by Sean Oswald
After some further discussion, they decided to place the remaining points to improve her melee capabilities, staying in line with her initial set up as a quick rogue, or as Emily insisted, ninja type of fighter. So she put 10 points into stealth, which had the +5 racial bonus, 10 points in sneak attack, 10 points in improved critical, and the final point was held in reserve for anything that was needed. One last look at her final skill choices revealed:
Stealth: 15, +75% to skill. Tier 2 bonus: stealth may be activated in full light as long as you are unobserved.
Sneak Attack: 10, +150% damage to any attack that comes as a surprise.
Improved Critical: 10, +10% chance every hit is a critical strike.
While Emily was applying her remaining character points and read the notifications that she received, Dave took the chance to cast Identify on the dagger she had used against the boar.
High Steel Dagger of Piercing:
Quality: Excellent
Base Dmg: 4. Attack Speed: 10. Weight: 0.7.
Active Effect: 1/moon rise- automatic critical blow with +200% bonus damage.
Passive Effect: Penetration - negates 10 points of armor. +6 magical damage.
Dave whistled to himself. “No wonder it went through that boar’s shoulder.” He then told Emily about the stats of the dagger and explained what they meant after which she gave him the final rundown on her updated stats and skills.
Over the next two hours, the family finished dividing up the gear. It appeared that the Watcher had provided each of them a backpack that was size and strength appropriate. They all had what amounted to two days of rations unless they purposefully restricted the amount they ate, but while it might be filling, the hardtack bread, jerky, and some root vegetables wasn’t going to be very exciting to spoiled American palates, used to a dizzying variety of different tastes and styles of food. So much for Emily’s thirty-day cooking plan. She had taken great pride in exposing her children to food from all over the world, and while sometimes distracted by her many outside projects, she was still an excellent cook and each month would come up with a dinner plan so that they never repeated a meal over the course of the month.
They also learned that while each pack had some of the same items--a blanket, rations, water skins, and such—that each pack also had some unique items. Emily’s had a small cooking pot with a large spoon. Dave’s had a small shovel, hammer, chisel, and saw. Mira’s had a set of metal tent stakes and both some thin twine lines for setting up a tent and one hundred feet of a smooth hemp rope. Jackson’s carried a canvas tent, and Sara’s had a medical supply kit along with a sewing kit. They laughed about the designations made in each pack, and Mira finally felt comfortable enough to say that whoever designed the packs must have been sexist to not know that a woman could use tools and a man could cook.
During this same time, Dave regenerated enough mana to finish identifying the items on the magical side of the loot chest. All that remained unidentified were the three rings, and Dave cast his spell three times in quick succession revealing:
Lesser Wind Ring: finger slot
Quality: High.
Active Effect: 1/sun rise- Fly for 10 minutes at up to speed: 180.
Passive Effect: Electric Resistance: 10.
High Ring of Boar’s Health: finger slot
Quality: High.
Passive Effect: +80 Health Points.
Excellent Ring of Mana Regeneration: finger slot.
Quality: Excellent.
Passive Effect: Doubles the wearer’s mana regeneration rate after all other modifiers.
Excellent Ring of Mana Regeneration: finger slot.
Quality: Excellent.
Passive Effect: Doubles the wearer’s mana regeneration rate after all other modifiers.
All of the rings were relatively mundane-looking, and with some experimentation, they were able to determine that the rings each would shrink or expand to fit on the hand over whoever was wearing the ring. They also learned that while two rings could be worn on the same hand, it seemed to create a static build-up that slowly made it so the wearer had an ever-increasingly intense headache. After five minutes, the headache would become debilitating. None of those same effects occurred when the rings were worn on different hands. After some discussion, it was decided that Dave would wear the boar’s ring for the extra health so he could take a hit saving the family. Emily, as their only healer, would wear the mana regeneration ring so that her regeneration rate would jump to 14 pts/minute. Finally, even though she was being closed-lipped about the skills that she chose when assigning her character points, it was decided that Mira would wear the ring of flying, as they were calling it. Dave muttered something about giving the keys to their only car to the teen with nothing more than a learner’s permit, but Emily wisely kept them from arguing about the rings.
Once they had divvied up all of the loot and pulled everything out of the chest, the chest itself became translucent and then began to fade so that within a minute it was completely gone. Mira started to tell her family about the coins that she had counted in the bags, but Dave interrupted her, “Dang, I’m such an idiot.” Then, looking at Jackson, “I forgot to loot the boar. All of you stay here while I go see what loot that boar had.” Without another word, Dave ran toward the carcass of his kill as it lay in the open area less than ten feet from the tree line of the clearly dark and foreboding forest. As he got up to the scene of his narrow victory, he began searching around the corpse, awaiting a notification, but one never came. He grew impatient and kicked and prodded the body, even going so far as to try to look under its four hundred pounds of dead weight. Yet all his attempts were frustrated. He didn’t discover any coins or special meats or anything, really just a very large, very smelly dead boar. As he was about to give up, he noticed a slight glimmer around the tusks. This prompted him to bend down and grab one. He tugged and pulled until finally giving up. He pulled out his sword in frustration and swung it with all his strength with the result that he was rewarded by a clear notch into the tusk. He started to swing the sword down again and then realized that he would probably end up blunting the weapon he was depending upon to stay alive.
