Chapter 146 – Peace Treaty.
[Christopher]
[1st floor]
Chris watched as his newly appointed generals, advisors, and various members of his freshly established counsel filed out of the grand hall. Their faces were serious, everyone’s head swimming with deep thoughts of what was to come next. He found it somewhat amusing that everyone thought things were going to become easier now that he had taken the throne. Claiming power was always the easy part. Now came the hard part—maintaining the peace.
As the final person left the room, Chris let out an exhausted sigh. He didn’t want to be doing this at all.
Back on earth, he had been a modern scholar of sorts. He collected doctorates like people collected trading cards. First was law. He was never overly concerned with becoming a lawyer, but his father insisted upon it—he had been the only one of his brothers to escape joining the family business. Next was economics, then philosophy, then a degree in history, which sent him down the art path for a while. He was considering a move into the sciences before the Tower got hold of him. Timing which he considered luckily, seeing as how backwards physics seemed to be inside the Tower.
He had always felt a little empty. Like something was missing. He tried desperately to fill that void with knowledge but always found himself wanting. The Tower had been the missing puzzle piece for him. A magical world filled with endless mystery, powerful magics, items of power beyond comprehension. From a young age he had dismissed things of that nature, choosing to focus on reality and things that actually existed. No matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t get lost in a fantasy novel, couldn’t enjoy tv, couldn’t even play video games. It had always felt like a waste of time to him.
But now it was real.
Never before had he considered himself a violent person, but the idea of swinging a sword, casting a spell, fighting monsters with his life on the line. It was the first thing that made him feel truly alive. He had stepped head long into a fantasy book and had the opportunity to become a hero… or a villain. He honestly didn’t really care one way or the other. He had no intentions of planning his life out anymore, instead just choosing to follow the path he was given no matter where it might lead. He was happy either way. He had taken to magic rather easily, quickly unlocking a mage class and proving himself to be quite the capable adventure. Things had been going rather well in his new life.
Chris’s eyes fell to a weighty tome that sat near the edge of the table, always within his reach.
The Diplomats Curse
Type: Soul Bound Cursed Focus
Tier: Rare
Enchantment Slots: 4/4
Natural Enchant – Peace Treaty
If applicable conditions are met, then a peace treaty is created.
Magi’s Focus – 4 Slots
Increases mana regeneration and casting speed.
*****
A haunted relic of the Oathkeepers, a long-forgotten faction who ensured magical pacts were upheld. While it facilitates peace treaties, its aged pages whisper of ancient wars and the consequences of shattered agreements. Those who wield The Diplomat's Curse find themselves inexorably bound to enforce these pacts, forever haunted by the spectral echoes of broken oaths.
Things had been going well until his newfound sense of adventure led him straight into a cursed dungeon. There wasn’t much information on curses floating about. The general consensus seemed to be they were a double-edged sword, offering great power at a high cost. For instance, Jack. He never got to see the man in action, but Hannah had filled him in on how his curse had worked. Couldn’t use mana throughout his daily life but could drop a tactical nuke that was just as likely to kill him as it was his opponent was how she had described it to him.
As far as double-edged swords went, [The Diplomats Curse] was the high king bastard of them all.
The rules to his curse were relatively straightforward. He could no longer initiate combat against someone. Instead, he had to sue for peace. If he did initiate combat, his stats were cut in half and given to his opponent for the duration of their fight. If he couldn’t kill them, then they just got to keep his stats. He found that out the hard way when he tried to kill a goblin, lost his stats, and then the little green fucker disappeared into the forest never to be seen again.
The upswing, if you could even call it that, was the enchant on his cursed tome, [Peace Treaty]. If he could negotiate terms with whoever his enemy might be, then the enchant would activate creating a treaty that only he could see. It would give it a rarity depending on who he was negotiating with and what it was he was negotiating for, peace between the two parties always had to be the end goal, but the terms were always all over the place. He flipped through the pages of his tome, which also acted as a record book for any existing treatise he had managed to make so far.
