Maybe this was due to the dying blessing of the wisp in the forest.
He was happy to notice that his intelligence and knowledge stats were about three times the average for a fifteen-year-old, the higher the stats, the better it would be for a wizard.
This made him flush with excited, but he wondered why he was so lucky — looking around the magnificent hall of the temple, he found somewhere to sit while he waited for the others to finish receiving their blessings. Cera was grateful that he had finally received the gift of self-knowledge from the goddess that he had been told about all his life by his parents.
Ceras had not been taught much about the details of gift except that it allowed him to gain experience and level up in different classes through the ranks. Then suddenly, as he was thinking about this activated the display of information, he saw the projected information in his vision:
Classes
They influence the skills you have.
Dependent on your level you have a mastery:
Apprentice: 1-5
Journey-Man: 6-15
Standard: 16-30
Master: 31-50
Legendary: 51+
To go to the next mastery, you must achieve something worthy of it.
You start as a level one in a class
People can gain classes after 15 years old but do not start with them
Every five levels you gain a skill relevant to your class
This was an interesting and new experience to Ceras as he had been told the information would come slowly to him as he gained experience or thought of a question. Ceras was soon broke away from his thoughts as Rinaldo bounded over to him and hit him on the shoulder, saying,” I chose the barbarian class! It so exciting to be finally able to adventure.”
Ceras thought that Rinaldo looks like an over eager child with a new toy, and in some way that’s what they all were.
After a few minutes of listening to Rinaldo talk about what he would do with his new power, Rhef came over with a smile on her face as she said, “I chose ranger.”
Chapter 3 Guild and Adventures
The three were now newly made adults, in the eyes of the law. They were chatting to each other about what had just happened, with an excited face, the old kind priest came over and said, “Your three had best be going over to the guild to register before they get busy, and from the looks of you go adventuring to earn some money.”
That statement brought a smile to all of their faces as they bowed to the priest and left the temple still smiling with new vigor in their steps.
Rhef said to Ceras, “So did you choose to be a wizard?”
Ceras nodded as the two twins shook their heads with dumbfounded expressions, but said nothing more about his chosen class for the moment.
Crossing the square to the guild headquarters, that was a large complex of building at the edge of the plaza. The temple of the gods and goddess was located in, Ceras noticed that the sun was now just above the horizon, and more people were walking around in the early morning light. Shops were starting to open up as the morning business started open and Ceras could see shopkeepers placing items for people to browse on rough wooden plank tables in front of the shops. The smell of fresh bread wafted through the air reminding him that he had not eaten this morning and felt ever so hungry.
As the three new adventures approached the large stone guild headquarters building with fortification along the top of the building, they saw the heavy wooden doors with iron bolts open, just before they arrived at the steps leading up into the reception hall.
The impressive guild building’s outside was decorated with carvings showing a different hero throughout the grand history of the kingdom. Each hero seemed to have gained fame and wealth with their deeds, as depicted by the story plaques. Ceras noticed that Rinaldo was looking at the plaques with an expression of awe and a mixture of jealousy.
Rinaldo said in an excited voice as he bounced up the steps in excitement, “Good timing! Rhef, I told you it would be best if we got up early.”
Rhef said in an annoying voice at her over-enthusiastic brother, “Shut-up loudmouth.”
Following Rinaldo into the guild reception hall, Ceras saw that they had entered a large hall, with mosaic patterns on the floor, and a high wooden ceiling with magical lights suspended on chains, providing bright yellow light. Along one edge, at the far end of the room was a counter with several people sitting down setting-up for the day’s work of helping the guild adventures. The rest of the room was taken up with large bookshelves containing thousands of thin boards with pieces of paper clipped to them.
Rinaldo practically skipped, like an excited child, to the desks at the back of the hall in excitement with the other two following him, trying to look like they were not with the over-enthusiastic barbarian. A woman behind the counter saw them coming and looked at the bright smile on the young man face and smiled with a look of amusement as if this was not new to her.
The guild woman said to the three as they approached, “Let me guess, you’ve just received your blessing and need to register with the guild.”
All three nodded shyly, and the woman said, “OK one at a time, I’ll have the dark-haired smiling one first. Place your right hand above the glowing sphere, and it will all happen magically.”
Rinaldo stepped up to the desk and placed his right hand above a blue, glowing sphere that shot light into the palm of his hand, for a few seconds, and they dimmed. As Rinaldo withdraw his hand, Ceras noticed a magical mark similar to one he had seen on his parent hands over the years. Rinaldo mark contained the icon for a barbarian with one empty dot on the outside that signified that he was level one.
Next Rhef placed her hand above the orb and received a similar mark that indicated she was a ranger at level one as well. When Ceras placed his hand above the blue orb, he felt his hand pulse for a second and received a mark of a wizard with a single dot. The woman serving him looked slightly surprised at his mark as if she was expecting to see another icon.
