Once we'd all calmed down a little, the conversation shifted course.
"Should hold." Zahri put the last part of her half-plate on the table and gave it a pat. "For now, anyway." The straps on the thing all looked fine to me, but then again, I wasn't a professional blacksmith, or armourer, or whatever they were called. "Also, here." She grabbed my knee, and with a few muttered words of Celesital, and the smell of fresh lavender, the pain that had been in my knee and leg was gone. Before I had the chance to say anything in response, she reached under the table and pulled out an off-white bundle of cloth, which was then thrust towards me.
I took it gingerly. "Thank you." Shaking it out, it was a thick jacket, about the size to come down just below my waist. "Is this...?"
"A gambeson." Zahri nodded. "For the chain."
"We stopped by the guard quarters this morning, to let them know that we were heading back to Turrford." Julie explained. "One of the women there had a spare, and it was about your size, so she let us have it."
Shrugging on the jacket, it did fit me quite well. Doing up the buckles along the front, it was a smidgen on the tight side, but the fact that it wasn't as thick as the gambesons that the heavy armour wearers had did help the fit.
My studded leather, along with the chain shirt, were still in the corner from where they'd been lain out last night, after we'd realised there wasn't enough space upstairs to set everything out properly. Wandering over, I picked up the chain, and slowly shuffled it on. It was a tight fit, the chain snug against the cloth of the jacket. Twisting from side to side, it restricted my movements a little, but hopefully it'll stop people killing me, so I was willing to accept that trade off.
"That fits really well, cheers." I bounced slightly, checking the fit again, but it was tight enough to not particularly shake. It felt like wearing a motorcycle jacket more than armour. A little bit of a shake from side to side made sure that it wasn't going to move particularly much in that direction either.
My testing out of the armour was interrupted by a cough. "I'm glad that you're, erm, enjoying it." Julie seemed slightly flustered. The rest were just staring at me. "The bucklers have been patched up as well." With a gesture to the side, Julie pointed out the bucklers, off to one side, near a pile of metal that I was pretty sure was the spare armour we'd dug out of the crypt.
The buckler attached to my arm easily enough, and it was sturdy and lightweight enough to not really get in my way. It was noticeable at the moment, but I got the feeling that eventually I could just forget that I was wearing it, like it was a really big watch.
"I really appreciate it, thank you." I was starting to sound a bit samey, but I didn't really know what it was that I should say in response to someone spending the time when you're asleep to fix all of your shite for you. "What do I owe you for all of this?"
"I can think of a couple of things you can do to pay us back..." Lidda flirtatiously joked, eyebrow wiggle included. I just gave her a deadpan stare, snorted, and then turned back to Julie.
"No, seriously though, what do I owe you? I can't imagine sorting this out was cheap."
Julie had flushed a dark red at Lidda's words, but my response seemed to mollify her a little. "It's a gift, don't worry about it. Think of it as, well, actually, that kind of leads in to something I wanted to talk about."
Well, that's an ominous phrase. This is the kind of thing that leads into a conversation that goes either really well or really badly. My mind ran through worst case scenarios briefly before I forced it to stop, crushing the random negative ideas it decided to throw at me.
"The plan was, once we'd done our adventure here, we were going to return to Turrford, which is the town where I, we, grew up, a couple of days walk away." Julie hesitantly spoke, not quite looking me in the eye, and rubbing her hands against each other.
Ok, so this is either a 'You should come with us, it'll be awesome' or a 'You can't come with us, we're leaving you here.' Hopefully it was the first one, as I didn't really want to be stuck in a village where I only really knew one old man and a bunch of probably criminals that I'd pissed off.
"Mind if I tag along with you then, if you're heading over there?" If it was an invite to go with them, then I'd just try and avoid some of the awkwardness that was happening right now. If it wasn't, then hopefully this might persuade them to let me tag along. Even if they didn't want me to go with them any more, being on my own in a town rather than a small village seemed like a much better idea.
"Of course!" Ah, an excited reaction, always a win. "That was only part of it, though. Our adventure there went very well, and we're all planning on continuing to adventure."
"Indeed, I've made some quite considerable progress on refining spells and potentially discerning the nature of a few more based on that excursion. Over the course of a day, I made more substantial progress than I have for the last several months." Sabrina enthusiastic backed up Julie.
"Right, we all learnt a lot, and it was profitable, both in getting better armour as well as the money we'll get from selling the spare armour that we picked up." The fighter (and I guess either the spokesperson or the leader of their party, given the way the rest of them were staying mostly quiet and letting her talk) was taking a circuitous route around this topic, and despite the positive reaction from earlier I could still feel a certain level of anxiety building up.
