--- Rania ---

Rania was sitting in her room in a tavern, reading an adventure novel.

She had more than enough money to afford a place of her own, but she felt like living in a tavern was part of the genuine adventuring experience.

On the table beside her were some very serious books about society and ethics. She had asked her friends for help to learn more about the world, and those had been the books they recommended.

She had tried to read them. She really had! But they were so boring. They didn't have any fighting at all!

She even tried talking to the spirits in the books. Maybe they could give a good summary? But no, talking to them was even more boring than reading the books. She should have known better. The little spirits in small objects like these were usually very simple and no fun at all to talk to. Her friend Pebble was also small and he was really fun and smart, but he was really the exception that proves the rule.

She had given up on the books after an hour, and switched back to reading her adventure novels instead. Those were much more fun!

She was reading the latest bestseller. It was about a dragon paladin, who went around un-kidnapping princes and princesses from other dragons. She had been amazed by the plot at first. Unfortunately it turned out that the novel wasn't to her tastes after all. It had far too much romance between the Main Character and all the people he rescued.

She didn't really want to continue reading the book, but she also didn't want to get back to reading the useful but boring books her friends recommended.

So she decided to procrastinate recursively by letting her mind wander.

Yesterday had been a lot of fun. The Coros people were so much nicer than the experts she had talked to before. They paid attention and listened to everything she said.

It was actually a bit creepy how much they listened. By the evening, there were four people with notepads who didn't even say anything, but just took notes on everything she said and did, while the others talked to her. But then again, they were paying her a lot of money for talking to them, so she supposed she couldn't get mad at them for wanting to make sure that they wrote down all of her words exactly.

She put most of the money she earned in the bank. It was a new experience for her.

After she had told Atrog that she spent all of her mission money on cool stuff, he had taught her about the importance of long-term investments. She did not really understand the details when the others tried to explain it to her. Galanys was a big fan of Magecoin, which was apparently a cryptographically secure network of tradeable spells, whatever that meant. Balron said that the First Draconic Bank was much safer as a long-term investment. The FDB was run by a whole lot of dragons, and it was the main reason that people still used the gold standard even though House Mardok used paper money. Rania couldn't really follow the details when he explained the political situation behind the bank. But she generally agreed that dragons were cool, and therefore picked the FDB.

It was important knowledge like this that was in the books next to her. She glanced at them guiltily, then looked away again and continued procrastinating and daydreaming.

Besides paying her in money, the Coros had also promised to pay her in information.

They were going to investigate and find out her Secret Origin Story. She was super excited about it, and was really looking forward to the answers.

The Coros people were really taking her seriously. As much as she loved her friends, she could still tell that they were sometimes not taking her very seriously. There were just too many everyday things she didn't know, probably because she grew up with such a boring childhood that she never learned about them. It also didn’t help for her credibility that her friends didn't really believe in stories for some reason, even though the evidence was all around them.

All the spirits liked stories. But her friends just thought stories were all about Tonos, even though he was a dumb god who didn't understand subtlety at all, and who had bad pacing, and was way too fond of tragic backstories.

Tragic backstories were bad. She knew that now. She used to think they were fun, because they are always entertaining to read about. But Bad Things happening to Good People was Bad. And since the Main Characters are Good Guys, Tragic Origin Stories were obviously Bad. It was perfectly obvious when one paused to think about it, and she thought that either Tonos was stupid for not getting it, or he did get it but didn't care, which would make him a Bad Guy himself.

Although to be fair, most of the spirits she talked to did not understand this either, and she often had to spend a lot of time explaining it to them. She knew that ethics was hard, so she was always patient with her explanations.

She really hoped that her own Secret Origin Story would not be tragic.

The Coros made mixed progress on their investigation so far.

The first big issue was that they couldn't find her hometown. Apparently Exampletown was not on any of their maps, and unfortunately she did not remember the route herself, because of all the shortcuts she had taken in her travels that weren't very euclidian.

