Letting Your Saviour Leave?

[jamesbondsmith He/him]

Why would a town let the people who have just saved them leave?

Basically, an outlying town on the coast is attacked by pirates trying to carve out a land-based kingdom. The lord's daughter and a merchant apprentice (both mages) fight them off, but what little I had planned of the story involved the two of them and the master mage going on a trek along a sort of fantasy Silk Road to speak to the leaders of their nation, and I'm struggling to think of why the townspeople would be OK with letting them just leave like that. I've been thinking of it in similar terms to the massive public outcry to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison leaving for Hawaii during the massive bushfires in 2019/20.

The master/apprentice duo are merchants who sell enchanted objects (innate magic is very rare, but objects allow non-mages to approximate things like superstrength and ensure their weapons never lose their edge), so I thought they could perhaps donate their entire stock towards the defense efforts. But that does kind of pale in comparison to the scene I wrote on the fly one day where he basically turns a bow into a medieval rocket launcher.

[+Invocation]

Maybe the town doesn't trust the enchanted items, no matter how good of a job was just done saving them with it, so they want the people who make/sell the untrustworthy (maybe they think the items are cursed/curse their user?) items gone before anything in that vein can happen.
Or maybe the folks just leave at night when everyone else is asleep.

[Quantus he/him]

Prisoners traditionally make terrible Guardians, and it sounds like the two Heroes had no pre-existing Responsibility for the town.  They come, they save, they get offered a celebration feast and maybe a willing farmer's daughter in hoped they will settle down, but unless they are awful people as a group they'd likely have to respect that the Merchant duo that saved them have lives and families and business elsewhere.  

 

But if you really want them to actively support the duo leaving, perhaps they expect the duo to do something for them elsewhere, like deliver a message, track down a lost townsperson, or return with some form of Relief from the Nation's capital, etc.  

[Duxredux he/him]

I'm an armchair story helper, never done a NaNoWriMo successfully, so take a pinch of salt with my commentary. I've listened to a lot of Writing Excuses though.

First question, is the lord's daughter the "heir" so to say of governance of this outlying town? The merchants probably don't need much reason to want to just continue their profession, but if the mage girl is looking to leave her her home, responsibility, and possibly inheritance, that will need more, and how she views leaving the town will affect things.

If the story is to get them to go on this adventure to the capital and see all sorts of cool things on the way without worrying about getting back to the pirate-besieged town, then the premise for why they leave and if there is meant to be a looming threat over the town during the story will affect what you can do. Quantus gave good ideas for getting the town to support the duo leaving, but then you have to have a reason for why they keep going and whether or not the mage daughter feels like she really ought to be getting back home to help rebuild.

If you want them to leave and come back with help, then maintaining some sort of pressure that is encouraging them to return to the town would probably be good - impending return of grumpy pirates maybe. If you want them to just go on their merry way, then there probably needs to be something that removes or otherwise eliminates the threat to the town so that there isn't as much of a pull to go back, because you don't want the reader to be wondering why they aren't going back to protect the town. Could be that another more pressing issue arises. Maybe the regional garrison arrives, promises that they'll improve patrols and the garrison commander declares mages of their caliber to be wasted in this backwater area, and sends them off to the Royal Mage Academy or something, particularly if mages are rare.

I dunno, there's a few ideas.

[jamesbondsmith He/him]

@Duxredux yes, the daughter is the 'heir' so to speak, hence the comparison of the Prime Minister. Perhaps it could be a 'we need a noble to talk to the nobles' situation, but in that case I feel like her non-mage father could do it just as well.

The current vague plan is for them to try to convince the capital to send help to fight off the pirates as they are still a threat, but the struggle is why they would be OK with the people who just saved them leaving when the crisis isn't averted yet? As opposed to sending some other townspeople who might be less crucial to the defense. To use a Sanderson analogy, why send your Radiants away when you're surrounded by enemies?

On the other hand, I suppose it could create drama if them leaving wasn't 'sanctioned' by the town, especially if the daughter has to come back and lead them eventually.

[Duxredux he/him]

Hum... @jamesbondsmith would you say that you are a discovery writer or an outliner? Are you just trying to get the heroes out of the town so they can have their adventure or are you trying to map out plot elements interwoven up to the ending? I might be giving bad advice because I think like an outliner.

If none of the ideas suggested so far feel viable so far... here's a few ideas. Also, feel free to ditch, adapt, or tweak any of these suggestions.

• Have the townspeople be scared or disturbed instead of celebrating the mage duo. Maybe have some of them feel more threatened by the mage duo than the pirates. Think of it as realizing that you survived a dog attack because your neighbor turned into a fire-breathing dragon. This might work if the town had never seen the mage girl slaughtering pirates wholesale or if there was collateral damage done to the town by the magics used. "We appreciate what you did, but don't come back with those missile launchers until you really know what you're doing!" Saving the town was heroic, but you could probably spin magic as terrifying to people who haven't seen it used in war (Well of Ascension spoilers)

Spoiler

similar to Vin killing assassins in front of Elend. Even though Elend knows what Vin is, has heard about Mistborn his whole life, and knows that she is fighting to protect him, it's still disturbing watching someone blow up another person's head. Depends on how gritty you want to get.

• Give something to the innate magic users that allows them to travel faster than anyone else, and maybe it's a long way to the capital? Maybe the route to the capital itself is really dangerous and they don't fully trust the merchant master and apprentice? You can expand or contract as much as you want how long the journey takes, so it can be a question of "lose our 2 mages and try to hold out for several weeks" compared to "keep the mages but it will take our runner the better part of half a year to get to the capital and then come back with reinforcements" or "hopefully our messenger doesn't get eaten by the thunder-wolves while going through the mountain pass".
• You also can make the daughter a poor choice to leave at the city instead of the father - a mage does not automatically make a good administrator. There could also be some sort of "noble boon of aid" that allows a lord to secure aid from the capitol. Maybe it requires sending the lord's signet ring or something and the lord doesn't trust anyone else with that much authority. Maybe the lord got injured in the raid and really shouldn't go on a long journey.

There's some ideas. Hopefully this sparks something that helps.

 

[Coolmint]

They don't let them leave.

Perhaps the townspeople lock up the duo, to prevent them leaving.  And they then have to escape.  And then another problem pops up, and they have to solve that one….and so on.