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Race: Saurian

Bloodline Powers: Strength, Rending, Emberbreath

Greater Mysteries: Fire (Noble) 3, Wind (Noble) 1

Lesser Mysteries: Heat 4, Oxygen 4, Embers 4, Pressure 4, Current/Flow 4

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Sam followed Rose out of the Bursar’s office, a confused look on his face and three scraps of paper in his clawed hands. He looked down at the neat swirls of the writing on the notes before tucking them into his pouch and following after the shorter woman.

He brought a hand up to his muzzle, coughing theatrically to draw her attention. Rose paused, looking back at him.

“You’re going to have to explain all of that to me,” he said helplessly. “I understand that my tuition is five hundred parros a year, and that Takkla and Dussok need to pay two hundred and fifty parros each, but I have no idea how much a parro is worth, let alone what they look like.”

Rose reached into a pocket, pulling out a disk of metal surrounding a shard of glass that glowed a dull orange. She handed it to Samazzar, and he turned the object over in his hands. The metal was brown, either copper or some sort of alloy, with a number of letters and numbers etched into its rim.

“Five parros,” Rose said. “The coin is called a quint. It’s roughly the equivalent of a skilled laborer’s daily wages. More talented workers can obviously earn more, but it is uncommon for someone to earn less than three in a day.”

She handed him a pinky sized rod of metal. As Samazzar inspected its markings, Rose continued speaking.

“That’s a slug, it’s worth one parro. I don’t have any doubles, eagles, or royals on me, but I can at least explain how the system works.”

Rose extended a hand, and Sam returned both of the coins to her. She tucked them back into her pocket before resuming her lecture.

“Most transactions are done with slugs or quints. The mint doesn’t bother with laying light enchantments on slugs given their low value, but I’ve been assured that there are ways of discovering forgeries.”

“For bigger purchases,” Rose said, “most people use doubles, which are worth ten parros, or eagles which are worth twenty. I’ve personally never had a use for a royal, but they’re worth a hundred.”

“The main difference between doubles, eagles and royals are the color of the light enchantments used on the coins at the mint,” she lectured. “Doubles are red, eagles are white, and royals are gold. There’s probably something coded in the markings on them that will let an auditor find a forgery, but I don’t personally have a clue what any of it means.”

Samazzar nodded slowly as Rose set out once again, guiding him through an inscrutable maze of tight hallways, lecture halls, and laboratories.

“So a thousand parros is a lot of money,” he responded, eyes on the smaller woman’s back as she led him to a spiral staircase. “Why do all of the job postings pay so much? The job to investigate the source of tainted springwater in Olemal Village pays a flat hundred and fifty. That seems like a rather tremendous sum of money.”

“It’s because they’re all dangerous as hell,” Rose said, her tone even. “I’d give you better than even odds that the Olemal Village job is a crypt lurker, spore gaunt or something even worse that has skulked out of some unexplored cave in the mountains. Students of the Vereton Academy have a reputation for two things, fighting well, and knowing enough about how the world works to identify and eliminate some of the more esoteric threats.”

“And if it were a crypt lurker or a spore gaunt,” Samazzar replied thoughtfully, “I could use the mystery of air to keep its noxious fumes away from me while I finished it off with fire. Both species are known for being incredibly flammable and too toxic to approach.”

“Exactly,” Rose said, nodding with satisfaction and Sam’s answer. “That’s a large part of the reason why I suggested that mission to you. It might be a hard task for another student, but the descriptions of signs and symptoms hint at a gimmee for you and your friends.

She stopped in front of a wooden door. At the top of its frame was a brand new wooden placard with the painted image of a flame on it. Below the flame were the words ‘Magi Tazzaera’ in simple block print.

“Remember,” Rose continued, stepping to the side of the door. “If people see an orc or a goblin, they call the guards or the knights. If they need a rare material retrieved or if all of their sheep fall ill on the same day without any outward sign as to why, they talk to the Academy. The jobs available to you will be more complex than simply fetching a parcel or slaying an obvious monster. The City has established services for that. Your team will be expected to have enough knowledge of alchemy and the natural world to handle a wide variety of potential problems.”

“Of course,” she said with a smile, reaching up to pat Samazzar on the shoulder, “you should also be ready to kill whatever you find. It may be fascinating and intellectually rewarding to discover new mutations or lost societies of strange creatures, but most of the time, the sorts of monsters that are draped in mystery after centuries of exploration maintain that mystery by eating scouts.”

“Kill or be killed and bring back anything valuable to sell for parros,” Samazzar replied with a quick nod. “I’d like to spend more time studying some of the updated bestiaries in Master Pothas’ library, but the tasks seem straightforward enough.”

“There will be plenty of time for that,” Rose responded, letting a smile briefly touch her normally severe face. “This is your friend’s classroom. Your companions have been here since I brought you to meet with Master Pothas.”

