Without so much as a smile, Kaldalis sat down next to the Finnian fisherman. “Aurigeant,” he said in greeting.

“Kaldalis,” Aurigeant said in response, but with a nod of his head.

“Seen any good fish lately?”

The Finnian seemed to chew on that for a moment. “A few,” he finally said, with another nod.

Kaldalis waited for a moment, but the Finnian declined to elaborate. Kaldalis just ended up nodding in response. He forgot how terse the man was.

Perhaps he’d have to try less casual questions.

“Have you met with Foturns yet?”

“Nope,” Aurigeant said. No nod this time. “Who’s that?”

“Fishing quest guy,” Kaldalis said, finding himself matching Aurigeant’s laconic energy. “Besides the cooks, I mean.”

“I didn’t know there was another,” Aurigeant said. “More dailies?”

“Nah,” Kaldalis said, “just one-offs. But good ones.” He gestured to the right side of his vision, where the quests live. “I’ve got one for ten thousand pale perch, which is a bit excessive. But there was another recently that got me a rod upgrade.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Had to mix up my bait. Follow simple directions. But I got the upgrade, and now the quartermaster sells me lures and stuff.”

“Hm.” Aurigeant grunted and scratched at his angular chin. “I’ll have to look for him, then.”

Kaldalis grinned. “I’ll point him out if I can.” He paused, trying to read the Finnian’s face. There was so much he couldn’t tell, so he just blundered forward. “So, I slept through the announcement. How much did they say about what was going on?”

“Onirioago is out,” Aurigeant said. “But she can’t leave an empty seat. Someone is going to need to be voted in.”

“But did they say why she was removed?” Kaldalis asked.

“Contraband,” Aurigeant said with a shrug.

“Nothing specific?”

“Nope.”

“Then I feel like I should probably tell you,” Kaldalis said, before pausing dramatically. “It was a fish.”

“Oh,” Aurigeant said. Kaldalis expected a question, but the man didn’t ask for elaboration.

“The council is trying to keep it under wraps for now, but if you’re doing any freshwater fishing in the jungle, be careful.”

“Thanks,” Aurigeant said with a small incline of his head. “Anything in particular?”

“I don’t know how much I should say,” Kaldalis said. “If word gets out about what’s out there, it could cause problems. Apocalyptic problems. Just make sure if you catch anything you don’t recognize that you go to Bangen to have it identified, because if it’s the same fish and you’re caught with it, you’ll find yourself in the cell next to Onirioago.”

“Or the same cell,” Aurigeant said with a visible shudder. “Thanks.”

Kaldalis grimaced so suddenly that Aurigeant let out a brief bark of laughter.

“Sorry,” the Finnian said. “Didn’t mean to put that image in your head.”

“Ugh.” Kaldalis shook his head. “Yeah, thanks for that. You’ve turned me into a model citizen for life now.”

Aurigeant grunted, but added nothing else. Kaldalis let a moment of silence pass between them.

“So an election for replacement leader, huh?” Kaldalis said, once the moment was passed. “Seems kind of wild.”

“Sure does,” Aurigeant agreed. “The League always seemed very order-driven. Never thought I’d see them do something this chaotic.”

“Yeah, a vote with open nominations for leadership?” Kaldalis said. “When I first heard about it, I thought they were going to do the usual thing and put forward two or three basically interchangeable candidates, attach a pro-con list, and then nothing really changes.”

“An appreciated discrepancy, though,” Aurigeant observed. “Kind of nice to imagine that our input could actually matter.”

“Certainly a nice departure,” Kaldalis said with a laugh. “Have you given thought to your pick?”

“Not sure how nominees work, but yeah.”

Kaldalis started. He hadn’t expected that. “Really?”

“Yeah. Seems an easy pick to me,” Aurigeant said. He paused, and so Kaldalis motioned for him to continue and the Finnian rolled his eyes. “Garyung is the only smart choice.”

“Oh.” Kaldalis felt his stomach drop.

“He’s been putting others first since the beginning. Even in alpha. He let me have drops he should have taken. Ran people in dungeons too low for him in order to help them level. He sat by quest spawns and helped with kills before turning the quest in himself. Never asked for a tip. Just said to pay it forward.”

“I didn’t know he did all that.”

“He’s done the same since we landed,” Aurigeant said, pointing back towards the beach. “Everyone else was fetching cargo from the boat, but he took an hour swimming back and forth, rescuing people from the wreckage before even accepting a quest.”

“I remember seeing him-” Kaldalis began.

“Even after that,” Aurigeant continued, “he was back to his old tricks. Helping with quests. Or with mats when the crafting stations went online. And he ran as many people through the dungeon as you did, even though he started later.”

“Yeah,” Kaldalis said, starting to feel redness rise in his cheeks. “He has been doing a lot.”

