Chapter 3: Chapter 3 Forming a Party?

Chapter 3

Forming a Party?

Tira spoke up for the group. "Listen up! This is the general plan. We will be traveling for at least six months. There are four wagons with nineteen new commoner elves. There are two wagons with elves and two with elfesses. There are also four heroes with us, one to supervise each wagon of commoners. You will listen to the heroes, or there will be discipline. There are seven wagons in total, the four sleepers, with an armed wagon in front and the rear with ward generator defenses and lightning line wands. If you are charisma based, taking Use magic items (activated) would be a good choice for a skill so you can run the wards and lighting wands. 

Tira looked to see if they were still paying attention and saw Twixia reading a book. The others followed her gaze to the scholar.

"Twixia!" yelled Tira, "You had better be able to tell me what I just said."

"There are twenty-four of us and some chickens, and we are basically toast, since only five of us have ever used a weapon, or activated a spell," replied Twixia.

"Fine, now put down the book and look at me when I am speaking to you; this is important enough for your full attention, unless you would like some punishment," said Tira.

Twixia looked at the book and weighed the pluses and minuses of still reading or being spanked or something worse. Reluctantly, she put a bookmark in the book and put it away in her pack so she could make it through the lecture.

"Don’t make a face like I just killed your favorite sibling, Twixia."

Twixia replied, "Sigh, I will see you soon; be patient. She proceeded to put the book away and look up with a more impatient expression, rather than I have just been stabbed one.

Tria continued, "We are not toast; we will raise the level of everyone to at least second level, so that they will be much more able to survive a goblin attack or something like that. The other wagon is a magical, chicken growing wagon, with hatcheries and a butchery. We will be leveling up the first-level commoners two at a time by having them kill chickens as we need food. You can shoot at small game as we go from the wagons for experience as well. small or smaller game, to be clear. All of you will need to make yourselves useful, so you will be assigned duties. Did you have a question, Alliasaz?"

“No, but common folk can’t get no class without year and years o trainin. Hows getting perience by killing defendless muls goin ta help? your greatness?” said Alliasaz with her head down.

Tria replied, "A fair question, the answer is you will get your Elven bonuses, you will get 7-9 hit points, depending if you take an extra skill or a hit point, plus double your health bonus instead of 2 hit points and your health bonus. Granted, you will not have more health, as most of you will lose an advancement due to being High Elves. But you will get more intelligent and dexterous. You will get more skills, which is quite useful for you in particular, Alliasaz, as you are one of only two elves in the caravan with access to cooking who also have a positive will bonus to use it. The princess is the other one, by the way. You will also have a 5 percent better attack."

Star raised her hand and was acknowledged. "Does that mean I need to take profession (cooking) as a skill?"

Tiara replied, "No, telling a person to take a certain skill or ability is not very nice. If you two are okay with the chicken tasting like dog or something, feel free to skip that skill."

"I am learning it now," said Star.

“I already lern farmin but I pose cookins fine,” said Allisaz, also taking the skill.”

Tria said, "Good. You will be the first to kill the defenseless animals, so that you will get better at it quickly. Plus, Twixia here is going to tutor you in how to speak in Elven, Allisaz, because your accent is annoying."

With a dark expression, Allisaz said, "Yes, your greatness." (Her only well-spoken phrase in Elvish when she had not rehearsed it)

"Now, back to the lecture," said Tira.

"The primary mission is to get the princess safely to the human capitol. The secondary goal is to get the rest of you there alive. Your prize will be free academy lessons for the commoners to learn a class of their choice. To receive this prize, you must all choose to take second level. If someone refuses, they will be left at the nearest village. For those who already have a class, you will get to join an adventuring team to earn more levels. There will be a chance at a ride back to the GEN if you want it after training, except for the princess. We would rather the commoners get a hedge class, so we will not be training warriors. Commoners trying to desert will be bound until they learn their lesson. Understand all of you are exiles until you gain a class at the Starwick University, or for those that have a class, for 50 years."

Star jumped up and held out her hand.

"Yes, Star?" said Tira. "Why did you refer to me as princess again, and why don’t I get a ride back?"

"Because you have been exiled by the order of the Grand Oracle for the next 50 years, of course. Also, you commanded me not to call you princess, so I am doing it while not addressing you in particular," said Tira.

Star held her hand up again.

"Yes, what is it, Star? I would like to end this lecture sometime before the wagon starts moving," said Tira.

"Why am I being exiled?" said Star.

"That is a secret that nobody knows, so ask the gods if you want an answer," said Tira. "Please don’t ask any more questions, because I am not allowed to lie to you even by omission."

"Yes, then can I go ask my papa before we leave?" said Star

Tira sighed, "Your dad is just a martial land god; they don’t get those sorts of powers. We can’t have him trying to keep you here, so that is why you were kept from him most of your life. Please stop asking questions. You will find out in due time, probably," said Tira.

Alliasaz started crying, and Tira put a hand on her head, petted her, and made soothing sounds, yoshi, yoshi."

"Probably?" asked Star.

"I said please stop asking questions. I am just your keeper and have to answer your questions fully. Sword Maidens are only told things if we need to know them, and I don’t need to know them. Since you asked a follow-up despite my warning, my exile is even longer, so don’t think you are the only one with questions. Plus, I have to have a baby with a human male until I have a girl, then have her kidnaped by slavers after I train her as a Sword Maiden. You may be better off not knowing anything," said Tira.

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Star’s eyes bugged out, and there were a lot of energetic and excited Elfess whispers.

"I will stop asking you questions now, and perhaps ever," said Star.

