboard grenade but you can’t put resin on the paper?”
“Yes?” said Dave, hesitantly.
“Dave,” said Hugh, his whiskers twitching, “you can add resin. With your hands.”
Sam covered her mouth and giggled.
Dave’s eyebrows furrowed and he stared straight ahead blankly as the point thunked into place in his head. Then, he burst into laughter, Sam and Hugh following soon after.
“Dave, you always forget detail!” said Sam, laughing.
He couldn’t do anything but chuckle and nod in agreement with her.
“Alright,” said Dave, forcing down his chuckling, “at the next village we’ll get some quick burning oil and some resin.”
“And, go over your abilities again,” said Hugh, “But, not now. Let's actually use these mounts at the speed they’re supposed to be and pick up the pace. We want to be hard to find, remember?”
Sam and Dave nodded and the origami heidels picked up to a canter.
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They’d selected some contracts in Megève for some unranked monsters, commonly called ‘lessers’ by the locals, because they paid in lesser spirit coins and the unranked monsters were a lesser threat than any other rank. Such contracts were usually non-urgent because normal ranked people, especially hardy country folk, could kill lesser monsters themselves but sometimes a particular monster or group of monsters was so out of the way or too difficult to find so there’d be a small reward put up and eventually a budding adventurer would pick it up simply because they were going to be in the area anyway.
The quest that Hugh had picked up was for some angry cows that were making trouble in some distant herds, and some people-eater pigs that had been spotted by fur hunters roaming in and out of thickets in a forest.
The angry cows were an annoyance more than anything. They only attacked anything they perceived to be a predator, like humans, so they were keeping the herd safe from wolves but, if the literature Dave was reading was correct, they were also prone to bullying the real cows and just generally being angry and putting the entire herd on edge. Hence the name. They had to be killed because they’d eventually go berserk but also because stressed animals didn’t produce good meat or dairy.
The people-eater pigs, the unranked version of the people-eater boars Dave and Sam had already encountered, were omnivorous and didn’t usually attack people unless they were going berserk. But, sometimes they did. One hunter had already been mauled and the rest had taken to staying in groups for safety which drastically reduced their ability to hunt. The hunters had estimated that there were four or five pigs; three sows and one or two solitary boars.
Hugh was leading the party along the dirt road to Blancheville in the late autumn weather and it wasn’t pleasant. Despite being kitted out in rain repellant cloaks, the wind from riding would often whip the hoods back which let the cold, drizzling rain fly into their faces. The team ended up stopping to cover their faces with scarves to mitigate the issue while Dave used Grand Mage’s Gravitas on a constant rotation to keep his companions and the heidels dry. It helped, but it wasn’t great.
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Ten miserable hours cantering in the saddle was enough to leave them all with a sore bottom. Thankfully, Sam could heal any real damage that’d been done but it was still an unpleasant experience to have gone through, knowing they’d do it again tomorrow. They’d passed several farmers on the road and Hugh had slowed down to chat with them and confirm that, yes, his magical map was working fine and he was in the right spot. Dave could tell it’d take Hugh a bit of getting used to it. Then again, Hugh got a giddy smile whenever he got confirmation of his functional map so maybe he was just having fun with a new toy.
They passed briefly through Sallanches. Hugh purchased a small barrel of crude naphtha, some potash and a tin of resin from the general store, put straight into his inventory, while Dave and Sam had gone over the origami heidels and patched up the worn parts as best they could.
Dave then used the water trough, meant for real heidels, to supply water to test the make of an experimental grenade. He created the cardboard structure in his hand, dipped it in the water, closed the improvised lid, put it in his inventory and then activated it.
The water grenade came back into the world exactly along the curved trajectory indicated by Dave’s HUD and smacked into a wall, splattering it with water.
“Well, that’s nice,” said Dave. His eyes flicked to his stamina bar which had ticked down a little. “Looks like it uses as much stamina as if I’d thrown it with my hand but I love the accuracy of this.” He moved a pen over to the damp paper to pick up his trash.
“What’s the potash for?” asked Hugh.
“A slow burning wick to attach to the outside. Less flaming than a burning rag and more likely to stay lit,” said Dave. It was something he remembered from a simple oxidation experiment he’d done once in undergraduate practical chemistry classes. “Potash is mostly potassium salts but especially impure potassium nitrate, which is a good oxidiser. That means it burns well. Infuse potash into a piece of cord and it’ll stay lit, even in the wind but it won’t flame. Perfect thing to stick to the outside of a grenade full of naphtha.”
“Oh,” said Hugh.
Sam just smiled up at Dave worriedly.
“Sorry. Chemistry stuff. Don’t think I’m allowed to explain myself.”
Sam nodded.
“Sounds impressive, though!” said Hugh with his whiskery smile.
“Eh, I just wish I could remember how to make TNT. Or, nitroglycerine for dynamite,” muttered Dave, somehow sounding bitter and wistful at the same time.
“Those are pretty names,” said Sam, happily.
“I’ll… try to get you some if I can,” said Dave.