He quickly ran back to where the rest of the family stood by the backpacks watching him with a fair degree of amusement. Without so much as a word, he quickly reached in and got out the hammer and chisel out of his pack before running back to the boar. Once there, it was only the work of a few well-placed strikes before the tusk came off. He repeated the process on the second tusk and was greeted with a quest notification:
Gathering Quest: the people of Aritine Village (and perhaps other villages) will pay a bounty of 1 silver per pair of boar tusks. Total collected so far: 1 pair.
Dave ran back to the family and showed his new find, explaining about the quest. This prompted them to finally go through the multiple bags of coins which they had. There were five coin pouches in total. Mira had originally counted all of the coins, so she explained what she had found. There were 4 larger coins, which they thought might be platinum, but not being experts in metallurgy, couldn’t be sure. Then there were what was clearly 100 gold coins. They were heavier but about the shape of a quarter if not quite so well-formed or as standardized in size as they were accustomed to. After that, there were 400 what they took to be silver coins and 3000 somewhat smaller copper coins. This treasure trove of coins apparently represented the value of all their various accounts, 401ks, the kids’ college funds, and the value of their car, if the Watcher’s message was to be believed. It was exciting but presented them with a problem. A rough estimate told him that the 3,504 coins weighed somewhere around fifty pounds altogether. Even split up, with Emily and the kids not being able to carry as much as he could and adding in their backpacks, this was going to really make traveling by foot cumbersome.
Together, Dave and Emily split the coins up, each of them keeping 2 of the platinum coins while giving 5 gold coins, 10 silver, and 20 copper coins to each of the kids. Thi
s was sort of an emergency measure in case any of the kids became separated from the family; the hope being that those coins would be useful in finding their way back together. They were a little limited in that they didn’t know how much each of these coins would be worth here in Eloria. Next, Dave and Emily split the remainder of the gold and silver coins evenly between them and gave her 10 of the copper coins and piled the rest of the thousands of copper coins into the largest of the money pouches for Dave to carry. It was his initial instinct to just leave the copper laying on the ground, as who wanted to put forth the effort of carrying that much weight for what was probably very low-value coins, but he was stopped by the memory of an old gaming buddy who used to run around the newbie zones picking up every copper coin he could find. You never know what resources you might need after all.
After packing everything up and following a long discussion, it was finally decided that the woods would not be a safe place to set up camp for the evening, so they decided to move closer to the river they could see about a quarter-mile away in the direction of the sun that seemed to be moving too rapidly across the sky toward setting in the west. Sara had been terrified about camping near the river after Jackson had made some comments about how there were often snakes around the river and had to be reassured by her father that they would be safe while Emily gave Jackson that motherly look which told him to keep future comments like that to himself. As they hefted up the packs and started to cross the relatively short distance to the river, Mira asked, “So what’s up with the sun?”
Not knowing what she meant, Dave looked to the sun in the west which was clearly beginning its descent. He pondered what little they knew. As far as they could tell, the sun was moving much faster across the sky than they were accustomed to on earth. It had appeared to be a noonday sun overhead when they first arrived, but now, after what could not have been more than two hours, it appeared to be nearing sunset. “I know the sun is moving faster than we are used to, but I’m assuming that just means Eloria spins much faster around than Earth does, and so it is likely that they will have shorter days and nights than we are used to. It's just another odd thing that we are gonna have to get used to.”
Mira stared at the rest of the family for a minute and then said, “No, not that sun,” as she pointed to the west, “I’m talking about that sun,” as she turned and held out her arm pointing this time to the east.
All the rest of the family turned their eyes to the east and sure enough, cresting over the horizon was the sun as if it was early dawn. Well, not the sun, because they could still see that in the west. Speechless for a moment, Dave finally said, “Well, it looks like we have two suns on Eloria.”
He wasn’t sure exactly what that meant for the family. Was there a night on Eloria? Were there times that both suns were in the sky and would that be dangerous? Ultimately though, he didn’t have answers to those questions. “This doesn’t really change anything though. The forest is dangerous and even if it's daylight all the time here, we will still need sleep so we might as well find the safest place to set up a camp. From there, we can explore and learn more about Eloria.”
With that, he turned and started walking toward the river again, weighed down with his armor and heavy backpack and finding that he was just focused on learning how to handle all of that rather than the mysteries of two suns. He felt rather pathetic. It was years since he had been out of the Marine Corps, and he was definitely not accustomed to carrying eighty-plus pounds worth of gear and backpack. He did chuckle though as he heard Jackson teasing his sister that maybe with two suns she would finally be able to get a good tan, and even more so at her retort that with this new skin of hers, she would never have to worry about tanning again.
