Incident Report: 4 Bluemoon, 6692

    Guild Representative: Byulla

She paused the scratching of her pen as she considered how to word things. The report would scarcely be believable as things stood, injecting her own opinions and impressions would help not at all. Yet how could she convey the terror she felt looking into those half-lidded gold eyes? She swore they had even gleamed red at one point when she had looked up from her work. Byulla shook the bangs out of her way yet again, yet again promising herself she’d see to trimming them soon, and glared at the form. Report type?

    Abnormal registrants

That was the correct, and only applicable, designation. Yet it was almost exclusively reserved for those who were deemed a risk to the guild, and Byulla didn’t think they would be. Not those two girls. They had been far too genuinely interested in being adventurers to be subversive agents, and were not nearly arrogant enough to be the type to start trouble with others. She found her gaze absently following down the corridor the two had only recently left by, their footsteps causing vibrations she could feel even after they had turned out of sight. Risk or not, abnormal they assuredly were.

She paused yet again over the next part of the report. The section where she should copy down which segments of the status and which behaviors were of concern. All of it. She huffed a laugh and took another look at their paperwork and confirmed, yes, the entire thing was deeply suspicious. For both of them. Which was another bit of strangeness, now that Byulla thought about it. The two seemed to be twins, and had been so in tune with one another that she hadn’t considered how unusual it was to have a group register together. Particularly since Byulla was nearly convinced that they were nobility.

It was a common practice amongst the kingdom’s aristocracy for twins to be treated rather differently. The inheriting twin would be groomed for the office, while the non-inheriting twin would be trained as a bodyguard or body double. That did offer an explanation for why the martially trained twin, and it was obvious to Byulla which one that had to be, would want to sign up as an adventurer. It wasn’t common, but some of the poorer houses would do that instead of utilize their personal guards to help with training.

What it didn’t explain was the presence of the other twin, or their obviously friendly relationship. An inheriting noble daughter would never be so cordial to her expendable sister, and would absolutely never sign up at the guild. On a more personal level, Byulla had never known or heard about a noble lady who had golden hair, or wasn’t conceited or, frankly, was so pleasant to be around. Strangeness upon strangeness.

Adventuring, as much as she might love it, was not a profession for the nobility. It was known for being composed of the dispossessed, the orphaned, the disgraced, and the criminal. It was therefore a somewhat grim affair for those involved; a necessary thing that was likely to lead to danger and death. While bonds were certainly forged within and occasionally between parties, and such things were in fact vital if an adventurer wanted to survive, approaching the guild in a group was beyond rare. Even if Byulla were to set aside the nobility issue, the fact remained that they were young women. It was yet another part of their strangeness which stood out, because women had a truly unspeakable failure rate as adventurers.

Byulla had seen a number of such cases in her time with the guild, on both sides of the desk. Women who would take a contract and then just up and vanish, never to be seen or heard from again. It was a pity, but spoke strongly to the reasons that few women registered to begin with. Byulla did not consider herself an exception; she never would have joined had she any good alternatives, but life had turned out well and she did not regret it.

What truly bothered her about the situation was that they were both so young, hale, and whole. Women did apply to the guild, yes, but they tended to be widows with no prospects, the exceptionally ugly or malformed, and of course the strange or truly desperate — as Byulla herself had been. By contrast to herself, the twins had seemed merely interested in joining, rather than left without other options.

Then of course there was the matter of them both being remarkably, notably, memorably, gorgeous. It was a point in favor of the idea that they were – or had previously been – part of the nobility, as it was well known that the aristocracy favored the most attractive of their children to inherit. As a woman herself Byulla could fully admit to a twinge of envy over the fact, though she couldn’t put something so subjective in the report. She chewed the end of the pen in thought. Even if those girls were experiencing difficulties, or had been outright disinherited, attractive young women would always have certain prospects available to them.

So why then choose adventuring?

    Applicants registered together. Young, female, well mannered, well dressed, and without visible deformity.

