(Y6, December 16th)
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A dozen kilometers from Tarquar, the trio found its first local hamlet. A clump of five-six houses.
“Almost looks like a big farm,” Birkathane remarked.
Quandocor threw her an interrogative look.
“What?”
“Main flat building, then lots of smaller outbuildings.”
Vantegaard looked at the small group.
“You know, before, I would have said, ‘Maybe it was once.’ But now… I’m not so sure it was ever inhabited.”
Birkathane thought about it for a while.
“Given that it looks very humanish while other races are around.”
“Yea. I don’t know… maybe the Deva could find those adequate. But I’m pretty sure the six-limbed ones wouldn’t make the kind of doors we find.”
Quandocor had to add, “which makes everything we find suspect.”
Vantegaard had to laugh.
“Did I ever introduce you to the Historicianus?”
“I do have a bookmark on the laptop back in Sweden, you know.”
“Well, don’t read too much on them. I mean, we are proving that there are aliens, but those guys… they are really throwing random data points and finding connections there. Doesn’t matter if there are no connections; they will find them.”
Closer, the farm looked more and more like a real farm. Most adventurers on Northworld behaved as hunter-gatherers, with a random sampling of internet-ordered spices and supplies carried from Earth to complement the local cuisine. But here and there, you found traces of actual agriculture from enterprising people. So it was either that, or somehow a corn-like plant grew by chance in rows next to the buildings, and a large vegetable garden had somehow been left by whoever made the buildings originally.
Up close, he could even see rows of trees with spots of color indicating fruits.
There was even a small panel to the side.
Sweets & Orchad
“Or… chad?”
“Someone’s got way too much humor. Or a D- in English.”
As they contemplated the name, a woman wearing a leather skirt, wool jacket, immense purple boots, and a large pair of shears came out of a side building and waved.
“Pilgrims?” she asked, with a heavy German accent.
“On our way to the Stones,” Birkathane answered.
“It’s common. You’ll find lodging closer. Fewer people during fall, even mild, so there’s probably room.”
“We’ve got maps,” Vantegaard injected.
“Is that a real farm?”
“Yes. Chad always wanted one, but a farm on Earth needs so much stuff to be viable; it’s not funny, even if you have enough to purchase the land. A small-scale one like here works – we’re not only self-sufficient, we also provide food for the two inns closer to Tarquar.”
“Chad?”
“Yes. I did not believe him when we met here three years ago, but yes, it’s real. Not the Super part of the handle, though.”
“Just you two?”
“Yes. He’s commuting with Earth. He does consultant jobs two weeks, then two weeks here working the farm. It helps the seasons are not pronounced, and there are only few pests. I moved to the States after he proposed. I should be on Recess too, but there’s a few things I needed to finish.”
“Married, eh? How does that apply on Northworld?”
“Same thing, except without divorce lawyers later. It’s the commuting that makes things a bit dicier. The contraceptive part, you know what I mean? In a way, the fact that you can’t conceive while the Silvergate is internalized or that it fails to function if you have an embryo is a boon. Can you imagine having a baby born here?”
“No Silvergate, no interface, you mean?”
“Yes. If we decide to have kids… we’ll probably have to shutter the farm and temporary Exile for a decade or more. Or find another couple to switch with to guard each other’s kids – we probably should before, just for the having the farm active 364 days a year. Well, it’s like most people – you delay and delay and delay. I don’t know how we’ll make it work. But we’ll do,” she shrugged. “Somehow.”
She waved at the trio as the group departed, heading toward the Stones’ location. There was an obvious path, well-trod, although they hadn’t spotted people yet.
Based on what Vantegaard’s maps showed, they were about four kilometers from the actual site when they spotted the first of the so-called pilgrims, based on what the woman – whose handle they hadn’t even gotten – had called everyone. By then, the sun was slowly setting. Northworld’s winter solstice – which, by pure calendar accident, was on January 25th locally – was more than a month away, but the inclination, as measured by the Cartographers, was a lot less than Earth’s, around 9 degrees. So, while the days were growing shorter, they were a lot less so than they’d be in November back on Earth.
Still, it was an almost automatic decision when they spotted a large building with a terraced outdoor patio and a bunch of people noisily chatting, drinking, and apparently eating. The stones weren’t moving, and spending the night in some inn was not a bad idea after a couple of days under a tent.
The building was indeed one such, devoted to serving the population of “pilgrims”. The brews were exotic, owing to local production from various things, including beet-analogues from the farm they’d passed by a few hours ago. Vantegaard could see an actual copper still in a backroom.
A few bronzes later for a drink and food buffet along with two rooms, and they took a seat under the rising stars. The one moon – a bit smaller than Earth’s, crisscrossed by straight scar lines as if a god’s claws had raked it – was rising into a blackening sky. Despite the lights of the inn, the stars were clear in the local fall.