The Coros thought that was weird, so they made her go through a bunch of magic tests. They checked her for weird stuff, and made a list of things she was not. It was a pretty long list. It took them a while, but they finally concluded that she was just a normal and unremarkable elf. She could have told them that. They didn't need to be so rude about it. It wasn't her fault that she was just a very normal person. Not like her friend Dov, who was super special and was so many cool things that she had difficulty saying them all in one breath. Rania felt a little self-conscious about being so normal. Like she was just a civilian pretending to be an adventurer, instead of a real adventurer.

After that, the Coros decided to contact outsiders to ask for help figuring out her Secret Origin Story. But unfortunately that didn't work.

First they summoned a Lawkeeper. But it just said "I am legally required to tell you that she is a Perfectly Normal Elf." and then refused to elaborate further. So that didn't help much. She thought that made sense, but the Coros people thought that his phrasing was really suspect for some reason and got into a huge argument about how to proceed.

They summoned a devil next. Rania knew that devils were super evil Bad Guys, but she also understood that they were very lawful and never, ever broke a contract. They also tended to be pretty smart.

The devil they summoned just smirked evilly and said she was a Perfectly Normal Elf. Then he started speaking about some random fairy tale that was heavily coated in metaphors, which she didn't understand. She thought that was pretty rude, to just switch the topic like that. But then again devils were evil, so they probably found it funny to waste everyone's time with stupid metaphors.

But at least the Coros people seemed to have fun listening to his weird story.

They said they were going to try with an angel later, but that they couldn't do that here because they needed specialized magic to summon them. She had been very disappointed to hear that. Atrog had talked about angels before and she was really looking forward to speaking to one. Unlike gods, angels were always really nice and good. They were made from the good parts of people after they died and went to the afterlife, just like devils were made from the bad parts of people. Unfortunately they were very limited outside of the afterlife, so they couldn't really do much on Hyd. Otherwise Rania was certain they would make for the most awesome adventurers.

Fortunately, all the commotion of trying to learn about her Secret Origin Story attracted some spirits of knowledge to them. The Coros people were pretty surprised when she pointed this out, and asked her to talk to them. The spirits once again confirmed that she was a Perfectly Normal Elf. One of them said something strange about her being “a classic Dee En Dee elf". That made the other spirits pretty mad at that one. They said that they shouldn't say things like that. Rania didn't really understand why, though. Maybe a Dee En Dee was some kind of racial slur for elves?

Since none of the supernatural creatures could help them discover her Secret Origin Story, they then decided to investigate the normal way, by asking her questions about her childhood and upbringing. But that made her really mad. She felt like they were rubbing it in how perfectly normal and boring her childhood was.

Rania was getting angry again just from remembering how they asked her those questions.

Luckily their boss noticed how they were making her feel, and told them to stop asking those kinds of questions. He made it out like a big deal to everyone, and emphasized that it was very important not to make her mad, and they should be more considerate with the questions they asked.

She knew that she had a tendency to get very emotional whenever anyone brought up her childhood. It was irrational, but it couldn't be helped. She had set out to be an adventurer, and she just really didn't like to be reminded of her super boring past. So she was glad that Mr. Goront acknowledged this and didn't push it.

Rania felt a little stupid about that. Here they were, trying to help her, and she got mad at them just for asking her some questions that would let them help her better. It was silly, and not at all something to be proud of. Rania wanted to do better, but it was hard. She really, really didn't like to talk, or even think, about her childhood.

The Coros promised that they would keep investigating her Secret Origin Story on their own, and asked her for help with something else.

They wanted her to help appraise items for trading with the fey.

At that point, she had already helped them a lot by explaining fey customs, and they had taken lots of notes. That was why all the higher ranked Coros people had started paying attention to her in the first place. She was glad to see that they valued multiculturalism so highly, and was only too happy to help them.

So she went through the items that they showed her and told them under what circumstances they would be worth how much. She also gave them tips. Some of those items would be a lot more valuable with the right presentation. They were all really excited about this, and just kept bringing in items for her to appraise for several hours.

Towards the end of the day they told her that they were really happy about all of her help. Their boss put himself under a truth spell and then told her how much money he thought would be fair to pay her in his own assessment.

It was a lot of money.

Much more than she had earned for the mission in Greenwatch and for saving Lilian Weaver. Even more than the literal princely sum that they had earned for rescuing Dov and her siblings.

