As I re-entered Driftwood to turn in my coal delivery quest, I came up short at an odd sight. A small duck, dressed in rags, with its name tag reading "Ragamuffin," blatantly pickpocketed a man shopping at one of the booths off of the main road.

The guards spotted it immediately and moved in. The man was indignant, but the guards laughed it off.

"Ha ha ha ha, a little scamp. We'll take care of this." They collared the duckling and dragged him off onto a side street. I moved up to get a look at the proceedings.

"Come now, you can't keep doing this," the guard said, with no real animosity in his voice. The guard patted the kid down and took something from him. "I'll be giving this back to its proper owner. Off with you, back to the orphanage. And don't let me catch you doing this again."

The scolding had no real heat to it, and the child duck scampered off as soon as he was released. After that, the guard moved back out into the street. From my vantage point, I saw him giving something back to the man shopping at the booth.

I was more interested in the child. He had disappeared around the far end of the side street. I had an inkling of an idea, and I followed. He was completely out of sight by the time I got to the corner.

I asked a passerby for directions to the orphanage. It was a block and a half away, up a different side street. This put it against the outer wall of Driftwood, which wasn't a very large town.

The orphanage was a single room with a desk along one wall, the rest of it crammed full of bunk beds. Scruffy-looking children filled the place. I spotted the one I had followed in the corner, shooting me glares. The matron appeared as soon as I entered the door of the orphanage, and launched straight into a spiel about how poor and unfortunate these children were, and how all they needed was someone to take care of them.

She continued her rant all the way through my accepting the quest. She paused only when I pointed out which of the children I wanted, which was of course the one to be pickpocketed.

[New follower - Ragamuffin Pickpocket]

As soon as I accepted the follower, the youthful duck came over and stood beside me. Trying to be polite, I asked its name and got only a sullen glare in response. I shrugged and left the orphanage. As soon as we stepped outside, the duckling followed me, automatically keeping a standard distance behind and to my left. Once we were out the door, it seemed to realize what was happening, or maybe some programming sprang into place.

"Oh sir, thank you so much for adopting me. You won't regret it." After that, the little duck wouldn’t shut up. He kept up a stream of chatter all the way across town until I stopped outside the door of the Duck Brotherhood. The duckling gasped, "The brotherhood? You're a member of the brotherhood? Oh my! Does that make me a member? I’ve always wanted to join the Brotherhood!”

“Just follow my lead,” I told him.

Duckling and I made our way back to the Duck Brotherhood. If they had been surprised to see me when I finished their initiation quest, now they were downright flabbergasted. I handed over the receipt for the bag of coal, and Greeter Duck just gaped at it in his feathery hand.

"How did you survive?" Greeter Duck gaped.

"Oh, easy. It was just a delivery quest."

"And nothing happened while you were there?" Girl Duck asked, similarly incredulous.

"Oh, there was some sort of commotion, but that wasn't any of my business. I was just there for a drop-off, and that's all I did. So… does that earn me a new rank?"

"What?" They all looked at each other and then back at me. "No, no, of course not," Duck #3 said. "For that, you must prove your..." He looked at the others helplessly to fill in the rest of his thought. "Your prowess at skull-dudgery."

I shrugged. "Okay, who do you want me to kill?"

His bill opened and closed again, and he looked back at the others. "How about the Emperor?" Greeter Duck suggested.

"No, no," Girl Duck said. "There's no way the system would allow that."

I interjected, "You need something simpler, but no less impossible, right?"

They all looked at me. What did embarrassment look like on the face of a duck, anyway? Whatever it was, this was probably it.

The little duckling was wandering around the room, weaving between the others. "Hey, get away from that!" Greeter Duck snapped as the duckling started opening the drawers on a cupboard. The duckling appeared to lose interest and wandered away.

I flipped through my menus quickly. There it was. Follower Inventory. Wow, this little duck had quite a few things on him. The inventory system was nice. I hadn't used it much because I had little to show for my time in this game so far, but I was able to sort by how long something had been in the inventory. Sure enough, at the top of the list were several items clearly stolen from this very room. [Mysterious Message, Strange Missive, Poison Vial, Bloody Dagger], and a number of other suspicious artifacts presented themselves to me. The [Incriminating Note] was the most noteworthy.