“It still bothers me,” Quandocor said.
“The sky?” Vantegaard asked.
“No Milky Way. Do the Cartographers know more?”
“There is a rough map of the closest stars and nebulas. There’s even a public version with constellation names people have been coming up with. However, there are at least two censored names on that. People have been bringing telescopes, sometimes big ones piece by piece, but it’s very hard when you can’t actually photograph the sky.”
“So we still don’t know where we are.”
“As you said. No Milky Way means if we’re in a galaxy, ours or not, we’re not in the main disc. Based on planet rotation, we know all three sectors are in the northern hemisphere, so maybe if we went to the southern, we’d see the Milky Way from above. Or we aren’t near it. People have probably tried to spot galaxies to triangulate and determine if we’re nearby, but I never heard about any results. Or we’re in a completely different dimension, and all those four other species come from alternate versions of Earth.”
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“Maybe I’ll ask them,” Quandocor said.
“I’m sure that will turn up once they realize other sapients exist in their world.”
“I wonder if they have fried dogs,” he said, looking at the buffet.
From up close, the central stones were indeed eerily reminiscent of the monument near Fanduk. A set of vertical obelisks floating a few feet off the ground. The sight reminded them that Northworld was more than just an alien world, but a magical one.
A few dozen people were seated, often meditating – normally, not from a Skill, Vantegaard surmised – while a pair had spread a tablecloth and were having a picnic of all things.
What interested him the most was the prompt once he got close. He’d already picked the single and dual minor leylines combinations, so only the triple would be available. But of greater importance was the second warning.
Warning! An intersection of Minor Leylines overwhelms and replaces your regular skill selection with an ambiguous Tier 3 Earth Magic skill. Resolve the leyline interference to prevent the reoccurrence of this difficulty. Other leyline configurations may still cause further problems.
Warning! A major configuration of Aether flows restricts and replaces your regular skill selection with the Aether Link skill. Reorder the Aether configuration or acquire a substitute skill to prevent the reoccurrence of this difficulty.
Triple Minor Leyline skills
Slick. Tier 3 Dexterity. It is hard to maintain a proper fighting form when your feet are no longer stable.
Icebreath. Tier 3 Strength. Cold and heat do not mix.
Unseen. Tier 3 Presence. If you are hard to see, you are hard to hit.
He’d expected it. Based on collated reports, Vantegaard had been 98% certain it would be that specific Skill. Aether Link was relatively common, which was probably why not every Aetherist who had tried their luck at the lottery in Tarquar had obtained something and the ones who got it thought nothing of it. If he’d used the lottery normally, he would probably have picked it at one point.
He hesitated briefly. The three and a half days spent grinding while coming there had brought him to level 257, and if he had a bit more levels, closer to the 300 minimum target set by Vormacinus, it would be a trivial choice, even if he was still hesitating between the three geomantic skills. But based on progression, he still needed at least a day, maybe two, of grinding to afford both Skills.
What clinched the deal was that Aether Link was grindable outside of combat. Even if none of the other two had unlocked Aether as a stat, they all had intrinsic Aether so that he could practice with Birka or Quan as targets. Some people, notably soloists, used a magical item as an Aether sink for that, even if you needed a fairly high-level one, or you ran the risk of blowing it up once it exceeded twice its natural Aether levels and you forgot to drop it to break the link.
Aetherists love making big booms, he remembered from Wisuqkz.
Aether Link
Tier 3 Reflexes
Action, Status
A burden shared is a burden halved.
Link with another Aetheric entity. The highest aether level will slowly drain into the lowest aether level until the two achieve balance. The link will snap if the entities are too far apart and require time to re-establish.
Aether exchange: 1 per 9.1 seconds
Maximum distance: 9 m
Cooldown: 13 minutes 42 seconds
Skill level 9 (base 1)
Advancement: 0%
Time to add another Skill to the grind, he thought. This one should give fast gains.
“Anything good?” Birkathane asked him.
“You should have something. Want to roll the dice?” he asked back.
“You bet. Let’s see… Icebreath? Really?”
“Congratulations,” three voices simultaneously came.
Vantegaard looked at the sitting meditating woman who had added her congratulations to his and Quan’s.
“Thanks, I guess,” Birkathane said.
“You’re welcome. I got that one six weeks ago,” she replied.
“It looks nice. At least on paper, or the Interface, that is.”
Icebreath
Tier 3 Strength
Action
Cold and heat do not mix.
Breathe a blast of ultra-cold air. Any creature with hot blood hit by it loses part of its internal temperature, inflicting damage and a loss of Strength and Reflexes (mitigated by Resilience).