Treaty of Balnora
Tier: Uncommon
Witnessed by: Christopher Owens, bearer of the [Peace Treaty] ability.
Parties:
* Christopher Owens, Human, Diplomat.
* Gringle Grobnick, Goblin, Warchief.
Desiring:
* The Human Kingdom desires an end to goblin raids on outlying farms and settlements.
* The Grobnick Clan desires access to scrap metal and discarded alchemical reagents for their tinkering endeavors.
Terms:
1. Safe Passage: The Grobnick Clan agrees to cease all raids on human settlements within a five-mile radius of the Balnora border. Goblins caught raiding outside this zone will be subject to human law.
2. Metal: The Human Kingdom agrees to establish a designated "Grot-Mart" near the border, where broken tools, dented armor, and other unwanted metal scraps will be deposited weekly for goblin collection.
3. Reagent Relief: The Human Kingdom's alchemists will, once a month, designate a small quantity of expired or unusable potions and reagents to be deposited at the Grot-Mart for goblin use. The humans reserve the right to choose the specific materials offered.
4. Theft: Goblins are strictly forbidden from taking anything other than designated materials from the Grot-Mart. Any goblin caught stealing will be apprehended and returned to the Grobnick Clan for punishment.
Dispute Resolution:
* In the event of a disagreement regarding the terms of this treaty, a representative from each party will meet at the Grot-Mart to discuss a solution. The bearer of the Peace Treaty ability may be called upon to mediate if necessary.
Renewal:
This treaty will be in effect for three months, at which point both parties may renegotiate the terms.
Upon Successful Negotiation:
Christopher Owens gains +35 Skill Points for the successful negotiations of an Uncommon rank peace treaty.
Skill points was his reward. For a Common treaty it was 15 skill points. For Uncommon, 35 skill points. He had just completed his first Rare peace treaty, earning him a staggering 75 skill points. It was an absurd number, but he thought it was a rather fitting prize. All he had to do was unite the first floor of humanity under a common banner. Simple, he thought with a sarcastic eye roll. It had of course been anything but. As it turns out when you give everyone the equivalent of super powers, they don’t care as much for things like law and order.
There were several annoying catches with the curse. For instance, he couldn’t operate in bad faith, or at least he couldn’t be obvious about it. There was some sort of ever-present watchdog making sure he was behaving. He tried several times over to goad his opponent into attacking him, which just earned him a stat loss and a difficult fight. It did seem the more Machiavellian he was, the easier it was to get away with something that might be considered “bad faith negotiations”.
He did quickly learn that the curse had zero issues with him getting other people to do his dirty work, so long as they seemed to think it was their idea. That’s where Hannah and Jack came into play.
He liked both of them quite a lot. Hannah was incredibly talented, smart, wildly effective at whatever she set her mind to, and gorgeous to boot. Jack was the singular most brutally effective human being he had ever met. Even though the man didn’t seem to care much for him, he very much enjoyed Jack and his antics. He found it amusing the absolute chaos the man always seemed to leave in his wake.
Chris had used them both to great effect. Eventually, everyone knew who they were, and everyone wanted them gone. Chris had used both Jack and Hannah to sow so much chaos and dissent amongst the ranks of the warring factions that his enemies would have done anything to see them gone.
It wasn’t long before Chris was negotiating deals to have them removed from the first floor. Soon after he was hailed as a hero by all parties, and his rise to power was swift, uniting everyone under a common banner—his. From there was the unfortunate business of overthrowing the current king, but Chris had never been on board with the idea of following a king that was created by the Tower. Even if he was really nice.
He did feel awful about tricking Jack and Hannah into leaving for the second floor. He had formed a rather intimate relationship with Hannah, and considered both of them to be his close, if not his only friends, but he was concerned that if they knew about his curse, knew about how he was manipulating events, then the watchdog would’ve kicked in and ruined everything for him. He hoped to make things right with her soon. He would need them both moving forward.
