Life After the Apocalypse

Taylor shrugs, Isbjorn logic makes sense to them.

"I hope the towns are safe. Dad always thought that people would go nuts once the Government made its move."

>>> "Yeah, I don't know about that, Pops..." the tattooed Sorcerer chimed in. "I mean, you're a BIG dude and all but if you're a Sorcerer like me... Well, we're the vulnerable ones." He struggled trying to wrap his own brain around trying to reason with the new reality they all now lived. "I looked at my User Interface and I've only got like 50 HP. She..." he gestured towards the flamboyantly dressed small Calico Catfolk, "...is a Pirate. A 'Tank' character. She's prob got more HP than both of us put together. I don't think we can really rely on what someone...or some thing, I guess,...looks like as to how tough it might be."

>>>BradL33 looked around at the surrounding landscape as if trying to get his bearings. "Okay, so..." he announced after a moment, "I'm not used to seeing things from first person perspective so things aren't exactly familiar but..." He sighed, as if having to admit something he didn't want to say but forced himself to do so. "I know that That Way is West, That Way is North, that way South and this way is East. I'm guessing that the only way I know that is because I have 'Hunter' and 'Tracker' as my SubClasses... I hope that's the case and I'm not just imagining it."
>>>"We need to go NorthWest. That's where Mound City is. 'In Game' it took me about 5-10 minutes of travel to get here from Town but..." he looked towards what he, at least, thought was NorthWest and open meadows and forest stretched into the distance. "...maybe that's different now. Either way, we should head out and talk on the way."
>>>He grimaced as Isbjorn ruffled his hair, "I'm not a kid, y'know. I just look like this because I just hit 'Random' on the character generator and took the first one that didn't look weird. I'm probably closer to your age..." He mistakenly assumed Isbjorn was his character; the same faux pas he was chiding the man for. The expression BradL33 wore certainly did very little to make him look like an adult. He looked like he was about to stamp his feet and throw a tantrum. "Let's head out..." his chunky boots start making tracks in the tall grass heading away from the clearing.

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>>>Darkness. Falling. An almost nauseating lurch of sudden consciousness...
A vocalization of pure emotion in the void, mixing feelings in a bewildering manner. A song attempting to understand itself.
Somewhere in the distance a peal of laughter that acts as an anchor in the formless, swirling blackness of existence.

>>> Suddenly, Light. Weight. A feeling of Being, a feeling of becoming differentiated from the Void.
>>>Warm breezes on Grace's skin presaged the opening of her eyes. The laughter, that called to her through whatever or wherever she was before, continued beside her. Louder and more 'real' than before...
>>> Grace's senses told her she stood beneath a tree next to a stone cobbled wall separating a field from the yard of a...villa?? She definitely wasn't here before... Before what?? Before... Before... Her mind stretched out for answers but found only confusion. The last thing Grace remembered was being in front of her computer messing around with an MMO... The laughter beside her was too distracting for further recollection.

>>> "AhaHahaHahhaHa!" The incessant laughter rolled from one of the other people Grace had been in the game Tutorial with. What became of the other four, she couldn't say as they were nowhere nearby. The girl's laughter had gone on long enough to be worrying before she finally stopped long enough to take a deep breath.
>>>Grace remembered the girl's gamer handle, 'Piphany', and that she'd clearly dropped quite a bit in the game's Cash Shop for a custom weapon and outfit. She was bent over, catching her breath as she braced on the absurdly huge Scythe at her side. Noticing Grace, she looked up, "Oh, hey. Ahaha..haha..hah." the smile didn't make it to Piphany's eyes. That wasn't the laughter of mirth, or excitement, or joy. That was the hollow inappropriate laughter left behind when everything else is short-circuiting. "Am I... Am I tripping balls right now?? Ahaha. haha. ha. he..." At least the laughter seemed to be subsiding.