"The thing is, is that it's difficult to say that we could have done it without you. And you seemed quite interested in it, and that you enjoyed yourself. So we were wondering if you wanted to, well, join us for any future adventures?" She was surprisingly shy about this for someone I'd seen hacking at a walking corpse with a sword, but then again I set a bunch of things on fire and I'd probably be just as bad, so it wasn't like I could talk.
Now, let me think. I could tag along with the only four people I really know in the world, continuing to fight things and get money out of it, and possibly get even stronger, or I could not do that. Hmmm, what a conundrum.
"Yup, sign me up. So, do we have a cool group name, or does that come later?" What's the point of being in a fantasy D&D world if you don't become an adventurer? Well, I suppose some people might focus on the whole 'survive in a world trying to kill you' thing, but even then, the best way of doing that was probably getting powerful enough to be able to kill any monsters that wanted to pick a fight.
Julie had been rendered speechless by my easy acceptance, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly. I wasn't exactly sure why, it wasn't like I had an enormous number of options available to me at the moment, and my skill set was very much suited to the adventuring lifestyle. Zahri was the one who ended up responding to my question. "No. Tacky."
"Having a name is tacky?" Most of the adventuring parties that I'd played in while gaming had had a name, just for ease of referring to them.
"Well, naming your own group can be a bit tacky, especially when you're just starting out. It's generally better to be named by other people for your deeds, or at least have done something of note." Lidda confidently opined.
"You've done some research into the topic then, I take it?"
She shrugged in response to my question. "It's come up before. A couple of times. We decided it was best to wait for a name, especially given some of the suggestions." The comment didn't seem directed, but Sabrina huffed in response anyway.
"Well, if you're all willing to have me as part of your group," I looked at each of them in turn, and waited for a nod or affirmative noise before I continued "then I should ask what the plan is then. Although, I have kind of been assuming, but are you the leader of the group, Julie?"
She nodded, albeit in a resigned way. "Only because none of the others wanted to be."
"And because you were the one who persuaded us all to start doing this. And because you're the one who generally keeps us in line and stops us wandering off and doing our own thing." Lidda had pulled out a knife at this point, and was toying around with it as she argued.
"Zar also..."
"Zahri, with no disrespect to you Zahri, you're lovely, but even you have to admit you're more than willing to let us do stupid things and try and get us to treat it as a learning experience than try to get us to not do the stupid thing. Case in point, this morning, Sabrina and her attempt to burn down the building we're currently in." Both Zahri and Sabrina grudgingly nodded at the halfling's words.
"I'm guessing the plan is to head out to this Turrford place then," (I don't think I could say leader without changing it to 'Glorious Leader', and there was no way I was going to say something like 'Ma'am' without having the mental image of being a schoolchild. I've used 'boss' before at work, screw it) "Boss?"
"Head out today, ideally in an hour or so, after grabbing food. It's a couple of days journey, and then when we get there, sell the spare armour, and see if there's anything that a group of adventurers could help with. If there isn't, we can look at moving on to somewhere else, Sen perhaps."
Sounded better than any idea than I had. Although... "Sen?"
"Capital city." Zahri informed me. I guess that makes sense, although whoever named the capital of the Sennian Kingdom (Queendom, whatever) 'Sen' was clearly lacking in the imagination department.
Julie was looking around the room, obviously considering something. "It's probably worth putting armour on, it'll make it easier to carry. And there's always the small chance that we'll run into something that's wandered onto the roads, although given where we are, I think there's basically no chance they'll be bandits or something else intelligent."
Lidda audibly groaned at that, and made some kind of warding symbol with her hands. Julie just gave her a confused look. "What?"
"Really?" The sheer level of 'you should know this' in Lidda's voice was strong enough to crack concrete.
"All I said was that it'll be nearly impossible for us to run into bandits or the like, especially when the guards are doing their jobs."
"There are two problems with that, Julie. The first you should know, given you've complained about it before, is that no one wants to do the road patrols, so they tend to get done as quickly and loosely as possible." Julie conceded that with a nod, as Lidda continued. "The second, and more relevant one, is that you're basically tempting fate with that one, which is never a good idea."
Given that we were in a world with gods and other powerful beings who could actually hear things like that, it might actually be possible that tempting fate was something that could legitimately be done here. Note to self, probably not a good idea to use the phrase 'I'm invincible!', even jokingly. There was a non-zero chance that something might turn up deliberately just to prove me wrong.
Julie, on the other hand, stayed optimistic about the whole thing. "Don't worry, I'm sure we'll be fine." Gah, she might as well have been wearing wet copper armour at this point.
