[SD:BOW] Gem's Naming Sense - Chapter 2

Gem opens their eyes and looks around. “Huh, you all got here before me? I thought I was logging in early?”

Samuel snorts, “Some of us decided to get an idea of what’s going on.”

Gem shrugs, “Okay. What’s going on, then?”

Samuel stutters, clearly not having actually done such a thing.

Emrys smiles, “Well, the army has set up camp in town, what with this being a border town. They actually arrived yesterday. If you go take a look outside, you’d see a brand new wall has gone up.

“Just a rough bit of stonework right now, but the army earthmovers should be refining it as we speak. And they certainly have enough earth mages to handle it. Professional armies tend to attract those aligned with the law. You generally need a horde, used in this case to denote organization and not as a derogatory term, to get more significant portions of the other base elements. Otherwise, you’re looking for mercenary groups to make up the difference.”

Gem, “Cool, so they’re hiring, I assume?”

Emrys sighs, “They have quests.”

June, “Wait, they aren’t hiring? I saw Inky’s comments about not being able to find a gig, but is the same thing a problem on this side as well?”

Emrys shakes his head, “Not like that. Inky isn’t even finding quests to do. No one is going to be able to join the actual army. That ship sailed once the war was official. Now, if you’re joining, it will be with an attached mercenary group or similar.

“Maybe once the war is over, those with the right skills and enough merit will be offered something. But that won’t be us.”

Samuel raises an eyebrow, “You doubt our ability to gain merits?”

Emrys shakes his head, “The main fight is on our level. Sure, players are leveling like crazy, but we have unlimited respawns, while the locals only get a limited supply. Besides that, this is entertainment for us, but life for them. They need to do things like earn money to afford their house and food. Makes it hard to level.”

Samuel, “Then why won’t it be us?”

Emrys shrugs, “We aren’t learning the right kind of skills. Honestly? You’re the closest to being recruitable by them. Though you’d have to switch to the spear and likely gain a few skills before they’d look your way. They want Soldiers, not adventurers. If they need a crazy murder hobo, they can just put up a quest at the local guildhall.”

Gem yawns, their left ear flicking, “Welp, I’m getting bored. Let’s go find out what quests they have for us!”

June shrugs, “They’ll just have us be whatever the land equivalent of the privateer is. Maybe they’ll focus us on the enemy supply lines or similar? I would prefer if we kept our own efforts to them, at least. We shouldn’t be causing undue strife to regular farmers and merchants.”

Gem twitches their tail and grins like a shark, “You might be a little out of luck. Well, for the merchants. It feels a bit Evil, except you’re the only Good guy to stop us. Though I’ll try to keep myself on the correct side of things. For the most part.”

June turns to Samuel, “Wouldn’t you be on my side? Being a bandit seems pretty chaotic to me!”

Samuel shrugs, “If we are authorized to do it? Well, that means we’re doing it lawfully. I don’t really see why we’d hold back when it is not only profitable for us, but practically our duty.”

Emrys bursts out laughing, “I can’t believe it, but I’m probably the one most on your side!”

June looks over at him, “But you’re Evil! Isn’t this your bread and butter?”

Emrys shakes his head, “Just being Evil doesn’t mean you go around kicking puppies and stealing candy from babies. I’m more Evil in the corporate sense. It simply isn’t worth bothering with poor farmers or merchants who inevitably won’t have much we can carry away. No, what we need to go for are towns and their treasuries! A bank heist, if you will.”

Gem’s eyes sparkle, “Bank heist? I want to do a bank heist!”

June claps her hands, “Well then we better go and check the quests! All this theorizing means nothing if there aren’t any quests that would lead to it.”

The four of them delay slightly to eat breakfast, but soon find themselves outside of the mayor’s office. Well, now it was the army’s office, but it had been the mayor’s. Luckily for said mayor, the town was big enough that they had an unconnected house of their own and so weren’t forced out of their home.

Gem, “I thought it would be more crowded?”

Emrys shrugs, “You should have seen it yesterday. I’d guess everyone is just off on missions. Now let’s go and see what they have for us.”

[ Supply Raid: Return with supplies stolen from the “United Nobility for the True Faith” ]

[ Investigation (Glayk): Find out what happened to Orevell Glayk, the lizardkin merchant. Last known location provided upon quest being accepted. ]

[ Cause Chaos: Get into the enemy’s back-line and cause some chaos. Rewards dependent on how much our intelligence officer hears of your actions. ]

[ Protect the Supplies: Stick around the warehouses. Rewards will be provided for every confirmed enemy combatants secured, bonuses if they’re alive. ]

[ Guard the Merchants: Travel with the merchants bringing in the needed supplies. Confirmed enemy combatants secured alive will provide a bonus. ]

[ Scout Around: Wander the areas near town, keeping an eye out for enemy spies and scouts. ]

And a bunch of other similar quests are all posted to what must have been the local adventurers guild quest board. Of course, upon seeing the third one, Gem completely ignored everything else. “That one!”

The others don’t even bother looking up from where they are on the board. They just know, Gem wants the chaos one.

June, “Yes, yes, but let us at least look through them all.”

Gem shrugs, they had actually skimmed the list already and none of the names sounded too exciting. The first few were generic enough, but after a certain point they were all basically copy-pastes of the “Investigation” quest with a different guy they needed to find.