That was as close as she could get in the official written version, but her superiors reading it would pick up on the subtext. Of course, if that were all there had been to it, she never would have bothered filing an actual report over the matter. It would just be a topic of gossip until something juicier came along. Not that it wouldn’t be the primary topic of conversation for some time, but those aspects were just window dressing to the real core issue. According to their status, which they made no effort to hide, they weren’t Living. They were Automata, which was something she had never heard of before at all! A thing that was built rather than natural, created to imitate the mythical sirol that once ruled the mountain.

She knew the fables of those lost folk, like most people did, and the two matched those descriptions. Imposingly tall with sharp angular features, large expressive eyes, shimmering almost metallic hair, and a darker skin tone than she’d ever seen before. They were everything an elf could be, but made more. That much was exactly as her grandmother had described in her stories, but they had left Byulla ill prepared for the reality. They were both so big that it was intimidating, and so colorfully vibrant they made an even larger impression. But it wasn’t only their physicality, their personalities had also made a sizeable impression.

One was sweet as sunshine, a giggling happy girl who made Byulla want to be her friend, or spoil her rotten. The only thing that had put her off was when the girl had bounced joyously in place for a few moments, upsetting the contents of her desk so terribly that it was going to take a quarter bell’s work to set it right again. Everything about that was alarming.

The other was less ambiguous in many ways. She was a naked blade: sharp and cold and pointed directly at Byulla’s throat. A sensation that had begun the moment she had appeared and had only grown more piercing when she’d read through that absurd status. Byulla opened her own for the sake of comparison, but there was simply nothing to compare. She had no strange or unique talents, no weird notes, nothing that stood out in any way.

Byulla

Scout (81)

H: 10/10

M: 10/10

S: 9/10

[Appraise]

[Intuition]

[Stealth] [Ambush] [Strike] [Evade]

[Spark] [Purify]

After a quick glance she realized something important that she had overlooked. The two didn’t have an entry for stamina! It was completely beyond anything a receptionist was prepared to deal with, and she was glad to escalate the issue. Particularly after needing to ask for the verbose version. The woman had complied without voicing a complaint, but that icy look of murderous contempt she’d gotten afterwards would be haunting her dreams, Byulla was certain of that. Speaking with her had felt like being put upon the gallows for judgement.

It was all the more worrisome since her status pane had said the woman was first level, yet there was not a single thing about her that said novice at all. It was such a strange contradiction that Byulla considered that perhaps the status had been falsified in some fashion. The way she carried herself, the way she walked, the way she watched everything at once, they spoke of an enviable level of self-mastery. Byulla had an eye for such things.

It was like looking at the veterans she had met, and she had known many powerful people in her career with the guild. Byulla had sometimes bragged about the rank A adventurers that had crossed in front of her desk, and her dear Nullim was well into rank B himself, yet never before had she been so terrified. So deeply certain that a single word or motion out of place would see her dead in the next instant, crushed like an insect and with as much care. She’d encountered monsters who were less hostile, and that was saying something.

Those things combined with the listed age gave Byulla some serious suspicions.

Only, all of that pressure and hostility had vanished when the cheerful one had caught the strangely named Mea in a hug. Byulla’s own heart had actually skipped a beat seeing that, as it so mirrored watching her often grim and dour husband melt under their daughters’ affections. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the lingering thoughts and feelings. None of which were helpful in writing the report.

    Full status attached to report. Irregularities too numerous to cite separately. Registered on both tracks, they     have already left on contracts: goblin hunt and Red Cap harvest.

That reminded her of the warning she’d given them. She decided it might end up being relevant and went to pull the missing persons reports. It wasn’t uncommon for novices to simply vanish, often before contributing a single thing, which left the files pretty thick. Fortunately, between the locator function and the enchantment to ensure monsters would be disinterested in them, most of the cards issued were eventually recovered. Even so, it took some time to find what she was looking for and when she did it lead to a somewhat startling discovery. Those missing weren’t novices at all.

She’d met several of the lost adventurers, and they were all careful and crafty upper D rank with proven combat acumen. That they would fall prey to goblins left her feeling worried. She was surprised to find no small twinge of concern in her breast for those two girls, as well. Which struck her as something a little strange. It was always saddening when an adventurer failed to return, but unless she really knew them she had to admit there were so many they got lost in the sea of faces. What would make those two different?