Grace gives the other woman an appraising once-over. Lovely outfit. Matching oversized scythe. Belt’s more function than fashion…

To Piphany’s comment, Grace replies, "There’s quite a bit I’ve tripped over throughout my career. Balls’re not among them."

She catches a glimpse of her own hand, with skin so young it’s practically a baby’s.

"I don’t know about you, Piphany. But I’d rather not wake from our shared dream."

—for she can’t imagine there’s anything dangerous about reliving her early twenties, and with magic to boot!

>>>The warm wind blew fresh scents in from the fields, the sky was an aquamarine blue with wispy clouds at its upper levels. Nothing about the situation Grace found herself in implied anything but reality, despite the obvious signs it wasn't.

"Dream?" she repeated the word as if she hadn't considered the option of their predicament being simply a dream. "This doesn't feel like a dream..." She seemed to have reigned in her laughter but the tension underlying it remained. Like she was treading a very tenuous wire mentally. "But it definitely doesn't feel like reality or a lucid dream either. It...feels real and yet not real at the same time." She hoisted the enormous scythe and spun it effortlessly, the deadly weapon moving as if it were weightless in her small hands. The heavy thud when she pounded the haft to the ground belied the weightlessness it displayed earlier. "I don't ever remember smelling things in my dreams...and all I'm smelling right now is the manure on those fields."
>>>The sounds of voices muffled by distance carried on the winds from the fields. Much closer, however, came a rustling of the crops on the other side of the hip-high cobblestone wall. Something moved hastily through the vegetation before bursting over the wall...
>>>"Haha! FIRESTICK!" the boy yelled, pointing a wooden twig at the girl as they tumbled over the wall. "FireStick isn't even a real spell! Anyways, I've got MAGIC SHIELD!" the girl yelled back, holding her hands up and brandishing the toy sword in her hands.
>>>Both the girl and the decidedly non-human boy stopped cold in their tracks as they two caught sight of Grace and Piphany standing on the other side of the tree. Looking at each other, the kids clearly had no idea what to do at the sight of strangers.

>>>A Status Bar pops up above the heads of the two kids, hanging in mid-air displaying their names (Ardana for the girl and Jean Louis for the cat-folk boy) along with their Level (3), a full HP & MP bar. The sight is surreal with the juxtaposition of the rustic setting and the obviously computer generated information hologram together.

>>>Well, well, well... What do we have here?" Piphany addressed the two kids coldly, levelling her scythe to cut off any escape path the kids might have.

"Manure is an acquired scent. My band used to do shows at the PYO. That’s pick-your-own—peaches, blueberries, apples—depending on the season. And they had cattle too. It was the ice cream that drew in the crowds."

The Three Graces were not exactly a successful trio, but O’Bass reminisced just the same.

When the kids show up, she smiles at them. She’s about to offer them a song to lighten Piphany’s mood.

But those HP/MP bars!

"Oh. So this is, like, for real." And maybe the people here are all older in the real world. Maybe the boy was a woman and the girl was a man. Or were they really children?

"Ardana, Jean Louis…" And Piphany’s scythe is making her very nervous now. "…Piphany? I think we are all in that game. I think we should keep our weapons in our purses—" She winces at the cute handbag which somehow carries her humongous baroque theorbo.

"—scabbards. And… and, and, and…"

But she can fight unarmed if it comes to that. And her instrument doesn’t look like a weapon, though the toy sword might be no different than a real sword here.

She continues, "We should introduce ourselves! It’s what people do! I’ll start," and she so desperately does! "Grace of Bass was my stage name on Earth. My band—it was O’Keys’ band—toured 5 of the 6 New England states, and once played on Canada’s Thousand Islands. Just one of them, though the islands are small and close together. People on other islands could hear us, which was the idea. Except for when someone called the police and they made us stop. That was NOT the idea.

"Andandand I didn’t realize the Moose Mounties had boats, haha? Ya learn something new when you travel outside your country, right kids? We’re all in a foreign land now, so we have that in common."