And nothing against that! Gem just realizes her groups strengths and weaknesses. Mainly in that they doubt anyone in the group actually knows how to track someone down? Which seems a little vital to the whole investigation thing.

A thing the others soon realize as well. Though Samuel makes sure to read every other quest. He really doesn’t want to do a quest for Chaos. But yeah, he gives up eventually.

By then, Gem has made it near the front of the line and so is quick to lock in their quest.

The scribe records most of the needed information before asking a question that causes a bit of a delay. “So, what is the name of your group?”

Yeah, they hadn’t actually thought about that? And given how different the group is, there aren’t any easy themes to build off of. Well, they could always base it on something chaotic as their group is quite the mix. Samuel wouldn’t hear of it, though.

Gem had their own suggestion, but the others turned it down. Though they didn’t see why. As far as Gem was concerned, “Fresco and Friends” was a perfect name!

The group ended up being sidelined by the scribe so they could keep working while the group worked things out among themselves. This took a non-insignificant amount of time. Though likely Gem’s continued “Assistance” exacerbated this. Mainly because after the first, they got really into odd alliterations.

All Alignment Allies

Best Bet Buddies

Catastrophe Co-op

Dastardly Daring Danger Delvers

And so on and so forth. Gem didn’t make it even halfway through the alphabet. Though mostly because Gem decided to do better with the alliterations the further they got.

Emrys ended up being the one to come up with the winning name, “The Four Corners”. This was anything but original. In fact, when they reported it to the scribe, the scribe sighed and said that while fine, we would be the fifth group in this town alone to claim the name.

Gem raised an eyebrow at that, “How long have the records been kept?”

The scribe shakes their head, “No, I don’t mean in our records. I meant that at this very moment, there are four other teams with that name. It is easy to get four people together, and with so few? Most like to believe they’re unique in some way. So yeah, four corners.”

Emrys shrugs, “Huh, we went for an alignment angle, but I guess that makes some sense. We’ll have to figure out a better name in the future.”

The scribe shrugs, “No skin off my nose. Not like a new team is instantly going to make a name for themselves. Though as someone who hears a lot of names and the troubles they cause, I do have one suggestion. Get a name that doesn’t point out how many people are in your group. Makes it hard to grow in the future.”

June, “That does make sense. We’ll have to brainstorm it during downtime. Now, is there anything else we should know about the chaos quest?”

The scribe shakes their head, “Your goal is what it says on the tin. Go cause problems for them and get rewarded based on how well you do. Though I guess I should note that it is specific for the chaos you cause on the back-line. We don’t want chaos where our own troops are fighting.”

June, “We’ll get through those areas quickly enough. Our current experience with mass combat has shown how ineffective we are and that was just a small raid.”

The scribe sighs, “At least you have that much experience. There are a lot of idiot travellers trying to showboat. Which, honestly? Whatever, they can get themselves killed as many times as they like. It is when their nonsense gets other people killed.”

Gem puffs their chest up, “I won’t bring others down with my inevitable stupid acts of chaos! Well, likely the enemies will go down with me? But that’s not what we’re talking about, anyway.”

The scribe waves them away, “Not my problem. Now move on, there are people behind you.” The scribe looks past the group, “NEXT.”

Thus dismissed, the group walks away, Gem running their hand through Fresco’s fur. “Wow, rare you find someone able to raise their voice without shouting.”

June sighs, “It seems they are getting a bit of practice. Now, what do we need? Our rations are stocked up and I’ve got the water creation ritual, so we’re good on that front.”

Samuel, “Our gear has been holding out, so we should be good. If anything, we can use this quest as a chance to pick up some better equipment as spoils of war.”

Emrys smiles, “A bit of sanctioned PvP is the best way to improve our gear. While monsters can drop stuff, that is generally materials and only rarely usable from the get-go. Well, besides the humanoid monsters.”

Gem sighs, “Shame we’ve only faced those old bones. There is a reason goblins are a popular low-level fight. They tend to have weapons. Even if no one would ever want to wear the armor and clothes the vile little green buggers have used.”

June, “It doesn’t help that we mostly face road trash.”

Emrys, “Road trash? I sort of get what you mean, but how would that change the drops?”

June, “The normal monsters near a road will be weaker. Driven there by outside influences. After all, they get beat up and culled regularly, which even monsters will notice. And even if a monster is strong to us, it won’t be for what they are and you mostly get proper drops from stronger beasts. Like that turtle me and Gem killed for the shield that just got traded.

“To get loot from monsters, you generally have to go into their territory instead of skirting around it. Though yeah, even those humanoid monsters near a road will be more likely to drop something. Which is balanced by them being more cunning and willing to be annoying. Stuff like running away early before they lose a monster or simply letting a group pass by without attacking at all.”

Gem, “Is that why we rarely even saw monsters like goblins?”

June nods, “For one thing, we traveled a lot with caravans. Only organized forces and mindless monsters will attack something like that. Though even those times we traveled alone, our team would have been intimidating. Gem, your Magic stat alone would likely drive off anything even close in power to us. You’re like a magical beacon to any monster looking directly at you.”

Gem pouts, “That’s boring!”

Forums And Their New House - Chapter 1

The Battlefield - Chapter 3