Cassiel has to stop and ask a guard for the location of a Hermetic Scholars office. She was sure that there would be one here since they’re almost everywhere, but since this is her first time actually visiting the city, she has no idea where it is.

Fortunately, the guard is able to point them in the right direction.

Fenrir and Serra have no idea what to expect as they stand outside of the large building. There is nothing remarkable about it other than its sheer size and a caduceus symbol on each wall around the front entrance.

“Cass Cass, I have a weird feeling about this. Why won’t you tell us what these guys are like?” Fenrir asks.

“Seeing for yourself is a rite of passage,” Cassiel answers.

She has already accepted her new nickname.

Cassiel opens the door and holds it open for them. “You two first.”

Fenrir and Serra look at each other, nod, and head inside.

“Welcome, welcome!” a short… creature, man, thing welcomes them in. It has a male’s voice, so Fenrir assumes that the creature is a he as impolitically correct that may be. More important, the creature has the upper body of a goblin and the lower body of a cat - he is walking on two feline legs with a swishing tail behind him. He’s also wearing a monocle.

Neither Fenrir nor Serra has any idea what this thing is supposed to be.

“Welcome to the Hermetic Scholars office of Port Tugator! What can we do for you today? Would you like to get your cards updated? No, I don’t recognize your faces. Are you new here? Do you need cards? Do you have any questions you want to ask? Ah, I know! You must—”

Fenrir cuts the creature off. “We’re uhh, just here for cards, I think.”

“Splendid! Are all three of you looking for one?”

“What are they… good for?” Serra asks, partially standing behind Fenrir.

“Great question!” the creature exclaims. “They’re a form of identification! You can rest assured that our cards are impossible to replicate, so presenting your card to anybody is a great way of proving your identity. There are many guilds that will not accept your application unless you have a card to prove who you are, tournaments such as the upcoming fishing tournament won’t allow you to register unless you have one,” suddenly, Fenrir finds that getting a card isn’t as boring and pointless as he thought it would be, “and they are a great way of keeping track of your growth!”

“I – I don’t think I need one,” Serra says.

The goblin-cat looks as if he’s about to toss her another sales pitch, but Fenrir speaks up before he has the chance to. “I’ll get one.”

“Me too,” Cassiel says.

“Splendid! That’ll be five gold each,” the cat-goblin says.

Fenrir has no idea whether five gold is a lot or not, so he agrees to the price without worrying about it.

Good thing Oleander bargained for twenty-five gold.

Cassiel hands over her coin as well. “Splendid! I’m sorry, but I’m the only one currently available, so I will have to help you both. We would normally have multiple assistants on to help all of our clients, but the other one scheduled to help me today met an… accident recently,” says the cat-goblin.

“What kind of accident?” Fenrir asks.

“Oh, it’s nothing. She was just trying to combine a monkey with a pig and ended up with very… explosive results.”

“…right. So, how does this whole card thing work?”

Fenrir has his doubts about whether this is safe now. He doesn’t even want to question the purpose behind trying to combine a monkey and pig.

“Come with me! Ah,” the cat-goblin pauses to look at Serra, “you can come along. I won’t be giving you a card, but you are welcome to stay with your friends.”

Serra smiles. At least this creature-thing is friendly.

“What’s your name?” Fenrir asks.

“Ah! My apologies, I never gave my name. You may call me Thelmes,” the cat-goblin, Thelmes, says.

Thelmes leads them into the back of the building where there are several hallways leading to a whole bunch of different closed rooms. At the end of the hallway looks like the aftermath of an explosion as the brick wall is covered in scorch marks.

Seriously, why a monkey and pig?

“In here first!” Thelmes says, leading the trio into the first room.

It looks pretty ordinary inside of it. There is a desk with a chair on the other side of it, a few chairs on their side, and a cabinet full of folders and boxes.

“Please, take a seat,” Thelmes says, pulling out the chairs on their side of the desk before heading over to the other side of it. He hopes up onto a stool, pulls a box out of the cabinet, and then sits down in his own chair.

“Oh, your companion there,” Thelmes points at Rock, “is it a combat companion or just a pet?”

“She helps me fight, so a combat companion?” Fenrir doesn’t sound sure.

“Splendid! I’m supposed to charge extra for pets, but since I’m the only one able to help you both, it will be free of charge to make up for the inconvenience.”

“That’s nice of you, thanks. Does she get her own card?”

“She does! It will be less detailed than yours since she seems to only be a tier one companion, but it will still have her stats and skills listed on it.”

“So, skills – there’s skills for everything, right? Are these cards going to have every skill we have on them?”

“Oh, no. Sorry, but we can only measure combat skills, and there are just so many potential skills that we will only test for the ones that you are interested in checking.”

“Makes sense.”

