Watcher's Test Page 17
“The darkness of night often makes simple truths clear or perhaps the lies we tell ourselves become more palatable.” —Engraving inside the tomb of a Valthryne Blood Lord
Maxwell sat in a back corner of a dimly lit bar down by the docks in one of the seedier parts of an already seedy town. Rostock was little more than a large port with multiple docks, warehouses, and various merchant establishments. There was little in the way of local commerce because the capital, Konig, was only ten miles up the river and had better wares, better prices, and in general, better everything. Rostock’s local population was limited to a few innkeepers, whores, and a couple of small shops whose owners thought to get business not by providing better goods or better prices but by being the first option to greet anyone disembarking from the many ships that dock here. The whores especially were popular with the sailors and had more latitude in Rostock than in the capital. It wasn’t that there weren’t women of the night in other parts of Albia; it was simply that the public morality of the nation didn’t allow for such things in the open. Rostock was different. Most of the country didn’t care what happened in Rostock as long as ships docked, and the goods were then portaged up to the capital. The arrangement also suited King Borstein because unlike some other nations where the capital was a seaport itself, by having Konig ten miles inland, it provided a buffer for any attack by sea. The broken and jagged coastline to the north and the centaurs to the south made Rostock the only viable port on the eastern side of the continent, at least as far as the humans knew.
The Cracked Oar was one of three small taverns in town. They each had a couple of guest rooms, but no one actually slept in them. It wouldn’t have been safe, and that wasn’t what they were for. The staff consisted of the owner/barkeep Yagmov, a half-orc, which was a rarity in and of itself, along with his human wife who served as the cook, a couple of young girls who helped in the kitchen, and half a dozen servers, all female and ranging from eighteen to forty-something. Yagmov provided security and poured the drinks while settling everyone's tabs and the serving women walked from table to table serving food, drink, and other things. While their attire might have been risqué in the capital, it wasn’t anything compared to some of the places the sailors hailed from. Shirts were cut a bit short to show some midriff and skirts were tight enough to show the shape of the hips as they walked with a perfectly mastered sway. Their figures in keeping with the standards of beauty for Albia, which is to say that they were all full-figured, curvy with enough flesh to pinch but only two fingers worth. In Albia, a full-figured woman meant that she was healthy with enough food to eat and hips wide enough for bearing children rather than the stick-thin figures of elves. The nobility prized those traits and bred them into their daughters, so it spread throughout the culture.
Maxwell, or Max as he preferred, didn’t ever drink to the point of losing control but sometimes he wished he could drink enough to forget. He wasn’t sure which he wished to forget more: his past and what he had lost or his new life in Albia along with the things that he had to do to secure this new life. He was well-known to the serving women of the Cracked Oar and it was just as well-known that while he tipped well. He never wanted conversation let alone any extra services. What was not known so well here was that Max was the leader of a squad of the Purple and Gold, an esteemed position, but in his mind, a position little better than a hired hand and not one with much choice in what he did, for that matter. His ebony skin and smooth shaved head clearly marked him as an outlander. Even the large golden earring in the left ear was clearly of the style worn in the spice islands. He was not the only member of the Purple and Gold who was not Albian by birth. In fact, the current king had something of a preference for those from outside of the kingdom, seeming to believe that they were better choices for his personal guard because of a lack of political motivations or attachments in Albia. The squad members were not prohibited from marrying, but if they did marry, then their families had to live in specially appointed quarters set aside near the palace by the king. They would live the best lives possible for non-nobles, but do so under the ever-watchful eye of the king and serve as a final assurance of loyalty. Not that they were needed. The magical tattoo which all Purple and Gold had to take upon completing their training was meant to provide not only substantial buffs to the new squad member but was primarily meant to ensure their loyalty. Even magic can’t force loyalty, apart from very short duration charm spells, but the tattoo makes it so its bearer is physically unable to harm the king or his family or to lie to any of the same. Each tattoo was personally prepared by the royal mage and worked to enhance the primary stats of its bearer, at least if it was done properly.
