--- Rania ---

"Bingo!" Lilian suddenly shouted out loud.

Everyone looked at her in confusion.

"Oh, I set up Bingo cards for literary tropes, for fun. A noble shouting 'how dare you?' was the last thing I was still missing. So thanks for that."

Nobody seemed to know how to respond to that, which gave Rania time to think.

The red noble was a baron. That explained his anger. In books, out of all the different ranks of nobility, it was always the barons who were the most pointlessly evil. Maybe it was like this here, too?

She looked in Galanys' direction for advice, but her face was unreadable. She really missed Dov's telepathy.

Galanys seemed to take it as a cue to speak up: "Why would you say that nobles shouldn't lower themselves to become adventurers? You do realize my girlfriend is a princess, and she is also an adventurer, right? In fact, the entire rulership of the Shan Kingdom is a group of former adventurers. That's kind of the reason everyone is so afraid of them."

"Puh. We are not 'afraid' of them. The people in the Cursed Lands are uncivilized brutes. Besides, if her parents really are stupid enough to attack us then she will be an enemy of Oruk, and consorting with her will be treasonous."

Adam gave the man a disappointed look. "That's not how your foreign policy works. It would violate section three of the 'laws of rational threat escalation' penned by Queen Oruk. I had to study these things to earn my position, and I am dismayed to see that you do not even know the principles your own country was founded on."

She had seen Galanys practicing scary looks in front of a mirror before, and she was pretty sure that Adam was better at it. Maybe he could be a mentor for her? It might be dangerous for Adam though, as mentorship always was. Rania was pretty sure that his diplomatic immunity would not protect him from the laws of narrative causality.

"I actually talked to Dov Shan earlier and she seemed far more collected than certain other people in this room. That said, from what I have heard of her siblings you may not be entirely wrong that some of them are not quite civilized. But before you make any more inane comments, consider that when Denissa Mardok deigns to deal with a problem personally, she is technically being an adventurer as well."

The red baron abruptly closed his mouth in shock.

Then Adam turned towards Lilian. "In any case, I have to thank you, Lilian. I asked you where you thought the most noteworthy things were going to happen, and you did not disappoint. I have barely been in this room for five minutes, and I have already been called a minion. To be clear, Miss Mortal, the only person in the world who can call me a minion is Denissa Mardok. If any other noble shows disrespect like that, they will be dead before the month is out."

Oh no. It looked like she really had made a major faux pas! This was bad!

She looked at her friends. They all looked really nervous too.

Lynn took another deep sip from her wine flask.

Before any of her friends could speak up, Adam continued: "Fortunately for you, you are not a noble. You are a shaman, and from what I have heard one of the weirdest ones around. It is clear you did not say this out of malice. There would be no point in a punishment at all, and to be honest I found this quite amusing. A bard who can only make fun of others and does not know how to take a joke himself is not much of a bard at all."

He wasn't mad at her! This was great. It looked like she really dodged an arrow there.

"How can you say that?" The red baron interrupted. "This behavior is absolutely unacceptable. This woman must be punished for her insolence!"

Adam looked at him and slowly raised a single eyebrow. "Are you presuming to lecture me on how I ought to treat others?"

The red baron hastily backtracked: "I would never! I merely wished..."

"Right. I don't care." Adam interrupted him. "My job is to show uppity nobles their place, not to bully commoners. In fact, anyone who doesn't have a title can feel free to call me by my first name. It drives the nobility up the walls when I invert the social fabric like that, and I find that hilarious."

He looked at Atrog. "In any case, Lilian believes that your group has the highest chance of running into interesting things. I will therefore follow you around for the time being. This is a somewhat unusual situation. Normally I would be recording events here in the capital, but in this case I believe I will trust her advice and my own instincts."

"I can still find out what's happening in the city when I get back, but whoever is responsible for all this might not be inclined to sit still while I'm taking notes. Shadowy conspiracies have a tendency to destroy evidence, and I can't allow that to happen. I will of course maintain political neutrality as always, so I will stay out of any fights you may get yourselves into. Just pretend that I'm not there."

