The following wait was a little awkward. None of them seemed to want to be the first to actually ask a question, or maybe they just couldn't decide which one to ask first. That definitely seemed to be the case with Sabrina, who was almost vibrating in place, flipping through a selection of hand-written notes.
Even so, she was still the first to ask something. "What's the most impressive magical advancement in your plane?"
Ah fuck, what's the most important tech development? Internet would probably be too hard to explain, and farming isn't really magical, so... "Writing?" I hazarded, to which she scowled in response.
"Well, yes, I suppose that an argument for that being the case could very well be made, but that wasn't the specific question that I had in mind when I asked you." There was a slight slur to her words, I noticed. "What I meant was..."
"What she meant was are there any revolutionary bits of knowledge that she could steal from you and show off to her old school." Lidda cut in with a smirk.
"Well that's not true at all! I've have given him co-author credit!" The mage turned to me. "I would give you co-author credit, help you get your foot in the door of a respectable organisation?" she suggested.
Tempting, for kudos and possible profit if nothing else, but I'd need to know how magic worked well enough to actually suggest anything. My brain jumped immediately to the concept of a magical railgun, which may have just been from all of the fighting today, but I couldn't suggest physics stuff without knowing whether or not physics actually worked the way I thought they did, or if it was just magical/divine fiat. For all I knew, electromagnetism wouldn't work due to electricity and magnetism being under the domain of two rival gods. As a result, I just kind of shrugged. "Nothing I'm really aware of then, sorry. I never really did a deep-dive of any topic, certainly not complex magic."
"Oh?" Lidda latched on to what I was saying. "What did you research, then?"
Starting with the easy questions, I see. "For my job? Whatever I was paid to, really. My boss would get a request for topic, they'd pass it on to me, and I'd look into it and write about it in a way that was easy to understand. Ideally, anyway."
Sabrina arched an eyebrow. "And that doesn't involve looking deeply into things?"
I just shrugged again. "I mean, kind of? It wasn't so much that I'd be looking deeply into things to discover new stuff, so much as cross-referencing things to get the most vital bits of information on something, so a boss or something could then pass that on their workers or whatever." Man, my job was surprisingly difficult to describe.
Julie gave me a considering look. "You looked into lots of different things, and wrote down the most important parts of them. So that other people could quickly learn the basics, if they needed to."
"Pretty much, yeah." It wasn't a completely inaccurate way of phrasing things, and it was good enough for the moment. I had some more mead, and chased it down with some nuts and water that I pulled out of my cloak. Best to try and avoid a serious hangover tomorrow.
Sabrina jumped back into the conversation as Julie made a humming sound. "You looked into different types of creatures, though, even if you didn't look into magic, right? Do you remember anything about any particularly impressive ones?" Oh no, an attractive woman going 'please tell me more about all of the D&D lore you've memorised', how terrible, whatever shall I do. The difficult thing was picking a particular monster to talk about. Which ones could I remember off of the top of my head with no prompting?
"Ok, so, the beholder is an aberration..."
I went on with what I could remember about the beholder, mainly the huge anti-magic eye, the range of smaller eyestalks with their own spells, and their complete xenophobia of all other life, answering all of the additional questions that Sabrina asked as she desperately scribbled down what I was saying. We'd moved on to other variants of the beholder (such as the spectator) when Julie, who'd been patiently listening and watching me, cut in.
"And how would you kill one of these?" There was a weird tone to her voice, kind of, I dunno, school-teacher-y?
"Personally, I wouldn't, they'd kill the shite out of me." I joked. "But if I wanted one dead, and didn't have a party of high-level adventurers" that caused a weird look, shite, levels probably weren't actually a thing, whatever, "then probably a large number of archers? They're tough to hit, but they don't ignore damage, not really, so enough massed fire from a far enough distance away would probably take them out. Why'd you ask?"
"Just curious." she replied. She sounded sincere, but I've never heard anyone use that phrase and not be hiding something. "Were there many people around where you worked?"
