--- Rania ---
Rania was excited. They were about to receive an important quest!
It had been so long since their first and so far only quest. She had not expected that there would be this much downtime in between quests. But Atrog had explained that was normal. He said that her books usually only focused on the exciting parts, and not the bits in between.
That made sense to her. In her novels, she liked the parts with fighting the most. The talking in between the fights was often very boring. But when she thought about it, she found that she had actually enjoyed the time she spent with her friends over the past weeks just as much as the adventure in Greenwatch.
That was unexpected. Real life was different from her books, but she was not disappointed. Real life was pretty great, too. It didn't have as many cool fights as she wanted, but it had things like hanging out with your friends and making jokes, which was also fun.
But now Atrog, Galanys, Balron and her were all invited to a super secret, super urgent meeting with members of the Interim Council. Dov had instead gotten a different messenger, and lots of guards, who told her to come with her. The others had all looked very sad about that for some reason, but it made sense to Rania. Dov was from a crossover after all. She probably needed a very different exposition than the rest of them, so it made sense that she would go to a different group of Quest Givers.
Dov would probably join up with them later. Rania wondered how likely it was that Dov would show up with some mysterious item whose purpose was unknown to them. Like her own Mystery Item that she got from Lilian in trade for the Mystery Potion she got from Silent Martha the Magical Girl. She hoped that if she did, then Atrog would have the good sense not to ask too many questions and let the mystery stay a mystery. The Unspoken Plan Guarantee had to be respected.
Atrog really did not understand that. Balron understood this, even though he was even more prepared than Atrog most of the time, because he said that some contingencies worked better if they were not public knowledge, and keeping secrets within the team was a perfectly valid way to maintain information security if there was no ‘need to know’.
One of the nobles was moving towards the podium and preparing for a speech. He wore a military uniform and a name tag that identified him as the Duke of House Nadror.
Rania was immediately filled with confidence when she saw him. She normally didn't judge people by their appearance, but this man looked just like Colonel Stonefist in "Magical Girls Sugar Explosion Squad VII: The Mystery of Glucose Artillery Nine". He was a totally badass background character, who was a father to his men and always provided guidance and sage advice for the Magical Girls under his command.
His only character flaw was that he had some weird views on the cultural role of sugar and how it related to the less addictive and healthier alternatives Vherdes created. He talked a lot about what that said about the humanoid condition.
However, Rania did not really care so much about the subtle social critiques that the series was famous for. She read Magical Girls Sugar Explosion Squad mostly for the Magical Girls, and for the explosions.
In any case, Lord Nadror looked basically exactly like Colonel Stonefist, so she trusted him instantly as a reliable Quest Giver.
She was planning to listen attentively to his exposition, and she was really looking forward to the Quest.
Her team was not the only one present, either. Lots of adventurers had been called in. It looked like this was going to be a really major event, with different quests for everyone. It was so exciting!
"Oruk is under attack." He began. "We do not know by whom. As of four hours ago, unknown enemy forces activated the Cassandra Project, an information warfare system from the Great War that was lost with the Cataclysm. Effective immediately, all communication spells must be considered unreliable. We are now in a state of war. By the power invested in me by the Interim Council, I am invoking section seven of the adventurer charter to draft all of you into service for the duration of the war."
There were shocked shouts from many of the adventurers present. Some of them sounded dismayed, which was weird.
This was so exciting! It was basically a guarantee for a whole chain of quests, instead of just one single quest. There was going to be so much adventure to be done!
But when she looked at her friends and gave them a happy smile, they did not look happy at all. They looked shocked.
Then she remembered why, and her face fell.
It had been in the books on ethics: Wars were bad.
It was one of the few things that most ethicists agreed on. Wars were bad, because often it wasn't Good Guys against Bad Guys, but just regular people from one country against regular people from another country. And many of them died for really stupid and non-heroic reasons.
And to top it all off, the Innocent Civilians were usually not having a very good time during a war, either.
Wars weren't in the spirit of Adventure at all!
That made her sad. It might be exciting for her personally, but it was very bad for lots of other people.
