Chapter 7: The Search for Gear

I’ve already decided that I’m going to start adventuring with the first person I get good vibes from. The first one who is willing to take me and who isn’t a complete jerk. I’m not in a rush, per se, but I’m not looking to wait all that long. I’ve got a lot to do in this world, and there is no time to waste.

I came to the conclusion this morning, maybe five minutes after the conversation with my parents. But if this really is the world that I created – and it certainly seems like it is – then I have a lot of really important opportunities. For one, I know things that no one else knows. I know where the secret treasures are, treasures that we were planning on teasing on the first anniversary of the game’s launch, treasures that will make a few players capable of truly legendary activities.

But more than that, I know some of the plotlines that we have lined up, and I know about the changes that the other designers were going to put in, the ways they are going to pervert my baby and make it into just another clone of the most popular games. They aren’t going to let the game be what it can be.

Well, I can change that. From the inside. I can make sure that this world isn’t one where might makes right, and where adventurers are little more than glorified murderers. I can make this a world where everyone can succeed, where there is a bastion of protection against those who would extort and control, hiding behind their martial prowess to avoid all consequences.

I’m going to make that change; I just need some fighting types to help me do it.

I also need some traveling gear. Which leads me to Inga and the shop where she works.

“What do you need, little brother?” she asks. “Oh, and happy birthday.”

I smile. “Thanks,” I say. “And I need stuff for adventuring. Ideally some weapons and some kind of armor.”

“You know how to use anything?” This question comes from Arnold, her boss and the primary smith of the town.

“I can use an axe, and I’m pretty good with throwing knives,” I say. “Or throwing hatchets, really.”

Arnold rubs his scraggly face. He doesn’t keep his beard trimmed, relying on the fire of the forge to singe it shorter. Inga has told me several times that the smell is not a pleasant one. “Do you have money?”

I do, but it’s not much. People don’t tip all that well, and buying locks a few years ago blew away any hope I had of being able to easily outfit myself. All told, I’ve got about three silver pieces and twenty copper.

Money in games is ridiculous, but we set up a pretty simple and common system. One hundred copper to one silver, one hundred silver to one gold, one hundred gold to one platinum.

“I’ll tell you what,” he says, “you bring me some leather and I’ll make you a bandolier with five knives to fit in it, in exchange for one of your silvers. For the other, I’ll have a battle axe for you. That sound like a deal?”

“With a holster for the axe and a regular dagger at the end of the bandolier?” I offer.

He thinks about it. Then he agrees. “I’ll need at least five pieces of leather, though,” he says.

“Deal.”

Notification: You have gained the uncommon skill: Haggle.

From the smithy, I head over to the tanners to see what it will take to get five pieces of leather. As I get closer, my newly massive Perception helps me pick up a conversation.

“...And I can even recommend a butcher for you to take the meat to once you’ve skinned it. He’ll give you a good price for the meat. I’ll have this tanned for you by next season.” I recognize that voice. I don’t know his real name, but everyone calls him Tanner, for obvious reasons.

“I can’t wait that long.” This voice is female, young, and there seems to be a mixture of tired and angry. “Can you do it any faster?”

“Takes months to properly tan leather, particularly for what you’re wanting to do with it. Can’t just tan something overnight.” I’m pretty sure you can in the modern world I come from, but not in this one. That said, I know that it only takes months if you do it without skills. Skills cut the time down dramatically. And with Tanner’s level of skill, he could probably get this all done in a week, if he really wanted to.

I walk in and see her with her arms crossed over her chest, a little higher than I expected, looking angry, tired, impatient, and … embarrassed?

She’s definitely a warrior of some kind. She has thick leather boots that come up to her knees, though the flap could be unfolded to cover her knees if she needed them to be. Tucked into the boots are pants that have a combination of leather and very tightly woven chain mail.

Armor in games is designed first for aesthetic and then for realism. I know that. I also know that there is an expectation that adventurers will be attractive. This will be all the more true when there are avatars that people can design. While we are expecting that most players base their avatars on their own appearance, the system is designed to allow them to make themselves more attractive, to make them look the way they WANT to look. And of course, since we’re allowing them to look how they want to, it’s not restricted. They can completely redesign themselves from the ground up, changing gender and anything else that suits their fancy.

