System Information:
Congratulations you have reached Level 12.
HP + 18 (HP: 100/135)
Mana + 0 (Mana: 21/21)
Stamina + 13 (Stamina: 52/65)
Strength + 1, Dexterity + 2, Intelligence + 1, Wisdom + 3
Stamina regeneration has improved.
Ok, ok I know I should break the habit of instantly checking my character sheet every time I levelled up - but that day wasn't today,
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Race
Class:
Neesh
14
Ambiguous
(the enquirer will see what they expect)
Human
Scout
Title:
Attributes:
Condition:
Character:
Alignments:
n/a
160cm
55kg
Shoe Size 5
Blood: Type O
[Could be better] no boosts or faults apply
Dominant traits:
Fair minded
Stubborn
Survivor
Ethics: 63/100
Order: 35/100
Selflessness: 55/100
Level:
HP:
Mana:
Stamina:
Regen Rates
12
(3500 XP to LvUP)
100/135
21/21
52/65
HP: 1pt/hour
Mana: 1pt/hour
Stamina: 2pt/min
Strength:
Dexterity:
Intelligence:
Wisdom:
Luck:
16
16
16
16
17
A new road lies before you. Time to see where it might lead
Skills (9 max)
Skill LV
Rarity
Description
Requirements
Literacy
10
Uncommon
You can read and write, that’s not as common as we’d like
Reading checks: +10
Intelligence >10
Numeracy
15
Rare
You have been taught actual mathematics rather than adding, plus you’re a bit of a whizz at it
Mathematics Checks: + 15
Intelligence >10
Archery
8
Common
You can shoot straight, on a calm day
Equip: Short Bows, Composite Bows, Small Crossbows, Quiver
Accuracy Checks: +3
Damage: + 3
Strength > 5
Stamina 1/shot
Must have weapon and ammunition in inventory
Linguist
12
Rare
You can argue with even more people you meet
Language Checks: + 12
Intelligence > 9
Luck > 10
Melee Weapons [Basic]
1
Common
You know which end is the pointy end.
Equip: Knives, Short Swords, Clubs
Damage: +0
Strength > 10
Must have weapon in inventory
Wayfinding
1
Rare
You know where you are and where you’re going
Orientation Checks: + 4
Wisdom > 10
Intelligence >12
Hunting
1
Common
It’s eat or be eaten sometimes and you’re determined not to be lunch.
Damage: x2 damage vs animals
Stealth Checks: +2 vs animals
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
Ranged Weapon must be equipped.
Dexterity > 10
Sneak
1
Rare
You can move silently, like a shadow. Just try not to sneeze.
Stealth Checks: +3
Dexterity > 10
Tracking
1
Rare
You know how to follow your nose. Just try not to sniff out trouble.
Find Checks: +4
Intelligence > 12
Wisdom >10
Acrobatics
2
Common
You can jump and twirl with the grace of a cat.
Dodge Checks: + 2
Falls Damage: - 2
Dexterity > 11
It was pleasing to see all my stats (except luck) now equaled sixteen points. I didn’t have time to dwell on it though as pretty soon after I had pulled my jacket on, pausing briefly to admire it’s fine quality, certainly compared to what I had been wearing recently but also compared to what was considered good quality in Trieste, when more instructions were given to us successful applicants.
I was given a map with directions to the Fourteenth Company’s Headquarters which were in Northgate ward, unsurprisingly this was the part of the city that surrounded the northern gate. I’d have to cross the rivers to make it there but the route looked short and fairly straightforward; plus I had my wayfinding skill if I really started to struggle. After one last check of the map I followed the stream of green jacketed boys out of the trial grounds and into the city. Even though it was now well into the evening the city was still as busy and vibrant as it had been just before noon. Most shops were still open, lanterns hung from awnings and poles, as merchants hawked their wares of spices and cloth to the people passing by. At every street corner more lanterns were hung from tall posts, I even saw someone change one that had run out of oil using a long pole to unhook the spent one and hang a new one. Even as I left the city centre and started to travel through what were clearly more residential streets there were still the street corner lanterns and every dwelling had at least one lantern in a ground floor window brightening the street. Some sort of food stall graced nearly every corner I passed, many of them selling doubles, others skewers of spiced meat; I wish I had some money as the smell of them was making me ravenous. Hopefully there would be food available when I got to my new headquarters.
