Lidda slid back into the house just in time for dinner, which was provided by the ever pleasant James (I managed to 'remember' what his name was when someone else thanked him for the food). Unfortunately, the dinner wasn't quite as nice as he was. It wasn't that he was bad at cooking, the food was well prepared, neither burnt nor raw, the whole shebang. The problem was that it was turnip soup, and there's only so much you can do to make turnip soup appetising. Especially given that there was obviously some kind of ingredient shortage (which made sense, given that I was in a small medieval style village on the edge of a forest), as there were only two recognisable ingredients in it: turnip, and soup.
I attempted to subtly cast Prestidigitation to change the flavour of the soup, although my subtlety consisted of holding my hand under the table and muttering the command word, rather than saying it loudly. The flavour change ability of the spell wasn't as strong as I'd been hoping. Rather than completely rewriting the flavour, it was more of the 'adding flavouring' variety, allowing me to salt and herb the soup as I liked, but kept the base taste of turnips. And the base texture of turnips. It turns out there's only so much you can do to make the turnip soup more palatable, especially when you're not actually a fan of turnips, especially as I needed to know what flavour to add. 'Make it better', it turns out, wasn't an option the ring provided, so I had to guess what would be good additives to turnips. I started with salt and garlic, and when that didn't quite work, I cast the spell again and just went down the mental list of herbs I knew, resulting in a herby medley of mess, that despite everything I'd done, had a strong taste of turnip. Still, I was hungry, and it was food, so I scoffed it down.
We were all eating around the central table in what I could only refer to as the dining room of the house. Although, it had both the front door and the stairs in it. Main room, maybe? None of the six of us were particularly interested in conversation while we were eating, the adventures tired and hungry and the old man very much picking up on the 'let me shovel food into my face' vibe the rest of us were giving off. It didn't take us very long to clear out our bowls, and after I cleaned them up magically, James picked them up, dropped them off in the kitchen, wished us all a good night, and went upstairs.
There was an almost awkward period of silence, as we all looked around the table at each other, each waiting for someone else to start, before Lidda reached into her backpack and started pulling out bottles. Five (what a coincidence) clay bottles were placed onto the table, and one was slid in front of all of us.
"Mead for all of us, I think, and I got 'em to dig out the good stuff as well. Today's been an achievement, our first proper adventure, so we should celebrate." Lidda cracked the seal off of her own bottle as she spoke.
It took me a moment to break the wax seal on the top of my bottle, a combination of a lack of experience with it and some quite solid wax (which was definitely not a defence for my own tiredness and weakness), and once I did, I gave the liquid within a sniff. It smelt like good mead, and when I took a sip of it, it tasted like good mead as well. After nearly a decade larping, I'd had a lot of mead, both good mead and some god-awful stuff, and this was in the top half, easy. I took a larger gulp.
"How much do I owe you?" I asked Lidda, my hand reaching blindly behind me for the pockets of the cloak I'd slung over the back of the chair, attempting to find the coin-pouch I'd had when I'd been dumped into this place.
She just snorted. "We're all getting a payday from this, I think I can cover the drinks tonight. Tell you what, next time, first round is on you, alright?"
I shrugged, nodded my acceptance, and took another swig from the bottle.
The next few minutes passed that way, with me staying quiet and slowly drinking from the bottle, and the others starting on their own bottles and making small talk about the day and things that had happened during the adventure. I listened in, trying to think of a good way to kick off the conversation I wanted to have without seeming weird, or like I was prying. Ideally, they would have all gone 'Let me tell you the full details of my backstory, complete with powerpoint presentation', but that wasn't happening. I did pick up that the giant spiders were fairly common, as Julie explained to Sabrina how the guards normally dealt with nests without magic (the answer appeared to be a lot of oil, and literally burning them out, and then shooting the shite out of any of the big ones before they could get into melee range).
Biting the bullet, I shifted the conversation to a more weighty topic. "So how did you all get together as a group, then?
