Lance accelerated up to 15 mph (about 25 clicks). Even though he had seen the Techno-truck zipping along the roadway yesterday, he felt more comfortable keeping things to a moderately sedate pace. That way he would hopefully have more time to react to anything unexpected. He’d been poking along, wary as he’d ever been doing route clearance in the Stan looking for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), when he noticed something in the road ahead. It was only about 2 meters around and appeared flush with the road surface, and centered in the approximately 9 meter wide roadway. As he reached the spot, he saw that it was a set of runes, darker in color than the roadway, but perfectly integrated into the material like a natural discoloration in the stone. His ‘Omniglot’ gave him the sense of comfort and endurance in travel. He understood somehow that they made the roadway travel smoother and hold up under travel better, while at the same time, giving those traveling slightly greater stamina and more resilience to their vehicles.
?
??
?
He noticed that some of these runes were the same ones he had seen on the stone circle, even though there was some overlap in their meaning, they gave a distinct sense of purpose. As far as he could tell, this was this world’s version of enchanting or maybe rune-binding. He would have to see if he could learn more about the runes and their use when and if he managed to get settled into civilization. As he continued up the road, he saw these runes repeated about every 5 clicks. Just around the 3 hour mark, he pulled over to the side of the road, topped up his fuel tank using up around 2 gals, ‘Duplicated’ the fuel focusing on filling up the empty space in the can. He had myriad items he could be copying, however since he was currently traveling, keeping his fuel resources topped up seemed to be his best option. Hanging the can back on the camper, he stepped off the roadway to relieve himself, physically noticing the change in what he assumed was his stamina regen. Those runes were no joke! Grabbing a bottle of water out of the back of the camper he climbed back in the cab, started the truck and headed on down the road.
Now that he had firmly resolved that he was going to seek out civilization, most of his anxiety about it was gone. Things could still go pear-shaped, but that was a hard-coded rule of life, analysis paralysis (constantly looking at the options and the what-ifs) would get him nowhere. As one of his Platoon Sergeants had once told him, make a decision, even if it’s the wrong one. If bullets and artillery are flying and you’re frozen in indecision, you and possibly many others could die. He had determined that with his truck and gear, there was no way he was going to be able to blend in as a native, so he wouldn’t even try. In many of the stories that he read about fantasy transmigration, the main character was alway claiming amnesia as the reason for not knowing things. Lance decided that he would be forthright in telling people he wasn’t from this world, and knew almost nothing about it. Hopefully that wouldn’t bite him in the rear.
He’d only driven another few minutes, when he came around a bend in the road and saw what he believed was the caravan from yesterday moving up the road. He braked to a stop, wondering how to approach this first contact situation. Grabbing his binoculars off the dash, he scanned the caravan. There, still at the trail position was the open wagon with the little gnome-like man. He suddenly stood up on his wagon seat, turned around, and looked straight at Lance. Then he proceeded to energetically motion him forward. Lance eased off the brake and started forward at low speed. The caravan seemed to be moving around 2-and-a-half miles an hour (4 kph), so he approached at around 5 mph, closing the distance between them. As others in the caravan started to react to the approaching rumbling of Lance’s diesel pickup truck, the little man turned back to the front and was busy yelling something, while giving the universal sign to calm down (vigorously pushing his palms toward the ground). Lance could tell that his approach was quickly passed all the way up the line of the caravan, and they slowed to a stop. A large man, riding a large animal that looked like a cross between a llama and a draft horse, made his way back down the line. As he arrived next to the man standing on the wagon seat, he stopped and had a short intense discussion. Turning toward him,with an unreadable expression, the big man waved him forward. Shutting off his truck, Lance reached overhead and grabbed his 5.56 and opened the door. He wanted this meeting to go peacefully, but he wasn’t going to be caught in the middle of a conflict with his pants down. Taking a steadying breath, he climbed out of his truck and approached the two men at the wagon. Portraying all the confidence he could, trying to tap into his charisma bonus from ‘Missionary’, he walked up, gave a short bow and said “Good day”. Even though he spoke in English, his ears could tell that the sounds that traveled between them were foreign. Surprisingly, the big man who Lance figured was in charge, deferred to the little man and the gnome-like fellow gave a big smile and proclaimed, “Greetings Traveler, be welcome to our humble merchant caravan and the world of Hearth”! Somehow Lance could hear the capitalization of the word Traveler, and it wasn’t lost on him that he was also welcomed to the world.
