Chapter 3: A Fresh Start

After that morning, I needed to get out of my own head. Let my heart chew on things without my brain being involved. God, this stopped feeling like a game again. When it was still sort of a game, it was fun.

With both settlements under management. I was going to head out north. First, I found Yamina. I tried to be light. But I could tell she’s overheard my conversation with her mother.

“I’m heading out to take that temple at the headwaters. You in?”

“Of course, Bill, If you want me I’m in.’

“Look my argument with your mother has nothing to do you with you. I’m upset. But not at you. Okay?”

“Bill, if you choose to go on to “what’s next” it has everything to do with me. You’d be -abandoning- me. Leaving me alone here with nothing and no one.’

“50 people who love you and 2 settlements isn’t nothing Yamina,”

“You know exactly what I mean Bill.”

“Yeah, I do, If it makes you feel better. Right now, you are one of the best reasons to stay. OK? Lets just go kill stuff and have fun.” I dumped all the stuff in my inventory I had piled up into the store inventory without looking. I kept the things I’d made and gathered and that was about it. I let the shop auth value them.

“Okay Bill. What about the rest of our party”.

Honestly, if it’s okay with you , I’d like It to be just the two of us.

Her eyes brightened a little at that. “Do you want me to tell everyone?”

“Sure if you don’t mind, that would be nice. I don’t have a lot of complication left in me.”

[Hey all, Yamina, Here, Bill and I are going to go work on some of our hunting skills Duo, so we’re going to break the party up for now. Feel free to group up and hunt If you want. We’re going to go take a look at the headwaters of the Danube. Maybe check out the building up there. We’ll group up again I’m sure. Have fun all]

Yamina spoke up:

I made sure Iron Skin was active, and cast Dermal shield and Bubble shield.

By the way, the skill I bought as a backup incase the napalm shield failed was Fireball, but fireball 1 is kind of embarrassing. It does 1 point of damage and looks like a fire sperm. It’s the biggest spell letdown ever. I’m going to be casting it at the river the whole way up. If your mom asks it’s because I want to train it till it’s not shameful, nothing personal.

Yamina Laughed, “So you want me to tell her you have fire sperm performance anxiety? Maybe you should share that one yourself?”

I laughed at that too, it felt good. We started moving north going slowly to enjoy it, me blasting fireball, and having Yamina drop small rocks on me to train my shield skills and iron skin. Then she took turns and I threw rocks at her. I turns out Shields and Iron skin only train when you get hit. So we were both at level 1 still we needed to fix that asap.

Yamina had picked up both shields as well Before long we were wandering north, having a game of rock tag. It was kind of awesome. Interspersed with me fire sperming the river. God that really sounds awful, maybe I should buy levels in fireball till it doesn’t suck? Ah screw it. Lets have fun and train.

Yamina, in no surprise to anyone had taken a rouge as a second profession and bought stealth. She started using stealth to hide and if I’d spot her, we’d rock chuck again till we were out of mana. Then back to stealth tag. Doing that I picked up the Perception skill. Every little bit helps. I worked on move silently, and stealth, and somehow never picked up either. Which Is extra weird because I used to move too silently in the old world. And the boots were way quieter than sneakers.

I was level 5, Yamina only needed 200 cp to hit level 5, finishing my William in Charge quest, step 1; As long as it has taken I hope it’s something good. We never encountered anything on the trip north along the river, probably because we were so noisy. When we reached the Cliifs and the waterfall, there was no trial, but a clear path to climb up. Yamina Flew, and I picked up Climbing;1.

At the top of the cliff everything was very different. It was like a zone boundary in old RPGs, Everyting was dark and over gown, gloomy like a bad horror flick. I was expecting pipe organ music any second, and Boric Karloff laughing.

Getting our game faces on, I sent Yamina straight up for a recon. The layout was simple, Dark omenous forest on both sides of the river. The river goes up to a lake fed by 2 streams, overgrown and buried foliage is the hidden temple. There were more buildings around it, but they were to buried by the brush to see anything, being only 1 story. Yamina said she could see something moving in the brush, but couldn’t get ID to stick on it because of the brush..

I went as stealthy as I could, and Yamina was in low overwatch, just above and behind me. When we saw the first creature, maybe monster was the right name. It was an honest to god skeleton rushing at us, but at speed, like a fast zombie from the more modern movies. No staggering slow skeletons here. Its mouth was open like it was screaming, but no sound came out. I Stuck an ID on it and got.

