Livday, 26th of Draconar, 11th year of the Stringless Era

  Oras shuffled around the coins inside his purse, hoping he would somehow come to a less annoying outcome. After a bath, food, and a stay for the night, they were down another gold coin, putting the party at 6 Gold total. On that kind of money, they could survive easily for another week, a lot longer if they went for lower standards.

  “Ya look so grumpy,” Theria teased him. “If ya want more money, ya gotta work for it.”

  “That is the reason why we are here,” he responded. “You forget quick.”

  “It’s early enough to forget stuff,” his favourite redhead answered with a yawn.

  The newlyweds were waiting outside the main office of the Adventurer’s Guild. Kumse, as one of the largest cities on the continent, also had one of the largest guilds on the continent. That Midyurters were an adventurous bunch helped the matter further, and that the Cult of the Supernatural Elephant preached the value of taking wives of several species was the final point in the calculation.

  The end result was that the only guild in Kumse that was bigger than the Adventurer’s Guild was the Merchant’s equivalent. Those two buildings peered at each other from across the street, each a monument to the building style that was prominent in the cities. Tall pillars held up curving balconies, who settled below domes and great windows. Geometry and symmetry were foundational.

  “What do they call this building style again?” Theria asked.

  “Renaissance - a rebirth of the way the Precursors built their structures.” Oras knew what his first wife would bring up next. “The Station of Resting deviates from the style of most Precursor ruins, although I don’t know if this Renaissance style is an actually good approximation. I doubt we have the kind of materials that they used.”

  “Think we’ll visit a ruin?” Theria asked, with the appropriate amount of veneration. Next to nothing was known about the Precursors, not about who they were, how they lived, nor how they went. They did leave the world with marvels like the Supernatural Elephant, so Oras reckoned they could not have been too bad.

  “Doubtlessly. There’s many of them around, especially if we go north.” The black-haired Dragonblood shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Ya gettin’ excited at the thought?” Theria asked.

  “Imagine what secrets could be hidden there,” he responded eagerly. “Just the metallurgy alone is enough to make one wonder.”

  “Just don’t try to chip the Elephant’s foot again.”

  “I was 5.”

  “Ya still tried it.”

  Oras rolled his eyes, then fixated on the door. The cylinder inside the lock turned with the heavy clunk of a sturdy mechanism. Three seconds later, the hardwood was pulled back. Someone poked out their head, then blinked at them in surprise. “Adventurer’s that get up before noon?” he asked, flabbergasted. “You must be new?”

  “The early dragon finds the gold.” Oras uncrossed his arms and stepped towards the man. “You are correct. We would like to register as new adventurers.”

  “Wise to come in early then.”

  “That was my thinking.” Oras and Theria followed the man inside.

  Oras heard that it was not uncommon for the Adventurer’s Guild to also be a tavern of some kind. This was not the case in Kumse. ‘The competition must be too much,’ he thought. With the way the city pulled most of its earnings from the pilgrims every year, running a bed and breakfast place just wasn’t that feasible.

  The main hall was still sizeable, but it felt like most of that space was for opulence. Every man that yearned for a second wife had to venture out. The two ways to go about that was trade or adventure and both guilds took their cut from every transaction that went through them.

  They circled around an indoor fountain, then arrived at the solid stone desk that was used for reception. “Are you familiar with the functioning of our organization?” the man asked in the neutral tone of regular business.

  “The Adventurer’s Guilds are a loose conglomerate of organizations that operate on the level of individual locations. There are a few sets of shared norms between them, allowing for a Quest to be taken in one location and confirmed completed in another, for example. Typically, they are partly owned or overseen by the local government.”

  The clerk agreed to the summary with repeated nods. “Tad annoying that, sometimes, but I can understand why they don’t want the people who can lob fireballs to be unaccounted for. The second biggest problem behind the monsters they kill are the adventurers that decide to follow the route of villainy.” He took a short pause, while looking for something behind his desk. “You did not mention one of the key functions of the guilds though.”

  “Recognition,” Theria chimed in. “Ain’t worth anythin’ to register as an adventurer if you’re just workin’ locally. The guilds make sure we can be identified even by people that don’t know us at all.”

  “Exactly, we provide you with means to turn any local reputation into an international one. Everyone can take work from a local blackboard, but we make not only sure that all the work is on one blackboard, we also make sure that you will be trusted to take work in other cities around the world. Not much adventure in only working locally, ey?”

  “Indeed not,” Oras agreed.

