Deep within the primal forests, Dragonroot, also known as the Widow's Mercy, is harvested under the watchful eye of the giant Jaderock bees. These monstrously rge bees, according to the observations of the researchers of Quas, require the poison produced by the flowers to crown a new queen among their number. Such is the importance of Dragonroot that alchemists from far and wide seek it out for use in their elixirs and concoctions. Legends even tell of the dragon syers of old who coated their weapons with a deadly paste made from the root, granting them the power to vanquish their scaly foes.

  - The Fanciful Travels by Beron de Laney 376 AC.When my shifts were finally over, the exhaustion I felt could still not quite dampen my good spirits. I made sure to hide my smile from the guards who looked at me as if I was deranged, and I made sure to smile at each sve who met my eyes too. Some of the poor sves even hesitantly smiled back.

  “You look to be in good spirits boy, did something good happen in those godforsaken mines? Maybe you poked about in a different shaft!” Adita jibed jovially, ughing at her own crude joke.

  “No, no, Madam Adita. Nothing of that nature, but I see that this evening’s meal looks as delicious as ever,” I replied adroitly, my good spirits lighting my eyes.

  “Told you I’m not a madam, not one of those high-nobility types, and fttery will get you nowhere!” she cackled as she dolloped an extra portion into my bowl. “Old Monta caught himself a little delicious Rockcrab by the Latifundium, threw that in today.”

  You have gained 1 Charisma.

  I smiled knowingly, taking my bowl filled to the brim with the questionable stew. The gain in Charisma was extraneous to my current dire circumstances. My mind was more focused on the fact that the game's internal logic had transted Adita's words into the ancient Roman word for sve quarters, an oddity that puzzled me as I began eating my evening meal. Soon, a familiar hulking manacled shape hobbled over. I rose and csped his arm at the elbow, which he returned in greeting.

  “Welcome, Kidu the Raider,” I grinned up at him, my neck having to tilt upwards to meet his cold blue eyes.

  “And you, Gilgamesh of Uruk,” he chortled, settling his bulk down cross-legged on the hard-packed earth.

  “I have questions…” I began hesitantly.

  "Of course, you do, god-touched. As long as we do not debate Quassian philosophy, I welcome them. Perhaps through answering of them, you will gain some insight into your past," he said sympathetically, his voice colored with compassion as we both sat down.

  We talked for a while. Kidu confirmed that he had no knowledge of the strange mental script which I dubbed the "UI" or "User Interface," a script that apparently only I could see. He viewed my interpretation of the UI's messages as some form of communication from the divine.

  I also learned from Kidu that the nguage of the Children of the Tides was simply called "Trade" and that the guttural nguage was almost the lingua franca for this region. He considered my pronunciation of Trade to be above average, indicating that my grasp of the spoken nguage had clearly improved by leaps and bounds. The singsong nguage that I had some experience with was called "High Quassian," and was also spoken by the desert people of the south.

  In time, the rge man shared his tale with me. I found out that Kidu was from the far frozen north. His tribe was a nomadic people who hunted a massive creature called the Cronir. The Cronir traveled across the tundra in vast herds, like caribou, and were sometimes preyed upon by vicious Ice Drakes. His tribe had lost several skirmishes, and the allocation of hunting rights to rival tribes had further weakened them. The Windspeakers of his tribe, a group of elderly and wise individuals who kept the oral traditions of the Three Bears, advised the chief to send a raiding party to the South.

  The chief had sent Kidu, who even then had a reputation for being a belligerent troublemaker, along with a few other fractious youths to form a party and travel south as raiders. The leader had pnned for them to bring exotic riches from the warm verdant nds back home so that they could trade for favors and hunting rights from other the tribes.

  However, in a frontier town near the frozen wastes, they had been duped by shady characters in the local drinking den promising them the location of a rich caravan that was scheduled to pass through. Instead of a profitable raid, they were assaulted in the night while in their drunken stupor, stripped of their weapons, and sold into svery to the said caravan.

  Due to his fractious and violent nature, Kidu had been sold and traded from master to master many times. Eventually, he had changed hands so many times that he had finally made it to Ansan, the jewel of the grass sea of the Grieving Lands, and a gateway to the Wilds.

  Spying Durhit with a group of tired-looking men, I called him over. His face at a distance looked like he had just swallowed a sour plum as he made his way to us. Suspicion warred with a need to make a connection across his bearded face. In the end, despite initial reluctance, the need to find some form of soce won.