Possibly because they were attractive young girls. Possibly because the golden one was so charming, in spite of that hair. Possibly because she was projecting, seeing her own darling children in the two of them. But it was also possible that, given the rest of the abnormalities, Byulla had been the victim of a mind altering talent. No such thing had shown up in the status, but her memories could have been changed too. Guild rules stated that personnel were to make no assumptions regarding talents, and she had encountered too many strange things in her life – not least of which were those girls – to doubt that wisdom.

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Even so, she hesitated to include that in the report. It would make the ensuing investigation take far longer, dig far deeper, cost more of the guild’s precious resources, and might cause herself and the two girls a great deal of trouble later on. But it would also make the guild’s personnel be more circumspect in their dealings, which would allow those two to go on about their lives without noticing the interest they’d gathered if they were innocent. What ultimately decided things for her, was the fact that Byulla wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she allowed something truly dangerous to take root where she lived and worked. Right at the heart of everything important to her.

    Possible mental interference.

With the core concerns documented, she wrapped up with a recounting of the entire encounter, step by step, start to finish. They’d ask her to tell it again later, but it was apparently necessary to have it all written down as soon after the event as possible. That shouldn’t have been too difficult to do, in spite of the late-start types that were beginning to trickle in. The lower ranked newcomers tended to start in the morning and be gone all day, while the long timers generally didn’t need her help, which meant mid-mornings tended to be a little boring if she were honest. But that didn’t mean she was completely free to focus on the paperwork, because among those wandering in was a familiar face.

“Heya B,” said the troublemaker. Keshyr, rank C and member of a fairly successful team. She had known him from before her transition onto the staff, and she could readily vouch for his competence, if not his personality. He’d be a first rate asset to the guild if only he weren’t such a swaggering pest. She was always of two minds about the man; on the one hand it was hard to place all the blame on him, seeing as he was one of the very few beastmen in town. On the other, he was nevertheless still single and childless at his age with no prospects of that changing. It spoke poorly of him and, combined with his overly familiar bearing towards a married woman like herself, Byulla found him a bit difficult to like.

“How might I assist you today?” She answered with impeccable manners, since she knew doing so would irritate him. He was ultimately harmless, that much she didn’t doubt, but she found it hard to resist giving him grief for being a nuisance.

“Aww c’mon, B, don’t be like that,” he roared a laugh at his attempted humor. He wanted her to use his name, to be friendly, but she refused. She always refused. The big beastman had always been too forward with her and it made her uncomfortable, even if he was that way with everyone. To herself at least, she could admit that one major factor for why she never used his name was because she couldn’t quite manage the back of the throat click, and didn’t want to embarrass herself.

“Please be considerate,” she said with her best vacuous smile, “of the others waiting, sir.” Not that there were any. “If you don’t need help, please step aside.”

“Yeah yeah yeah, alright miss receptionist. You win,” he said with an overly dramatic sigh and a smile that showed far too many teeth. She didn’t hate the little game they played, exactly, but it wasn’t her favorite thing to do either. Even if they were more or less old friends, he was still a perverse man whose interactions felt like advances. Decidedly unwelcome ones, at that.

It smacked of courtship, and she was a married woman of another kind. He had never, to her knowledge, sought out his own kind for his attentions and that just wasn’t quite right. It made her mistrustful in a way she had never been able to shake, no matter his better qualities. She did not think him morally miscreant enough to deserve accusation of impropriety, but his casual flirtations set her on edge nevertheless. In spite of all that though, she couldn’t deny the sneaky little bit of enjoyment she got out of tormenting the annoying man.

“Ol’ Kem will give ya the proper report later but I wanted to swing by and tell ya that the saurs are actin’ up. We were out that way yesterday lookin’ fer brine, but couldn’t get close. The things were swarmin’ somethin’ fierce.”

“I appreciate the warning,” she said with all sincerity. The guild wouldn’t move without a verified report, at least not officially. But she’d be steering everyone away from any quests in that area in the meantime, and would be passing things along to the afternoon shift. It was that kind of word-of-mouth between adventurers that saved lives. She and her dear Nullim had both benefited from that sort of gossip numerous times, and now that she was stuck behind a desk it was one of the few things she felt like she could actually do to help those that came to her.

