Leaving Hah’roo to her own devices, Joe headed into the center of Fort Coral. His distant architectural assessment from the ship held up. The town had a Caribbean appearance to it. The buildings looked like they were made mostly of brick and stone and then coated with a thick layer of some creamy-colored clay. Curvy terracotta shingles coated the rooftops. Covered walkways connected many of the buildings suggesting frequent showers.
Joe stopped for a quick bite to eat at a busy-looking hut that smelled deliciously of grilled fish. His bowl was just half of a coconut shell but it was filled with a medley of grains, sliced vegetables, and spicy chunks of a pink-colored fish. If this was average fare for Fort Coral, Joe was going to enjoy his stay.
He did not need directions to the guild house. As he walked and ate, he came across a large bulletin board in the main town square. On it were dozens of pages stamped with metallic marks. Most were bronze or silver but there were also a few small slips with copper stamps. The symbol was a stylized shield emblazoned with the letter ‘A’. Each page held a quest request.
Right behind the board was an expansive building with a black signboard on it. In gold letters, it stated ‘Adventurers Guild’. Below the large print, Joe read ‘To stand before those in need and thwart foes to our peace’. Joe glanced once more at the quest slips but decided to get his membership squared away before picking one.
He entered the guild house and understood the local construction immediately. The day was already getting warm outside but the interior here was pleasantly cool. Like the Corsairs of the Ardent Watch Club, there were several heads mounted on the wall, though none came close to the titanic dragon the Count’s club had. The largest he saw was some wereshark-like creature.
A human woman was waiting behind the desk in front of him. “May I help you,” she asked as he closed the distance.
“Hi. I’m looking to join the guild. I have two sponsor letters and a writ proving good standing.”
“Well, that will make this easy. You don’t know how many people just show up and expect immediate enrollment without any character references,” she uttered, leaning towards Joe as if they were sharing a secret. Joe could not help but smile at her amicable nature. He could understand why she was manning the front desk. She had that inherently welcoming manner about her.
She took the pages Joe offered and her eyes opened wider as she read them.
“You know Count Valloc Randeau? Oh my! The ‘Tale of the Burrowed Sphinx’ is one of my favorite books. Is he really as good-looking as they say?”
“I wasn’t really paying that much attention to his looks but yeah. He was definitely a handsome guy.”
‘You are going to have to tell me all about it,” she beamed. She must have caught Joe’s off-guard expression. “Oh, not right this minute of course. Let’s get you set up first and some afternoon when you’re free, I hope you’ll let me pick your brain.”
“Sounds fair. What do I have to do?”
“I just need a drop of blood and an oath from you. I don't see any reason with that writ and the Count's recommendation why we can’t skip copper and start you right off at bronze. You would have probably tested out of copper anyway. Going straight to bronze saves us a bunch of time.”
While she talked briskly, the woman was actively filling out a large ledger and pulling out items from behind her counter. She stopped short and tucked a lock of her shoulder-length brown hair behind her ear. She gave Joe an apologetic look.
“I am so sorry. I did not even introduce myself. Hi, I’m Kendell,” she stated, holding out her hand.
“Joe,” he replied a bit nervously as he took her smooth fleshed hand in his shaggy, taloned mitt. Kendell did a double take but after that second of surprise, she gave Joe’s hand a solid shake before turning back to her work utterly nonplussed. It seemed like Joe was the only one who cared that his hands looked like they belonged to some bestial monstrosity.
In a few minutes, she had filled out whatever documentation he needed. Kendell then placed what looked like a leather folded case for a policeman’s badge on the counter. She flipped it open, and sure enough, there was a bronze shield pinned inside the flaps.
“So I will need a drop of blood on the badge, which you keep. We do not keep samples of your blood unless you buy a resurrection policy with us.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “They are really expensive,” she whispered. “I’m supposed to try and get you to start financing one but honestly it is better to just buy one if you ever hit it big than to try and pay for one bit by bit.”
“Good to know,” he replied in an equally low voice, even though there was no one within hearing distance. Kendell was fun. He already liked this port town far better than either of his last two.
“So, the oath. Once you put the drop of blood on the badge please repeat after me,” she instructed ending in an expectant pause.
Joe quickly stepped up and took the badge and tapped a claw into his fingertip, only to have the skin hold firm under the sharp talon. He had forgotten how tough his hands were to physical damage now. He lifted his hand to his ear and poked a hole in his elbow to get the needed drop of blood.
Kendell must have found the sight amusing as hell. She let out a chuckle before continuing with the oath. “I, state your name…”
“I, Joe Morris.”
“Promise to protect those in need from the deprivations of beast or brute.”
Joe repeated the words and she continued.
“From fiend or phantom.”
“From the machinations of the outer planes and realms below.”
“I swear to honor the codes of the Adventurers Guild and work not with any god or government to undermine its purposes.”
With those last words repeated, Kendell smiled. “Great, that is it. If you want to be released from that Blood oath you will have to request a tribunal. Oh… sorry I was supposed to tell you that first. Sorry. You got me all flustered with the Count Radeau recommendation.”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“No worries, Kendell,” Joe expressed. He was amused by how often her eyes kept drifting back to the recommendation Valloc had written him. “I think my first order of business though will be to study up on the local area. Can I use your library?”
“Of course. Follow me. I know a great local map.”
Kendell took out a small chalkboard with a stand and wrote ‘In library’ on it before stepping out from behind her counter. Joe got his first good look at his guide. She was about five feet tall and dressed in a strange mix of casual apparel and adventurer gear. The woman wore a loose green peasant blouse but her skirt was more like a battle kilt. Additionally, her feet were contained by a pair of very heavily reinforced boots. Along her back, she wore a pair of crossed tomahawk-like axes.