"Ok, that was it for the lecture," said Tira.

"Wait! "It was already the end, and I embarrassed myself for nothing?" said Star.

"Well, no, you got to learn my dark secret that I never wanted to tell a living soul; please don’t spread it around girls. Plus, I am just going into a new speech," said Tira.

Tira began her second speech, "Now for the duties; I already explained Alliasaz’s duties. Twixia, in addition to teaching Alliasaz, you will read and gain your skills first," said Tira, to which Twixia immediately responded.

"Praise be to the gods!" said Twixia, throwing up her hands while standing on one leg, then getting out her previous book.

She turned to the Woodling, saying, "Zip, you will be on guard duty all night because of your eyes, and I will spar with you so we don’t get rusty."

"Sounds good," said Zip.

"Try not to kill any of the boys keeping watch that try to hit on you," said Tira sternly.

"Tee hee!" laughed Zip in response.

Tira nodded, saying, "As she will be sleeping during the day, try not to wake her; plus, being a warrior, she might stab you if she is grumpy, and one of you has 2 hit points."

Allizas trembled again, and Tira gave her more reassuring head pats and sounds.

Tira continued, "Nobody here will be driving the wagons; that is a job for the men, plus this way they can talk to girls, and it is part of your duties to not treat them badly; they are under a lot of stress since they will be expected to, um, help defend the wagons; may our patriarchal father god, Callidor, help the poor things. That is why there are a few spares. We will pick up more along the way if we run low on them."

More trembling, more pats.

Tira then turned to Raythiel and said, "It would be nice if you took Beginning Enchanting, and cure wounds and made scrolls. We gave a lot of supplies to Twixia for this purpose. Healing scrolls will save a lot of lives after we leave the GEN, either for cash if we need it or if you make them during the first part of our journey. You will be paid the standard rate for them even though we are supplying the materials. The other thing I would request is that you learn either a musical specialty or massage to help with the entertainment, as there are only two elves with a higher charisma than you. One of them is the princess; the other is a blended summoner hero.

Star started to raise her hand, then put it down.

"Fine with it, but I will take percussion then; at least you can use it to signal, so that is not so bad," said Raythiel.

"Fine, that leaves massage for you, Star," said Tira.

"Wait! "I think I have another question, but maybe you can just kind of expand on that thought however you would like," said Star.

"Well, first off, we have a magical wood elf creature, and I would like her to not wonder off into the woods because we fail to take care of her skinship needs, as that is both terrifying and potentially disgusting. Secondly, we have a lot of horses, and massage and animal handling can keep them from going lame and such and not having to use resources to heal them."

Tira held up her hand to forestall Star and continued.

"We will need more musicians, entertainers, people who can read scrolls, and people who can activate the wands and wards. Having you and Twixia learn the local human kingdom language would be good, although she can get that at second level. I guess we already have diplomacy covered, but deceit would be a nice communication specialty as well. Also, it would be nice if you talked to Twixia and took your specialty knowledge with you so she did not double up with you.

"You have more skills than all fifteen of our low tier commoners put together, because right now, other than a certain exception in our wagon, (head pat) they all have a negative intelligence statistic until they become second level, so they only have one skill each. None of them can even learn those skills at second level, other than Raythiel, who can learn some of them. Unless you take them first, Star, then teach them. Even then, you would be a lot better at those skills because of your base charisma.

"We have a grand total of one male craftsman, named Ambrose, who will basically have to fix and build everything. He will not be driving the wagons. (chuckles, a tee hee, and a brief discontinuation of trembling) Everyone else on the trip, if you did not do the math yet, is a low tiered commoner. We need those skills!" pleaded Tira.

"I see; I guess I will keep busy learning the skills we need to survive," said Star.

Tira shook her head. "That is currently 25 percent or less of it. When you form a party, you can teach people skills in that party. Understand that each hero can have one commoner in his or her party at a time. One. Singular. You can have five. Also understand that once a hero forms a party, the commoner can only be removed at a guild hall, where they ask very pointed questions to make sure you haven’t taken advantage of them and now want a new type, for example, or for selfish reasons, like you want to sleep with them. The system punishes the guildhall if they allow it when the commoner is being taken advantage of. So, usually, two parties have to agree to swap them.

"Nobles, and only nobles, can dissolve and take on new parties at will, because you are a commoner, and the system doesn’t protect commoners from abuse from other commoners. If you join a party of heroes, then that would be different. But you can also have a single hero in your party as well as four commoners; again, there is no protection from heroes being thrown out of the party or from heroes leaving for that matter. If you are thinking of abusing this power, Star, this does not stop the Elven curse from affecting you, so be careful with that."

"If you put one of us heroes in a party with four commoners, we can teach them, or you, hero skills, and I can even teach you sword dancing abilities—not the spells, but the abilities—even though you don’t have the class. Your marital skills are at half, as are those of sword dancers, and you possess the bloodline. I also have some skills that will make you quite formittable with romance.  If the crafter or Twixia is in the party, they can teach their restricted skills. You know, like alchemy.  They have one open slot now, other than Allisaz, who learned farming without talking to anyone.

Allisaz gasped and started trembling.

Tira patted Allisaz on the head and continued, "Yoshi, yoshi, farming is a fine profession skill, and the commoners will get three to five more skills at second level, well, four to six for Allisaz." Tira gave Allisaz another head pat, then gently stroked her brown hair and marveled at how big chested she was. "That is sixty to seventy six skills that can be upgraded from common-only skills because you are here with us. You are more important to our survival, Etherstaria, than any hero right now."

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