Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.1      Finding her Feet

1.1.4    An Intriguing City

1.1.4.2  Innamorati

Ten minutes later, a small troop of cavalry cantered up, led by a captain. The captain's armour was more practical than fancy but, though no longer new, it had been well looked after. In a way, Kafana thought, the captain matched his armour. He was in his mid-thirties and had clearly seen his share of fighting, yet he still held himself well and his hair was neatly trimmed. Right then his sharp eyes were giving Alderney a rather pointed look and, though his face remained calm, a twitch at the corner of his mouth led Kafana to believe he was still deciding whether to be amused or annoyed by Alderney's antics.

“Does this young scamp belong to you?” he said, holding up three paper aeroplanes, reading “Boo!”, “Follow me to meet The Great Bandit Slayer, Flash the Mighty”, and “Aww, don’t be like that, I’m not hurting your wall, you can have cakes!”

Bulgaria bowed and then proclaimed: “Captain, it is my extreme honour to present to you the personal friend and ally of Lord Claudio Landi, the newly arrived Questing Spirit, Madame Kafana Sincero who, with the aid of her mighty companion Bungo the Flash, did not only slay 14 bandits and free 1 captive, but also brought 7 more to you alive to face the city’s judgement.

Wellington produced a document with the seal of House Landi upon it and the Captain nodded shortly:

“Forgive me for not introducing myself. I am Captain Lelio, of the Torello Watch. This is not the place for you to produce proofs of such claims. You will come with me to the gatehouse and we shall talk further there. Are any of you injured?”

The slight woman who had been beaten by the bandits and refused healing stepped forwards, and spoke in a soft voice.

“Captain, oh captain, if you cou” she stumbled, interrupting her request, and he was off his horse in an instant, catching her before she could fall. He was obviously quite high level and had put plenty of stat points into both strength and dexterity. He looked at her closely and said, far more gently: “Yes, I could” and lifted her up onto his horse in front of him, cradling her in his arms as they rode back to the gate.

On examining the city passes issued to them by Villa Landi and using an item to magically verify their authenticity, he asked a few questions about the ex-bandits, examined their new Cov’s pendants, and then declared that this was an ecclesiastical matter as well as a secular one, and they would all have to come with him to the Sanctum. He ordered two coaches to be made ready, detailed his tenente to take over charge of the gate and off they set. He seemed to be a decisive man, yet amusingly he got increasingly distracted. He couldn’t take his eyes off the waif, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. It didn’t surprise Kafana at all that the girl ended up in his arms again, rather than the carriage.

Tomsk: {Ahhh, to be in love, it is the finest thing}

Wellington: {They’ve only just met}

Tomsk: {It can happen like that.}

Alderney: {What would you know? You’ve only ever fallen in lust.}

Tomsk: {You wound me, little sister. I love from the depth of my heart. I would give my life for any one of them.}

Kafana: {You must have a very big heart, to fit so many loves in it. They do look happy, though. She keeps blushing. I don’t think you could remove her from his arms with a crowbar.}

Bungo: {I wouldn’t like to try. If he’s a high ranked guard in the Watch, we’re probably talking level 60, maybe higher. It also means he’s likely to have very high resists, so she’s not casting a charm on him. My guess is this is Plot with a capital ‘P’. They procedurally generate new quests, just as they do with the geology and other stuff. But given this world has just launched, no doubt XperiSense prepared some fun ones in advance. We’re probably just the first adventurers to do the bandit rescue, and turning up with her triggered this event. Mark my words, they are fated. It will be up to us to decide whether to help them, thwart them, or ignore it and leave it for a later party to encounter.}

Bulgaria: {I bet they won’t have predicted Kafana redeeming the bandits, necessitating church intervention. What will that do to their plot?}

Bungo: {They don’t script it, exactly. Instead they give key NPCs motives that will send them on an intersection course with certain other key NPCs. It creates lots of coincidences, but it lets you build up reputations with a few individuals who you get to know and like or hate, while having realistic sized city populations.}

Kafana: {Well I vote we try to aid her rather than thwart her or ignore her, and see where it leads. You did say they probably put work into this quest to make it fun.}

Wellington: {Free the minds and you change the world.}

Bulgaria: {Quite so}

Bungo: {She is a mind, albeit an artificial one, and we quite literally freed her.}

Alderney: {She’s cute. Let’s do it. Let’s help her change the world.}

Tomsk: {Unanimous.}

[You have started the Lovebirds quest chain.]

[You have completed a milestone on the Lovebirds quest chain: Beat the Bandits.]

[You have completed a milestone on the Lovebirds quest chain: Free the Captive.]

[You have completed a milestone on the Lovebirds quest chain: Escort to the City.]

[You discovered a new milestone on the Lovebirds quest chain: Save the Orphans.]

[Level 11 acquired. You have 10 unspent stat points. You have 10 unspent skill points.]

[Level 12 acquired. You have 21 unspent stat points. You have 11 unspent skill points.]

[Level 13 acquired. You have 33 unspent stat points. You have 12 unspent skill points.]

Kafana: {I’m nearly out of time. Can you look after Vessel Kafana, see what she wants to do with her downtime, and find her a place to stay and nice things to eat and wear? Oh, and tell her I’m trying my best to dream her, but in the meantime she can write me notes and I’ve left some stuff for her on a shelf in the inventory box. What new stuff would she like to see? I want to see stuff too, but has she any particular places in mind or things to do? Should she get a separate vote on whether to do the quest or do I have to vote for both of us?}

Wellington: {We’ll look after her as though she were you.}

Bulgaria: {The clue is in the name, I think. “Questing Spirits”. She supplied the body, you have to bear the responsibility of making the decisions about quests. Part of the reason I acted as a vessel, you know, wasn’t just to give you all space. I wanted to see how I was treated, and develop an understanding of their situation. I spent a lot of time, while Bungo kindly killed stuff to level me up, talking with Fra Mattheus about the threats to this world, how it works on a spiritual and ethical level, about the daily lives of the poor and the legal status of vessels, and many other things.}

Alderney: {Send me your recording of this gaming session, I’ll edit it with mine and everybody else’s and get it out there when I’ve got it cut down and polished. Can you send me Mary-Lynn’s contact card from your friends list?}

[Minion: time to return to arlife, Nadine]

{Got to go, send me a recording of your meeting, and I’ll watch it while at the bar. Oh, and try to find out what I should do with all those unspent skill points.}

{Tomsk: Shoo. Go see to your customers. They’d never forgive us if we delayed their lunch!}

She shooed. *flip*