I arrived just a few minutes later, the fourteenth’s headquarters was a series of buildings built up against the city’s northern wall, itself surrounded by a more modest stone wall. There was a gatehouse with a heavy, iron banded, set of wooden double doors, flying above it was the banner of Malin and below was a painted crest depicting a crossed sword and pickaxe. Swallowing my nerves I approached the doors, spying a more person sized door in the middle of the right hand one, and knocked.
The door swung open and to my surprise I saw Sir Erik, the knight who had fed me earlier, standing there.
“Surprised?” he said warmly, “I’ve got to admit I was. You seemed an interesting kid when we met this morning but I wouldn’t have put you down as a bit of a marksman with a bow or that you even knew your letters let alone would ace the academic tests. It’s lucky you are completely useless with a sword or I’d think you were some exiled foreign prince or something.”
I laughed nervously at that suggestion and to mask that I had no idea what to say to any of that. It didn’t seem to matter though as after a second’s pause the affable knight continued with his speech.
“Still what you did in the first bout was pretty entertaining so there’s that to work with,” he said, putting a friendly hand on my shoulder and ushering me through the door.
“Anyway, welcome to the fourteenth,” he said, gesturing at the courtyard I had just stepped into. It contained three buildings, built around each of the other sides of the courtyard.
“Barrack house and infirmary to your right, stores and stables to your left, mess hall and the officers’ offices are in the building against the wall, behind you under the gate side wall are the blacksmithery and workshops, and we’re standing in the middle of the training ground. Anyway come on, I bet you’re starving and dying to meet your new squad mates.”
And with that he strode off in the direction of the mess hall. I hurried to follow him. The building opened up into a wide room with two doors leading off it to the left and right. We went through the left hand door into a massive hall. It was constructed with a jaw dropping vaulted timber ceiling, stained nearly black over the years, the walls bore shields and trophies and themselves were formed of ornately carved wooden panel work. The hall itself was filled with three rows of tables and long benches running nearly its entire length with another smaller table standing on a raised platform at one end, seven seats arranged behind it.
As I entered the deafening noise of a hall full of knights drinking, eating and talking subsided into silence. All in all I guessed there were easily a hundred knights of varying ages and races filling the hall. One thing that struck me, was that unlike Sir Erik, and the knights I knew from Trieste, they were dressed, well they were dressed a bit shabbily; there jackets were mud stained and torn, and few wore any armour beyond some boiled leather underneath their jackets; only Sir Erik and the six knights sat at the high table looked like the other militia knights I’d met today. Even so, it didn’t make the fact that they were all staring at me any less intimidating.
Sir Erik, now behind me, shoved me gently forward and I walked slowly through the hall, trying to shrink into my jacket, towards the high table. When I reached it, the man in the central seat, a wiry looking man with long straight jet black hair, tied into a ponytail, stood up. His eyes, which were behind thin rimmed metal spectacles marked him out as one of the people who came from behind Trieste’s eastern borders, so seldom seen that most people referred to us Triesti and the people of the other kingdoms around us as easterners and had no idea there were still kingdoms and peoples further east from us, seperated from us by an even greater range of mountains than the Great Eastern Mountains, so inhospitable that they were nameless, that seperated the Eastern Kingdoms from those of the Ald and Est basins. The man looked me up and down once slowly before smiling and then starting to speak.
“Welcome to the Fourteenth Company, Knight Apprentice Neesh,” he said, surprisingly warmly. “I am Knight Captain Shi and I am the commander of the fourteenth, and the rest of these fine fellows,” he gestured expansively, “are your Company, from now until your dying breath, the finest and most important company in the whole Militia. The company of pioneers. We are the militia’s engineers, it’s map makers, it’s scouts. Where we go others follow, where we stand others shelter; and we’re very choosy in who we recruit. In fact you are the first knight apprentice we have selected in six years, I won’t make any apologies for that but you have my sympathies that your youth is going to be spent in the company of old men!”
