Marc had nightmares of the spider, and of falling. He found reprieve being woken up to the sounds of people downstairs. All things considered, he’d put it slightly under being unconscious for a day.
When Marc looked around the room he was in, basking in his lack of possessions. “Vow of Poverty succeeded, I guess” he muttered to himself. The fact his clothing was somehow neither reeking of body odor nor filthy with road grime and mud was a miracle. Or magic. Now that he thought about it, he hoped it was magic, because he had no idea how he would wash his stuff here without constant miracles.
Marc walked down the stairs, turned his key in, looked into the main room. The first floor of the Slayers’s Society was a massive feasting hall crossed with a trophy room, and was pretty rowdy late into the night. It didn’t help that the place doubled as a semi–exclusive tavern full of people with freshly earned money.. The person replacing Berk was far kinder in general, one of those Moose People he’d been seeing around. Marc made for the door, but was called by someone.
“Hey, wait!” he turned around to see Jacky, the dryad from the day before rushing over to him. Dryads, Marc had been told, needed to move with an odd gait. They couldn't ever be completely disconnected from living wood, or they'd start suffocating. That made them basically unable to run. She eventually got next to him, “I’ll show you around!”
Not wanting to be a burden, Marc refused, “You don't need to. I should be able to find my way on my own. Thanks, though.”
She was insistent though, “You don't know the city, and any weird magic you give off I can explain.” He didn't really have a good response to that, so she walked alongside him.
Jacky, of all of the Dryads he had seen, was one of very few to not wear armor. Because of the way they moved, many doubled down, deciding that their speed wouldn't matter if they were protected enough. Instead, Jacky used her woven grass dress to hover over the ground a few inches, the blades of her grass dress moving like the legs of a centipede. She wasn’t agile, but she could also move at a walking pace alongside Marc.
The streets were bustling with life and movement. Jacky told him that, in case they got split up, he should stick around the adventurer areas, called the Traveler Ward. According to Nico, adventuring was far nicer in Grand Vale than Trinity City.
Grand Vale, despite its forested nature, was a city more defined by its hills. There were many of them, and streets tended to run up or across them, rather than diagonally. Marc had never been, but he imagined San Francisco looked something like it from the pictures he’d seen. The Traveler Ward was about halfway up from the bottom of the city. Said bottom, the Riverside, was unsurprisingly the most dangerous part of town. There was a Thief's Guild called The Root down there, which was stood out as odd to Marc.
“Why would a city allow a Thief's Guild? Wouldn't everyone know they're all, y’know, thieves?”
Jacky shook her head, “Not exactly. Think of it this way; The queen can't stamp out crime. No one can. The Root is protection both ways. They get lesser punishments, typically a fine, for most petty crimes. And the city gets a group of people really intent on monitoring all outside criminals.” The logic made sense to Marc, but he was sure someone could poke holes in it.
“Besides, the Root is led by one of the Queen's family members”. And that explained the rest of it. Good old nepotism.
Jacky continued pointing out the buildings they saw. She was a member of the Slayers’s Society, but the Alchemists’s Guild was just across the road. Jacky had told Marc that they should get Marc signed up at the Adventurer’s guild, so they were headed that way, towards the Traveler Ward market square. Passing by were the Hall of Glory, an arena-style organization, the Temple of Allfaith, a place for basically every religious adventurer, and then the House of Quills. Barry was inside, and from what Marc knew, and what Jacky said, they were a group only in the Sage Lands that focused on the recording and preservation of magical information above all.
Marc popped inside, asked for Barry, and finally retrieved his bag. Once it was on his back, he concentrated to bring his inventory back up. It seemed that the system he used, whatever it was, didn’t give notifications about items being gained or lost, only destroyed.