"Time is of the essence, so I will brief you on the situation." Lord Nadror continued. "Details can be found in the dossiers our aides are handing out. By the end of this meeting you will all be mobilized and assigned your own missions."
She really wanted to talk to her friends right now, but it looked like you weren't supposed to interrupt the speaker, so all they could do was share worried looks with each other. Dov wasn't there to use her telepathic link, after all. She missed Dov, and hoped she was having a better time than herself and her other friends.
Then Lord Nadror started giving exposition, as expected. She had never heard of a Cassandra Project before, but it sounded important. She was a bit surprised though, because in her opinion a war-defining magical superweapon should involve a lot less lying to people and a lot more explosions and raw magical power.
It was a bit boring and anticlimactic for a doomsday weapon. Where was the highly visible counter that was ticking down the time to certain doom, unless the heroes could press the Big Red Button to shut it down in time?
A vague "maybe our neighbors now think we are Bad Guys and will attack us, but maybe not because we really don't know" just did not sound very dramatic.
Personally, if she was the Bad Guy and had to pick a secret Orukian project from the Great War to reactivate, she would have chosen the giant magical artillery at the top of the Ivory Tower. That way she could rain death from above while the heroes had to fight their way through the Cataclysm Containment Zone of the capital. Plus, the epic final showdown would happen at the top of the tallest tower in the world, which would be worth extra points for style. Maybe she could even rig the tower to collapse if she was killed? But with a timer of course, to make sure that the heroes could escape by a hair's breadth if they hurried.
“...which is why we are now preparing for an assault on area six. All claims that other regions are being attacked should be disregarded as a deception.”
Hm?
Oh no! She had missed some of the Quest Giver's exposition because she was daydreaming!
She resolved to pay more attention, so that this wouldn't happen again. Luckily he had said that there would be handouts with details, so it was all fine.
He continued to talk about all the lies that people were telling, and what they thought was probably actually happening. Lots of the messengers they sent out did not return, and it looked like they were being accused of being spies even though they were actually Good Guys!
He talked about how Oruk had lots of failsafes and redundancies in their military. She looked at Balron for confirmation, and he nodded. The military really must have a lot of security then. Lord Nadror said that the redundancies were all failing, and how that meant that it was an inside job.
He said that the assassination attempt against Dov and her siblings was probably part of a plan to start a war, and the information warfare was a second part. They didn't really know what the end goal of all of that would be, though. Even in the worst case, if a war did break out, a truce could be reached relatively quickly once communications were back. And that was why there was probably more going on that they hadn't figured out, yet.
The solution was to be proactive, he said. Rather than wait for the other shoe to drop, teams of adventurers were being sent to uncover and disrupt the enemy's operations. Since the enemy had the advantage in information and had clearly been planning this for a while, they would rely on overwhelming power and send out multiple small armies.
The details were super confusing to her. She tried her best to follow, but couldn't do it. The Quest Giver had a spell that projected a map of the country on the wall and had lots of illusionary little armies and arrows moving around on it. She had no idea what was going on, but Atrog, Galanys and Balron looked like they did. She gave a silent hooray for teamwork and the division of labor. If her friends could figure it out, then that meant she didn't have to.
Then something happened that Rania had not been expecting at all: When it was time to assign quests to each individual team, he said that team Nundru would be sent to Transcendence Laboratories. Other teams were going to the suspected locations of the Cassandra Project, but not them. They would continue their existing Quest instead, because they suspected there might be a connection.
Rania was upset. What had even been the point of all that exposition, if the Cassandra Project wasn't going to be relevant for them personally at all?
But then she noticed that she was being self-centered. All of the other adventurers in the room were also doing their own things. Many of them were going after the Cassandra Project, so it was relevant to them. It was important to remember that each of them was the hero of their own story, even if Rania had never heard of them.
Probably most of them even had their own names and backstory, too.
After that overview of everyone's missions, each of the teams was called into a smaller meeting for a more in-depth mission briefing.
Most of the other teams only had their briefings with an aide, which were like Junior Quest Givers. But team Nundru didn't just have a Junior Quest Giver, but also lots of cool people as well. The aide was accompanied by Lilian, by someone she knew from the Coros, two nobles, and even several other adventurers for some reason.