Rania was excited: "Does that mean that we have our own bard now? This is great! I will tell you all about our adventures later so that you can write them all down!"

"Please do, although I will cross-reference with the others to make sure the story is accurate, so please no embellishments."

"Awesome! I can't wait to describe how we killed a basilisk. It was really cool. Galanys was all like 'I have an idea!' and I was all like 'Whoosh', and then I jumped straight at the basilisk's face and killed it with baking supplies. So much fun!"

Adam looked quizzically at her team, but then Mr. Smith spoke up: "I can confirm that, to the best of our knowledge, this actually happened and is not an exaggeration."

Rania noticed that Lynn stopped drinking her wine. Then she prayed to Duna for divine aid, and cast a healing spell to purge the alcohol from her system.

That reminded Rania of something she forgot in all the excitement: "Now that my Minions have introduced themselves, we still need to introduce ourselves to them."

"Let me interrupt you right there." Lilian said. "You mentioned earlier that you were looking for something else to call them. Calling someone a minion is really more of a villain thing, not a hero thing. You don't want to be a villain, do you?"

"Of course not!" Rania responded. "I want to be a hero!"

Then she started listing all the things she wanted to do on her fingers. "I want to kill Bad Guys. I want to Save The Innocent. I want to get all the loot from the Bad Guys. I want to explore cool ruins and dungeons. And I want to do lots of other cool hero things! I have a checklist! Do you want to see it?"

"...actually, yes. I would like to read that." Lilian responded. "The point is, only villains have minions. Heroes have sidekicks instead. They should be your sidekicks."

Rania was shocked. "How did I miss that? Of course, that makes so much sense. I got so excited when the Coros people told me I could have Minions that I never questioned it. But this is much better!"

"Did you hear that?" She told her Sidekicks. "From now on, you will be my Sidekicks, and not my Minions. This is great, because Sidekicks have a much higher life expectancy than Minions."

Lynn cheered to that, and took another large sip of wine.

Then Rania brought the conversation back to the introductions, while she fished her checklist of heroic adventurer things she wanted to do out of her backpack and handed it to Lilian.

Her teammates introduced themselves to her new Sidekicks. She was disappointed but unsurprised that her Sidekicks clearly did not acknowledge Pebble, Aranea, and Whiskers as proper team members. Really, she thought that was quite rude. As side characters themselves, they should know about how bad it was to deny other people their spot in the limelight.

Obviously, the more often Pebble, Aranea and Whiskers got mentioned and acknowledged as real team members, the more important they would be to the story. That would naturally make them better at everything they did. Whiskers and Pebble were both already contributing a lot to the team by scouting and providing sage advice, and she couldn't wait for Aranea to reach the same level. The cute little spider already provided moral support for Rania, of course. But she wanted Aranea to become even cooler, and that would never happen if people did not treat her as the valuable team member she was destined to be!

She decided to address the problem directly. "Adam, can you make sure to highlight how important Pebble and Aranea and Whiskers are, when you write down the epic stories of our epic exploits? I'm afraid they are really not getting as much recognition as they deserve."

He blinked at her. "Sure, why not? I often make sketches of the politicians I meet for my records. I might as well make a sketch of someone more photogenic, like a spider."

"Thank you! You hear that Aranea? I think he just said you are cute!"

It was good to see that the bard was not speciesist against spiders. She had read that there was a widespread belief in something called 'arachnophobia'. As far as she understood it, this was a form of Xenophobia, and therefore speciesism. Some countries had widespread speciesism against orcs, or elves, or really any of the humanoid races. Most people in Oruk agreed that this was really bad. But despite this, even here she had encountered arachnophobes before, and nobody seemed to consider this a problem. She hoped that humanoids could get over their bigotry against spiders one day.

She turned back to her Sidekicks. "One of us is still missing. We will have to wait until Dov gets here, so that she can introduce herself, too. She is not here because she is from a crossover, so she is getting briefed separately. She probably has her own Quest Giver, too."

The aide spoke up: "I don't think that's the reason. Princess Dov Shan is currently being detained in protective custody and..."

