Origin of Grebthar's Day

I sat calmly at the end of the long table in the inn.  Now that the violence was over the place was kind of quaint.  I glanced over at Badgelor but the little guy was draped over the end of the table all tuckered out from eating.

“You can restore hit points from eating massive piles of food,” I said, shaking my head at the little badger.

“That’s a badger’s promise,” grinned Badgelor.  “A War Badger can either take the path where food heals your injuries, or you can eat anything!  And I like hit points!”

“Who doesn’t,” I grinned, rubbing my hand through Badgelor’s soft furry belly as it converted half a cow into a full load of hit points.  He would have preferred to lay near the fireplace, but those beasts had damaged it so badly that the innkeeper hadn’t been able to light it.

“Just goes to show how much monsters lower the property value,” I quipped.  The ‘princess’ frowned, she was beautiful enough to even look good while frowning.

“Monsters are monsters,” stated the princess firmly, “They are a force of nature and it is my responsibility to deal with them.”  She tried to look stern, but failed then finally added, “still, thank you for your assistance.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” I replied.

“From you, I’d expect no less,” shot back Leia with a grin.  She was gorgeous when she was in her stern mode on the rare moments she could manage it.  She was typically bubbly and happy, which befitted a princess I supposed.  She thought of me as a friend, which sucked.  Leia saved all the love and affection for the jerk and he was of course out searching for more of the hard-to-track beasts.

“Toomen, you doing alright,” I asked turning back to more immediate matters.  The poor cleric looked absolutely terrified, which he should have been given that he only weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet.

“Like, that was the scariest thing I’d ever seen,” replied young Toomen.  He was the latest acquisition to the group.  Leia’s sidepiece had found him in a temple and more or less drug him along for the ride, much to the young man’s chagrin.  Sidepiece was of course the system’s term for whatever he actually was.  It probably meant consort or something similar, but I had long ago given up trying to figure out what the system meant.

“Ordinal is weird,” I said softly and Leia ignored me as she usually did.

“You will get used to it,” stated Leia as she began to unwrap her long brown hair.  She was out of battle mode now so that meant the jerk was probably pretty sure that the monsters were all gone.

“Like, I don’t want to get used to it, I want to stay in my temple, man,” stated Toomen sheepishly.  He didn’t much care for getting chased around by monsters, like a sane person.

“Ron’t Rorry Roomen,  Rile Ro-tect Roo!” grinned Badgelor sitting up on his haunches.  I always found it odd when Badgelor spoke, and of course, the Lord of the Badgers didn’t want himself to appear as anything other than the leader of all of his people and sounding like scooby doo was certainly out of the picture.

Toomen nodded.  He and Badgelor actually got along, it was Badgelor’s naturally protective nature and Toomen’s near inexhaustible ability to get in trouble in so far as I could figure it out.  I was actually a touch jealous of Toomen, but Badglor was my companion and I doubted anything would ever break that bond.

The mayor of the village strode into the inn while I was contemplating.  He was a typical frontier mayor, which is to say a former adventurer who thought he could carve out his retirement in the wilderness with his wife.  He had buried her the day before we arrived.  The mayor looked directly at me as he approached, ignoring the ‘princess’.

“Thank you for saving the town,” stated the mayor.

I nodded, I still regretted taking the title and all the obligations that it came with but now was not the time for that.  I was an adventurer now, and this is what I did.

“We are planning on holding a day’s worth of celebration for your actions,” stated the mayor as he continued ignoring the princess.  Outside of the valley, Leia’s dubious claim to the throne was even less credible.  She wasn’t even old enough to be Queen yet so instead, she held to the fiction that she was out serving her father on a diplomatic mission.

Of course, her father was a bandit and his throne was built up due to an ancient highway that he patrolled regularly.  I supposed he was shifting between the point of being a bandit king and a real king, but as far as her father was concerned that hadn’t happened yet and he wasn’t trying to change anyone’s mind.  Leia, on the other hand,  was actually trying to find a Crest to bolster her claim to the throne despite all the political ramifications that would entail.  Heck, if she found it she might even be the real first Queen of Falcon.

“Falcon’s Crest,” I chuckled.

The mayor didn’t seem to notice my non-sequitur and continued talking about their feast, which sounded quite impressive actually.

“A parade,” I asked.

