Materia Book 1: A Survivalist's Guide

“Verily! and well.. Nope it’s too early for that. We wake up early after killing the skeletons, again. They were already dead but now they aren’t moving. We need to assault the slaver encampment. The smartest strategy would be to kill the ones that are still sleeping, or the ones that just finished a night watch. If we get discovered we free the slaves from their cages to cause a distraction, that should give us time to… wait Adora where are you going? My friends, I have come up with a brilliant plan! I will use my excellent vocabulary to articulate just why they should release the slaves to us instead of making them slave away forever. I sprint down the hill, my sharp wit and sharper tongue at the ready. First I prepare with some cunning magic and disguise myself as one of the large folk. I go to the massive mountainous monstrous captain and implore with my fastidious reasoning that they don’t need these slaves anyway… Which worked! Not very well, but fear not because I used some magic to bewitch the captain into selling me all of them for a steal of four gold! It would have gone swimmingly if not for that pesky guard with a very "convenient" letter detailing to kill us all. Whoops.. Time to jump into action I suppose. I use my staff to leap over their makeshift wall. Inside I see the slaves weren’t in cages at all. Just a waist high fence. They also outnumber their captives like 10 to one. Cowards couldn’t even try to save themselves. Why are we saving them again? Whatever. I employ my usual strategy of kicking up dirt and fighting blind. Most people are really bad at sensing movement in a dirt cloud. Except their boss or whatever doesn’t seem to have that problem as he hits me in the face with a mace couple of times. Ouch. I think I hear the sound of other combat around me but It’s hard to tell. Hope I’m not the only one in the middle of this chaos. I’m back! I misty step away from the creatures that are asking for my head and appear inside the short fence locking the slaves in the pen. I go to unleash them upon the wild to save themselves but realize the lock is on the other side. Oh well time to tell them to just flee instead. They easily careen over the fence leaving just me and some creatures with hate in their heart. They breath horrible breath upon my face and I am hit with slashing pain as I collapse to the ground dead… My smokescreen goes down and I see everyone is getting the shit kicked out of them. This went about as well as I expected it to go honestly. Azadeem fell out of the sky, Adora is clearly dead, Jack is casting spells now? And Gearforge is, well, Gearforge is still doing really well actually. Go figure. Not sure if I’m going to hold on much longer though. Didn’t expect this to be the way I would die, figured I’d get eaten by one of those giant monster lizards. Just kidding, I’m alive bitches! I think however with horrible fiends looming over me that it’s best to play dead instead. I use my into theatre class and exceptionally play the part of a dead person. My plan comes to fruition and they are none the wiser. But one pf those misserable fucks steals all my gold! I dash up and try to kill him but he gets away with my hard earned hoard. Whatever I guess I’ll just kill the others instead. Impressively. I’m alive, Adora is alive, and all but one of the slaves is alive too. Now we got like 40 extra mouths to feed, and I’m certain none of them will help with that. We decide to rest here for the day and set out in the morning. One of the would be slaves, Alan, a carpenter, mentions seeing an empty castle on the mountains. Sure enough there is an empty castle. Why is there an empty mountain castle? If I had to guess, I would say it has something to do with the undead roaming in the night. I don’t know, maybe we will check it out tomorrow, but for now we should rest. I sleep like a baby but am still exhausted by morning fall. We find rock creatures staring at us making strange clicking noises. I try to learn their language but it doesn’t click so I use magic instead. Azedeen is determined to get one of their tiny lizard things and appeals to them by clicking like a mad woman. Unfortunately they also think she’s mad and want to cart off to the rock mental ward. I step in and perform for them, clicking away and they give Azdeen a companion. Mission accomplished. Ok so now Azadeem has a monster lizard pet I guess. I don’t really care. What are we doing? We have 40 people that would be dead in a day without us to take somewhere. Are we taking the castle? Are we going back to the refugee camp? Are we exploring where the undead came from? We should really make a decision. What do you think Jack? I dunno, what makes you think I have any idea what's going on? I have broken ribs!”