Author's Note: The "plus" symbol appears not to show up properly in the document viewer. Therefore, I will use the word "plus" even when I mean to use the symbol.

Chapter 16: Election Selection

Tariel, Artalax, and Talia walked back inside the city's perimeter defense shield and sat down on a bench. "Okay, let's recap the clues we have so far," said Artalax. "We think Kalmeth is the bad guy, because that's what Robari told us, but we don't know. What we do know is that if we want to find more information we should probably go to Carpathia University. That happens to be right inside the city, so it's convenient."

"Don't forget the quest I got at the tavern," said Tariel. "It's Quest Waypoint 214 on your map. And also, if we go there we might get to fight good monsters on the way."

"Can we just go home?" Talia asked. "This is ridiculous. I had no idea the mission would be this complicated. You came in here without a plan of any kind. You're not even sure who the bad guy is, much less how to find him. Let's just go home so we can live happily ever after. And by that, I don't mean married to each other."

"Why not? You don't like me?"

"Look. I saw you back there in the palace. You didn't even care about saving the Prince's life, all you cared about was your reward. You're just like all the other heroes I've met: arrogant, self-centered, and not at all heroic."

"Okay, you can go home if you want. But we're staying here until we finished the mission. And by the way, wasn't the deal that you would stay as long as we can squeeze in a romantic love scene?"

"Well, if I were to go back right now, since I have no combat abilities of any kind, I probably wouldn't survive long enough to get from the portal back home," Talia said. "But wait, I have a better idea. How about if we use a democratic method to decide where to go next?"

"Democracy?" Tariel asked. "I've heard about it before, but I don't really know exactly how it works. Can you show me?"

"Okay," said Talia, as she reached inside her travel pack. "We've come up with three choices for where to go: the university, Quest Waypoint 214, and home." Talia withdrew three blank butterfly ballots from the pack, and wrote the three choices on each ballot. She kept one for herself, then gave one each to the other two members of the party. "The way this works is that you punch out the hole corresponding to your choice. Then at the end, you give them back to me, and I count them up."

They all filled out their ballots and gave them back to Talia.

"Okay, let's count the votes," Talia said, looking through the ballots. "Artalax voted for the University, I voted for home, and Tariel voted for home. It's two to one, we're going home."

"I didn't vote for home!" Tariel said. "I voted for the Quest Waypoint! Don't try to cheat like this!"

"No, you punched out the wrong hole on your ballot. You see, the top hole is for the waypoint, and the middle hole is for home, and – "

"Look. You know what I meant to vote for. Wait a second, I demand a recount. Give me your ballot."

Talia gave Tariel her ballot. "Look, Talia, you didn't punch out the chad all the way on your card. That means your vote doesn't count. Which means it's a tie. How about that?"
"Wait," Talia said. "You can't just jump in and demand a recount. In order to recount the ballots you first have to go through the –"

"Just forget the butterfly ballots," Artalax said. "We'll say that Tariel voted for home, but Talia's vote doesn't count, so it's a one to one tie. Let's try this again and just write down what we want."

Tariel leaned over and whispered in Artalax's ear. "Let's both vote for the Quest Waypoint so we can outvote Talia. We'll go to the University later."

They turned over their ballots. "Okay, it's two votes for the Quest Waypoint, one vote for home this time," Artalax said. "We're off to the quest waypoint."

"I know you stole the election, but as you always say, we do have to be united against evil," Talia said. "But before we go into the wilderness, don't you think it would be a good idea to get equipped first?"

Later, outside the War-Mart Supercenter in Carpathia City…

Tariel looked in awe at the gigantic store. "War-Mart Supercenter," the sign said. It was many times bigger than anything he had ever seen before. Looking through the windows he could see just about anything he could think of for sale. But what really caught his eye was an advertisement on a poster in the window:

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CLEARANCE SALE! ALL WEAPONS MUST GO!

Plus-4 Sword of Destruction (Mk. II) – Only 600 Gold Pieces!

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"Only six hundred?" he thought. Back in Altaria, even a single point of enchantment would run at least a thousand, probably more, and even then you'd be lucky if the thing actually worked as well as advertised. Four points of enchantment for only 600 – this was something he had to see.

They walked into the War-Mart and shopped around. Tariel got the Plus-4 Sword of Destruction, Artalax got a Plus-6 magical staff, but Talia couldn't decide what she wanted. "I might as well get this bow and arrow," she said. "Not that I know how to use it, but it's better than nothing, and I can stand back and not be in danger."

…

"1,250 gold pieces", said the cashier after she finished ringing up their order. "That's too high. How about 1,000?" Tariel asked.

"The prices are right on the stickers," said the cashier. "I don't have the authority to change them even if I wanted to. And besides, our prices are low enough as they are."

"What I meant was, back in Altaria, you can haggle with the merchant to reduce the price. And it's really cool because if your haggling skill is higher, you can get a lower price, so you have to decide whether – "

"Well, you're not in Altaria any more. And that's probably a good thing too, given that…"

"…we're so technologically primitive. I know that. I've heard it a lot. But is there any way I can get a lower price?"

"Well, we do offer store credit for loot trade-ins. If you have some loot to trade in, we can apply it towards this purchase."

Artalax took his matter-compression device out of hit pocket and hit the de-compress button. A large pile of loot appeared on the counter. The cashier counted up the loot.

"Okay, this is worth 317 GP, which means you owe me 934 GP overall."

Tariel paid the fee with the money they had earned for saving the Prince. "You know, I am having quite mixed feelings about this place," he said. "You have to admit, the prices in there were way lower than anything I could have gotten in Altaria. But there is something, something a little… unreal about it all."

"What are you talking about?" Artalax asked.

"Like, everything's just so big. Back home, at least when you go into a store you know the guy, so you can haggle with him, and you get to have good roleplaying interaction. But here in Carpathia, it's all geared toward combat. You just get the quest, get the equipment, then go out on your adventure. There aren't even any interesting cutscenes."

"Don't you like that," Artalax asked. "Back home you were always complaining about how there were no monsters to fight. Here there are quests and monsters all over the place."

"Well, yeah, I guess," Tariel said. "I guess we'll just have to wait and see."