Dialysis Book: Chapter 5: Darven, the Town of Trees

As we approached Darven the land started looking a lot more settled.  The open forest gave way to well tended fields.  Fields full of crops I did not recognize.  For someone from rural Ohio, that was annoying.  I won’t pretend to know all of the things that are grown by farmers across the United States, but the fist sized green growths on the almost wood like stalks were not something I recognized at all and really pushed the fact that this was an alien world.

I reached out to pluck one over the stone wall separating the field from the path but as my hand crossed the wall, I thought better of it.  I pulled my hand back and looked at it, sensing something was infecting my essence.

“Oh, someone’s been affected by an Apathy Charm,” said Spivy.

“Charm,” I asked.

“A weak spell,” replied Spivy.  “It pushes out a weak spell effect over a broad area, if you are experienced you can just bypass it but you don’t seem like you have any kind of mental resistance to such effects at your level.”

“Can I learn that skill,” I asked.

Spivy snorted, “That’s a very specific class skill, it would be rare that anyone would just pick it up.  Don’t worry though, as your essence becomes more potent, charms will have a difficult time affecting you.”

I focused on my essence, which was still very depleted, when Shadow ran up and put his nose into my hand.  Suddenly there was a herb in it.  Since he was looking for herbs that could help me, I took a bite and immediately felt my essence start to replenish.

“Good boy!” I said.

“I wouldn’t have done that,” said Spivy.

“Why?” I said as my stomach started rumbling.

“Well, you get poisoned if you eat them raw,” said Spivy.

I swallowed, my mouth becoming dry.  My guts twisted up and a moment later I was at the side of the road vomiting.  The buff giving me an essence recovery bonus stopped the same time as the poison condition did.

“Most herbs can’t be eaten raw, at least not without a much greater constitution than you possess,” said Spivy.  “I suppose you could try to fortify that with essence, but I don’t think you have enough to pull it off.

“Great,” I muttered.  “How do you use herbs then?”

“You are supposed to boil essence root before you eat it,” said Shadow confidently.

“Why didn’t you tell me that,” I groaned, glaring at the traitor.

“You didn’t ask,” replied the dog as he tilted his head to the side.

Spivy chuckled, “Still, it might have been enough.  You just needed to kickstart your essence regeneration.  Even holding it down for ten seconds should have been enough.”

“I think I only held it down for about 6,” I said.

Spivy considered that, “Shadow, find me that essence root.”

Shadow returned a few moments later with the root, and I was able to persuade Spivy to allow me to wash it off first as we continued down the road to Darven.  I managed to keep it down for ten seconds, which granted me just enough essence recovery to jump start my body’s essence production.

I also gained a poisoned condition.

“That will fade,” said Spivy.  “Think of a burn out like having the wind knocked out of you, but with essence.  You need that first breath to start recovering your essence.  It just sucks to take.”

“I take it back, this vacation sucks.  I just want to go home,” I groaned as we continued walking.

We left the outer fields, which were growing the bulk staple crops, basically their equivalent of wheat and corn, and got to the fields closer to town.  They were growing mostly herbs, strangely enough.

Well, maybe not strangely.  I had to imagine an essence root sold for more than a loaf of bread.  As we crossed into those fields, we started to see people of various stripes.  There were humans, of course, but also pointed eared people who were either vulcans or elves.

One laughed loudly and I decided: elves.

A very large gray green man spotted me as I walked down the path.  He was standing next to a half full cart and looked quite large enough before a second man walked over holding more herbs.  The gray green orc stood a full head and shoulders over the second man.

“Hello,” I offered while waving.

The orc’s expression changed slightly, and he held up a hand, “K’dar”.

The smaller man looked up, and spat out a series of unintelligible sounds at me.

“So I’m gathering that they don’t speak English,” I said.

“The first one said hello,” said Shadow, scratching behind his ear.  “The second one said, I don’t think he speaks our language, Ko’tal.”

Both men were looking down at Shadow, who’s tail started wagging.  The orc knelt down and held out his hand, which Shadow walked over to.  A few moments later, Shadow was getting his ears scratched and I had a moment to talk to someone.

“Do they not speak English,” I asked Spivy.

“Heavens no, they speak the local dialect of Anoran,” said Spivy.