Yeah no kidding, aggressive. I swapped to my mace with its bonus against undead. I cast stun on it just before it hit me, and since it was running full tilt, it collapsed to the ground. I hit it with a max power blow to the joint where the skeletons skull met the neck.

Looked like I took off about 20%, Yamina cast Wound, and it’s bar got bigger instead of lower.

“Try Healing it, sometimes undead are reverse on heal/wound magic”.

I swapped to my LangSaex, and swung a powerblow at it again. I did about the same damage, So I stuck with the Langsaex. I started shifting the weight forward till I looked more like a Bolo than a saex, and the damage went up 2 points.

The Skeleton was getting back to its feet after my 1 second of stun wore off, I shield bashed it center of mass, and it flew backwards. Turns out Skeletons are kind of light. I stowed my Saex, and pinched off a Dart of Blessed Oak, and fired it at the Skeleton, Aiming for the neck. The skeleton was decapitated, but didn’t stop, if just reached down, picked up its head and came back on the attack. Yamina Got a good channeled Heal in on it and burned it down.

I pulled out one of the bowls of holy water and poured it all over my Bolo-Saex and the front of my shield. It seemed worth a test. The brush was thick and dark, and we couldn’t see very far. I realized most of our tactics were based on long line of sight.

“Yamina can you popup stealthily and look to see if you see any flying creatures?”

“Sure, I looked last time, but I’ll check again”

“I don’t see any Bill, I don’t’ want to go buzz the forest, and things seem to be Lvl 5”

Excellent. We’re going to build a strategy based on Melee only, specific to this terrain and mobs. You are going to pop up, scout ahead, find a single skeleton, Heal it till it aggros and pull it back here. I want you in stealth till you pull it and under the canopy when you bring it back here. I’ll set up here. If you get more than say 5 seconds flights way, we’ll move up together bounding. Just like we planned it before, but using the trees to our Advantage. Only difference is you pull instead of me.”

“Got it. Bill.”

“If we get more than 2, I’ll put my back to a tree and we’ll try to stun lock 1 of them. Otherwise, we only have 1 of us on stun cool down at a time.”

I backed up a step, so the Skeleton would have to stand in the blessed water mud to get at me and stashed my Meteoric Lang-Bolo and pulled 2 steel darts.

While I was waiting, I used the smallest thinnest shape fields I could and started dropping branches to open lanes of fire for dart.

Yamina came zipping back “2 Incoming” and went above me.

2 shapes came bursting out of the brush, hauling ass towards us. 2 skeletons, their bones old and yellow, like Ivory, dappled here and there with Lichen and bits of Spanish moss. and wearing the shreds of their former clothes. One carrying a club the other bare handed. The barehanded one opened its jaw in a silent scream like the previous skeletons. the one with the club was scanning it’s eyesleft and right clearly having more awareness.

On a hunch I stunned the club wielder and shot two hardened steel darts at the neck of the silently screaming skellie. One dart clipped the neck, getting a crit and doing 12 damaged, the other went high and to the right, clipping its skull and blowing out the right eye and the top of the skull on that side. the force of the hit blasted its head to the side making it stumble and slow.

I took that fraction of a second to send a party message for Yamina

[Try keep the club wielder stunned]

Yamina landed a wound on the neck of the screamer, taking another chunk out of the neck but not knocking the head loose as I’d hoped. The screamer was about 7 feet out when I called my Langsaex in its heavy bladed configuration into my hand I stepped forward and swung a chop at its neck, connecting on the right side knocking the head off and to my left. The rest of screaming was up against my shield blindly trying to reach around me and get me with its clawed fingers.

I braced my shield at the top right corner with my fist, and shoved the screamer back with all my bodies force, thrusting forward with my legs, and checking with my shoulder at the same time.

About then the smart skeleton began running again, only getting a couple steps in before Yamina landed her stun on it, freezing it in place again.

Taking the second, of undivided time I had , I leapt forward again and chopped a double shot, using the bounce of the shot to recoil my arm, and bringing the second chop in by sheer brute torsional force. This combo of two fast chopping blows without a pause to reset in between was a favorite of one of my buddies back in my sca days when belly to belly with an opponent. It worked just as well here.

I spun in place to see Yamina had hit the smart skeleton with several “heals’ causing wounds on it’ sleft leg. ‘

[Good thinking, trying to snare it, let’s keep it up]

Storing my meteoric weapon into my inventory again, i started shooting pair of hard steel darts at the left leg of the skeleton as fast as I could, after the 4th one hit, the leg broke both bones of hte lower leg and the skeleton was only able to move by hopping ot crawling towards us. I kept pounding darting in taking chunks off its skull with each hit. after 4 mo4 darts and a few wounds from Yamina the skeleton dropped

I quickly looted the 3 skeletons and put the rest of the bones into my inventory. Undead parts were often useful in crafting and spells. I realized that I’d never pulled any of the skellies into my blessed mud puddle to see if that worked on them.

