We\u2019re in Dustspawn for the next couple of days while the caravan takes on lading.<\/span><\/p>\n You can\u2019t just walk up to one of these things and tag along like a lost puppy. You pay a fee to be under their protection, which covers the cost of shared guards and scouts, and the safety of numbers in general. There are entire fee schedules\u2014Druma loves its fee schedules\u2014for the things, ranging from how you\u2019re traveling to what you want along the way. Traveling on foot? That\u2019s your base per-person fee. Riding an animal? Takes up more space, spreads out the caravan, and they smell, so there\u2019s a per-animal fee. Pulling a wagon? Harder to defend, and they sometimes break, so there\u2019s a base wagon fee and a per-axle fee. And so on.<\/span><\/p>\n You can even get amenities. Don\u2019t want to bring your own food? Your meals can be provided for a fee. Don\u2019t have a tent but want one? There\u2019s a tent rental fee. Don\u2019t feel like walking? There are a limited number of coach spaces. For a fee. You get the idea.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s another way to join up, too, and that\u2019s to make yourself an asset instead of a liability. Which meant it was time to put Iskaryn to work.<\/span><\/p>\n For all the shit she gives me, when it comes time to rely on her for something serious, she really does pull through. I made a proposal, and she agreed without hesitation (and without an attitude).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cShe can serve as an aerial scout,\u201d I offered to the caravan-master. \u201cShe can talk, read, and even write, in Sylvan.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He was skeptical. And I get it. I don\u2019t blame him. Familiars, animal companions, and the like aren’t rare, but ones that can talk are. Literate ones? Even more so.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSylvan. How, exactly, does that help me?\u201d he asked,<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>I<\/span><\/i> speak Sylvan. And this is Druma. Surely, some of the escorts for this thing do, too.\u201d There\u2019s a subtle art to chastising someone without being overtly insulting. I adopted a concerned tone. \u201cPlease tell me you don\u2019t travel through the Palakar Forest without someone who speaks the language?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He relented, though not before asking Iskaryn and me to prove our claim. We sent her off on a couple of simple scouting tests, and he pulled in a dwarven guard named Thilo, who also spoke Sylvan, to act as a translator. He verified everything, and then it was done.<\/span><\/p>\n And because Iskaryn is Iskaryn, after the contract was signed, she wrote \u201cThanks, asshole\u201d in the dirt.<\/span><\/p>\n Thilo, to his credit, only paraphrased. But he did chide me quietly, afterwards. When I apologized, he said, \u201cJust keep the bird in line,\u201d and walked away.<\/span><\/p>\n So, thanks for that, Iskaryn. Now I get to be extra polite to Thilo for the rest of the journey.<\/span><\/p>\n Being a woman (and one who, even in my current state, draws the eye) with a magical bird traveling the road alone tends to attract attention. Most of that attention is either the wrong sort or the sort I am not currently interested in. Case in point. We\u2019re at this inn called The Mineshaft\u2014Dustspawn is an old mining town, so the decor is a whole <\/span>thing<\/span><\/i>\u2014and I\u2019m writing this all up. A man I did not want to get to know better came up to me just now and asked, \u201cWhat are you writing in there?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI am just keeping a travelogue,\u201d I said, because I try not to be rude to people (even when they deserve it, which, so far, they did not). Also, I need to travel with these folks for the next week, and it\u2019s best not to make any of them mad at me.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not a language I recognize,\u201d he said, which <\/span>was<\/span><\/i> deserving, and is precisely <\/span>why <\/span><\/i>I write this in Sylvan instead of the common tongue. I wanted to say, \u201cThat\u2019s so assholes can\u2019t read it over my shoulder,\u201d but, again, trying not to be rude. So I went with, \u201cOh.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The best way to end a conversation you don\u2019t want to have is to smother it in the cradle. It\u2019s hard to respond to \u201cOh\u201d because there\u2019s nothing to work with. After a few awkward moments of him just looking at me, waiting for me to go on, he gave up and left.<\/span><\/p>\n A triumph for the power of \u201cOh.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dustspawn night We\u2019re in Dustspawn for the next couple of days while the caravan takes on lading. You can\u2019t just walk up to one of these things and tag along like a lost puppy. You pay a fee to be under their protection, which covers the cost of shared guards and scouts, and the safety […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[88],"class_list":["post-5385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aoa-vignettes","tag-aemi"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5386,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5385\/revisions\/5386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}