The Free Adventurers' Guild

Further on into the wilds we met a fellow called Bent Root-sucker who had a mountain lion pet called Binky. He was a druid, and knew a lot about the surrounding area. He kept offering to"level us up", but apparently that required submitting to being bent over a tree root and taken hard from behind. Needless to say, no one volunteered.

After a bit of travel, we came to the village called Pind. It was just a collection of wattle and daub huts, and had seen better times. In fact, there were many many ruined buildings. Across the river was a large ruined temple to the god Elric. We asked Bent who Elric was, and he said Elric was "one of the nine" about two generations ago, but had somehow fallen and was not one of the nine today.

"Well, which god replaced him?"

This only got a blank stare.

"There are nine gods now, and Elric isn't one of them, right?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Fifty years ago there were nine gods and Elric was one of them, right?"

"Yes."

"But Elric is not one of the nine gods today, is he?"

"No"

"So which god replaced him?"

"Oh, what's that shiny thing over there?"

"List for me the nine gods before Elric fell." I said.

"Why of course: Vull, Illana, Grism, Norman, Loki, Hale, Fotherington, Zaahl, and Dierdra."

"But Elric isn't in that list."

"Of course he is."

"Then why isn't Elric's name in that list?"

"I don't understand the question. He is."
...

This same conversation, or similar, occurs with anyone, scholared or not, intellectual or not, priest or not. There is some global cognitive dissonance affecting everyone in the world in that they acknowledge Elric is no longer one of the nine, but have no idea which of the nine replaced him, and if you ask for the list before the Fall, his name will not be in it.

We travelled next to the river Aldure upstream for a day, and arrived at the Shadowlands Keep. From here, Lord Loofah and his Bahn mercenaries rule the surrounding lands. In fact, they claim all the land from here to the big upstream city Cleophany (one week away). Being so near to the portal through to Earth, the Keep has recently grown very rich on the wealth brought through.

The Keep is divided into two areas, the castle area (where normal folk are forbidden), and the town area, which contains a collection of inns, tavern, some shops and various useful buildings. One of which is the Free Adventurer's Guild establishment. Having no where else to stay, we went in.

We were greeted by Winstone, the hobbit proprietor and owner of the place. He explained how the Free Adventurers' Guild works: its a world-wide franchise that supplies free accommodation for adventurers, a simple equipment store, a centralized bank (allowing magical money transfers between branches), and training to allow members to "level up" (which doesn't involve anal sex). The cost of the training is a debt put onto your FAG account. You then pay the debt off by adventuring, and the FAG takes half of your gross adventure income to pay off your debt. They charge a nominal interest rate on the debt, which depends on class, but is about 12% annual. When your debt is cleared, you can still use FAG to train, but the becomes fee-simple. The contract signed is enforced demonically to stop welshers and thieves.

So we all signed up.

We also found out that you must never use your true name in this world. If someone discovers your true name, they can have power over you. This explains, to some extent, all the half-arsed names of all the people we encountered. So we adopted a common name each: I (Carmilla) became "Carla", Howie (Ian) became "Peg Groups", Sean (Shane) became "John Wayne", Martin (Darryl) became "Yeti", Nathan (Jeff) became "Light Touch". Whiss became "Whizz". These "safe" names will be used from now on, to protect the innocent.

After five weeks of extensive and zen-like training, we were all declared to be "level zero". The FAG then supplied us with our first few adventures to get us to "level one".

We were assigned a mission: Half a day's travel down the road, we were told, there was a group of bandits who were attacking supply caravans destined for the Shadowlands Keep. We were told to find them and reconnoitre: "No need to attack. Just collect information".

So we equipped up and headed out, walking up the road, following the large river (think unbraided Waimak) to our left, and forested hills to the right.

By now, we were well-used to our new "0th level" bodies. I, Carmilla/Carla was a half-elf priestess of Illana, with infravision no less, and a set of Illana "gifts" (Heal, Blessing, Comfort & Succour, Protection from Evil, Cure Disease, Cure Serious Poison, Godly Might - increases stats, Neutral - improves the attitude of attackers towards me), Howie/Peg was an elf ranger with corresponding tracking skills and a massive double-handed sword. Sean/John was a gnome wizard, Martin/Yeti was a human wizard, Nathan/Light Touch a half-elf thief. Whiss/Whizz a human paladin of Grism wielding a mighty battle-axe.

After a few hours of walking, Peg's keen tracking skills spotted scrape marks over the road that disappeared into the woods to our right. We melted into the forest and Light Touch took off to check. He soon came back and reported a group of two soldiers, one thief, and one wizard all lead by an evil priest of Fotherington.

Light Touch and Peg spied on them for a few hours. Every so often, one of the men-at-arms would walk down to the road and scan each way, obviously looking for ripe caravans to plunder.

After two hours, a caravan was indeed spotted, so the evil party began preparing an attack. Our cunning plan was to ambush them right on the moment of their ambush, but we weren't quite quiet enough, and they spotted us;  the battle was had!

To cut off a long story square, we wiped the five out in quick order. But Yeti suffered massive trauma when one of the men-at-arms skewered his gut, John Wayne was badly chopped up, Whizz almost lost his leg, and Peg Groups, in an act of extraordinary panache, tossed his double-handed sword majestically into the air and caught it with his head, point-first, carefully missing any protection from his helmet, neatly impaling his brain. Luckily, I was on hand and, by the healing power of Illana's gift, cured most of it.

The caravan arrived soon after - a merchant, homely daughter and two guards - and they were most pleased not to be robbed, raped and killed. We guarded them for the night, and then escorted them to the Keep in the morning.

The Free Adventurers' Guild was pleased with our success. We gave Winstone the FAG tokens off the evil party (all FAG members carry ID tokens), and used half of the spoils to pay down some of our debt, and got a big tick in the "1st adventure completed" box.

The next adventure was to take on some Lizardmen in the swamp. Lizardmen are tough, but normally they are peaceful and benevolent. However, some recent event is changing the way they react. Our mission is to go investigate.

to be continued