Current Wealth: 224 gold 18 silver 2 copper
[Appraisal]
- Class: Emperor
- Level: 14
- Condition: Fine
- Modifiers: +6 Toughness, +4 Strength, +4 Speed, +2 Alertness
- Statistics: Strength 10, Speed 10, Dexterity 6, Stamina 5, Toughness 10, Alertness 10, Charisma 9, Intelligence 9
- Inventory: Local wear, plate armour, repeater, shortspear
- Class abilities: Appraisal II
- Current Experience Points: 153/480
- Unspent Skillpoints: 0
I’d put my points into Alertness and Toughness, but not just to round everything out at ten. I reckoned they were the most useful at the moment, Alertness was almost a limiting factor on my fighting speed, and Toughness was all the more influential for a person in full plate armour. Everything I took would be an impact, now, and that was just the thing that Toughness helped most with.
It would’ve been nice to get more than just the one level, but I barely concerned myself with what could have been. A huge experience dump was still a huge experience dump, and it seemed our decision to join the tourney had paid off.
The knowledge that we were now more or less stuck in it, as the path of least resistance for strengthening ourselves, did take a notch out of my good mood in any case.
Solitaire was next in my sights, and he’d chosen predictably.
[Appraisal]
- Class: Revolutionary
- Level: 14
- Condition: Fine
- Modifiers: +4 Speed, +6 Toughness, +3 Alertness, +5 Strength
- Statistics: Strength 12, Speed 11, Dexterity 8, Stamina 6, Toughness 11, Alertness 11, Charisma 3, Intelligence 10
- Inventory: Local wear, plate armour, shortsword, shortspear, knivesx3
- Class abilities: Detect Element II
- Current Experience Points: 148/480
- Unspent Skillpoints: 0
Toughness really was in our best interests right now, and Strength was always good. I took a moment to appreciate how much even I dwarfed Beam as of our arrival, then moved on to Beam himself.
[Appraisal]
- Class: Dragonknight
- Level: 14
- Condition: Fine
- Modifiers: +3 Strength, +4 Speed, +4 Toughness, +5 Alertness
- Statistics: Strength 12, Speed 12, Dexterity 8, Stamina 9, Toughness 12, Alertness 13, Charisma 6, Intelligence 5
- Inventory: Local wear
- Class abilities: Beloved II
- Current Experience Points: 226/480
- Unspent Skillpoints: 0
Alertness, interesting that. I supposed he hadn’t seen the King of Blades’ swing, either. Made sense that he’d be trying to stop a miss like that from happening again. Though I wasn’t sure how much difference one point would make, our Speed points seemed to make less of a difference than our Strength or Toughness. Otherwise a real world human sitting at ten would be outrunning horses.
Which wasn’t to say it was useless, that just meant it wasn’t by default the only thing worth getting. We’d already been doing this long enough to know the benefits of iterative, long-term improvements. One step was better than no steps, and turned directly into two.
More to the point, there was no guarantee this was as good as our tourney rewards were going to get.
“This wasn’t that hard, right?” I asked, suddenly feeling…Suspicious. Things weren’t this easy in Redacle, never. If something looked too good to be true, it probably was. I’d learned that better than anything since coming here.
“Mixed bag.” Solitaire agreed. “But we got lucky.”
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Beam piped up, seeming more confident on this than either of us. Which was fair enough.
“We did.” He nodded. “Sixty or so fighters who weren’t with us, and a good few are dangerous enough that none of us would even have a chance against them. Even putting aside the King of Blades, Aja the Pithound, the Challenger…Fuck, that giant the King actually beat would’ve had better than even odds against me as I was in round one. And I’m not that much more confident I’d win now. The risk was high, and we got fortunate. We can’t bank on that happening again.”
“Particularly because we’re now fighting the top half of the last round.” Solitaire concluded, looking suddenly less pleased with his new statline.
