Artyom awoke the next morning feeling well rested and ready to take on the next step of his plan. He needed a way to meet with the Great Hero that exposed him to as little risk as possible. To that effect, a party hosted by the nobility would be the perfect place to do so, where everyone was expected to act with decorum and not murder the other party goers. Artyom was able to secure an invitation to a party hosted by Lord Cabbafor, the biggest noble in town, for the Great Hero and himself. The only problem was, he needed to actually get the invitation into the hero’s hands.
From the rumors he heard the day before, the hero’s quest brought him near the town in search of some sort of mcguffin. If Artyom could beat him to the punch, he could replace the item in question with the invitation, giving the hero a reason to attend. Sure, he was ripping the idea straight from one of his favorite games back on Earth, but if it works, it works. Artyom left the inn after getting ready for the day, and made his way into the mercantile ring in town. After much wandering around and receiving the vaguest of directions, he was able to locate a cartographer.
As he entered the shop through the wooden door, the smell of paint and parchment hit his nostrils, forcing Artyom to reorient himself. The room he ended up in glowed with many muted shades of brown, from the oak shelves, to the rolled up sheets of tan colored canvas, down to the owner’s undyed linen clothes. The owner in question was a bald, unassuming middle aged man whose blister-covered hand held a brush that glided across the canvas in front of him.
There was no bell tied to the door to announce Artyom’s presence, but the loud creaking of the door’s old hinges reverberated across the shop floor, bouncing between shelves and heralding the new arrival to the entire building. Artyom braced his eardrums, expecting the sound to be followed with an equally fortissimo creaking of the owner’s chair across the hardwood floor. It never came.
The owner continued his work, heedless of the aural disturbance and potential customer.
“Hello?” asked Artyom, somewhat surprised at meeting the first shopkeep not showering him in platitudes upon his arrival.
“Hey,” said the owner, his voice soft yet distant.
Artyom made his way across the shop floor, past several tables and shelves holding rolled up pieces of canvas, all organized into specifically labelled piles.
“Uh, I’d like to buy a map, please,” said Artyom. “One that shows the way to Crystal Kobold Crossing?”
“Space F3, on shelf 4,” he replied, his eyes still glued to his work. “If you can’t find it, you’ll have to wait for me to finish this up first. And that’s not going to be for a while.”
Artyom shrugged and began looking. He noticed that each of the shelves were labelled with a number at the top, and upon locating shelf 4, he saw that each of the rows had a letter etched into them. He located row F and walked over to the third column. The space for F3 contained several rolled up maps. Artyom unfurled one of them and took a look at its contents. It contained the western entrance to the town and the area beyond that, which included a cave-like icon labelled Crystal Kobold Crossing. What was most surprising to him was that the town he was in was named “Brimhaven” and that it took until now for him to find out.
“Got it!” said Artyom.
“Huh, that was fast,” commented the owner, finally looking up from his work. “Most people can’t even figure out my organization system. You have a locator Skill or something?”
“No, it was pretty simple. The numbers and letters are all written down, they’re pretty hard to miss.”
“Well you’re the first one I’ve heard say that. The name’s Carr, by the way.”
“Artyom,” he introduced himself as he walked over to Carr with the rerolled map in his hands.
“Two gold,” said Carr brusquely.
“Huh?”
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“The map costs two gold.”
“Oh, right,” said Artyom, as he fished around in his bag for the money. Artyom realized that there wasn’t much money left, and that the map would put him back to the last of his gold. He still had enough for another night at the inn, but he had to make do for another week! Well, that was a problem for later.
Artyom handed the coins to Carr, who barely glanced at them before putting them inside his desk, before returning to his work. He picked up the brush he’d placed down and focused his full attention onto the canvas in front of him, as if Artyom was never there.
Having accomplished what he wanted, Artyom was ready to make his leave. But something about Carr interested him.
“So…” began Artyom, ever the master at smalltalk. “Looks like you really like drawing maps.”
“Mhm,” replied Carr, paying barely a speck of attention to Artyom.
“You’ve been doing this a while?”
“Twenty years,” he replied.
“Wow, you must have one heck of a Skill to draw so many of these maps, then. Uh, are you using it right now?”
