NPC Quest

[ScarletSabre]

Hey there my fellow Sanderfans, I had a bit of a manic episode today at work, and finally started writing a bit of the idea I call NPC Quest, first mentioned here -

So this hasn't properly gotten into the worldbuilding or even the main plot with the actual hero of the story starting his quest, but I thought I'd share what I've got so far...

Be warned, this was written entirely on my phone today when I should have been working, and I have a tendency to use run on sentences, and huge blocks of text. I've not formatted this at all yet, and I'll probably go back and rewrite parts since descriptions are my strength more than dialogue... but I hope you all like it. It feels a bit less like the dry, sarcastic humor I was originally planning for, and a bit more like Mogworld, or Discworld, which I've started reading lately.... I have a habit of mimicing the styles of authors I like sometimes. ^^;

Anyway, let me know what you think! I'm curious if the premise of the world grabs you at all, since I can play with fantasy tropes and cliches and use soft magic to my heart's content.

 

Spoiler

NPC Quest - Chapter One

--------------------------------

The sound of a hammer ringing against glowing metal echoed around the workshop as Devlin swung his tool down over and over, beating the last few signs of a dent out of the blade of the sword before him.

Clang!

“Ow.”

Clang!

“Ow.”

Clang!

“Ow. That hurts, you know.”

 

Unfortunately, the sword was a very whiny one, and didn't much appreciate his hard work. Devlin rolled his eyes as he continued to hammer, giving the glowing blade another smack with the hammer, satisfyingly harder this time. He ignored the louder, more petulant yelp that this brought, muffling it with a hiss as he picked up the blade with his tongs and dumped it into the quenching barrel of oil in the corner of his workshop. He sighed in relief as he pulled the tinted goggles that protected his eyes from sparks and glows from his face, dumping them onto the anvil beside his hammer.

“Ooooooh, that's more like it…” the sword sighed, sounding as though it was stretching out in a hot bath. Which Devlin supposed a quenching barrel was for a piece of metal that had been heated to glow white hot.

He hated working on swords, enchanted ones most of all. They were either full of themselves, demanding that he only hit them with a hammer tempered in dragon blood, or on an anvil encrusted with jewels, or they were boring, talking to him all the time he worked on them about the men and goblins they'd slain, or the mantles they'd hung on. One had spent twenty years at the bottom of a lake, and by the time Devlin had finished rewrapping the hilt with leather he felt like he'd spent a few years down there himself. This one was particularly bad, as the voice it had was nasal and whiny even when it wasn't fretting or complaining, which it had done since he'd taken it out of it's sheath.

He left the sword to steam and sigh in the barrel, turning back to his workshop, such as it was. It was a cramped corner of the back of his house, the shelves crammed with tools and supplies. Locks and whole tails of unicorn hair glittered in bunches, constantly attracting pixies and moths with the natural glitter they produced, and the fangs, horns and claws of beasts tried to maul and gore him from beyond the grave whenever he bumped his workbench and made them fall. Racks of potion vials threatened to spill their contents into one another, several glowing and bubbling, casting small, multicoloured shafts and dots lights across the top of his workbench, a disco for gnomes. 

Devlin stepped carefully over a crate of apples, almost slipping anyway as his foot caught on a roll of silk from the southern isles. He flailed for a moment, then scowled down at the bolt of blue fabric, and the imprint of his foot, embossed in the roll. “Bloody brilliant.” he growled, kicking it aside. He took a deep breath. It wasn't SO bad, he could probably sell it to one of the idiots in the village by claiming that the imprint was part of a ritual, that they decorated their clothes with footprints and handprints dipped in dyes… The housewives of this sleepy little village would cluck their tongues and murmur about it being “so quaint” and “ethnic” and pay an extra ten coppers for half a foot of it, if he evened out the pattern… 

Devlin nodded to himself as he picked his way across the stock he kept hidden behind his shopfront, finally getting to the other corner of the small back room. His armchair, battered, beaten and comfortable, beckoned to him, the desk beside it calling to him to read the next part of the adventures of Arthur McHugesword, and see how he escaped the trap of the dangerously curvaceous women who plagued his life this time. 

