“Questing Questing, we're going Questing.”

“Make it Stop.” Mary groaned, she had felt bad about leaving Abbot in the square and not being there when he got beat up, she had told him last night. Apparently, this was not enough for her to ignore his singing during her daydreaming, particularly because there were actual songbirds on his shoulders singing backup, alongside the three-legged rat squeaking out of one his pockets. The creature was apparently the sole survivor amongst the ones that had defended him from the werewolf, and Abbot had immediately taken to taking care of the animal.

“Eh, whatever, at least he can sing alright not like that “bard” in the tavern last night,” Karsten Grumbled, giving her his best imitation of a wry grin. “I can't believe they kept letting that guy back in.”

“Don't remind me, he was so bad we threw him out after one song. And what was with that accent.”

“He was from over the ocean I reckon, you think they all sing with their throats where he's from?”

“Probably. Maybe they have frog people there like the Velucans have beastmen.”

“Yeah, and maybe they all wear silly hats like that too.”

“Who knows? We could ask him if we see him again.”

The three adventurers made their way south through the land district towards the Southern Fortress. One of the two outer fortifications in the city, as opposed to the proper castle that looked down over the confluence. It was a large bastion that contained the south gate, but more importantly, was the docking point for the adventurer’s Ferry down the Greater Montauk river.

“Archbishop Ethelred said Old Mirno is the best place to look for more people to join our group.”

After they had spoken to Sir Harald and the archbishop after the fighting, mostly just giving their reports about the werewolf. When his little captain had gotten there the archbishop had quickly dragged him off to a private meeting, something about asking about out their journey. For his part, he had just spoken to the holy-knight that served as the bishop’s bodyguard. The man had a surprisingly good sense of humor underneath his stern exterior of devotion.

He could see why Abbot would want to become one.

While Abbot hadn't exactly briefed them on what he and the archbishop had talked about, he had come out of the meeting insisting that that eyes leave the city and head south the next morning with the ferry.

“Why do you want more people?”

“To improve our combat strength, Karsten’s the only one of us who can fight in melee, and none of us can deal with lots of weak enemies well. Ideally, I'd like to find a wizard and a warrior if it's possible. Plus we'll be able to train in teamwork against the undead there, two birds with one stone. I guess having a lot of people could work too, if we can’t find any experts”

Karsten shrugged his shoulders at the unfamiliar phrase, he could get the gist of it at least. “Since you want to increase our combat power I suppose you don't want to just be a traveling healer after all?”

“Oh I'll still do that, but the stronger our group is the bigger the problems that we can solve. If a town is attacked by a dragon or something I don't wanna be forced to run away if we can help it. I felt kinda bad leaving Riverbelly behind with all those orcs there.”

Karsten snorted at that, he was fine with anything as long as Mary was willing to go along with the childish priest who apparently intended on forming a proper monster-hunting band. Though he really didn't like the prospect of facing an attacking dragon. “Gonna have to be one hell of a party then.

At that, the bright child simply gave a cheerful nod. “Yep, definitely.”

Of course, the cheerful mood melted off of Karsten when they got to the riverside and he realized that they had to get onto another boat.

“But we just got onto the ground again can't we walk?” He hadn't mentioned it to anyone, but he was really quite sick of it by the time they got off of Joseph’s rickety piece of junk.

His captain was, of course, having none of his silliness.“Yeah if you want to sleep on the ground for a week. C'mon, get on.”

Glancing to the side to Mary for sympathy he found little, as she just seemed to be stifling a giggle at his expense.

Eventually, he let himself be persuaded to get onto the ferry, despite dreading another three days of river travel.

‘At least I don't have to push it off of the banks this time.’

______________________________________

The Eagle glanced down at the ruined city beneath him, surrounded by a high wall that stretched out into the distance. The capital of the old empire, it was nearly thirty miles across, though he was mostly interested in the surrounding area, noting down streets and back alleys that might provide him some use in the future.

The city was a great chalky red and yellow mass because of the old colored bricks that had been commonly used in the old empire, and we're still the common construction material in Veluca. It's streets, however, were grey stone, especially easy to pick out with his eyes even at this height. Stone too was the wall around it, which had once served as its defense, but now had been refurbished to function more like a cage for the shambling dead that frequented its streets. The occasional guard patrols kept watch on the walls, and the flags of the Silver Prince hung silently above the flags of Brindon on the rare watchtower that still stood, mostly near old, sealed gates.

