“Um, isn’t this the keep?” I asked as we stood beneath the towering portcullis as it slowly rose to let us in.
Gertie glanced at me. “So? You said you wanted to see the appraiser, right?”
“Do you keep him in the dungeon?”
She scoffed. “Hardly. The appraiser is one of the most prestigious dwarves in the kingdom. Do you realize how many unknown items we find under the mountains?”
I looked over the buildings behind the heavily fortified gate in the distance. “What else do you keep in here besides the dungeons? Is there a treasury?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, giving me a side-eye. “This is my home.”
“You live in a keep?” I asked.
She scoffed. “It may look rough on the outside, but I assure you the inside has all the best comforts under the mountain. My father would settle for nothing less.”
“Your father, the king?” I asked, remembering Gertie’s conversation with her brother when I met her.
“Unfortunately,” she grumbled. “Are you ready to meet him?”
“I thought you were taking me to the appraiser.”
She smiled. “Well, he’s an important part of the royal course. He should be with my father.”
----------------------------------------
“Gertrude!” a large dwarf, almost twice the size of any other dwarf in the room, bellowed from his throne. “I applaud you for your success on your recent quest.”
Grom sat beside his father looking downcast. Gertie stiffened but strode forward with purpose.
I wondered if I should hang back but Gertie grabbed my hand and dragged me along. “You want to meet the appraiser, right? Don’t get cold feet now.”
Near the throne were several advisors, most of them dwarves. The only one that stood out was a thin tall one in the back with long pointy ears. I put my money on him being the appraiser.
“Gertrude,” the king said again, his voice soft with warmth this time. “Thank you for retrieving my errant heir.”
To my surprise, Gertude smiled and curtsied when she got to her father. Everyone looked at me expectantly, so I bowed.
“This is Veritas, a hero I met on my journey,” she introduced me. “He has taken the mantle of my apprentice.”
“And mine,” Grom muttered, looking at the ground and refusing to make eye contact with me or his father.
“Good!” the king bellowed. “Teach this hero and be done with it. Then I can pass down the…”
“No!” Gertie and Grom screamed at once.
Gertie cleared her throat, clearly the braver of the two. “Ah, well, we don’t intend to cow to your will, Father. You need to get with the times and embrace the future.”
“Nonsense,” the king shot back. “You are still children playing with toys. You will pass down the glorious tradition of the dwarves. It is your birthright.”
“I don’t want it,” Gertie said, standing tall even though her father towered over her. “The sooner you come to grips with that the sooner you can decide on an heir.”
“It won’t be you with that attitude,” the king grumbled, throwing his hands in frustration.
“We both know it can’t be,” Gertie said, eyeing her brother who looked sheepishly away. “Besides, I don’t wouldn’t want it even if you offered.”
“Ah,” the king sighed, following her gaze. “Did you come here to rile me up in front of this human?”
“No!” she snapped defiantly. “This human wants to meet Gregorious.”
“Well, he’s not here,” the king huffed. “You know that boy, always off on the next hunt.”
“Is he there right now?” Gertie asked, her eyes lighting up for the first time since arriving in the keep.
The king shrugged. “Don’t know. If you see him, tell him his brother’s back.”
Gertie spun without replying and dragged me toward the exit. I glanced over my shoulder to see Grom look up just before we left the chamber.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
----------------------------------------
“What was that all about?” I asked as Gertie marched me back into town.
She sighed heavily. “Father is old fashioned. We aren’t. All he can do is threaten us with the succession but none of his children keep with the old ways.”
“Is Gregorious your brother?”
“Half brother,” she explained. “Grom and Greg have the same mother. Father has many wives and even more children.”
“Why did you say you can’t be queen?” I asked. “And if he has a ton of children, how is it that none of them follow the old traditions.”
“That’s where it gets complicated,” she went on. “Only the children of his first wife are allowed to succeed him. Grom, Greg, and Gordonious are it.”
“What about Gordonious?” I asked. “What class is he?”
“We don’t know,” she replied. “He left years ago and nobody knows where he went.”
We arrived at One Man’s Junk before I could ask more about it. Gertie finally let me go and stormed into the shop, looking from aisle to aisle until she spotted a scruffy-looking dwarf in the back.
“Greg!” she hollared. “I got something you need to see.”
“Again?” he asked. “You just had me appraise a sack of junk last night.
“This is so much better,” she replied, pulling out a sealed vase I’d never seen before.
Unknown Urn
Unidentified Cursed Item
Appraisal skill required: 66
“Um, that’s cursed,” I said, backing away from the dwarves.
“Why would you say that?” Gertie asked, looking like she wanted to drop it.
Greg actually took a step toward the vase, reaching out to take it from Gertie before she dropped it. “He has the adventurer’s eye. They can see things even when they can’t properly appraise them.”