The last line broke the silence of the room as a series of jeers and retorts were shouted at the Captain, who took them all with good humour. “Go eat, Sir Erik will introduce you to your squadmates, you must be starving,” he said to me as Sir Erik steered me towards the centre bench, where there was indeed an empty spot waiting for me. As I approached a dwarf stood up, he had a huge mane of fiery red hair that merged into a thicket of a beard so that all you could see of his face were two amused looking blue eyes and a broad nose.
“Sir Steven,” he said, taking my hand in a crushing grip, “Sergeant of the seventh squad. Welcome Neesh, come sit and I’ll get you caught up.”
I sat, a steaming bowl of curried meat and potato stew, a fresh onion and corriander salad, a couple of flatbreads and a mug of beer were laid before me. Not hesitating I grabbed my fork and started stuffing food into my mouth, relishing the warmth of the curried food that was so popular in Malin. Apparently this was behaviour the Sergeant approved of as he slapped me heartily on the back.
“If you could look up from your plate,” he joked, which I did, taking the opportunity to swig my beer (not exactly pleasant but hardly the vile substance my mother had always told me it was), “I’ll do the introductions.”
“The shady looking fellow opposite you is Sir Pelli, he’s alright but don’t play cards with him, he’s a notorious cheat,” the man opposite me grinned, he was missing two teeth and did have the air of a scoundrel, his wavy brown hair was trimmed quite short framing a friendly, if not entirely trustworthy, looking face.
“Wolfie here is Sir Yale, he’s alright if a bit uptight when it comes to his measurements,” he said pointing at the beastkin man on my right. I had never been this close to a beastkin before, he was quite fascinating to look at, I had to be careful not to stare. His hair, or fur, was thick and grey, although it followed the pattern of a man’s facial hair, he had shaved his beard but still sported thick sideburns that stood out a good few centimetres from his face, he had elongated canines, that you could see every time his mouth opened; but most strikingly were his pointed, furred ears that rose from near the top of his head rather than the sides.
“Then there’s Sir Micah, to your left,” he continued, as a greying older man offered me his hand. Sir Micah looked like he must be close to retirement, and bore some scars from his years of service, he had a friendly face though and kind brown eyes beneath some bushy dark eyebrows that contrasted with his thinning grey hair and pale skin.
“Finally, there’s Sir Flynn,” he said pointing to the young man sat next to Sir Pelli, “he was our last apprenticeship, don't know how I keep getting stuck with you youngsters in my squad, but watch yourself he’s a noble.” It was clear this last remark was both true, Sir Flynn was dressed much more smartly than anyone else on the whole bench, and, from the young man’s facial expression, a long running and exacerbating point of mockery in the squad. He was handsome, with olive skin and deep brown eyes, clean shaven, with a narrow long nose and black hair cropped close to his scalp. “He’ll show you the ropes,” Sir Steven said finally, taking a large swig of drink.
“So Neesh,” Sir Pelli said, “where you from then?”
“Trieste,” I said, the less actual lying I did the less likely I was to mess up.
“Far away,” Sir Micah said, “never been there myself, what’s it like?”
“Nothing like here,” I replied, “there’s no town even a quarter of the size of here, even the capital, there are lots of forests and the foothills of the Great Eastern Mountains. That’s where I was from, my father was a huntsman and we lived in the forest in the shadow of Ben Hallo, the first true mountain.” This was the cover story I’d decided on.
“How did you learn to read and write then?” Sir Flynn asked, thankfully with a look of curiosity rather than suspicion; time to deploy the second part of my cover story.
“Well,” I said, my nervousness here actually helped with my story, “my father wasn’t always a huntsman. Before I was born he was the tutor to the King and Queen’s children, but he had an affair with my mother, the favourite maid of the Queen and they fled the capital to escape punishment.”
“Ha that’s quite a dramatic tale,” Sir Yale said, “you humans have funny ideas about mating.”
“I guess so,” I said.
“Well now that you’ve brought it up,” Sir Steven said, “I probably should mention, you being a young man and all, that the servants here are strictly off limits for that sort of thing - if you’re found in their quarters there will be hell to pay.”