“Yeh,” he said with a burly shrug. “Ent been out that way meself, but grist is the kabbies and greens been givin’ grief too.” The ‘grist’ of tavern rumors wasn’t a particularly reliable source of information, particularly when it came to the often tricky kobolds, but if Kesh was taking time to say so there was probably some substance there. “Gobs too, o’ course, but they never done anything else,” he said with a low rumbling chuckle that flexed the long silver scar that showed through the fur on his cheek. A gift from the goblins. She’d known the wretched things had been acting up lately, had just been looking at the file, but saurians, kobolds, orcs and ogres? That was most of the local tribes. She scrawled a quick note in the margin of the report she’d been writing. It wasn’t professional, but no one was going to mind.

“It will certainly be difficult for the Hunters, if that is all true.”

“We’ll make do. Say hi to Nully fer me, B,” he said, turning to go.

“Do it yourself,” she told him with a sniff and a toss of her head.

“Yeh?”

“Drinks.”

“When?”

“Seventhday?” He thought about it a moment, then nodded. “Bring your groupies,” she added. He barked another laugh and strolled off. It would be good to see them all again — even Kesh. He was a perverse man, but never so low as to attempt his flirtations when Nullim was around. She might even describe him as fun, so long as his team was at hand to balance him out. They’d had a drink most nights, back before she’d retired, but now it was difficult to arrange. Which of course just made doing so more worth the while.

The rest of her solo shift passed with few enough interruptions that she was able to complete her report, though updating the contract boards was something she’d have to pass off. Not that Thylgma was likely to mind, since the mid-afternoon shifts were just as empty and boring as the mid-mornings. Though that only counted the desk for registered adventurers. She would never envy old Miss Nollua’s endless stream of completely useless scoundrels out at the public desk. How she managed to hold her own there all day, every day, was beyond Byulla’s comprehension.

“Byulla? You there? Don’t tell me you’re sleeping!” A cheerful voice from behind jolted her while she’d been rereading the report for anything she might have missed. She quickly brought up her status to find that she’d turned on her Skill without intending to yet again. She’d spent years skulking around immensely dangerous monsters and, like most scouts, had developed the habit of staying in [Stealth] almost all the time. It wasn’t as bad as some of the older veterans, who felt anxious without it, but even after several years of retirement and safety a moment’s inattention was enough for her to slip up and use it.

“Oh, why good day Thyl,” she said, ensuring her Skill was properly turned off before turning to her coworker who’d just stepped up beside her at the desk. Thylgma shot her a smile and a knowing look. She never seemed to mind, and neither did the rest of the staff, as they’d all been adventurers and had earned their quirks. It was only courtesy to forgive each other for a bit of oddness now and again.

Thylgma was tall for a dwarf, with thick braids of a lovely light brown and eyes to match, but even so the woman still needed a step-stool to see over the counter. They’d known each other for years and Byulla thought of her as an excellent person, which was why she felt slightly pained to acknowledge that her friend was also somewhat vain. The proof was in the fact that she had commissioned a ‘bespoke height aid,’ as she put it, to replace the stonewood box the guild had used before. It had become something of a forbidden joke among the staff, and Byulla did love a bit of gossip and poking fun. But since she regularly used it herself to reach some of the stored documents, she had always felt it hypocritical for her to join in and so didn’t.

“Have a look at this,” she said, handing over the report she’d written. It was technically confidential, as it included two instances of a full status, but that wasn’t a problem. Reports were readily accessible to staff members in any case, and everyone would want to read this one.

“Something interesting happen?”

“That is certainly one way of putting it,” she said with a barely suppressed smile. Her friend began to quickly read it over, and Byulla took the opportunity to guess how far she’d gotten by the expression on her face.

“God of the Mountain, is it?”

“So it said.”

“You believe it?”

“A god, no. Certainly not. More likely one of the Mystic State’s failed heroes. Else perhaps, given that this incident involves golems, an ascended stone-carpenter with delusions. Possibly an organized group of them.” Even considering the options made Byulla appreciate that she lived in Aita Lluvri.

Monsters and the occasional miscreant could make it a dangerous place, no question of that, but at least the challenges were ones she understood. The walls, the guards, and adventurers like herself, all worked together to keep things as safe as they could be. What the other nations faced were, by reputation and report, so strange and foreign that she would not choose to live elsewhere even as a queen.