"That's a state secret!" The red baron suddenly shouted at him. "You can't just say that out loud! Are you mad?"

The aide suddenly looked pale: "I apologize! I thought everyone here knew that already. I didn't..."

The noble interrupted him again: "You thought, did you? You are not being paid to think! You are paid to do your job. You just wait until I tell your superiors about this."

Adam once again interrupted the noble. "You are overreacting. This is obviously not going to remain a secret for long and there is no way team Nundru would not already know it. The man clearly looks overworked and tired. You threatening him is hardly going to help."

"He is just being lazy, not tired!" The red baron replied.

"I disagree. He is exhausted from the past day of catastrophes, and unlike the two of us he can't afford the revitalization spells needed to deal with sleep deprivation. It is important for rulers to understand the abilities and limits of their subordinates. Your failure to do so reflects poorly on you, not on him."

"But the help is beneath me! Poor people like him are that way for a reason."

Adam actually blinked in confusion and took a few seconds to respond. "Are you listening to yourself? Frankly, at this point I am starting to wonder if you are some kind of caricature of a noble. I have never personally been involved in one of Tonos' plots before, and it would be interesting if true. The Orukian system of nobility is supposed to be much less corrupt than that of other countries, and yet I find myself sharing a room with you."

He gave the red baron a withering glare. It was only a metaphorical withering glare, though. Rania had once watched a fey use an actual withering glare. It had looked exactly the same, but there was a lot more screaming and dying involved by the recipient.

Adam continued: "As for your claims that you are inherently better than the commoners, it may interest you to know something of my own history. My father was a bard who gave performances in seedy bars, not in operas like I do. My mother was an air elemental of the lowest caste. We would call it slavery. I earned my position despite this. Talent can come from anywhere, and it is my understanding that Orukian nobility in particular is supposed to share this view."

The red baron did not seem to know how to react to this, but was saved from having to respond when Pymion asked "Your mother is a slave? That's terrible! I didn’t know that the elementals still followed such barbaric practices."

"Your concern is appreciated, but at least in the case of my mother it is no longer necessary. Once it was clear that I was going to become a Historian of Secrets, Denissa Mardok wrote a letter to Lord Zephyr. She told him that keeping the mother of one of her emissaries as a slave was really exceptionally rude. My mother was raised to the status of a baroness in response, and now spends much of her time taking care of people from her former caste."

"Wait, so you don't need us to rescue her?" Rania asked. "I thought for sure that was going to be a side quest. Can we get back to talking about Dov, then? You said she was in protective custody again. So that means we have to free her before we can leave in the morning."

Galanys looked at her sadly. "No Rania, it doesn't mean that. Dov is being detained by the government. They aren't evil, and she does not need to be rescued. We will have to go without her."

This made no sense to Rania. "What? But there is no way that the crossover is already over! So whoever is trying to keep us apart is a Bad Guy. It's a rule."

Lilian decided to back her up: "I agree. There is no way in hell that Dov will remain in custody for long. Tonos clearly cares about this group, and trying to keep them apart at this stage might as well be a slap in his face."

She turned to Adam and continued: "I'm going to go talk to the council after this and see what can be done. I don't expect them to listen to me, though. I would appreciate your support."

"There is nothing I can do to help you there, I'm afraid." Adam responded. "I must maintain neutrality, at least when it comes to sensitive political matters such as this. I will tell them that I personally believe you, but nothing more than that. They are unlikely to care."

Rania was upset. "Does this really mean that Dov won't come with us, and we can't go rescue her either?"

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"Probably yes. But don't worry, I'm sure circumstances will conspire to free her and make her group up with you again." Lilian responded. "Honestly, I'm less concerned about her, and more concerned about the collateral damage that Tonos might cause in the process of freeing her."

"This is absurd. You can't really believe that." The red baron said.

"I'm willing to bet ten thousand gold at even odds that she gets out of there and meets back up with team Nundru within one week." She replied without missing a beat.

"Uhm. I will think about it." The red baron hesitated.