“Splendid! Now then, your names?”

Thelmes goes through some basic information for Fenrir, Rock, and Cassiel. Going through one of them at a time, he takes a blank, copper tablet the size of a business card and uses some sort of magic to “carve” information into it. When Fenrir tells the cat-goblin his name, magic etches the name “Fenrir” into the appropriate field on the tablet. Thelmes also asks for: the real life date that the character was created on, any possible guild or faction affiliations, and their main interest gameplay-wise. Naturally, Fenrir tells him that fishing is his main interest.

“For sport, or gathering?” Thelmes asks.

“Uhh, both? Maybe?” Fenrir answers.

It gets put down on the tablet as “Interest: Fishing [S/G].”

He then goes through the same questions for Cassiel. She answers “general” for her main interest.

Rock gets a unique set of questions. “What is its name?” Thelmes asks.

“Her name is Rock,” Fenrir answers.

“Splendid! A very fitting name, if I do say so myself. How did you acquire her?”

“Uhh, she was just a pet rock at first that was really useful for some basic crafting and fighting when I first started playing and didn’t have anything yet, and then when Ca— when somebody almost killed me, the rock turned into Rock and defended me.”

“Hmm. Sounds to me like she’s is a tier zero artificial companion then.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Being an artificial companion means that, through one way or another, you formed a deep bond with an inanimate object which then magically brought it to life and gave it a form you would subconsciously desire the most. You said she was just a pet rock before, so given that she now has the shape of a dog, I am assuming you have or had a pet dog in reality? Either that or you have always wanted a pet dog.”

“Yeah. Had one.”

Cassiel and Serra look over at Fenrir when they hear his somber tone. Rock even leans up to lick his face, cheering him up instantly.

“Being tier zero simply means that she is currently in her weakest form. She will grow larger and stronger over time, and when she does, she will reach higher tiers of strength and skill. Her appearance may also change over time. I have one client who first came to me with a sword that got turned into a parrot, and over time, the parrot evolved into a harpy! Needless to say, she had very, very sharp claws.”

“I’m fine with Rock staying a cute pup forever,” Fenrir says, petting Rock’s head.

“Splendid. Now then, may you please lean over the desk so that I can reach your foreheads?”

“Uhh, sure,” Fenrir says and is the first to lean over the table.

Thelmes places one hand on his forehead while keeping the other on the tablet. “Hmm, hmm… I see, I see… negative thirteen! That isn’t very good, but it isn’t enough to get you kicked out of the city,” Thelmes says as a “-13” pops up on Fenrir’s tablet next to where it says “Standing.”

“What’s that mean?” Fenrir asks.

“Your ‘Standing’ is how ethical you are. We measure your conscious for this. Deeds such as stealing, killing, engaging in traumatic content with other players, and so on will decrease your Standing while doing good deeds will increase it.”

Fenrir looks over at Cassiel and sees her trying not to laugh at him.

By Fenrir’s logic, he totally deserves to get positive points for killing all those pricks. Though, he did steal their ship and burn down their village as well. They probably weren’t all bad, maybe.

Oh well.

Thelmes measures Cassiel’s Standing next.

“Ooh, negative twenty-three… you better be careful. Two more and you won’t be allowed back until it improves,” Thelmes says.

“Wha… haah? Negative twenty-three? You’re kidding me, right? There’s no way that I’m that low! I used to have eighty!” Cassiel complains.

“Have you been reset? If you were, like everything else, it gets reset to zero. Either that, and you have made some bad choices since then, or you have certainly fallen from grace!”

“Tch,” Cassiel grinds her teeth, wanting to strangle the cat-goblin-thing in front of her.

Fenrir senses her desire to abuse the cat-goblin and calls her out on it. “This is why you’re negative twenty-three.”

Cassiel glares at him with the intent to kill. “You’re lucky I don’t want it to go down anymore.”

Serra giggles as she watches them.

“Are you interested in learning yours? I won’t be putting it on a card, but I can still tell you what you are at,” Thelmes offers to Serra.

Fenrir and Cassiel are both looking at her with curious eyes. She can’t exactly say no when they’re looking at her like this.

“Sure,” she says.

Thelmes eyes go wide when he reads her.

“It’s… a good thing this isn’t being placed on a card. Just what did you – never mind, I don’t want to know. It’s better for us both if you don’t tell me.”

Serra tilts her head. “What is it?”

“Negative thirty-one.”

Cassiel looks just as surprised as Thelmes is.

“I guess basically blowing up an entire village does that,” Fenrir says.

“Please don’t tell me anything else regarding her score.”

Serra looks worried. However, when she sees Fenrir looking at her with a proud smile, her worried frown turns into a satisfied smile.

“Good job,” Fenrir says with a thumbs-up.