Right, because that's not a weirdly phrased question. It was pretty obvious that she was digging for something now, but I didn't know what exactly it was she was digging for. Still, no reason to lie about anything yet, but it still might be worth watching what I said. "Not a huge amount? I didn't have very many co-workers, and I lived in a village near the edge of a city, so there wasn't a huge number of people there anyway."
Julie reached a hand into her shirt, and... was she scratching her tit? I brought my eyes up to her face, but thankfully she didn't seem to notice.
"You lived in a village, but that had a large number of books and other research materials in it?" Sabrina took over while Julie had another drink. It almost felt like I was in an interview at this point, four people (well, three people, Zahri was being fairly quiet) all playing off of each other to ask me questions. Thankfully, being pissed was helping to deal with any anxiety that I had.
"Books aren't that uncommon in England. Oh, that's the name of the country I'm from." I pre-empted the question. Wait, shite, aren't books super expensive in the players handbook? Fuck, I can't remember. How do I explain that? Wait, I can still go with the truth, if just not all of it. "Are you familiar with the printing press?" They've been around for centuries, and there's lots of different advancements of them, even if they don't have them here, a basic printing press isn't that much of a tech advance.
Thankfully, Sabrina lit up at that. "Yes, the Taige has one, it's a fascinating piece of machinery. Are you saying that they're so prevalent where you come from that every village has a library?" She'd stood up at this, her hands on the table, leaning over it towards me.
"I mean, not every village," (thanks, government cutbacks) "but yeah, it's not that difficult to get your hands on a book." A mild understatement, but essentially correct.
There was a brief pause in the conversation, followed by "Romance?" I turned around to Zahri, and tried to raise an eyebrow, and ended up raising both of them.
"Sorry, what?"
"You with someone?" She was holding her drink well, the way she was tipping her bottle when she was drinking from it indicating she'd gone through a solid amount of it, but she seemed the least drunk at the table.
"You mean am I in a relationship with someone?" She nodded in response to my question. "Then no, not for quite a while now. Any reason?"
"Far away now." The sound of flapping arms came from the other side of the table, but when I turned around, Lidda was just looking back at me, an innocent expression on the halfling's face.
"Right... No, I was in a relationship that ended badly when I was a teenager, but nothing since. You?" I wasn't sure if I her dating history was actually relevant, but hell, she'd asked me, it was only fair.
"A few flings. Nothing serious." I suppose that told me a little bit about the culture around here, in that maybe short term relationships weren't particularly frowned upon?
A thunking sound came from Lidda, and as I turned back around again, she was clutching her leg, having brought her shin all the way up to her chest, and was glaring at Julie, who was looking content, if very slightly smug.
The conversation wandered around quite a bit from that point on, from correcting misapprehensions...
"Why would I be from the Plane of Fire?"
"Well, you said you're from another plane, and you breathe fire." Julie insisted, her hand thumping against the table for emphasis. "So the fire plane makes sense. You're not gonna be from the water one, are you?"
I slumped my head into my hand, and leaned on the table. "That's not what I meant. No one lives... Ok, well, some people live on the Plane of Fire, but that's not the point. Ok, so, imagine some really spread out islands, in the middle of a sea, right?" I waited for Julie's nod before continuing. "Now, rather than being a normal sea, picture something called the Astral Sea." I made sure to capitalise the words, even when speaking them. It's important, after all.
...to arguments about magic...
"Of course Colour Spray didn't work, they were vermin!"
"What does that have to do with anything?" Sabrina demanded. "I've used it to clear a cellar of rats before, and it worked fine."
"Well, yeah, rats aren't vermin." What was the classification for them, was it beasts or animals? Was there a difference? I know they're not magical beasts, anyway.
"The fuck do you mean rats aren't vermin, of course they are!"
"Nah they're not, if they were, Colour Spray wouldn't work on them."
The normally energetic Sabrina slumped in her seat and fixed her eyes on me. "Mazhiron, what the fuck are you talking about? You're being," she made a spiral motion in the air with a finger "circular."
I nodded. "Kinda, yeah. They're not tax, fuck, what is it, taxonomical, classifications are more convenienced based." At her confused look, I continued. "It's like construct, or undead, or whatever. Vermin are dumb, mainly insect type things, but they're dumb or weird enough that illusions and stuff don't work on them, so Colour Spray doesn't do anything."