“Wait, what do they do?” asked Hugh, notepad out.
Dave tilted his head as he thought about the best way to describe it in this culture.
“A stick of dynamite is about the size of a sausage and can make an unranked, non-magical explosion that can shatter a rock that’s as big as a man,” said Dave.
Sam and Hugh both looked at Dave with open mouths.
“A sausage!?”
“Dave, how you make explosion without magic? That’s silly!”
Dave looked at Sam in confusion.
“This reality doesn't have flour or wood dust explosions?”
“Wait, I think I’ve heard of this!” said Hugh, eyes wide with recognition. “I’ve heard of an explosion essence and I think someone proposed setting up our own regular explosions to maybe get one. I remember grain silos were involved but I didn’t take it seriously. You mean that’s all totally serious?”
“Absolutely,” said Dave.
“Oh, you’ve got to tell me more!” said Hugh eagerly, holding onto his notebook.
“No!” said Sam, giving her nervous smile. “We have to travel!”
Hugh looked torn. He wanted to get days away from a grief-stricken silver ranker but he also wanted to write about outworlders.
“Tonight, mate,” said Dave, patting Hugh on the shoulder who nodded. “Even though Sam only wants us to go before you try and make an explosive with what you can find in the store.”
Sam nodded seriously.
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The group continued in the saddle until the sun had completely set and Sam found a nice spot on a slight rise for Dave to cast Comfortable Country Cabin. It flew together taking loose objects from the environment as usual but Dave thought looked particularly rustic with the grass of the field thatched across the roof.
Sam casually flung a healing spell at everyone before they’d gotten inside and Dave stretched his entire body, working out all the muscle aches he could while the healing magic lingered. Hugh took a foldable table out of a dimensional bag and Dave immediately went about making an evening meal on it while Hugh pulled out more foldable furniture and set it about the cabin.
“Hugh, I’ve got something to show and tell you about your quest ability,” said Dave, making simple fried fish and steamed vegetables straight out of his inventory. He’d haphazardly included some seasoning that both Sam and Hugh had agreed was a good idea. It’d be fine.
“Yes?” said Hugh, trying not to whip his notebook out with an improper enthusiasm.
Dave smiled lightly and used Tome to fly over a complete copy of his own quest system ability and Hugh’s as per the ‘more details’ button on the abilities in their respective character sheets.
“That’s for you, mate. Wrote it on the way over, one word at a time-”
“- the short version is,” continued Dave. “Your ability doesn’t give monetary rewards.”
Hugh face said he understood that.
“Boo,” sang Sam softly in discontent.
“But, your version is more selective and exact,” finished Dave. “For instance, my ability requires that it can detect a want or desire out there in the world, that I’m included in and then the ability supplies incentive for me to go and do it. Mine’s external. Your ability can latch onto any undertaking, even your own, so it’s both internal and external as well as self inclusive. The selectivity factor is that you can, I don’t know how, select from the quests around you according to your own wants so, although you won’t manifest rewards you can just desire quests that pay handsomely and you’ll get them. I think.”
Dave had been using a pen to point out the interesting bits in the printed text as he went and left Hugh in a stunned silence.
“Thank you, Dave,” sang Sam softly while giving Hugh a wide, cheeky smile.
“Oh? Oh! Yes! Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you, yes!” stammered Hugh.
“Read them later, Hugh. Read them later, I spent all day on that so just ask me the questions. It looked like you had some input on the not getting rewards point?”
“What? Oh, yes! Well, I’m not allowed to get paid. I’m a friar. Vow of poverty and all that, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” said Dave in a tone that clearly indicated he’d rather forgotten.
Sam put a finger over her lips playfully and back away to put a stone block on the floor across the room which Dave waved a hand at to start his fire cantrip on. Sam started making hot water for tea.
Hugh, however, threw back his head with laughter and relaxed his swarthy frame further into the foldable chair.
“Friar’s robe,” he said, plucking at it, “and little else. Maybe some food to carry or some tools. Say, if we went up north I’d be allowed to own more clothes to ward off frostbite and skis or snowshoes.” His eyes turned thoughtful over his smiling beard. “I think there was a notable adventurer-friar a few centuries ago who liked to say that he didn’t own the warmace at his hip, he just carried it for a friend who allowed him to swing it in battle.”
Sam and Dave grinned with Hugh at the humorous absurdity.
“The soul of the person shapes the abilities they will get,” said Dave, quoting from A Treatise On Essences, Awakening Stones And Their Results by the Remore Academy.
Hugh nodded at him.
“Yeah, getting a spin on the quest system ability that doesn’t get you paid seems on brand for someone with a vow of poverty,” said Dave. “What about your other abilities? The whole unarmed and unarmoured whatsit?”
“Ascetic warrior,” said Hugh smugly.
“Yeah, that! Also poverty.”
“What’s ascetic?” asked Sam, popping over to hand Dave a pile of alchemy ingredients which he inventoried and idly noted that his quest, Healer’s Materials, Megève, ticked up all the supplies into double digits.