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Chris let out another annoyed sigh. At this point, he was a venerable powerhouse. He had an absurd number of stats, and even though he was only level twelve he effectively had the stats points of someone in their thirties. The only problem was he just couldn’t use it. At least not easily.
Sometimes negotiations were simply impossible. There wasn’t much he could say to a yeti, and they would attack him before he could even bring up the idea of a peace treaty. He liked it when that happened the most and he could rip his opponent to shreds.
It didn’t work on every monster though. One time he negotiated a peace treaty by having a local butcher bring his leftover scraps to a den of hungry wolves every week. It was truly all over the place who and what he could form a treaty with.
The worst though was when a treaty was broken. He had to be careful what he promised. If he failed to deliver on his promises, then he would wake up missing the stats he had earned, with interest. He always tried to make the peace treaty as short as possible, but it seemed the length of the treaty played a big role in the rarity of the treaty.
The door to the meeting room burst open and a guard stumbled in, red in the face and panting as though he had just sprinted through the entire castle. Chris stood up quickly to address the man.
“Lord Owens sir,” the guard bowed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Someone is trying to break into the castle, we must get you to a safe room fast,”
Chris didn’t budge. There was no one left to attack him, he thought. “Who?”
“Err…” the guard looked almost embarrassed.
“Out with it,” Chris commanded.
“It’s a lone assailant. I know it’s absurd to put you into hiding for one person, but she seems powerful, and you can never be too safe these days. She threatened to blow up the castle if we didn’t let her inside.”
The castle shook a moment later, dust falling from the rafters above. The guard turned to the source of the noise, his eyes wide with panic.
“I think you better let her inside then,” Chris suggested, a small smile on his face.
“What? Sir? Do you know the attacker?” he stumbled.
“With any luck, it’s my girlfriend…” Chris said, moving past the guard and heading down towards the gate to stop Hannah from blowing up their new castle.
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[Second Floor]
[Somewhere in the Broken Moon Desert]
[Lozo]
Lozo lay back on the sands, his shell shattered, panting heavily, his eyes filled with tears for his lost comrades. He pushed himself up off the ground and glanced at the five remaining tortuga he had with him. They were all in a state similar to his own.
They weren’t supposed to be out here. They were supposed to be inside the city, defending the sector for their new human leader. Kain had grown impatient though and sent a small warband of thirty out into the desert to hunt the moonlight beasts. Lozo had been out here for months on end now, pushing further and further away from the city. They had gone so far that the broken moon hanging heavy in the sky was nothing more than a bright dot.
Their hunting had been rather successful for several months. But something had changed. There was a noticeable trend of the moonlight beasts growing noticeably stronger, but it hadn’t been anything they couldn’t handle, and it seemed to be happening slow enough that it wasn’t cause for concern. This last one though… Lozo turned to look at the chaos of the battlefield. It was often hard to see signs of a fight within the ever-shifting sands of an endless desert. It wasn’t hard this time.
A giant tortoise shell towered over the battlefield. It was the largest moonlight beast they had fought yet. Six clawed legs hung lifeless out of its shell. The surrounding sands were turned to glass from the monster’s fiery breath. The corpses of his dead comrades lined the battlefield. The beast surprised them. What they thought was a giant sand dune was actually the monster itself hiding below. The fight took everything they had, and then some. Lozo racked his mind for what could have changed. Something had happened. There had been no signs of a moonlight beast this powerful before. They survived for months on end without a single casualty, and then in one fight he lost eighty-five percent of his fighting force. It didn’t make sense. Lozo ground his teeth together and pushed up off the ground. With only five of them remaining they were in a dangerous spot. If they came across another moonlight beast it would be a very different story. This fight had cost them everything.
He walked over to his remaining troops. “We make camp tonight and head back to the city in the morning…” Lozo trailed off as he stepped up next to the small group of five. They were circled around a hole in the ground. He squinted into the gaping maw; the darkness absolute. It looked as though something had crashed through, creating the hole. He brushed away the loose sand at its edge, his fingers scraped against a cool, slate-grey stone. Unlike the haphazard dunes, these were meticulously cut rectangles, bound together with a stubborn mortar. Their fight with the massive creature had shifted the sand and unearthed something lost to the sands of time.
