18 - Civilization, at Last [Cherno]

Intending to leave soon, she took a few more minutes to look over the rings and coins she’d gotten off the deadman.

Both were money, at least she gathered as much from the Rings having the same type of readout as the coins.

[JAS'RABAN BRASS COIN]

[Status:]

Good (Ancient)

[DD Value:]

4500

[New Calbium Ring]

[Status:]

Good

[DD Value:]

10

Most of the rings were valued at 10 “DD”. Nine larger ones were worth 50, and six rings with small orange gems read as 100. Storing them away in her Kenoma Pocket, she retrieved the cigarette-rolling box and spent a few minutes rolling up a dozen more of them, storing these away in the Pocket as well. Already, after only two cigarettes, that ancient habit had resurfaced, perhaps as some form of retaining a connection to the happier period of her past life.

She soon left the deserted town behind, following the road.

The road led her to a greater road, and that road, to a city.

It was gorgeous, a blend of ancient buildings with new construction; bones of vaguely middle-eastern semblance and a contemporary style adjacent to early-1900’s art deco. She estimated its population to be at most a couple tens of thousands, maybe a hundred thousand at most. She supposed that, by this world’s standards, it likely counted as a proper city, though it was barely the size of a Megacity subdistrict. For every major difference, Krahe found something vaguely familiar. She wasn’t about to complain about being able to function on a basic level. It was certainly a preferable alternative to getting thrown into an utterly alien and hostile world.

Entering the city wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t walled, after all, though the road by which she entered was guarded. The guards wore no visible armor save for chunky belt buckles with a conspicuous lever on the right-hand side. Their uniforms, simple as they were, projected an aura of just-good-enough professionalism. One was a human, and the other a… Humanoid crocodile. She’d seen weirder, both from cyberized animals to gene-modders.

They looked her over, the human raising a monocle before waving her on through. She made her way through the city, taking note of the people she saw as she calmly explored the place. Besides a vast variety of lizardmen, she also saw a few lanky, insectile humanoids that incessantly rubbed their hands together. Fly-men, perhaps?

As she went along just following the road, she came upon an apparent gathering place - a temple of some sort with a bronze statue of an impeccably-chiseled, long-haired man out front. It depicted the man pulling his own chest open, revealing three golden hearts inside. Hymns extolling some figure named “Zavesh” resounded from within, and the same name was found on the statue’s pedestal:

ZAVESH THE GRAFTER

OUR LORD OF FLESHLY ARTIFICE

FOUNDER OF THE GRAFTING CHURCH

Out front of that place, she overheard a conversation between an incredibly muscular woman covered in stitch-trails and a man with camera-like implants instead of eyes: “...can’t help it. The Silversword Agency blacklisted me, so it’s either church work or going through an independent broker. I’d rather make less money than indirectly do the dirty-work of some baneworm scumbag.”

“Why’d they blacklist you?” replied the man, though his tone of voice was one of rhetorical amusement.

The woman gave an incredulous reply: “Fuckin’ guess.”

“You got caught complaining about the favoritism.”

“Yeah, no shit. It’s obvious they do it, but if you mention it they wait until you call a saurian a lizard and blacklist you over that. Asinine. Sanctimonious cunts.”

“Guess we’re both Church Contractors now,” the man laughed.

Agencies. Contractors. Brokers. Corruption.

“The more things change the more they stay the same,” Krahe thought. The mention of Baneworms reminded her of what the memoryslate had said, and the consideration that there were sapient forms of those horrid parasites ran through her head. She shuddered and headed on into the temple, curious. Within was no silent cloister, but a reception room with a bizarre-looking person manning the counter. Her skin was a pale blue, with no hair, ears, or nose to speak of, the latter two only being holes on her head. Most glaringly, however, she had a vertical third eye which spanned from just above her nose-holes to where the top of her forehead would’ve been if she had any hair. Half of its sphere protruded outward, triangles of moist flesh above and below it. Despite a lack of hair, she had bony ridges in place of eyebrows.

While her horizontal eyes were fixed to paperwork that her hands were feverishly filling in, her third eye snapped to Krahe.

“Ah. You look new. A foreigner, I presume, and an anathemist to boot. Come in with the latest Dregstone Road caravan? It doesn’t matter. Are you here to get a CQF ID printed, or perhaps to get that absolutely horrid anathema burn looked at? The gym is down the hall.”

She thumbed to one doorway behind the counter.

”If you’re looking to schedule a grafter appointment, you’ll need to get a health assessment first.”

Krahe wasn’t particularly eager to register in any system before she could find out the ramifications of such an action.

“Just looking around,” she said, doing just that. A real, wood-and-metal bounty board caught her eye; particularly, sketches of deformed people with bounties for crimes such as “Body Theft” and “Banisher Kidnapping”.

“I could use a spot of bounty-hunting…” she muttered, turning to the receptionist for a moment. “Do I need an ID to claim a bounty?”

“...No, though other contracts will be inaccessible to you until we can ascertain your capabilities.”

“Say I can deal with a handful of those half-torso things that prowl in Jas’raba without a Voidkey, how’s that?”

“A handful of Tur’ith?” the receptionist raised an eyebrow-ridge.

“Five, give or take one or two.”

“That would make you a…” the receptionist squinted before snapping back to a professional countenance. “Come here, please, so that I can ascertain your claim. Just repeat it to me while looking into my third eye.”

Krahe did, despite the fact the duo from earlier had just entered and the goggle-eyed man had turned his gaze towards her. Her distrust of organized systems and desire not to draw undue attention was not quite as strong as her ego streak, which she had cultivated through her time in Megacity Gamma’s underworld. Projecting an aura of power was often just as good as actually being powerful. It hadn’t saved her from a monomolecular whip through the neck, though.

“I’ve defended myself against a pack of Tur’ith without a Voidkey, Barriers, or Wards of any kind,” she expanded on her earlier claim.