I hopped on the officer's chat and asked Granny to keep putting blessed water into the shop and transferred the skeleton bones there as well. This was going to be super handy for inventory management…

Granny came back [I’m a tad busy, if you add my grandson Bart to your store list, I can not only have him do all that, but keep the store running and open while you are away. Please do be aware that we need foodstuffs, not just bones though.]

I added Bart to the store, replied to granny [Bart is added, we’re fighting undead here, nothing worth eating, but we’ll keep our eyes out. Has the cooper Olaf made any larger containers yet? and can you have Bart check to see if he’s able to use that 3rd mastery quest gem from Danu?]

[Olaf is already a master. He's out here because of a poor choice of a wife and an over-fondness for drink. If I can get to Journey-woman Priestess in time I`ll take that gem, but don’t hold it for me if you get a better use.]

I concentrated for a moment and set up a store channel with Yamina, Thorbjorn and Bart, Granny and myself in it.

Meanwhile JImni came on officer chat and asked [Ye mind if we heads to the plateau area too, we’re not getting as many lizards anymore, so we needs us a good hunting ground Thor and I. We'll leaves you alone, unless ye needs us, but dat xp would be good for us too]

I gave my assent, telling them we’d be on the east side of the river and to take the west side of the river, or the bottom of the cliff area to themselves.

I decided to stop screwing around and used shape to drop all the trees around us and put them into the shop as raw materials. I dropped about a dozen trees and cleared a 30ft area around us before I ran out of mana. All this shaping was getting my skill efficiency way up.

I checked my shaping skill levels

I was getting close to 25 in shaping which is the next breakpoint and I saw that my Mana Manipulation was finally moving a little but I wasn’t sure what I was doing to train it.

Hoping for a synergy when I got both to 25, I tried to think of something to do train that skill up and help our hunting at the same time. I concentrated a couple dozen stones into blocks and shaped it all together into a large ground level bird bath about 3 feet in diameter and a foot deep. Next I filled it about halfway with the Blessed water we had on hand, thinking it’d make a nice trap for skeletons damaged by holy magic..

To my surprise, I got a notification

I selected yes, and got another popup.

This was a harder question, I knew it was a good idea, but I was still too frustrated to want to deal with it, so I asked Yamina to do it, and cast Id on the pool.

I noticed that the scrub a few inches around the fountain was starting to look greener and healthier already.

I called Yamina’s attention to it.

“Yeah”, she said, “it’s a lot like a baby grove for us, if we can feed it it’ll grow more powerful and become equivalent. I've never made one myself but now that you figured out how, I think we can make more as needed. It will slowly improve the area till its ush and beautiful because that’s how mom power works.”

“Feed it how?” I asked interested.

“The basic way is to directly feed it CP, that’s how mom would do it. For us, we can keep adding blessed water or other blessed items to the fountain. Considering where we are, we could feed it monsters. The CP would go to the fountain instead of us. Oh and we can build on it like a building as well, adding BP and LP to improve it Like how you created it in the first place, cleared an area. Then you build a fountain, yadda yada yadda, boom.”

Pondering the idea, I used concentrate and shape.to make a bunch of blocks of stone and shaped them into a waist high wall in a v shape facing the forest and funneling anything coming at us from that side into the fountain. Deciding to indulge a little constructive paranoia, I added another set of walls making the fountain the center of a giant X with the back legs going all the way to the cliff, which I noticed I’d eroded back towards us when creating the stones.

Out from that I made a circle of stones that would work as a trip hazard, far enough out to knock 2 legged monsters like the skeletons into the fountain face first.

ON a hunch I sat and concentrated on Mana Manipulation looking to see if it let me see mana as well as manipulate it. With my eyes closed I could see the waves of blue mana lapping out of the fountain and washing over the whole area. I tried to smooth the waves into a flat pool of mana but it kept slipping through my mental fingers as I tried. I was pretty sure I was onto something there. If mana manipultion was -THE- fundamental spell of the Mage, it had to have some important function and I’d been ignoring it all this time.

I asked Yamina to go pull us a couple more skeletons and put myself at the center of the x, with the fountain before me and the trip hazard behind.