“How can they understand the dog,” I asked.

“I gave him a language shard,” replied Spivy.  “That grants the language skill, so you could understand him.”

“And you aren’t speaking English so how can I understand you,” I asked.

“Because I have the language skill as part of my class,” replied Spivy cutely.  “I’m here to help, after all.”

“Can you give me a language shard,” I said.

“I was a bit too helpful with Shadow,” said Spivy.  “I’m all out, but inside the town there is probably a solution to your problem.”

Shadow turned back to me, “Ko’tal is going into town, he said he would take you to the shard vendor.  They have cheap language shards.”

I nodded and waited while several more buschells of herbs were loaded onto Ko’tal’s cart.

“His job is to take the herbs from the field to a man in the town who will squish them up into potions,” said Shadow.  “I said that sounds really boring, and Ko’Tal agreed with me, but it has to be a thinking person so the load doesn’t get stolen.”

“Can he understand you right now,” I asked.

“Nope,” replied Spivy, cutting off Shadow.  “The shard lets you speak one language at a time.  Mind you, if you spend enough essence you can understand several at once, especially if they are similar.  You speak English, which is super rare.   When Shadow is speaking to you, I doubt anyone will spend the essence to listen in.”

That was lucky, though fit with what I knew about my map shard.  If I wasn’t focused on it, I might as well not even have it and I could easily miss stuff if I wasn’t spending a lot of essence that I might need elsewhere.

When his cart was loaded, he lifted the oversized not quite wheelbarrow on its two massive wheels and started pushing it into town.  As long as the cart was reasonably balanced, pushing it was no big chore for the orc.  Shadow ran next to the cart and Spivy hunkered down in my pocket for a nap.  The path into town only took us a few minutes to cross until we arrived at the town proper.

Darven proper was a walled town.  The wall was made entirely of trees that looked like they were stripped of branches and driven into the ground before being tied to the adjacent trees.  The airship mast was still visible right until you got up to the wall, but aside from that you couldn’t really see much inside.

Ko’tal walked right through the gate and waited patiently with Shadow.  I moved to follow and a burly dwarf stuck out his hand and gestured towards the front of a short line of other people.

“You’re new,” he said in a faint German accent.

“You can understand me,” I replied.

“Da,” he said simply.  “I have the language skill as I am the gate guard.  I need to be able to understand everyone, even though I don’t recognize your language.”

“It's English,” I replied.  The dwarf nodded and wrote that down.

“Good enough, I’ll be letting you through now, just walk through the detector,” said the dwarf, stepping aside so he was standing next to an equally large second dwarf who looked decidedly less friendly.

“What’s that detect for,” I asked, stepping forward to the edge of the detector.

“Fairies,” replied the gate guard.

“What,” I asked, turning around and looking for an escape route.  There was just enough traffic here, and I was missing Shadow, so that me just running off was going to be really bad.

“You didn’t check the dog,” I said.

“That was an animal,” replied the gate guard curiously.

I relaxed as I saw Shadow panting on the other side and realized what happened.  Obviously Spivy hopped onto the dog when he was nearby and went in with him to avoid the detector.  She wouldn’t do something so brain damaged as to try to come in with me, through the fairy detector.

Stepping towards the ring, I glanced down at my pocket which should have been empty only to see a tiny arm in a green jerkin, stretching.  The person behind me in line I’d effectively cut, a dour looking elf, was giving me the stink eye.

I was just going to have to bolt as soon as the detector went off, there might have been a way to get through alive.  As I stepped forward through the large iron ring that was tall enough for a man to walk through, I waited for the signal.

Then the elf pushed me the rest of the way through before storming passed me muttering something.

For a bare instant I held there, waiting to get tackled or something but I glanced back and the gate guard was making a shooing motion.  I walked over to Shadow and Ko'tal.

Shadow was scratching himself, but stopped and said, "Do not be afraid, chum.  You do not need to be afraid of a vacuum cleaner unless it is turned on.  That's when the angry monster inside will get you."

"Turned on," I said.

"The elf said that everyone knows the rings are broken," said Shadow as Ko'tal continued pushing towards the center of the town.  I groaned and glanced over at the dwarven guard with the language skill.  He was already talking to his friend in a language I couldn’t understand and obviously not paying any more attention to the weirdo, who was me.