As she recovered from her look of surprised, she said to the adventures, “There's not much in the way of introduction, as your expected to find information out by yourselves. You do this by using the blessing that provides you with information from them. For the guild questing you can take any quests in the beginner categories for now.
“It’s best if you work in groups, the most practical number is five we’ve found. As there’s three of you already, you might want to talk to the two-level, one’s over there and see if you all want to team up.
“You’ll need some coppers to stay in the guild accommodation or use the library and any other of the training facilities. My guess is that you do not have many coppers with you at the moment.”
With that comment, all three of them looked slightly embarrassed and nodded.
The woman continued to say, “It best if you do some initial quest first, so you have some money. You’ve still got the whole day left so I’d use it to the quest. Anyway, good luck, and I’ll be seeing you around.”
Lastly, she pointed over to two people stand in a corner looking at quests plaques on the level one shelves. Ceras noticed that one was a very pretty blond girl that had clothes that were clean and well-made but did not appear to be rich. The other was a boy that had home-made clothes, like the rest of them, but with a cloth tied around his neck and one shoulder carrying something.
Rinaldo looked at Ceras and said in an excited voice, “Do you want to team up with us?”
Ceras had not really had any plans so nodded his head in acceptance, and them Rinaldo said indicating to the two other level ones, “Let see if they're willing to join the group?”
He rushed off to the two, as his sister followed while shaking her head at his excitement but not stopping him. By the time Ceras was walking over, Rinaldo was already introducing himself to the girl and boy with a smile on his face.
Ceras heard him say in an excited voice, “... so we’re looking for two more members to make u
p a group how about it them.”
The boy said, “I’m in, by the way, my name is Grikius, and I'm a warlock. This is, and she is a healer.”
The girl nodded her head but looked down as if she was shy when talking to the others. Out of the cloth around Grikius body, a small puppy head poked its head out and bearded its teeth with a growl at the three new people.
Grikius said in a gentle voice as he rubbed the dog's ear, “This is my familiar Apollo, don’t worry he’s very friendly.”
As Rhef tried to pet the dog growling puppy, by putting her hand on the top of his head, the puppy bite into her finger. She pulled away quickly, rubbing her finger as it bled, and she said, “Yes, I can see he’s just the little bundle of love.”
Semana moved over to Rhef and seemed to concentrated for a moment as blue light ray left her hand and seemed to caress Rhef hand. This stopped the bleeding and closing the wound in a blink of an eye.
Rhef looked astonished but smiled happily at the shy girl and said, “Thanks.”
Then Rhef said in a commanding voice as she pushed her brother, “Right to form a group we all need to put our hand on each other's and think of forming a group.”
As Rhef pushed, shoved and corralled them all into a circle to place hands on each other's, in the center a white light started to emanate from each of their marks circling around their hands and then slow dimming away. Ceras looked at each of his group of adventures and could, see, if he concentrated on them, shades of red, green and blue indicating; as he was shown by the goddess blessing:
Red – Health (HP)
Green - Stamina
Blue – Magic (MP)
He smiled as he remembered his father telling him about how this helped each member of the group in battle, allowing them to come to the aid of each other. Ceras was excited to see how this worked out when the team worked together.
Ceras said as the others were still looking at each other's aura, "Ok my guess is that we need to find about three quests, that will enable us to make some money, and get some experience."
The team split up amongst the shelves to search for quests and for about half an hour each of them searched to bring back to a desk in one of the aisles quests on thin boards. For the next ten minutes, four of the team argued, while Symania was quiet, but finally agreed on three quests:
Quest Title
Fanged Rats Burrow Extermination
Description
Extermination Fanged rats in burrow and kill the queen
A Burrow is located just south of Riverward and has been killing local farm animals. A reward will be given by the farmers (through the guild) to clear out this den of Fanged Rats (see attached map).
Level
1
XP per team member
1
Reward
100 coppers
Quest Title
Tusk Pig Hunting
Description
In the forest south of the town provide five Tusk Pig the butcher (Brown and sons) on the highstreets
Level
2
XP per team member
2
Reward
300 coppers (upon presentation of pigs to Brown and sons)
Quest Title
Gobin cave
Description
In the forest south of the town destroy the goblin camp and kill the gang leader (see attached map).
Level
3
XP per team member
3
Reward
1000 coppers and anything found in the goblin cave is yours to keep
With all the information on the thin boards, the group of adventurers went to the friendly woman on the counter who had helped them register the quests.
She looked at all the quests the team were taking out and said, “Quite ambitious for your first outing. Just know for the future that the XP level is one XP for the level you are on and goes up by one for every level above your present level the quest you're taking out is.”