2 more silent screamers came running towards me, but as they entered the clearing, they began to smoke. I stunned the first one, and then quickly darted the left leg of the other. After 6 darts, the leg broke and the Skellie fell flat on its face, its crusty and lichen splotched arms dragging it towards us.

Yamina stunned the first skellie as soon as my stun ran out and by the time the 2 seconds was up, the skeleton was at half health. Yamina had been nibbling at the right thigh bone. I put 2 more shots there and dropped it as well.

“Yamina hold, let’s see what happens if we let the clearing do the rest of the killing.

A few seconds later we got our answer.

I turned to Yamina, ”How does this CP get spent? It’s our clearing.”

She replied “If we leave it alone, it’ll just keep getting stronger versions of what it does now. It seems logical we could insert some control, why don’t you see if it shows up on your local political interface.

I pulled it up on the interface and had just a few options at 200cp. I could spend 200 to level up the bless or cleanse to level 2, or save it up for a new power at 500cp.

I popped the cleanse to level 2 and looked at the new spell options. The best I saw were a confuse aura, and a snare aura for the clearings.

We’d handled 2 nearly effortlessly with the clearing, I told Yamina to pull 4 this time and that’s what we did, pulling 4 at a time, stunning two, blasting the thighs of the other two and letting the cleanse field eat them alive. It only took about 7 seconds for the skellies to die. It took the 400 cp, and bought the cleanse up to level 3, leaving 100.

While our skills were growing, we were not getting any CP, but I thought the time well spent. We basically had a foothold on this corner of the plateau. I informed Jimni and Thorbjorn about this location as a home base and how to feed it skeletons. Thorbjorn thought it was a little creepy, but said they’d put the river to one flank and the cliff to another and see if they could replicate the tactics if not the clearing itself.

We continued there the rest of the day, taking turns pulling 6 or more skeletons at a time, one pull for us one for the clearing.

At the end of the day we’d both ground out an extra level, and bought both the snare and the confuse skill for the clearing. The Cleanse effect had leveled to level 4 on its own. I kept digging through the menus for the clearing and not finding what I wanted. In the end I concentrated on the mana of the area and thought about creating an ability to lure undead to this area like a honey trap. My plan was to make it a self-reinforcing outpost for us.

I finally got a notice that “Lure” was reserved for divines of an evil nature, and instead started working on a noise maker using my mana manipulation much as I'd use shape, but trying to shape a spell. I figured that if it was loud enough it’d pull nearby skeletons to the area. I was finally able to get something about as loud as a firecracker that went off every few minutes.

Lastly before I left, I used shape to clear a lane along the east side of the plateau area about 100 yards towards the temple 10 feet wide. I pulled as many of the trees as I could into my inventory and moved them to the shop, then used shaping magic to fuse them all into just 1 giant hunk of wood each. Basically, making a single log out of all the wood and leaves of the original tree.

Deciding it was getting dark, and that I expected the monsters here to get worse, we finally actually used recall to pull us back to the grove. At first everything just got still, and everything about us got gradually dimmer and dimmer, then in a sudden wrench of vertigo, like stepping across a crevasse slightly too wide for you to make without a little jump over a gap that sunk to the very molten center of the earth.

Right when I’d landed back at the grove, I had a great idea.

“Yamina, could we have bound ourselves back at the fountain? We could right?”

“Yeah, sure Bill, that’s what their most common use is, why? OH CRAP! we could have just jumped here and back at will eliminating the whole trek out there. That would have been awesome!”

Yeah, just when I think I’ve figured this whole hero thing out, I walk into a big batch of stupid like that.

---

The next morning, I awoke, not angry anymore, but not decided upon a course of action either. Knotted up inside and feeling broken.

Logic dictated mending fences with my sponsor in this new world. My inner greed monster agreed. The thing is, I realized I'd started to like her, to enjoy her company. So the shock of being deliberately manipulated, the one thing guaranteed to infuriate me like no other, felt inexcusable. She didn’t even have the excuse of not knowing. She’d picked me and winnowed me out of roughly 164,000 people that die on earth each day, times however many days she’d been looking.. She knew me better than any human could.

She knew, hell she knew perfectly that I’d have probably done it if she’d just asked just explained. Even I agreed it was the right choice once all the facts were in. Why was this sticking in my craw? Neither Danu nor Yamina can lie to me, you’d think I'd be on cloud nine just from that. Yet here I was stuck in the middle with you. I had no idea what to do or where to go to put things back on a normal track.

