For the first week, the only exciting thing were the stories told by firelight. We each decided to tell a story each night, the only rule was that it had to be personal.

Missy and Sissy begged to go first.

— Missy and Sissy’s fireside tale—

Our parents are pretty rare in gorgon society. As you know there are only female gorgons with us having to make with other species to procreate. As such we don't really do long-term relationships. Don't worry Grim knows this and we just wanted some fun before meeting up with all the aunts and uncles in our parents' party watching over us.

Getting back on point, our dad is a dwarven stone-shaper and he met my mom a few years before the war ended and joined the adventuring company. She is a gazer, her abilities are turning people or parts of people into stone. As you might expect they did great work together, saved each other lives a few times, and fell in love. We were born not too long after.

My dad soon became well known as an architect using his stone shaping skills to rebuild, but the adventuring party soon got restless so we got on one of the first convoys to this continent. He helped build a lot of what now is Storm Cove, designing and shaping the lighthouse and the gatehouse from the cove up to the city. He also helped start the walls of the city as well. The rest of the party helping to keep the new city safe and scouting out the surrounding areas.

When word came a few years ago that a new city was being built up the coast called Maiden’s rest, he was asked to help design it. As it wasn't that safe at the time our parents decided to leave as at the boarding house. They sent us a message asking if we wanted to join them up in Maiden’s Rest. And so we made a deal with Grim for an escort to the city.

The second night I decided to go next.

—Drakon’s fireside tale—

As everyone here now knows I never knew my birth parents. I was adopted by Marion and Herbert Mercet. My parents were a strange pair. My mom was a devout follower of Odin, she was a battle-cleric, she was human but was close to seven feet tall and she thought she might have had an ogre or giant ancestor in the past. Flinging lightning bolts and healing her allies by hitting stuff with her huge war hammer. My dad couldn't be more different, like me he didn't really follow any of the gods apart from the normal things like an offering to Poseidon when going on a sea voyage or praying to Odin for safe passage through a storm. He was a tale-smith, a form of bard that casts illusions by telling stories. He also was pretty well trained in using an axe. He had a custom-made one that when not used to kill monsters could be used as a guitar. He was madly in love with my mom and followed her and the adventuring party around gathering stories. Not long after they got married my mom found me tucked behind the altar of a shrine to Odin and took it as a sign and they adopted me.

They were both killed defending the ship that brought us here, defending it from an attack of sea monsters in the middle of the night. My dad and a few others were snatched from the deck by some tentacled monster, and the last thing I saw of my mom was here leaping over the side war-hammer in two hands with a lighting strike coming down from the heavens. Whatever she did must have either killed the monster or scared it off as that ended the attack. In the blackness of the night, no bodies were able to be recover of the ones taken or thrown overboard, and that included mine and Grim’s parents.

Aura went next and gave us mostly the same tale she told when we first met as Missy and Sissy hadn’t heard it yet. They explained to her that it wasn't that uncommon in smaller communities that only had a single species living there to be more bigoted than places like Storm’s Cove where there were so many different races intermingling. It's hard to be a racist when the guy your talking shit about can chop your face off.

After the last couple of nights being filled with more depressing stories, Grim decided to tell the story of how we became friends.

—Grim’s tale—

We met each other a few months before the voyage where our parents died. Getting all the supplies together to found a new city on an unexplored continent taking a while. Us and the other kids hung out together getting into mischief like only a couple of four and five-year-olds could. A few days before the voyage I slipped away from my parents and decided to explore the small port town we were in at the time which was a mostly human town. I ran into a bunch of older kids probably about 6 or 7 years of age, who started to tease me for my green skin. Even at the time, I was a big kid so they probably thought I was their age. I got angry and started to punch at them but it was 3 or 4 of them, I can't remember exactly, so I was taking more hits than I gave out. When suddenly this at the time white-skinned black-haired small thing came flying out of nowhere, screaming at the head of his lungs, get away from my friend. And then he punched what seemed to be the ringleader right in the nuts. After that, he himself got punched a few times before some other folks showed up and got everyone apart.

We both got escorted back to the ship and were grounded until we left port. Bonding below decks and having spilled blood together, we declared ourselves blood brothers for life, having heard tales of that sort of thing in the stories that our parents told us. Which became more important than ever a few months later.