  The man found what he had been looking for. Two items were placed on the table in front of them. First was a crystal, the shape and size of a playing card, but several times thicker. “This is our way to do so,” the clerk said. “Precursor tech that we managed to salvage and replicate on a small scale. Every Adventurer’s Guild has the capacity to read and write into the crystal. Because it is extremely expensive to get one of the enchanted machines that do so, it’s pretty safe, and we have our own codes on top of that to prevent fraud. The crystals themselves are fairly cheap to make, but you still only get one per party to begin with. You can request additional ones after your trial period.”

  “Is it really necessary to recount all of this to us?” Oras asked.

  “You’d be surprised how many people come in here and think the guild exists as some kind of bank.” The clerk’s hand wandered to the second item on the counter: a sheet of paper covered in the sharp lines of pressed ink. “Now that I made sure you are informed, you can fill out your registration.”

  Oras took the form and the quill offered and carried them to a nearby table. Most of the form was pretty simple to fill out. Names, rudimentary details of identity and origin, all so they could be identified if that was ever necessary. The only problem that gave them halt was at the bottom of the page: the name of their party.

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  “Any idea?” Oras asked.

  “We could just call it ‘Oras’ Harem’,” she suggested.

  “The world is not Midyurt,” he reminded. As encouraged as harem seeking was in this part of the world, they were from one small country from the smallest of the three continents. Flaunting his intentions like that felt inappropriate in that broader context. “It is too overt.”

  “Ya don’t mind the idea though?” Theria tapped her chin, before snapping her fingers. “Dragonhoard!”

  “That… could work.” The name had a few layers to them and it was unique enough that he doubted there would be clashes in the registers. He nodded, then wrote that into the box. “Dragonhoard it is.”

  With the name written in and their signatures put on the document, they returned to the clerk. “Just making sure: that’s hoard not heart, yes?”

  “Yes,” Oras confirmed. “Is my penmanship poor?”

  “No, but if I miswrite this, your crystal is stuck with it, so I am just making extra sure.” The clerk took the crystal from the counter and disappeared in a backroom. There were some unnatural sounds like… light getting drawn over a violin string. Oras did not know how to describe the insistent hum properly. It was gone fairly quickly. “Alright, that would be your registration done. For early missions, we do supply inexperienced people with a mentor. We have a duty to keep casualties low and all of that.”

  “How long will we have someone lookin’ over our shoulder?” Theria asked, disapproval swinging in her voice. “Do we really need one?”

  “It is advisable,” Oras answered before the clerk could. “We are just two novices, Theria. It is best to approach these things with care.”

  Confidence in his abilities did not prevent him from seeing the wisdom in those words. Death was a companion in every party, and most deaths no doubt occurred with new adventurers who bit off more than they could chew.

  The clerk gave Oras a thankful nod. “I understand you must have pride in your ability, but we have found just sending fresh parties out there has an alarming rate of failure. Some are just idiots who think that a pack of wolves won’t rip them to shred. Others just don’t know what to look out for, alert a tribe of savage goblins, and then the lucky ones are killed.”

  Theria sucked at the inside of her lip. Her finger trailed the scar over her left eyes. “Alright, fine,” she relented.

  “Are we assigned one or do we pick one?” Oras asked.

  “Assigned. It’s the season for new adventurers. Really smart of you to come in early, means I can get you one of the better ones…” He scanned through some paperwork. “Torm will do nicely for you two, I think. He’s an older man, lots of experience, easy to get along with. He’s aiming to settle down soon, so he will keep youthful ambition in check.” The clerk looked up. “Although I must say that you have a remarkably controlled temper. Most new adventurers are more like your lady.”

  “I have meditated much on my path,” Oras answered. “From my first memory, I knew I would chase this lifestyle one day.”

  “Is that a Dragonblood thing?” he asked.

  “It is dragon related,” Oras answered and recalled that very first image that ever stuck inside his mind, the barrier between infancy and childhood. Scales, slit-pupils, and whispers of ambition. “As controlled as I may appear, I am eager to get started.”

  “Alright, then you just move to the blackboard and take whatever mission you think is appropriate for you. I’ll advise you after you picked something. Torm usually comes in about an hour from now, so you got plenty of time.”

  “Appreciated,” Oras stated.

  The Dragonhoard party stepped away from the desk and moved to the blackboard. It covered an entire wall, stretching four metres wide and going from the level of his hip as far up as his hand could reach. The prestigious size was largely unnecessary. While a great number of jobs were on display, the notes only covered about a fifth of the space offered.

  “Let’s see…” Oras muttered.

  “I’ll watch ya instead of reading these myself,” Theria decided and took a seat at a nearby bench.

  “Do you have such trust in my ability?”

  “Nah, I just know you’ll read every single one in pursuit of the perfect mission.”

  Oras crossed his arms. Rather than humour her with a response, he was simply going to prove her wrong by reading every single note at rapid speed. His eyes dashed over the sometimes difficult to decipher words that had been put to paper.

