First, he looked for an explanation or list of his attributes. There had been those poems, the prayers for like, Strength and Agility. He’d selected Vigor, but didn’t remember them all or how many there were. Maybe he could pray for Strength now, Ichiro thought. It would be gratifying maybe, to pray to KORG here with a Tree novice listening in from outside the door. He flipped to the spot, but the book had changed it’s ink. The attribute prayers were no longer there.
There was this part still:
//Ichiro ~ World Exile//
Now human child come here my favor claim
Divine rewards give power to your name
The masters price is small his gifts are vast
Good souls embrace and hold this book of blessings fast
And then there was this new poem:
And now new pow’r throughout your veins doth flow
May Vigor’s blessing help to make you grow
More favor gain if prove your worth to me
Triumph, Fight Kill! Or burn maybe, that stupid Tree
Well. That was an idea. One that Ichiro decided to table for later. But, the point was that he’d used up all of KORG’s favor praying for Vigor. He wasn’t afraid to fight a whole temple full of monks for more of it. He’d fight something else. Who exactly, he didn’t know, but Ichiro was valorous. He just needed a sword.
Looking around the tiny room helped Ichiro come back to the present. It was peaceful here and now, and that wasn’t a bad thing. Still curious about his stats, he turned the [Identification] feature of the book on himself.
You are a nineteen year old male who comes from another world. This is a significantly important fact, but one that is difficult to prove…
Your attribute values are not common knowledge, but it is known that your Vigor has reached the enhanced level. This was achieved through the consumption of god’s milk…
Your Strength attribute is not enhanced. Judging by your tall and slim build it is one of your weaker physical attributes…
Pondus is not an attribute recognized by the common citizens of the Rosette kingdom, but the old priest has indicated to you that you are a prodigy of sorts. Naturally enhanced attributes are rare, especially spiritual and magical ones, since they are difficult to train…. Ok, yes, you should feel special…
Your enhanced Pondus makes using the ability
possible…
There are many abilities.
This stuff about stats was very exciting to Ichiro, but the book was a little reluctant to just fork over all the details of how the system worked right away, so he stopped picking at it.
There was a map of Tumas in his book now, with important places labeled. He took a few minutes to orient himself and come up with a plan. The merchant’s guild was his first destination, and then he would try to buy some things, and finally find a friendly inn to stay at.
Finally it was time to leave. Ichiro tried to ignore the monks around him as he walked through the temple grounds. He wasn’t their enemy, but he didn’t want to be friends either. As he was passing by the Tree though, he couldn’t help but notice a group of fighters and their leader. They were wearing green uniforms over their armor, with the symbol of a golden tree on their chests.
“The guardians are back!” Someone was yelling.
Ichiro overheard bits of conversation as he slipped past them.
“Arlox, look, the Tree has made another bloom while you were gone!”
“Arlox, the Keeper wants to see you about something.”
“Arlox, did you see any battle?!”
This Arlox guy was popular. Ichiro could see why, he was very tall, handsome, and wore an honest smile. There was a certain aura around him, a feeling of confidence and power, and perhaps even a visible sparkle here and there. He resembled a clean shaven version of Brox, with dark hair and a square jaw, and in the feeling that he he could fight ten regular men at once and still win.
None of the monks seemed to notice him leaving which Ichiro appreciated.
With the merchant’s guild in mind, Ichiro first descended the temple mound and then circled around it to it’s back side. He and Brox had come from the north so this was his first time seeing the other side of the city. Across a dry river bed, climbing the hills up off the valley floor, was the rich half of Tumas. It’s beautiful stone buildings beckoned to him to come and explore.
To get there Ichiro crossed the bridge. The bridge was three hundred feet long and seventy-five feet wide. Wide enough to fit a basketball court, and long enough for three. Instead, there was something like a farmer’s market going on. Stalls featuring all sorts of crafts and food lined both edges of the bridge’s black stone deck. There were some performers, beggars, and crowds of people traveling both ways.
