That data paints a bizarre picture. Milton says it’s on purpose, but the behavior of her patron is not consistent. It’s as if…

Ernesto Gomez, notes (recovered)

Trying to shutter the Library took time. They definitively wanted to make sure the book collection remained intact until it was time to come back.

Next year, Johanna anticipated.

They would need time. Time to truly sort through the truly monstrous pile of parchments that were now packed in the wagons. Time to digest the lessons learned there, about how they worked.

Gomez had designed a clever system of tests to measure one’s pre-existing qualities. Like checking basic specializations, an Authority plus Shaper, then a simple Shaper, then Thorn Fist, then Authority plus Parler, then Parler. With each parchment, you had 1 additional Authority requirement, so you could gauge from 0 to 4 how high your Authority was by checking in order which parchment you could light until it stopped. Level interfered a bit with that, and if you were above 4 in a given quality, the ways to check became truly complicated, requiring much higher Levels and depending on some other qualities’ minimums first.

Gomez had used that same method to measure himself, and it did look like he had -1 in Agility, Dexterity, and Strength, but +2 in Authority, Empathy, and Perception. It matched the combinations of specializations he could get, from Stock Fixer to Adept Sentinel, and why even a Strength plus Metal Shaper did not work for him. The lone wagon driver without Talents had let himself be tested, and it sounded a +2 Agility, +1 Dexterity, and -1 Empathy and Perception in his case. Although with what looked like a Level of four, there was no way to check if the Scout specialization was working for him unless he activated a Level parchment, which he obstinately refused to do, even just for the experiment’s sake.

The strange part was that, once he’d shown and explained his notes, all four of them, not just Johanna, suddenly started to produce dozens of complete sets of the exact parchments used for the measurements each, before reverting later to the quasi-random production of Talent and specialization parchments.

“Looks like the Ancient approves your method.”

“I feel honored. But then…”

Gomez bent and whispered theatrically, “I think he does not know everything. Don’t tell him.”

“You know, I had a new vision last night. It even included other Talents and further specializations. But he said that we had what we needed for now.”

Gomez instantly made a face, and Johanna smirked.

“Regardless, I am happy you’re there to make sense of the thing.”

“I’m going to use the traveling time to sort my notes and make some drafts. I need a bit more experiments, but I can derive some methods already. The fundamentals are not complicated.”

“You’re sure?”

“The thing that will be hard is figuring out how the Talents themselves work. Getting them is almost a solved problem now. Well, provided you do have access to the necessary parchments. But how do Talents themselves work? How do they interact? And more importantly… what do they do?”

“There are so many, you mean.”

Gomez sighed.

“And once we’re finished, you say we have more awaiting us.”

Moore mentally sighed as he saw the work tables being shuttled back into the Library of Congress, the traces of the camp cleaned, and the draft beasts hitched back to their wagons, much to their displeasure after those two weeks of idling.

Well, all that XP will be still there next time.

The immense amount of XP he got from a day of parchment converting was far more profitable than trying to fight Changed beasts, after all. Not to mention a lot safer.

As before, he’d tried to convey what he could to Johanna, apologies for not having access to all of the System. He should have dumped the nine new skills he’d unlocked after raising Peter’s Perception to 20, but he never got around to doing it.

He also hoped she’d understood the need to keep a firm hand. She would have to delegate, obviously, but building strong leadership… well, the stakes were higher than when he’d been an HR manager for ultra-high-tech startups. Conveying the abstract concepts around a Guild might be too much for whatever communication channel was when he pulled her. She’d handled the need for parchments well. Worst case, he had a large buffer of XP, useable for another communication.

Next year? This winter? Who knows?

“The Tallers are there,” the scout yelled as he rode across the Camp.

Helena Silvers perked. She’d been trying to explain how weirdly the mount-skills worked to a pair of hunters and welcomed the distraction. The scout stopped beside her and dismounted, almost more breathless than his mount.

“Spotted them on that Ancient way,” he announced.

Helena looked up at the sky. The afternoon was making its way into the evening. The Camp would be waking up soon, but she had no time to waste.

“They won’t go much further. They always made camp over an hour before sunset,” she noted.

Then she started running toward the kennel where Mists was stationed.

The elders had given her, and only her, the mission. Once she realized she had a similar stealth ability to their scout, that she could somehow make people and mounts stop noticing her, there was no discussion about who would go. They had reluctantly fed another sheet to Mists, the only Reconnaissance they had. Both she and her mount would have some capacity to become discreet, as the original sheet said.

“Your mission is simple,” John Silvers – her grand-uncle – had said. “You follow them back to whatever base they come from. You scout. You learn. Who are they, truly? How do they live?”

“And then?”

And that was a big shock.

“And you have to decide. Given the number of sheets they made, there must be large camps out there that require skills. And… well, we need those sheets. We barely hold on to the Camp. We need them to live… or we need them to move.”

Helena froze in surprise.

“Yes. We get used to it, but it pains me every year when someone falls to a beast pack or a Greater Beast on a rampage. We’ve reinforced the Camp with every generation, for the sake of the Four Families or ourselves, but that’s all we can do. Hold the Camp.”

“But… decide? Me?”