Lidda just brought a hand up to rub at her temples. "We're doomed." I gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder.
The actual getting ready part went by fairly quickly (which probably meant that they'd got most of it done while I'd been sleeping, a thought that did cause me a small amount of guilt), Lidda popping out to get food while the rest of us packed things and parcelled up the loot for carrying. I'd ended up with the lightest load, due in no small part to my lack of a backpack or other carrying container. Some of the lighter bits of the armour ended up in a sack that I tied to my back, with rope that had been tied to the top of the sack lashed diagonally across my body. It would be awkward, and bounce somewhat when I moved, but it was hardly the worst thing in the world.
Julie and Zahri carried the lion's share of the weight, while by the looks of it Sabrina was the designated chef, as the rucksack she hoisted onto her back had a few bits of cooking equipment dangling off of the sides of it, most notably a frying pan.
James started off by hovering around us, performing the well-known dance of 'I want to be helpful but I'm not entirely sure how'. He ended up disappearing off to the kitchen about ten minutes in, only coming back out once Lidda had returned from wherever she'd gone to pick up the wax-paper covered parcels that she then dropped into Sabrina's bag.
I'd only vaguely noticed the smell that had started wafting through the house as we sorted out who was carrying what and balancing out loads, but the scent of freshly-baked bread was unmistakeable as he came out of the kitchen, carrying a large, soft looking loaf, along with a small leather pouch of salt, the latter of which he pushed into my hands.
"It's not much, but everyone should have some salt with them. My wife swore by it for when she was on the road, you never know when you're going to need to eat whatever you can find, and a small amount of salt makes everything more palatable." He was so earnest that mentioning the never-ending food supply and the ability to flavour everything that I had seemed like it would just be pointlessly rude, so I accepted the gift in the spirit that it was meant, with a smile and a thank you, and I stored the little bag in one of the pockets of my cloak. I wasn't entirely sure what I'd do with it, but it was a useful thing to have just in case.
The bread was placed into a satchel for ease of access, and I was pretty sure that was going to be lunch. And maybe part of dinner as well, James had not skimped on the size of this thing.
Our actual act of leaving was fairly quick, once we'd got everything packed up. James was somewhat teary-eyed at our departure, but with several more thanks, and an offer that his house was open to us should we ever come back and need to stay here, we set out towards the gate.
I almost instinctively went to limp to avoid discomfort, memories of my painful walk yesterday coming to the fore as we stepped into the street, but I corrected myself near-immediately. The sheer casualness of the healing spell was a hell of a thing. Just 'boop, you're fixed, anyway, what were we talking about.' An injury that would have probably meant I'd never walk again, gone in two spells. It was one thing to know about it intellectually, but actually experiencing it was a whole other thing. A lack of permanent negative effects was nice, though. Hopefully I wouldn't end up crippled from the whole adventuring thing unless something went really, really wrong.
My positive internal monologue continued as we went from the house to the gate. The streets were mostly empty, even though it still a couple of hours before noon, so we made quite a quick pace. The gates themselves were open, and while I didn't recognise one of the guards there, the other was the possibly-an-organ-harvester from when I'd first arrived, who took my presence with the rest of the party with some scorn.
"Ya ended up shacking up with Jules, then? Figures you'd be the type. Is it the nice gal act that gets you goin', then?" The combination anger and dismissiveness that she displayed put my back up.
"As opposed to what, exactly?" I tried to keep my voice calm, but I couldn't quite stop the edge that crept into it.
"Well, if'n you ever want to try a proper woman, you know where to find me." Whatever-her-name-was tried what was probably supposed to be a seductive grin, but it came out too predatory to actually manage that.
"Sure, if I need a bad example to show them, I'll let you know." The snark came out before I could get my brain-mouth filter engaged, and as she started to turn red and open her mouth, I swept past her out of the gate. No need to start a fight with the guards, that seems like the kind of thing not likely to end well. I'd have probably been better served keeping my mouth shut, but I couldn't resist.
I only went a few metres down the path, just out of comfortable conversation range, and waited for the others to catch up. The implication that I was 'shacking up' with Julie was intriguing, though. The envy what's-her-face had implied that she wasn't interested in my organs, or, well, not most of them at least. Was it a due to the otherworldly beauty feat thing that I had, or was it something else? I didn't want to bring it up in conversation ('Oh, hey, you know that woman who kind of insulted you, why would she be interested in me?' seemed like a non-starter), but it was definitely something I was going to ponder. And maybe, as the start of an idea dawned in my mind, test.