“In a couple of months, the weather will break, and most of you will be back on the road looking for work. I’ve enjoyed the time we’ve gotten to spend together, but I can also appreciate that cabin fever has you feeling a little restless right now.”

  “A little,” Smasher, one of the Fighters from the Whiters party, joked. The rest of the adventurers in the guild hall laughed.

  Hans smiled. “Yeah, I feel a little like that myself, to be honest. Before you venture back out to show the world how a few weeks in Gomi transformed you into next-level adventurers, no doubt singing the Association’s praises to all who will listen, there’s a topic we haven’t spent much time on that I think you’ll find valuable: Research.

  “I was joking about the next-level bit, but I’m serious about the research part. As adventurers, we are told again and again how important preparation and planning are for a job, so all of you know to think about these things.”

  Hans wrote a list on the chalkboard:

  -Monsters

  -Travel

  -Weather

  -Location (Pre-Run)

  -Location (Mid-Run)

  When Hans turned around, he saw several heads nodding, indicating that he was correct. The adventurers in the room, ranging from Irons to Silvers, had seen this material before.

  “Stop me as soon as I say something new,” Hans said. He pointed to the line for monsters. “Figure out what you’re hunting and plan for other monsters that might be in the area.”

  He pointed to travel. “What you need to pack to not starve to death on the way.”

  Then weather. “Pack the appropriate gear for all of the climates you are likely to encounter.”

  Pre-run location. “What can you learn about the area, the layout, and potential hazards before you get there?”

  Mid-run location. “Once you’re there, scout carefully to not rush into anything stupid. Have I said anything earth-shattering yet?”

  The adventurers shook their heads.

  “I have points I want to cover for each of these, but let’s start with location research pre-run because this is where most of the missed opportunities begin. I won’t call on anyone–I promise–but please raise your hands if you and your party do these things in your own jobs.”

  Hans started another list, going one by one to see how many hands were raised for each point:

  -Speak with other chapter members before leaving

  -Home chapter library research

  -Local barmaid and tavernkeeper interviews

  -Local chapter interviews

  -Local expert interviews

  -Local leadership interviews

  -Local library research

  He paused for a moment on that last bullet. “Pulling maps of the area is important, but it’s so obvious it doesn’t count. Keep your hand up if you do more than that in a local library.”

  Hans smiled when most hands went down.

  “That’s what I thought,” he said, laughing along with the class. He returned to his list to add two more items:

  -Local tradesmen and merchant interviews

  -Local nobody interviews

  “Over the next few sessions, we’re going to drill down into each of these because there’s a lot more here than any one of these little summary lines might suggest. For today, we’ll hit some of the high points to get you in the headspace for the rest. Does anyone have any guesses for why I put these items in this particular order?”

  “Broad to narrow?” Quentin guessed.

  “The list does reflect that, but that’s not it.”

  A Fighter raised his hand. “Chronological? Goes from accepting the job at home up through getting to the job itself.”

  “Also true of the structure but not what I’m looking for.” Hans looked around for more hands before continuing. “This list goes from ‘most likely to do’ to ‘least likely to do.’ Talking with your pals at your home chapter about a job is so easy to do it happens by accident. Hitting your own library is also fairly easy. You’re familiar with it already, and if the job is out of town, there’s probably not a ton of location-specific material for you to dig into. And, of course, most of you are pros at tavern research.”

  More smiles and chuckles rippled across the room.

  “Everything after that is a lot more work. Tracking down and talking to strangers is tedious and can be unpleasant, depending on what door you knock on, and everything at local library research and below can quickly feel like dead ends. Nothing there. Not worth your time. I see heads nodding. I’m glad you know what I mean.

  “The problem isn’t that there is nothing useful to learn. The problem is that we often don’t ask the right questions. Up through interviewing local leadership, your questions are straightforward, and the people you’re speaking with understand why you’re asking, so they’re primed to give you more of what you’re looking for.