“So you know I’m not from your world”, Lance asked. “Yes, yes”, replied the little man, “I felt the disruption in the energy, and even though it hasn’t happened for many hundreds of cycles, it has been described to those of us whose families are familiar with the phenomenon. Then when we passed you by yesterday, the forest let me know you were watching, and I could feel the remnant energy that you still carry on your person.” Lance would try to unpack the fact that the man spoke with or listened to the forest later. For now he continued, “And you’re not concerned that I’m a danger to you or the world?” As he said that, the big man’s posture shifted into what Lance could tell was a martial defensive stance. The little man responded, “No, no. In every one of the stories of Travelers, they always either bring change, or fight heroically to protect the people or the world. Only once were they a danger, and that was only to the bastard nobles who were suppressing and abusing the populace at the time.” The big man relaxed his posture and spoke up, “That is true. Every child grows up hearing stories of the impossible or heroic things that Travelers have done. Even though, no one has seen a Traveler for over a thousand cycles.” Lance accepted this information at face value for now, and decided that he would ask if he could travel along with the caravan. But before he did that, he couldn’t go on calling these two “big man” and “little man”, he needed to introduce himself. “Very well”, he said, “my name is Lance Raven, and I am a professional soldier in my world”. The big man replied, “Ah yes, where are our manners? I am Bj?rn Handlesmann, caravan master and trader, and this is Grimble Skogsjunker our hostler and physiker. Do you have any plans on what you are going to do or where you are headed?” “Well,” Lance replied, “I was hoping you would be amenable to me joining in with the caravan, at least until I could get my bearings on where and what to do.” “Most assuredly”, replied Bj?rn, “you may travel up front with me and I will endeavor to regale you with the Traveler stories that I can recall. Be welcome to the Hearth and Home Traders Caravan.” “Thank you very much for the welcome and the offer”, Lance said, “however my vehicle is very loud which would prevent us communicating unless you were riding in it with me, and it produces a byproduct smoke that would most likely be very disturbing to everyone else following close behind. If it’s agreeable to you, I will follow along behind, and perhaps if you aren’t too busy when we stop for the evening, you can tell me some of those stories. You do stop for the night, don’t you? I saw no evidence of a camp between where you passed me by yesterday and where I caught up with you today.” “Yes, of course, that will be a splendid solution”, Bj?rn shot back. “As to our night camp, yes we will stop short of dusk. Evidence of our campsite is near non-existent when we have one of the forest-folk along. Then I will leave you in Grimble’s capable hands and look forward to this evening.”
As Bj?rn turned and walked away, Lance tagged him with an ‘Identify’
Fjallar - HP 270; Disposition - Approachable
Grimble raised his eyebrows and asked, “What exactly was that? I could feel the change in the world energy.”
Lance replied, “Oh, that was just me using a skill I have, called Identify. It lets me get a minor sense of something. This was the first opportunity I had to try it on a person. What’s a Fjallar?” “Fascinating”, Grimble almost shouted, “I have never heard of a skill like that. When you have some time, you will have to tell me how you came to have it, if you will. On the topic of Fjallar, I will leave the details to Bj?rn if he wishes to discuss them, but they are the result of the defilement of a human woman by the monstrous J?tunn. What do you see if you identify me?” Lance activated ‘Identify’ while focusing on Grimble. “Identify says that you are a Tufte with a health pool of 180, and your disposition towards me is benevolent”, he stated. “Simply amazing”, Grimble whispered. “Well”, he said, “It looks as if we are once again on the move. I look forward to setting up camp this evening.” Lance noticed a slight mischievousness on Grimble’s face as he said that.
