Thursday, June 28, 2018, 8:30 PM Norfolk, VA

  I woke up this morning with a purpose. Sunrise set me to think about how I could help others, and realized that I could be doing more. I got Rex ready to go and decided that I could get a start on patrol for the community, deciding at first to go “undercover” and then to put on the mantle if it was needed. I decided that I would take a break after the morning hours to get some enchantment work done. I got dressed and placed a text to Jonathan to ask him for a favor for me, and that I’d drop by later. I got kitted out, fully set up for an encounter, and used my kote to change the shape and design of all my clothing.

  Leaving the storage unit after Rex was ready, and I had meditated, I went to immediately go get food. That was where the day started to get weird. I rode into the drive thru for Chick-fil-A, one of the only drive thru places open at this hour. Just as I was ordering a morning Spicy Chicken Biscuit, a pair of motorcycles pulled up behind me with the obvious nomenclature of the Warlocks. It is still a bit interesting to think about the incongruencies between the calling of “Warlocks” and the biker gang.

  I sure hope that there aren’t any Rangers, Paladins, or Wizards named organizations. My luck, I’ve come to a place where the Wizards are known to be sports enthusiasts or something else physical, and the Paladins have a reputation for underhanded fighting or something. I carefully listened as I slowly rode forward to the pick up window, and learned that they were going to deliver this material in some place called the Devil’s Kitchen or something similar. The other one laughed and said that he heard that this stuff was really scarce, and that he didn’t know who had paid for the stuff, but that it was going to make the gang a mint. I wondered if it was drugs or anything similar, and decided that I should probably stop them.

  I got my order and planned on following them from a distance after they left the restaurant, but things didn’t exactly go according to my plan. I started to ride a little distance away, when I figured out that they were following me. I figured that they must have caught on that I had overheard them. I made my way to a more secluded aley, trying to limit collateral damage. When I finally found one, I ducked in quickly and used the few scant seconds I had to cast Haste.

  I had just enough time after that to get off my bike and assume a posture that I assumed someone would take if they were about to be mugged by a pair of bikers. I guess they were a bit too taken in by the display because they advanced quickly enough and pulled out pistols as soon as they got into the alley. Once they were close enough, one of them spoke up, saying that it sucked that I overheard them, but that I couldn’t be allowed to potentially be a witness to what they were going to do. One of them lifted up their pistol to take aim and while they did, I quickly got in my stance, drew, and fired at the lead thug. I didn’t use any of my flashier abilities. I did however dump three bullets into the guy, acting like I was panicking, dropping them.

  His buddy isn’t quite as shell-shocked as other Warlocks or thugs that I had dealt with in the past, and managed to wing me in the chest. It wasn’t lethal, but it certainly hurt. I turned my attention to him, letting him think that I was more hurt than I actually was, and unloaded three rounds into him as well. With both of my assailants dropped, I quickly collected my rubber bullets, swept the area for any blood that could have come from me, and then went to check out their bikes. I found a grand in cash, more drugs, a sawed off shotgun, a couple of cheap cell phones, and a five pound block of material that was wrapped up.

  I grabbed the cash and the five pound block of material, got it in my bags, and used one of their cell phones to call the police, masking my voice to say that there was a shootout at the address on this phone, between two bikers. I rode off quickly to my storage unit, using whatever back alleys that I could, to get back there as secretly as possible. When I got back, I took the package out that was like five pounds and carefully got the item out of the package. I was EXTREMELY surprised when I saw what it was. It was a five pound ingot of Living Steel, at least what I recognized as it. I didn’t know how or where this material was found, but it looked and acted exactly like the metal that my revolver was made from.

  I thought about it and realized that this was a boon, that I could use this for more armor, along with the material from my revolver. This would put me at nine pounds of living metal and then I could use this as the underlayer. I remember the material that David Drake had told all of us about in the class, the “flexible boron carbide” that had been developed back where he was from, and I figured that I should reach out to S.H.I.E.L.D. and see what they might be able to find for me. I cast an Unseen Crafter spell to have it working on taking the block and my pistol, and set the crafter to disassemble the pistol, reforge all of the metal together, and start making the armor’s interstitial matrix layer, knowing that it would take the better part of three months just to finish that portion of it.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  I walked over to the other side of the tent’s central area to get all of my enchanting gear out and start to work on the next item that I need. I started to pull out the thistledown bedroll that I had had in my gear when I had gotten here. I started doing the stitching and summoned up another Unseen Crafter to help me with it. After an hour or so, I started the enchanting portion, infused the salt with magic, and started the full enchantment portion. This was something that I was still figuring out here, so it took me a fair amount of time to finish this particular item.

  At the end of the enchanting, almost a full eight hours, my thistledown bedroll was now enchanted with two functions. It will minimize the amount of sleep that I need to take every other day, and help me recover from injury faster. The second function was just something that would make it easier to deal with any injuries that I might end up recovering. With the cash, I decided to do something for the community. I had already made the arrangements with Jonathan earlier, so I decided to go catch up with him.