They were upset when she said she wanted to go back to adventuring despite earning so much money. They said that they would like to continue to talk to her, and what if she died? But Rania insisted, because adventuring was the best. She did want to keep talking to them, because it was fun, and also because she was pretty sure that earning money by talking about your experiences counted as an adventuring-related activity.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Their boss accepted that explanation, and then he gave her magic stuff to keep her safe. As an investment and not a gift, he said. She of course did not listen to how it worked because that would make it work better through the Unspoken Plan Guarantee.

They also said they would find bodyguards for her. She thought that was weird because adventurers don't normally have bodyguards. Maybe Dov would appreciate them though, since she was a princess? But then they rephrased things and said they were Minions, which made a lot more sense to her. Strong adventurers sometimes had Minions. This made her very happy. If they thought she was strong enough to have Minions, it was a sign that she was turning into a great adventurer!

Before she went home, the Coros people asked her to repeat some of the promises she had already made in the morning: Don't repeat any of this to anyone. Not even to her own team. It was important for trade reasons. She didn't really understand the details of it, but they all had seemed very nice and none of the things they told her were important for her friends to know anyway. So she promised.

They were very serious about it and summoned a Lawkeeper to draw up the contract. They even summoned a fey to check for loopholes.

It turned out the fey they summoned was someone she knew! That was a nice surprise. So she chatted with the nice fey and asked her how her day was, and they made small talk. The fey also told the Coros people that Rania was cool and could be trusted, which was very nice of her.

Rania read the contract carefully before she signed the non-disclosure agreement and non-compete clauses. It was a pretty good contract in her opinion. These guys really knew their stuff. It even had clauses for important things that most mortal contracts sort of glossed over, like "what if linguistic drift makes it so that the meaning of these phrases changes" or "what if someone gets mind controlled into believing weird things".

In return for agreeing to all that secrecy, Rania got just so much cool stuff, and so much money! Plus the promise that they would look into her Secret Origin Story. It was a very solemn and official promise too, with another contract behind it.

She would keep showing up for other questions a few hours each day. She was happy to do so, because the Coros were taking her much more seriously than Doctor Freestep and Professor Haven had, and it was nice to be appreciated.

She didn't like that she wasn't allowed to talk about much, but she could understand their point.

And there were exceptions of course: The Minions that the Coros wanted to hire for her were one of the things that they said she could tell her friends about. But when she told the others later in the evening, Atrog said they weren't Minions after all. Calling them that would be rude, and she should treat them just like anyone else.

Rania had been shocked to hear that. In all the books she read, it was very clear that the Minions were much less important than the Main Characters. The Minions often died so that the Main Characters could learn important life lessons, or sometimes just to increase the suspense. But her friends said that was terrible and she shouldn’t think like that. Ethics was hard. Minions were people too.

It was one of the topics in the books that she was successfully avoiding to read with her daydreaming.

And just like that, the guilt returned.

Maybe she should have another look at the super boring books after all?

Fortunately Rania was spared having to bring up the willpower to make this decision when she heard a loud knock at the door to her room.

Happy for the interruption, she immediately jumped up and opened the door.

A very nervous looking guard stood in front of her, slightly out of breath.

"Are you Miss Rania Mortal?" He asked politely.

"Yes, I am." She responded.

"Then you are the one responsible for him." The man said, and looked to his left.

Rania leaned out of the door to see who the guard was looking at, and noticed another person in the corridor.

He was a giant of a man, dressed in leather and wood, and he carried an enormous bow on his back.

His every physical feature was beyond perfection, but he was beautiful the way a waterfall was beautiful. He exuded danger, and his face promised a violent death to any who stood in his way.

He was watching the guard with wry amusement, the way a human might watch a particularly entertaining ant.

Rania recognized him by his tattoos as a member of the Wild Hunt.

As he met Rania's eyes, he slightly inclined his head in greeting.

Rania knew that this was very polite by his standards, so she smiled brightly and waved at him in response.

"Did you seriously open a fairy gate in the public park over there?" The guard suddenly asked her. "That's where he claims he came from. Said he had something to deliver to you."

"Yes, I did." She responded. "Is that a problem? I asked the spirits and they said it was fine. Is there a law against it? I totally forgot to check! I'm so sorry if there is."