Cold: -56°C
Damage: 10.5% of the cold
Debuff: 56% of the amount of Strength/Reflexes over half of Resilience
Power Cost: 67
Skill level 11 (base 1)
Advancement: 0%
“The damage is minimal at the beginning, but it progresses fast. Assuming you can find targets to practice on, that is.”
“We found a few packs of Otocolobus coming,” Birkathane said.
“Yes, but you need to go almost a day out to find those. Anything closer is usually killed by the visitors. So I go grind at times, then I come back to attune myself to the stones.”
“Oh?”
That’s not how it works, Vantegaard thought, but he kept that to himself. Right now, it was mostly superstition that prevailed. People thought about that one special thing, thinking it was unique, unaware of the underlying rules. He was supposed to sell that information for the Cartographers one day. People would probably make better guesses once the locational interference mechanic got advertised, but that wasn’t a thing so far. The Guild made its money by being the most accurate and exhaustive at whatever information you sought. You could find stuff out on lots of sites, but most of it was bootleg partial copies of Cartographer databases, like Honest John’s Guide for Skills.
Some experts – maybe not even Gaters – were probably designing the business model for that, and that wasn’t his job. That job was organizing the database and verifying when he could, using his so-far unique Skill. And find Skills for his friends as a side benefit.
“You’re trying to get more Skills?” he guessed.
“I heard that people could get geomantic ones if they stayed around the Stones for long. I’m trying to get into the Earthen Brethren, but they have a minimum skills policy. Five skills. It used to be three, but they’ve just increased the amount two months ago.”
Because they know it’s easy to get a few if you know how.
“People say they have a steady source of Skill Stones for more, but they want that minimum to start with. I had one Skill, I got Icebreath and then two others here already, and I want the streak to go,” she said. “I just need one last and then grind some levels to 750.”
Vantegaard hesitated a second. Spilling it out was out of the question, but…
“I know some Earthen Brethren, you know. A few came here to see what it was about because of the rumors, but they got like two or maybe three Skills, no more.”
“You’re one of them?”
“No, I work with them. But don’t expect to keep getting geomantic Skills, even here. You probably got as much as you’ll ever do.”
“Well, it’s not as if I have something to lose. Run the lottery here, run it somewhere else…”
“You could check the other stones,” Birkathane said.
Vantegaard threw a quick look at her, hoping she’d catch his worry. There was no sense in spilling out the beans. He was supposed to sell that information, not give it for free. At least, that was the understanding he now had with the Cartographers. And Quandocor insisted they were people you needed to cultivate because they were movers and shakers in Northworld.
“Stones?”
“Didn’t you hear about the other stones? Fanduk Stones?” Birkathane pursued while throwing him a wink that told him she was aware of his situation.
Plausible deniability. It won’t matter if the boss decides I screwed up. Armangest still disliked him and would probably push against his second-in-command if he decided Vantegaard was endangering the business recklessly.
“Sounds like something I heard about on a forum back on Earth. Wait… a remote new spawn? With all kinds of towers and stuff?”
“That’s right. One of those curiosities is a set of floating stones, just like here. But different.”
“If it gives different stuff… but it’s far away.”
“Nobody gets anything for free. Even on Northworld,” Birkathane countered.
They left the woman keeping on her meditation exercises. Vantegaard felt somewhat guilty about his job, but there was little he could do.
“You still haven’t found my locations for Skills,” Quandocor said with a little smile.
“You’ve got less than we have, right?”
“26 total. You?”
“31 Skills now with that last one. And 33 for Birka.”
“Investing in Perception is expensive. Even if I’m replacing what I wanted it for.”
“Too bad that necromancy, ritualist, nor wizardry dip heavily in that stat. I mean, there is one known skill for Perception necromancy listed in the Cartographer’s list, but it’s the one you already have…”
“It is what it is. I’m lucky I got a new staff that doesn’t exceed my reach. I have 46 points banked, and the next Perception point costs ten already.”
“Want to try the lottery?”
“Wouldn’t you detect something if there was more?”
“We don’t know how wide Sense the Leylines work. I know it can detect Lifeforce-type Skills, even if I have none.”
“So, not good prospects, again,” Quandocor shrugged.
“I’ve combed what I could find on the subject of the Stones, but no one systematically tracked…”
“Now, that’s interesting.”
“What?”
Entranced by Fate
Tier 2 Intuition
Ritual
Fate cannot be seen; it can only be glimpsed.
Grant every friendly entity an Intuition boost.
Duration: 14 min
Area: 28m radius
Buff: +14 Intuition points
Cooldown: 5 hour, 12 min
Cast time: 26 sec
Cost: 65 Ritual, +12 per affected entity
Skill level 14 (base 1)
Advancement: 0%