Life After the Apocalypse

"Yes. We were at a museum and, maybe it was a replica and the original’s somewhere in Europe, but anyway, I fell in love with this painting…

"It’s these three goddesses, and they.. well, they’re goddesses, so they don’t need to wear clothes. They’re just hanging out, so confident and poised. And one had like, this flabby butt."

From Grace’s expression, she’s not poking fun at the painting. She seriously loves this piece of art.

"That’s what did it—the artist took the time to detail these little imperfections on the goddesses, and it was fangirl-crush at first sight. Belle and Joy felt something like the same and… we had our band name."

Isbjorn followed Guy in eating the tasteless stew the villagers had prepared for them. He grimaced as well, although he didn't voice out his complaints out loud. Arga's mention of the 'Chef' subclass intrigued the man as well. Maybe there really is a difference between food meant for 'Players' and those of 'Non-Players'?

He remembered that he bought some rations before. Isbjorn would've hesitated in testing it before since they were tight on money, but defeating the King Triffid should've netted them some rewards, from his understanding?

The man quickly took out a ration out of his Inventory, curious and eager to try out to see if there was a difference.

Raquel smiles at Grace's story. "That's awesome," she says, not really sure what else to say at the moment. The passion in the bard's voice makes her heart flutter.

She realizes that she's been staring at the redhead, so she looks away and clears her throat. "We, uh, should get back to the village and eat now, probably."

>>>Guy spooned out a bowl of stew and slid it over to Atalanta. "More power to ya then, mate... Eat up." He reached for the clay pitcher and poured two flagons, one for himself and the other for the Monk. "Stuff tastes like the kinda thing they say is 'good for you' or 'healthy' or the like..." Guy stuck his tongue out mockingly.
>>>"Guess one good thing is that if the food tastes this bad, it'll cut down on having to use the Loo..." Guy blurred out. "Because I haven't seen a single WC yet and I bet my mace there's no indoor plumbing."

>>>"Gross..." Tina said a bit too loudly. "Could you just NOT?" She couldn't refute the point her guildmate made, however.

>>>"Well...that makes the Maid SubClass a whole lot less appealing." the Sorcerer groaned. "On that lovely note, I'm going to bed and hope my MP restores by morning." Arga stood and headed to the stairs but stopped about the same spot Piphany had earlier. "Oh, hey. We bumped a couple of levels so...should we 'level up' before we leave tomorrow?I'm not even sure what I should choose."

>>>"A couple?" Guy asked, wondering what he should do with his dirty bowl. "I bumped up only one level..." He looked to Tina who shook her head in agreement.

>>>"I only went up one level as well...but I was halfway to 23 already before we ended up in the game." BradL33 stood up as well, walking towards the stairs to join Arga. "You level pretty quick below level 20 and it gets a LOT slower the higher level you get. Took me three years to break level 50 but trying end game content speeds that up afterwards." He sighed, "I don't even know how that'd work now..."
>>> BradL33 noticed Isbjorn unwrapping a pack of rations at the table and commented, Are you still hungry??" Big man, big appetite he guessed.

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>>>Back at the field, and a few hours later than the conversation at the village, the field hands lit a pyre to burn the suspect vegetation they'd unearthed behind the now vanquished King Triffid. As the pyre took light, the field hands began to gather in a file to head back to the village.
>>>The younger field hands towed a small cart laden with baskets containing the things they'd retrieved from the fields. Odd items left behind in the wake of King Triffid's defeat, no doubt.
>>>Maxime approached as the last of the field hands passed onto the path towards the village. "I thank you for staying with us in case more trouble appeared." he greeted Grace and Raquel. "And for your bravery battle that fiendish creature. Nothing of its like has ever been seen here before..."

>>>In the distance, somewhere deep in the surrounding forest, bursts of light erupted. Flashes that could be mistaken for heat lightening, if they weren't multicolored, flared from the trees. Out there in the darkness of the deep wood a battle was raging.

>>>"It is very dangerous in the woods at night. Let us hope they fare as well as we, eh?" Maxime remarked before ushering the two Adventurers to follow along towards the village.

A part of her wants to rush to the aid of those fighting in the woods… but there’s no chance Grace and Raquel—even if she agreed to it—would get to the source of the colored lights in time. Far more likely, they’d encounter a threat, or several, upon entering the deep dark wood.

"Yes. Hope is all we can give them from here. Let’s see the villagers safely to their homes."