She was suddenly very anxious. She just wanted to be polite to the delivery person who was going to bring her all the stuff she purchased from the fey shop a few days ago. So she made sure that all of the sticks and stones in that park were arranged just right, so that the fey would have an easier time crossing over. It hadn't occurred to her that there might be laws about this. Maybe the city didn't want people to just materialize in a park? It could make the work for customs officials much harder.

"Frankly, I have no idea if that's legal." The guard replied. "It's never come up before. I didn't even know it was possible to make a fairy gate on purpose until he told me about it." He indicated the fey.

"This is way beyond my pay grade." He added. "I'm going to talk to my boss. You two, please don't kill anyone."

And with that he hurried out of the tavern.

The fey was visibly amused by the man's fear, but made no move to interfere.

"I greet you, Rania Mortal." He said once the guard was gone. "I am Vellandor the Swift. I am here on behalf of my master Lord Wodan, to deliver weapons fairly bargained."

With that he took one of the two quivers from his back and handed it to Rania. She took the quiver, and bowed politely in thanks.

Lord Wodan was one of the leaders of the Wild Hunt, and he was the person Rania had ordered her Arrows of Bad Guy Slaying from.

The Wild Hunt were experts on hunting and hunting-related activities. They were very powerful, and they were motivated by the thrill of the hunt above all else.

Unlike other high-ranking fey, the Wild Hunt did not have a land to call its home. Instead, they simply traveled from place to place, hunting and killing as they went. In Rania's opinion, this made them honorary adventurers.

However, they were also murder hobos. "Murder hobo" was a slur she had heard other people use to describe some evil adventurers. She felt a little bad about insulting the Wild Hunt like that, but she reasoned that since they did in fact commit a lot of murders and were in fact homeless, the term was accurate. And since they killed indiscriminately, they were kind of like Bad Guys themselves, and so being rude to them in your own head was fine.

She felt a little bad about buying her arrows from them, but she hadn't known who the shop owner's supplier was at the time. Her friends would probably not be happy about this, either. Maybe she should talk to Vellandor about it and see if there was a way to tone down all the murder? He was here to deliver the Arrows of Bad Guy Slaying to her, so that should make for a great way to breach the topic.

She knew that the Wild Hunt cared about hunting, and so she used that knowledge to hatch a cunning plan.

She inspected the quiver and arrow. She wasn't a mage and didn't actually know what to look for, but she held the arrows close to Pebble, and he said they were well-made. She wasn't quite sure how a rock would know that, but then again Pebble was very old, so he could have learned this in any number of ways.

"These look great!" She told the Wild Hunt delivery boy. "How do they work? Did you get my message where I mentioned how to detect Bad Guys properly? I wasn't sure if you would get the message. The stars weren't really aligned right for the communication ritual. I had to use mirrors to force the celestial bodies into alignment with a trick of perspective. Did it work?"

"It did. We received the message, and the arrows work just as you requested." Vellandor replied. "It was an interesting challenge to craft these, and I have to admit I am curious why you would go to the trouble."

The enormous fey looked very scary as he asked her, but that was only his appearance. Rania knew that he was trying his best to be nice to her, and he hadn't threatened to kill her even once. He probably didn't want to make an enemy of her because she had found such beautiful art to trade to his master.

"Well, at first I didn't think to specify what I meant by Bad Guy, because I thought it was obvious." She responded. "But then I talked to Atrog, who is a friend and teammate of mine. He is very good at being a Good Guy. I told him about the arrows, and he asked how they worked, and I had to admit I didn't know. Then we had a very long discussion about ethics that made my head hurt."

"Ethics is hard." She said, with emphasis.

The Wild Hunt delivery boy nodded his head in agreement, but Rania was pretty sure he just did that out of courtesy. The murder hobos probably did not even know what ethics was.

"Atrog gave me some books to read." She said, indicating the books in her room that she was still studiously ignoring. "But the most important thing he told me was that all of the ethicists disagree with each other. Even Edur only tells his followers to do what they personally think is best, so long as they genuinely believe it and spend time thinking about it. Because of this, you can't really give an objective definition of what a Bad Guy is.

