There were two more days until the hunt. Iris woke early to the sounds of crates being lowered onto the back patio and unloaded from the lift by Autumn, Titus, and the worker who delivered them. That would be the ingredients and cooking supplies Autumn procured, so she tried not to be annoyed as she rolled over in her bed and pulled the covers tight.
As the sound of dropping crates continued, Iris eventually groaned and rolled out of bed. Rather than try to sleep through the racket, she decided to get an early start on her day. With great regret, she changed from her soft, warm pajamas into fresh underclothes beneath her dark blue robe. After cinching the belt she held up her bottomless bag and let it reach out with its strings like tendrils to grab hold of the belt and pull itself tight.
Finally, she picked up the tattered grey wizard hat. She had stayed up late last night cleaning it with damp cloths and a small vial of hat cleaning mixture she had bought in town. Though it was still floppy and literally rough around its edges, the hat now carried its age proudly instead of pitifully. For a moment before donning the hat she questioned if it would be disrespectful to the Weird Farmer if she dyed it blue to match her robes. She decided to think on it.
Victoria and Eli had already left the tavern earlier that morning, having taken the lift up to the city before the delivery arrived. As Iris came down the stairs, Autumn and Titus were cataloging the supplies and comparing them to a list.
"5 piece pot set?" Titus asked, running down the list on a clipboard with a quill.
"Here, not dented," Autumn said.
"12 piece set of mugs?"
"Here, kinda dented," Autumn replied, holding up a mug that had a slight dent around the top rim.
The crates were small but numerous and scattered across three different tables, only the table where the two of them were working had any opened or unpacked crates. Soon after Autumn noticed Iris she was put to work shoveling cataloged items into her bottomless bag. She half expected the bag to spit something out or close itself up at some point, with a new discovered trait showing up in her journal with the bag's max capacity. She was surprised, however, when they finished the last of the supplies about an hour later and her bag still seemed every bit as bottomless. After dropping in the item -- a bundle of spices -- and returning the bag to her belt, she patted it gently and smiled.
After the unpacking and repacking was done Iris made her way to the city proper. Rather than call the lift back down and take it up, she chose to go through the Underbelly and pick up a breakfast kebab from a sketchy food stand. From there she took the path up and around to the gates, which had opened a few days prior, and strolled into the city.
Her mission today was simple. She had written a list of items that she wanted to obtain to store in her bag. They were mostly cheap, mundane things like rope, gourds of water and a shovel, but the list grew more and more odd as it went on. Her hopes were that by taking advantage of her storage space she could have a variety of solutions to mundane problems that others wouldn't sacrifice the space and weight to be prepared for.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Her shopping list took her through a variety of shops and stalls in the market district, and a few more scattered across the rest of the city. She stopped by to see Fal the shopkeeper at the clothing store, who held-up a lengthy one-sided conversation about the newest fabrics he had received and their respective origins. She completed her shopping trip as noon drew near. All her items had been placed in her bag, and she reviewed the "New Items" list that helpfully populated itself in her adventurer journal.
- Strong Rope, ~50ft
- Iron Shovel
- Gourd of Water x5
- Wooden Bucket x2
- Snaprocks x10
- Crude Plank Shield
- Dice set
- Woven basket
- Portable Candle Holder
- Writing Quill x5
- Ink Well x2
With her list checked off it was time to meet the others at the Questing Hall to retrieve their quests and final information for the Grand Hunt.
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Eli and Victoria sat on a bench in the Questing Hall's front courtyard, which was lined with smaller versions of the wooden garden planters they'd seen in the market district. They spoke low but casually, and paused if anyone walked by.
"Who are they?" Eli asked.
"I can't be sure," Victoria said, "whoever these people are, they're way out of my league. There's a lot of people that could be, but it's not the city guard and it's not the Night's Brigade. Every time I think I see one of them I can't even be sure, I start convincing myself I'm imagining it. I think I only noticed them at the orientation because there were so many."
"Do we know who they might be?" Eli asked.
"That's what scares me. In most cities there would be a lot of groups it could be, but in a city this far away from anything else the options that make sense start dropping. There's one group I keep coming back to though, the Morose."
"As in the God?" Eli asked, a worried look crossing his face.
"Yeah," Victoria said, trying to stay matter of fact, "a group of their followers known for being the elite of the elites with an emphasis on stealth. They work under the jurisdiction of the Adventuring Corps, so that might be why they would be here."
Eli sat for a moment in the warm summer breeze while he thought. He noticed Titus and Autumn approaching on the sidewalk from a distance.
"I don't like being anywhere that a god is taking interest," he said eventually.
"Agreed," Victoria said, "if we're lucky I'm wrong, or whatever they're here for it's too far over our heads for us to even find out what it is."
"And if we're unlucky," he said, "it's going to be a very interesting Hunt."
The conversation trailed off as Autumn and Titus approached the bench. They filled in Eli on the arrival, cataloging and packing of the supplies earlier that morning, and confirmed his worries that they had no idea where Iris had been since then. They waited around and chatted until Iris briefly appeared up the sidewalk, then appeared again amongst the group.
Eli made a faint but exasperated gesture with his arms, "how does a teleporter show up late?"