The Mayor was delighted about the previously undiscovered massive pile of bat crap. Not a sentence I ever expected to have pass through my brain. He paid us a fat finder’s fee and promised more if one of us could produce a decent map to it. He seemed unbothered by the community of giant, probably venomous bugs that lived on it or the colony of huge bats that produced it.
Moonstone didn’t have much in the way of natural resources. There was a lot of wealth in the city but a good chunk of it flowed straight out to buy supplies. There were a few obsessive gardeners producing food in the cramped space under the domes. They used magic to produce hybrid plants that, for example, bore three kinds of fruit, could be grown in a pot, and clung to the outside of a building as they grew. However even magical plants needed fertiliser to produce a decent yield
#
The next day Jethro resolved to go in search of accommodation. He claimed to have an idea of how much we could expect to earn working for the Mayor. I’d have preferred more data points to predict our earnings but I didn’t know anything about the Arkadian housing market so I left it to him.
I was just glad that he’d found something to keep him busy while I took my first trip to the Outlander Archive.
#
Gertrude was waiting in her office for me. She wasn’t alone. A sleek Otter-Kin woman stood beside her, wearing a knitted jumper over a long skirt, and holding a picnic basket.
The Otter woman looked a lot like Rollo Henning, the head Doctor at the Fever Hospital. I wondered if they were related but I resolved not to ask. It was probably something akin to racism to say that all Otter-kin look alike.
“Is this the famous Geraldine?” I said. “She talks about you all the time.” A slight exaggeration. It wasn’t so much that Gertrude talked about her constantly, it was more that the way that she talked about Geraldine suggested that she was actively holding herself back for fear of boring the pants off of everyone.
“It’s all lies,” said Geraldine. She was smiling, as if this was a joke, but the corners of her mouth were a little tight, as if she was worried that it wasn’t. “I swear I’m retired.”
“Well now I am intrigued,” I said. “She’s never spoken about your profession.”
Gertrude managed not to look embarrassed but I think that was only because she’d invested too much time on her air of impenetrable superiority to blow it by looking embarrassed. “I’d like you to stop trying to tease each other. It’s not going to work.”
“Aww,” said Geraldine. “You’re no fun.”
“I’m lots of fun,” Gertrude said, maintaining her deadpan face. She swept out of her office, leaving Geraldine and I with no choice but to follow her.
She led us between the racks of the main archive to a door in the back of the building. It opened onto a walled courtyard garden filling the space behind the Library, the Archive and City Hall.
It was surprisingly sunny and pleasant. There were formal garden beds, a few fruit trees and several stone benches. It was all laid out in concentric circles surrounding a structure that looked like some kind of mausoleum or above ground tomb.
My brief stab of curiosity about who might be interred there was snuffed out when I noticed that Amris, the Cat-kin Librarian and most dapper man in Moonstone was seated on one of the benches close to the centre of the garden. He was eating a sandwich and he had brought a teapot and porcelain cup out on a tray with him so he could drink his tea properly. He smiled at Gertrude and Geraldine, and possibly also at me.
Geraldine took her picnic basket to one of the stone benches closest to the Mausoleum. She began unpacking it. I was curious about the contents but not as curious as I was about the large iron key that Gertrude was suddenly brandishing.
“Lunch first or Outlander Archive first?” said Gertrude.
Lunch appealed to my practical side but I knew that I was far too wound up about my first trip to the Archive to actually enjoy eating.
I reached for the key. “I think I’ll run up an appetite first.”
Gertrude didn’t give me the key but instead she led the way to the door of the Mausoleum and unlocked it.
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“So this isn’t a tomb then?” I said.
“No. Unless you think of it as the tomb of your civilization,” said Gertrude. Her words gave me a weird shiver for reasons that I couldn’t quite explain, even to myself.
I lit my lantern and pushed the door open. Inside was a plain white room. In the centre, where a coffin would be if it really were a tomb, was the top of a stairwell descending.
The stairs spiralled down one floor to a large circular room filled with bookcases. There were more floors beneath this one, and for a moment I wondered if I should press on and see how deep it went, but I feared that if I did that I would definitely miss something useful. I turned my lantern up to maximum illumination and diffusion and set it down on a small circular table by the staircase.