  Most of the missions were extermination work. A goblin tribe here, a herd of unusually sized rodents there, an undead one barony over, that sort of thing. This was the bread and butter of adventurers, to take care of the little problems before they could become large problems. By the time the local goblin tribes had confederated into a war host, it was the army’s problem. It was in everyone’s interest to act well before then.

  After that, other frequent missions were to escort, to deliver or to scout. People and items needed moving and it was pretty normal to send in less powerful adventures to verify a rumour before wasting the time of the kind of individuals that could create lakes in an afternoon. Oras intended to join their ranks, but the only way there was steady, constant improvement.

  ‘A goblin extermination in a Precursor ruin?’ His eyes locked onto the note when he spotted it. It was obviously a very good start, both because goblin exterminations were a classic first mission and because they would get to see a landmark they were very interested in. Cleansing goblins from a Precursor ruin was only proper. The savage greenskins would only muck up the place. ‘But on the off chance that I find an even better mission…’

  ________________________________________________________________

  Theria giggled every step back to the counter. “Told ya,” she teased him.

  “I was just making sure it was the best one.”

  “That’s exactly what I said ya would do.”

  Oras had nothing to retort, so his first wife got to be all smug about it when they waited in line. By now, over a dozen other people had come into the chamber, five of which belonged to two different new parties that were now getting the registration spiel. Oras and Theria had to stand there and wait until both parties had been guided through, a process that was not half as smooth as it had been for them.

  Ultimately, they managed to step up to the receptionist, who took the mission note from them. “Ah, a bit ambitious but should be doable with your mentor. Have you killed savage goblins before?”

  “Yes,” Oras answered.

  “Thought as much. You’re from the countryside, I can tell by her accent. Goblins are the rabbits of the monster world, can’t really avoid them.” The clerk shook his head. “Letting them house in a ruin is disgraceful. Ever been to one of those?”

  “No, we are looking forwards to it.”

  “I recommend you reign in your expectations a bit. This one was found in an already derelict state about 200 years back and has been stripped bare already. It’s still fascinating architecture, though.”

  That was disappointing news. ‘Should have expected as much,’ Oras chastised himself. An unexplored Precursor ruin wouldn’t be left for newcomers to check out. “I assume Torm is here by now?”

  “He should be…” The clerk stood up and took a look around. When he waved his hand in a calling gesture, the Dragonhoard party checked on who reacted.

  The man looked almost exactly as Oras would have imagined. The man was of an advanced age. His hair was grey, well-combed and pulled back into a low ponytail. He had a nicely trimmed beard, adding to the appearance of someone aspiring to change to a job where the appearance mattered more than brawn. He looked mildly tired, brown eyes sunken in his wrinkly face.

  What Oras did not anticipate was the lack of scars on the man. He was in good shape, toned arms and pectorals visible past the edges of his plain brown shirt. A sword on his hip made it clear he was the frontliner type. An old adventurer could have been free of scars only if he was exceptional, if he had the money to remove them, or if he avoided any real danger. Two of these were out, leaving them only with a fellow without ambition.

  [Character AI Picture in Spoiler]

  ‘Well, he is just showing us the ropes,’ Oras thought. ‘I am not going to have another man in my party permanently. What would be the point?’

  “How may I help?” Torm asked the clerk.

  “This here is the Dragonhoard party, Oras and Theria, they just registered with us and I recommended you mentor them for their first couple of missions.”

  “Sounds good. Name is Torm,” the older adventurer offered his hand.

  Oras took it. “I am looking forward to learning from your experience.”

  Theria shook the hand after, then Torm turned to the clerk. “Do we already have a mission picked out?”

  “Yeah, just wanted your opinion before I confirmed it,” the clerk answered and slipped the note with the details to Torm. The seasoned adventurer quickly scanned over it, then nodded.

  “I’ve been to that ruin before. You are an archer?”

  “Yup,” Theria answered.

  “Good… you?”

  “Brawler,” Oras answered and showed his knuckledusters.

  “Alright. That means we have an archer and two melees. I know the lay of the land. So in combination, this should be a pretty easy job. One or two days of laying in ambush, whittling down numbers, and then one final charge in.”

  “A sound strategy,” Oras agreed.

  “Sounds a tad boring, doesn’t it?” Theria asked.

  “There will be enough danger at the end,” Torm assured. “When do you want to leave?”

  “We have no reason to stay and every reason to go… finances.” Oras gestured at his unnervingly light purse.

  “Then I have no reason to keep you.”

  “Pass me the Intel Crystal and I will confirm you have taken the Quest,” the clerk said. “Then you can get right on it.”