She isn’t sure her little anecdote was helpful at all. But she remembers specifically choosing a No-PvP option. The status bars don’t mean anything like that, do they? Piphany isn’t… is she..? What is she doing? What is everyone doing?

>>> "You sure do talk a lot..." the girl with the scythe said, looking at Grace. Presumably she was a girl... Grace's sudden musings on appearances vs. actualities brought everything into question. Piphany narrowed her eyes trying to follow Grace's rapidly derailing train of thought. Either way, the effort seemed to have averted the feeling of menace building in the girl.
>>>"Alright, you two. I wanna know what's going on." Piphany addressed the two kids in an abrupt mood swing to annoyed rather than possibly homicidal. "Where ARE we?"

>>>The girl stepped up rather defiantly to answer Piphany's challenge, "You're standing in my Appa's yard. That's where you are."

>>> "You gotta big mouth for someone with..what...fifteen HP?" Piphany shot back. Her grip tightening on the scythe.

>>>"Fufty-een what?" Adana questioned. The audible grip on the leather wrapped scythe didn't go unnoticed and she forced her grip on the pommel of her own toy sword. The thing couldn't cut bread, presumably, but she clearly felt confident with it in her hands.
>>>Jean Louis stood slightly behind and to Ardana's left, eyes wide as he took everything in. The way the sun hit the boy's fur, the twitch of his ears and he stood on digitigrade legs sold the 'reality' of what Grace was seeing, despite the obvious impossibility of it all. "You're Adventurers, no?" he said haltingly, accent a bit different from Ardana's.
>>>"Appa will know..." Ardana cut in. "APPA!" she called.

>>>An older man shuffled out of the cottage, in a relative hurry for a man his age once he saw the two visitors. Making his way up the slight hill with a bow-legged gait, he stopped to look at the kids and his two visitors.
>>>To her credit, Piphany raised the scythe and set it, blade under, to let the kids pass. "My, my..." he said in the most 'grandpa' way possible. "What brings you out here to our village? We hardly ever get Adventurers out this way." The old man looked between the two women with a bit of trepidation. Not waiting for a response, he patted his vest, "Now where have my manners gone? My name is Verduhn. Village Apothecary." He gathered the two children to him before rushing them off to continue playing elsewhere. "Perhaps you're lost? Let us get away from the heat and enjoy some tea inside,eh?"

Grace kinda knows a few gaming terms. Some of her fans recommended the hobby on her Three Graces Fans Discord channel—which she almost renamed Three Three Graces Fans, but a fourth fan joined before she could figure out how to rename it.

Anyway, she thinks these people are NPCs, and that might mean they aren’t real. Still, she’s glad Piphany didn’t kill them.

"Oh, yes, we’re Adventurers." She stops herself from saying ‘not Murder Hobos.’ Don’t provoke Piphany. Make her feel needed. Because when the monsters come, she will be. "We’re just doing our part to keep civilization safe from—" What exactly is the major threat in Elderscrollsville? "—evil."

Be the Bard, ya dope!

"A spot of tea would be a delight, Verduhn. Perhaps I could play tune to express my gratitude for your hospitality." To Piphany she adds, "That, and I’ve never received a complimentary drink without being expected to entertain."

>>>The two kids run down the line of the stone wall, glancing back at Grace and Piphany once before disappearing back into their game of fantasy cops & robbers. Varduhn shows the two women down to the cozy villa at the bottom of the gently sloping hill.
>>> Inside, out if the sun, the villa was quite cool and refreshing. The ceilings were high and boasted none of the things one would associate with a modern home. No TV, no couches, no electric lamps, no electric anything ... The word 'cottage-core' leapt into Grace's mind as the best way to describe the interior. A huge unlit hearth dominated the room and was surrounded by tied bundles of drying herbs and bark. Wooden tables lined the walls and a wide chest with a hundred tiny drawers dominated the back wall. Grace had seen one like it playing a gig at a Farmer's Market once. That one held seeds, this one? Who knew?