"So the safe course of action is to base ethics on public consensus. That will still get things wrong a lot, but not as often as other approaches. And that's why I asked you to make the arrows detect Bad Guys based on what people are thinking of each other."

"I don't understand." Vellandor responded. "Why not just base the decision on the alignment assigned by Axis? That's what we were going to do before your message reached us."

"Atrog said definitely not to rely on Axis." Rania answered. "Axis just says things are clear-cut because that's his role, but that doesn't make him right."

Axis was the god of categories and patterns. A minor god, which only obsessive bureaucrats and mathematicians prayed to. Despite being very weak, he was well known for inventing the alignment system that assigned each person to a single moral category such as "Chaotic Evil" or "Lawful Good". Rania had thought that was pretty great when she first heard of it, but Atrog pointed out a whole lot of problems with the way Axis made his decisions. There was a reason that a person's alignment was not admissible as evidence in court.

"But why do you care in the first place?" The fey asked. "I understand Arrows of Dragon Slaying. Dragons are difficult to kill. It makes sense to have a special weapon to hunt them. But what makes Bad Guys more difficult to hunt than others?"

This was the important part, Rania knew. Her real reason was because she had learned about morality and didn't want to hurt anyone except Bad Guys, who deserved it. But the Wild Hunt wouldn't understand that, so she had to find another way to explain it to them.

"It's because hunting only Bad Guys is more challenging." She lied. "A hunt where you are only allowed to hunt some of the prey and have to avoid others is much more difficult. It's like with Ravagor the Cunning. He only hunts the strongest prey, and avoids killing any of the weaker ones because it would be dishonorable."

The delivery boy nodded in understanding. Ravagor the Cunning was a legend among the Wild Hunt. Rania knew that any comparison with him would make her ideas sound better to them.

"An interesting idea." The fey responded. "But what makes the Bad Guys more dangerous than others? And why not do the opposite, and hunt only good people instead?"

"I don't focus on Bad Guys because they are more dangerous, although usually they are.” She replied ”The real reason is because it fits much better with mortal traditions this way. Bad Guys are for killing, and Good Guys are for helping. And saving the innocent gives extra points. If you do it the other way around then that's a really serious faux pas and mortals will laugh at you. That would be super embarrassing."

"Oh, and you shouldn't trick other people into mixing it up, either." She added quickly, just to be sure. "That would be crass and is just not done."

"I have to admit, that does sound intriguing," Vellandor said. "But it’s also needlessly complicated."

"Oh, it is super complicated." Rania agreed. "That's on purpose! You know how important it is to understand how your prey thinks, right?"

The fey nodded.

"It takes great practice to look at a group of prey animals and be able to tell from their behavior which of them are sick, or other useful things to help with the hunt. Being able to tell who among the mortals is a Bad Guy just from their behavior is even harder. It's really impressive if you can do it. That's what makes it so challenging and fun. Ethics is really hard, and identifying Bad Guys takes a lot of skill. So you need to find out who is Bad and who is Good, and then you have to kill only the former, and avoid hurting the latter. And if you can save the latter from the former you get extra points, too!"

After a short pause she added "But no cheating, of course. You can't wait until the Bad Guys have almost killed the Good Guys so you can get points for saving them. That would be bad sportsmanship. It would probably be best if you get a referee for edge cases like that, because ethics is hard. I use my friend Atrog for that, because he is great at being a Good Guy."

The Wild Hunt took several long moments to digest all of that, his face deep in thought.

"I do believe you are onto something interesting there. I will mention the idea to Lord Wodan."

--- Professor Greenwater, ethicist, four days later ---

Professor Greenwater was close to despair. He had just received terrible news: The ethics department would have its funding cut again, for the third year in a row.

It was depressing, and he felt deeply under-appreciated. He had spent his life studying morality, and yet nobody ever listened to his advice.

Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door.

The old halfling opened the door and almost fell over in shock. Before him stood the most terrifying person he had ever seen. A fey, judging by his perfect looks, with murderous intent written plainly on his face.

"Rejoice, mortal!" The creature shouted at him. "My master has decreed that you shall join us on our next hunt! We will set forth to hunt Bad Guys and Save The Innocent, and you have the honor to join us as our referee!"