I couldn’t blame him, my own optimism was starting to dwindle. I wasn’t half the fighter Solitaire was, or one tenth the fighter Beam was, but I knew enough to know there was some fierce competition. Even ignoring the top five of the tournament, more than one of the other competitors were good enough to give Helena, even Argar a run for their money.
“Which means more experience if we manage to reach round three.” I breathed. Even to me, it was a pretty fragile reassurance, but Solitaire looked happy enough. I supposed that was the major benefit to being an insane megalomaniac. Optimism. Shame his paranoia usually cancelled it out.
“Either way we have some preparation to do.” Beam noted, and we all agreed once more.
“Let’s head back.” Solitaire breathed. “I want to keep working on our…Defences.”
Neither me, nor Beam contradicted him. It would just have been cruel, for one thing, to deny him so vital a mental lifeline at a time like this.
And for another, I rather liked the idea of leaving ourselves better protected, myself.
We arrived back at the mansion with no great incidents, apart from an incredibly embarrassing moment where Solitaire almost killed a man who he thought was walking up behind him, but had actually just been moving past us to get in front. It was a refreshing, almost surprising thing to see that our new home was not under attack. It was no less glorious than ever, from the outside at least. Expansive lawns, proud towers, sprawling wings.
You only saw the dessication if you paid attention to subtle things, like how the gardens were strategically trimmed only around the outer perimeter, hiding the decay nearer the centre.
“God, it’s so…Insecure.” Solitaire spat, lip curling, eye twitching. I did my best to ignore him as we strode in.
Beam disappeared soon after our return, heading off to find Argar and the others. Solitaire and I were quick to leap back into discussion, however. We had a lot to touch on.
“Do you have anything you can make that might let us stave off a bigger attack?” I asked him, not really all that hopeful. He was either quicker than usual, or had already been considering just this question, because he got back with an answer so fast I didn’t even notice a pause.
“I can make more guns. Well, Ardin can make them, but it’d take time out of armour we might use in the tournament. Mines, those I can do myself.”
I decided not to directly contest him on literally mining my home, and instead move the topic onto less volatile means of defence.
“I was thinking more along the lines of barricades, and such.”
Solitaire sighed.
“Yeah, I can set those up, but it won’t be much good until we have more men. And recruiting en masse now just opens the door for whichever bastards are after us to sneak spies in by paying them more.”
I hadn’t thought of that, and found myself suddenly less confident about having hired Magnus. All the more reason to mention it fast.
“I did pick someone up in the tournament.” I told Solitaire, spitting the details out quickly. I half expected him to go insane on the spot, instead he looked pleased.
“Perfect, Beam didn’t think he was trying to kill you, and Byror almost definitely isn’t smart enough to pull off an infiltration this complex, not with the sort of double bluff it’d need. Or stupid enough to think that sending someone from within the tournament to join us wouldn’t be the most suspicious method possible after what happened to Helena. Nice one mate!”
He hit my shoulder, and I smiled. Forgetting, for a second, all the things he’d made me remember since we came here.
Then it was back to business.
“Well try to get him here sneakily, send Elizabeth on it actually. It’ll be good to see who else we can draw in from the tournament. And…Hm, rival gangs might be another source of recruits, trustworthy ones at least. Trustworthy enough to give guns as long as we’re ready to put them down if they act up.”
It was dizzying, watching his paranoid considerations, and more dizzying knowing that Solitaire could only physically speak fast enough to voice one for every ten that flitted through his mind. I did my best to stay focused despite the radioactive psychoses playing out before my eyes.
“Assembly lines.” Solitaire said at last. “We can get extra smiths for our guns, several. Making different components, which will then be modified in different ways, and assembled as a group. The factorisation approach but used for disguise rather than just for speed. If nobody knows more than a single component of what we’re making, and nobody knows how to make the ammo, then none of them will have the ability to replicate what the final product is. We can easily outfit our recruits with repeaters like yours and not need to worry about the secret getting out, or drawing Ardin away from armour smithing.”
Thinking about it for a moment, I decided the plan sounded solid enough. It left only one question.
“What’s Beam up to during all of this?”