[I need you to send more coal to the kilns right away at our usual rate. The Dark Menace has disrupted my operations here in Quackitude, and my usual couriers are not available.]

That sounded promising. I was pretty sure getting to the bottom of the Turducken Mystery was a key part of the main quest line, and if I could approach that from an oblique angle, it might prove worthwhile.

I looked at the ducks who were still debating my next mission. "Are you sure you don't have something in Quackitude there?"

They glanced at each other again, and then put their heads back together. I figured it was obvious what they were talking about, so I inspected my inventory instead of turning on the closed captions. I usually left them off because, quite honestly, they were annoying the rest of the time, and downright distracting in combat.

Most of the other items were uninteresting. There was a letter that struck me as odd. It was addressed from Pinfeatherstead, and described idyllic life on a farm. It was apparently from one of the three ducks' family, wherever they had settled. Mostly it was boring and uninteresting, but it had two references to the System that piqued my interest.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

This was not your usual NPC letter. Whoever had written it was connected with the Brotherhood and had a similar attitude as theirs. That did not match a proper NPC. They sounded like, well, players.

But if they were players, what were they doing here, pretending to be NPCs?How long had they been here, and just what was their objective? They were taking steps to hide their presence, like killing quest givers. And they were generally disguising themselves as NPCs. It just didn't add up. I was missing something.

The huddle of ducks broke apart. "Yes, we do have a mission in Quackitude. One of our rivals, uh, let me think — ”

“Why don't you just write it down?"

"Oh, good idea!” Duck #3 nodded vigorously. He grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen made out of a human finger and started scratching down a note on the pad.

“You know, for quest givers, you guys are really bad at it." I pointed out.

Greeter Duck muttered something that sounds like "We don't get many customers."

"I mean, if you're trying to disguise yourself as NPCs, you need to be better at it. Just because most people aren't able to pick up your quest doesn't mean you shouldn't be ready."

Greeter Duck stopped writing his note and gaped at me. They all stared at me for a moment. There was that same embarrassed duck expression again.

"Whatever do you mean, adventurer?" Duck #3 said with a voice of exaggerated confusion.

"Yeah, never mind. Just give me the quest."

The other two made hurry-up gestures to Greeter Duck, and he turned back to filling out the piece of parchment ehile the other two gave him helpful suggestions.

"Defeat twelve members of the goose assassins guild and kill their leader. Bring back his feather.”

“No, head!”

“Head. Also, twelve potions of invincibility.”

“No, you can't add that. That's a completely different kind of quest. The system will reject it. You'll have to give him two quests."

"Oh, do you think that'd be a bit much?"

"Nah, just use another piece of paper."

I waited patiently as they finished their scribbling.

"Here, here, I'll do it," Duck #3 said, snatching both pieces of parchment. "Here, adventurer.” He flourished piece of parchment before handing it to me. “This is your next assignment. And while you're in Quackitude, here.” He handed me the second piece of paper. “You can also bring us back some supplies we need."

I accepted both. “Perfect! See you soon.”

I left the brotherhood and crossed town with my ragamuffin, headed for the front gates. The little scamp detoured to rob every person we passed. About half of them spotted him, and twice the guard gave him a good scolding. I stood a little ways off and pretended to take no notice each time, and the guard ignored me. Through the follower interface, I was able to grab all the loot before it was confiscated. The little scamp even robbed the guard himself as he was being scolded. The haul from that one was a pair of pink fur-covered handcuffs. That was weird.

The others were random heirloom rings and a couple of coppers and one suspicious note that clearly was part of a blackmail quest somewhere.

There was a wagon at the edge of town that seemed to offer a fast travel option, but the driver wouldn't talk to me. Probably somewhere there was a quest chain to unlock that feature. There were certainly drawbacks to avoiding the main quest lines. It was a long, hard slog down the main road. Wide and tame though it was, random wild boars and wolves still occasionally came charging out of the forest to attack. Once, a bull chased me around a pasture where I had taken shelter from an enraged elk. All in all, It was a tedious journey.

When I finally reached the gates of Quackitude, they were closed and sealed. Two guards stood outside.