There was a stack of leather bound books on the table. The one on top had the title Start here, Outlander. I covered part of the words with my hand but they remained the same. Actual English letters. I lifted the top book and looked at the one beneath it. For a moment I saw Commencez ici étranger, which I knew to be French. I recognised the word étranger as meaning ‘stranger’ but then the words shimmered and reformed themselves into Start here, Outlander.
There was a plush red armchair close to the table so I sat myself down in it and opened the English book.
#
> Start here, Outlander
>
>
>
> This is a general guide to things a person from Earth needs to know about Arkadia. If you have useful basic knowledge that is not included in this book then please add it at the end. If there’s no space then you need to start a new book.
>
> If the language in this book seems archaic, or any of the information in this book is out of date, then this book needs to be retired and replaced with a new one. Please copy out the accurate information in your own words and add this book to the retired shelf.
#
On the next page I learned that the dominant counting system of Arkadia was base 60, like the way we counted minutes and seconds. I learned that there were 60 copper coins to 1 silver and 60 silvers to one gold. I’d been dimly aware that they weren’t counting money in base 10, which was why I’d left Jethro to deal with the cash, but I hadn’t asked about it for fear of maths.
I also learned that contraception was readily available from any Apothecary, Herbalist or Witch and that abortion was common, cheap and safe. I’d sort of known that already too.
I wasn’t sure if I was impressed with humanity or despairing of it that the first two answers were about getting paid and getting laid.
It was somehow extremely 21st Century Earth that the pages immediately after getting paid and getting laid were all about religion. There were notes in multiple handwriting about how to find faith communities of all the major Earth religions. Surely the fact that we had all been reborn into new bodies on a different world was proof that Buddhism had won. That was the only religion that had got anywhere close to the truth we found ourselves living in.
If I’d had a pen on me I would have made a note in the margin to that effect but instead I flipped angrily past the religion pages and onto a section on alcohol. Some brave soul had tried every form of alcohol that they could get their hands on and ranked them in order of potency. They had written additional notes on the taste of the drink and quality of the hangover produced as a result.
The wheat beer that Jethro and I had tried in Uln was one of the highest scoring beers for both taste and potency and came with a warning about not mixing it with spirits. The Huntmaster liqueur was likewise high scoring for strength, though the writer did not like the taste, and it was recommended that it shouldn’t be mixed with anything. I was starting to feel like we’d been lucky to get out of Uln alive. It was clearly more of a party town than it had seemed.
The next section was about the skill tree. It pointed to other, much more detailed, guides to the tree but also said:
> Do not underestimate the power that you have simply by seeing the whole of the skill tree. Study it. Not only the part that is relevant to your current skills but the whole of the tree. See the hidden patterns. Learn the shape of it. Master it as widely as you are able.
There was an odd weight to those words. As if there were other words between the words I could read. A message inside the message. I wondered if there were other starter skills that I could learn through simple grinding. Maybe there were other synergies that I could access so I could level skills that I didn’t have a lot of use for right now. In the same way that I could level CLIMBING and PARKOUR at the same time, or use fibre crafts to level both MAKE BASIC GEAR and TAILORING.
I began to appreciate that access to the Outlander Archive made an already broken build even more overpowered. I felt like my brain was fizzing. I was also hungry and I knew that if I read further I’d probably read stuff that would make me forget my plans for homework.
#
I returned to the surface to find Gertrude and Geraldine still waiting for me. Gertrude looked a little relieved that I was back safely, making me wonder if there were any dangers in the Archive. She also had a slightly manic glint in her eye. She looked like a mad professor ready to unleash her creature upon the world.
Geraldine had brought a bottle of wine in her picnic basket that she brandished at me as soon as I returned the key to Gertrude. “A little something to celebrate your first visit?”
I inspected the label, freshly armed with knowledge of Arkadia’s booze. If the guide was right it was a cheeky, fruity drink, similar to some famous French red wine that I’d never heard of, and perfect for a slow afternoon drink. Not a session wine because the hangover was brutal and it would stain both lips and teeth.
“I’d love one, thanks.”