Holding up a finger while she took a drink, Julie put the bottle down, belched, and answered."We're all from Paggton, which is a town a couple of days walk from here. Known each other for a while, worked in the guard with Zar, Lids has been a friend for a while, and when Sabs came back after graduating we figured we could give it a shot at the whole adventuring thing."
Ah, the 'childhood friends become adventurers' trope. More common to things like video games than D&D, given the habit of any group of D&D players to be able to come up with wildly different backstories at the drop of a hat. Still, it made sense in what I'd tentatively refer to as the 'real world', most people would probably need more than 'I met them yesterday in an inn' to put their life in someone else's hands. Although I didn't, apparently, given how little pushing I needed to risk my life with what were effectively only one step better than random strangers, so maybe that whole thing does fall apart. Was that latching on to other people in a situation where I didn't know what was going on or who anyone was, just going with the flow when they went out, or a genuine desire to go and adventure and get to use my new abilities in the 'socially appropriate' setting? Or maybe some kind of mix of all three? Eh, whatever. Now's not really the time, and I've let silence drag on for a touch too long. Quick, new question.
"So, you've worked in the guard back at wherever that was, and you're working with Julie in the guard here now. Is that normal for priests of Pelor around these parts?" Let's try digging for information with a slight degree of subtlety.
"Nah."
Thank you Zahri, for that insightful answer. Truly, I am filled with the wisdom of the ages. Let's try that again. "Why the difference with you, then?"
"Not really a priest." was her laconic reply.
"What?" I'm perfectly capable of brevity too, let's not go down this road.
With a put-upon sigh, Zahri placed the bottle down on the table. "Wandering priest came into the town for a while, started talking to her. She made some good points. Convinced me. Started praying. Pelor listened. More people could be clerics. Only need to believe."
I shot a glance at the others at the table. Julie and Sabrina seemed unbothered, with Lidda catching my eye and just shrugging. Alright then. I guess that implies a more Planescape kind of 'belief powers everything' thing going on here? Or there's something else, and I can't make sweeping generalisations about single anecdotes. I took another long pull from the bottle.
Given how getting that out of her was like pulling teeth, I decided to switch topics. "Cheers." I tipped my bottle towards Zahri, who nodded and clinked her bottle against it. "So Lidda, what about you? What did you do before you signed up to adventure for money and glory?"
"Eh, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of that." Oh for fucks sake, where they all going to be like this? Lidda laughed at my facial expression, and relented. "Sorry, sorry. It was too good to pass up. Seriously, though, that is mostly true. I was an odd-jobs woman, did little bits of things for the coin, never really had the patience to stick to one thing for too long. Got bored too easily. Still, it's given me a lot of skills to pitch in to help the gals out when needed, so it's not all bad. When Julie decided she wanted to start adventuring, I was the first to sign on with her. Someone with some common sense was needed, anyway." She snorted at the mock-offended expression Zahri sent her.
Sabrina was idly tracing something out on the tabletop with one finger, while holding her bottle in the other hand and taking occasional sips, so I figured it was Julie's turn next. "The adventuring was your idea, then? What made you decide that?"
Julie's face just shut down. No expression, no nothing. It might as well have been carved from stone.
"It's a long story." she said. Well, that's ominous.
"Fair enough, if you don't want to talk about it, that's fine." I may not always be the best at picking up social clues, but that might as well have been a neon sign with attached siren.
She sighed, and suddenly looked very tired. For a second it looked like she was about to say something, but instead she just took a long drink from the bottle. Once she'd done that, she looked down through the hole in the neck of it as if the liquid inside would reveal some kind of deep secret, before looking up back at me. "It's just... complicated. And it is a long story." Raising the mead back to her lips, she had another couple of swallows, a single drop of the amber liquid escaping and running down her chin.
This got very serious, very quickly. Accidentally stepping into a conversational minefield was not ideal, to put it mildly. I took a swig myself to put off having to respond, but that only lasted for so long.