"Why not just call them insects, rather than vermin, then?" A very good point, Sabrina, and one I don't have a particularly good answer to.
"Because it contains creatures like spiders and crabs in it?" I hazarded.
"Crabs?" The, what was the word, it wasn't quite derision, suspicion? Whatever, it was dripping from Zahri's voice.
"Hey, giant crabs will fuck you up. They'll fuck basically anything up, they're monsters. No one should fuck with the giant crab, if anything is proof of the wonders of carcinisation, it's the giant crab." CR 3 my shiny metal arse. Even the nerfed version could fuck off.
"Are they really that bad?" asked Julie.
"They're bigger than a horse, with a shell tougher than full plate, about as fast as a horse, and they have enormous, powerful, fuck-off claws that latch onto things and crush and cut them to death at the same time. Don't fuck with the crab."
...to what were essentially drunken shenanigans.
The arm wrestle between Julie and Zahri was going well. Not really for either of them, they'd been going back and forth at it for a few minutes now, and neither of them had made any significant headway, but it had caused both of them to sweat, and the tunics that they were wearing had started to stick in some quite interesting places (mostly their tits) and I was trying not to obviously lech at them. I wasn't sure how well I was doing with it, but there was no reason to be impolite.
Zahri was the eventual winner, slowly pushing the fighter's hand down to the table. Her resulting celebratory pose, as she stood up with her arms in the air, caused her tunic to cling to her quite sizeable breasts, and while she did catch me looking, thankfully all she did was wink. Seems I managed to avoid insulting her with it, at least.
I did eventually clean them both up, though. No need to be a dick about things, even if I was enjoying the view.
Eventually, the night wound down. I was hammered, as were most of the others, although Zahri still looked fairly sober. I was shoving nuts and trail mix into my mouth and chowing down on them while the others were discussing sleeping arrangements.
"Nho," I swallowed "no need for all of you to pile into one room tonight, I'm not going to make one of you sleep on the floor while I take your bed. I can sleep on the floor, it's fine."
"You can't sleep on the floor of one of our rooms." Julie seemed quite insistent on that fact.
"Why not?" My question was followed almost immediately by Lidda, asking the same thing. This got her a hard stare from Julie.
"It wouldn't be proper." This was directed more at Lidda than me, for some reason. Was this a matriarchal thing? Probably, it's the kind of thing that seems like it would be, but that was a problem for tomorrow me. Current me just needs to find somewhere to sleep without annoying the others, either by stealing their bed or by breaking some kind of cultural taboo.
Looking around, I alighted on the area under the stairs, which looked like it was being used for storage. "Alright, I'll sleep in there, then. Problem solved, you all get beds, I don't do anything improper."
Julie took in the slightly dusty and cobweb filled cranny. "Are you sure you're alright sleeping somewhere like that?"
A quick use of the ring cleaned out all of the small debris, and I nudged some of the bigger boxes aside to make space. "Yeah, it's fine. I've slept in worse places, don't worry about it."
Once we'd all finished queueing for the chamberpot, and I had an empty bladder, I gave myself one last clean, making sure to clean my teeth, I thumped to the floor in the alcove, and waved the others goodnight as they went upstairs. The floor wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as I thought it might have been, my newly tough skin removing a lot of the discomfort. A twinge in my knee as I shifted around did remind me of the injury, though. I'd forgotten about it, the alcohol numbing the pain, but I was pretty sure tomorrow morning was going to suck. Hopefully I'd warded off the hangover, at least.
Pulling my cloak over me, I grunted slightly as I enjoyed the automatic temperature control, and slowly drifted off to sleep. As I did so, my brain threw up the fleeting thought '1070 encounter + 100 quest = 1170/2000', but it was nonsensical enough that it was quickly forgotten as I slumbered.
As they walked up the stairs that Mazhiron was sleeping under, Julie grabbed the attention of the other three with a combination of taps on the shoulder and whispers, and dragged them all into one of the bedrooms. Making sure the door was closed behind them, she sat down heavily on her bed.