“Thanks, Sam! It means like, simple or without decoration. Very much describes a monk’s life. But, not in a bad way just like -”
“In the sense of removing unnecessary things or distractions from one’s surroundings,” said Hugh with a kind smile to Dave.
“Yes!” said Dave, glad for the save.
“Alright!” said Sam with her happy smile and popped back over to the now boiling kettle. “It suits!”
“Yeah, I’ve been looking at your abilities, Hugh, you’re turning into some kind of outworlder themed, astral Shaolin monk. Pull him up, Tome” said Dave, letting Tzu out of his eyes.
“What’s ‘shaolin’ mean?” asked Hugh as Tome flicked open to Hugh’s abilities description page.
“I… Yeah, I don’t know. A place or organisation, I guess? Doesn’t matter, they’re a bunch of exotic monks who learn martial arts in the mountains.”
“That sounds nothing like me.”
“You’re a monk who took a bunch of essences in the mountains and got the power to transform into elemental forms to fight people.”
“...Fair enough.”
Sam giggled.
“Yeah, look,” said Dave, pointing with a floating pen. “Most of your racials are dimension themed; dimensional affinity, dimensional storage, dimensional portals, and your essence ability, dimensional sensing fits right in there. Your outworlder theme is obviously the map ability and quest system which is the kind of thing outworlders get to acclimate to new realities, right? And your fighting-monk themed stuff is your mystic affinity, nirvanic awareness and essence abilities transcend self, ascetic warrior and mystic form the rest I think are in a general adventurer theme but maybe outworlders usually already are or become adventurers? I don’t know? Could they fit under that? I made them their own category.
Hugh looked thoughtful. Sam looked confused. Dave handed them both a cheatsheet.
Outworlder
Self-updating map - self expl.
Quest system - self expl.
Astral Knowledge
Dimensional affinity - good at dimension stuff; resistance, damage
Dimensional storage - store stuff
Dimensional portals - manipulate portals good
Dimensional sensing - sense the nature and details of astral stuff
Martial Monk
Mystic affinity - form based resistance, damage and transc. damage
Nirvanic awareness - No sleep, no meditation, better aura
Transcend self - cast self spells on allies or vice-versa
Ascetic warrior - no weapons, no armour
Mystic form - become fire/water/earth/air
General Adventurer
Prayer of Healing - self expl.
Cleanse ally - of all non-bleeding afflictions
Free ally - of movement impediments
Project elements - into enemies
“Oh!” said Sam, still reading. “This is much better!”
“It’s… simplification… good summary. Need deeper, though,” mumbled Hugh as he went back and forth between the cheat sheet and his long form descriptions in his hands.
The silence went on as they both thought deeply.
“This is… quite the popular hit. Should I do something similar for my abilities and Sams? Hers are obviously under two themes: Summoner and life recycler. Yes?”
Hugh looked up, blinking.
“Wha…? Oh, yes. Please do. Not now! No, we have a lot to… But yes. It’s just that ability synergy is only a theory! The soul-body dyad problem is a foundational problem in magic. I’ve been looking at this for years! Trying to find hints of proof to write about, writing letter after letter asking outworlders to visit me for testing.” Hugh's voice trembled and tears gathered in his eyes. “But they just… don’t. Thirteen years of my life and,” he sniffed, “I wrote to Asano ten times and didn’t even get a reply. Standish, an astral researcher who observes Asano, published an opinion piece that maybe outworlders shun tests as a defensive reflex. Eventually, I just stopped and went back to my research, resigned to just recreating events as best I could, learning from the residue measurements that the magic society in Greenstone found and published from the Asano event.”
Tears were rolling down Hugh’s cheeks and into his bushy beard but he was smiling at Dave now as he continued.
“But that day… I thought I was going to die, the summoning worked and a real outworlder came. Not only do you… all this!” Hugh shook gently the character sheet documents Dave had given him in his hands. “But now I’m getting outworlder type abilities! I just… I don’t know. Did I die that day and it’s all been the endless astral dream?”
Sam put a cup of tea in front of Hugh.
“It’s alright,” she sang gently and patted his arm.
“It really is,” said Dave, taking his own cup of tea and nodding his thanks at Sam. “Your astral knowledge has been helpful in settling me into this reality and it could have been a lot worse for me without both of you.”
“We help each other,” smiled Sam.
There was content silence and sipping tea that, eventually, Dave had to break.
“Really? Ten letters?” said Dave. “No replies?”
Hugh shook his head.
“And, you just wanted…” said Dave, gesturing at the papers in front of Hugh.
“Yes, that. Maybe some passive thaumaturgy readings. Nothing invasive, of course! Standish’s paper indicated that being a part of Asano’s adventuring party lets you share his identification ability so we thought…” Hugh trailed off in a disappointed voice.
Dave looked utterly baffled.
“So, just party up with scribes and go to sleep, right?”
Hugh nodded with a forlorn look on his face.
“He wouldn’t even… anonymously…?” Dave’s voice fell as he saw the forlorn look on Hugh’s face.
“What a dick,” said Dave.