But for a Slime

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Joe woke the next morning feeling refreshed but a bit achy because of the poor bed. His sleeping bag did help to soften the bed, as did the poor stuffing, but it certainly wasn’t comfortable despite being marginally better than the small village inn. Garnedell, as always, awoke with Joe’s movement and prepared quickly to move out, packing a couple extra materials he felt would be useful for the day since he was uncertain what they would be fighting. Joe then took care of his belongings and also made certain that his room was well protected before heading out. Most of the things would likely be completely ignored, given the basic technology level of the people, but he didn’t want to take the chance that he might lose his water filter, amongst other things.

Their breakfast was significantly poorer than what the village innkeeper had been giving, but it sufficed to satisfy him and Joe had no reason to complain except for the exceptionally bland food. They spent breakfast learning more words, the boy now spending less and less learning English and Joe pushing himself to learn the local language. He had basic interactions down, and now could do decently enough ordering or purchasing, but conversations were still quite out of his reach. He spent the time learning well before leading the boy out of the inn. The last portion of their language lesson had been taken up with Joe trying to explain his desire to visit a clothing store and reminding him of his desire for the hair ties.

The kid bounced his head when he understood, and was soon leading Joe through the vast city towards the merchant area of town. Garnedell had to stop several times to ask for directions, but they soon found themselves outside a rather run down store full of poor clothing. It was about right, and he could only hope that they had cloaks for sale. When he stepped in, he was surprised to find such a poor selection. Huh… is everything made to order? Nothing premade?

The conversation followed as with most adults, although Joe found the tailor slightly quicker with his responses than others, though definitely not as quick as the blacksmith back at the village. Joe wrestled with the language but was finally able to get across the to tailor, with the help of Garnedell, that he wished to purchase a dozen or two different cloaks of varying colors, designs, and lengths. After the man understood Joe’s request, he seemed quite taken aback, but Joe won him over with hard coin and the man promised they would be finished quickly. When Joe asked for a timeframe, the tailor offered a week. Joe frowned and pushed for half a week and the man grimaced in return. He then seemed to consider, growing a bit greedy and offering three or four days but raising the price by almost double. As the price really wasn’t an issue for Joe, he accepted the deal, paid the man half. The hair ties proved simpler and he was able to receive a half dozen immediately. The tailor seemed surprised that he wanted so many, but cared little to argue when Joe paid him quickly.

He then spent a bit of time in the corner of the tailor shop learning from Garnedell how to appropriately wear the hair tie. Joe understood it easily enough but the tie proved quite complicated and Joe almost quite in frustration before finally learning how to do so. When he did get it tied correctly, however, the relief of having cleared his face of hair proved immense enough that Joe promised himself to spend time each day to practice working on tying his hair. With that done, Joe turned to the rest of their day.

He really didn’t want to waste ten or so days before he could return to his leveling, so he looked around the store and found some discarded and old clothing. He soon saw that there were three or four cloaks similar to what he needed, especially including hoods that did well to cover his face. Joe smiled at the cloaks and turned to bargain for them. The man rejected Joe’s offer and it took a bit of three way communication for Joe to realize that these were commissioned cloaks. Joe pushed for any old ones, and after some tricky miming and poor sentences, the tailor beamed and slipped to the back of his store before returning with six different cloaks. Joe looked through them and discarded two when he saw they had no hoods. He took the other four, although one turned out to be a rather expensive piece so Joe decided to reject it. The man grew a little desperate and offered to cut the price significantly, and after some haggling, Joe had four new cloaks.

Joe took the cloaks back to his room, throwing three of them on the bed before slipping one on himself. He then turned to Garnedell, an easy destination next.

“Joe go priest. New job.”

Garnedell nodded quickly but closed to whisper a little quietly to Joe while speaking in his poor English, “Zhoe go. Zhoe no talk zhob. Zhoe quiet!”

Joe nodded and slipped back to English, “Yeah. I know. Joe know. Priest say, Joe no say! I remember, kid. What I’m doing will raise a bunch of eyebrows. Why do you think I got a bunch of cloaks? Heh! Got my cloak and dagger on! We’ll be good, kid.”

Garnedell obviously lost Joe’s conversation once he flipped back to an easy fluid and fluent English, but he seemed to have gotten Joe’s meaning and the two were soon sliding through the crowds following the advice of the various people they asked. Joe was cautious with his coin pouch as the crowds started up, and he kept it high up on his person up under his arm, hidden under both shirt and cloak.

They made it to what was obviously the temple square as Joe stopped with a bit of stunned awe and stared around at a good twenty or thirty temples festooning the edges of the square. The place wasn’t busy, but it certainly wasn’t calm or deserted. Groups of people filtered through the square heading to various temples, all but one which looked they were very well cared for and prepared for the business of caring for the soul. Joe didn’t really care where he went, though he did stay away from the run down temple, and simply chose to keep his temple going simple. He choose a temple at random then decided that he would go from temple to temple in a clockwise order just so he could remember which one he’d already been to. He chose the temple just next to the dilapidated one, and simply kept a tally in mind: one! He would just increment and go to the next temple, using the dead temple as the starting point to remind him where he’d been last.