>>>The old man cleared spaces at larger table, clearly meant for family dining but now lay cluttered with jars of dried mushrooms and other ingredients. "Please, have a seat..." he waved the two to sit at the table. "No need for your..." he waved at Piphany's scythe, trying to figure out what to call it. "It will be safer if it were leaned in a corner, yes?"

>>>"Sure, Pops. If it'll make you feel better." she surprisingly agreed. "Getting kinda tired of lugging it around. It looked cool in the Shop but I didn't know I'd be carrying it around like.... Well, like this."
>>>She sat the oversized weapon in the corner, making sure it wouldn't fall, before setting down in one of the sturdy wooden chairs at Varduhn's table. She shot a look at Grace, her expression confused as to maybe what came next.

>>>The old man made himself busy by filling an earthenware vessel with water from an honest-to-gosh hand pump and placed upon a rack above a small pot. Removing the lid, something in the pot immediately emitted a purple flame. Varduhn grabbed a few dried herbs from a couple of jars, humming a subliminally familiar tune, adding things to the vessel and then sitting at the table with the two women. "Tea should be prepared soon. In the meanwhile... What brings you to the village of Belle, hm? Adventurers, such as yourselves, are always running around after such interesting things. Nothing like that around here..." It was pretty clear he was searching for information albeit in a most genial way.

Grace is surprised at how agreeable Piphany is around the old man. She sits at the table, and… it takes effort not to glance back at the scythe.

He disarmed her.

Maybe that’s normal. How would Grace know? In the real world, a man never offers a lady a drink for free. The most suspicious men never state the price aloud.

But… there may be a way to know! Grace contemplates her in-game skills.



Just sitting at a table means I can STUDY the old man, right? And the whole set up, all this clutter on the family table, Piphany’s sudden lack of paranoia, whereas she was highly suspicious of mere children…

The purple flame is not so much a shock as it is a mild surprise. She expected the flag to be a more subtle shade of red.

But Farmer Brown ain’t looking for a roll in the hay, so if this is a trap, it’s one befitting Elderscrollsville.

She hopes the in-game skill will kick in until the tea is ready. If it doesn’t, she’s mentally prepared to protect Piphany—despite her earlier fears about her obsession with that scythe.

"We fell here," Grace replies honestly. And she decides to be even more honest. Not about her yet-to-be-confirmed suspicions. But the likely motive for whatever Varduhn is up to. "But this ain’t my first rodeo. I’ve been in dozens of Belles. ‘Nothing interesting here’ is a polite way of saying my girls and I should take our instruments elsewhere.

"And I think I understand. Adventurers in Belle will disturb the peace, and you can’t allow that." She’s watching how the old man responds to her honesty. "Then the simplest way to accomplish that is to give directions. There must be a town where Adventurers belong. There must be a way there without passing through Belle."

For the sake of those children, she hopes to avoid a fight with this Appa. He might actually be a hospitable elder behaving normally. Or he might have jars of adventurers heads in his basement.

>>>"Been to dozens of Belles, you say?..." the old man seemed sort of entertained by Grace's assertion. "We 'People of the Land' don't travel much. Not like you Adventurers. We're the type that's mostly born, live and die in the same village. Oh, some of us do travel some. Merchants and the like, you know." It clearly wasn't what Grace was getting at but he did ramble on. "I've only been to bigger towns a handful of times... I even went to Mound City once in my youth. That's the Adventurer town you asked about. It's about half a days travel Northwest of Belle."
>>>Getting up from his chair, the old man searched up three tankards and cleaned them with water from the well pump, "Id originally thought you were from Mound City but you say you 'fell' here? Sounds like magic to me...but I'm just an apothecary and don't know much about such things."

>>>"That's nice and all, Pops." Piphany rapped her nails on the solid wood of the tabletop. "What I wanna know is how to get a hold of an Admin or a GM or somebody who can explain...this..." she gestured at herself, not unlike Varduhn did to Piphany's scythe, clearly at a loss to explain what it was that she needed explaining.