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INVENTORY
Wanderer’s Armor (Cloth, Mundane)
Outsider’s Locus (Container, Esoteric)
Potion of Past Steps (Healing, Consumable, Esoteric, E1/L1) x3
Attunement Lozenge (Consumable, Esoteric) x10
Constellation Dagger (Iron, Esoteric, E1/L1)
Jacky waited outside, and was talking to one of the other adventurers, one of the Moose-people. Marc walked up, and Jacky introduced the two, “Oh, Arwa, this is the personI was telling you about,” she turned to Marc, “and this is Arwa, an Icess. You probably don’t have them where you’re from, no?” He shook his head in agreement.
Arwa reached out a hand, and a low, resonant voice came out of the Icess, “It’s nice to meet you. Arwa, Green Knight, Glorifier.”
“Huh?” Marc asked while shaking his hand.
“Glorifier. I fight in the Hall of Glory.”
“Ah, sorry I'm-” Marc was cut off
“Not from around here, no worries. Enjoy the city while you are visiting.” Arwa left with a chuckle. Marc wasn't sure if he liked being a novelty, but it was better than being a potential execution candidate.
“Hey Jacky?”
“Yeah?”
“Is the plural of Icess also Icess?”
“How'd you know?”
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As they walked to the market, Jacky was telling Marc a lot of things. Some of it very elementary and thankfully identical to what he went through on Earth (apparently the Water Cycle was Dryad secret science). Others were useful and basic to anyone growing up in this world, like how Historia, classes, and levels worked.
Historia are, more or less, a magical crystallization. “Of what” was apparently hotly debated, but Jacky believed it was a location's memories of a hero's great deed in the past. They could be found at the sites of past battles. There were some rare places where they could be found consistently, and those became heavily guarded Historia farms. What counted as a great deed was less assured, since Chef's Historia existed and Marc couldn't see Dwarven Ramsay cooking a Dragon to death.
Each person was born “unclassed” and most people lived their lives happily without. If they got one though, their first Echelon class was always that of their first Historia. From there it depended on the person and what they found.
For example, both Barry and Jacky started as Shamans, but Barry became a Pyromancer with his focus on damaging fire spells. Jacky, meanwhile, was more than likely going to become a Sage when her Echelon increased to two, given her own focus on healing.
Levels were easy. When you did things your class wanted you to do, you gained levels and stats to match. By now, Marc had long since accepted that asking questions was going to be the only way he figured out how this world worked. It was a lot harder playing a game if you don't know the mechanics.
“Why? Levels, I mean. Why do they. . .exist?” Marc asked for probably the 20th time today.
“Well, you're a location, aren't you? Why couldn't the Historia you've already gotten grow stronger from your own experiences?”
They looked into the market square, and across the large courtyard stood one of the tallest buildings in the city. The Society of Adventurers.
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When the Second entered its perception, the Fourth knew something had happened in the world. Locked in its meditation, the Fourth could be aware of just about everything that happened everywhere, but it chose not to, allowing the world to stay its course without interference.
The Second, always one to speak first (and last if it could help it) said, “Another has entered.”
The Fourth, always one to ask questions, replied, “And this one is different from the others?”
“They are always different.”
“But does this difference mean anything?”
The Second had a look of disdain in its aura. The two were not really there, instead projecting their souls deep into the ground. “This other is in your territory.”
“Do you not trust me to handle such things?”
“You are summoned to the rest. Under the next solstice.”
“Do you mean the equinox? That comes sooner.”
“No.” An answer to both questions at the same time. The Second had been spending time with the Ninth.
The Second and Fourth had never truly seen eye to eye. They had fundamentally different ideals of what Magic is and could be. The Second must Know. The Fourth must Understand.
Thankfully, the Fourth would not object to the summons. Despite its belligerence, it could agree to the importance of the event.
“Very well. Tell the First, and the rest while you’re at it.”
The Second nodded, “Of course I will”, before its soul projection dissipated.
With any luck, this one would be like the many others before it. But the Fourth had nearly two seasons to get ready for the meeting. It let its perception expand outwards through a pulse of Primal magic.