With no further ado, I walked into town.

Davren's insides were much like any historical village I'd seen, with the exception of the four story tall mast that was nearly in the middle.  I saw what must be a church next to it, but while that building was more grand it lacked the height of the mast.

The mast looked a bit like an overbuilt watch tower.  The lower two floors were all stone, and then there was a two story stout wooden tower built on top of that foundation.  Four large metal rings were spaced around the tower, and I guessed that they were anchor points for the airship.  Further, there was no place to land so the airship must be suspended over the mast while it loaded and unloaded cargo.

The town's warehouses and granaries were conveniently located as close to the tower as possible.  I didn't see how they loaded up goods, but the size of the stairway up the tower was insufficient for large cargo so there must be another method.

Beyond that was the town's market.  Davren was only a few hundred people, and their market was not expansive but I could see at least a dozen different shops as we walked down the main road towards it.

The main road was cobblestone, but as I looked down the side streets I noted all of them were simply dirt.  The houses were wood and stone, with some sort of plaster making up the walls.  The roofs were a mix of thatch and slate, but all one or the other with few exceptions.

That was what you expected a fantasy village to look like, so I started looking for the differences.  There were streetlights that were all off at the moment except for one.  A local wearing what looked like a welder’s mask was working on it.  The light was blindingly bright even in the light of day.  The worker pulled out what appeared to be a monster core causing the light to dim before placing another monster core into a socket on the lamp post.  The light suddenly turned on and was significantly less bright than before.

He pulled a lever and the light suddenly shut off.

The technician took the spent core and dropped it into a small box of other cores before walking down the street and out of sight.

“They get brighter?” I asked.

“To make an arcane lamp work, they need to feed it light mana.  That invariably turns the core into a light aspect, which amplifies the effect.  However, the powers that be don’t want aspected cores available,” said Spivy unhappily.  “The local shardsmith probably makes a good income cleansing them.”

“Are aspects bad,” I asked.

“They are instrumental for people to gain classes.  If your government is based on people doing what you want, they should be avoided,” said Spivy as we suddenly stopped.

Ko'tal pointed into a shop.  He yelled something to the proprietor inside who walked out.

"I need a language shard," I said.

The shopkeeper stopped looking at the orc and started looking at me.

"Wat?"

"I need a language shard," I said.

"One more time."

"A language shard, I need one," I said.

"Wow, you certainly do, I'm Bogan, please come in," said the shopkeeper.  He was a hefty fellow with expressive black eyebrows and a wrinkled forehead.  I followed him into the shop, where there were a variety of crystals displayed prominently.  This was the kind of place I'd avoid if I was back on Earth, but here this was a shard shop.

"How do you understand me," I asked.

"Merchant class has language as a skill," replied Bogan.  "Mind you, I'm doing a pretty intense burn to keep up with your strange language.  You aren't from around here."

"No, I've traveled pretty far," I said and the merchant nodded.

"Well, I was getting a new shard built up and it is just about ready," he said, causing a shard to appear in his palm.  "You are lucky, the Duke offers these at a discount so it will only cost 60 silver."

I had three gold and some change that Shadow had given me so I pulled out the 60 silver from my inventory.  That still felt weird.  I basically concentrated and the money appeared in my palm.

Handing that over, the merchant handed me the shard, which was still warm.

"How does one make a language shard," I asked as I slotted the item.

"If you have a skill, you can impart that skill to a blank shard," said the merchant.  "All merchants get the language skill by default, so I made a language shard.  I try to keep a few of them around."

I wasn't sure if I should be grossed out about that or not.  The shards just vanished when you slotted them, they didn't sink into your flesh or something like that.  I mentally decided that they went somewhere strange and wonderful, and taking someone's shard was not gross.

Despite what I'd seen Spivy do.

Powering the language shard used most of my essence to the point where my map quality seriously degraded.  Running just the language shard was taking me to a medium burn, and that was going to get annoying quickly.

"Does it always use this much essence," I asked.

"Heavens no, you just don’t know our language at all," said the Bogan as he walked over to the counter and put the silver into the till.  "The shard can let you understand a language you don't know, but it also teaches you the language at the same time.  After a while the essence cost of the language will drop to zero and you can just speak it without the shard."