On the way back, when only Raquel and Maxine can hear her, she asks the catfolk, "What of the missing fieldhands?" She’s sure that if those men were never found, the reason is obvious, and she’ll offer condolences. But she has this naïve hope that maybe they were in that crowd, and she was so focused on performing that she didn’t notice.

Raquel also feels conflicted when she sees the lights. She wonders who those other adventurers might have been before the world changed. Would they be okay? Were they hurt? Scared?

She keeps her musings to herself as she follows beside Grace and Maxime.

Taylor eats the soup slowly and mechanically, not mentioning the taste at all.

"If that's the kind of creature we'd run into frequently on the way to the next town, I'm not sure we'd be able to make it levels or no levels."

Fren just drinks water, lots of it. And when he feels full he will go to crash on the first available room. He is so tired that he just listened his colleagues and did not said anything. Even when he saw his bed he fell with his clothes and equipment on. "Tomorrow morning I should visit the bath I guezzzz...." he finishes his thought mid sleep.

Morning comes early this time of year, the assumption being that it is the same time of year it was back on Earth. Real Earth, not this replica of the Elder Tales game world...
Sunlight streamed through the warped yellow glass of the windows on the street side of the building. Cool and humid air seeped through the building lending everything a clammy feel. Air conditioning wasn't a 'thing' here.
>>> There's a quiet bustle of activity outside the Merchant Quarters building as the village goes about its daily business the same as it ever has...presumably. Without clocks and cellphones telling the time of day was a guess, at best, but the hour seemed neither very early nor very late in the morning. The rousing activity of those to awaken first, the creaking floorboards and unduly loud sounds of weapons and armor rustling and scraping, served to wake most everyone.
>>>Despite the battle the previous evening, the bodies you now inhabited seemed to recover quickly from both extertion and injury. The only remnants of dire wounds seemed to be soreness and bruises and even those felt minor.


>>> Venturing downstairs at each individual's pace, you discover the recovered rewards from battling King Triffid collected and laying across a couple of tables. One held baskets of gold coins and bottles arranged by color and size while another held an assortment of unusual items and materials. Tina sat at the table with the gold coins, stacking them into neat piles as if trying to count them.

>>>"Feels weirdly like Christmas..." she said greeting those coming down the stairs. "Like waking up to see what presents are under the tree...that we had to kill... before it killed us. Nevermind, I lost the analogy." she tossed a handful of coins back into the basket. It didn't look like she'd slept much last night. "This is all cash and consumables." she gestured at the table where she sat. "That's all items. They need to be identified before we can tell what they do or if we can use them or even want them."

---

Grace looks over the loot—"These are gorgeous!"—but she doesn’t claim any of it. She doesn’t feel like doing the math, both for the gold and the stuff. And identifying what the crown, the boots, the flower… which of these should go to her depends on what the things do. And it doesn’t seem there’s enough clothing here for everybody* to get one.She isn’t sure what to do with it all, so she simply pulls out her instrument and plays a quiet tune, bidding "Good morning!" to anyone who enters.

"Good morning to you too Grace..." says Fren with a yawn, "...isn't it a bit early to sing?" he looks around and adds "Do we have coffee or anything similar?" He goes over the loot and tells Tina "I can appraise some of this stuff if you want..." he wonders if he will find any stuff to use as a blacksmith.

"Certainly neat looking." Atlanta says, "But what does it do?"

Clara descends the stairs shortly after Fren and Atalanta. "Morning everyone!" she greets cheerfully. The pirate cat obviously had a good night's sleep. Being able to get dressed in a second with a quick tap on the interface definitely contributed to that, too.

She shakes her head at Fren's comment and offers Grace a wink of encouragement. "Hey, a calming tune is just what we need for such a nice morning, don't you think?"

Her gaze drifts towards the piles of loot on the large table. "Wow, that's a lot of stuff. Too bad I don't have any useful appraisal skills." She turns to Fren, smiling sheepishly. "Do you think identifying everything would take a long time? I can... uh... count the gold, if that's any help."

Grace smiles back at Clara, and happily keeps playing wordless tunes. It’s not too early for music, but it is too early for singing. Not because of the time of day, but because it’s too early in the relationship with so many new friends. To sing words would discourage conversation.

"Yeah, if you two want to count money and appraise stuff, that’s fine," she says to Clara and Fren. "I guess we can’t put on boots and tiaras and such without identifying them.