Lance hurried back to his truck, climbed in, and fired up the engine. Although he didn’t need four-wheel drive on this perfect roadway, he shifted into 4-wheel low in order to be able to crawl along at the caravan’s speed, hopefully without having to ride the brakes. Creeping along between 2 and 3 miles an hour, Lance devoted some of his attention to thinking about many of the things he’d come to know about Hearth. First, was that there was history of this happening, here on Hearth, before. He couldn’t be absolutely positive, but assumed that previous Travelers had also come here from Earth. He chalked the similarity in names up to chance, considering the likelihood of an ancient traveler speaking English and somehow naming the world was slim to none. The next thing he pondered on, was there was definitely influence from one world to another. He wasn’t sure if it was one-way, or bidirectional, but the system using Latin-esque terminology while some of the monsters and peoples he had encountered were identified with Nordic terms, and the runes he had encountered looked very similar if not exactly like the runes he had encountered in viking and celtic style tattoos throughout his service. Futhark or something along that line, he believed. Lance knew that besides being granted as a boon, he could “verify” his proficiency in a known skill and gain that skill, and that he could also “create” a new skill. As demonstrated by his ‘Analyze’ and ‘Identify’ skills. As receptive as this group was, Lance needed to avail himself of their hospitality and learn as much about the world and its skills, and ‘magic’ as possible. By the growl and feeling in his stomach, Lance determined it was about lunch time. He should be due for another round of ‘Duplicate’ right about now. He stopped and shut off the engine and stepped down out of the truck. Everything looked pretty clear all the way around. As he looked back up to the caravan, he noticed Grimble hurrying back toward him while his wagon continued along up the road by itself. The tufte reached his side, and asked if anything was wrong. Lance assured him that everything was fine, and he was just going to relieve himself and grab a snack for lunch. The small man was satisfied with that, and told Lance not to tarry too long, for they were entering into somewhat more dangerous territory, and turned and hurried back toward his wagon. Lance went to the back of the camper and climbed in. He grabbed a banana, a small bag of corn chips, and a pack of peanuts for lunch. Instead of duplicating his fuel, he decided to duplicate some beverages to share around the camp tonight. He had a case of beer that he had already busted into, and there were 22 left in the carton. His math told him that 20 twelve ounce beers would hit his 15 pound limit, but that wouldn’t account for the weight of the cans. Pulling 3 more cans out of the carton, he focused on it and activated his skill. Apparently that was pushing the very limit of his weight limit, and the skill almost pushed back. Suddenly, there was another partial carton of beer, and he got a notification. “DING”
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Class Skill ‘DUPLICATE’ has increased by 1 Level
Focusing on his skill in his status, Lance saw that his cool down for the skill had now decreased to 2 hours. By the time they stopped for camp, he expected to have a little bit of a host gift in the form of dinner and drinks. He set out a box of chips that he had that had 64 bags of a mix of corn chips, tortilla chips, cheese curls, and sour cream and onion chips. He’d make one of those on his next stop. Grabbing a grocery sack of hamburger buns he set those out too. After that he should be able to use his skill at least one more time to duplicate the 12 pound box of hamburger patties he had in the freezer. Hustling back up to the driver’s door, he climbed in, started the truck back up and headed up the road to catch up with the caravan.