When she caught Joe’s eye she grinned at him.
“They want us to look all nice and proper at the front desk but heavens forfend if the sharkfolk come boiling out of the bay. Then they want us ready to go at a moment's notice. This is my compromise.” She held her hands at her waist. “From here up, I’m all formal and respectable. From here down, I’m all business. I just have to toss on my breastplate and I am ready to go.”
Her eyes twinkled at her own levity and Joe chuckled with her. Kendell was disarmingly charming. She tapped him on the arm to get them moving again and led Joe deeper into the building. He could see they were heading toward a pair of double doors. One was closed. Through the open door floated a terrible smell. Joe slapped the back of his hand under his nose to block out the rank scent of sulfur and smoke.
Thankfully Kendell didn’t notice the gesture. She walked through the doorway and headed right for a particular stack of shelves. Joe slowly followed her in, scanning the room for whatever was driving his enhanced sense of smell insane.
Sitting at a table was a young man with red skin and a pair of horns sprouting out of his head. A classical devil's tail swished under the desk he was working at. While his features and expression spoke of an earnest young man utterly absorbed by his studies, his scent and fiendish accouterments cried out ‘demon’.
“Heya Vex,” Kendell exclaimed. Obviously, the quiet library rule was not an Adventurer’s Guild standard.
The young man looked up and Joe saw his eyes were completely black. It was as if he had no iris or sclera. Just 100% pupil. The demonic youth smiled and waved but in a second returned to his scribbles and notes. He had a large tome open on his left and he was alternating scratching out symbols on three different sheets of paper. He would write out a couple letters or lines on one page and then move to the next. After a second he would move back to the first or on to the third.
Joe just stood and watched this scrivener’s ballet until Kendell walked back up to him and whapped him on the shoulder with a rolled-up map. Joe looked at her and then back to the strange behavior of the student.
Kendell watched for a second as well before explaining.
“Oh. That’s Vexor. He specializes in gates and portal magic. He once explained all that to me. He said it is hard enough to draw out three dimensions on a two-dimensional page. When you start trying to do it with four and five dimensions, it gets really tricky,” she took his arm and led him back toward the front desk. “I have to stay by the door but I can walk you through the basic region if you like?”
Happy for both the help and getting away from the brimstone scent, Joe let himself be led away. For the next hour, Kendell pointed out what’s what in the local area. She would have to stop occasionally to help an adventurer. The people who walked in the door varied widely from each other, but most had a sense of confidence and competency Joe envied.
The first to come in was a classic fantasy hunter. His broad-brimmed hat had sharp fangs sewn into the band. He wore thick hide armor with a few disks of metal reinforcement here and there. It had seen numerous repairs over time to the point it looked like there might be more new stitching than the original leather. Around his body, he had a pair of short swords, at least six daggers, and a few hand-axes. On his back was a huge greatsword and a trio of javelins.
Kendell greeted him by name. He returned the salutation and handed her a sheet of parchment and his badge. The young desk clerk checked the page against a ledger and touched his badge to something Joe could not see behind the counter. A second later she ducked down and Joe could hear a metal box opening.
“A tidal hydra! Nice one Edror. So six heads. Four Eighty a head … ”
As Kendell reached for a pen and paper, Joe instinctively supplied, “Twenty-eight, eighty.”
Kendell smiled at him. “Thanks.” Looking back to Edror, she asked. “Do you have a preference of color?”
“Red, if ya got it,” the hunter replied.
“We do.” The clerk placed two bars of what looked like red gold on the counter. There was a shimmer to the metal that seemed to go beyond just the lighting. Each bar was about an inch by two inches and a half an inch tall. Next to it, she placed eight bars of what looked like platinum and eight coins of the same material. “There you go. Two eight eighty.”
Edror scooped the reward into what Joe guessed was a dimensional bag since he did not hear any sound of metal on metal once the bars and coins passed through the opening.
“Thank ya, Kendell. See ya next time.”
When the man had left, Joe addressed the woman next to him. “What kind of metal was that? When you brought it out it almost had a presence to it.”
“You never seen dragongeld before? When a dragon hangs onto gold for long enough it becomes something more than it was. There is almost nothing better for crafting items than dragongeld.”
“Did I catch that right? It comes in different colors?” Joe inquired, leaning over the counter to glance behind the desk.
“Of course. Depending on the color of the dragon that gelded it. I’ll show you the next time I open the safe,” Kendell stated, bumping him back off her counter with a light poke to his shoulder. She sent the finger down to the map, tapping a spot to get Joe's attention. “Over here is where you will probably be spending a good deal of your time with early-level quests. There are three small hamlets that are mostly farming communities. They have a few fighters on hand, but we get a lot of jobs to clear out monster problems for them.”
An hour later, Joe had a pretty good idea of the lay of the land around Fort Coral. The fortified town was the hub of half a dozen farming and fishing villages. The region was not part of any kingdom but a collective of communities that called itself Tir Lagan, which was surprisingly a name from the language of the Fey. It turns out that this region has a much more amenable relationship with the feyfolk than Duskrug did. Each village had a representative on Tir Lagan’s council of elders.
He had a quest as well. It was not with one of the farming hamlets though. This one would take him into the forests to the southwest of the fort.
ENCROACHING APES (Uncommon)
Badboons have overrun the trail to Mount Serabuk. Clear the Badboon troops. Additional rewards are available for determining why the primates have moved from their territory onto the mining road.
Reward: 400 gold per troop
+60 Reputation with the Adventurers Guild
Lastly, he also had a date. Kendell asked if he would join her for dinner when he got back from his quest. It may just be for Count Randeau stories but Joe was pretty sure she liked him as well.
As he left the Adventurer’s Guild, he was not sure which he was more nervous about; his first solo quest or his first real date.