Kaldalis caught up to Haldir right as he was meeting up with Balrim and Myrin in town. The trio were exchanging the construction materials they’d gathered, and a little pile had been politely prepared for Kaldalis before he had arrived.

“Thanks, you guys,” Kaldalis said, gathering up his share of the goods. “This was probably a lot faster than us all having to gather our own stuff.”

“Haldir’s the one to thank for suggesting this course of action,” Myrin said, “and it’s definitely something worth thanking him for. As we were coming in, everyone we saw was heading straight across to the beach for the stuff you two already had.”

“All we need now,” Haldir said, “is the fish you have for all of us.”

Kaldalis divvied out the stack of oilfish in his inventory, filling out the needs of everyone’s quests.

“How did the hunt go, by the way?” Haldir asked as he tucked his handful of fish into his inventory. “I didn’t expect to see you back here for another hour.”

Kaldalis held up his little disc-shaped charm.

Haldir’s eyes almost bugged out of his skull.

Balrim and Myrin stared at him like he’d done a magic trick.

“Is that a gear upgrade?” Myrin asked, pointing angrily at the charm.

“Where did you get that?” Balrim asked.

“There’s a creature called an enhydra,” Kaldalis explained. He gestured at Haldir. “We saw one, and Haldir explained that it’s kind of like a… Um…” Kaldalis spun a hand in the air, searching his memory for the point of reference he wanted. “Like a fuzzy treasure goblin. If you catch it it drops stuff.”

“How did you get it?” Haldir asked. “Nobody ever catches the first one they see.”

“I just waited for it,” Kaldalis said, “I hid and eventually it poked its nose out, thinking the coast was clear. I pounced and grabbed it.”

“How good is the charm?” Myrin asked, peering curiously at the little metal disc.

Kaldalis had examined it earlier, but he checked it again, just to be sure he had the numbers right.

Vital Charm

Item Level: 7

Acumen: 11

Clout: 11

Vigor: 12

HP: 13

“It’s an HP charm,” Kaldalis explained, “and I don’t know how to judge how good it is. The stats are double the level one stuff I have on, but I don’t know if that’s good or not.” He laughed. “One of the big pitfalls of going without an upgrade for so long. I have no frame of reference. Every charm is good when you have no charms.”

“With hit points, you’re the one who gains the most from it,” Haldir pointed out. “In case anyone was thinking of trying to barter for it.”

Kaldalis held the charm a little closer to himself, realizing that Myrin was almost salivating over the shiny little item.

“Don’t worry too much,” Haldir said, clapping Kaldalis on the shoulder. “We’ll have plenty of opportunities for more upgrades.” He pointed towards the center of town, where Kaldalis could see some smoke rising. “Unless I miss my guess, the forges are running now. We might be able to get things crafted.”

“Finally!” Myrin said, turning and heading that way immediately. “Something to do with all this vendor trash I’ve been hoarding this whole trip.” She stopped and turned around to beckon the rest of them on. “Are you guys coming or what?”

All of their quest turn-ins were at the center of town, gratefully accepted by the Adventurers League architects and rushed away to various places in the camp. They were rewarded with a handful of crescents and informed that the crafters were at their service. As Haldir had said, the workstations were set up and ready to take orders. With the quartet having worked together to gather their materials, they were first in line to get gear made.

Weapons were first and foremost. Apparently the Adventurers League was holding out on them, having brought materials with them on the ship, and work had begun as soon as the forges were lit. As a result, weapons were already made and just had to be picked out as a reward for completing their quest. They each got weapons with an item level of 5, which wasn’t as impressive as the charm Kaldalis got off of the enhydra, but was still a significant upgrade from starter gear.

Apparently when items were crafted by an NPC, their stats were randomized, but that didn’t matter much to Kaldalis. Anything was an upgrade.

His new spear wasn’t wind-based as his starter weapon had been, but instead applied some debuff called “Gust” which he didn’t know a damned thing about. He’d ask Haldir later.