The river, of course, the Greater Montauk, in the human tongue, or as his people called it, the Blueblood, cut through the city like a knife, splitting it in half cleanly. It was crossed only by the enormous partially collapsed river gates, and by the crumbling ancient bridges of the city, carved with the images of the Old Empire’s triumphs now fallen to decay and ruin.

His animal mind told him to go snatch a mouse that was wandering a field just outside the walls, but he overrode it, having long ago gained a good deal of control over his emotions in this state. Instead, he chose to settle in and rest his claws by perching atop the roof of the Silver Prince’s “Castle” Really just a fortified old barracks inside of the only part of the city still inhabited by the living, Fort Smith. The small walled area was where the city’s current “ruler” lived, though the prince was really just an overseer of sorts for the explorers and looters going into and out of the city. That said he did have semi-autonomous governing rights due to the various treaties regarding the ruins as a neutral location between the three countries.

Around the run-down palace as always there was movement, especially in the morning, when the vagabonds and wayfarers who clustered there made their way into the city looking to strike it rich or die trying. Most of them would suffer the latter fate, the city was a dangerous place.

‘perhaps I will someday as well.’ the thought held little fear for him, he was attuned to life and would leave his body as a spirit of nature, even should he die.

He had come to the city at the behest of the spirit of the Willow-Glade, a refuge in Veluca for his oft-wandering people, safe from the predations of those who would seek to enslave his kind in that land. The old Tree-spirit had told him that an upheaval from these ruins would soon shake the land if nothing was done to prevent it, so here he had come.

Still, while he had acted as a guide for several parties of looters into this cursed place, he had not yet found the source of the future calamity, and he was beginning to worry that he might not find its source before it was too late to stop it.

He glanced up the river and noted that the ferry from Brindon was arriving, likely with a new crop of fools, so he kicked off the roof, flapping his old wings, and flew over to follow it into the dock. At the very least he might find his next party of vagabonds here.

‘Is, that… singing?’

______________________________________

“Row Row Row your boat, Gently Down the stream”

“Make it stop Karsten.”

“I'm not sure how,” Karsten mumbled as Mary pressed herself against his chest, hands clamped tightly over her ears.

Honestly, he was just amazed at the fairly ridiculous sight before him. His captain had spent two days quieter than he had ever been since they left Brindon, spending all of his time scribbling in some strange language he'd never seen before in a journal that he had bought somewhere along the way, only leaving their cabin to hand out food or heal an injury, but he had woken them up this morning by getting the entire ferry crew and half of the onboard adventurers involved in a ridiculous series of singalongs. What's worse, the tone-deaf throat singing musician from the tavern was on the boat as well, and Abbot seemed to be getting along great with him. Yodeling, he called it.

While it wasn't that off-putting for him, Mary evidently had issues with the constant singing that Abbot seemed to be determined to fill every second of the day with.

“Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily life is but a dream.”

“One More Time!”

On the other hand, he was certainly appreciating the close contact with Mary, it was as good an excuse as any to hug her to his chest as any. And since she was in her armor today it let him get a real grip on her smooth sides. All in all, he couldn't complain. He didn't mind the singing so much.

Still, he knew that the contact with the woman would soon end as he had spotted what he presumed to be their destination approaching in the distance some time ago.

“Row Row Row yo-Whoaaa!”

Karsten glanced up from Mary to see his charge apparently being landed on and pinned down by an enormous brown eagle.

“Hold on there, hey, cmon.” the child, who was maybe half the size of the bird, was frantically pushing it away, as the bird seemed to be trying to nuzzle into him. Karsten let go of Mary and started moving to help Abbot along with a couple of other adventurers when the bird suddenly stopped dead in its tracks, freezing up like it had been hit by a spell.

It turned to stare around frantically before kicking off of the boat frantically and flying away as fast as possible, all the while flapping clumsily as if it was drunk.

“What on earth..?” Abbot mumbled, climbing up off of the ground, fixing his robes. “I know animals like me, but that was a bit much.”

