Bryzax then takes Enno through the cobbled streets of Kaeshana, wide enough for one wagon in each direction, and leads him to an inn, whose ground floor is mostly used to eat and drink.
“I heard it all: our lord going crazy to the point of yelling for help in the open! Bryzax went looking for help, a rental healer who could cure madness of the kind our lord is suffering!” the innkeeper comments on what happened outside. “Milord, you’re clueless about that aspect of the outside world: you were always pampered in the palace, with attendants catering to your every need!”
“It just so happens that even my servants cannot do everything!” Enno tells the innkeeper with a tone of voice indicating distress.
I shouldn’t mention haunted parks to anyone until I can actually meet with the rental healer, Enno ruminates while the innkeeper rummages through his mental list of rental healers for whoever could help Enno get back to health. At least to the innkeeper’s eyes.
“May I suggest… Saronium?” the innkeeper suggests to the two men. “She might be a little expensive, though”
“How much does she charge?” Enno asks, worried that the price will balloon if his condition deteriorates.
“It starts at fifty gold”
For 50 gold, my guess is that he’s going to have only a consultation, Bryzax muses upon hearing the start of the price schedule. Any actual care will cost him more than that. Also, I wonder how she goes around healing.
“How does she go about healing?” Bryzax asks the innkeeper. “Is she a witch, a dancer or does she use another method?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, she’s a life witch. Now, it seems like Saronium is here tonight!”
Often, at inns like this one, inn patrons go down and not only eat, but also listen to tales of the more adventurous. I guess, because a lot of people mostly stay in one place, as I did, listening to the tales of a traveling adventurer will be a welcome change from the palace’s entertainment. Which is mostly centered around the jester and the musicians, Enno then moves to the counter where the barman is.
“I never came here before, so what do you have to drink?” Enno asks the barman.
“Milord, we have lager, mead and wine”
“I’d rather have bread and cheese first” a hungry Enno orders out of what he believes is courtesy.
So it seems like Enno is served a slice of cheese on top of a much bigger slice of bread, almost plate-sized; however, the slice of bread is a little thin.
Meanwhile, Bryzax, realizing that the inn’s selection of food is a little limited, also ends up ordering bread and cheese.
But Saronium begins her story for the night, about how she was there when she ran a haunted park in Upper Perseria and saw the ghosts start requesting justice for what happened in Lower Perseria.
“Perseria must be a wealthy city to be able to afford more than one haunted park!” Enno comments about how much he feels it would have cost Perseria to build even Upper Perseria as a haunted park.
“What’s Perseria really like?” an inn patron asks Saronium.
“It’s pretty far away from here, in the desert, and the upper city is more magnificent than the lower city. However, I fled the city before it went on lockdown because the city was on the verge of revolt!”
Enno feels like it’s a good idea to get up to speed with the haunted park situation in Perseria. Obviously, Perseria would have information on what costs go into building a haunted park! However, Saronium is implying that’s a dangerous city, so not sure it’s a good idea to travel all the way to Perseria, or have Bryzax do so, to get some more design and accounting information about the construction of Perseria’s haunted parks!
And then, Saronium talks about how many attempted to brave the dangers of the haunted parks and died trying.
“People often talk about how haunted parks came with a high mortality rate, but is the mortality rate due to careless adventuring or to poor maintenance?” Bryzax asks the rental healer, relaying his concerns.
“Last I heard about the Perserian civil war, the rebels were complaining about how the haunted park ordinances weren’t enforced and how the ghosts terrorized the population!” Saronium’s face starts turning red as she feels like the inn’s patrons are asking questions that make her uncomfortable.
Saronium makes me uncomfortable about the prospect of ghosts turning amok around a haunted park. Maybe the townsfolk are right, there shouldn’t be a haunted park. But part of myself doesn’t want to give up on building a haunted park until I know the full picture, Enno realizes that ghosts running around a place might not be in the residents’ best interests. If I am to scrap the haunted park…
Nevertheless, Saronium talks about another adventure taking place in haunted parks, this time in a different park. The inn’s patrons appear to be more impressed with the locales of these parks than with the adventures.
“A haunted park in a swamp? Were the park’s operators cheapskates?” Enno yelps upon hearing about Saronium trekking through a swampy haunted park.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
“It’s the first time in my life that I ever heard anyone assume that building a haunted park in a swamp is cheaper!” Saronium yelps, and she turns to Enno. “Are you crazy?”
“Now that you’re mentioning it, I might be. But I cannot say for sure” Enno tells her, a little concerned about his health.
“People never talked about the costs of building and operating a haunted park! All that people seemed to talk about were the dangers of going into one, their loot, what the park is and looks like, as well as tips that can help adventurers looking to go through one!” Saronium seems to be increasingly unpleasant towards Enno. “For a while, you kept talking about haunted parks, but adventurers typically make the distinction between types of haunted parks!”
“What distinguishes haunted parks between each other?” Bryzax asks the rental healer.
“For starters, adventurers usually distinguish between dungeons and raids, as well as between single and multi-boss parks. Dungeons are usually run with up to five adventurers, while raids require twice as many”
“What are haunted park bosses anyway?” a patron asks her, trying to clear up confusion.
