Welp, you've gotten me to join up on your worldbuildin' thing...although its going to take a while for me to add my ideas and make sure they're internally compatible with everything else.
Huzzah!
Stay in Beriac, work as a scribe for a few days so that you have money to sustain yourself for a bit while we pursue our intellectual interests.
Hang around the local tavern/inn in the evenings, play some traditional wilderness music to entertain the locals, and keep an eye out for any interesting locals who might be worth learning from.
You quickly find the inn and rent out their open room. It's what you expected from an inn in such a remote location: not much. Even so, the room is reasonably clean and the food is good. Beyond that, you don't particularly care about the quality of your surroundings.
You wait in the common room of the inn for the nightly crowd to gather, but a surprisingly few number of people arrive. Your foreign garb attracts a few glances, but nobody makes a move to speak with you. Their hushed demeanor is slightly unsettling.
"Pardon me, but is their something wrong with them?" You hesitantly, in your accented Acasic, ask the serving girl while gesturing to the man who appears to be the focus of the group. She pauses and brushes a few stray hairs away from her eyes before answering.
"Oh. That's Calib. He's just... He's going through hard times. We all are, but he's gotten it worse than the rest of us. Don't worry about it." She smiles reassuringly before glancing around and speaking in a hushed tone.
"You know, they-" "Alaya!" The innkeeper interrupts her before she can finish her sentence, striding over to the table where you sit. He pulls Alaya away and whispers sternly to her for a moment before turning back towards you.
"Pay no attention to any gossip Alaya told you. Things are hard here, but... Well, we'll get through it. Always have." He stands still momentarily, appearing to be thinking through what to say next. Taking a third option, he nods sharply and turns back to his business.
The innkeeper's intervention drew the gazes of Calib and his group. He raises a hand and nods slightly at you, quietly acknowledging your presence. The hushed discussion slowly picks up again amongst his companions.
The next day, word had gotten around that a scribe was in town. A trickle of people would occasionally stop by the inn to have words committed to paper; the faces of the townsfolk were, for the most part, somber and subdued. Long after the rest had come and gone, you met the one exception to that standard.
"So yerra scriber, righ'? Well, lemme tell ya, I tell ya I gotta story yerra wanna righ' down posshat." It was nearly sunset. The majority of Beriac's citizens had retired to the safety of their homes, but the dirt-coated vagabond interrupting your dinner had other ideas.
"...Do you mean 'posthaste'?" "Whaterrer you wanna call it, fancypants." The man was filthy, missing a tooth, and one of his eyes was pointing in the wrong direction. This should be interesting.
"But I gotta story yerr gonn' wanna hear. A real history if'n ya catch what I'm sayin'." "I presume you're implying that your story is true, but your visage is detracting from it's plausability." He seemed inordinately proud that he had a visage, and that it detracted from another large word. You suspect he doesn't understand what you're saying.
"Righ', righ'. Well lemme tell ya. They don' think it's real, but I tells ya, I bin a sailor when I was a lad, 'n I knows when I sees, ya see, I sees them out 'er, an' the others, they-" "Is there a period in the foreseeable future?" You not-so-subtly try to prod the man into finishing his run-on sentence.
"Well, gi' out yer parchn't an' I'll tell ya what I know." There's no harm in humoring the man, you suppose. Retrieving your writing supplies, you wait for him to say what he saw that only he recognizes. He leans forward, very obviously glancing furtively about. He elaborates in a conspiratorial tone.
"They dunno 'em cause they's not sailor's, but I seen 'em." He inches forward more.
"The squids 'r out there, ya see? I sees them wherever I goes, and they cannae tell me I'm crazy, no sirree, they just dunno. " You are less than impressed at the revelation that squids are out there, but the man expounds at great length about the places he's seen squids; up trees, under rocks,
in rocks, in a sandwich he had once. He pauses momentarily to urge you to write down what he says. You halfheartedly summarize his soliloquy. When you put the last period down (all the periods were your additions), he beams at you.
"Ya keep that an' tell 'em all what I sez, ya hear? An' here, have this lil' summat to keep." He passes you a small metal rectangle, pitted with rust, with a frayed leather cord running through a hole in the metal. It seem to be some sort of necklace or pendant. In its center is are three mismatched lines of a light metal, untouched by abrasions or oxidation.
"Ya keep that, I dun' need it 'cause I knows what the squids are doin'. It'll keep 'er safe." With that he stands up and obtrusively sneaks out the door, turning around to tap the side of his nose in a gesture he most likely had never actually seen before. As the door clicks shut, you're left alone in the inn.
Wat do?
Author
Topic: Teki Silova: Loremaster (An Illustrated Suggestion Adventure) (Read 2766 times)