“No problem there Sergeant,” I said, oh what the man (dwarf) didn't know!
“Glad to hear it.”
The rest of the meal passed in raucous (at least raucous to me) fashion and went on for a good couple of hours before I was escorted to our squad’s quarters in the barrack hall. The officers had suites on the top floor, where the servant’s dorms were also housed. On the ground floor was the infirmary and the middle two floors were full of squad rooms. Each squad room consisted of a reasonably sized common room, with a stove and water pump, a small private room for the sergeant and six bunks for us. The bunks were perfect for my situation though, each one was effectively a small cupboard, sliding doors opened out to reveal a bed, and behind it a built-in chest and above that a small book shelf and sconce for a candle. This was more privacy than I expected and would definitely work to my advantage. At one end of each corridor were latrines and the other a small bathroom containing two small tubs in their own cubicles, each with a small stove that heated the water. There was a bathing rota for the squads on each corridor, two bath slots a week were what we got with some spare available for people who needed to clean up after carrying out their duty.
All meals were taken in the mess, breakfast at six in the morning, dinner at one in the afternoon and supper at nine. If you missed meals because you were on duty then you could get food from the kitchen built underneath the mess hall but otherwise you were expected to buy your own food. Laundry was taken care of by the servants and I was pleased to find I’d been issued another jacket, a set of three white shirts, two pairs of thick brown breaches, underwear and a boiled leather jerkin. These were all already in my trunk with accompanying instructions just to throw away the clothes I had on from Sir Steven.
I also found out I’d be paid a wage of seven marks a week. A small purse with a fifteen mark signing on bonus was also waiting for me in my chest. I didn’t have much experience with money but some careful probing of Sir Micah led me to believe that with no need to worry about accommodation or meals this would be enough to live well on in Malin. The full knights got a wage of fifteen marks a week, and officers fifty marks a week.
Speaking of officers, Sir Steven explained who the others on the high table were. I knew who Sir Shi was and Sir Erik, as they had introduced themselves, but there was also Dr Haskell, the Company Physician, Sir Satou, the Company Cartographer, Sir Loos the Steward of the Walls, Sir Oran the Siegemaster and Sir Glen the Master at Arms. Essentially between them the other officers each ran a branch of the Fourteenth according to its main functions and every militia company had different officers depending on their role in the militia. Sir Satou commanded the company’s scouting and map making duties, Sir Loos, was responsible for the upkeep of the city’s walls and therefore commanded the engineering arm of the company. Sir Oran as Siegemaster oversaw the operation and upkeep of the City's seige weapons, and Sir Glen was responsible for the general provisioning, training and order of the company. All under the command of Sir Shi, who had Sir Erik as his deputy. The seventh squad was one of the squads under Sir Satou and my class being a scout was how I ended up assigned to them.
Tomorrow I would start my training. Training of apprentices was the responsibility of the fifteenth company and I’d spend at least four days a week there, at least in my first year of training, then two days training with my squad and one rest day. Despite the early start and the strange new circumstances I found I was actually excited about what the next day would bring for the first time in a very long time.
---------------------------------------
Erik was sitting in Captain Shi’s suite with a glass of warm Rakka, a drink from Shi’s father’s country, which Erik had found he also enjoyed. It was very alcoholic and flavoured strongly with aniseed; one of the few spices that didn't find favour with most Malinese's palettes, but Erik found he enjoyed it.
“So we have a new recruit,” Erik said.
“Indeed, one you stuck your neck out for no less,” Shi smiled.
“I did,” Erik said sheepishly,” but aren’t you glad I did.”
“Yes, I suppose I am, he must be some sort of mathematical savant - it’s the only way I can explain some country peasant boy passing that test. Even the noble kids who have been tutored for years tend to only just scrape a passing score - yet this kid somehow got a perfect score and also scored highly on the foreign languages tests.”
“Yes - well enough for the thirteenth to want him as well,” Erik agreed.
“Yes - well it’s all a bit of a mystery, one we’ll have to keep our eye on. For the boy’s sake as well as our own.”
“What are you thinking?” Erik asked.
“That there’s a lot more to that boy’s story then we’re seeing,” Shi said.