“Light,” Lozo commanded.
One of the tortuga lowered his hand to the hole and shot a spell inside, banishing the darkness with a bright yellow light. Lozo listened, waited patiently for over thirty minutes, stretching his senses to listen for anything that might be inside. He waved his hand in the hole, half expecting a dungeon prompt, but nothing came. He dropped inside, falling thirty or so feet to the ground below with a loud thud. Without command his troops followed, landing behind him with loud thuds of their own.
The room was large and rectangular, with massive stone columns leading long ways throughout the hall. A large wooden door made up one end of the room. The stone walls had ancient glyphs carved into every inch of them. Lozo frowned as he moved in close to inspect them. The system either refused or couldn’t translate the strange glyphs. That had never happened before.
“Over here,” one of his soldiers said. Lozo quickly turned to join him. At the end opposite the door was a set of stairs, leading to a small stage. On the stage was a large opulent coffin of bleached wood polished smooth. Gems of every color lined the edges, with a particularly large ruby set in the center. It was covered head to toe in the same undecipherable glyphs that lined the walls.
“Everyone on me,” Lozo called out to the rest of the troops, and they fell into formation around him, spears leveled at the coffin. Little was known about the deserts that surrounded the city. Lozo couldn’t hide the greed in his heart as he stared at a coffin clearly designed for royalty. It likely had treasure inside. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice screamed at him. This was an undead city after all. Opening a coffin was bound to cause trouble. He was also in no shape to fight, none of his troops were.
“It’s our reward,” One of the tortuga, Digbar, said as Lozo pulled his hand away from the coffin.
“What?” Lozo asked, confused.
“Think about it… That moonlight beast we just fought was so powerful, it only makes sense that it was a boss, no? We even all gained a level from killing it. This is the treasure room,” Digbar was grinning at this point. The other tortuga all seemed to be nodding in agreement.
The Tower was known to reward difficult battles, Lozo thought with another glance at the coffin. Rewarding us all with an ancient long buried treasure did seem fair for killing all of his soldiers. Unable to restrain his greed, and desperately looking for anything to right the wrongs of his loss of soldiers, he pushed off the lid of the coffin.
A tall, slender elf lay inside. His hair was long, and so blonde it was almost white. His skin was a pale faded white and his face looked almost sickly, as though his death had not been a peaceful one. He wore silk robes of red that remained unmolested by the passing of time. The only thing that was cause for concern was the large black spike that stabbed directly into the center of his chest.
His attention was quickly pulled away. Jeweled rings adorned each of his long fingers, and Lozo couldn’t hide the shock on his face as he inspected each one. Ten rare rings. In fact, all of his jewelry was rare. His earrings, his medallion he wore around his neck.
“He’s laying on something,” Digbar said, trying to roll the corpse over. Lozdog moved to help him. It looked like a staff of some sorts, but they couldn’t see enough of the item to inspect it. The corpse was like a stone, refusing to budge even an inch.
“What the hell,” Digbar complained. “It’s this damn spike, he’s nailed to the coffin.”
“Don’t,” Lozo tried to stop the man, but he was too slow. The idiot grabbed it and pulled it. It came out easily and crumbled into dust in his hands.
“Everyone back,” Lozo commanded, pulling out his spear and leveling it at the coffin.
Several minutes passed by where nothing happened, but he wouldn’t allow his soldiers to leave formation. Lozo cursed himself over and over again. He was exhausted from the fight and wasn’t thinking straight. He let himself become blinded by greed so easily. You’re supposed to be leading them, not getting them killed on treasure hunts he chastised himself.
An arm slowly raised up out of the coffin, gripping the side of the side for leverage. The elf slowly pulled himself up, inspecting his surroundings. His sickly pale face landed on Lozo and his troops. He smiled at them.
“Well you all look interesting. Tell me, what race are you?” the elf grinned, his eyes inspecting the tortuga.