>>>"I'm sorry?" Varduhn paused for a moment from cleaning the tankards. "I'm not familiar with those words although I'd like to help you if I could..." he returned to the table with the metal cups and sat down. "It is true that sometimes when Adventurers appear in places like Belle trouble can follow." He gestured with his hands as if trying to articulate his position as delicately as he could. "Sometimes trouble follows the Adventurers here and sometimes the Adventurers turn out to be the trouble... As I said, I don't know much about you Adventurers or the world you live in but I've found that despite all our differences, there's common ground between us to be had by acting in friendship towards each other.". It was a nice sentiment but it had underlying implications. One of which was that there was a sort of dichotomy between people like Varduhn and people like Grace and Piphany. Like they each belonged to different castes or class system. The other was that people like Varduhn, the 'People of the Land' as he called them, were not at the top of the system...and that might explain his cordial deference to the two girls.

Raquel walks along behind BradL33 and Isbjorn, marveling at the altered world around her. She'd sometimes imagined what it would be like to live in a video game world, but her daydreams couldn't hold a candle to the reality of it all. All of the colors were so bright and vibrant, the smells and sensations heightened beyond reality. It was definitely an upgrade from her previous humdrum existence.

Her body... that would definitely take some getting used to. But it was not an altogether uncomfortable change. She seemed hale and healthy, and that what was most important. The rest would come later. For now, she puts that part out of her mind as she enjoys the walk to the village.

Grace’s paranoia subsides as (a) her skill from character creation doesn’t seem to be kicking in, (b) Varduhn’s nice and (c) from that ‘pops’ reply, it’s now clear that Piphany isn’t under any kind of a spell as Grace had feared. And she isn’t crazy or homicidal… she’s just scared.

And maybe I’m the crazy one just trying to enjoy the ride. Accept this. After all, who am I but myself when I was young and full of dreams. To relive ’em so they don’t turn out nightmares this time.

Or maybe they’ll be different nightmares, where the monsters are green and toothy and trying to kill me.


"Those children we met on the way in.. they’re lovely." She assures the old man, "If trouble comes while I’m here, you’ve my word the children matter most."

She then turns to Piphany, "And we can travel to Mound City together, okay? As long as we act in friendship with People of the Land, everyone will know we’re the good guys—including the people who can explain The Unexplainable."

>>>"They are quite lovely children." Varduhn agreed quite readily. "Ardana's my youngest daughter's girl. Her friend , Jean Louis, is a refugee from across the Gateway." The older man said it as if Grace and Piphany were supposed to understand what that meant but the phrase 'Gateway' sounded intriguing. Piphany locked eyes with Grace when the old man mentioned it.
>>>Oh, tea's probably ready by now..." he stood and attended to the now steaming earthenware jug, finishing the hot tincture with a little of this and that from small jars on his counter.

>>>"Do you think he means the gateway outta here?" Piphany leaned in conspiratorially as soon as Varduhn was, presumably, out of earshot. "He doesn't know what's GM or an Admin is but he just throws out 'gateway' like it's no big deal?" She drummed her fingernails on the wooden table agitatedly. "I could really use a cigarette right now..." she slipped that out there before a surprised look crossed her face. "...but I don't really want one?"

>>>"Here we are..." Varduhn poured the hot liquid from the vessel he held with a towel to avoid getting burned. "Lemongrass, dried apple peel, a pinch of salt, a spoon of honey and AleBalm. Let it cool a bit and it's quite soothing for the nerves. I grew the AleBalm myself..." he looked at the two women and realized he probably should explain. "The orange flowers in the garden... That's AleBalm. Goes into all kinds of things medicinal. Takes a good crop to brew HP Potions and Curatives for Status Effects. I'm quite proud of the crop this year." It was somewhat jarring to hear the old man just drop 'game terms' into a conversation as if he were chatting about the weather.