Sam nodded, reaching for the door. Just as his hand closed on the knob, Rose spoke up once more.

“And Sam? Good luck with whatever mission you choose. I know that I can be a bit unforgiving, but it isn't anything personal. I’m only to protect Master Pothas from unmotivated would-be students that are trying to take advantage of him. You don’t seem like the type, but he can let enthusiasm overwhelm his common-sense at times.”

He looked up and shot Rose a quick smile, careful to not bare his sharp teeth. Apparently, humans found a proper saurian grin unsettling, something he’d had to come to terms with since arriving in Vereton yesterday.

She inclined her head slightly before spinning on a heel and clacking away down the stone hallway. Samazzar turned his attention back to the door, rotating the knob and pushing it open.

Almost immediately, a wave of heat assaulted him. Reflexively, Samazzar reached out with his mind, lowering the temperature of the air around his scales to a more reasonable level.

In the center of the room, three humans, Takkla and Dussok sat cross-legged around a bonfire. Just behind the five of them, Crone Tazzaera stood in front of a podium, her tiny hunched form leaning forward as he shouted at her pupils.

“Jessica, scoot closer to the flames. You’re never going to understand the mystery of heat from way back there.”

“William!” She barked. “You’re too close. Unless you’re trying to intentionally baptize yourself before you’re ready, you need to move back.”

“But Magi-” one of the male humans began only for the Crone to cut him off.

“Your hair is smoldering boy, and if you aren’t careful your clothes are about to catch fire. There’s a time and a place for that, and your first training session without access to an oil of burn resistance is neither.”

“Shit!” The man yelped, pushing himself backward and frantically patting at his smoking hair.

Samazzar walked into the room, nodding at Tazzaera. She inclined her wizened head back, barely at the same height as Sam despite standing atop a pedestal behind her podium.

The crone raised a claw above her head, clenching it tightly. The heat in the room shifted, flowing into cocoons around the five students. Almost immediately, the humans began panting for breath as Tazzaera’s magic robbed the air from their lungs.

“One final push,” Tazzaera rasped. “Let the heat flow over you and bake your scales. Bask in the flames. They are alive, like you are alive, taking in good air, exhaling bad air, consuming logs like they are food.”

“Think of yourself as the fire,” she continued, “there is heat inside your body. It grows like a flame as it eats nutrients. Let it flow up through you, producing flame and ember.”

As Sam watched the air above Takkla and Dussok’s heads began to shimmer. For a fraction of a second, he saw what looked like a heat mirage in the shape of licking and crackling flames.

Then one of the men, the one Tazzaera had called William, collapsed backward, wheezing for breath. The crone opened her hand and the fire in the center of the room dwindled away in seconds.

“Samazzar,” she called out, jerking her head toward a nearby counter. “Your legs are longer than mine, and they still work. Grab the poor man some of the fragrant healing balm. If he rubs it on his upper lip, the fumes will have his lungs back in working shape in no time.”

Sam picked up the small ceramic jar while Takkla and Dussok unfolded themselves. The other two humans clustered around the downed one, eyeing him worriedly until Samazzar brushed past them.

He knelt next to the young man, applying the pungent salve below his nose and mouth. Samazzar wrinkled his muzzle at the pungent medicinal smell rising from the injured human, but the effect was almost immediate. He thrashed less, and his breathing came easier. After about fifteen seconds his eyes fluttered open and then widened with terror as he stared up at Sam’s scaly face.

He patted the panicking boy on the shoulder and stood up, letting the soot covered human push himself backward across the Academy floor before clambering to his feet. The other two humans looked at him, a hint of worry in their eyes as Crone Tazzaera began speaking again.

“A practitioner of the noble mystery of fire is also an alchemist. It is simply too dangerous of a mystery to learn without knowing how to brew a variety of heat and bur resistance oils as well as healing potions. If you plan on mastering the mystery, you simply must accept that you will suffer pain. There is no way to learn about fire without pain.”

“But Magi,” the female magi questioned, “my friends learning the mysteries of muscle, copper, and magnetism haven’t had any painful lessons yet. They just study diagrams and touch the subject of their magic.”

“Then go study those mysteries,” Tazzaera replied with a dismissive snort. “The lesson is over. Your next lesson will be in two days. If you don’t decide to show up, I understand. Noble mysteries aren’t fit for every practitioner. If you are fine settling for common or uncommon magics, it isn’t my job to try and convince you. I’m too old to be a saleswoman, I am simply a teacher.”

The three humans filed out of the room. Jessica was a bit hesitant, clearly mulling over the Crone’s words, but William, despite his close brush with the flames, had has hands clenched tightly, a determined expression in his eyes.