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One of the nobles had blue skin and cool hair that flowed without wind. He looked like a Main Character, so he was probably the leader of that other team of adventurers, and this was another crossover.
As soon as they were in the separate room, everyone immediately started talking, and she listened to her teammates.
"So, how fucked are we?" Galanys asked diplomatically.
"Very. If we are unlucky, this might turn into a real war. A lot of people could die before the misunderstanding is resolved." Atrog responded.
"This is all so pointless. There is no reason at all for the Shan Kingdom to invade." Balron added. "But whoever is orchestrating all this probably has more tricks up their sleeve. You don't just reveal that you have something major like the Cassandra Project on your side, if you aren't sure you can win. I don't really understand politics, but the Shan Kingdom is a recently conquered country run by adventurers. Its political situation is a mess, while Oruk was designed by one of the smartest people who ever lived. If the Cassandra Project works this well against us, who knows what it can do to them?"
"Yeah. Dov told me about her parents." Galanys added. "They have very different strengths and weaknesses. Some of them frankly don’t make for very good rulers and leave administrative tasks to other people. If Queen Damiah is the one in charge, she will figure out the deception in no time at all, but what do you want to bet that she is currently occupied with something else, and it will be Elona who gets here instead? She is a priestess of Duna, and Dov once told me that her approach to hostage situations is 'just kill everyone, then resurrect the hostage afterwards'. That approach is not going to work so well in a full-scale war."
Rania wanted to add her own thoughts, but they were all interrupted by an angry Lilian.
"Rania, there you are! What were you thinking? You ran after a group of assassins on your own! Are you out of your mind? Don't you realize how risky that was? There are so many bad narrative hooks here!"
She began counting on her fingers as she listed out the scenarios. "The hero who overestimates herself and dies for her hubris. The teammate who abandons her comrades and fails because she fights alone. The hero who leaves and mysteriously never comes back, which generates a whole subplot about rescuing you. Do you realize how lucky you were that none of this happened?"
Lilian looked really angry, and Rania was shocked. She hadn't considered any of that!
"But I thought, we are a team, and the others did cool stuff and I didn't, so the universe still owed me a victory." She responded hesitantly. "I wasn't planning to show off. I just wanted to do my part!"
"That's a valid reframing of what you did." Lilian said calmly. Then she suddenly got loud again: "Unfortunately for you, that doesn't matter!"
"You don't get to choose your own framing for the story you are in. Are you a specialist pulling her weight by doing what you do best, or are you an arrogant fool who is due for a reality check? You don't get to make that decision. Tonos does! You have to look at your life from an outsider's point of view, and consider what it would look like to an audience. Your own opinion on your life doesn't matter. Only the judgment of others does."
A chipper looking elven woman suddenly interrupted, and gave Lilian a thumbs up. "Wow, that was fatalistic even by my standards. Nice!" She was part of the other group of adventurers, and she had the symbol of Duna engraved on her armor.
Lilian ignored her and continued to glare daggers at Rania.
"I want to tell them to take the situation more seriously, and focus on our mission." Atrog said to Balron and Galanys. "But at this point I feel like I should probably just assume they know what they are doing and leave it be."
The others nodded at that.
Lilian did have some very good points. Rania thought she had a pretty good intuitive grasp on how stories worked, so this hadn't really occurred to her before. But maybe there was something to it, and she should be more careful in the future. She really didn't want to end up being a Arrogant Loner or some other unlikable type of character. She wanted to be a cool character instead. The kind that the audience would look up to, and want to be like.
"Attention, please." The aide suddenly interrupted them. He mumbled a faint 'adventurers...' in a frustrated voice and just stared glumly at the ceiling until everyone stopped talking.
The man wore disheveled clothing and looked really tired. He was definitely not a full Quest Giver like Lord Nadror was, but more like an intern. But that was ok, since there were so many other teams getting their own quests right now. Rania had heard about universal conservation laws from when Galanys and Balron discussed wizardry, and she was pretty sure there was a Conservation Law for Quest Givers as well. The really fancy Quest Givers were probably assigned to people like Dov, since she was a princess.