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>>>BradL33 led the group through open fields towards where he swore he came through to get to the woods from Mound City. He diligently went around any density of woods to hopefully avoid encountering anything like the Goblins from before. The strange sounds carrying on the winds from the dark treelines mark that as probably one of his better ideas. Avoiding the clumps of trees and hurrying through the thinner patches of woods added to the length of the trek, however. Despite that, the hike didn't seem to be very tiring at all for the group. They'd all marched seemingly for kilometers and kilometers but really didn't feel any effects from it. On the plus side, there didn't seem to be an abundance of bothersome insect life either. Sure, they could hear cicadas and crickets and the like but never saw any trace of them.
>>>Idle chatter amongst the group during the hike revealed the use of the User Interface to BradL33 and Isbjorn. During a short rest, BradL33 reviewed what he knew about how it worked, at least when it was a game, and experimented with it a bit. He explained about the Friend List and how it was used to keep tabs on players you meet, how to add others to it and be able to use the TeleChat feature. TeleChat took some getting used to... It worked like a built-in cellphone for a character. Selecting someone from your Friend List let you 'call' them and voice chat but it worked only for one person-to-person 'call' at a time, though anything in the surroundings were audible at the other end.
>>> Having spent more time than they could probably afford playing with the UI, BradL33 mustered everyone along to continue the hike. This time, he picked up the pace since discovering that they could all handle a much more intensive pace...
>>>A low stone wall halted progress as the group exited a thin patch of woods brought BradL33 up short. A large Status Box popped into everyone's visual field...
Village of Belle
Field Zone | Eusa Server
Monsters: Yes | PvP: Yes | Skill Use: Yes
Entry Restriction: None
"Woah..." he murmured under his breath. "Been by here a bunch of times but never stopped in." he slowly climbed the low cobble stone wall into the field of orange flowers. "I think the only thing here is a Potion Shop...but that was before."

Grace responds to Piphany’s want of a cigarette. "That’s good that you don’t. Believe me, I’ve had my struggles with addiction." Her expression is apologetic as she adds, "Sorry… if you’d rather not know the me from Earth, I’ll understand. I just hope when we find the way out, you’ll continue to not want cigarettes."

After the old man names the potion, Grace imagines the surgeon general’s warning stating that ‘smoking is bad for your HP.’

"I did wonder what those orange flowers were. That’s one mystery solved." She raises her tea cup, looks at Piphany, and says, "Here’s to solving the next." But she doesn’t sip her tea just yet. "Heh. Probably should’ve made the toast after the tea cooled."

It's fortunate that their group, big as it was, didn't encounter anything dangerous on their way to this small village, although Isbjorn felt quite embarrassed about his lack of gaming knowledge throughout the whole trek. That said, he doesn't forget to add all of them to his Friends List—it's good that there'll be a way to contact each other, just in case they get separated.

Still, everything feels surreal, even as he stares in surprise at the Status Box. Most of the information here he can understand easily, or at least infer what it means, but "Field Zone | Eusa Server" and "PvP" stumps him. I'll ask about it later.

Hearing Bradley's words, he says, "Let's go to this Potion Shop then, since at least it'll be familiar. There should be somebody we could talk to there."

Despite the long trek, it feels strangely effortless for Clara. Maybe this is just the perk of being a cat, she thinks as she remembers her cat Cinnamon's random bursts of energy.

The nature here is beautiful. From the absence of pesky insects to the vibrant flora, it's unlike anything she has seen in the real world. She always dreamed about fantasy universes like this since she was a child, so while being swept away from reality is unsettling, she also takes a moment to enjoy what this world has to offer.

She added everyone in the party to her friend list when they took a break, following Brad's instructions. The voice call functionality is decent, albeit lacking a noise-cancelling effect.

On the way, she can't help but notice the thoughtful look Fren sometimes throws in her direction. Surely not because of her non-human appearance, he's also a fox himself. As a curious person, she decided to just ask. "Is there something on my face?"