"Hold!" one of them said, holding out his hand and blocking my way with his spear. This guard was a ravenfolk with a short hooked beak. "None may enter the capital while rebellion is afoot."

I kept up a relaxed and non-threatening posture. "Is that so?"

"Yes, traitors to the Empire have been caught and even now are being punished within. Do you have a token from the Empire to prove your loyalty and allow passage?"

I didn't, of course, because I hadn't been doing any of the entry quests. "No, as a matter of fact."

"And so you may not enter." The guard stood back and took up a threatening pose with both hands on his spear. I was clearly dismissed.

The other guard was a goose. He glanced at his companion and then beckoned me forward.

"Hey, if you want to get in, I might be able to help,” he said, pitching his voice low so the other guard couldn't hear him. "If you have a token of the rebellion, I might look the other way." He let his voice trail off suggestively.

I didn't have one of those either.

"No? Sorry, then. I guess you can't get in."

"Is that so?" I asked the guard. I turned and eyed my ragamuffin. "Here," I said, and then opened my inventory and my follower inventory and started unloading everything that I thought might be considered contraband.

"What? What are you doing?" the ragamuffin asked. "What, do you think I'm sworn to carry your burdens or something?"

"Shut up, kid," I said and then closed the follower interface.

"If you've got no business here," the first guard exclaimed, "then you should move along!"

He had barely finished the sentence when I punched him in the face.

Three seconds later, my screen faded and I woke up in prison. A guard was unlocking the barred cell door.

"And let that be a lesson to you before you consider breaking any more of the Empire's laws. All right, out you go."

The guard who opened the cell led me out. "Your things will be in this chest," he pointed to a large trunk not far from the cell. "Except anything that was stolen or illegal," he added, leering at me. Geese are actually really, really good at leering.

“Great.” I opened the chest and grabbed the small handful of things that I’d kept on me.

"Do you want that other stuff back?"

I just about jumped out of my skin. The ragamuffin was suddenly behind me. "No, not yet, kid. Hang on."

The guard tapped his spear butt impatiently on the floor. "All right, come on."

He led the way up the stairs, taking no particular notice that a child had suddenly appeared in his dungeon. At the top of the stairs, he paused.

"Come on, don't dally."

He was standing there staring straight at me when something dark rustled past. It was a humanoid form in a flowing cape, moving quickly, which made it difficult to make out. The guard didn't react at all, continuing to look at me, but four other guards came running into the room.

"Halt, thief! You'll face the regent's justice!"

The caped form jumped up onto a window nearby. It was open. He stood for a moment on the ledge. He paused on the ledge to turn. One arm held the cape up, blocking the lower half of its face.

"You'll never catch me!" a deep voice taunted them. "I am the terror that honks in the night!"

There was something oddly familiar about that voice. The figure spun, and with a rustle of dark cape, it vanished out the window.

"Was that who I think it was?" one of the guards asked.

The captain of the squad nodded. "That's right, boys. That was Darkwing Goose."

I thought it odd that they weren't following him, and I decided that I would. I ran across the room and jumped out the window. It was a lot farther down than I had expected, but just before I hit the ground, I jumped in the air. My fall was momentarily interrupted, and I landed lightly on my feet. Oh, when it comes to cheese, sometimes the old classics work best.

The flapping cloak was disappearing around a corner half a block away. I took off after it as fast as I could. All the running and dodging in the forest to avoid getting caught had given me a few skill points in sprint, which came in handy now. For most of the day, I had been using the skill almost on cooldown, and it had added up.

I dashed around the corner and down a short alley and came out on a darkened street in the middle of which stood a large carriage. I guess it was a carriage. It looked like the severed head of a goose, with a big bill stretched out in front, beyond which were four ostrich-like creatures harnessed to the vehicle. The top of the goose's head was cut away, leaving the inside of the skull as the open top of an open carriage. The effect was pretty creepy.

"Hi-ya!" The cloaked figure was already cracking the reins, and the birds pulling the carriage took off at a run.

I leaped and just caught the back of the goose head. "Hey, wait for me!"

"What are you doing here?" the deep voice demanded. I turned and looked straight into the face of...

Shad Williams?