The point is, I don’t know if strips of chain crossed with strips of leather is all that good for actually defending someone, but it looks fantastic. The pants hug her hips and the chain seems like it outlines her musculature as it goes. At her side, I see a curved knife that could be used for skinning but probably has more combat applications. A backup weapon, though, clearly. Her main weapon is the very long sword at her shoulder. It has a holster rather than a sheath, allowing her to slot it in and brace the sword there without having to go through the process of drawing what looks like a five-foot-long blade all the time.

Her shirt is part armor and part corset. Not completely impractical, but protection was not the primary thought. One of her sleeves is missing, though it looks more like that was torn or cut away than a design choice.

I’m pleased to say that there is not a random cleavage window. Or, at least, there isn’t supposed to be. But looking at how the cloth moves when she turns, and how high her arms are, it seems that there is a cleavage window. I can see the chainmail peeking out, and I know that there is enough covered that we didn’t have to worry about age appropriate guidelines, but the leather that is supposed to be covering up to the base of her neck is torn away.

“See something you like?” she asks, raising an eyebrow that has no reason to be as perfectly plucked as it is. Her tone tells me that it will not go well if I compliment the shape of her breasts, or even if I just comment on the corded muscle in her bare arm.

“I see you need some repair work done,” I say, gesturing at her armor as if that excused where my eyes were. “And I see that Tanner here is going to take longer than you’d be pleased with. Now, Tanner is the best there is, so I know that when he says it will take a full season, that’s what it will take to make leather that would match your armor with such perfection you’d forget which arm was new.” Tanner smiles, beaming at my praise. “And I know that you’re not a local, so you probably want to get a move on sooner rather than later, right?”

“Yes,” she says, her lips tight and her voice suspicious.

“Which puts us at a little bit of an impasse, doesn’t it?”

“Us?” she asks.

I smile at her and look at Tanner. “What my new friend here,” I gesture at the woman, who at least doesn’t immediately deny me, “may not realize is that you are in a constant state of perfecting your class, of gaining more and more skill. Which means you always have leather at various stages of tanning.”

“Aye, that’s true.”

“And so she also might not know that you would give her a significant discount on leather you have already made, if she was willing to trade these animals to you in exchange. Especially if she also did the carrying and sold the meat to the butcher for you. Why, if she did that little task, it would save you hours of time. Enough so that you might even just trade her the animals for the leather, fair and true.”

He considers the idea and looks at the animals. They’re deer, which means their hide will make decent leather, but to make it strong enough for armor would take a lot of time and effort. Deer make better clothing than armor. But he’d be losing a bit on the trade.

So I turn back to the woman. “And what my friend Tanner here may not realize is that you are an adventurer, and hence a traveler. You go to all kinds of places, and you probably come across all sorts of interesting creatures. Creatures whose hides could be turned into special and fantastical leathers, the kind that would be a true test of his skill. The kind that would let him grow his skill. Of course, you’d need a good reason to stop back here, of all places, next time you have those hides. But I bet he hasn’t considered that starting a relationship with you, so that he knows you’ll bring him more hide to work with – for a reasonable price – would be more than worth the difference in value for the leather you need.”

I look back at Tanner. He seems to be convinced. The woman seems convinced too. I try to take a guess about how much leather can be made out of the two deer. And how many pieces of leather would be needed to fix her armor.

I shouldn’t know the answer to either of those questions. I have no knowledge of leatherworking, and I’m not an armorer. But I made this world, including the system for repairing armor. And I know that her armor only needs two pieces of leather and one piece of steel to repair; the damage is really minor. And I know that one deer is worth four pieces of leather, because that’s the value we assigned to that animal. It’s also worth two pieces of horn. Antlers aren’t actually horn, but we categorized them as the same thing.

“So what do you say, Tanner? She gives you the two deer hides and takes them to be butchered, with the meat going to you, and in exchange, you give her, say, eight pieces of leather, right now?”

“That might be a bit too steep for me,” he says. “Maybe if she were willing to take four pieces of leather.”

That doesn’t work for me. I have to sweeten the pot. “What if I take the meat back to my mother, and she smokes it into jerky for you?”

Tanner’s eyes light up; my mother makes the best jerky in town. He readily agrees to the deal.

The two of them shake on it. I get a notification that my Haggle, Empathy, and Rhetoric all increase by one.

“Thanks,” the woman says. “I’m Petra.”

I give her a broad smile. “Pleasure to meet you, Petra. I’m called Harper. Can I carry one of those deer for you? I’ll show you where Ashir the butcher is, and we can talk.”

I sling one of the animals over my shoulders, grunting a little bit as it settles into place, but noticing how much lighter it is than I expected it to be. I like having my stat points all spent.