“Could be. Still, this’ll mean we have to take it up with the kingdom, huh?”

“Unfortunately,” Byulla said, only to be met with an incredulous face. “I trust myself as a judge of character, and the two who came in were quality assets.”

“Maybe so, but with toughness like this,” she said, tapping the paper, “we’ll have to send a whole subjugation force of A rankers to go check the mountain.” Byulla nodded. It was part of the expenses she’d had on her mind when writing the report. Calling on people like that had a price, and a steep one.

“If the king moved the Thirty-Second Princess or even his Champion it would be reassuring,” Byulla said, lost in thought.

“To the guildmaster’s pocket book, maybe,” Thyl laughed. Byulla shot her a look. “I’m just saying, we both know that someone like the Lightning-Lance Princess isn’t about to slum it with folks like us, and I’m not sure you’d be so confident if you’d actually met the Kanna trio. That Champion fellow in particular,” she shook her head. “I’ll just tell you they’re better as stories than in person.” Even if Thyl had been in a position to know the three of them while working at the capital branch before her retirement, Byulla wasn’t sure she was ready to believe something like that.

The king’s Champion, Lott Kanna, his wife Lleuli, and his sister Brin, had sent ripples through the kingdom by ascending their classes at an incredibly early age and then ascending them again just a few years later. They were widely considered the ultimate adventurers, an inspiration to everyone despite having never actually joined the guild. They were delvers exclusive to the Dungeon Company, but that just proved their competence in Byulla’s view. Only the absolute best among even the A-ranked ascended dared venture into a Dungeon, with their strange rules and fantastic rewards. Most of her contemporaries and certainly the younger generation all idolized the three of them, so hearing a bad word spoken against them had her ire up.

“Don’t get bent out of shape about it now,” the dwarven woman said with her hands raised in a soothing fashion. “You may get the chance to meet them, if they swing this way to check on your two new recruits. You’ll see what I mean then.”

“As you say, then.” Byulla put it out of her mind, and her companion went back to reading. Not for long, however, as every new line sparked conversation — as she knew it would. It was too strange, all of it, but they didn’t have the chance to get into it in any depth before the lunch crowd appeared and put them both to work. It was busy work, but mundane, with nothing more of interest or import happening for the remainder of her shift. The traffic died down to tolerable levels by the time she was scheduled to leave, as it usually did, and she bid her coworker and friend farewell.

She collected herself and the report before taking the hall behind the counter into the depths of the guild, aiming for the second floor and the guildmaster’s office. As she passed through the lounge area, she but overheard one of the materials teams on break discussing the thunderous noise from the mountain. It had happened near the end of the previous month, some week or so past, and Byulla had put it out of her mind. But with the day’s events, and the apparent existence of a God of the Mountain, now it pricked her interest. The rumors were that the guildmaster had already considered sending a few Explorers to have a look, but the kingdom had told him to stand down.

If that was the case, and the recent series of events were all connected, then it was a relief to think that her report would just add to things already in motion instead of starting them. She didn’t want to stand out that much and make things difficult for her family, or those two girls who had just wanted to register. No matter how strange they might have been, or how mean one of them looked, she didn’t really want to cause them trouble.

She knew it was a weakness, but she had always been prone to such sentiments ever since her days as a rootless orphan. Even as a woman of some reknown and competence, fully grown and with a family, she found herself often at the mercy of such small and timid feelings. It came then as no surprise that the simmering mix of unease and nostalgia and loneliness had built and bloomed into a sort of guilt, prompting her offer to Keshyr and through him to his team.

A little get-together with her old friends might settle her nerves, and they did need settling, because in spite of looking forward to the drinks and the company, a malaise lingered over her heart. Perhaps it was her [Intuition] Skill, as vague but vital as it had ever been. She dwelled on such maudlin things as she delivered the report and changed, but just as she was about to walk out of the guild and head home for the day she stopped to take a few deep breaths and packed all that vacillating away. She needed to switch from adventurer and receptionist to mother. Byulla the woman could be a little feeble-hearted from time to time, but mom could not. Even so, she had every intention of spoiling her daughters rotten.

It would make her feel better.