Vultressant went to practice with the Anuran woman, and Vanya filled a bowl with the fish stew. It appeared to be the only thing that had any vegetables in it. It was spicy, but surprisingly good. She turned her attention to the language lesion, and she focused her emerald green eyes on the Anuran conversing with Vultressant. The race seemed to be friendly, and it looked as if they had no problem with supplying information to the party. They did appear to be relatively secluded, however, and might not have much in the way of accurate information to share.
Vanya finished eating and went back to talk to Maroftis. “I think that you’re probably right about needing other races to get solid information, but I think that we might get something useful from the Anurans.” He tried to understand her words, but without Vultressant there to translate, she would need to try to find a way to dumb it down for him. “Never mind,” she continued. “Why don’t I talk to you for a while in Common and give you some practice with that. Vult shouldn’t have to be the only one giving you lessons.”
Maroftis struggled to follow her words, but he seemed to get the gist of them, and he nodded and said, “I try. No sure thing.”
Maroftis and Vanya did their best to converse, but after several minutes of listening to them talk, Taloc called over to them. “Hey Maroftis,” Taloc said, “say ‘Hear the lamentations of the women.’”
Maroftis repeated the words, and Taloc doubled over laughing. “Me sound as Arnold?” Maroftis asked.
When the Ranger could contain his laughter, he held up a hand with his thumb and index finger less than an inch apart. “Little bit, yeah.”
Maroftis shook his head and went to grab another large filet.
When the Anuran finally left, it was twilight outside. Vultressant grabbed a piece of smoked fish to eat while he gathered the others for a meeting. Ewtain was outside practicing throwing knives into a tree, so Vultressant sent Isla out to bring him in. Taloc had been looking at his HUD, but he stood up and dismissed the notes that he’d been working on. Maroftis had long since given up on his studies of Common and was dozing on the largest of the cots that were set up at the far end of the room. Vanya put the potion that she had been working on away and went to wake him.
When they were all assembled and attentive, Vultressant began. “I learned a few things from Tollaisa while she was helping me learn her language. First, the Anurans are split into three septs or clans, and this one is called Ranid—it’s the largest of the three. The other two are in this general area, and they all get along just fine, but each group has a different set of leaders that make the decisions for their community.”
“How do you know that they get along so well?” Isla asked.
“Well, remember that the race is pretty docile, and they appear to be a live-and-let-live sort of people…”
“Frog-men?” Maroftis interrupted with a wide grin, displaying a vast amount of gleaming white teeth.
Vultressant held up a hand. “They don’t like being called frogs, so we should try to refrain from referring to them like that. They may be doormats, but we need their assistance, and I would rather not have to subjugate them even if we could—our numbers are small and we are inexperienced in this world. Also, it seems that people get jumpy when we use a language that isn’t native to this area, so we need to speak Common unless it is absolutely necessary that we use Koraken.” He looked up at Maroftis with an eyebrow raised. “I saw that Vanya was helping you with the language; how’d it go?”
Maroftis sighed and looked away, and Vanya laughed. “He is not a good student.”
Vultressant looked at him pleadingly, and in Koraken, he said, “Dude, you have to learn it. We have already had some minor problems when we spoke your language in front of people who don’t know it, and it’s likely to get worse if we continue.”
While Maroftis had no desire to practice the language, he knew that if he didn’t agree, the little Gnome would not let the matter go, so he said in Common, “Yeah, I do thing.” He had little intention of trying any harder, but it was best to say that so they could let the matter drop for now.
“Tollaisa gave me some info about what we’re likely to find in the surrounding areas,” Vultressant said, going back to Common, but trying to speak more slowly for Maroftis’s sake. “There are a couple of populous cities to the south, the ones that the leaders asked us if we were from. To the north and west, the land is hillier, and there are Dwarves and Gnomes there along with a few races that are a bit more hostile, like Goblins, Orcs, Gnolls, and other nasties. To the east is more forest and wilder land, and she said that the best chance to find Elves in this vicinity would be in that direction, but she wasn’t certain.”
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“I don’t want to go where all the baddies are,” Isla said. “I prefer the cities.”
“Cities are probably a good first location,” Vultressant agreed, “but the north doesn’t sound too bad by the settlements. From what she said, most of the prevalent races are pretty weak, and while the Orcs are stronger, they are tribal and unorganized. Each clan is run by a Shaman, or sometimes a Warlock, and the clans fight with each other almost as much as they do with the good races in the region. On rare occasions, a very powerful Shaman will unite two or three clans and cause real problems, but the unity rarely lasts long, and either the leader is deposed by an ambitious underling or the locals go out in force and smash them. I’m not saying that we go straight there, but we should keep it in mind for when we get more skills and experience.”