Ichiro hurried to the other side, wondering why the bridge was so large. Wild totemic statues punctuated the side railings every twenty feet, bringing another level of grandeur to the structure. The creek below, however, was almost small enough to hop in places. Unless there were absurd seasonal floods the huge, black, ornately carved, stone bridge was overkill, to say the least.
On the other side Ichiro explored a public square. At the center of it was a tall steele that seemed to function as a sundial. A thirty foot mosaic was artfully laid into the stones around it, making a giant map of the Realm, which Ichiro recognized from his book.
There were guards in impressively shiny armor and blue tabards guarding the entrance to the mage’s guild, a wide tower seven stories tall. The merchant’s guild was a long two story structure on the other side of the square. It’s guards wore white tabards, and they looked at Ichiro suspiciously as he approached the heavy doors that looked like they were covered in gold leaf.
He thought they might try to stop him, like a bouncer in a bar, so Ichiro pulled out his gold coin. “Can you direct me to the money changers?”
One of the guards opened the door for him and escorted him to the correct counter inside. The money changers were lined up like bank tellers, and were flanked by their own pair of bored looking guards wearing the uniform of the merchant’s guild. They were very business like and didn’t make any comments, or even look twice at his strange clothing.
They weighed the gold coin carefully on a small scale and marked the number down in a ledger. Then they moved to a larger scale and weighed out a huge pile of silver coins for him. The silver moons were the size of silver dollars but he also got an assortment of smaller sizes: demis, quarters, ochos, all the way down to the tiny mites which were 1/64th of an ounce.
Ichiro walked away with a conspicuous pouch filled with three pounds of coins. It felt like a lot of money, and it jangled around like a huge bag of coins does. He could just imagine the resident thieves of Tumas licking their lips. He could try to tuck it away, hide it somehow, but another solution was to spend it. There were things he needed to buy!
The second floor of the merchant’s guild had only a few fancy specialty shops. There was a weapon shop, an armor shop, an accessory shop, and a shop that sold elixirs. None of the shop keepers or attendants bothered to talk to Ichiro to ask him if he needed help. He looked like a poor person who was only window shopping.
Ichiro was miffed at the lack of service. The way the staff avoided his attempts to make eye contact was particularly annoying. All he wanted was to know how much things cost, and there were no signs! So Ichiro decided that it would be okay to take matters into his own hands and pull out his book. He was sure [Identification] would tell him the value of the stuff for sale, and that was even better than asking a shopkeeper who might try to swindle him.
In the weapon shop a beautiful slightly curved two-handed blade caught Ichiro’s eye. The book said it was worth about 6lbs 7oz. Since each silver moon was an ounce, that was… 103 silver pieces? That was more than twice as much as he had! Ichiro appraised more of the authentic weapons, axes spears, morning stars, more swords, and his spirits fell. Everything was worth more than he could afford, especially since he needed money for food and shelter now too.
The armor shop and accessory shop were the same, there was nothing he could really afford. He continued out of curiosity, no longer worried about hiding his book. Ichiro was too engrossed, learning new things, to notice that the tables had been turned and he was the one ignoring pointed looks. The elixir shop displayed a modest number of colored glass bottles behind glass in luxurious looking cabinets.
An elixir of Strength. Used to permanently raise the Strength attribute. It’s safety and efficacy are not gauranteed. One of average quality usually sells for around 30lb.
Wow, thought Ichiro. Those are expensive! He moved closer to get a better look, but then noticed a noise behind him. It was a pleasant sound, a loud purrrrrrrr-ing. Turning around, Ichiro was faced with a furry creature. A cat/human with grey and white fur was licking his ring encrusted paw/hand. He wore a loose silk robe open in the front. It had a hole for the tail in the back.
Neither Ichiro or the Cat person said anything as Ichiro stared. Suddenly the purring stopped.
“Excuse me! Sorry!” Ichiro broke eye contact and practically ran off, down the stairs and out of the merchant’s guild.