"This will be a larger excursion. You will be assigned to a detachment of private troops from multiple houses, led by House Ulein. These troops are guards, not military. The military would take too long to recall, and the few troops that we could get a hold of are needed elsewhere. You will meet them in the morning, as everyone is busy preparing. Team Nundru will be the heavy hitters for this operation, supported by team Delta of the Silvered Arms mercenary company."
"My notes on this are confusing, to be honest. As I understand it, your team has already been briefed on team Nundru? But not the other way around?"
"That is correct." Mr. Smith added. Mr. Smith was a trader she knew from the Coros, but she had no idea why he was here. The man had a cool tragic Origin Story: He accidentally gave his name to a fey when he was younger, so now everyone just knew him as Mr. Smith. He worked for the Coros to stop other people from making similar mistakes and to improve multicultural understanding with the fey. She thought that made him pretty cool.
"Team Delta is in the employ of the Coros Corporation and will be attached to this mission. Miss Mortal, they are the mercenaries we promised to hire for your safety. They have been briefed on all they need to know, and have taken oaths of secrecy."
Oh! That was so cool! Her Minions were here!
Although she had to remember not to call them that. Atrog said it was rude. But he hadn't told her what else to call them either, so they were still her Minions in her head.
There were three of them: A silver dragonborn with really heavy armor, an orc who wore leather and carried a bow like herself, and the elven woman who complimented Lilian on being horribly fatalistic earlier. Duna worshippers were weird like that, but Rania was a shaman and had to deal with many negative stereotypes herself. So she resolved not to let herself be prejudiced by the fact that literally the first words out of the woman's mouth were exactly what the stereotypes would have suggested.
"Hi, I'm Rania! It's nice to meet you! May I have your names?"
All three of them suddenly stiffened. They looked at her strangely and gave each other nervous glances instead of answering.
Had she already said something wrong?
"It is perfectly safe to give Miss Mortal your names. This is not a fey trap." Mr. Smith explained to them. "As we discussed before, she is a Perfectly Normal Elf, and those are not capable of stealing anybody's name. Please do remember the briefing."
"Wait. What?" Atrog wondered aloud.
"Let me talk to you later. I think I need to explain some things to avoid misunderstandings here." Lilian responded.
Rania didn't really get why everyone seemed to be getting confused here, but she was glad that other people volunteered to explain things.
Her Minions were weird. Why would they think she would take someone's name? Only fey and spirits did that, and only if they were very bad at multiculturalism and didn't understand how names worked for mortals. Perfectly Normal Elves like herself would never do that, and she was not such a shaman that she would get confused about such things.
She felt a little bit insulted and unfairly stereotyped. Obviously the real reason she wanted to know their names was to make sure that the universe knew that these weren't side characters, which was a very reasonable concern. It would make them less likely to die. They should be grateful, really.
The dragonborn suddenly looked at her, and gave a crisp military salute, then introduced himself: "Sergeant Pymion Thunderforce, Ma'am. Squad leader of Team Delta of the Silvered Arms. Formerly Sergeant in the Grey Legion. I am trained as a rune knight, and I have worked as a bodyguard for specialists and officers before."
A rune knight was a mage who used magic to strengthen their equipment before a fight, but then fought with weapons instead of casting spells. The man seemed very professional. He would probably get along great with Atrog. They were both Very Serious People, so they would probably have fun discussing boring and serious things together, like taxes or something.
Then the orc spoke up. "I am Norsh. I am trained as a combat biomancer, and I have been assigned to this team because I am one of the few people who should be able to keep up with you if you need to chase someone or scout ahead."
Oh, that was nice. He was fast and stealthy like her, and he even had a bow like her. Since he was her Minion, she was obviously going to be better than him, though.
She wondered if she was supposed to be a mentor to him, then? It was a big responsibility, and she was not expecting it, and that made her kind of nervous. She was also very worried, because mentors had such a low life expectancy. It was great to grow as an adventurer so quickly, but not if it meant that she died of mentoring before her time. She was still too young and had too many adventures of her own she wanted to experience.