In Max’s case, he didn’t feel the binding effect was necessary. He truly had no connections to anyone in Albia before arriving by ship in Rostock several years ago. Since then, he had not formed any attachments. He had learned the hard way how attachments can be ripped away and so had walled up his heart against any such thing. Sure, he felt camaraderie with the squad members that he commanded. That was inevitable after all the fighting they did, necessary for the level of performance required of them and probably a good thing. It kept him from feeling entirely dead inside. Yet if he allowed himself any time for self-reflection, Max would have been sage enough to realize that the sense of detachment was what had allowed him to advance so far. He was one of only a handful of tier 3 humans in Albia. Besides the king, the royal mage, and another member of his squad, there weren’t any others near the capital. Any others being stationed along the western border. He would also have realized that gaining a rare class, Crimson Vanguard, had also allowed him to advance further. It provided perks that other unclassed or even base classed humans simply couldn’t match. The number one advantage that humans had was their XP bonus. This allowed for any humans actually willing to take on an adventurer's life or even a military life and who was lucky enough to survive for a time to quickly gain a few levels. It got harder after that because as one leveled, they either had to go into continually more dangerous zones where fewer and fewer humans were willing to go or end up stagnating. Very few leveled humans made it past the single digits and almost none made it into the third tier. Further, humans lacked the racial bonuses to stats and skills which all of the other races seemed to enjoy. Sure, humans didn’t have any stat penalties but since every warrior of another race he had ever met had built around the strengths of their race, those bonuses really stacked up to make them more effective at what they were intending to do. This was another advantage of humans: versatility. Humans would never be as strong as orcs, as durable as dwarves, as agile as moon elves, or as good of casters as sun elves, and that wasn’t even talking about the truly powerful races like the minotaurs to the south. Those cow-headed beasts masquerading as men were just so physically powerful as to be overwhelming. Yet these traits, which made orcs into great shock troops or dwarves into great defenders, also tended to make them predictable in their outlook and approach. When fighting a sun elf, it was safe to assume that they were going to try to use magic against you, so the strength of a human was in having the versatility to counter or to act in less limited ways.
These were not the thoughts that occupied Max’s mind, only the ones that could have crossed his mind if he allowed himself any self-introspection. Rather, the thoughts that crossed Max’s mind, the ones that he drank, hoping to somehow forget yet never really wanting to, were deeper and more personal. Ones that he could only express by drinking for he lacked the words to say what he felt, even inside his own mind. It has been said that some men drink because they are poets and others because they are not. For Max, the latter was definitely true. All he could see in his mind’s eye was a bright smile and an infectious laugh as he spun around with little hands clasped in his own.
“Captain?”
“Captain?”
“Can you hear me?”
Max opened his eyes, but the image in his mind didn’t fade away. No, he was forced to tamp it down,
to push it deep and seal the lid over it, wrapped in chains to not allow any emotion to leak out. That done, he was able to focus on the voice calling his name. What he saw was not at all what he had expected. He had expected a royal page sent to find him and call him for some new mission. Not in a million years would he have expected to see Eleazor, the King’s Steward standing in front of his table in person. Not only in person, but without any guards beside him. Something was up and he wasn’t sure what it was, only that it put him on edge.
“May I sit?” asked the Steward in his overly formal manner. He wasn’t wearing any insignia of rank, but he still stuck out in this sort of bar. He had neither the swagger nor the slumped shoulders which represented the two primary variants of the patrons here. Eleazor had a quiet confidence not born of physical might but of an innate competence and an awareness of his own worth.
“Of course, but I have to ask you not to call me by rank here. Here, I’m just another man drinking away his sorrows,” responded Max in a quiet voice.
“I’m sure it’s none of my business, but I will keep your request in mind. Actually, I am glad for a level of anonymity here as it is for that very reason that I sought you out here rather than sending a page.”
“So this must be something off the books. Either that or it is something with political ramifications.” Max had long ago mastered the ability to speak in a hushed whisper, which the person he was speaking too could hear but which wouldn’t carry beyond their table. Even better in a place like this, that was the common way that people carried on their conversations, except of course for the occasional boisterous drunk.