  Before I left, I loaded up the storage unit with another two more Unseen Crafter spells, focusing on the armor work. I wanted to get this equipment done and enchanted as soon as possible, so summoning and assigning two more of the crafters was a valid expenditure. Also, I figured that if I needed to, I could still make most of my defensive spells function. As I rode through the streets, my progress got stopped by some youngish teen. I normally wouldn’t mention this, except that when the kid turned around, they were wearing a t-shirt with my Verdigris alter-ego on it.

  The kid was geeking out about my e-bike and asked me where I had gotten it. I told him that I had gotten it from S.H.I.E.L.D. and that this was the only way I knew where to get one like it. The kid scoffed and said that S.H.I.E.L.D. was gone, and that I must be lying, before running off. I continued after a moment of reflection, and made my way to the building where Jonathan worked his “Day Job”. I didn’t have any issues getting there or waiting for him, until he got out.

  When Jonathan came out, he walked up to me and said that it was good that I had reached out to him, as he had had some information to pass on to me after we had dealt with whatever I had had. I pulled out the money that I had gotten from the thugs, the remaining jewelry that I had confiscated from the criminals, and most of the remaining cash. It totalled more than ten thousand in cash, and an unknown amount for the jewelry. Jonathan grabbed all of the assorted items, and asked if I just wanted this attached to my account.

  I thought about it, remembered the dreams, and decided that I should do something now to start helping others. I told him that I’d like for it to be put in an account and send a decent amount a day to some random charity or something that would help the people of Norfolk. Jonathan thought about it and said that he could arrange something like this, and asked if it had to be every day. I told him that I really needed it to be daily, and he thought about it for a minute before he said that he can manage it. I thanked him and asked him if there was anything that he might need me to help with, since I had just had to leave consistent daily employment with Bob’s.

  Jonathan asked me if something had happened to cause problems with me working there, so I told him that there were issues with magic and the like with some of the coworkers, and after an attempted robbery, it was judged that I might be drawing trouble to the place, which I can’t say that I blame them. Jonathan asked if I would be looking for more employment elsewhere. I shrugged and said that after I finished up a magic item or two more, and then I wouldn’t really have a need for a daily wage, with the exception of replenishment of my gear and the occasional lunches or dinners outside the base. I did mention that I could really use access to some specific materials for what I needed for my next suit of armor. Jonathan asked me what I needed and I handed him my short list of the Boron Carbide cloth, the Shear-Thickening fluid, and Boron Carbide powder.

  Jonathan looked at me with a smirk and asked me where I had encountered any of this. I told him that the person who taught me back on my old world had come from this world and had studies about it that he referenced when he made his own armor there. I told him how David Drake had shown us how he had initially made the items in the glazier place, and made his own Argon for the bath, and how he had managed to reproduce the conditions needed. Jonathan took some notes on his phone, and said that he’d get back to me with the cost of what all this was going to take. I thanked him and told him that I would be working on the base level and that I expected it to take a month or two to put everything together after I got the rest of the materials.

  Just before we were about to leave, Jonathan told me that he was writing up what I had been doing, and that I was going to have a visitor tomorrow. I had gotten on my bike while he was heading back into the office to get done what I needed to get done. I asked him who, and he said simply, The Captain. I didn’t know who he was talking about, but I needed to get back to get back to work. I headed back to the storage unit and when I got back in there, I immediately cast the Unseen Crafter spells, as many as I could, giving me a total of four working on the armor, leaving me a single available spell to cast a Page-Bound Epiphany, to learn more about the Captain, and mainly getting a lot about his WW2 exploits.

  1) Rolled an encounter with 2 Warlocks. Hardly worth the effort to do the combat analysis, but still did it.

  2) Rolled a downtime encounter of, I shit you not, Exotic Metal: A supplier offers to sell you a small amount of cold iron, mithril, or adamantine (up to 1,000 gp worth) at a 20% discount. You may spend Goods, Magic, or gp to pay for this metal. Well, since gp is a valid option, and gp might be found in an encounter, I just combined it with the rolled encounter. Also, at this point in the Marvel Timeline, Adamantium isn’t around in the MCU, and Vibranium didn’t make sense (when has Vibranium even been in the Commonwealth of Virginia? I don’t know if Cap ever even stepped foot there, let alone anyone from Wakanda). So I looked back into the possible MCU materials, and found Cogmium, a metal which is called “metal with a memory” which can change its shape back to the intended form, kind of like how Living Steel repairs itself, so the Warlocks were carrying almost five pounds of “Cogmium” in their saddlebags to deliver to someone out of state. That isn’t likely to cause problems down the way with the MCU, no not at all, Poindexter…

  3) Rolled an encounter with “Regular Citizens Blocking the Path.” Que the fans I guess.

  4) I pre-rolled for tomorrow and got an encounter at almost the same time as the meeting, so this will be interesting.

  Magic Item: Basically just a Heward’s Fortifying Bedroll + a Magic Bedroll.