  “‘We’re here for the goblins.’ ‘Okay, great.’ ‘Where are they? How many of them are there? Anything we should know?’ But then you get to the library, which might be packed with material about the town and the local region, and it seems both overwhelming and also a little pointless. The good news is that I have a punch list for all the things that might be helpful, from land deeds to import/export records, so that will be easy to cover later. Instead, we- Yes, what’s your question?”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  A Bronze Rogue had her hand raised. “Did you say land deeds and import/export records?”

  Though it was from a distance, Hans glanced at the journal on her desk and saw that it was dense with notes. He knew this type of student. She was a transcriber, intent on capturing every word of a lesson so as not to miss anything. That habit was a blessing and a curse for those types. On the one hand, they had extensive notes to refer back to after the class. On the other, taking notes that detailed could take their attention away from the actual lecture. They wrote more but heard less. Sometimes.

  “Yes,” Hans confirmed. “My research list isn’t a secret, and any of you are welcome to read that chapter in our Apprentice to Iron manual and copy down whatever you like, so don’t feel like you have to capture all of it here. But yes, land deeds are useful because they can give you an idea of how much attention an area might get and who else you might talk to. That old mine that was sold fifty years ago but has had no movement since? That probably means no one cares enough to look after it, making infestations more likely and a bit more unpredictable, depending on the area.

  “For jobs like that, the original owners are often long dead, and nobody wants a mine with nothing worth digging for, so their kids end up inheriting it. They probably don’t know shit about the mine that grandpa founded way back, but they might have a box of records and maps squirreled away somewhere that don’t exist anywhere else. You might find a dozen work orders about water intrusion for one specific wing of the mine, for example, or you might find a record of an exploratory dig that produced nothing, got boarded over, and was left off the primary maps to avoid confusion.

  “Imports and exports? Well, it’s good to know if hunting and farming are way down. If people in town are hungry, then the monsters outside most certainly are as well. Did the town need a lot of medicine one year? If so, why? Is trade growing, or is it slowing? Both can tell you a bit about what monster activity might be like. Does that answer your question for now? If you want to grab me after, I’ll show you the list.”

  The Rogue nodded and scribbled furiously.

  “All of that research is about inferences and connections. That material wasn’t collected for monster hunters to review, so you won’t find a goblin guide in granddad’s old files, but there for sure might be something about the area that makes your life easier or saves it entirely. Speaking to tradesmen and merchants is a similar sort of indirect research.

  “A local armorer probably doesn’t know much about goblins in mines, but they can tell you what kind of repairs and injuries they see most often. If you have any evidence from the scene, like claw marks or damaged clothing from a victim, they’re good people to talk to about that too. They’re usually pretty adept at pointing out what’s normal and abnormal for an area. They might even be better than you at identifying the monster species because of what they’ve seen come through their shop. If you aren’t used to differentiating wolves from gnolls based on tracks and bite marks but are in an area where both are common, a smith can usually spot the difference in armor damage real quick.

  “The nobodies, now those are my favorites,” Hans said, tapping that line with his chalk. “Experts are great because they have knowledge to draw from, but that can also bias their perspectives. To a town alderman, a goblin problem is a goblin problem. Unless it’s a crisis-level infestation, you’ll get an approximation of the nest location and a rough figure of what their numbers are like. But if you then go and talk to the farmers and hunters who live most of their lives close to goblins, not in a comfortable house inside the walls, you’ll get a much better sense of the problem because they are motivated to pay attention.

  “If a farm family tells you the goblins are worse than usual, you better listen to why they think that. They are far more sensitive to deviations from the norm, and though their information might not be scientific or precise, their insights have a lot more of the ‘will this kill me?’ logic baked in than other sources might.

  “Okay. That’s a good place for us to stop today. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to be here.”

  Hans showed the Rogue where to find the material he mentioned during the lecture and answered a few follow-up questions, some about the class material but most about what dungeon rotations were opening up and when. For all of the latter queries, he did what he always did: Referred them to Tandis and Terry.

