Chapter 1: Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Wrong Place Wrong Time

I sat in the cold prison cell.  The walls were worn stone and the door was aged wood with heavy iron bands.   I was literally wearing a potato sack.  A dark wooden bowl of potato soup had steam rising from it near a stone slab that was my bed.  It was my second-day residence.  How did I get here?

A week ago my nephew decided to have a shotgun wedding out in South Dakota…in January.  I decided to drive out from North Carolina for the wedding.  While I was driving across the state of South Dakota it started to snow…really snowing…my phone was not getting any signal.  It had gotten so bad that visibility was nil and the snow was accumulating fast on the highway.  I had to get off the road.  Now there is nothing in South Dakota.  I took what I thought was an exit off the highway and drove down a road looking for a hotel or restaurant or bar to wait out the storm.  Well, there were none of these things as I drove a short way down the exit.  I tried to turn back to the road but of course, got my little Toyota RAV4 stuck.  I sat in the car for about an hour watching my gas gauge go down.  I started turning the car on and off, heating the car when it got too cold.  I got out every time I restarted the car to make sure the exhaust was clear. 

Soon the sunset but my gas was getting close to empty.  It was around 1:00 am when I finally ran out of gas.  Fortunately, it had stopped snowing.  I noticed a light in the distance.  I was fairly certain it was not a street light so I bundled up and went toward the light.  I had to break through the 2-foot deep snow to reach the light.  It was tough but when I finally got to the light I found it was a large barn.  I walked around the building looking for the associated farmhouse but didn’t see anything in the limited light.  I then decided to break into the barn.  I was able to ply the old door open just enough to get in.  I struggled to find a light switch was the light on my phone.  Eventually, I found what appeared to be some old horse blankets.  At least they smelled like horses.   Being cold and exhausted I bundled the horse blankets into a makeshift nest and curled up to go to sleep.

I woke up to some light bleeding through the barn door.  I looked for my phone and couldn’t find it and to my shock, I was also naked.  I didn’t remember stripping so I started to crawl on the floor looking for my clothes.  Just as I was noticing it wasn’t that cold the barn door swung open.  A middle-aged woman stood there.  Weirdly the first thing I noticed after the women was there was no snow outside. 

Well, she screamed and ran to the right I tried to get to her to calm her but forgot I was naked.  I exited the barn to find myself standing butt-naked in the middle of a farm.  There was an open stable to the left with some horses, a handful of chickens running around, and a large central farmhouse that had three young men running from it.  I tried to talk to the angry boys but they didn’t seem to speak English and were yelling at me.  Eventually, an older man came out with a small crossbow.  I got on my knees and put my hands behind my head to appear as non-threatening as possible. It worked as I wasn’t shot and eventually the younger boys tied me up. 

After talking amongst themselves they seemed to decide I needed to be brought to the police.  They put me in a wooden wagon, still naked, and hooked up some horses.  I then spent the next six hours bouncing around watching fields of wheat and rye pass by.  My captors didn’t respond to any of my efforts to communicate. Eventually, we entered a walled city that would have fit in any medieval setting.  I was quickly escorted into a stone building and into the cell I currently occupied.

Finally, a man entered my cell.  He wore…

The magistrate introduced himself by activating a medallion that translated between. So this world had some type of magic.  He listed my crimes with a penalty of 5 silver coins to be paid to the farmer for each guilty verdict.  I had four verdicts of guilt against me.  Trespassing, assault, attempted rape, and theft. Besides trespassing, everything seemed to be concocted by the farmers for as much wealth as possible. When I asked about my trial he seemed confused.  The farmers had submitted my crimes under a lie detector and they passed.  No trial was necessary.  If I couldn’t pay the magistrate said I could be ‘labored out’ and it should take 10 months to pay the fine.  Or I could join the standing army.  I would be trained, fed and housed in the army.  The pay for a soldier is 1 silver and 8 copper per week after you finish the seven-week training.  I signed on for a few reasons. First the protection of being in an organization.  Second I had nothing so being fed and clothed was an incentive.  The third reason was I had no idea how to defend myself in this new world and my best chance of living was learning how to fight.