Chapter Seven
“O beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” —Shakespeare
On a battlefield, a full four hundred and fifty miles to the southwest of where the Nelson family was scouting out suitable campsites, a very different sort of camp existed. Captain Radick walked through the Albian war camp on his way to brief General Eikhorn about what the scouts had discovered. His mind was racing with the news that he carried, but the professional soldier in him still took time to correct the troops around him. Even though they weren’t fighting today, there was no excuse for the soldiers to be lounging around as they were. This was an active battlefront, not some lord’s barracks, and it was high time that these fresh recruits from the capital learned what it meant to be at war. There was no rest time, no days off. There were only lulls in the fighting and failing to use those lulls to stay prepared was a gross dereliction of duty. But then again, Radick had grown up in what was known dismissively by the rest of the kingdom as the border baronies.
Those barons who didn’t have the same political clout as others ended up being ceded land along the western edge of the country where the border was shared with dwarven and orcish nations, if such as the orcish clans could be called a nation. Since the foundation of Albia, goblin raids had been a regular thing. Every year, a few young goblins would seek to establish their place in the tribes and would gather for raids on livestock and such. New men-at-arms in service to any of the three border barons were familiar with this sort of raid, but none more so than those under the flag of Baron Steffen Eikhorn. Radick had followed behind the current baron himself in warbands that countered the periodic goblin raids. He had a scar from just under his right eye down to his chin to prove it, and he had proven himself first an obedient soldier, a good fighter, and finally, a capable commander of men, in that order.
Looking around, he couldn’t say if these desperately needed new recruits were capable fighters. Some had now arrived, but he knew for a fact they were not disciplined soldiers. Their tent lines snaked back and forth like a viper in the midst of a seizure, clothing and armor pieces were left lying on the ground around the tents. Worse still, it was clear that some of them couldn’t seem to be bothered to go to the latrine area but instead had decided to relieve themselves wherever they felt like it. So it was with a certain glee that he saw soldiers with bleary eyes obviously still suffering from too much drink the night before, despite the fact that it was already nearly second sunrise, scrambling to follow his orders and straighten up their campsite. It became even more satisfying when a young lieutenant, most likely the scion of some noble home, based upon the fine nature of his uniform, came out to find out who was causing all the ruckus. “Who is yelling and creating such a racket? Let me know who it is so I can have him strung up. I’ve just been woken from my nap.”
Hearing his words, Captain Radick turned upon him quickly like the snapping of a wolf's jaws. “I will pretend that I didn’t hear you say you were napping in the middle of the day if you get your men organized and instill some order into this pigsty you call a camp.”
Still waking up and not yet having had his first cup of kaf for the day, Lieutenant Holstein, youngest son of Duke Holstein and a man unused to being questioned by any but his father, turned first red-faced and then blurted out, “Do you know who you are speaking to?”
“Why yes, Lieutenant. I do.” As Radick spoke, there was a clear inflection upon the rank of the young nobleman. “And Lieutenant, I don’t know what you are used to in the soft east, but here on the border, we maintain our camps according to regulation and we don’t sleep half the day away.”
Using his hand to shade his eyes from the sun, Bors Holstein snapped back, “And just who the hell do you think you are to tell me how to order my men around?”
While striding toward the younger man, Captain Radick kicked over a small table with cards and dice placed upon it, which had obviously just recently been used for one of the more popular eastern gambling games. “I am Captain Radick, senior officer of the scout company and your superior officer. I don’t know which noble family you hail from, and truth be told, I don’t give a rat’s ass, but just to be clear, these are not your men or even your father’s men. Onc
e they got here, they became part of the royal army of Albia under the command of General Eikhorn. When you are at private parties in the capital, you may outrank me or even Baron Eikhorn, but here, I am a captain, he is a general, and you are a lieutenant. Do you know what that means?”
Never having been spoken to like this in his life, Bors stood dumbly staring at Radick, unsure whether to let loose with his anger or to listen to that little voice inside telling him to be quiet. In the end, whether because the little voice won out or because Bors was inherently a coward, it mattered little because the end result was the same. Bors stood there as Radick reached his position and leaned in to whisper into his ear. “I have no desire to shame you in front of your men, but my life and the life of every other man here depends upon following orders. Those orders start with maintaining an organized camp. So get to it.” Bors didn’t say anything at first, but then took a step back and offered up a salute, which resulted in Radick slapping him across the face. “Are you trying to get me killed here? No salutes at the frontline. Enemy shamans or archers could see and target me for pruning.” Once again startled so that he didn’t know what to say, Bors simply nodded and then started to yell for the men around him to get busy cleaning things up. Radick felt as though his task had been accomplished and then recalled the importance of the intel that he had to discuss with the general, so he strode away heading for the center of the camp where the command tent was located.