He had goofed around with the food and drinks for about 10 minutes, and they were about five or six hundred meters up the road. They appeared to be stopped, and embroiled in some kind of controversy with a group of individuals blocking their way. Reminded of some of the insurgent attacks during his deployment, Lance intently started looking to the trees left and right of the caravan as his ‘Danger Sense’ started pinging his awareness. He was able to pick out a couple of individuals who were moving a little too much and breaking their camouflage. He stopped quickly and shifted the truck from low range to high, then started moving again, hoping he would arrive in time. Just before Lance could catch up to the unsuspecting caravan, he saw those hidden in the tree line break cover and rush toward the roadway. Punching the gas for the last 50 meters or so, he barreled up to the tail end of the caravan and then locked up the brakes while laying on the horn (which he had upgraded a few years ago to be a massively loud train whistle). The noise disturbed the caravans draft animals somewhat (not nearly as much as Lance would have expected), but not nearly as much as it disrupted the rush of enemies from the side. Slamming the truck into park, he bailed out the driver’s door while grabbing his rifle. There appeared to be about 15 people on each side of the road, not counting how many were blocking the caravan’s advance. Lance’s first shot took one of the attackers right underneath his upraised arm, as he prepared to chop down on one of the caravaneers with a bearded hand-axe. Quickly shifting, he moved up the caravan acquiring targets, and eliminating them with precision and speed. He knew he hadn’t been able to see all the attackers on the right side of the caravan as he moved up the left, and hoped the caravaneers had been able to hold their own. Of the 15 on the left, he had personally downed 11 of them, and 7 on the right. When he reached the front of the caravan, he saw Bj?rn,and two other men with drawn swords, along with Grimble standing over the bodies of 6 of what Lance could only assume were bandits. The men all stiffened at his approach, but relaxed when Bj?rn recognized him and waved them down. Lance quickly informed Bj?rn about the hidden attackers and that he had cleared the left side of the caravan. They all moved to the right side of the caravan to see that there were no more attackers there either. Besides the 7 that Lance had downed, the other members of the caravan had downed another 3, and apparently 5 had become horribly entangled in briar vines as they gave up on the attack and tried to retreat into the forest.
The two men (elves Lance suspected due to their pointed ears) moved toward the briars with swords drawn. Lance’s ingrained training was screaming at him that you didn’t execute prisoners of war. Of course, number one, this wasn’t any kind of declared war or police action, this was an attack on the lives and livelihood of normal hardworking people. Number two, this wasn’t Lance’s call to make. He turned to Bj?rn and asked him to wait. Bj?rn was intrigued and yelled at his men to stop. He looked to Lance for an explanation. Lance told him about his “rules of engagement” and asked if there was no way to turn them over to the authorities. He knew there was no rear support channel here to cuff and stuff these guys and hurry them along to a detention center. Bj?rn said he did not have the facilities to keep them tied up, guarded, and fed, and Lance understood his position. Making one last ditch effort, Lance asked if they could be spared if they were willing to cooperate and give information. Perhaps there were others operating in the area, or even a bandit stash of goods. Bj?rn acceded to this request stating that if any of them would give good information he would consider turning them over to the regional authorities.
While Bj?rn and his men questioned the captives, Lance decided to try some things. Taking Grimble to the side, he asked him what people’s opinion was on looting the dead. Grimble said that there were no particular standards of decorum applied to those downed in battle, especially bandits. But most wouldn’t mess with the bandits other than to drag them off the side of the road, knowing that they probably didn’t possess much of worth, and their clothing or any armor they wore would be most likely soaked in bodily fluids. Lance further explained that what he wanted to do was use his loot ability on the dead bandits. Grimble had never heard of such a thing before, and stated that it must be something he had because of Earth, or his non-standard awakening to the system. With Grimble in tow, excited to see this said loot ability, Lance moved to the first bandit, bent down and touched it and whispered “Loot”. The swirling gaseous light show appeared, and when it was over, the body was gone and in its place was a satchel, and two silver coins. Grimble was awestruck. Moving on to the next body, he repeated this procedure, only for nothing to happen. This was one of the bandits that one of the caravaneers had dispatched. So, it appeared that he was only able to loot what he himself had killed. Moving through the caravan, he looted or attempted to loot all the bandits, stopping only occasionally for Grimble to stop and tend to the few wounded that the caravan had incurred. Apparently Grimble was one of the forest folk that Bj?rn had spoken of earlier, and his connection to nature allowed him some minor healing magic. Basically some soothing and enhanced mending/recovery speed. He was also the reason the caravan hadn’t been caught completely unaware (Grimble had run forward at the moment of first encounter and whispered to Bj?rn that there were people hidden in the woods), and the reason the 5 that had tried to run were tangled up in a bunch of brambles. When they had completed their looting run, besides the satchel and 2 silver, Lance had acquired two vials of liquid (one red and one green), 72 copper coins, a pair of leather vambraces, 2 more silver, and 6 wax paper wrapped parcels that Grimble called blork. The blork was apparently an unappealing yet filling ration similar to the early American pemmican.