Lozo stared at the elf blankly, who met his gaze with expectant eyes.
“Tortuga…” Lozo slowly said.
“Interesting. I’ve never heard of Tortuga,” he said, trying out the word. “I always thought it would be humans who found the cure with how smart Andurian is. Oh, how I’ve looked forward to this day. I certainly never suspected it to be turtles who would rescue me, but I suppose beggars can’t be choosers,” he said with some wistfulness.
The elf climbed out of the coffin, dusting himself off of nonexistent dust and turning back to the group. Lozo and his soldiers fell back into stance, even more confused.
“Now, if you will, the cure please,” he extended a long, elegant hand.
“What are you talking about? What cure?” Lozo asked, gripping his spear all the tighter.
The elf’s smile faded, and he inspected his surroundings once more.
“Please tell me you read the instructions… They are literally plastered all over the walls. I was sure to make it obvious to avoid this very thing from happening.” He turned and walked over to the wall, tapping the glyphs one by one. “Do not remove the stake until a cure for vampirism has been created or found,” he read aloud.
Lozo stared at the elf blankly once more. “You can read that?”
This time it was the elfs turn to stare blankly. “You can’t? Do they not teach Godscript in the Tower anymore?”
“…Godscript?” Lozo asked, unfamiliar with the word.
The elf let out a long, dramatic sigh, rubbing at his forehead. “So, I take it you don’t have the cure… Well, this is disappointing.” He walked back over to the coffin, leaning against it. “All right, well, go ahead and stake me, send me back to my eternal slumber. Although I suppose I should leave a different note, so this sort of thing doesn’t happen again… Can’t read Godscript. How absurd.” He was mumbling to himself as he rifled through his coffin, looking for something.
“What do you mean stake you?”
The elf peered up from his coffin, flashing Lozo an obvious smile full of teeth. Fanged teeth.
He felt a shiver run down his spine. A vampire.
“Wont… Won’t staking you kill you?” Lozo tried.
“Sure, but I’m not talking about that kind of stake. What I need is a Stake of Eternal Slumber. You know that black thorn you stupidly pulled from my chest? One of those. It will maintain the integrity of my mind and body for, well, all eternity,” he said, still not looking up from his coffin. “Could I trouble one of you for a pen and paper?” he turned to ask.
“I’m afraid we don’t have a Stake of Eternal Slumber…” Lozo swallowed hard.
The vampire let out another long, dramatic sigh. He turned to Lozo, his eyes narrowing once more as he inspected each of the tortuga.
“I was trying to be subtle, but you do realize I’m a vampire, correct?”
“Yes,” Lozo nodded.
“And while I don’t know exactly how long I’ve been here waiting, I think it’s safe to assume it’s been a long time, no?”
Lozo nodded again, though he honestly wasn’t sure. The elf certainly didn’t look like any elf he had seen before. Even with his sickly and pale face, the elf had the air of something… higher? More noble?
“Good. So it would be safe for us both to assume that I, the vampire, am probably exceptionally hungry, no?”
The room was filled with a deadly silence, no one willing to make the first move.
“Oh, don’t be such cowards. I’m not actually going to eat you all. I’ve never had turtle before, but I’m certain you aren’t my type. I just want you to appreciate that I am very disappointed with the lot of you, and if I were any other vampire, you would all be dead by now,” he scoffed. “Broken Moon City still stands I presume?”
Lozo nodded.
“Good. Take me there and we shall buy a new stake. I warn you though, they are quite expensive. Seeing as how this is all your fault, I expect you to pay for it. That won’t be an issue I presume?”
“No, not at all,” Lozo quickly said. “The city might be different from what you imagined though… Are you sure you know where to buy one?”
“Of course,” the elf said haughtily. “I had Andurian make the first one for me. Once we find him, I’ll have him make another.” The elf pushed past the turtles and walked to the opposite end of the hall, pulling on the door at the end. “Why won’t this door open?” he complained loudly.
Lozo just stared at the strange vampire elf pulling at the door. Who the hell is Andurian? He wondered.