Suddenly he seemed to gather himself and addressed the aide. "But enough of these distractions. Why is this team being sent in the first place? Just look at them! None of them even look like powerful adventurers at all. Everyone knows that experienced adventurers are recognizable by their armor and weapons. These people just look like common mercenaries."

Rania nodded. As rude as he was, he was right about this.

"It is true that we need fancier clothes. I have told Atrog this before. You just need to look at the covers of adventurer novels to tell that we need to have more gold and gems on our armor, and more needlessly spiky and impractical crossguards on our weapons. But Atrog says that those aren't actually useful at all. He says that adventurers only dress like that if they want to fool people who have no idea how adventuring works."

She noticed Lynn open her flask of wine again, but she thought nothing of it and continued speaking: "Now, personally I agree with you, because those covers do look very pretty and impressive. But Atrog said that we should only wear clothes like that if we ever need to impress a rich idiot. That's why we don't wear any fancy clothes!"

Atrog put his hands in his face, and the red noble became even redder! Did she say something wrong again?

Luckily Lilian spoke up: "Leaving their equipment aside, they did kill an Elder Mind Warper. Do you have any idea how dangerous those things are? The military usually deals with them by bombarding the area, and writing off everyone present as already dead.”

”Some of the people I talked to say it may have been luck, and they are not fully wrong. But I would say that it was divine intervention by Tonos instead. That looks very similar to luck, but with one major difference: Luck is something that happens once, and can't be relied upon. But Tonos' divine intervention can keep holding true so long as you follow the correct paths. I am living proof of that."

"And if it is not the team as a whole that is a problem, then please point out to me, which of them do you think are unsuited for this expedition? The paladin with a spotless reputation and track record? The professor who designed the security systems in half the city? The wizard who merited a divine intervention by Unir, the same god who even Kharn doesn't want to mess with?"

Rania had heard that militaries really didn't like fighting the god of creativity. They would keep winning victory after victory, until one of Unir's priests would do something weird, and suddenly all the warriors turned into frogs, or died in a trap, or turned on each other, or did any of a thousand other unexpected things. It was only because of Galanys' plan that they managed to kill a basilisk after all, and those were very dangerous to conventional military forces, or even experienced adventurers.

The red baron said nothing to Lilian's description of her teammates.

"No? It isn't any of them? Then maybe the person who you think is unsuited is the shaman who for some mysterious reason is worth enough to the Coros that they hired an entire second team of adventurers as bodyguards?"

Rania heard Adam whispering to Mister Smith: "Incidentally, you will have to explain this to me later."

She was happy that Lilian thought so highly of them all, but she was also disappointed because once again Whiskers, Pebble and Aranea were not mentioned at all. She had really thought that Lilian of all people would know better.

"There are better teams." The red baron responded flatly.

Rania could no longer stand it. "Why are you so mean to everyone? Yes, there are better teams. But we are trying our best!"

Mr. Smith answered in his stead: "I believe he is resentful because we purchased the services of team Delta before he could renew their contract as his retainers. Discrediting team Nundru represents a small but non zero chance that they will stay out of trouble, and I believe he hopes that this would make us reconsider hiring Team Delta."

"This is ridiculous. He doesn't even have a good reason to be here. This is definitely narrative causality at work." Adam added.

Rania had to agree. "I know, right? I thought at first that maybe he was drawn here because of the pairing you two seem to have going on. One of you is blue and the other is red. The personalities match the colors because you are nice and the baron is rude. He didn't even give us his first name either, so now he is just the 'red baron' to me, and that name sounds extra evil."

"Can you stop talking about me like I'm not here?" The red baron asked, somehow sounding both angry and confused at the same time.

"No. This is highly elucidating." Adam responded. "Congratulations, you are now useful for furthering my understanding of divine machinations."

"I don't understand anything anymore." The red baron said dejectedly.

"You don't? Well, I will put it simply: You are a living stereotype. The archetypal arrogant and condescending noble. You are bad enough that Tonos has manipulated you into arriving here just so that your onerous presence can serve as a narrative trope for him. Well done. This is a rare opportunity for me to study narrative causality."