“A little of both, but more of the latter. The king tasked me with sending a full squad of the Purple and Gold to check out an issue that he is concerned about. It seems as if one or two dukes are not taking their duties to their liege lord seriously.” The royal steward paused then, making direct eye contact with Max, to make sure that his words were being received with the appropriate gravity. After reviewing activity reports and making some subtle inquiries, he was confident that Captain Smart’s squad was not only one of the most effective squads but also seemed to have absolutely no political connections. At first, that had bothered Eleazor. In his world, no one was entirely free of the tiny hooks that political contacts place into an individual. It intrigued the consummate politician so much that he had spent the entire day verifying all of his contacts until the second sun had already set. He had had to requisition a horse from the royal stables and then make his way down to Rostock where all the sources agreed it was most likely he would find Captain Smart. So here he was, sitting at this table in a dingy bar, revealing the mission, but more importantly, taking his own measure of the man.
Max didn’t say anything, so Eleazor continued his explanation. “You may not be aware, but the kingdom is experiencing a significant lumber shortage, which has been greatly exacerbated by the goblin incursions on the western front. The king recently ordered the construction of three different villages on the eastern border of the kingdom, yet after an initial uptick, there has been almost no increase in production of lumber. The kingdom is surviving on imports but that won’t be enough once winter comes. We suspect that the problem may be a lack of support from the dukes. In particular, Duke Holstein, since the two villages he had set up had originally been producing lumber but no longer are.”
“No disrespect intended, but isn’t this a bit overkill? I mean, the Purple and Gold are not exactly investigators.”
“You are being asked to perform more than an inspection. Yes, His Majesty wants you to inspect the village and see if you can determine the reason for the lack of lumber production, but if there is a problem with Duke Holstein, the use of your squad makes a political statement as well.”
“I am not happy being used in such a way, but the Purple and Gold serve at the pleasure of King Borstein.”
“Yes, and the reason that I approached you here is that His Majesty wants you to depart first thing in the morning, but to do so circumspectly with no one to know where you are going.” Eleazor was all business at this point.
“Very well, my Lord Steward.” Max recognized that this was the end of the conversation and went back to sipping on his ale. Unlike some fresh recruit, Max knew his work and knew he was good at it. He had time to finish this drink, but then he would have to head out and find the rest of his squad. They had been on a short furlough and weren’t supposed to have to report back to duty for another three days, so it might take some work to find them. He hadn’t told the steward that it was unlikely that his squad could leave by first light. Well honestly, not unlikely, rather impossible, but Max had found it better not to bother the king or his steward with such things. After all, what mattered was when his squad got to the logging villages rather than when they left, and his squad could travel faster than any other squad if they had a reason.
A couple hours before the second sunset, Krinnk awoke from his sleep in the long grasses along the shoreline of the Seinna. The light level was now low enough that he could travel without discomfort. He quickly munched down one of the dried fish that he had packed for supplies. Then he decided to continue east along the river to make sure there weren’t any other villages. Krinnk traveled and packed light. His only clothing a deerskin loincloth held against his skinny frame by a belt of tightly twisted rough leather cord. Connected to his belt, he had a crude iron dagger with no sheath, a sling with five smooth stones, a water skin that constantly had a slow leak, and slung over his shoulder was a pack made of the same type of deerskin, which held his limited rations. All goblins could travel far and fast on very little food. Hunger was a constant companion of goblins and the most driving force in their society. Even a suckling goblin babe never had enough as poorly fed goblin mothers couldn’t produce enough milk. It bred a race of creatures driven by primal need to the exclusion of all else. This more than anything else made the goblin horde such an oddity, that this many goblins could be held together for such a long period of time. Even when goblins had enough to eat, they always had an insatiable need to find more food with only limited distractions for shiny objects, mating, and their love of inflicting cruelty upon other beings. Hunger and need created in them a hole of insecurity that could never be filled.