"So." She paused for a second. "So."
"Ten gold says he's a noble." Lidda was her usual shameless self. Still...
"No bet, far too obvious. There's no way he isn't a noble of some kind." Julie responded.
"I must admit, even assuming that that Eng-land country of his have made advancements in the printing press, he is still, from the sound of it, used to being surrounded by a wealth of books. Combined with the high quality of his clothing..."
"And literally everything else about him, yeah, Sabrina, we get it, he's so obviously a toff. Even his job seems to be 'learn about the basics of how everyone else does their job, and write it down so we can hand it off to others who need it'. Which is the most sensible thing I've ever heard of a noble doing, so maybe he isn't one." Grinning at her joke, Lidda pulled out a boar and starting rolling the golden coin around her fingers, the head of the queen on one side and a snarling porcine face on the other flickering back and forth as the rogue indulged in a nervous habit she'd mostly broken out of.
Staring at the coin as it flicked back and forth, Julie used the time to pause and clear her thoughts. She always found it useful to take some time to not do things. A long time spent being cautious and too prone to overthink things had resulted in her trying to break the habit by listening to her gut instinct and first response.
"I think he's not just a noble, he's a prince." She found herself saying. "His life sounds too much like a gilded cage. My guess is that between how he looks," he was stupidly, inhumanly attractive. It was all she could do at points not to just stare at him and drink in every aspect of the way he looked. Thankfully, he never really seemed to notice. Either that, or he was so used to people looking at him it didn't really register. "and what he said about that relationship, he was kept safe and trained so he didn't get kidnapped. Although if that was the case, it didn't work very well."
"...no." Posited Zahri.. "Too crass. Used to roughing it. I think dragon." Julie had known her taciturn friend for long enough to know that she didn't mean he was a proper dragon. Even though...
"He can't be a half-dragon, he isn't dragon enough."
"Quarter, maybe?" The cleric shrugged. "Don't know how much. Raised by them, though. I think. Trying to blend in. Failing."
Julie doubted it, but she supposed it was possible. Only one thing for it. "Ten gold?" They shook hands. "Either of you two want in on this?"
"I'm guessing just going for noble isn't allowed?" Lidda smiled again at the look of Julie's face. The halfling took far too much pleasure in winding people up, sometimes. "Alright, I'm going to go off track a little, and suggest he's actually some kind of Fey. He's vague on the specifics of everything, he's far too attractive, and everything he says is conveniently unverifiable. I'll bet that everything he's said isn't a lie, but is misleading somehow. Ten gold to the pool on him being a fey."
Sabrina was tapping on the back of her book, looking pensive. "I think the vagueness might be from a different reason. He doesn't look normal, but he was also surprised by it, and that kind of thing doesn't happen overnight. I think he was kidnapped by a wizard, like he said, and she experimented on him. If he'd been kept for a long period of time, used as a apprentice or test subject, it would explain the scattershot knowledge around monsters and creatures, and the unusual appearance of him. And then, when the wizard got bored of him, she could have just fiddled with his mind and dumped him somewhere."
Julie wasn't really sure how someone could get bored of a man that looked like that, but there was no explaining wizards, sometimes. It took a special kind of woman to want to spend years, if not decades, locked inside reading books and coming up with words to describe things only they could understand.
"Could ask him." Zahri mentioned, but Julie shook her head.
"If either you or Lids are right, then he's going to lie about it. If Sabs is right, then he's not going to know. If I'm right, he's only known us for a day or so. Would you trust four random woman after a day if you were a prince?" Zahri acquiesced with a slow shake of her head. "Exactly. Best to wait, and hope he opens up to us. Assuming that he wants to keep coming with us, though."
"Did you see how he went for that huge zombie? All we'll need to do is keep promising fights like that, and I'm pretty sure he'll stick with us." Lidda flicked her coin in the air, before catching and stowing it, as Julie shuddered slightly at the memory of the man having his leg shattered by the swing of that giant hand. The image of Jonathon briefly appeared over the memory, before she crushed it ruthlessly. She'd done her mourning.