  “Be a little quieter, manling. The guards here are sensitive to those with loud tongues,” grumbled the dwarf.

  I held my hands up in mock acquiescence, still grinning.

  “I’ve never seen a human, plenty of dwarves, but never a human so happy pounding away at rock. I swear he is a little queer in the head,” he grumbled again.

  "Then you have probably never heard of the gold rush," I replied. The dwarf's eyes almost comically widened at my mention of gold. "Men would cross oceans, pins, and deserts in their search for gold," I tried to intone as wisely as possible.

  "Aye, that is well-known, that man's greed for gold can rival even a dwarven Deeptaker's," Durhit nodded sagely into his bowl, his long beard almost brushing into the stew.

  "I know you are god-touched, but at times you sound like my tribe's Windspeakers, Gilgamesh of Uruk. Are you a schor?" interjected the wild man, his voice surprisingly serious in its earnestness.

  A bittersweet smile formed on my face, shaking my head as the lie found its way to my lips, "No, Kidu of the Three Bears, though I have heard a few things here and there." Already treading on dangerous ground with my mention of the California gold rush, I grew wary that continuing this line of conversation would lead me to share more about my origins.

  "Your tribe will enjoy many good years with their offering, to give not only a god-touched but also a man wiser than his years to the Chooser of the Sin," he nodded, accepting my lie completely.

  “How about you, mysterious manling, what brought you here to the great Ansan?” the dwarf inquired, bushy eyebrows raising a fraction in interest.

  Thankfully, Kidu interjected, eager to tell my story to the dwarf, with just a little bit of joy in the telling. He embellished little, except for my fight in the arena. According to the savage-looking man, instead of killing a green and untested youth, I had sin a scarred seasoned warrior, his bde pitted with the csh of many battles.

  “...And what brings a stone-eater so far from your mountain halls?” the wildman finished with a question.

  The dwarf's face scrunched in irritation before looking down, troubled, as if trying to retrieve the memory from the ground itself. In time, he too told his tale, "A bunch of ds and I signed as mercenaries for the manling Lord Hayles against one of his neighbors, Lord Farilse. Something about an exorbitant port tax that one of Haylebury's ships refused to pay for. This led to City Lord Farilse seizing his vessel, the Pride of Iron, that was berthed in his port."

  Something ticked at the back of my mind with the ship's name, but I quickly turned my attention back to the dwarf's tale.

  “The port of Seaguard had strong high walls and even stronger coastal defenses, and little Lord Hayles decided he needed a bit of dwarven ingenuity to do something about the defenses. A messy affair if there ever was one…" He spat on the ground before continuing. "Good rights to pilge and steady coin are a siren song to any good dwarf worth his ore, and we marched under Haylebury's banner with the baggage train. But Farilse was a cunning one, and he hired mercenaries of his own. Hateful pointy-eared scum, Dark Elves, quiet like shadows, fell upon the baggage train near, gutting the sentries and picket lines with not so much as a sound.

  “My own mate, Kabruk, was taken down right before my eyes, one of their cursed bck bdes across his throat as he tried to raise the arm. I gave as good a reckoning as any of the Stoneborn, and I perhaps got a few of them with my trusty hammer. Like hitting leaves and twigs, those Dark Elves are. They faded away like morning mist just as the first light hit, and the damage they had done was great. They had hit our baggage train and killed our Girabis, poor blundering beasts, and just like that, our whole venture was hamstrung. A curse of ash and ruin on the sharp ears!"

  Durhit continued, “The bckguard Farilse never faced us in open battle after that. He hit us again and again and finally forced Hayles’ surrender.” The dwarf paused for a moment, as if the memory caused him bittersweet pain.

  “My sister Evenes could only afford the ransom for her man, Not. I don’t bme her in truth, as it was more my idea to go about on that sg heap of an adventure. She promised that once she and Not started work on the new cim they had, they’d find a way to pay my bond price. But with no way to pay my immediate ransom, Farilse sold us to a passing sver caravan. Those vultures are always about the edges of war, like flies to a fresh corpse. Now, here I am in Ansan, mining iron ore for manlings to make weapons to wage war upon one another.”

  Something must have struck a chord with the wildman as he silently patted the dwarf on the shoulder in compassion only to be brushed off brusquely. I, too, fell silent, though for another reason. Something the dwarf said set off something in my mind, like suddenly remembering an important memory.”

  Then I found it, the spell Rust. Like a slippery eel, it had always wriggled its way from my attention. Circumstances had meant I never had any leeway to experiment with its use. Determined now, I called out to it and was met by resistance.