"But no matter what magical effect the boots have, if being in a fantasy world means that shoes always come in your size, maybe reality ain’t all that and a bag o’ chips."

Her instrument falls silent.

"I mean, reality’s not without its perks, such as People-Eating Flowers Not Existing."

The bard’s hands remain frozen in place for a beat and a measure, then she’s back to strumming her calming tune, as if she can just strum away the horrific memory of Piphany being lifted by Those Damned Vines.

Raquel sleeps in later than most of the party, worn out from the long, strange events of the previous day. When she awakens, for a moment she wonders if everything that has happened had been nothing more than a very vivid dream. But as she sits up in the bed, she feels a still unfamiliar weight shifting on her chest and has to brush the long hair back out of her eyes. It would seem it wasn't a dream after all.

Her body is a bit sore as she comes downstairs in her leather armor, but she smiles when she sees the others up and about, her smile widening when her eyes fall on Grace. She gives the bard a nod before her attention is drawn to the treasure spread out on the table. "Ah! Filthy lucre!" she exclaims playfully.

"It all looks to be rather useful. But how exactly do we go about identifying everything?" she asks nobody in particular.

Fren goes to the unknown loot and starts looking at them. Some start to show stats that only he can see, he will tell the others what he finds.

"I have a skill related to this, I think," answered Isbjorn to Raquel's question. He opened his status window, trying to look for it. "Ah, here it is! Identify Magic Item!" After confirming, he tried staring and concentrating at the loot they got from the King Triffid, focusing particularly on those items.

>>>The rising amount of noise from downstairs and the deepening hour of the morning rouse the remaining Adventurers to join everyone downstairs.


>>>"Having only ONE set of clothes makes me feel like a cartoon character..." Piphany grumbled as she came downstairs. She was definitely not a 'morning person' but that probably didn't come as a surprise to anyone... "I sure hope there's something like hoodies and sweat pants in this world." She gravitated from the stairs over to look over the assembled loot on the tables. "Woah... Look at all this GOLD! Back on Earth this much would be worth a million dollars!"

>>>"Why'd you have to bring up coffee?" Tina groaned after Fren had inquired about it. "Now I want some too... I think we all got up too late for whatever they do for 'breakfast' here. I was up sometime after sun up and the NPCs were already in the fields and going about their day." she shrugged, unsure what to do about food for the morning. "Anyway, since I was up, I started counting the coins. Everything I've counted so far is stacked up here. Comes to a bit over 825 that I've stacked up so far and I'm maybe a third of the way through the baskets?"

>>>"That's a whole lot of stuff..." BradL33 looked over the table where the Materials and Items were stacked. "Raids usually dump a good bit of loot but I've only been in late-game Raids. I wasn't sure how that'd translate to early-game." He looked at some of it and passed on other things. "Yeah, Isbjorn's got it right. These Items here..." he indicated the ones that hid their Stats and descriptions, "...are going to need to be Identified before they can be used. It takes a while before you can use the Skill again, unfortunately. The Cooldown on it kinda sucks... Hopefully more of us than Isbjorn and I have it. Might be helpful to get this stuff Identified before we head out. Some of it could be useful. The rest of this stuff just needs someone to take a look at it and its Status should fill in without needing the 'Identify Magic Item' skill."

>>>"I have that skill, too... So that's at least three of us that do." Tina also raises her hand. "So that's four. We can at least try and Identify most of the Items but...which ones should we do?" Arga looked around at the others for direction. "Also, I'm guessing we all Leveled Up last night. Should we go ahead and finish that out before we leave? Seems like we should but I'm not sure what to pick. I used an online guide for the build I made and I don't know what's the best thing to do now that we're stuck here and I can't access it. Even if I could, would what it says even matter since things are different now?"

>>>"There's something else to consider..." Guy added at the end of Arga's question. "Talked with some mates over TeleChat last night. They're over in Brotherhood City and Freedom City, guess that's Philly and DC??" he sounded unsure. Elder Tales used the Earth as a map guide and tended to put Player Cities on top of larger 'real world' city locations but gave them emblematic names instead of their real names. "They said things were getting rough in the cities. People...Players...not taking well to being stuck here and acting all crazy. Says that we should be careful if we're approached by other Players or Parties."

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Without any useful identification skills, Raquel volunteers to help count the coins.

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