“Yes. You will need to figure out how they can help, if they can help. Will they screw us once they learn of our existence? A few scouts have spotted Sciurids north, including at least one Greater. If you find a large colony with empowered dominants like that, it usually means the year or the next will have more Beasts. Way more. And we lose a dozen hunters those years. The fall is coming soon, and delays can cost us the opportunity.”

“… Leaving the Camp?”

“It depends on what you find. If you think they can be trusted, secure their help. If not… steal all you can and we’ll endure. As we always did.”

The three elders that gave her the mission looked at each other.

“If they had come or been spotted earlier… the Four Families might still live.”

And now, the mission was upon her, and her alone. She had the tools, she had the responsibility.

Even for an experienced scout, it was heavy. Elders made policy, not hunters barely in the middle of their careers.

“Wake up Mists! We ride.”

The Canid huffed, surprised, then shook himself before dropping to the ground to let her climb his much-increased frame.

At least, she had not grown up as he did after consuming those sheets.

“Let’s go! We need to find their camp as soon as possible.”

“Lots of notes,” Johanna said as she hoisted up onto the wagon, checking on Gomez.

“And more to organize. You know, I’m trying to make sense of the classical tier system used by the Society of Sorcerers.”

“Which is completely obsolete and irrelevant in almost all cases,” Johanna noted.

“Don’t dis it. It worked well… well in a world where people mostly have one single Talent, or maybe two at best. I was writing an article based on that. Remember when I spoke about seconds-based endurance?”

“Square of numbers?” she tried to remember the discussion on that same wagon, back when they were traveling the other way.

“Well, if you look at single-Talent people, and assume those weird sub-categories are like ranks, then you can see how rank 0 – anything not listed on a specialization – works to around 5, rank 1 seems around 20-25, rank 2 Talents is around 40. We even have one contemporary example of rank 3, which probably revolves around 60.”

“Who? Oh…”

“Yes. Mrs. Worchester only makes sense if she’s at rank 3 in that Fog Cloud. Meaning she’s not a basic Shaper, she must be a Water Shaper. But not a Water Master. At best, a hybrid Shaper who hasn’t got a second Talent.”

“Do you think someone like the Burning Walker…”

“Given his legendary endurance, he might have been a Fire Shaper with an additional Talent, or maybe a Fire Master. You know, once you have all the elements available, the model that gave us the idea of the old tiers is simple and elegant.”

“How so?”

“You have an amount of mana available that is the sum of all your ranked Talents’ values. And you expend one for every value times one second of the Talent you want to apply. The old fudge factor I needed for my formulas to work is just the regeneration that you see. Not everyone might have the same one, and Mr. Sengfield’s seem a bit extreme, but if you regain one mana around every 4 minutes, for instance, it fits the old data a lot better.”

“Petra could redo her full rank 0 Frostbite three times an hour.”

“Yes. All adepts would exhaust themselves before they can get back even a single mana. That’s why they have such a nice square for their endurance, and every ‘real’ Talented had an additional margin that seemed to depend on the tier. It’s just the duration allowing more regeneration to occur.”

“There must be other factors, right?”

“I’ll have time to figure out more. But I can use the basics in a Talent build guide.”

“A guide?”

“Given you’re going to provide powers to people without direct design by your patron,” he nodded in acknowledgment, “you need a design guide.”

“The Gomez Guide?”

“Not a bad title,” he laughed.

“Do we gift a surprise for the guards?” Peter asked as the Cheat guard tower’s top came into view in the distance.

“It’s a bit early for that. I tend to agree with Miles on that one,” Johanna replied. “Better we finish setting up the Talent House.”

“Well, at least it’s going to be a surprise coming back. They probably think we’re dead.”

“If those are the same ones. I assume they rotate them,” Ulrich said.

She turned toward Gomez, “I think we’re going to be there just before evening.”

“Good. Not that I begrudge the expedition… it’s been worth it, every minute of it. But my bones still hunger for civilization. And a real bed. With double mattress.”

“And you’re leaving us,” she said, with a small regret.

“The first semester has started by now, and the dean is probably asking for my head or something. Especially since I gave not much notice – when I got Mr. Sengfield’s original letter, I did not expect all that trip. But making arrangements for transport back to Nashville from Cheat is not going to be that complicated, and I don’t need a detour through New Sandusky.”

“And you’re stealing parchments.”

“Don’t you worry. We went over that, and I took only a minimum, just what I’ll need for a few tests. You have an average of 150 copies of each Talent anyway. Plus, they’re going to be safely hidden at the bottom of the book crates, and I am not keeping them out of my sight, or Estrella will make sure I can’t ever retire. By chaining me in her dungeon, even if she has to build one. No, when I need more, I’ll call upon you, and by then, you should be public, and people are not going to wonder what this research of mine is about.”

“We can use everything you find about them.”

“I’ll start with more statistics. Then some Talents’ full behavior, given how little Heroic stuff is documented. Detailed formulas, as I explained to you a few days ago. We have just a catalog, nothing more so far. That’s the kind of thing I’m going to research. Probably for years.”

He smiled.

“But I do expect to have some researchers to become finally interested in that.”

“We agreed you’d keep discreet…”

“… for as long as possible. I’ll limit my test subjects.”

He laughed, and Johanna raised an eyebrow, but Gomez did not elaborate.