Chapter 31

News Flash

Continued sleep in a comfortable bed left Janus even more refreshed than he would have hoped. Hashilli must have been running late the night before, and Janus had gotten to bed early. He had a few things to take care of before meeting up with his team.

His first order of business was seeing if he could get his robe repaired. After the night before, he had little left in the way of funds, but it was worth a try.

The ground level of the guild actually contained a small tailor’s shop. Janus discovered that shops sponsored by the guild were willing to take a portion of his reward from any writs he completed in exchange for services.

The price came out to be a little more than what it would have been if Janus paid up front, but the robe was his only enchanted layer of protection.

After Janus signed a stack of paperwork, the tailor informed him that it could take up to a week for the repairs to be completed. Janus didn’t really have any context for low long repairing an enchantment would take, so he could only nod his head and accept the wait.

He was still browsing the various shops in the commons when Tara showed up. She continued Janus’ education of Bear Station by showing him around the guild. When he mentioned his robe, she scowled.

“You let them garnish your writ rewards? That stuff is a scam. You’ll end up paying way more that way,” said Tara.

“I wanted to make sure I had my robe for our first job. It’s the only protection I’ve got.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll help you figure out an alternative if something like this happens again.”

Tara continued to lead Janus around. She demonstrated how to select a writ from the notice boards all along the far wall in the commons. The notice boards tended to only have simple jobs. It surprised Janus to see that there were even writs asking for delvers to move heavy objects.

When he asked Tara about the strange writs, she explained that they meant very heavy objects. Stuff that most non combat classes would struggle with. Usually they were industrial jobs, payed out by the station governor. She continued to explain that the guild in Bear Station differed from some of the other guilds. They focused on improving life for station citizens wherever they could. Janus assumed it was probably more about the money from extra jobs, but kept quiet.

On the other hand, the guild in Eagle Station was more focused on the prestige of delving. They were more concerned with taking down the biggest possible dungeons and finding the rarest items.

The differences didn’t seem all that clear cut to Janus. Obviously, the delvers in Bear Station wanted prestige, too. Tara herself appeared to be more of a thrill seeker than anything else. He wondered why she wasn’t taking writs in Eagle Station.

Rowan finally showed up a few minutes after Janus’ tour with Tara concluded.

“Sorry I’m a bit late guys,” the [Trickster] said. He was already sipping on a drink. Janus assumed it was some sort of alcohol.

“You weren’t late enough to pick up something to drink on the way,” said Tara. “It doesn’t matter much, anyway. I just got finished giving Janus the rundown of the guild. I was thinking we could check the notice boards or even try to score something a bit more lucrative.”

“Oh right, you mentioned the notice boards were only for simple jobs?” asked Janus.

“I guess it depends on how you look at it.” Tara shrugged. “Some of those notice board jobs can get a little crazy. But, if you want the real deal payouts, you check the Bingo Book. Well, that’s what delvers call it. I think it has a boring official name like the guild ledger, I don’t know. We call it the bingo book because every job has a ton of requirements. If you manage to meet all of them, well, BINGO!”

“Yeah, that last job was a bingo for us. And we didn’t even have to do any of the work,” said Rowan.

Janus was still unsure. “Should we check the Bingo Book then?”

“We can take a look, sure. I mean, no offense, Janus, but we probably won’t hit a bingo with a brand new member. We’re gonna have to get you a job history,” Rowan explained.

The group continued talking as they approached the clerks. Tara asked for the “Bingo Book” and Janus watched as they pulled a massive tome from behind the counter and slammed it down on the desk. The sound rang out through the commons.

“It’s theatrical, ya’ know? Like ‘Ooh look at them, they’re lookin’ at the book’ kinda thing,” said Rowan.

Inside, the book was a lot less interesting than Janus would have hoped. Each page was actually a sleeve that could hold up to two cards. The book only appeared to have about dozen cards inside. All the other pages were simply empty sleeves.