Then Adam gave a slow and sarcastic clap.

The red baron opened his mouth to speak. Then he thought better of it, closed his mouth, and left the room without a word.

Once the man was gone, Adam turned to the aide. "If I know his type correctly, then he will want to seek revenge for his bruised ego by lashing out against someone weaker who was involved in this. I am sorry to say, that will probably be you. I'm going to write you a signed note. If he gives you any trouble, hand that note to his superiors. That should solve the problem for you."

Well, that was nice of Adam.

It also showed that she had been wrong all along. While the two of them arrived together, the baron had left alone. That meant they were not a color-coded matched pair after all! She needed to stop referring to the baron of House Ashfall as the red baron, then.

She had one major question from all this, though.

"Why did you say that this was a 'rare opportunity to study narrative causality'?" She asked Adam. "Can't you do that all the time?"

"Oh no, Rania. Only you and I get to do that." Lilian responded. "It took me quite a while to realize this, but normal people do not have Tonos' attention even once in their life. He really doesn't involve himself in mortal affairs in such drastic ways most of the time. He is only a minor god, after all. It's just that the two of us are quite biased because we are involved in a disproportionately large number of story events he plotted."

Balron nodded at this. "That's quite right. In all my life before I joined up with you, I have never been involved in Tonos' machinations before. Except when I first met Lilian some years ago and she dragged me into things for a while, of course."

Rania wanted to say that Tonos had nothing to do with that. It was the spirits who told her about narrative causality, and those were paying attention to everyone, all the time. But they had had that conversation before, and they had agreed to disagree. It would be a longer discussion that she did not want to have right here and now. Not when there was a quest to be obtained.

So she simply nodded and said "I understand." to Lilian and Balron, and then turned towards the Junior Quest Giver. "So, can you tell us more about the quest we are being sent on?"

"Of course. I have been waiting for you adventurers to stop interrupting each other for a while. We are really behind schedule at this point." The aide replied.

He then explained their quest objectives in more detail, which took almost an hour. Rania was disappointed in how boring it was. She was expecting at least one major mystery hidden in the details of the description. Something that would really grab the audience's attention. After all, why would anyone bother to read mission details if they were going to be boring?

But to her surprise, these details really were extremely dry and uninteresting. If she was writing a novel, she would probably not even bother writing them down.

There was one very important thing in the dossiers the Junior Quest Giver handed out, however: A list of names for all of the house guards and mercenaries involved! Rania resolved to spend her time until the morning studying the list, so that she would know everybody's name and thereby ensure they were important to the story. This was probably more important for reducing casualties than any of the training they had done.

Then she suddenly had a brilliant idea.

Why did it have to be her who knew everybody's name? After all, she was a Perfectly Normal Elf and therefore probably not the Main Character. As she had discovered earlier, her team was very well balanced, and did not seem to give preferential treatment to any of them. That meant that it should work just as well if one of the others learned all of the names.

Someone like Galanys, who had a perfect memory!

"Galanys, can you please make sure to read all of the names? It's vitally important to make sure people don't die."

"Sure. I was going to do that anyway. Is this about making sure that they are no longer side characters?"

"Yes, it is." Rania responded.

She was glad that Galanys understood her so well. She still sometimes got the impression that the human was just humoring her and did not actually believe her, but she understood that Galanys could not talk to spirits, and that most shamans really were kind of weird, so she did not hold it against her. It took time to establish trust, and her friends were already taking her much more seriously now than when they first met.

"If this is what I think it is about, then you must make sure to remember to speak their names out loud in a dramatically important situation, when you can be sure that Tonos is paying attention." Lilian added. "Don't do it now. That explanation just now was extremely dry. We are probably not 'on stage' right now, so to say."

Rania noticed that Norsh was trying to take away Lynn's flask of wine.

Oh, she misunderstood. He wasn't trying to take it away from her. He was asking her to share. Lynn gave him her flask and pulled out a second one, and now they were both drinking. Pymion was standing behind them and shaking his head.