Pulling the hood a bit closer over himself as inconspicuously as possible, he entered the temple. Taking a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the gloom of a thick stone building with few windows, Joe soon found someone priest-like and turned towards them as if he knew exactly what he was doing. He stepped up with some confidence and spoke one of the few phrases he took special care to learn, “Job change, please.”

The priestess standing before him blinked her eyes with some surprise before rattling off something while waving behind her. She then simply passed by him and said little else. Joe flickered his eyes to Garnedell, seeking help, and Garnedell stepped off in front of him without a word and Joe followed behind him. Man! This kid’s on the ball! I’d be so screwed if he wasn’t here!

The two crossed the floor before taking a turn around a corner and coming upon something that looked a little like an information desk merged with a street shop. Garnedell turned to one of the attendants standing behind the desk and Joe followed closely behind. Garnedell rattled off something a bit too difficult for Joe to catch, but he felt some gratification when he was able to understand the priest’s reply well enough.

“Ak gulna da fifty iron soona koor, please.”

Joe was able to grasp enough, and smiled as he reached into his pocket to pull out the fifty iron, or the square four hole that he’d learned from the smith, Kargallen. He handed the fifty iron to the priest and the man looked expectantly at Joe for a few moments. Joe didn’t look at the priest since he was looking down and waiting expectantly for the popup to show up so he could choose a job. Time passed and Joe looked up with some consternation as he realized the priest had been speaking to him. What is he waiting for? Why… What is happening? Is it…

Joe stopped when Garnedell stepped up and spoke something quickly to the priest. The priest grimaced with some frustration but then seemed to accept Garnedell’s statement and continued his job change hand-waving thing that he’d seen the other priest do as well. Joe looked down, waiting for popup, but was shocked when he received something completely different. It was a small popup with only a single sentence: Congratulations! You have successfully changed your job to Citizen! What? Why didn’t I get the chance to choose! What is…

He broke out of his funk when he felt Garnedell subtly tugging on his shoulder and a quickly returned to the current situation. Bowing to the priest as a way of thank you, Joe kept his head down and turned to leave, walking quickly, but firmly from the building. They made it out of the temple easily enough, but despite Joe’s many burning questions, he remembered the old priest’s stark warnings, or at least Garnedell’s very insistent and worried ones, about keeping silent regarding his many job changes. They needed someplace private and at least a little secure for the questions Joe needed to ask.

“Garnedell. Go home to inn. Right?”

“Yes, we go home.”

“Yes. I many questions.”

“Joe no speak here. Speak home, right,” Joe quickly spoke when he saw Garnedell glance up with a bit of panic, a warning in his eyes as he looked towards Joe but Joe quickly eased his worries. Garnedell relaxed and they fell into a comfortable silence back to home. The crowds were now quite significant, and Joe held his coin pouch quite securely under his arm, still remember the last robbery back at the little village. They made it back to the inn without any significant occurrence and were soon seated back in their room. Joe started his first question with a whisper.

“Why Joe no change job? Why priest change job?”

“Zhoe… Zhoe…,” Garnedell broke off with some consternation then started again as an epiphany brightened his eyes.

“Village priest friend. Good friend Zhoe. Zhoe … Zhoe… Arrg…” Garnedell broke off with a growl and dropped his last sentence all together, “Priest good friend Zhoe. Priest kind. Village Priest give Zhoe change zhob. City priest no give Zhoe change zhob! Zhoe say priest zhob. Priest change Zhoe zhob!”

“Well, that’s going to royally suck! How am I going to learn the names of these jobs to tell the priest what job I want to change to! What am I going to…,” Joe sighed as he realized it was going to be tough. Only the jobs that Joe might be able to mime to explain to Garnedell would be options for changing his job. Maybe I should go back to the village. The priest really is… Or I’ll need to get my own priest job! That looks like the best way to go! But Joe sighed as he considered these options. It didn’t really matter because he would have to fumble through all the jobs anyway until he was lucky enough to find the right job to unlock the priest job. Well, let’s see if I can’t learn the words for the jobs I can get.

Flipping open his available jobs page, Joe looked at the jobs currently at zero but available to him: burgher, groom, butcher, merchant, and his current job, citizen. He felt a bit of dismay at trying able to explain what a burgher was, but then realized that he might be able to pull it off. They had all the words to probably pull off a definition and a comparison. And the other three jobs seemed to be easy enough to figure out since he could simply go to one of the people in the city and ask what their job was. That’s seems easy! Let’s get burgher done first!