I guess the sticking point was I couldn't realistically see how there was any way she’d change. She has been who she was for countless millennia. How could I expect any change not to be utterly superficial in the face of that?

She couldn’t change, and I wouldn't change, refusing to accept that kind of behavior was part of the self work that I had to do to become a fully functioning adult human being.

After learning to say no to pretty women without feeling guilty, it was the biggest life lesson I'd learned. Okay maybe third or fourth. After don't lie and, other people don't think about you nearly as much as you think they do, as they are too busy thinking about themselves. But still, right at the top of the list. The fact it turned into a rage button was probably an indicator how thin the patch on that maturity upgrade actually was. There was some thinking to be done there. OK let's focus on a solution. If I was a mythological perfectly sane and adjusted version of me, how would that imaginary me react?

Calling them out on their ways was clearly step one. I'd managed that, even if far from optimally or kindly. Next. Make an emotion free decision about the immediate topic at hand. Check. Third, Get over it. I was clearly stuck on step tres. OK, set that aside for now, as intractable. This perfectly optimal imaginary me, Step4 what is step quatro?. Make a decision about how to proceed long term. OK what would that look like.

She's a goddess, who's used to manipulation as a first language. Who was and is constrained by the rules of her game from just telling me what she wants like a sane person, instead of wanting me to read her mind. Actually there are a lot of women out there who want you to read their minds, but I’d accepted that wasn’t a strength of mine, and moved on to talking things out long ago. I’m not nor will I ever be a mind reader, and women's minds least of all..

So back to the topic. On her scale she was already insanely involved in the minutia by just dealing with us directly and regularly. In that context what was OK and what was out of bounds. I needed to define the shape of an acceptable long term compromise. Setting up targets for us to knock down. I'm cool with that. Laying out short and long term strategies. Sure. Presenting choices where one was obviously best. I like that too. So where is my sticking point? Gain, her gain. Not goddess level inscrutable intangible gain, but simple short term material gain, which is paid for with me and mines suffering pain and most importantly death.

When did I get so attached to these fuckers that I got pissed when she put them in the path of danger?

OK, set that aside as off topic. The important data was that I -did- feel that way. Not my life, Yaminaand Thorbjorn, Jimni, Fannon and Grannie, old and young, all the rest of them. They had become my people. I cared about their long term well being. Paternally or pastorally was irrelevant. I cared.

OK there is the sticking point. The solution would have to fix that. Potential fixes. what would make me more comfortable putt them at risk, as i am comfortable doing with myself. Mana based resurrections like in lit rpgs. That'd solve it cheap plentiful rez plus information, I”d want them to make their decisions with the facts in hand.

I had a feeling that it might be a non-starter, because Rez is so rare. But some ability to bring them back. That was the piece I needed. If it was limited, then I needed to be able to save up and rez them later. No time limits. Permanent backups were the key. Actually , just like with allbackups, restoring them is the key, the best backup in the world is trash if you can’t restore it.

Okay, lets setup my working negotiation plan. First bid, mmorpg style rez. Cheap and plentiful.

Next, what is my hard no line. My, “I will walk away” line. Where was that? I have to be able to save up rezzes, and get them back eventually.

Now I need what, My middle line. My happy line. The least I'd take and be happy with the deal. I'd need to be able to save them and use my personal saved rezurrections to bring them back. Probably need a hard safety on that. Can't rez unless I have 3 saved up? That should keep me reasonably safe.

the last line i thought outlet. "Anything above my happy line was butter.” Wow,

That sounds soo dirty when you say it out loud.

Next question. Is not perfectly OK with that. Yeah I think I am. Harder question. Was I ready to move forward with this plan?

No, I was still too upset for that. How did I tell you my imaginary listen might ask, my gut was still knotted up at the idea. Until that released inner me wasn't OK, plan or no plan.

So, victory and loss conditions are set. I just need to let imperfect me chew on it and accept it. Gronk the inner cave man had to come to terms. I figured the Goddess was already listening in and had time to make up her own mind about things as well.

OK I can do that. What damage controls can I put in place without making it worse. No point waiting three days to feel better, if things blow up in two.

Talk to Yamina. That was easy. What do I tell her? What's importantvfor her to know. She needs to know that I think I have a non 'picking what's next' answer. That I think I'm in the ballpark of a workable solution. That I will probably be staying., but that I need to ponder it a while first. Change probably to almost certainly, and I think we have a winner. She needs to know that so she’s not stuck hanging in the air, just because I'm not fully there yet.

