Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  During the short walk over to his home, where he intended to put them up for the night, the mayor started trying to find out more about Dave, the kids and especially Emily. Dave was intentionally vague and evasive with his answers. It was a lawyer skill that had always infuriated Emily, but which was very useful here: the art of answering questions without actually answering anything. He didn’t know how effective his diplomacy or sense motive skills were but Talvenicus seemed to be more accepting of their unexplained presence here than Dave had expected and as far as he could tell had nothing but the best of intentions toward them. In fact, everyone in the town seemed genuinely awestruck that a Daughter of Redemption was in their little town.

  The town wasn’t really that much to look at from the eyes of a man used to looking at twenty-first-century earth buildings but seemed to be in line with a later middle ages type of construction. The homes were made with wood and appeared to be some sort of tongue and groove construction. The roofs were thatched and there was little in the way of true stone construction. The roads, if that was what they could be called, were all dirt, but the town itself seemed clean. There was a surprising lack of animal waste or animals in general in the streets. No horses other than what they had seen with the wagons, no roaming chickens, and only a handful of dogs which all seemed to stay close to an individual home. Dave’s quick count showed what looked like five general type buildings of varying sizes. The only one he thought he could identify for certain was a smithy. There also appeared to be around fifty to sixty homes, all square, single-story deals laid out in an orderly fashion on straight, dirt roads. The only house that seemed bigger was the one they were approaching, which, while still only one story, was cut in a U-shape having a front and two separate wings to it. It likely wasn’t more than two thousand square feet, but it still stood out as more than twice the size of any of the other homes. Judging by their path and the size of the house, he guessed this was where the mayor lived. Some things didn’t change in any world, Dave thought, the leaders always have the best of what is available.

  Even if the mayor did have the nicest house for himself, he and his daughter seemed to do all the work around the house, not a servant in sight. That spoke well about the man to Dave as did the hearty vegetable stew that they served him and the kids. It wasn’t seasoned anything like back home, but it didn’t seem likely that in a Middle Ages level world that common folk would have very much access to spices. Nevertheless, it was still a very welcome change of pace from dry rations which has been the majority of their food for the last two days.

  Another cultural difference popped up when Dave was offered a hearty ale and increasingly watered-down versions were offered to his children. From what he could tell Mira was offered the same as he was, and Jackson’s was cut slightly with water and Sara’s was about half water and half ale. Talvenicus picked up on Dave’s surprise and asked if he had done something to offend. Again, not knowing the customs of the land, Dave chose to err on the side of caution and simply say that he had never visited Albia before and hadn’t known what to expect. When Jackson made a comment about no one under twenty-one being allowed to drink back home, it caused just as much shock with Talvenicus and his daughter, although they also politely played it off as different customs in different lands.

  It was a couple of hours after the second sunset when Emily finally made it to the mayor’s home with a clearly exhausted Gertrude in tow. Emily expressed her regret to Dave and the mayor that she hadn’t been able to heal everyone yet and promised that she would not stop working on the problem. In fact, it turned out that she only had left the makeshift hospital in the town square when Gertrude had sent all the patients home for the evening. Even those few who still couldn’t walk were carried by friends. The tale Gertrude told was one of wonder at the amazing healing powers Emily possessed along with her great knowledge of human anatomy. Apparently, the herbalist had seen other healers but few of them had any knowledge of the human body and simply counted on their magic to do everything. Even then, Emily’s magic was the strongest that she had seen and when augmented by her advanced knowledge of biology that had managed to heal all but three of the loggers who had been wounded. Two of those who were not yet healed were victims of the treants, and the branches speared through their bodies had grown and spread piercing new parts of the body making it impossible to heal the wounds around them. The third was one who had been injured by the large flame lynx that Dave and Mira had killed and had a gaping wound in one of his legs where the quadriceps muscle had been shredded. Because of how the wound had been cauterized, there was too large of a gap in the muscle for the healing magic to make the tissue grow back.

  After hearing Emily’s report and Gertrude’s praise, both women ate some of the vegetable stew before the herbalist excused herself to go home. While they had been eating, both Jackson and Sara had fallen asleep, no doubt aided by the ale, watered down or not. Dave had carried both of them to the area where blankets had been laid out on the floor in what seemed to be a sort of parlor. Talvenicus had offered his own bed to Dave and Emily, but neither was willing to sleep apart from the kids or to put an older man out of his bed in his own home. After all of her efforts, Emily was ready to collapse and so, as soon as she was sure that all three of her kids were safely laid down on one of the blankets set up for them, she fell asleep almost immediately, cuddled up in her husband’s arms, her head resting upon his chest.

  Dave too was relieved to get everyone laid down and was surprised that the thick blankets, when combined with what they had gotten in their packs, made the wood floors surprising comfortable. There was a large rug covering the parlor floor beneath their blankets and maybe that helped some, too. Either way, he knew that his body from earth would have been screaming at him about how sore and stiff this was going to make him, but whatever process had created his body in Eloria seemed to have taken care of all the slow changes of aging that he had already been starting to feel at forty. Unlike Emily though, Dave wasn’t about to fall asleep. He had been holding off all day on reading some of the notifications he had gotten and on assigning the numerous points he had gotten.