“Perhaps he thought you were a mouse, you are the same size after all.” a warrior wearing full plate who he believed was named Karl commented, sending a chuckle through the boat.

A comical look of horror made its way onto the child's face. “Oh no, where's Rem?” he frantically started patting down all over his armored robes until finally, he pulled the small rat out of his pocket, making sure she was okay.

The relief that passed over his face was met with smiling and laughter from the folks on deck, and he flushed with embarrassment as he let the little rat scramble up onto his shoulder.

“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up” The kid nodded, before picking his staff back up his face bright red as he visibly centered himself. “It did interrupt the song though.”

“Shuld we sing anuda?” The foreign throat-singer asked, sounding hopeful.

He didn't even see Mary go by, but she was somehow in front of the boy clutching his collar tightly and lifting him up off the ground a bit. “NO!, er… I mean, we're about to reach the dock, so uh, we shouldn’t.”

Karsten stifled a chuckle at the desperate scene.

“Ah, I see.” The man looked down, though his body language was odd, “anuda time then.”

“Awww…” Despite knowing quite well that his captain was far older than his appearance dictated, the priest was clearly quite capable of laying the puppy eyes on thick, giving Mary a look that could be described as sheer anguish.

It was interesting watching the beautiful woman's face twist over itself trying to decide between righteous indignation and sympathy for something like a minute.

Eventually, however, she settled on a look of grim acceptance. “You can sing later Abbot.”

The child priest looked down for a moment, apparently in consternation that his transparent ploy didn't work, before he came right back up smiling.

Then he started whistling some odd, but catchy tune.

Karsten moved forward, placing a hand on Mary’s shoulder before the girl decided to strangle his sworn boss.

“Let's just go find some party members, alright?”

______________________________________

OK so, maybe I was being a bit of a petulant brat about the whole thing. Mary was perfectly in her rights to dislike my singing, and driving her up a tree whistling was just me being annoying.

On the other hand, a few of the other people were catching on to the tune of ‘Centrefold’ so I thought that maybe I could introduce good music taste to these primitives anyhow. ‘Well except for the yodeller, he should keep doing what he's doing.’

‘It'd be ironic at least, a priest spreading rock and roll, the Devils very own music out across the world.’

‘Heh.’

The dock itself was a large wooden platform with a small building on one end, and as we stopped the crew began loading and unloading palettes of some sort of green sludgy material. I asked after just what it was and they informed me that it was “Grinnash”, which was apparently harvested in the city from undead plants. The guy said it was an alchemical catalyst, which sounded pretty interesting.

Anyhow, we made our way off of the boat and onto the paved road into the city, it seemed that the adventurers operated in a sort of enclosed town area which was the staging point for people going into the ruins. It made sense I guess, the ruins were a resource for the three southern countries after all, though most of the easy to get to parts of them had been picked over centuries ago from what I had heard back in Brindon, meaning that only the center of the city and the catacombs beneath it were really worth exploring. Brother Ethelred had suggesting speaking to the Silver Prince’s chamberlain, and written a letter of recommendation for me once I made it clear I wasn't interested in staying in Brindon.

We passed under a reasonably well-maintained gate and into the enclosed fortress, inside there were around twelve bunkhouse buildings, a stable, a tavern and a larger barracks building which had the Prince’s flag draped prominently over it. There might have been a few buildings further back, but I could spot them since I couldn't see past anyone else as short as I was.

Still, the difference in architecture compared to Brindon was immediately apparent, the rock here was of a different, much darker grey texture, and the buildings were made of red-cut clay bricks that reminded me of home, though the yellow tiled rooms were a little odd. The whole thing looked like a giant McDonalds. The smell there was also different, I had been on the river quite some time, and Brindon certainly smelled like that as well, if mixed with the gross smells of a medieval city. This place, however, despite the river only being a few hundred yards away from us, had little in the way of smells at all beyond that drifting out from the taverns open doors. The animals too, what few there were, were quieter, well, barring the crazy eagle from earlier.

If I were to describe the feeling that I got here it was that there was more life present even on the rocky parts of the Plains of Kelmo than there was here in this city, despite the well-kept grass growing off of the paths in the fortress. I had to wonder if what I was feeling was the undercurrent of the ancient curse that applied to this place.