“He’s what the camp needs. Selfless, trustworthy, and completely guileless.”

“Guileless?” Kaldalis asked.

“Ever heard him try to lie?” Aurigeant asked with a short laugh. “He can’t. What’s more, he knows it. He doesn’t try. After the old Expedition Leader, it’s what we need most. No more deception.” He shook his head. “Well-intentioned or not, I couldn’t imagine voting for another liar.”

“Of course,” Kaldalis said, trying not to think about the deception necessitated in his final encounter with Onirioago. “That makes sense. Otherwise we’d have another vote in a week when they stepped out of line, too.”

Aurigeant grunted in agreement, but said nothing else.

Kaldalis tried not to think about what Aurigeant had said. He thought he’d had an advantage by being at the center of everything at every turn. But even if everyone knew all of his accomplishments, would they see them as a good motivation to vote for him? Sure, he had quite a resume under his belt of big heroic deeds that had helped everyone. But Garyung had been out there this whole time helping people one at a time.

He hadn’t considered that someone else might have been developing a reputation as a hero in parallel to him. Kaldalis had done a lot of stuff that had earned him glory, but Garyung had apparently been down on the ground helping people person-to-person.

“Sorry,” Aurigeant said at last. “Didn’t mean to give a campaign speech.”

“No, it’s fine,” Kaldalis said, “I asked, after all.” He also realized he’d been too passive. He’d asked Aurigeant’s opinion before even putting himself on the table as an option. “I appreciate the insight.”

“No problem,” Aurigeant said, moving to stand. “Do you know where I can find your fishing quest guy?”

“Oh, Foturns?” Kaldalis said, shaking his head, trying to clear the thoughts of his mistakes. “I usually see him down at that floating dock - he’s the one who built it - but if he’s not there, I don’t know.”

“Mm.” Aurigeant shrugged. “I’ll find him. Thanks.”

The Finnian started towards the beach, and, after a moment more, Kaldalis made his way back to Balrim and Myrin.

“So, that looked like it went well,” Myrin said.

“Yeah,” Kaldalis said, dropping dejectedly back into his seat. “Fantastic.”

“What happened?” Balrim asked.

“I didn’t even mention I was interested in the job,” Kaldalis said, slumping down lower in his seat. “I mentioned the vote and he started going off on how great Garyung is.”

“Ah,” Balrim said, nodding. “That makes sense.”

“I shoulda known,” Myrin grumbled. “Alpha players think that the only real people in the game are other alpha players. Like a few weeks’ head start makes them so much better than the rest of us.”

“You could have said something,” Kaldalis said with a frown. “The whole point of the first person was to build momentum. Now I kinda want to just crawl back into bed and wait to find out who won after.”

Balrim shook his head, putting a hand to Kaldalis’ shoulder. “But hitting one bump shouldn’t stop you altogether. You just picked the wrong hill to start on.”

“Yeah!” Myrin chimed in. “If you let yourself get stopped by every tiny little crushing defeat, you’d never make a good expedition leader, anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah. I get your point.”

“So what are you going to do?” Myrin asked.

Kaldalis rubbed at his face with a sigh. “I’m going to go out there and find someone who likes me already and ask them if they’d vote for me.”

Balrim patted his shoulder twice before removing his giant hand. “Alright. And how are you going to do that?”

“Well, I’m going to find Heluna,” Kaldalis said. “She’ll side with me.”

“Are you positive about that?” Myrin asked.

“Well, not 100%, but-”

“Then don’t!” Myrin interrupted. “If she shoots you down, you will absolutely crawl back into bed and wait for it to all be over.”

“Think about the other NPCs you’ve helped,” Balrim suggested. “Real people are likely to have first choices among their individual little cliques, but if you can find an NPC you’ve done something uniquely nice for, they might not be predisposed towards someone else yet.”

“I mean, Heluna is on that list.”

“Yeah, but you’re too close to her,” Myrin said in a small voice. “Her rejection will hurt too much.”

Kaldalis stiffened and glared at the Suyon. “Why do you think that?” he asked defensively.

“Because she’s the first person you mentioned,” Myrin said. “After us and Haldir.”

“Before Haldir,” Balrim pointed out.

“Alright, so then who do I talk to first, if not her?” Kaldalis asked with an aggravated sigh.

“Why are you asking us?” Balrim laughed. “We haven’t been with you every second of every day. Who have you helped in a meaningful way?”

“Uh,” Kaldalis thought. “That crafter lady.” He furrowed his brow. “Sivima? I fetched her paint palette from the shipwreck.”

“There you go,” Balrim said. “Good connection. Now go get her!”

Kaldalis paused and looked at the two of them. “Wait, you’re not coming with?”

“We’re not the ones running for office,” Myrin said with a smirk. “And we have gathering and crafting dailies to get done.” She shooed him away with a gesture. “Best of luck, though!”