I felt the last of the knots in my heart unwind and I felt better. Trust those knots. They tell you when you are on the right track, emotionally speaking. When your inner Grok agrees. If you check them often enough they can be used to chart your course to the right emotional decisions. Like an old sailor pitching his lead weighted line from the bow of his ship to chart the dark unknowable depths below..

“Yamina, do you have a moment, I'd like to talk if that’s ok with you.”

“Sure Bill, what’s up?” she said it kind of timidly, like she was trying not to let me see that she’s afraid of the answer. Address those needs first.

“I think good things, things you’ll like, I’m not all the way there yet, but I think I`m on the track of the right idea. I just wanted you to know that I’m pretty sure things are going to go the directions we want and pulling the ripcord to’ what’s next’ was almost certainly off the table. I’m not ready to sit down with you mother and hash things out yet, but I think I have a solid grasp on what those conversations will be like once I am there.”

Yamina turned more towards me during that speech and her shoulders relaxed and she began to look more like her full-sized self instead of a version balled up into a knot. “That's great to hear Bill. It's a big load off my mind to know I’ll not be alone here. What do you need to get from here to get ready to talk to mom? What do you need from me?”

“I just need you to be you, I think we’re good, I just need time for my inner caveman to fully agree with what outer me has decided. Inner me needs to chew it over a bit longer is all. I picked hunting yesterday. Would you like to pick what to do today?”

Yamina perked up straighter and her tone was much more interested and hardly wary at all. “I’d like to find out if we can bind in Danaster, and if not set up a fountain there or some kind of physical iconography that the system will let us dedicate into a bind stone. Our people will be able to port back and forth safely once they get 2 bind points. Then let's go bind ourselves at the fountain up on the plateau.”

“I think that’s a great idea, let's go see if Olaf the cooper has any buckets or barrels for us to use.” moving water by the bowl was a pain in the ass.”

We discussed it as we walked south down the river, looking for any beasts that needed to be cleared to keep the path open between our two towns. I dropped a mileage stone halfway between the towns that had an arrow pointing up and Danusholm on the south side and the same arrow and Dannister on the north. Just to mark halfway so people would know they are halfway there. Look at me turning into a proper Roman engineer.

We decided to try something new for Dannister, and went to the center of town. I used shape to sink a shaft down into the dirt, and deeper into the rock itself. Way deeper than the bottom of the river. Then using the rock, I first lined the shaft and then built the tube continuing up about waist high out into the air. Then I used them to create the rest of the archetypal well A little roof covering it, windlass rope and all. I pulled off a piece of wood and shaped it into a bucket, just a solid piece of wood. Next, I cut a horizontal shaft to the river so the well would fill and lined that as well. I filled the bottom of the well with gravel and sand to filter the water again if needed. Lastly, since I wanted it to be symbolic of Danu, I carved fishes swimming in a circle around the base of the well, and Celtic knotwork to symbolize a river on the uprights. Then around the very lip of the well I carved a row of tiny Deva, Firefly fairies just like Yamina dancing as if in flight. I figured that’d send some Mojo Yamina’s a way eventually. then using the bucket, I got river water and put a couple buckets of water into the well to get it started, as the water would be working its way through the sand and gravel.

“I think this will do Bill, let me try dedicating it if that’s okay. I mean it's got a dozen of me around it after all”

At my nod she raised her hands up, fingers out and said “We Bill and Yamina dedicate this well to the worship of the Goddess Danu, of our sacred river. We dedicated it as a safe place, a source of nourishment and a binding altar for those who share our faith.”

In my mana sight there was now mana flowing all over the well, but not rolling out to fill the whole square. I pulled up the menu and it had just a few options. Blessed waterways already active. I tied it into the city's CP pool, and used a little of the cities CP to buy the ability “Bindable”. making it a bind point. While I was there, I tied the city's CP pool to the one in Danusholm, and bound them in a single interface. Then I took most of the “people in your city completed XXX” quests, and assigned their output to that pool. The CP we’d assigned at the fountain gave me plenty of ideas for our other locations.

We bound there, and then headed back to the fountain on the plateau. As we landed I asked Yamina,

“That reminds me, who did Joseph wind up recruiting?

Yamina replied, “Josephs recruits are his wife and kids, he sent a letter off to someone else, too back home, inviting them here."

I thought on that a moment. And asked Yamina to keep an eye on them. I got their names, and added them and Joseph to the Guild. If Joseph couldn’t’ figure out a way to make that inventory system turn him a steady and fat profit, I’d sorely misjudged the man.

We settled down in out Booth for the night. And went to sleep.