When we made it here to Storm Cove, Drakon’s parents' adventuring party had taken us both under their wing as it was now impossible to separate us. But to be fair to them and an adventuring party is no place for a bunch of 5-year-olds that aren’t your own kids so as soon as the guildhall and boarding school were built we got enrolled there.

The next few nights I kind of bowed out from the fireside chats spending my time looking up at the rings and the moons surrounding the planet. When Earth was merged all of the other planets' moons came with it. Thankfully only earths moon was pulled in by the higher gravity the rest either smashing into each other creating a beautiful set of rings around the planet or settling in regular orbits further out. Us being near the equator the rings looked to be very small. But I had heard stories that the further north o south one went the rings became more and more pronounced.

Alpha seeing me sitting by myself moved up next to me. “You know that you don’t need to keep watch right. Between us” Looking at the other skeletons “Freki and Tobias not needing any sleep you can get some rest as well”

“Oh I know, and I think probably the rest of the group suspects but hasn't said anything. But I feel more at home at night. It feels much better to me to sleep in the middle of the day on the cart.” I replied with a chuckle. “I can already feel the hair growing back on my scalp, so maybe the daytime lethargy will end soon as well. Maybe we can spend this time doing some training.”

Alpha called over Moira who also didn’t really need any sleep and walking down the road a bit to not disturb the people asleep we did some weapons training with the sword and borrowing one of the spears and a shield. After a couple of nights of this, I had a look at the new notifications, seeing that I missed a few over the last couple of days.

Nice, so it seems that if I level up certain skills I can gain abilities and my summoned units will get better as well. That's good to know. It also seemed that I don't actually get the skill-ups or the abilities unless I actually have read the notification. So I really needed to pay attention. As soon as I thought that a few new ones popped up.

New paths unlocked

I had a bit of a talk with Moira about what paths I should take at the next level. Moira replied “It’s all up to you. Looking at those three new ones tho it looks like picking one might lock out the other two so think long and hard about your fighting style before deciding. Also, different ones might pop up if you decide not to choose yet if you don't lean towards any of them.”

I then asked her how many path points I would get seeing as I had 3 at the first level but level 2 only gave me 2 new ones.

“It really is class-dependent. And it has a weird curve to it. The commoners like merchants, farmers, and basic craftsmen get very few path points and also level pretty slowly. Then you get the basic adventurer classes who get 4 or 5 path points each level but get weaker paths to choose from. The more powerful a class is the fewer path points they get. But they often get access to more specialized and powerful paths to take.”

She continued “Take your weapon master path for instance. A basic warrior might get things like bow-master, spear-master, sword-master all dealing with different weapons and only helping with the skill gain. Weapon-master gives unskilled access to all weapons and lets you level up with all weapons faster, and can probably get upgraded later on. If we take mage as another example. A basic mage might need to take paths in each spell separately to learn it. While an elementalist will learn a whole bunch of spells in a single path or get huge bonuses casting specific spells. And so on. Lords being on the top end of the scale you will probably get the 2 or 3 per level that you have been getting now.”

“So any ways to get more path-points other than leveling up?” I asked seeing as I was getting more and more options and paths before me, it was getting hard to choose.

“Well, there are a couple. One of which is closed off to you. But you get a unique one for the lord class in return.”

“Don't keep me in suspense what are they,” I replied.

“Well, the first one is the most common one, which is running dungeons. Sometimes one of the rewards for finishing a dungeon is an extra path point. It's also the one that's closed off to lords.”

“Closed off why?”

“There have been Lords in the past that have tried to take a dungeon core to try and get them to become a City or Fortress core by force. It doesn't work that way and usually resorts to a core’s destruction but it didn’t stop ambitious ones from trying. So the guild enforced some rules. The only way a Lord can gain access to a dungeon now is if the core itself will make an exception or the guild council decides that a dungeon is too dangerous and needs to be destroyed. It's the second reason most core’s don't allow lords in unless invited is they are seen by them as the guilds executioners.”

“Well, that makes sense.” I nodded “What are the other ways?”

“The other way for most to gain an extra path point is a quest, usually given by one of the gods, although the guild itself is known to have given out some in the past. But this way is very rare.” She said “The last way is unique to Lords. As soon as you get your own domain, you get a separate domain level which you level up by doing all kinds of stuff like building new structures or towns. Building fortifications. Defending your lands from invaders, and so on.”

Having heard enough and starting to get hungry. “Well enough questions for tonight I think. It's almost daybreak lets wake up Grim so he can start breakfast.”