10. REBEL CLERK
The world Below was dominated by Order, the second born of the gods and leader of the pantheon. His Static empire stretched across four of the six continents, his lands forming a repeating tapestry of farms and villages with the occasional seven-sided city set at regular intervals. Every part of the empire looked much like every other part, as far as geography would allow, which most gods found deeply boring but which pleased Order, who liked his roads straight, his cities clean, and his people obedient. Each year, the empire expanded, the streets grew longer, and the cities widened. Soon the world would be the empire, and the empire would be the world. But not everything was as Order wished. The influence of Chaos, firstborn of the gods, still lingered in the world: goblins crawled from mines and caves, ghosts haunted the darkest forests, and terrible monsters roamed the lands without any concern for the travel permits and carefully stamped licenses that a citizen of the Empire needed before they were permitted to leave their homes. Out on the fringes of the empire, there were even a few dark lords and dungeon masters who were yet to be shown how much better life could be as a registered servant of the empire. It infuriated Order. Worse still, while the armies of Order were entirely loyal and had flawless rhythm while marching, they could only fight when told exactly what to do. The soldiers were simply too slow to adapt to a dungeon’s cunning or a monster’s rage. They needed every trap or trick explained to them in advance, on paper, as was the way of the Empire.
And so Order was forced to gather together a specialized force of mortals who were adequately obedient in their service to the empire, yet still adaptable enough to fight its most dangerous enemies. Many of these mortals came from the border towns or from outside of the empire, and they needed taming. Order created the Guild of Heroes, the sprawling network of halls and guild masters, to harness the might of these wild mortals using whatever carrots or sticks were deemed necessary. The heroes held a unique position in the Empire: they were free. The Empire turned a blind eye to the heroes' excesses and eccentricities, to their distinctive clothes, to their jaywalking, to their messy paperwork. They could swear and spit, they could gamble and sleep in late, they could even forget to pay their taxes as long as they also served. Most citizens considered the heroes akin to plumbers: their work allowed society to exist, but nobody wanted to hear about it over dinner. The Guild Halls were built far outside the cities to limit their corrupting influence and, possibly, their smell. The oldest Guild Hall was built on a hill overlooking City Three Of Region Two (Order was not good with names). Here, heroes gathered to seek quests, to feast and mourn, to buy and sell, to train and craft, to argue and gossip. All of this activity generated a lot of paperwork – they were still in the Static Empire, after all – and the guild employed a small army of human and gnome clerks to fill out the endless forms. These diligent workers spent their days and nights in a long, windowless hall buried beneath the guild where rows and rows of desks sat facing the single entrance.
The door to the hall burst open, and a hero stepped into the room. He was an elf dressed in blue robes, an ice mage. Pinned to his chest was the bronze badge signifying his rank as a senior apprentice Hero. He walked up to the oldest clerk, a frail human woman who sat near the door, and banged on her desk impatiently. The clerk flinched, refusing to look at the hero.
“I need a volunteer,” the mage growled. “Quickly now! We need to get this done before lunchtime!”
The clerks all bent their heads closer to their work and pretended they hadn’t heard. All but one: A young gnome at the back of the hall was staring up at the ceiling, so caught up in his daydream that he hadn’t even noticed the hero walk in.
This was Nanoc, the gnome clerk. He had been thinking about how much he hated paperwork, and about how much better life would be if he wasn’t a clerk. These were dangerous thoughts, in the empire. So was listening to a hero.
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“You!” the hero demanded, pointing at Nanoc. “Yes, you there! Wipe that dumb smile off your face and come here!”
Nanoc put down his pen, hopped down from his hard bench, and ambled over to the hero. The gnome was as skinny as a twig, and his head only came up to the mage’s elbow, yet he happily met the hero’s eyes.
“I’m Nanoc,” he said. “Level nine clerk, at your service.”
Nanoc hadn’t wanted to be a clerk, but it was the only class the empire approved of for gnomes. It was not the right class for him: he was talented enough, but his heart had never been in shuffling paper.
He nodded cheerfully at the elf who towered over him. The elf glared down, using a spell to inspect the gnome.
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NANOC THE GNOME
Health: 4/4
CLERK Level 9
Skills: Paperwork, filing, taking notes, counting, boring stuff
Abilities: Speed reading (50 per day), finding folders (10 per day), avoiding the blame (1 per day)
ATTRIBUTES: Hidden
QUESTS: This class does not allow quests
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“You’ll do, then,” the elf said.
“Sure.”
“Aren’t you scared of me?” the elf hero asked, a little annoyed.
“No, not at all,,” Nanoc replied. “You see, my father always used to say I’m far too reckless for a gnome—"
“I don’t care. Come with me.”
The mage led Nanoc deeper into the hill, down twisting tunnels and damp passages, until they reached a narrow stairway that cut into the caves beneath the hall. The stairway was steep. It disappeared around a curve, its end lost to darkness.
“Do you know what lies in the great caves beneath the guild?” the hero demanded.
“Junk, mostly,” Nanoc said, nodding.
The Guild heroes were like magpies, collecting every magical trinket they came across. Most had little value, but part of the Guild’s charter was to prevent any dangerous magic from entering general circulation, which meant keeping it somewhere safe. The basements below each Guild Hall were filled with half-magical swords, expired potions, moldy books of spells, and boxes of haunted bones.
“They are treasures!” the hero said, slapping Nanoc across the head. “Each one a victory for the empire! And Tsaob, master of the ten thousand hidden blades, demands you fetch the one he seeks!”
“Why?” Nanoc asked.
It was an impertinent question for a gnome to ask, but the apprentice just sighed.
“He’s trying to impress a lady, I think. Again.”
They shared a moment of being annoyed before the apprentice remembered his station and glared at the gnome.
“He wishes you to bring him the Witch Lord’s scepter,” the apprentice snapped.
“Which lord was that?” Nanoc asked with a smile.
“Yes, the Witch Lord, the great darkness that spread through the mountains until at last it was cast out by—"
“But which lord’s scepter?” Nanoc asked.
“That’s what I said! Witch Lord!”
“Which lord?”
“Witch!”
“That’s what I’m asking!” Nanoc said. “Which lord is it?”
“I—” The elf glared at the smiling Nanoc, then said, “Are you teasing me? I should beat you for your insolence! Then perhaps you will learn your place.”
The twinkle in Nanoc’s eyes dimmed, but only slightly. He had been beaten many times before for disobedience, for being messy, for questioning his elders, and for a dozen other infractions against the Static Empire. The beatings had been in vain: the bruises always faded, but the anger they caused remained, growling in the darkness. But what could he do? Nanoc was a gnome, alone in his convictions, and even rebels need to eat. He’d become a clerk because that was the only professional class the Empire had allowed him. The smart thing to do was to apologise and shut up, to keep his head down, to be a good gnome.
But sometimes doing the smart thing is just stupid.
“Lighten up, I’m just having a little fun,” the gnome said.
“We don’t pay you to have fun!” the elf snapped. “We pay you to do as you’re told!”
He slapped a form onto Nanoc ’s chest, waved a hand, and muttered a spell. Nanoc was encased in a bubble of glowing purple energy, which lifted him off the ground and shot off down the stairs, bouncing off the walls as it went.
“And hurry back!” the hero ordered after him.