That was incredibly useful.

"Mind you, it can take several months depending on how obscure the language is," continued Bogan.

There was always a catch.

"So what other shards do you sell," I asked looking around.

"I have a variety of shards being made all the time," said Bogan as he showed me the various cases.  Most were decidedly underwhelming.  While the cases were set up like a jewelry shop, the shards were pretty much uniform in shape, though I didn't know if that was because that was how shards looked naturally or Bogan was unimaginative.

There were shards for hoeing, planting, and even a few cores that granted you classes like farmer, or lumberjack.  I didn't see any cores that were useful in combat, even tangentially.

"Of course the lumberjack core has been carefully crafted to only be useful against trees," said Bogan as examined that one for a moment.

"No striking cores," I asked.

Bogan looked shocked, the eyebrows really helped, "Sir, this is a licensed establishment, of course we don't have any illegal cores."

"Sorry," I said quickly.  "I was just making sure.  I do have some cores to sell, if you are interested."

"That depends, I of course will not deal in any illegal cores," he said.

I considered that before carefully replying, "Are Fizard cores illegal?"

Bogan relaxed somewhat, "No, those are perfectly legal and worth 30 silver."

"I have a blank one too," I said.

The merchant perked up at that, "That's more like it, blank cores are worth 50 silver."

"Why is a blank core worth more than another core," I asked.

"I have to cleanse the core of its imprint before I can do anything with it," said the shard merchant.  "With a blank core, I can just knapp it into shards and sell it.  If I need to, I can also have a class imprinted on the core."

The class cores were kept in a separate case, but as I looked carefully I realized there was just a hint of dust around the case.  I realized class cores must not sell very often, and why would they.  You'd need one, and I needed to get one that wasn't lumberjack.

"So how do you make a class core," I asked.

"Pretty much the same process as a skill shard," replied Bogan.  "You take the core and imprint the class from the user.  Mind you, after the orb is imprinted you need a shardsmith to work off the rough edges or you are going to have a bad time, in case you were thinking of doing it  yourself."

"Perish the thought," I said.

"Seriously," replied Bogan.  "I can increase experience gains by 10% in any of my classes and reduce essence consumption of all class skills by 5%.  Those benefits add up quickly."

"That would be nice," I said.

"And if you want any custom class features, you need a shardsmith to add them to the core unless you want to learn them the hard way," said Bogan.  "I'm a mechant, but I'm also a shardsmith.  All of those skill are on my Merchant(Shardsmith) class orb."

That would have been helpful, except that he wasn't going to add the skills I wanted.  I looked through the rest of his skill shards, and none of them seemed useful to me.  There was an appraisal skill, but that cost 3 gold and I wasn't sure if that was worth it or not.  Spivy was sleeping and not all that helpful.

Just then a man walked in, holding Shadow by the collar.

"Is he yours," asked the man.

"Yes," I said, saying bye to Bogan and stepping out into the market square where everyone was going about their business.

"He just ate 6 sausages," said the butcher, whom I understood.  "I could call the sheriff."

"How much," I asked.

"12 silver," replied the butcher.

I paid and the butcher left, but not after banning me from his store.

"So, you ate every small animal from the goblins to town," I said.

"That is true," replied Shadow, who was too full to feel guilty.

"And then we got to town and you ate more," I asked.

"The sausages smelled good," replied Shadow.

They did smell good, and I supposed I hadn't eaten anything.  I walked over to a merchant selling something that looked like a bacon stuffed donut.  I bought two, and offered one to Shadow.

We sat and ate under the shadow of the Mast near a large old style bulletin board, Shadow still hungry enough to eat despite gorging himself earlier.  "I don't understand it'' I said , as I finished chewing a bite.  "How did you get caught?  You are supposed to be a ninja."

"A poop ninja," said Shadow.

"Just a regular, easy to catch, ninja," I said.  “You were sneakier than that back on Earth.”

"He said he had a skill that let him catch thieves, and I was thieving," said Shadow.  "One moment I'm all hiding and not getting caught."

"Then?"

"I was not hiding and getting caught," said Shadow sadly.  His tail moved between his legs, and it should.  Imagine a ninja getting caught by a simple butcher.