  The first notification he looked at was the one from the fight with the flame lynx at the bridge. That had been one of the strongest beasts he had fought, other than the dire croc, so he was looking forward to another decent-sized boost in XP.

  You have defeated: Flame Lynx Level 9. XP: 54/2 xTier Penalty of 50% x 2 (killing blow bonus) x racial bonus +50%= 40 XP

  You have 2 new character points. You have 66 unused character points.

  Well, that was disappointing, to say the least. Apparently now he had some sort of tier-based penalty for being tier 2 and killing tier 1 creatures. Nothing could ever be easy. In his mind, he had thought it would be easy to zoom up now that these creatures were starting to get trivial, but true to “game-like rules” the amount of XP he would gain from these weaker creatures seemed to really drop off. He now had 3003 XP but needed 3320 to reach level 14 so that didn’t sound too bad. The thing that really stood out now though was that his skills and stats were growing but his gear was not. That scale mail and sword, which had seemed if not amazing at least adequate when starting out at level 1, seemed woefully underpowered now. This got his mind thinking about how he might get better gear. In most game worlds, gear was obtained in one of three ways. Either, you got it as loot drops, bought it in a store, or crafted it yourself. Dave had never been much for crafting in games. The endless farming of low-level materials, followed by combining them hundreds if not thousands of times, had always put him off it. If he was going to farm something, he had always preferred to hunt creatures that dropped coins so that he could buy gear, or even better, to find creatures that dropped the gear themselves.

  Eloria seemed a bit different though. There were no illogical drops falling from these creatures. He chuckled thinking about how he and friends had always wondered where the boars they were hunting in-game had carried the copper coins th
at they dropped. It had led to all sorts of jokes about body cavity searches, which had seemed funny at the time. No, here in Eloria, the creatures only seemed to drop items that naturally existed on them. The horned drey hounds and the boars had been the only creatures to drop items that he was prepared to harvest. It was gruesome enough cutting off horns and tusks. He had no interest in trying to learn how to skin the flame lynxes for their pelts. The other real problem with loot in Eloria was that he had no inventory. Every game he had ever played had an inventory screen that could be pulled up and it was a place where items or sometimes even entire slain animals could be placed for later handling. Here, if he had wanted to haul that slain flame lynx back, he would have had to carry its probably four-hundred-pound carcass back. Not a task he was likely to perform. Truth be told, carrying the packs and coins they had gotten from the Watcher was enough of a burden.

  Well no use fretting about what couldn’t be. He would just have to hope that the coins they had received were worth something here. Now though, it was on to the fun of assigning his points. First, he had to assign the bonus he got for rising to tier 2. 20% to a single stat seemed impressive, especially if it scaled as he continued to level. He noticed that Emily and Mira’s racial bonuses and their penalties as well had a significant impact. Prior to this last burst up in levels, Dave had only had one stat above 20, his strength at 22, while Emily had a 28 in Agility and a 31 in Wisdom.

  Thinking it through, he was tempted to put the 20% bonus into Intelligence as that might help him catch up to his eventual goal of being more of a mage, but he quickly rejected that. Nothing so far had convinced him that he would be able to give up his role as the tank for the family anytime soon. Certainly not these weaklings in Eris’ Rise. Well, maybe weaklings was too harsh, but of all the people he had used his spell to assess, he had only found four of them that were above level 0 and Talvenicus was the highest amongst them at level 6. Even Mira had broken into level 9 after that fight to rescue Malcolm, so he wasn’t sure what to make of people being level 6 or the vast majority of them being level 0. He had recognized that Jackson was gaining XP at a dramatically slower pace than the rest of them, but still. Well, hopefully Talvenicus would be willing to explain some of it to him tomorrow. That was, if he could keep the mayor from asking too many questions about why they didn’t know how things seemed to work in Eloria.

  Dave recognized that once again his mind had wandered and realized he was tired but didn’t want to fall asleep until he assigned the bonus and at least his stat points. He had been looking forward to it all day. So, if Intelligence wasn’t the way to go, then he could put it into Agility, which seemed to help with his movement speed and with better utilizing his Strength. Of course, he could just add it to Strength or Constitution. The question was, was it better to use the bonus to augment a stat he might not put as many points into or better to maximize his primary stats? Ultimately because it was a percentage bonus, he decided he would get the most out of it by assigning it to the stat he was using the most: Strength. Once decided, it was only the work of a thought to make it happen and then even lying down, he felt his muscles swell, the fibers become denser, the raw power shot through him. What a rush. And the best part was that he still had 15 stat points to assign.

  He really liked his new skill Offensive Stance, but it ran on Stamina which was controlled by the Endurance stat, so the first thing he did was add 4 points into Endurance, taking it to 20. He wanted to make sure he kept having enough mana, so he added 3 points to Intelligence, also bringing it to 20. The rush from increasing physical stats was what he imagined it would feel like to be on some sort of drug. He had never even experimented around with those though, so he could only guess, but the rush from increasing his Intelligence was an entirely different thing. Yes, he could feel the increase in available mana but equally, he felt like things just made more sense. It was easier to make connections and process information. He determined that in the future whenever he had stat points to assign, if he was going to assign any to Intelligence, he should always do that first because it might make him see ways to make better decisions with the rest of his points.