“I would like to meet some other Elves,” Vanya said, “but I think that the cities are a good starting place, and we might find some there.”
Vultressant nodded in agreement. “Any other thoughts?” he asked. No one responded, and they all seemed to be in agreement.
“When should we head south?” Ewtain asked.
Vultressant had already thought of that. “Well, I would like to get my skill in Anuran up to ten before we leave so that I can get an attribute bump. It’s unlikely that I’ll get a chance to increase it if there’s no one to speak to who knows the language well.”
Taloc nodded. “This place seems safe enough, and I would like to learn what we can from the Anurans. On a side note, I was looking through the HUD interface and messing with the bind spot feature. I’ll show you.” He produced an image of his interface and spent a few minutes showing the group what menus to access. A map of the area appeared with a blue arrow pointing to the southwest. Taloc zoomed the map out, and while the outer area was black, there was a blue beacon on a spot that was likely where they entered the world. Vultressant projected his map next to Taloc’s, but his map was more detailed, and it was clear that the beacon was at the start location.
“I thought that we just had to will our bind point to move,” Vultressant said.
“Well, that might be dangerous, since thinking about something might trigger it to actually happen, so the manual way might be safer,” Taloc reasoned.
“Doesn’t it take five minutes to do?” Vanya asked.
“Maybe after it’s triggered,” Taloc said, “or maybe we have to concentrate for the entire five minutes. I don’t think that we should bind here yet; if something goes wrong, we have a relatively safe location to come back at. When we’re ready to go, we can maybe change it to something nearby.”
Isla did not hesitate to object. “What happens if one of us dies while training in this area? Only Vult has a map that’s useful at all. How do you propose we get back here?”
“Maybe we could make a copy of the map for each of us and put it in our inventories,” Vanya suggested.
“We don’t even know if we’ll respawn with the stuff in our inventory,” Isla countered. There was a pause as everyone looked at her with thoughtful expressions. “What? Have none of you thought of that?”
Taloc was the first to speak. “You have a point, but we should at least prepare something just in case. I think that waiting to change our bind points and making a map in the hopes that it’ll be there when we revive makes sense. We can ask the leaders if there’s a way to locate others using the interface if we get separated. I can see where you all are in party view, but I don’t know the range of that. I don’t think that we should discuss the revive ability that we have with the elders. Just in case things turn sideways here.”
“Do you think that they will?” Vanya asked with real concern in her voice.
“Not really,” he admitted, “but I would rather not give them any sensitive information about us unless we have to. They might have the same two lives that we do, they might be players like us but with only one life, or they could be NPCs, but spawn camping could be devastating for us, and while they might not do it, they might give the information to someone who would.” Some games allow for player-versus-player combat where characters respawn at a location that they set. If other players knew the location, they could just keep killing the player at the spawn point as they respawned. Most games have protections for a player after they spawn, like not allowing others to attack them for a set period of time, but other games were still pretty brutal.
“Three lives,” Vultressant stated. “We have two respawns, but this would be our first life.”
Taloc looked at him from the corner of his eye. “That’s what you took from that?”
Vultressant shrugged. “Just saying.”
While clearly exasperated, Taloc continued in an even tone. “I also think that we should leave here soon unless they’re able to help us train or level significantly. We should head to civilization, probably one of the cities to the south, Jestilla or Cairnth.” He held up a hand to forestall an interruption from Isla. “I know that you want to keep to safe areas, Isla, but we need to make sure that we’re getting stronger. We have no idea what sort of things this world can throw at us, and I want to prepare us as quickly as possible. You did say that you wanted to go to a city.”
“Need is newbie zone,” Maroftis said while laughing to himself, and the rest of the group either smiled or nodded in agreement—they did need a newbie zone.
“I remember those two names from the elders, but I thought that they were kingdoms or countries and not cities,” Ewtain said.
Taloc thought for a moment. “I don’t know that they specified. I assumed that they were talking about them as cities, but your guess is equally valid.” He turned to Vultressant. “Vult, when you meet with them, see if you can get directions, a map, or something. And ask for information about what we can expect from each of them—hopefully that will help us make a decision.” Looking at Isla, he added, “Even if that decision ends up being for us to stay here. Right now, I think that we should rest and think about what questions we might want to ask tomorrow.”