The magistrate was nice enough to patiently answer my questions. The monetary system followed a standard fantasy game system.  100 copper coins equal 1 silver coin.  100 silver equal 1 gold coin.  A coin was about the size of a nickel.  A large coin was the size of a half dollar and was worth 10 coins.

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The magistrate produced a large stone tablet was silvery writing on it.  He explained it was an assessment tablet and required to join the army.  But based on my size he didn’t think there will be any problem.  I held the tablet and the magistrate activated it with his magic.  It glowed and the silvery script changed.  As I can not read it the magistrate told me what each line revealed.

The magistrate pointed to each line and read it to me, explaining each as he read it.

“Now a normal person typically has a score between 10 and 25 with potential between 30 and 60.  The upper limits for a human is 100.  The seven physical stats are very important for your new career as a soldier.  Strength basically details how much weight you can move.  Your power is how fast you can move weight.  Quickness is how fast you can move.  Dexterity reflects your manual control of your hands.  Endurance reflects how long you can perform physical related tasks.  Constitution is your ability to ignore pain and recovery from injury.  Coordination is your control over your entire body.  Now the requirements to join the general army are to have a potential of at least 40 in strength and endurance.  So you qualify.  There is also a more advanced unit, the Legion of the Lion, which requires you to have a minimum potential of 40 in all physical attributes and also 60 potential in Strength and Power.  I will tell you only about one out of every three complete the training.  The next column are your mental traits.  You intellect shows your intelligence, how well you can recall knowledge.  Your reasoning is your ability to understand…” he stopped before he translated the numbers further.  Running his finger down the second then third column.  “Ah you have excellent mental attributes and potential.  Unfortunately you magic traits are weak, otherwise you might have been able to enroll in one of the magical colleges with a sponser.  Your affinities are both extremely rare as well.  Ah well sorry to get side tracked.  Let’s see…your reasoning is your ability to utilize information.  Your perception is your awareness of the physical world.  Your insight is your ability to decipher knowledge and make leaps of understanding.   Resilience is your ability to resist mental attacks.  Empathy is your ability to interpret other peoples disposition.  Finally fortitude is your ability to function under mental fatigue.  Now the final column just represents your magic ability.  Your Aether pool reflects how much magic aether your body can hold.  Channeling reflects how fast you can use aether and replenish aether.  Shaping is the ability to mold aether into a usable construct.  Your tolerance is how much aether you can channel before sustaining damage to your body.  Your aether resistance is your ability to resist damage from aether backlash and attacks.  Now the final two lines are your affinities.  There are 21 affinities in magic.  Seven common, seven uncommon and seven rare.  Your two affinities are both rare but the rest of your stats are not impressive.  If you were to attend a magic college you would be evaluated for all 21 magic affinities as each ranks between 0 and 100 as well.  The simple tablet I have just lists your two highest affinities.”           

I asked more about the Legion of the Lion.  He told me it required high physical attributes as they serve as the elite troops of the kingdom.  The training is seven months, much longer than the seven weeks for a soldier.  But the pay is 5 silver and 40 copper coins per week if you complete the training.  I thought about it and decided to apply to the Legion of the Lion.  My thought was seven months of training would be much better for my survivability than the seven weeks I would get as a soldier.

The magistrate smiled and said he would take care of the paperwork.  I later found out the magistrate got bonuses of 1 silver for each soldier he recruited and a quarter gold for each legion soldier he recruited. 

My potato soup had meat added to it and a half loaf of bread over the next two days and then I was off in a wagon.  I had a sealed letter that had a copy of my statistics.  I was of course escorted by some city soldiers as they brought me to the training camp.

It was a six-day trip and the caravan stopped in small towns every night adding more potential soldiers each time. I couldn’t communicate so I just observed.  We had seven guards and four wagons.  By the time we arrived at the camp, there were 23 recruits.  The main camp was for training soldiers.  It looked like there were roughly 1000 soldiers in training here but I didn’t have much time as 21 recruits from my caravan got out here.  Me and two other larger recruits were brought to a smaller camp, the training camp for the Legion of the Lion. 

My two companions from the trip and myself were brought inside a wooden barracks.  76 of the 100 beds were occupied.  We took 3 of the open bunks.  I immediately went to sleep, exhausted both mentally and physically from my ordeal so far.

 

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