When the door closed behind them, Samazzar turned back to Crone Tazzaera and let a smile split his muzzle. He crossed his scaled arms as he addressed his mentor.

“It seems that the Academy has already found you pupils?”

“Hush, little dragon,” Tazzaera replied, the smile on her face undermining her testy tone. “Some of them are good kids. William has your willpower, if not your raw talent for understanding the mysteries. He will go as far as his circumstances let him.”

“Then it sounds like you have enjoyed your appointment at the Academy so far?” Sam asked, fishing the scraps of paper that Rose had given him from his pouch. “Have they been treating you well?”

“Well enough,” the Crone said agreeably. “I’ve only really been here for a bit over a day, but I have a teaching schedule, a home, a stipend, and scheduled laboratory access. Better yet, alchemists are preparing a course of treatment for me that’s designed to ease my aches and extend my life. All the Chancellor really wants from me is that I continue to expand my research and record my findings in writing.”

“Apparently,” she continued with a dry chuckle, “there aren’t that many written records of how to progress in the mystery of fire. It seems that paper and fire magi tend not to mix, especially given the tendency of fire practitioners to immolate themselves during baptisms without leaving a trace.”

“Do you hear that?” Samazzar asked, struggling to keep a smile off his face. “You need to be more careful. Dussok. We can’t have any more reckless behavior out of you.”

The big saurian snorted. To his side, Takkla slapped a hand across her muzzle as she tried to choke back a laugh.

“Now, little dragon, how was your meeting with the air scholar?” Tazzaera questioned. “I hope your first lesson with him has gone smoothly.”

“Not yet,” Sam replied, handing the three scraps of paper to Tazzaera. “Unfortunately, the Academy requires payment before the three of us are allowed to begin our formal lessons. Fortunately, we are allowed to pay our tuition through tasks and missions rather than with money we don’t have.”

“Oops,” she said, shrugging at Dussok and Takkla. “I guess I missed that in the introductory paperwork. I honestly don’t understand how they expected me to read through all of that in the hour or so before they sent the first wave of students to my door.”

“I don’t think it matters that much,” Samazzar responded. “So long as Takkla, Dussok and I set out to perform a mission right away, I doubt that anyone will mind. Of course, there will probably be complaints if we laze around here for a couple of days, but I want to start my lessons. The sooner we complete a task, the sooner I can begin my studies.”

Tazzaera didn’t respond, instead humming to herself as she sifted through the scraps of paper. Quietly, she set two aside before inspecting one a bit closer. Finally, she nodded her head decisively before handing it back to Samazzar.

‘Collecting yellow scarab shells?” He asked. “I had been thinking of the Olemal village mission. It pays more, and I think it's a bit closer to Vereton.”

“Think boy,” Tazzaera replied with a snort. “Your strengths lie in the realm of fire and air. Even if an enemy is weak, it dwells in water. All the monster will need to do is dive into the spring and your attacks will be thwarted. Plus, the scarab mission doesn’t actually pay less. It simply pays twenty five parros per shell. Between your heat and air magic, you should be able to find dozens of the things. If you kill six of them without doing too much damage to their shells, you’ve made as much as the Olemal mission. I’ll eat my own tail if you make less than two hundred and fifty.”

“Plus,” she continued, her voice dropping an octave as her eyes took on a sly glint. “This mission takes you to the Redfern Vales, a series of heavily vegetated valleys carved out of one of the nearby mountains. Not everyone knows this, but the reason there are so many plants around Redfern is the warm temperature and rich volcanic ash that nurtures the soil.”

Samazzar perked up, expression brightening as he pondered the Crone’s words. When he answered, he spoke quickly, his voice almost incomprehensible as he rushed to push the word out through his excitement.

“Do you mean that there’s a volcano or a magma vent nearby? That would mean more materials for fire baptisms, and potentially-”

“Yes,” Tazzaera confirmed, flashing a smile full of yellow, chipped teeth. “Just past the Redfern Vales there are a series of magma vents. It’s a tough region, too hot for most human forces to establish a foothold for long. That means that it's packed with monsters, but the good news is that Vereton hasn’t had a chance to properly exploit its resources yet.”

“The first thing I requested when I met the Chancellor was flame garents,” the Crone continued. “They’re a common ingredient in fire based alchemy, and often used to perform baptisms. Apparently the Academy’s stores are starting to run low. I was informed that a request would be put out for students to gather more in the coming weeks.”

“Oooh,” Takkla chirped. “So if we head there before-hand we can scout the area out and make preparations before the actual request.”

“Exactly,” Tazzaera said approvingly. “And remember, there’s no rule saying you have to turn over every ingredient you acquire on a mission. You can buy flame garnets from the Academy as a student, but they are incredibly expensive. It might be worth your while to just put four or five of them aside for later use. After all, the three of you have baptisms on the horizon.”