The young man from another world felt like he’d been caught trespassing. He was the alien here, not the cat-person. No one was pursuing him though, even the guards at the door didn’t really seem to care about his odd behavior. Again he felt self conscious about how conspicuous his big bag of silver was, and began circling the merchant’s guild from the outside.
The shops on the ground floor opened onto the street, not the interior, and stocked less exotic items. There were shovels and picks in one store, bags of flour and kegs full of eels in another, and all shapes and sizes of candles in a third. It began to rain as he went from shop to shop and Ichiro hurried back to a clothing shop he had seen and purchased a cool looking ‘all weather’ Wanderer’s Cloak in green, as well as a pair of shoes and socks that fit all right for 15 silver moons.
He spent another 2 silver on a sort of wide belt with built in pouches he thought would be better for securing his remaining coins in, and then he decided he needed some kind of weapon at least.
There were no swords for sale on the street level, but he did get a dagger that he liked the feel of for 5 more silver.
The rain intensified a little, and Ichiro hunched under his new cloak. He was feeling sort of strange about everything, just being alive but alone. He was a stranger, and Ichiro was very aware of how he didn’t fit in. But the cloak was nice, at least he thought that his identity and secrets were safe behind the layer of wool cloth.
He needed to get out of the rain, and look for somewhere to stay. He thought he was better off looking on the other side of the bridge, in the poorer part of Tumas. He had already spent half of his coins and had learned that he was not rich by any measurement. How much things cost was a sort of mystery to Ichiro. Some things seemed very expensive, and others cheap.
Food was cheap. On his way back over the bridge, Ichiro bought some meat on a stick and a bun that had some kind of cheese filling for only two mites. His remaining coins would feed him for a long time, but if he wanted to buy things like clothing, weapons, or tools, his money would run out very quickly. Maybe that was because everything was made by hand.
Back on Earth everything was mass produced in a foreign country where wages were low, and then shipped to America so he could buy things cheap. That wasn’t the case here, the economics were just different. He hoped that since food wasn’t expensive, a room at a friendly inn wouldn’t be either. Ichiro assumed that most of the people he passed didn’t have a couple pounds of silver in their pockets.
Normal citizens weren’t carrying weapons either. The normal people around him seemed to be just, well, normal. Besides the one cat-person, he hadn’t seen any other fantastic races, no elves or dwarves. There were people with different hair colors, pink, green, and there were people who seemed exceptional like one man who was about seven feet tall who looked like he could carry a horse on his shoulder, but even these exceptions felt like they were within natural limits.
As Ichiro people watched on the bridge the rain finally stopped, and a magician started doing tricks for passers-by. He conjured illusory birds that startled and chased away real pigeons, (which then also were revealed to be illusions). He made a pathetic ‘double’ of himself, and then asked people to guess which one was real. He did a sort of levitation trick which was kind of impressive maybe? The busking magician received about the same amount of attention from locals as the musician types that were also there amongst the merchants. Ichiro moved on.
A little further there was a man selling things laid out on a dirty blanket. He stood out from the rest as looking particularly suspicious, but Ichiro was interested in his wares. Swords. They caught his eye as he passed even though the were a little dirty, like the blanket and the skinny, crouched down man.
“How much?” Ichiro asks.
“45, 40, 40” The dirty little man says with a weird accent as he points at each sword, not wasting words.
“Twenty” Ichiro annunciates, pointing at the nicer one.
The man hesitates only for a second and bobs his head. He holds out his hand and gestures for haste while looking anxiously up and down the bridge.
Ichiro can’t help but look too. He sees a group of three merchant’s guild guards coming their way, two of them holding halberds, the third a cudgel.
“These aren’t stolen are they?” Ichiro is torn between closing the deal quickly and staying on the right side of the law.
“No! I win it gambling!” The thief claimed, but he didn’t wait for Ichiro to pay. He pulled up the corners of the blanket in a flash and started to hurrying away quickly. “Fuck you mother, man!”