  Bck slithering things crossed the edges of my vision and cold sibint whispers caressed my ears, making me shiver as electricity traveled down the nape of my neck. A sense of wrongness so profound and utterly inimical to all things filled me.

  Wanting to release this dark energy as soon as possible, I eyed a random sve engaged in evening conversation in the corner of my eye. Focusing my target, I surreptitiously cast the spell at his manacled feet.

  Bck lines of power left me then, seemingly invisible to everyone else, wrapping around the chains like velvet lightning as he continued talking. The whispers slowly left me, the feeling of wrongness lessening, but I could still see the dark lightning working its way around my target’s iron chains. Gradually now, the lightning danced around the metal, slowly and steadily like a funeral procession.

  Where it touched, a few dots of orange and red could be seen as the metal was oxidized at an accelerated rate. The spell had only cost me a single point of Mana. I made every effort to hide the grin on my face as I looked back at my companions, questioning looks on their faces as I suddenly rose to my feet. I had found the key to my chains. Expining to them that I thought I saw the ghost of a familiar face, they nodded sympathetically at my false hope.

  Bitterly, Durhit shared that he had often done a simir thing when new dwarves were welcomed to the mines. We talked about small things of little importance, and I learned more of the common knowledge of this world. The name of the world I found myself in was called many things by its innumerable people.

  But here in this area, known colloquially as the 'Grieving Lands' due to the sudden, tumultuous storms that were endemic to the region in the ter months of the year, the locals called the world 'Gesthe.' This meant 'Garden' in the nguage of the First People, as the Elves liked to call themselves. The Grieving Lands were but a small part of an enormous world that was broken up into massive continents, which according to Durhit were the bones of nd dragons.

  We talked also of strange and fanciful pces. Durhit spoke of his home, the "Beacon Mountains," an active volcanic range. The fiery chasms would frequently erupt with fme and ash, the dwarf recounted with a grin. I couldn't help but ponder what kind of people would willingly inhabit such a perilous environment.

  Somewhere in the conversation, there was talk of a pce to the far west called the ‘Gss Fire Sea.’ Here sailors feared to navigate its treacherous waters as great crystalline gss formations floated on its becalmed surface, burning any ship to bckened husk that got too close.

  Despite the danger, some savvy or desperate captains were willing to take the risk, venturing forth under the cloak of moonless nights to collect precious fragments of the gss. Such treasures were highly sought after by the great universities of Quas, willing to pay a high price for the rare and valuable material.

  The fmes of adventure were lit once more in my heart, and I could feel a desperate need to be free taking deeper root there. However, before too long, we were herded back into the sve stables. Before going to sleep, I sat up and cast Rust silently, picturing iron manacles, and released the energy in random directions in the room. The bck lightning from my spell was invisible, even to me in the darkness. I knew the spell was being cast as I could see my Mana drop in steady increments, and on the ninth cast, I was rewarded with a notification.

  You have gained 1 Intelligence.

  Lying back down on my cot, I perused my character Status. Like the other day, I had gained some nominal experience from mining. But more importantly, I now had the tools to make a bid for freedom. I needed the patience to see my growing pns through, and it felt like my chains chafed more than usual now that a path to liberty could be seen. I yearned to feel and experience the best this fantasy world had to offer, and not just be a sve to destiny.

  STATUS

  Calling: Gilgamesh Level 6 Acolyte of Avaria

  Strength: 20

  Dexterity: 13

  Constitution: 27

  Intelligence: 17

  Wisdom: 12

  Charisma: 9

  Luck: 13

  SKILLS & PROFICIENCIES

  Pain Nullification (lvl.1)

  Power Strike (lvl.2)

  Endure (lvl.2)

  Stealth (lvl.1)

  Rest (lvl.2)

  Backstab (lvl.2)

  Dodge (lvl.2)

  Polearms (lvl.2)

  Dual Wield (lvl.1)

  Critical Hit Mastery (lvl.2)

  Mining (lvl.2)

  Unarmed Combat (lvl.3)

  Hammers (lvl.1)

  SPELLS & MAGIC

  Heal (lvl.5)

  Rust (lvl.1)

  Identify (lvl.2)

  Silent Casting (lvl.1)

  GIFTS

  Curse of Entropy: -20% all starting attributes.

  Experience to next level: 850/991

  Health: 92/111

  Stamina: 13/43

  Mana: 1/11