"There is one last thing you all need to understand." The aide said. "I can not stress enough how effective the Cassandra project is at manipulating people, and we suspect that there are traitors in our ranks as well. We have sent envoys to other countries, but we don't know if we can trust that they will arrive safely and deliver the correct messages."

"Message spells can not be trusted at all while the Cassandra Project is active. Just disregard them completely. They may be lies, or they may be half-truths designed to trick you into thinking they are correct. It should go without saying, but especially don't believe it if you receive a message that says that the Cassandra Project has been shut down. The only messages you can trust are those delivered by riders who know the passwords you can find in the mission details."

Rania was glad he mentioned that. It made sense now that he explained it, but she was pretty sure that she would have fallen for a trick like that. She looked to the rest of her team to see what they thought. Balron looked concerned as he read through all the boring mission details, and he soon spoke up about it.

"I have read through your notes, and I'm not quite happy with it all. I have given lectures on information security before. With the upcoming mission I will not have time to talk to the chief of the guards myself. Can I ask you to please relay a message to her and the Interim Council? Section five, subsection three of my anti-infiltration procedures are applicable in this situation and none of these notes seem to take the problems I outlined there into account."

The aide blinked in surprise, then agreed to deliver the message.

Rania was so glad that teamwork was a thing. Balron would make sure that they didn't run into any stupid traps, and Galanys would remember everybody's names. That left more time for Rania to focus on exciting and fun things, like killing Bad Guys and Saving the Innocent.

Now, with all of the planning out of the way, there was one last thing left to do.

"Excuse me, may I have everyone's attention, please?" She said.

She waited until everyone was looking at her.

"Now that we have our Quest and all the questions are answered, I wanted to give everyone a present, for good luck! I went shopping a while ago and bought some things that I thought you might like, and I think now is the best time to hand them out."

"Oh, that's so sweet of you. You needn't have done that." Galanys said, and the rest of her team responded similarly.

"Yes I should! It's important! Giving someone a present right before an important event starts makes it much more likely that the present will be useful."

"Good thinking!" Lilian said, while the others looked confused.

Rania started rummaging through her bag, and pulled out the presents one by one.

"First, Galanys. You always go on about how you like understanding humanoid psychology, and sometimes you ask me about how the spirits and the fey think in comparison. So I bought you a book from a fey that tried to understand elves and wrote down his thoughts."

"That is amazing! Thank you!" Galanys said as Rania handed her the book.

"I'm glad you like it! But don't open it, yet. The author is a bit of a trickster and put some minor curses on the book, for fun. Here is a note on how to read it safely."

"Next up, I actually have a gift for Dov, but she is not here. It's a power limiter that could help her with her training, and also has some disguise abilities included. It was made by an archfey, who used it to hide among mortals more easily. It's a good thing that I waited until now to hand out gifts, when Dov isn't here, because it means that Dov is slightly more likely to meet back up with us. Otherwise she couldn't get her gift, and the plotline would go to waste."

Lilian nodded at that.

"You bought a magical item from an archfey?" Atrog asked in surprise. "How did you get that?"

"It's a secret! I signed contracts and Non-Disclosure Agreements with the Coros, and I even made pinky promises. I'm sorry, but I can't tell you about it."

Lynn started drinking again. It was a shame she hadn't known about her Sidekicks when she bought these gifts. If she had, she would have tried to get some alcohol from the fey shop.

"Anyway, the next present I have here is for Aranea. It's a magic tattoo that makes her poison stronger, so that she can hunt bigger things."

That tattoo had been surprisingly difficult to get. The Coros had made her sign a whole bunch of contracts for it because they had to import it from the Elemental Plane of Australian Wildlife. It was a lot more expensive than she expected, because she had missed a couple of zeroes on the price tag when she first read about it. But she didn't really care much about money anymore, and it felt good to do nice things for her friends.

Aranea crawled out of her cloak and waited patiently on her arm while she applied the magical tattoo. Unlike a regular tattoo, this didn't require a needle and could be done in seconds, because expensive magical items were made to be convenient like that.