"I remember potions from the tutorial. You can never have enough supplies, so we should check in there as soon as we can."

>>>The tea is warm and mild but with a definite bitter medicinal 'whang' to the aftertaste. It's not an unpleasant bitterness, perhaps akin to the slightly bitter, earthy flavor of good coffee or very dark chocolate. It has a tongue warming effect aside from the temperature of the liquid. Overall, it's not bad but it's also something alien to Grace's experience.


>>>"It's called Cicada Tea." Varduhn offered. "Oh! No cicadas in it, of course!
It's just that the ingredients to make it are usually ready about the same time as the cicadas start singing..." the old man offered a quick explanation as he caught Piphany's eyes cut his way, the Assassin almost choking on her first sip.

>>>She sat the cup down and wiped at her chin and watery eyes. She very nearly shot the astringent drink out of her nose. "...next time just be quiet and let me drink..." she wheezed at Varduhn. The old man fetched a dishtowel to let Piphany clean herself up a bit.

>>>"AleBalm is what Belle is known for. It's our main crop." he tried to fill the awkward silence while Piphany recovered with some kind of small talk. "We grow most of the regional supply here in our little village. We have a festival in the autumn after the AleBalm has been cut and finished drying. Merchants and Representatives of the Nobles come from all over to obtain a goodly stock of our dried AleBalm. What I grow in the yard is my own personal supply for when the village might have need of a Potion or three."

>>>A sharp knock at Varduhn's doorway stopped the old man's rambling as a tall lanky man stood in the open doorway. "Beg your pardon, Varduhn..." the laborer said, "There's a whole bunch of Adventurers coming into the village out by the southwest fields." Judging by the startled look on his face, he didn't know Grace and Piphany were already in the room. "Kaimon sent them this way because they were asking about Potions..." The man's face bore more than a little concern on his weathered features. The way his eyes darted from Grace and Piphany over to Varduhn made him seem nervous, even more so as he noticed the big black scythe sitting menacingly in the corner.
>>>"Friends of yours, I hope..." he sounded like he actually meant that to feel relieved but he acted like the laborer had announced that there were wolves in town..

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>>>A gray beared man drops the implement he'd been using to perhaps weed the row of orange flowers he tended. About two dozen other men and boys of varying ages were working their way down the rows of flowers doing the very same task. Weeding a field by hand was tedious work and the gray bearded man seemed both eager for the break but cautious of strangers simultaneously. "Adventurers, eh?" he regarded the strange way the group dressed, especially Arga. "Welcome to the village of Belle..." he didn't sound particularly welcoming but not overtly hostile either. Maybe a bit agitated. "I'm Kaimon, field supervisor. What brings you to our village?" his tone said 'state your business' but couched in a formal kind of rustic cordiality.

Grace enjoys her drink as the old man talks. She did prefer her chocolate dark and her coffee black.

But when Varduhn’s colleague enters, it becomes clear that her earlier instinct wasn’t too far off. But not from meanness.Grace sips some more of the strange drink. Her smile is subtle, but enough the men may have noticed she approves of the beverage. She lowers the cup to the table.

"Friends…" She considers the possibility that these adventurers are the other four from the tutorial. But what difference would that make? "I could try to make friends with them, I suppose."

Her eyes shift from one man to the other. "It’s obvious that Adventurers put you on edge. Not without reason, I’m sure. Have any Adventurers given you trouble?"

Perhaps the men will be polite and choose their words carefully, but Grace will watch the younger one especially. What he says, how he says it, his expression as Varduhn replies…

Fren looks around him, taking the vista. He finds the walk pleasant. He speaks to the pirate cat without really looking at her. "No, nothing at all, you remind me the cat a friend of mine has. IRL friend I mean..." but what was real life and what was a game right now?

He sees the people working at the field, the flowers are so pretty. He notices the man named Kaimon to be a bit annoyed with them being there and he lets others talk. He does not know how people will react to a non human like a fox-folk.