“No. If I were, then the map would just show up on the paper.” Carr still hadn’t looked up again, but his eyes began to narrow and his grip tightened around the brush.
“Huh, why aren’t you using it then? It’d probably be a lot faster.”
Carr arrested his hand mid stroke before taking a deep breath. He slowly lifted the brush off the canvas and set it aside, eyes still on the page in front of him.
“I didn’t become a map maker to have a Skill do what I love for me,” he replied gruffly.
Artyom stood still, processing Carr’s response. He was different from the others Artyom had met so far, and he could understand how. Artyom slowly smiled as he made his way to the exit.
“Hey Carr,” he began.
Carr looked away from his work with confusion on his face.
“Keep drawing your maps.” Artyom opened the door and left the shop.
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On his way towards the western exit, Artyom looked around for where he could buy lunch for a single copper coin. He’d paid for another night at the inn, and that left him flat out broke. Sure, he could hope that the dungeon he was about to raid had hidden caches of gold, but he wasn’t about to risk a place to sleep on such a hunch, especially when the place could already have been looted. From the signage of the street vendors, he’d been able to work out that each denomination was worth 10 of the previous, with gold being worth 10 silver, which in turn was worth 10 copper. A copper was roughly the equivalent of an American dollar in this world, and that meant all it would get him was scraps. He slowly rummaged around his bag, hoping to find a loose silver, but he found something else.
“I’m a fucking idiot,” Artyom whispered to himself.
The rectangular bars wrapped in wax paper somehow missed his attention the entire time he was in this World. Artyom had forgotten that one of the items packed in his survival bag was a set of nonperishable rations. Food. Artyom continued to curse himself at how remembering the obvious would’ve helped him so much throughout his mission so far. Skipping the purchase of additional rations back in Freeacres, not having to spend most of a gold coin on “exotic” food at this town’s inn, but most importantly, not having to worry about finding lunch.
Artyom sighed and decided to take this epiphany as good fortune instead of mourning lost opportunities. He unwrapped one of the bars and took a bite. Whatever science team had put this together prioritized nutrition and caloric density over everything else. Artyom cringed as he forced himself to chew through the bar, each bite sending a small shiver of disgust through his entire body. It was back to mourning lost opportunities for him, namely with not eating this when he was hungry enough not to care.
"I could be eating a fried egg sandwich, or tacos!" lamented Artyom, his nose filled with the scent of fast food from the nearby stalls. "They actually have tacos here, fried corn tortilla and all! Why do they have to cost two coppers?"
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Artyom left town and made his way down the cobblestone path, half a bar in his hand. He decided that that was enough and put the rest away in his bag, as a full bar was supposed to last the entire day. Yeah, that was why.
As soon as the cobblestones stopped and dirt took their place, Artyom took out the map to find his bearings. The map was incredibly straightforward, more so than most Earth maps. It didn’t hurt that details were sparse, but even the ones present were well organized and easy to understand.
The map detailed several paths branching from the main road that led to common destinations. Wherever a path led that had no road included distinct landmarks. Artyom’s destination lay on one of these untread paths, and he’d already arrived at the first landmark; where the cobblestones end. Artyom looked down and appreciated the coincidence, before turning perpendicular to the road facing left and made his way into the forest ahead.
As he made his way through the various thickets and brambles, Artyom was continuously surprised by the specificity of the landmarks, and how easy they were to spot. He was sure that Carr had to traverse these paths himself to make these maps, and appreciated the cartographer even more. He even noted the possible dangers, including wolves and bears that mostly prey on Kobolds, but should still be avoided by people.
“Alright, turn left at the banana tree in the clearing surrounded by maples, and I should be there. Wait, a banana tree in this climate? And surrounded by maple?” asked Artyom.
But lo and behold, there was in fact such a feature in the forest, a banana tree growing in the cool climate. Artyom approached it bewildered, before accepting it as another quirk of this World, perhaps the result of magic. He turned left and continued on for a few seconds before he reached a hillside cave entrance. Artyom took one more look at his map before rolling it up and placing it back inside his bag. Here it was, Crystal Kobold Crossing.
“Alright, then. Let’s see if the Great Hero has been here yet.”