“It is traditional here to have a parade,” stated the mayor.  Traditions, I was coming to accept, were an integral part of getting a city running normally without television.  If there was something you could go back to, there was something you could understand.  These people needed a lot of understanding at this point and something they looked forward to would achieve that.

“Well, that sounds like a great tradition, I love parades,” I said, nodding at the mayor.  I doubted they had enough people left for a proper parade, but if it made them happy.  The mayor nodded and smiled slightly.

I did it again.  This nonsense was tricky.  I liked parades, which meant that everywhere I went and saved the day were likely going to have parades anymore as the rumor circulated not that I like parades, but that I NEEDED one whenever I accomplished anything.

Like saving a town from shadow touched monsters, which is all I ever did anymore.  Fucking Dark Overlord.

“I don’t suppose the mighty King of Helena will be helping us,” challenged the mayor.  That is what Leia styled her father. Her father did not.  Further, we were in Vine Hill, which was quite a bit outside of the territory that Leia’s father patrolled, and the reality was that no matter how much she wanted to help she simply didn’t have many resources.  Moreso, people seldom walked around carrying the massive amounts of supplies that a city would need.

I bristled slightly at that.  This mayor was being a dick to Leia unnecessarily.  She was a breath of fresh air in this horrible place.  Then again, I knew her father so I only bristled slightly.  Her father was a dick in every sense of the word and would probably have used this as an excuse to annex the town if he could manage it.  Also, I was being generous with annex, loot would have probably been a better word.

“I have candy,” said Leia after a moment.  “We usually pass it out to the kids after a parade.”

“That sounds really nice, I’m glad the kids will have candy,” I said, biting out each word to the mayor, “Only a fool would ask for more than that.”

The mayor, to his credit, realized he stepped in it and took my olive branch with an alacrity that demonstrated why his town had been so successful up till this point.  “The children will love it!”

Badgelor raised his head, he had a soft spot for kids.  Specifically, he had a soft spot for kids who were in danger.  He whispered to me in badger, “Did we get all of the shadow monsters?”

“I’m pretty sure,” I replied, “And besides if we didn’t, all the houses are trapped to protect themselves against monsters.”

“But there are kids,” stated Badgelor firmly, “That won’t do at all.  The monsters might sneak into their burrows and kill them while they sleep.”

I was about to argue with him, but Badgelor had that slight tremble when he thought of the Dark Overlord’s minions sneaking into burrows where families of little badgers were sleeping all snuggled up safely with their mothers.

I was going to kill the Dark Overlord for what he did to baby Badgelor.

Instead, I said, “Obviously you should check the town to ensure the traps are top quality.”

Leia rolled her eyes and turned to look at me, with how common War Badgers were lots of adventurers spoke their language, “Are you sure about that? Badgelor isn’t that good at finding traps.”

“He’ll do fine, besides I’m certain if you do get caught by any traps you can just raid their iceboxes for a quick snack to get your hit points back up,” I said.

“That would be stealing,” said the Lord of the Badgers, horrified.

“It will be alright if you are checking their traps,” stated the mayor.  “I’m confident that everyone in the town will sleep far more securely knowing that their children are safe and that they gave their diligent protector a light snack.”

I’d argue violent protector was more accurate.

War Badgers were a particularly violent animal companion, and young Badgelor was far more so than normal.  He still had a lot of issues to work out, but then again so did I and the little bugger had saved my life when we first met so I owed him.

Badgelor nodded sharply and then crawled up onto my shoulder and spoke earnestly, “Most of those kids lost everything when the monsters came, do you think you could help me fix some of their toys?”

I nodded, there was nothing else I could do.  He must be worried, Badgelor didn’t like sitting on shoulders.  I didn’t have a skill for that so I’d have to check with Michael if there was a repair toys skill as I doubted my crafting covered it.  That felt like cheating though, but I wasn’t going to be able to take another ‘useless’ skill.  Maybe there was a general repair skill I could utilize to cover it.  My skill list was nearly full and I needed to get to level 60 and remort to really expand my skills list.  That was going to be years.

Leia eyed me, she got suspicious whenever I thought about Michael, leading me to believe she had some sort of mind-reading skill.  “How did you know that this town would be in danger?”

“I’m Grebthar,” I replied.  “I always know where the danger is the greatest.”