  As soon as he was able, Hans extracted himself from the guild hall and slipped into the art-analysis half of the dedicated gazer research area.

  The Gazer Temple, or “the Gazer Vacation Home,” as the others called it, contained a wealth of material to catalog and analyze. The walls in this part of the guild hall were lined with art representing gazer history and accomplishments, and those pieces were accompanied by symbols from a language no one recognized or could yet translate.

  The items of most interest to Hans were an enchanted jawbone necklace and unidentified bowing statues. The jawbone was worn by the orc mojoka, who seemed to be negotiating with the elder gazer of that section and who may also be a young representation of who the orcs now called “Wargod.” The jawbone was covered in unknown runes and symbols, so Dunfoo, Gomi’s local enchantment expert, sealed it under a glass case and alarmed it for good measure.

  The statues that interested Hans were pulled from a room-sized art installation that featured various species bowing to a gazer overlord. There were three species they had yet to identify, and though the research team intended to eventually extract every statue from the Gazer Vacation Home, they started with those three to make them easier to analyze.

  Two were demi-humans, one a sort of snake-human hybrid and the other a type of fish-person. Those two were in the research room with Hans. The third was too large to fit through a standard doorway. It was across the courtyard and off to the side of the Leebel training room, the former gymnasium for Tsumi University. This particular creature was an eighteen-foot-long centipede monster with human-like arms and two vaguely humanoid heads. The extraction team needed to separate it into several pieces to get it out of the Caves.

  If that portion of the Tainted Caves was from the distant, distant past, as their research seemed to suggest, those three species could exist thousands of miles from their known world or be extinct entirely.

  Devon dubbed the centipede creature “Handsy,” and Hans was thankful to have never encountered Handsy in the wild.

  Active Quest: Enjoy it.

  Hans found comfort in surrounding himself with active research, often visiting this room simply to bask in that unique flavor of peace. Olza would say that was still too much like work, but he believed it was also a part of his ongoing effort to savor and appreciate the good things that had come out of his time in Gomi. Where his usual habit was to always be productive, every waking minute of every day, sitting amongst gazer art was a meaningful pause.

  This visit was maybe more work than pleasure, if he had to be honest, but it still counted as relaxing in his mind. He wanted to find a way to incorporate the active gazer research project into his larger unit on adventurer research and information-gathering methods. Too many adventurers thought only about killing the monster to finish the job instead of being more curious and observant about the world around them.

  Not only did more knowledge improve survival rates, Hans often wondered how many times adventurers walked right by a once-in-a-generation find simply because they didn’t bother to stop and look. Everyone stood to benefit from adventurers expanding their knowledge and nursing their academic curiosity.

  But easier said than done, and he was tired.

  Hans set down his pencil to rub his eyes, rediscovering that he had only the one eye to rub when his fingers brushed against his eyepatch.

  Active Quest: Adapt.

  He still had that experience several times a day. He’d forget that he lost his left eye only to encounter a surprise reminder through some banal habit or motion. Like the urge to rub his eyes.

  Or running his hands through his hair only to snag his fingers on the eyepatch strap.

  Or instinctively closing his left eye to aim or calibrate something and then needing a few seconds to figure out why closing one eye didn’t change his vision whatsoever.

  Or bumping into the corner of a table that he either didn’t see or whose location he misjudged.

  Or noticing that the person he spoke with stared only at the missing eye.

  That was the problem with pausing to take in the sights and sounds of his strange dungeon home. Yes, he had gained so much, but he couldn’t help but fixate on all that he had lost.

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

  Monitor for independently grown sections of dungeon.

  Complete the next volume (Bronze to Silver) for “The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers.”

  Establish a Hoseki-grade library in Gomi.

  Prepare the first collection of job debriefs for publication.

  Learn to help your advanced students as much as you help beginners.

  Adapt.

  Enjoy it.