As good as other goblins might be at traveling far on little, the scouts were at an entirely new level. Their training, if it could be called such, consisted in part of seeing how long they could go without food. So the fish that he ate today was the first food that he had eaten in three days, and rather than eating it slowly and savoring it, he instinctively devoured it while barely tasting it. The miracle of the goblin scouts was not that they could travel so far or so fast while starving, but rather that they had had it beaten into them that apart from feasts, they only got to eat every third day. The rigors of the torture called their training drilled this into them and also prepared them to travel upwards of thirty miles per night, which given their slight stature and poor overall health was remarkable in the eight to ten hours that the light was limited enough for them to travel with comfort.
Krinnk and the other two scouts had found three villages of the ugly humans. They weren’t big villages, but still full of shiny things and food. Krinnk had unusual thoughts for a goblin. Sometimes he couldn’t make himself understood by his tribemates, and all the goblalinas felt he was odd. The other scouts had wanted to head back as soon as they had discovered the location of the third village. They wanted to be back with the rest of the tribe and didn’t want to miss out on the many shinies and other spoils that would come when the tribe attacked the first village.
A part of Krinnk wanted those same things, but there was this persistent nagging thought in the back of his mind. It was a thought of a need to do better, to make sure there was nothing more past the third village. He didn’t know why he had such un-goblin-like thoughts. In the goblin language, there was no word for duty, so it was not surprising that Krinnk would struggle with these ideas. None
theless, that unspoken need within him pushed him to get up and instead of moving west toward his tribe, he moved to the east as he looked to see the night eye rising in the sky.
Despite the plans to take turns staying awake throughout the night, the stress and exhaustion of nearly twelve hours of fighting and struggling to find a way to survive ended up winning out against those good intentions. They didn’t know how many hours had passed, only that the sun, or more properly, the first sun was rising just above the horizon. They had fallen asleep all clustered together, Dave with his back to the trunk on their platform of tightly twisted branches. Emily and Sara were sleeping with their heads against his chest, and Mira and Jackson both lay curled up, touching the others.
Dave was the first to wake. He could have sworn that he felt a trembling, a slight vibration in the tree. His first thought was that something massive was down on the ground, but he quickly rejected that thought as this tree was massive. He couldn’t imagine how big a creature would have to be to make the tree tremble like this. Then the vibration was gone, and he had to wonder if he ever felt it in the first place.
As Dave started to move, Emily woke up as well. Initially, she was startled by her surroundings. It all seemed surreal as if it had been a dream, but waking up like this made it clear that what she had hoped to find out was only a nightmare was actually her new reality. She leaned her head into Dave’s chest and started to cry softly. This was more than she could bear. She was afraid for her children, for herself, and even for Dave. She was glad for Dave’s chest to cry on and glad too that he wasn’t trying to stop her from crying or even commenting on it. He simply wrapped his arm around her and held her as she shuddered softly against his chest.
After a few minutes, Emily got herself under control again. She and Dave started to speak to one another in soft whispers. With the kids still asleep, this was their first chance for a real adult conversation. Quickly they expressed their fears and their reliance upon each other before progressing on to other matters. Dave tried to explain to Emily as much as he could how Eloria both fit in with his expectations of a game world and how it differed. He explained that in most games the first few levels were easy to get, but in Eloria, it appeared as if people were actively discouraged from even beginning the leveling process due to the extreme penalty on XP, as well as the minimal improvements that the early levels provided. From what information they were able to gather based upon the leveling notifications that they got, each level only produced two stat points, but each level seemed to produce one more character point than the level before it. Dave also explained that it was odd to gain a character point for every twenty XP rather than getting them all at the level up like they did with stat points. Emily really had no basis for comparison, so in many ways, her understanding of the system was more intuitive than Dave’s because he was constantly comparing the rules in Eloria to all of the games he had played over the years. They discussed that the stat system seemed in many ways to be more important than character point system as Dave gained 2% bonus to physical damage from each point of Strength versus only 1% for a point in his Long Blades skill. It further seemed that race, and even Emily’s class bonuses, incentivized putting points into certain stats versus others, at least for Emily and the kids.