Chapter 1

____T'was a dark and stormy night... There is a harsh wind blowing, the sky is covered wth ominous clouds, and the average temperature of the day is 75 degrees Fahrenheit, with a high of 100 degrees. Right now the temperature was not at its high. Quite the opposite, actually. Some people are relieved at this, confusing Fahrenheit with Celsius and fearing that the heavens would rain down boiling water if it hadn't cooled off before the storm. Of course, these were the same idiots that had considered overthrowing the united republic that the world had been since around ten years ago and bringing back the monarchy. Seeing their opportunity when the case was brought up in the legislature, certain other people argued that the world would be better as an anarchy where all the towns had no contact with each other whatsoever, only selling supplies to the occasional hero out to save the world. THOSE people were the ones who eventually got their way in the Legislation. The authority immediately took action to bring this idea to reality, and started off by chopping the House of Legislation to pieces, fearing that it was a threat to the new anarchy because of the socializing that took place between people of different villages.
____Most parents didn't want their kids to grow up to become occasional heroes out to save the world, mainly on account of income problems. As a result, just about everyone had wanted to become a hero. However, anyone who wanted to become a hero had to expect to face a life of horrendous hardship. Everyday, they must fight apocalyptical monsters and find their way through intricate labyrinths, yet that's not their worst problem. Most people consider them heroes to be rebellious. A survey had shown that if you went to any single town and randomly picked out two people, there would be a 20% chance that they would look exactly the same. That part about looking rebellious is around 30% of their worst problem. As mentioned before, there's the income problem. Your average hero earns around 2000 Gil a day, noticeably less than the income of the average merchant or the average guy who walks around a village repeating random stuff to travelers. In the old days, you could pick out two people from one village and there'd be a 30% chance that they'd say the same exact thing. Recently, some guys went on a movement for individuality and encouraged people to come up with original things to repeat over and over again to travelers. The youngsters caught on to the idea pretty quickly. The adults said that the whole idea seemed pretty blasphemous. The really old geezers said please, save the princess!! --- Obviously the idea of original speech never caught on with them. But anyhow, the guys who started the movement wound up earning noticeably more than your average hero, which makes up another 50% percent of the hero's worst problem.
____The average hero, being desperate to stand out and make themselves look rebellious to most people, usually spend more than 80% (1600 Gil for your average hero) of their income to purchase various hair conditioners and to hire specialized tailors to design their costumes so as to make themselves stand out even more. This leaves on 20% (400 Gil) left for the less important stuff like medicine, the most popular of which being the line of healing liquids manufactured by the Potions company. The company started up when a guy called Alexander Potion discovered that by mixing various chemicals he could create a substance that repairs damaged tissue. Being conceited, he named it after himself, and is was commonly known since then as the Potion. Back then, however, no one had any use for such a substance. Alexander's industry would have ended in financial failure if he didn't come up with the idea to add alcohol to the Potion and ship it off to various bars around the world to be used as a Vodka substitute. It immediately became a hit with people, selling out all other alcoholic healing substances such as the Tonic and the Herb. Eventually, when the fad started, the Potion was used even more commonly as a healing substance, but its alcoholic properties were never removed. Eventually, Alex's potion industry, renamed the Potions company after his death, came out with the Hi Potion and the Max Potion, which recovered far more HP than people had. Heroes had to develop their max HP to four digit numbers in order to adapt to this new innovation.
____A bit after the fad started, a depression fell upon the land, because heroes started wanting to sell items more than to buy them, and merchants went bankrupt one by one because they had no chance but to buy the heroes' goods. Only the more experienced heroes were able to possess any Gil at all. The effects of the depression were that prices of what merchants were left skyrocketed, and enemies that used to drop 50 Gil now only dropped 10 Gil. Even the guys walking around repeating random stuff had to cut back on their talking because of short-distance communication bills. People stopped becoming heroes, so there weren't any more newbie heroes. The intermediate level heroes were bitter because the experienced heroes were hogging all the Gil, even though there was nothing whatsoever that they could buy with them. Naturally it was an intermediate hero, who shall remain anonymous, who came up with the idea to attack and plunder villages to support their own budget. In time, these heroes came to be known as and , but the word Webster's Dictionary came up for them was . To protect themselves from these idiots, people called upon the veteran heroes to fight them losers. Unfortunately, they were all retired, and had all retreated to some big estate on any obscure island. However, with the promise of wealth, people started becoming heroes again, and they eventually were able to hold the villains at bay. The conflict between good and evil had been balanced like that since... oh say... two days ago, but this shall soon change in about sixteen years. By then, this new balance shall be known as the product of centuries of culture, and people won't be able to imagine how they ever lived without it. However, it had been mentioned that the balance will be screwed up in about sixteen years, and this will make at least one or two people in the villages mad.
____It just so happens that on this dark and stormy night, a villain stealthily approached the city of Town #1.
The villain trudged on towards the city with a blank expression, but his mind was chaotic in the process of coming up with some witty evil phrase that he could recite once he got to the village. An idea quickly flashed through his mind.
____Edgar you idiot! Why do you have to live in a desert in the middle of nowhere?!
____The villain rethought about this last statement, and decided that it wasn't appropriate. First of all, there was no desert here. Second, he wasn't 100% sure that there was someone in this town named Edgar, or that there was anyone in this town that had a name. Around this time, the only people who had names were heroes and villains. It is a commonly known fact that they don't sleep at night, but rather spend eight hours a day coming up with some cool name for themselves and thinking about how they could make their name sound cooler. In any case, the villain in question didn't feel like making a fool out of himself. Better write it down though, the villain thought to himself. He ought to keep a notebook of all the witty villainous phrases that he come up with. Heck, maybe someone might actually use one of his phrases someday.
____I, Eskarite, shall knock you all down!!!
____Eskarite frowned at this latest idea. It didn't really fit the situation, as the term knock you all down seemed to suggest the use of a club-like weapon, while his own choice of weapons is one of them generic swords. He walked on, trying to come up with a witty opening phrase for when he reach the village, when he suddenly realized that he had walked past it.