13. The Planning Meeting

I end up going all in on the dungeon theming in my workroom. A few shattered chains hanging loosely from the wall really brings together the cold solitude that I was trying to make. The downside is that if the windows always show moonlit nights it’s definitely going to throw off my sense of time even more than I do just by existing. At this point I should just make myself a timekeeping device, it’d only take a few gold worth of materials to keep track of things, and I could use my own magic to display the time which would save the cost of that part. I just don’t know if I could justify the cost though, especially since my last round of crafting got hit by a massive financial loss. I guess I don’t have to worry about that for a while still, hopefully this new work pays reasonably well.

Just to be safe I leave the guild a decent bit before noon. Hopefully nobody will come looking for me, but I’m not exactly in high demand for anything other than yelling at the moment, so it’s pretty unlikely. I put up my illusions before even leaving my room, so I can pretty easily wind my way through the near empty side streets without anyone noticing. The building itself is appropriately skeevy for a criminal hideout looking for all the world like an abandoned house. Creepy, but I’m still pretty sure I’m not about to get mugged … or at least that it would’ve been more efficient for them to mug me earlier. Steeling my breath I drop my silencing illusion, and knock on the door. For a few seconds nothing happens before Johannes opens the door. I think he was sleeping pretty recently based on how messed up his hair looks. “Huh? Oh right.” He steps out of the way of the door to let me walk in, and closes the door once I’m inside.

The interior is a lot nicer than the outside implied, although I’d be disappointed in them if it wasn’t. Johannes is standing right there, so I cast off my illusion. I'm a bit curious if I could dupe the sensations his magic gives him with dark magic, but since there’s no way I could test that safely I shelve it. He shakes his head “I don’t get why she asked you to come invisibly, feels like it makes the whole thing look more suspicious. Guess I’m biased with my powers, but eh.” He gives a half shrug. “You want anything to eat or drink? Liz usually makes tea for these meetings, but we have a bit of everything.”

“I’ll be fine, I usually just drink water and flavor it with illusions. Honestly it makes it way easier to eat healthy when I can just make everything taste like any food I want.”

He shrugs. “Handy, I’ll have to try that sometime. Can’t make the rations taste much worse. Here, we usually meet around this table, it’s the only one with enough space to put a map.” He gestures towards a table with a collection of mismatched chairs around it. It’s nice in its own right … although I wouldn’t mind doing some decoration around this area if they were to ask.

A few minutes later Elizabeth walks by with a kettle of tea that she sets down on the table, she’s easily the person I have the worst read on in the group since I haven’t even heard her voice yet. She does at least look at me while setting the kettle down and at least doesn’t seem angry … maybe she just doesn’t like talking. After setting it down she casually sits down next to Johannes who just sits there in the awkward silence.

A minute or so later Willard walks in, leaves through the door Elizabeth came in from, and comes back with a small loaf of bread and a cup of something before sitting down by himself at one of the heads of the table. After a few seconds of eating he nods at me. “Glad to see you decided to come by. I tried out the things you made, they worked well. Plus every time I learn something more about your magic it seems even more useful. It’ll be interesting to see how you fight an actual fight.”

Great … I really don’t want to be thought of as impressive before I disappoint him, but at least that’s a compliment. “Thanks? I really don’t think I’ll do as well as you’re suggesting, but hopefully it’ll go well.”

Willard just shrugs “Nobody here did well their first time. Still I’m sure you’ll make do.”

Johannes shrugs along with one shoulder, while Elizabeth is leaning on his other shoulder. I’m going to guess those two are dating … probably. Aside from the shrugs everything quiets down for a few seconds before Willard fills the silence again. “Should be starting soon, I’d do introductions about all of us, but you know all our names and you know my magic, and I’m not about to explain everyone else’s magic right in front of them.”

Johannes gives a chuckle. “I’m going to guess that’s aimed at me. I should probably clarify that while I have force magic, I also have light magic. It was either ending up here, or the church so I ended up here. The combination is a bit hard to use, but if you need healing I can probably provide.” He moves his shoulder a bit and he and Elizabeth share a look I can’t quite read before he continues. “Liz is unfortunately a bit cursed at the moment. I’ve been working on breaking it, but it’s slow work. She’s a very skilled pyromancer.”

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Elizabeth looks directly at me and does a very small facsimile of a wave that ends with a lick of flame swirling up her hand. Afterwards she goes back to lying on Johannes shoulder. Ok .. yeah they’re definitely dating. As I’m thinking that Gwendolyn walks into the room looking like she also woke up fairly recently. “Well good morning to you all. Jezebel, glad to see you decided to join us. Everyone good to start?”