I shivered involuntarily at the thought, a spell that powerful? Lasting that long?

I could only imagine how horrible whatever was at its center was.

“Where do we sign up for a room?”

“In the tavern, I imagine.” Karsten gestured, and the group of us mostly shuffled that way, though a few broke off, dispersing to other business around the fort.

The tavern’s sign referred to it as the Blue Horse, and it was just about as standard an establishment as what I might imagine in this world, save for one thing. It's patrons.

One of the few aspects of society that my father had given me a full education on, after some prodding on my part, was the racial politics of Mirno, it just wasn't something that one could get around and hope to avoid, so I had received a full briefing that might be a few decades out of date, but was nonetheless useful.

To sum it up, most of the intelligent races on Mirno loathed, or at best barely put up with each other depending on the group. With some, like Orcs, it was obvious, they raided everybody, and everybody killed them if they got the chance. Most of the time anyway, they would only ever occasionally be hired as mercenaries in warfare. Other national relationships were more complex. Brindon, for instance, had open trading relations with the Dwarves of the Southern Red Mountains, their small empire quite happy to supply mineral wealth in exchange for dyes and the like, but Humans generally didn't enter Dwarf Holds and Vica-Versa, it wasn't that they'd be killed if they did, but they would never truly be welcomed there, always a foreigner. Other nations and races were more or less complicated. Brindon was generally on poor-terms with most non-human species, though Elves were ostensibly tolerated, mostly because no one could actually capture an elf most of the time, and because they were strongly light aligned, and the church tacitly approved of them despite their paganism.

Polnia, on the other hand, was a dangerous place to be for basically any non-human, they had inherited a significant hatred because they were the primary victims of the Velucan’s allies during their civil war a decade ago, and there was still a large movement there intent on taking revenge for the brutal pillaging that they received. A dwarf or an elf might barely squeak by, but anyone else would likely be shot and left in a ditch to die, or in some more radical parts, thrown up into a Gibbet for all to see how they felt about them.

Veluca, on the other hand, was positively egalitarian for the general level of social advancement, if vile in their own way, the Velucans still maintained the Old Empire’s model, meaning that people of all races are allowed within their territory, as long as they're willing to uphold a citizen’s duties, primarily soldiering. That came with the caveat though that around a third of their population were slaves, a practice that while not unknown in other countries, was only widely utilized in Veluca, and formerly Polnia. This was also combined with the fact that while the Velucans themselves generally were only a bit more abusive than an average army on campaign, many of their “tithed” auxiliary units came from excessively barbaric societies, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Cobolts, and most infamously the Brutal Beastmen of the Furred tribes, who's rapacious slaughter of the Polnian North was the primary reason that Polnia was pointing its guns towards Veluca in those days.

Still, all of this interracial conflict seemed utterly irrelevant within the walls of the Blue Horse Tavern, indeed, I spotted a couple of orcs, some dwarves, a man who I presumed was a half-troll by his size, and even a hobgoblin towards the corner, or at least I figured that was what the red-skinned humanoid was. Not to mention several halflings wandering about at around my height. The tiny folk were often forgotten, but they lived pretty much everywhere humans did, and given that crossbreeds not only existed but we're common and themselves fertile, the church actually considered them human in practice, as did most human countries.

There were more non-humans here than I had seen in my entire life up to this point, understandable since I had grown up isolated on the holy mountain, but nonetheless surprising.

Karsten seemed to be more confident about this place than Mary or I, so we followed his lead as he ordered drinks for the two of them and a mug of fruit juice for me.

“So…” I asked as we sat down at one of the emptier tables. “Do either of you have any idea how to recruit people into our group?”

“I saw a noticeboard out front,” Karsten said, sipping his drink. Mary just seemed to be lost in her own world again. “I bet that we could post an offer up there, you're a priest so it shouldn't be hard to find recruits.”

“Yeah, that sounds reasonable. The archbishop also said I should talk to the Chamberlain at the barracks about getting a license to operate in the city. We can go in without one but the cut the prince takes is higher.”

“That's a good idea, should make grabbing new people easier too. You want to head over there and do that now then?” Mary nodded from across the table, apparently having forgotten my musical inclination.

“Yeah, I think that's a good idea.”

______________________________________