Maybe she could copy what Balron did to survive his mentoring of Dov? It would require her to learn how to be quirky in interesting ways. She didn't know if she could do that, since she was so Normal.
Then the last member of their group, the elven priestess of Duna, introduced herself:
"My name is Lynn, and I'm happy to meet you. I am mainly a healer, but I also dabble a bit in necrotic attacks and can hit things decently well. Basically, I keep the people I like from dying, and hasten up the dying of the people I don't like."
That made sense to Rania. Lynn looked really cheerful and nice.
"I'm really happy to see you all." Rania said. "I have been looking forward to having my own Minions for so long and it's great! Oh wait. I'm sorry! I just remembered that Atrog said I shouldn't call you Minions because that's rude. What do I call you."
Luckily they didn't seem offended at that. They just glanced at Mr. Smith instead, who shrugged.
Then Pymion said: "As per the contract, we are your bodyguards, but we are also at your disposal if you need us to operate independently."
"With how much we are getting paid, you can call us whatever you want." Lynn added. "We were still negotiating when all this happened, and Mr. Smith just straight up doubled our pay if we agreed immediately. It was awesome! You can call me ‘minion’ if you like, but I draw the line at 'meat shield' or 'ablative armor'."
Norsh made a face at that. "Please forgive her, she can be very morbid sometimes."
The clergy of Duna had a reputation for being morbid. They were also said to be stoic and serious people.
Lynn stuck her tongue out at Norsh and blew him a raspberry. "I call it as it is. Just because we will all probably die painfully some day doesn't mean I can't make fun of our fate until then, and enjoy my life to the fullest."
Then she took a long drink from the flask of wine at her belt.
Pymion eyed her critically. "Not on the job, Lynn."
"Oh come off it. What do I have healing spells for, if not to cure hangovers and alcohol poisoning? You only live once. Unless you earn enough money to afford a resurrection, of course."
It looked like her new Minions already had their own team dynamics and everything. That meant that they probably even had backstory, which was great. She resolved to ask them about it later. No, wait. Dov had told her once that it wasn’t called ‘backstory’. It was called ‘life experiences’ or something like that. She would have to remember this, so she wouldn’t give offense.
She turned her attention to the two nobles who were with her Minions, who hadn’t introduced themselves yet.
"Who are you two? Are you my Minions, too? I thought you were with them, but you didn't introduce yourselves, so now I'm confused."
She looked at the blue guy with wavy hair. "You look like you are their leader because you have really cool hair. Is that wrong?"
Galanys looked at her with a horrified expression. "Oh gods Rania, please stop talking!"
Most of the others looked at her really weirdly, too. Except for Lilian, who was laughing, and Lynn, who was now drinking her wine much more quickly.
Had she said something wrong?
The blue-skinned noble had a shocked expression at first, but then his face changed and he looked like he was about to burst out laughing. She couldn't remember saying anything funny, but that was much better than the other noble, who looked super angry. He was all red in the face now.
Oh! One of them was blue and the other could transform into red. Maybe they were a matched pair and had a theme going on, or something like that? Maybe they were color-coded for her convenience? The fey sometimes did things like that, but she couldn't remember if mortal nobles did the same thing.
Rania felt very confused, and she hoped she hadn't just made a social faux pas. It had been very difficult to learn all of the cultural norms and values that the Lords and Ladies of the fey cared about. She didn't really know much about the local humanoid norms, but she hoped their rules weren't as complicated. She really hadn't spent much time learning about them, because adventure beckoned. Multiculturalism was hard.
Then the red-faced noble screamed at her: "How dare you!"
He drew himself up to his full height. Rania could tell that he was trying to look imposing, because he made the same body motions that she had seen the Wild Hunt make before their ritual duels. The effect was a little less intimidating though, on account of how he was a human and not a literal personification of the concept of violent murder and predation. She gave him an A for effort, though.
"I am the Baron of House Ashfall, and this is Adam Gust, an emissary of Her Highness Denissa Mardok herself! As if we would ever stoop so low as to work as adventurers! And you dare to call us 'minions'?"