  Down to 8 remaining points and 3 stats that he was interested in increasing. He thought about splitting them up, but as much as he enjoyed the boost to Agility, he had to face it. He was the tank of their little Nelson party, and he needed to both hit harder and be able to take more damage. So he split the points between Strength and Constitution, netting him another 40 HP, and thanks to the 20% bonus, pushing his Strength all the way up to 31.

  He was psyched by the feelings of superhuman health and power, but even with the increased Endurance, he was reaching his limits for the day. Maybe the extra Intelligence points also helped him see clearly enough that the character points would wait until the morning, and he should try to get some sleep while he could. Once he accepted that, it was less than a minute until he had joined the rest of his family in a deep slumber. Of course, he might not have rested so well if he had seen the eyes watching him from just outside the parlor.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” —Sir Walter Scott

  Radick flipped the goblin that had leapt onto his back over in a shoulder throw. Really wasn’t much of a challenge considering the average goblin weighed less than one hundred pounds. Then as he shifted his weight back to a standing position, he made a quick slash of his scimitar across the goblin’s throat, opening it wide in a coup de grace. He then scanned the battlefield and saw several of his men down and bleeding, but it appeared that all of the enemy had been slain and none too soon.

  Even the newest of his men were quickly becoming veterans as the waves were coming more frequently with less rest time between each attack, and somehow each attack seemed to have more goblins than the wave before it. Also, each wave seemed to have some new form of shock troops. Always goblins, usually always some hobgoblins, but one wave would have an ogre, another might have some winter wolves, one had even had a pair of giant grizzlies with wide saddles carrying half a dozen goblins and a hobgoblin driver each.

  Battlefield XP rules didn’t tend to give that much XP but most of the newbie soldiers had gained at least 1 level and some had gained as much as 3. They had learned better strategy and even the Holstein brat seemed to be too tired to be political. None of it was going to matter, though, as they were simply being worn down.

  General Eikhorn had been pressing him to try to find a way to get scouts back out in the field, but it was more out of frustration than any real dissatisfaction with the scout captain. No one could figure out where all the goblins were coming from as they had never appeared in numbers close to this before. The goblin population was normally limited by lack of food, lack of safe places, harsh winter conditions, the young warriors lost to border raids and even the nests that were killed by the orc clans as they moved through the mountainous zones looking for the best hunting grounds. Wherever they were coming from, one thing was clear: something had to give or not only was Albia going to lose the border, they might end up having to give up actual towns near the border.

  The general sent messengers to the king and duke requesting more aid, but the battle situation was changing so fast that it was impossible to rely upon resources from his duke let alone from the capital. Based upon the estimates from the healers, they would only be able to maintain this pace for another three days, maybe five at the most. One way or another, it appeared that the outcome at the border would be determined in the next few days.

  Having left the war council early two days prior when his steward had brought news of the arrangements made for a squad of the Purple and Gold to go and check on the logging villages, King Borstein canceled the council meeting for the next day. Harold felt that the meetings were becoming unproductive squabbles between Duke Tarstadt and the others. They were only receiving updates from the front every week or so. Magical means of communication were too uncommon or expe
nsive and mundane messages took between six and nine days to make their way by horseback. The last message they had gotten had been a magical message three days ago conveying that the new troops, both royal and from Duke Holstein, had arrived. From what the message said, there was a lot of give-and-take across the front, but it was fairly stable over a one to two-mile width as each side either gained or lost ground.

  Even with that last fairly positive message, King Harold was actually growing tired of this border conflict. It had dragged on for far longer than anyone had expected, and so he had taken a day off for private contemplation. Then this morning he had sent messengers to the mages’ guild, the dungeon delvers’ guild, and each of the three temples of the gods of good. His messages were as close to royal commands as he could manage for these organizations that he did not directly control. He offered terms which he knew would be most appealing to each of the organizations: tax breaks on dungeon loot for the delvers, offers of royal grants for research to the mages, and promises of royal tithing to the churches. Equally though, he demanded that each of the organizations provide significant and immediate aid to the war effort in an attempt to bring it to a “quick and certain end.”

  Today, however, he called all the military officers of the rank, captain or higher, along with Duke Tarstadt and the representatives of the other dukes as well as any other barons who were in the capital. He had reached a decision, and it was time to end this war. He waited until twenty minutes after the designated time for the council meeting to begin for effect. Then he entered the room surrounded by a full squad of Purple and Gold. All eyes turned to see him, and the conversations all quickly died down. His steward followed behind him, and, once the king was sat in his chair at the head of the largest of the war room tables, gave permission for everyone to sit. Normally these council meetings had a greatly reduced level of formality since, in war, planning it was better to get the real opinions of the officers than the self-serving preenings of sycophants.