They were also able to trade in the materials they’d gathered from their kills and other sources for charms, but the work on charms was going to take time. They handed over what materials they could spare, along with however many crescents the crafters asked for, and were told to return in a couple of hours when the work was complete.

“Sticking with the bow, then?” Myrin asked Balrim as they all hefted their new toys.

“For now,” the ruddy-scaled talsar said, “I’ve gotten my ability unlocked for bow, so it seems the most prudent choice, if we’re going into a dungeon. I don’t want to start over at zero if I don’t have to.”

“How about you, then?” Kaldalis asked. “Sticking with your giant beatstick?”

Myrin scowled at him and hugged her new giant sword like a stuffed toy.

Their weapons had a rough look to them - probably owed to the improvised nature of some amount of the workshops that forged them - but looked much finer than their starter gear. Despite being, by all descriptions, a spear, Kaldalis’s new weapon’s design matched a glaive again. The head was much the same chef’s knife shape, but with pointed serrations on the back side, making it look more fearsome. Because of its freshly forged state, the blade itself also had a pleasant polish to it, and as he gave it a test twirl, it sparkled in the sunlight. The haft itself was nicer as well, with obvious handhold spots carefully wrapped with black cord. He could see that the wood was a light-colored maple wood, and as Kaldalis gripped it, he could feel ridges carved down the haft. The ridges helped his grip, giving him more control over the facing of the blade, and he suspected that it was a mark of the higher quality of the weapon when compared to the starter gear.

Their other weapons looked to have a similar increase in quality. There was nothing ornate about the new weapons, and they didn’t seem that different in style or design, but the biggest change was noticing things that were wrong or sloppy on the others. From the way Myrin handled her sword, Kaldalis could tell that it was better balanced, and she was moving noticeably faster and smoother with it. Balrim’s bow also had a proper grip, giving it a more recurve shape, rather than a simple wooden arc with a string on it.

Only Haldir’s weapon wasn’t an enormous change, but that was likely because he wasn’t using starter gear when they’d met him. Just the same, his new blade had a nicer hilt, with a slight curve that would better catch anything sliding down the blade, showing that some improvements had still been made.

Kaldalis took the opportunity to step away to find Sivima. She was working in her tented workshop behind the person who had been handing out the weapons.

“Do you have a moment?” he asked between the pummeling of her hammer on steel. When she didn’t respond immediately, he held up the objective of his quest, hoping his interruption wasn’t going to cause her to fling the hammer at him.

She looked up, annoyed, but her face lit up as soon as she saw the wooden palette in his hands. She plunged the blade she was forging into the oil bath she had near at hand, quenching it and leaving it there before almost dancing across the workshop to him.

“I thought I was never going to see it again,” she said as she accepted it from him. He felt a warm fuzzy feeling as he gained more experience from completing the quest. It wasn’t enough to get him to level 6, but he was glad for that, because he suspected that his gear would have been item level 6 if he had picked it up after leveling.

“An enhydra got a hold of it,” Kaldalis said. “There’s a cave north of the shipwreck with some other personal items in it, in case anyone else is looking for missing mementos.”

She nodded, acknowledging him and his words, though her attention was on the wooden palette. Sivima took it to her workbench and took a moment to find a place to arrange it, standing it up against the canvas wall so that she could see it from where she had been working at her anvil. “I can’t thank you enough,” she said. “I mean that literally, though. With the forge running again, I can’t take the time to reward you properly. But I won’t forget this favor.”

“I know,” he said, giving her his best smile as he held up his new spear. “And as far as I’m concerned, you’ve thanked me already.”

She laughed at that, getting back to working on the blade she had been forging. “Don’t worry, when I have time, I’ll do something nice for you. Just you wait, hero.”

Kaldalis laughed. Mostly at how weird it felt to be called ‘hero’. But also because it seemed to be the thing to do in response. Sivima didn’t look up, and instead fetched the sword she’d been working on and fetched a file, as if to test the hardness of the blade.

Without much else to gain by staying, Kaldalis left the forge and returned back to his friends. As he went, he tried to think of what their next move should be.

He was sure that Haldir had an opinion or two.