Each of the boards passed through over a magical field that registered the quest to their team. Ceras saw Rinaldo was starting to walk toward the door, to the plaza outside before the guild woman had finished speaking with a look of excitement on his face. The others member of the adventures group had to follow him swiftly, to catch up with him as he exited the building into the early morning light. The square was now was full of people at stalls selling well with loud voices announcing the goods.
Wait for us, you big idiot. You don’t even know where you're going,” Rhef shouted to her brother before he could run of too far. “
Rinaldo turned back to allow them to catch up with him, "Yes, I do we're heading to the 'Fanged Rats Burrow,' and then for fame and wealth."
Rhef sighed and said as she shoved a map in his face, "But you don't know where it is, do you."
Then addressing the team with an authoritarian note in her voice, "Right you lot follow me to the first quest."
Everybody looked more excited for Rhef to be guiding the way rather than the overexcited barbarian, so they started to walk after Rhef, who was leading them to the southern city gate. As they walked through the city in the early morning, Ceras saw that everything was open and busy as people from all walks of life were going about their daily business.
As they walked out of the square, they passed other teams of adventures, that were a lot better equipped than his poor team, with its home-made clothes and weapons.
Ceras noticed, what he thought might be other wizards in robes made of expensive material with staffs with crystals embedded on the top or some other magical items. All of the wizards seemed to be thin and not like him; he had board shoulder and a body full of muscles. All of them had a book in their hand or in a small bag on their hips with a book, making it easily accessible. The warrior all had sets of armor and shining weapon, seeming more for display then blooded in battle.
A loud noise broke Ceras contemplation as he heard a loud whistle from somebody in his group. Turning around, he noticed that Rinaldo was whistling at a good dress beautiful woman that was passing the team.
Before Ceras could react, Rhef walked back to her brother and hit him across his face, with a fist, and said, "I've told you not to do that, so stop it."
Rinaldo at first looked angry, but then nodded to his sister in acceptance of her rebuke of his behavior. The rest of the team looked a bit shock as they continued down the alleyway full of shops with items to sell that none of them could afford. The rest of the journey out of the town was uneventful but full of wonderful sights for the team members from the farms in the middle of nowhere.
Rhef led them along trails, as she looked at the map, through fields of corn and other cereal crops; that were centered around the small little hamlet. After about an hour of walking, they had just passed the small hamlet with the rat problem and were crossing a field to the edge of the forest where the rat's burrow was located.
The forest was full of dark brown trees with a large swirling knot on the trunks indicated that this was an old forest with its look of age, with large branches littering the forest floor, with a small amount of bracken in between the trees. Most of the forest floor was darker than the field they had just left, but enough light past through the treetops for shafts of sunlight to spray like golden rain on the ground. The adventures team make their way slowly through the thick undergrowth down an incline into a hollow in the forest and soon lost sight of the field they had come from.
Rhef stopped them with a wave of her hand and said in a quiet voice pointing to a hole in the side of the ground and said, "That the entrance to the borrow any ideas on how we're going to tackle this?"
Ceras was just about to say that if they built a large fire and smoke the rats out, they could deal with them in the open, but Rinaldo shouts in a loud voice, "Attack and just ran across the leafy forest floor toward the hole."
Swearing at him Rhef ran after him with a worried look on her face pulling out her s
ling and placing a rock inside it. The rest of the team looked at each other and pulled out their weapons and ran after the large idiot. Symania produced a knife from her belt, while Grikius has a club make out of a stick with a large knot at the end. Ceras, with his staff outpacing the two of them reaching Rhef before she entered the burrow.
As he entered the borrow, he could hear the sound of screaming in Rinaldo tone of voice, in the burrow and loud rat screeches. Ceras stopped for a second as he could not see anything only for Symania to surprise him by producing a ball of light, that shot into the burrow and lit up the darkness. This allowed the team of adventures to get a good view of mad barbarian surrounded by rats as large as a small dog:
Name of Monster
Level
Agility
HP
MP
Skills
Fanged Rats
1
2
7
-
-
Rinaldo already had several bleedings wound, from the sharp fangs on the rats attacking him, and Ceras could see that his health was already down by about ten percent. Now that Rinaldo could see, his fighting became more coordinated as he started to beat the large fanged rats back with his home-made mace. When the spiky end of the mace hit the rats, the mace tore into the bodies sending a bit of skin and gut everywhere.
Ceras notice that each rat that was still alive had a red bar above their head, that disappeared as Rinaldo hit them showing that they were dead as if the broken bodies were not enough to indicate death. A blue light ray shone from behind him and hit Rinaldo’s body, healing his wound as they knitted up, stopping the flow of blood. Also, the red aura around him fills up, showing that he was at full health. As the healing ray been doing its work several rocks from Rhef sling had been hitting the rats closes to Rinaldo, knocking them dead in one shot.
Origins Page 3