"How did you make Aranea do that? I thought you said she was just a spider and not a spirit? How did she know that you wanted her to come out and sit still?" Balron asked.

"Through friendship." Rania replied confidently. "We have been together long enough that she just gets me, you know?"

"That's unusually intelligent of her. Could it be that she is getting empowered by the Law of Adversity, and that is making her smarter? That normally only happens if a creature is actively involved in combat."

Well, duh. Of course that was the reason. Aranea gave moral support to Rania. Therefore she was involved in combat. Therefore she would get stronger. It was obvious. But saying that Aranea only grew smarter because Rania kept killing Bad Guys was kind of demeaning. She much preferred to think of it as the Power of Friendship at work.

"My next present is for Pebble. I spent a long time looking for really cool paint to paint you with. I talked to a whole bunch of children who have awesome rock collections and asked them for advice on the best way to paint a rock."

She listened to Pebble for a response.

"Yes, that is why I sometimes left you at home and didn't take you with me. It needed to be a secret! I'm glad you like it! The other rock spirits are going to be so jealous. You will look like a precious gemstone, but you will still be a pebble, and everyone will be like 'woah, that is such a cool pebble, I wish I had a pebble like that.' I'm going to paint you with it later, ok?"

"Next up, I have a journal for you, Balron. It's a diary written by a hag that describes the rituals she uses to keep her demesne safe. You like security stuff, so I thought this might be helpful for you. I hope you like it?"

Balron took the book out of her hands. "This is amazing, Rania. Thank you."

"Happy to hear it! Next, I have Vherdes brand food additives for Whiskers. I heard from the spirits that most familiars think they are really tasty, and I hope she enjoys them."

"And for Atrog, I have potions. I thought a lot about what you like, but all I could come up with is 'helping people', which is really nice, but difficult to shop for. But then I realized that potions are basically liquid help in a bottle, so I bought you a bunch."

She handed Atrog a bottomless bag filled with various potions.

"Thank you, Rania. I don't know what to say. That is very nice of you."

Then after inspecting the bag, Atrog added. "Wait, these are unlabelled. What do they do?"

"I have no idea!" She responded excitedly. "I didn't read the labels when I bought them. They work better that way."

"...you expect me to use unlabelled potions on people without knowing what they do?"

"Well, some of them aren't potions. Some of them are grenades instead, which you can throw at Bad Guys to stop them, but I don't know which are which. I'm sure you will figure it out when the time is right, though."

Atrog stood there, mouth agape. He was so flabbergasted by how awesome her present was that he forgot how to speak. This was great!

"And last but not least, I have a present for my new Sidekicks. I made these just a few hours ago. They are nametags! They are blank right now, but I'm going to put your names on them right away."

"...you got us nametags? Are they magical?" Pymion asked.

"They aren't really magic, but they are super important anyway. They are there so that the spirits know that you have names, so you don't die for narrative reasons!"

"I am flattered?" Pymion said. But he didn't sound flattered. He sounded confused.

Luckily Lilian spoke up: "This actually sounds like a great idea to me. I'm annoyed that I never thought of this myself. Then again, I think it works better for her than it would work for me, since she is a shaman. Spirits are different and probably react to this better than Tonos would. As on the nose as that god is, even he would prefer something more subtle than a nametag. I recommend that you wear them until you have established yourself as party members and the narrative knows what to expect."

"...so you are saying this is useful because she is a shaman, and because of weird divine intervention by Tonos?" Pymion asked.

"Basically, yes." Lilian responded.

"Well, in that case I thank you for the gift, Rania. I don't understand how it works, but I trust that it does."

Norsh and Lynn also thanked her, which made Rania happy. All of her presents had been well received!

"I'm glad you all liked it! Unfortunately I have nothing for Lilian or Adam. I didn't know you were going with us."

Lilian looked at her in confusion. "Oh, I'm sorry to say, but I won't be going with you. I have other open plotlines waiting for me here, but I'm sure we will meet again soon."

"As for me, I think that seeing all of this weirdness first hand and getting an opportunity to write it down is gift enough. This is much more fun than spying on state secrets all day." Adam said.