I tore off a chunk of donut and slipped it into my pocket.  A moment later the bacon on the donut flew out and Shadow snatched it from the air before it hit the ground.  Spivy yawned.

"Oh good, we aren’t in jail yet," she said, and took a bite of donut.

"You are a terrible guide," I said.

"That's why I quit," she replied.  "So when does the airship leave next for Arden?"

"Six days," I said, reading the sign on the mast.  The language shard allowed me to read as well, and there were signs everywhere with lettering that I thought were interpretive art.  The letters didn't change, I could just read them now and that was kind of jarring.  If I let the essence level I was spending slip suddenly nothing made sense.

The local language was as logographic as it was syllogistic, meaning that they used pictures and characters that represented chunks of a word rather than a language like English that was an alphabetic language, meaning that it just used letters.

The symbols for the Elven Dominion were easy enough to follow even without the language shard  now that I knew what it meant.  It was a large elven ear with a crown around it.  There was a ship leaving for Dominus, a city in the dominion, two days hence, and then not again for a month.

Other routes were weekly, and only a few days didn’t have an airship coming or going, but in all the traffic was about once per day and the pickup time was always in the morning.

“This is a valley, airships only fly about 100 feet or so over the ground and you don’t want to leave the valley when it is dark,” said Spivy.

“Because they might hit a mountain,” I asked.

“Monsters, the nearby mountains are full of monsters,” said Spivy pointing to one of the nearby mountains with a very obvious cave in it, with charred trees nearby.

“Dragon,” I asked.

“Yes, but dragons tend to leave people alone if people leave them alone,” said Spivy.  “It doesn’t  hurt that  your races amount to … chicken nuggets to them?”

“That’s the second or third time you’ve said a term from my world, how are you managing that,” I asked.

“That’s easy, as part of my system fairy bond with you I’m able to pick off some concepts from your world,” said Spivy fluttering to eye level and continuing to talk, “So if I say something to you, the bond will try to translate that into a concept from your language.”

“So you guys don’t have chicken nuggets,” I asked.

Spivy chewed on that word for a moment, “  We have those.  They are called gappa, which are just bite sized hunks of chicken.  When I said that, the bond processed it and called them chicken nuggets.”

“Good to know,” I said looking back over at the board.  “So the tickets are two crowns?”

"That’s an Arden coin, it is worth about 2 gold," said Spivy.

“They use different coinage,” I asked.

“Arden is in a different country than here, so yes,” said Spivy.  “You can trade coins for weight, Arden’s god is the god of commerce so their are considered the standard for merchants.”

“But the locals don’t use that,” I asked.

“They aren’t merchants,” replied Spivy.  “Plus the local Duke pays a licensing fee to mint coins with his likeness.”

“They’ve been taking my coins,” I said.

“Your coins were from goblins who stole them locally,” said Spivy and I relaized this was going to be like a trip to Europe pre Euro.  Every nation was going to have it's own currency, and every moneychanger was going to take a cut.

If I wasn’t looting the money from monsters, I’d have been outright upset.

"So four gold each,” I said, deciding it wasn’t worth the trouble.

"If they find me we aren't leaving, and Shadow doesn't count," said Spivy, who dared to poke her head out and then instantly fell back into my pocket.  "This place still sucks."

"We don't have four gold," I said.

"Well, how do you feel about picking cornups," asked Spivy.  "They pay like 50 silver a day, so in 6 days you should be all set."

"Cornups," I asked.

"They are a kind of vegetable with little knobs on them," replied the fairy.

"That sounds terribly boring," said Shadow.  "For Max."

"Aren't you going to help," I said.

"No, I don't have to pay for passage," said the unfaithful dog.  “Besides, I do not like airplanes.”  Shadow snorted when I looked at him.

"I didn't come here to do manual labor," I groaned, causing Spivy to laugh  "Is there anything else?"

"She seems desperate," said Shadow as a young woman walked up to the board and pulled off two notices and replaced them with one.  Shadow walked over and looked at it before coming back as the woman walked off.

"What did it say," I asked after a minute.

"Adventurer needed, quest available at adventuring guild," said Shadow.  "Pays 2 gold."