Arriving back where Bj?rn and his men had been questioning the captives, he noticed that four of the five had been summarily ended and the fifth was extricated from the brambles and bound with some kind of leather cuffs, fastened together by an odd looking lock. He appeared to be no more than 14 years of age, and according to his story was a survivor of one of the bandits’ earlier raids. He had been kept alive and the bandit leader (apparently the man Lance had gotten the satchel and 2 silver from) had been grooming him for unsavory purposes. This was to be his induction into the group forcing him to become one of them. If his story was true, he hadn’t actually participated in the attack. Bj?rn said that a truth-seeker in one of the bigger cities would be able to verify the veracity of his story. According to the boy, just up the road (about a kilometer if Omniglot was translating distances correctly) there was a rarely used trail headed toward an old abandoned mine. They had been operating out of that mine since he was taken about 3 months ago. Bj?rn knew the road he was speaking about, and said that with the injuries that they had and the anxiety all the commotion could have caused to the livestock, that they would make camp at that trail and go scout the bandit camp in the morning.
As the caravan crew worked to drag the remaining 18 corpses that Lance couldn’t loot of the road, and gathered up the weapons lying about, Lance realized this was a golden opportunity to give identify and analyze a workout. First moving over to the pile of weapons, he identified each one. They came back with simple descriptions like “Axe, Sword, Spear, and Maul”. Analyzing them added various conditional states like “dull, chipped, and rusty” along with material types of “iron, bronze, and steel”. One weapon stood out a bit when he identified it. It was an Enchanted Sword, and when he analyzed it he got:
Sword; Metal; Steel;
Enchanted with Sharpness
Making a note to himself to tell Bj?rn about the sword, he then moved over to where the crew had dragged the corpses. He had seen a couple of elven looking bandits earlier, along with one he suspected might be a dwarf. Identifying each corpse in turn, he saw Human corpse, álfar corpse (both pale and dusky skinned), and Svartálfar corpse. When he analyzed them, one of the pale elven looking ones came back as
Corpse; Ljósálfar; The álfar whether dark (D?kkálfar) or light
(Ljósálfar), lithe and beautiful, often keeping themselves away
from the affairs of the other races, their involvement is usually
based on their whims, and they are often morally ambivalent.
The dusky álfar came back as he expected after the information he had just seen.
Corpse; D?kkálfar; The álfar whether dark (D?kkálfar) or light
(Ljósálfar), lithe and beautiful, often keeping themselves away
from the affairs of the other races, their involvement is usually
based on their whims, and they are often morally ambivalent.
Analyzing the sole Svartálfar corpse, he saw
Corpse; Svartálfar; The svartálfar are often denizens from the
deep dark, experts in metal and stone, they are often deemed
exceptional craftsmen, they hold strong moral opinions, and
can often be surly and disagreeable.
Finished with his investigations, and everyone back aboard their wagons, Lance climbed back in his truck, started it up, and proceeded to follow the caravan down the road. As they made their way toward this evening’s campsite, he reviewed the level notifications he had received. He had been ignoring the attention pull from them since the start of the battle.
Profession Skill ‘Danger Sense’ has increased by 1 Level
Profession Skill ‘Steady Under Pressure’ has increased by 1
Level
Bandit x 18 Slain. Energy Gained 540
Level Increased by 1. 3 attribute points gained.
Skill Identify has increased by 1 Level
Skill Analyze has increased by 1 Level
Profession Skill ‘Steady Hand’ has been gained at Level 1
Focusing on his ‘Duplicate’ skill, he saw that his personal level up had once again increased the amount of material he could copy. He could now do 25 pounds every 2 hours. Once they made camp, he was going to be busy. He would need to copy the buns and chips, assign his attribute points, dig into the weeds on his new skill, copy the meat for his cookout, and cook for the caravan.