He turned it over in his hands, looking for markings.
“What are you doing?” I asked, hoping for the name of the skill.
“What does it look like?” he asked sarcastically. “I’m inspecting this for fine details.”
“Is that a skill?” I asked, probing some more.
He sighed and turned his attention to me. “Look, if you want to learn what I do, you’re going to have to drop either of your current classes. Or wait for…”
The dwarf went back to examining the vase.
“Wait for what?” I finally asked when he showed no signs of continuing.
“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I almost got ahead of myself. Continue your adventure and you’ll find out eventually.”
“Can you at least tell me about your class?” I asked. “What’s it called for starters.”
“Greg is a treasure hunter,” Gertie answered for him. I wasn’t sure if that was a class or a description.
Greg set down the vase. “You’re a curious one, aren’t you? I suppose that is the right mindset for a treasure hunter. Very well, I’ll tell you about it. We travel the world seeking treasure. Not for riches or anything so mundane but for the preservation of the treasures themselves. We gain prestige for extracting and identifying treasures that were once lost to time.”
“Even cursed items?” I asked.
“Especially cursed items,” he replied, showing renewed interest in the vase. “A curse is just a blemish waiting to be cleansed. Part of my job is to restore relics and artifacts. I’m not quite sure what this is but it appears to contain more of a trap than a curse.”
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
He smiled. “Good question. A proper curse involves dark spirits that require holy intervention to cleanse. A trap is just a mechanism built into a treasure to defeat the uninitiated.”
“Uninitiated?” I asked.
Greg laughed. “Watch.”
I did just that as he continued to examine the vase. When he got to the bottom, he muttered, “Ah hah,” before tracing a line that looked like a tiny crack. It glowed where he touched it, forming a green design that looked like an angry face. When it faded, the top popped off with an angry hiss. Greg removed it and reached his hand in. I thought that was incredibly dangerous considering anything could have been inside and was about to tell him so when he pulled it back out clutching a scroll. He looked it over carefully and so did I.
Unknown Scroll
Unidentified Document
Appraisal skill required: 72
“Ah,” he whispered, unfurling the scroll. I still couldn’t recognize it. “It appears, dear sis, that you uncovered some more lore about the hidden clan under the mountain.”
I wanted to tell him that I knew all about Under Drunder but couldn’t be sure what he would do with the information, or who else was listening for that matter. Gertie snatched the scroll and began reading intently, ignoring everything else around her.
“Tell me about the skills you just used,” I continued my interrogation. “You figured out it was a trap, disarmed it, and then appraised the scroll. I’m considering the class and I want to know more about it.”
Greg rubbed his chin before coming to a decision. “Tell you what. You find me something to appraise and I’ll walk you through the process.”
Without hesitating, I removed the glowing green ore from my inventory. Greg’s eyes lit up when he saw it. “Where in Drunder did you get that?”
“Mount Bountiful,” I replied honestly.
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious? We scoured that mountain.”
“He’s telling the truth,” Gertie said without looking up from the scroll. “Took him there this morning.”
Greg gently took the ore from me. “Okay, fine. For something as simple as this, the Identify skill will suffice. That skill is a compendiary of items. It provides a name and any known attributes. The Appraise skill is an alternate form of the skill used to determine the rarity and value of an item. That’s not always useful as merchants will often place value based on current market trends such as supply and demand.”
“What about the curse,” I asked. “How did you break that?”
He clicked his tongue. “If you want to know about that, you’ll have to accept the class or come back with a cursed item.”
“Okay,” I sighed, satisfied with the info I’d managed to extract. “So, what is it?”
Greg leaned in so only I could hear. “This is Krionite. It’s not originally from this world and is very rare. Legend has it that orcs of old fashioned their greatest weapon out of it. You might have just dug up the largest specimen in the world.”
“That is very interesting indeed,” One Man said from behind the counter. Apparently, his hearing was superhuman. “Are you interested in making a deal? I have lots of gold, and even more to trade.”
“Hmm,” I replied, looking from Greg to Gertie skeptically. Gertie ignored me and Greg just shrugged.
“Follow me,” One Man said, beckoning me toward a door behind the counter. Greg went to follow and One Man held up a hand. “Sorry, not this time, friend.”
The room in the back contained the treasure I expected to see when I first came into the shop. Matching sets of armor stood on mannequins but they were all too high level for me to equip. There were also a variety of weapons. Again, very fancy but also out of my level range. I supposed I could trade for something and grow into it but I had a feeling there was something more. Something I could use right away.
I was about to give up when I saw it. Sitting in the back of the shop and resting against the wall like it didn’t belong there was a simple wooden shovel.