Tara shrugged after Janus mentioned the empty pages.

“There aren’t a lot of jobs at the moment. When a job is completed, they remove it from the book. Some of these jobs are even shared between the stations, so you can kind of get an idea how big of a deal the Bingo Book is.”

The cards within the book had details for various different jobs and the requirements to meet with the job issuer. Many of the jobs were vague about what actually needed to be done. The clerks explained that most of the stuff in the Bingo Book was on a need to know basis. If a team got a job, that’s when the details would be revealed to them.

Unfortunately, Rowan was correct in assuming that their team wouldn’t qualify for a job from the Bingo Book. Almost every job required each delver in the team to have completed dozens of high end missions. Even Tara and Rowan only qualified for a single card.

“I guess we should look at the notice board,” said Janus.

-

The notice board encompassed nearly the entire northern wall. Janus noticed that the jobs steadily increased in danger and difficulty as he moved to the right. The jobs near the left hardly even required fighting anything at all.

Tara immediately gravitated to the far right and Rowan rolled his eyes, beckoning for Janus to head further left.

“She’ll try to find whatever job will kill us the fastest. Let’s tackle some simple stuff. I bet you’re broke after yesterday, anyway,” said Rowan.

Janus simply grunted in reply. He didn’t really want to admit that he’d spent nearly all of his money the day before.

Rowan placed his finger on a writ near eye level.

“Something like this will be good. This job is to protect earth manipulators as they dig. Usually pretty low profile. Low-level monsters. To accept the writ, we just pull it off the board.” Rowan said and then peeled the paper from the notice board.

“What is the pay like for these jobs?” asked Janus.

“Well, it’s not gonna be huge. A single silver eagle for each of us. This job pays better than others at this level because we’ll probably be working for a few days. Usually, we camp out with the digging crews.”

Janus considered the job. A single silver eagle actually wasn’t that bad. Most people would earn that in a month or two.

“That sounds good to me.” Janus shrugged. “Is, uh, is there a date? When would we start?”

“Looks like two days from now is when the crew wants to move out. Since our team is about level 30 on average, we might have some leeway to convince them to wait a day. These crews value safety and want the best delvers they can afford.”

“Two days should be good. I need to check in with the governor’s office. They were going to see if my dad made it to Cougar Station or not.”

“Aye. I almost forgot about your dad. I’m sure he made it out. He must have helped collapse the tunnel.”

“Yeah….”

“Anyway, we should tell Tara we picked out a job. She’s gonna be upset that it’s not super dangerous, but that woman is obsessed with gettin’ herself killed.”

Tara had taken the news worse than Janus had expected. She insisted they should start with writs from the right side of the notice board. Janus could sort of see her logic. The writs on the right side were worth more in terms of recognition from the guild. But he wasn’t interested in jumping back into any life-threatening situations so soon after returning to civilization.

Eventually, Tara agreed to escort the digging crew. The trio all signed their names on the writ and presented it to the guild clerks. The clerks noted that the job had been taken up. They would inform the crew that a team had agreed to escort them.

With that done, both Rowan and Tara explained that they had some errands to run. Janus bid them goodbye and decided now would be a good time to head to the governor’s office.

-

The officers outside the governor’s office had been a lot less intrusive now that Janus was wearing a clean outfit. It didn’t really matter all that much to Janus, but he was glad to not have an escort watching his every move this time around.

The secretary spotted him before he even reached the desk.

“Oh! Uh, Janus, right?” the secretary said.

“Yeah. That’s me.”

“I know it’s a bit earlier than expected, but I actually got a response from Cougar Station. We’ve been dealing with communication problem since that dungeon popped up on the rail line to Crow Station. Sorry, I’m rambling. They sent a delver with a reply.”

“Oh? Did they send the list of refugees?”

“No, but I asked them if any of the refugees registered as Cyrus Alamy.” The secretary grinned. “And I am happy to say that the name was in their record of refugees from Crow Station!”