"If you do want to talk about, then I'll happily listen, but if you don't, we can switch topics and pretend this part of the conversation never happened." There we go, a nice neutral response that puts the ball back in her court.
By this point, she'd put the bottle back on the table, and was staring intently at it, occasionally twisting it around with one hand. "It's..." she started. "Have you..." her voice trailed off. Sabrina reached under the table and squeezed her knee supportively (at least, I assumed it was supportively). "My beau decided that being married to a guardswoman wasn't an exciting enough life for him." Julie was still staring at the bottle, but her words has picked up speed, spilling out of her mouth in a rush. "He didn't have any combat training, he was a bakers son, for the gods sakes. But he loved stories about famous male warriors and adventurers, so when that fucking bard"and there was real venom in her voice at that, repressed rage and hatred bubbling to the surface "decided to seduce him, he wandered off with her without so much as a 'by-your-leave'. Just strolled off to adventure, and got himself killed. They didn't even bother to bring his body back, just a half-arsed apology and laughter behind my back." Her eyes were damp, but she looked far too angry to cry. "So I decided to not let that happen again, and started training properly to go out and clear places out of danger and stop something like that ever happening ever again." She took a couple more mouthfuls of mead, as Zahri reached out and patted her on the shoulder.
That explains the protectiveness and not wanting me to come along, at least. Not sure that's really the logical thing to do in that situation, but I guess it's not really the kind of thing where logic wins over emotion. How the fuck do you even respond to that, though?
"Well fuck." Always a good start. "I don't really know what to say. If you ever need help fucking up that bard, I'll be happy to help, 'cuz that is a shite thing to do." That's an appropriately adventurery thing to say, right? The confused and astonished expressions on their faces implied that maybe it wasn't, although Julie's quickly morphed into incredulous laughter. Not giggling, fully on belly laughter. It sounded like a seal having sex, simultaneously incongruous and amazing.
She must have laughed for a solid minute before she stopped, wiping tears from her eyes. "Ahh, wow. Yeah, I'll take you up on that that." Julie grinned, and seemed much looser than than before.
We all took a moment to take another drink. I wasn't drunk, not yet, but I was tipsy, and definitely on my way towards drunkenness. I wasn't sure if it was the booze, how open the situation was, or the information I'd picked up during this conversation, but things were starting to coalesce for me, and I wasn't really liking the shape the resulting thoughts were taking. Some time to think things over would be quite useful right about now.
"Hey, Mazhiron, so what's your story? You mentioned being a researcher?" Lidda was looking at me with a laser focus, and now was really not the time. It felt like I was on the cusp of an important realisation, and figuring out what it was before I started talking about myself seemed like a good idea.
"Sure, I can talk about that." It was stupid that I was panicking about this, the conclusion was stupid, but if I didn't think about it and what it might mean, I could end up doing or saying something very dumb. "I need a piss first, though. Where's the, erm..." what the fuck were those things called?
"Chamberpot's in the kitchen." Zahri pointed at the doorway. That sounds sanitary. I pushed my chair back.
"Cheers. Back in a minute." I stood up, and immediately became aware that I was somewhat drunker than I'd thought, as I needed to lean on the table to not lose my balance. "I'm good." I pushed myself off, and wobbled towards the kitchen.
Ok, let's look at this objectively and not jump to conclusions. What have I learnt about this place, I asked myself, as I rooted around for something vaguely 'chamberpot' looking. There was a clay pot thing on the floor with a lid, and the smell that came out when I lifted said lid made it very clear this had been used as a chamberpot for quite some time.
I pushed it against a wall as I continued ruminating. I didn't have a smoking gun, any specific thing that I could point to and go 'Yes, this proves my suspicions', I just had a collection of little things that lead me to three different facts. The first was that this place was matriarchal. The whole 'Queendom' thing, maybe a couple of other things I couldn't remember right now, but I was pretty sure this was a matriarchy. The second was probably tied into that, in that being female was the default. Being male was notable, and different. The assumption of any person around here seemed to be that people were female unless otherwise noted. The third was that this place was surrounded by enormous, fuck-off spiders, and that wasn't particularly seen as weird or unusual by anyone. Those three facts suggested drow, and I really, really, really didn't like that.