Everyone else nods and I follow their lead as Gwendolyn grabs a rolled up sheet of paper from a nearby chest before unrolling it out onto the table. It’s definitely a map, but it’s labeled with a bunch of extra colors I’ve never seen on a map before. After it’s fully rolled out she takes out a few stones to weigh down the edges, and gestures towards where the city we’re in is marked “So, just to be sure we’re all on the same page we’re currently here, the mission is over here in this red area, supposedly there’s a fairly fresh nest of Man Trap spiders up there, so it should be pretty small, and exceptionally vulnerable to fire. The job will be pretty simple, Liz you deal with clearing the nest itself, I’ll handle any spiders that decide to try and attack us directly, Will you handle keeping the fires from spreading out of control, and John you help me and Will depending on situation, keep down the fires if they’re spreading too much, or help me if the spiders are being a bit too aggressive. Jezebel you try to keep that second thing from happening, and try to hold the spiders’ attention anywhere but one of us. Any questions?” I guess I don’t have any … I mean I don’t exactly know how to go about distracting the spiders, but that’s probably not something I can reasonably plan for. Nobody else seems to have any questions so she continues. “Great, the trip should take six days both ways, so a bit of a shorter trip than usual, but it should be a good first mission, and it was officially requested, so we’re still getting paid fifty gold each.” Hmm, the church obviously isn’t hiring them so who is? I’d rather not interrupt with that question, but I can probably ask one of them later.

Willard leans over the table to get a better look at the map. “Rough area. We aren’t going to run into anything else around there are we?”

She runs a finger along an invisible line on the map. “To be safe we have to take a slightly more roundabout route, it’d normally be a five day trip at most, but we’re trying to go around this area … supposedly a group’s going to be handling the issues over there, but it’s best not to rely too heavily on them. So if we go around here.” I add an illusory line that follows her finger as she traces it. She pauses for a second before looking up at me. “Ah, thanks. So if we follow this path we’ll give the worst places a wide berth. If for some reason we need to rush we can cut these corners a bit closer, but I doubt that’ll be a consideration.” I use a different color to mark that path as she traces it, this is fun.

Elizabeth leans up and traces a new path, and I use a third color to mark her line, and Gwendolyn takes a look at it. “I’d be a bit worried about this one, this part over here would be risky since we’d basically not be able to sleep for this entire area.” She looks up towards me. “The Great Vultures in this area are pretty easy to avoid if you’re awake, but get a lot more aggressive towards anything that looks dead. With how big the area is we’d have to stay up from one dawn until the next just to get through it.” Elizabeth shrugs at that and Gwendolyn continues. “Fair point … it might be safer than going this close to the Hate Blooms, but it’s definitely still a risk. What does everyone else think?”

Willard speaks up first. “I’d rather take a potential fight while we’re doing fine rather than put ourselves in a bad situation for a lower risk of fighting. There’s not much I can reasonably do at no sleep.”

Johannes chimes in. “I can use light magic to push back exhaustion a bit more, I’d already be using it just from the one day travel time, but it’ll at least mitigate not sleeping as well, especially if there’s an emergency, the risk wouldn’t be too bad, although I’d be a bit spent by the end of it all.”

Gwendolyn looks at me, so I guess she’s expecting my response. “I don’t really need much sleep, but I don’t know much about either threat so … I’ll go with what everyone else decides.”

Gwendolyn shakes her head. “Just when I thought we had a tiebreaker. I’ll abstain from any sort of vote, so it sounds like we’ll be going through the Great Vulture area if there are no other issues. Should we plan to leave in an hour?” She seems to direct that one at me.

“That would work for me, I should probably pick up my sword from home, but otherwise I don’t need to prepare anything. Would we just be meeting back up here?”

She nods. “That would be the plan, we’ll bring the rations, but bring your waterskin, and tent, and anything you’ll need for a two week trip. Oh, and we’ll bring some cards and dice for the downtime; trust me it gets a bit miserable if you have to talk for multiple weeks in a row without any subjects. Otherwise though, don’t worry too much about it, this won’t be as high stakes a mission as it could be.”

Willard chuckles at that. “Although you should still assume about half the plan will still go wrong. We mere mortals are still the ones making the plans.”

That gets a laugh from me. “Well don’t worry, I’m more than used to things not going according to plans.” For the first time in quite a long time, I’m surrounded by multiple friendly people. No matter what, something’s definitely going to go wrong. I’m not optimistic enough to think otherwise but maybe with a group of potential friends I’ll be able to downgrade a catastrophe to a concern. Maybe … hopefully.