Saronium kept talking about big monsters, such as the giant garuda at the end of Upper Perseria, so are these big monsters, well, the bosses she just mentioned? Bryzax ponders while a lot of the inn’s patrons finally realize that bosses guard the loot chests. And they start thinking about the risk-reward analysis of going through a haunted park.
“Do people approach each type of haunted park differently?” another patron asks her.
“Definitely. People tend to be more risk-averse around raids, especially at higher levels, and dungeons are perceived as comparatively easier on average, and its loot is perceived as being less valuable”
Enno then prepares fifty gold so that he can have a consultation with Saronium in her inn room. Which simply contains a bed. However, his consultation seems not to be forthcoming since patrons bombard her with questions about her history of running haunted parks.
Once in Saronium’s room, Enno gives the 50 gold for the initial consultation he obtains with her. This better be good, especially since I know nothing about the rental healing world.
“Milord, what makes you think that you have gone crazy?” Saronium asks Enno, finally realizing that he’s the lord of the city.
“It seems like, in the past few days, I suddenly had this idea that building a haunted park would be of benefit for my land. However, in the excitement of the idea of building a haunted park, I tried to sell the idea of one to my residents, on economic development grounds, but without a clear timetable and financing schedule, I am going to lose face to the eyes of my residents!”
“Remember what I told people about the Perserian failure to implement its own haunted park safety ordinances! You’re the first person I ever met that even treated a haunted park as a mercantile endeavor!”
“Maybe because most adventurers you came across are of common extraction, owning a haunted park might not have crossed their minds!”
“Milord, you might be crazy, but you think the Caladon Bog, as a haunted park in the swamp, was built on the cheap? You touted economic benefits to the residents, but the economic benefits of haunted parks of any size require some infrastructure to be realized!”
“Like an inn, a set of workshops which, jointly, would be able to handle repairs to the gear, which I believe would be privately funded. However, chapels, graveyards and roads are definitely public property! I guess, the best locations to build a haunted park in would already have preexisting infrastructure, which is perhaps why Perseria has two haunted parks within its walls!”
“If anything, Perseria is the cheapskate faction of the haunted park world, not the Caladon Bog operators!”
Saronium might be a rental healer who went to a variety of haunted parks around the world, but I didn’t expect her to know about that aspect of statecraft! Definitely the best 50 gold I spent in my life! Enno muses.
“But I feel like you’re due for a trip to a haunted park! That ought to set things straight about what it really means to run one! Right now, you seem to treat a haunted park as a purely economic endeavor!” the rental healer scolds her lord.
“And how would actually experiencing a haunted park make me a better haunted park operator?”
“You want to build a haunted park, you should consider not only the loss of appeal factor, but also the adventurer experience, if that makes sense”
“What do you mean, I must consider the adventurer experience?”
“At their core, haunted parks are theme parks. People won’t necessarily come back to a haunted park if the rewards were worthless, or if the combat aspect of running a haunted park is unpleasant to the adventurers! Some of the more highbrow adventurers also look at the story of the park, too! What experience of running haunted parks do you have?”
“None”
“That’s clear to me! Also, fighting in the open world just isn’t the same as in a haunted park! Speaking of open world fighting, what are you best at in battle?”
“I use a magical hunting carbine in battle”
“It will have to do. Also, I wonder whether your herald can fight, too…”
“That’s not even a question; my herald wields a sword and shield in battle, wearing a plate armor with the tabard on top of it! Also, how far away from here is the Caladon Bog on a flying carpet? I can take my herald, you and me to the Caladon Bog on my flying carpet!”
“That will cost you extra, milord”
Often, that kind of adventuring dilettante wanted a rental healer for something far less savory, and out of combat, than simply the provision of medical services! Which is why some girls of common extraction tried their hands at rental healing: the lure of what some of them feel is easy money, but it’s actually anything but. As a rental healer, you will get blamed often when things go wrong in a dungeon or raid, unless someone else is clearly at fault, Saronium muses while she tries to calculate the potential range of the final price of making the two go to the Caladon Bog with her.
“How much extra are we talking?” Enno asks her.
“Also, when are you available?” Saronium sends the question back to him.
“Is there a date that will work for you? Does a certain date come with a certain discount? I will need to confer with my herald; I plan on bringing my herald to the Caladon Bog, too”
I wonder what I got into, but if this rental healer feels like the treatment requires a trip to a haunted park, so be it, Enno feels like there could be some sort of discount for advance booking, but at the same time, he feels like there’s a catch. However, Saronium is the kind of rental healer whom I can feel has much more offer than just medicine! He then steps out of Saronium’s room, and back with his herald.
“Bryzax, I wonder when you can go with me run a haunted park…”
“Any time for you, milord, so long as it can avoid you making an expensive mistake that might bankrupt Kaeshana!” Bryzax tells him.
Enno seemed to have charmed Saronium into helping him build this haunted park… but at what price? Bryzax muses while Enno returns to Saronium’s room.
“The earlier, the better; delaying the construction too much will make this project more expensive than it should!” he answers the previous question of the rental healer.
“In two days then, and this will run two thousand gold”
“I’ll pay in two days, before we leave”