I rested my head against the wall as I unbuttoned my fly and started pissing into the pot. It couldn't be drow, right? I hadn't been enslaved or killed, and there weren't any elves with a skin colour somewhere along the black-blue-purple spectrum, so it couldn't be directly drow controlled. But that didn't rule out drow influence. If the country were at war with the drow, or were long time enemies, then that could shape their culture. But their culture could also be shaped deliberately, behind the scenes. Was this all some kind of drow shadow plot?
Nah, that's stupid. I have literally no evidence for that, and while a drow shadow plot wouldn't leave much evidence almost by definition, that was a very slippery slope to go down, and I didn't want to end up some kind of weird conspiracy theorist. The problem was that I hadn't been here long enough to be able to pick up enough facts to refute any theories. Still, it was worth being careful. The idea was ridiculous, but it was the only explanation I could think of for any of this, even if it did require a number of justifications to make sense. So let's not do anything drastic like accuse anyone of anything, but at the same time, just in case, let's not bring up drow or anything massively vital just in case they are running things behind the scenes, or have divination magic or whatever. And maybe hope that at some point I do find out a single vital piece of information that causes everything to suddenly make sense. Fuck, did I wish I could just ask "What's the big difference between your culture and mine" and get a useful answer.
That did bring up another good point, though. What did I want to tell the people in the other room about where I came from? I was reticent to reveal the whole truth, but at the same time, I didn't want to lie to them. Apart from the fact that I wasn't a fan of lying anyway, the practical reason for not wanting to lie to them was the fact that I didn't want to have to keep track of it. If I came up with some kind of elaborate lie, and then mentioned some random fact from my past later that contradicted it, I was fucked.
At the same time, if I revealed everything, I couldn't trust that the information would stay with those four. Even if they didn't tell anyone, and even if there wasn't some kind of drow shadow cabal or something lurking in the background, there were all kinds of things that could listen in to the conversation. Like Pelor. Or really any other deity, but a cleric of Pelor would be listening, and I didn't know if that meant the god would find out or not. Probably not, but did I want to take that risk? The fact that I was here meant that there must be some connection between here and my world (I tried my best not to think the phrase 'the real world', that had way too many connotations for my pissed brain to deal with right now, it was struggling with the thoughts I was fighting at the moment), and if a god found out, they could try and make a stronger connection or do things and then other gods could find out and then fiends from the lower planes could get involved and damnit I've been leaning against the wall holding my dick and drunkenly panicking rather than doing anything useful.
I put my dick away, cast prestidigitation, and closed the lid of the chamberpot. Right, I think my takeaway from that run-away thought train is not lie, but maybe mislead and get them to think that where I come from is similar, but boring, and a place that there's no need to visit. And I should probably definitely not bring up drow. As a precaution, I took a moment to recast my Beguiling Influence. If there was ever a point where being more persuasive would help, it was probably now.
That decided, I looked at the clay pot on the ground, shrugged, and stuck my head back into the main room.
"Took your time, didn't you?" Lidda joked at me.
"Yeah, kinda. Quick question, the pot. What do I, erm..." I made a circular motion with my right hand, trying to find the words.
Another look was shared between them. I wasn't sure what impression I'd been giving them so far, but whatever it was, I seemed to done the opposite of half-arsing it. A full-arsed impression? Whatever. Sabrina answered. "Leave it there, there's a cesspit on the edge of the town it can get dumped in when it's full."
"Cheers." I walked over, and didn't so much sit in my chair as fall into a seated position onto it. This mead was deceptive. I didn't think it was that strong when I started drinking it, but I was merrily drunk now, and I'd only had half the bottle. That being said, I drank some more. It was good stuff. "Alright, you mentioned you had questions. What do you want to know?" I asked them.