He plopped himself down with a sigh, feeling the tension in his back slowly relax as he settled back into the familiar plushness, brushing a brown lock of hair from his eyes, closing them and slowly stretching his wiry arms. There was a reason he hated working on swords. They were bloody heavy things, and so was his hammer. But being the only shopkeeper and blacksmith for at least twenty miles of forests, hills and mountains, in a village that saw the occasional suicidal idiot who called themselves a hero, and more sheep than people, meant that he couldn't be picky with his wares. He traded in everything, mainly so he could sell it back to the farmers and shepherds who worked the fields for a nice profit. They seemed happy enough to believe Devlin when he told them fishscales came from mermaids, or that wearing the fang of a batwolf around their neck would give them it's strength, and Devlin got to put money away to be able to retire to a real town, one with sights more than the ancestral dungheap of the Mayor's family, or the village’s oldest goat. 

That wasn't to say that it wasn't without it's annoyances. Devlin’s shop had been broken into so many times, by teenage boys on a dare to swipe what they thought was pickled cyclops eye or kraken tentacle from his storeroom, or by a passing or otherwise aspiring thief who wanted to “Up his lockpick stat”. It had happened so often he didn't bother fixing the locks anymore, and just locked his door by nailing a thick piece of wood across the handle and frame each night. He'd done so an hour ago, before taking the hammer and setting to work on that dent in the sword, which was still gurgling out whines in the barrel, and was glad he had. 

Working on it had been bad enough without interruptions from some upstart “adventurer” trying to sell him lizard tails with an inch of gore still on them right before sunset. What use did they even think he had for them?! The nearest wizard college was at the top of Mount Hubblebubble, and he couldn't sell them on to the housewives of the village with bits of their original owner still attached. If he was THAT charming or charismatic he wouldn't be in this backwater village after all. He'd be in one of the great cities, earning enough money to pay a pretty woman to pretend she cared for him, and that she didn't care about her lack of clothing.

That might have just been the influence of his book, it painted quite the picture of life in the grander cities after all… and of quite a few other things. Devlin had earmarked those pages, and started to flip to one of his favourites to relax. He'd had a very a long day of having to smile and pretend to like the people he served.

BAM BAM BAM.

Devlin jumped, almost tearing the page he had been turning out of his book as his door rattled on it's hinges, seeming to bulge around the bar of wood that held it shut. He looked down in horror at the ragged tear in the page, cleaving poor Bustilda, Arthur's travelling companion and regular damsel, from her hourglass waist up to the lines of the fur bikini she had been dressed in by her kidnappers. The banging continued, and Devlin growled, slamming his book closed as he rose to his feet. He paused, glancing down at the pages, seeing the one he had just torn, now crumpled between its brethren, folded at the tear. His mouth opened in a soundless cry of horror. 

BAM. BAM BAM BAM. BAM BAM.

The banging came again, and as Devlin stomped through to the front of his shop, he vaguely noticed in his rage that it seemed almost rhythmic. Was someone testing out a battering ram?! His hands clawed into fists as he stepped into the darkness of his shopfront. The blinds on the window were closed, letting only orange slits of sunset through them, and he squinted as he grabbed the nearest object that felt sufficiently heavy from behind his counter, ready to launch it at whoever was behind his door. Couldn't they see he was closed? He'd turned the sign out front, making sure that it showed the “Bugger off.” side before he'd nailed the door shut for the night. 

BAM. BAM BAM BAM. BAM BAM.

The pattern came again, one bang, then three quick ones, then two slow ones. Devlin strode forwards, and he saw that his makeshift lock was all but splintered in two, the nails knocked out of the frame and door to the point it barely held on. A determined breeze could push his door open, and whoever was on the other side wouldn't get through another kick before their foot came through. “Bloody farmboys….” Devlin growled as he yanked the plank free. They were always doing things like this, but this was too far! They sounded like a dwarf trying to be stealthy!

Devlin flung the door open, fury in his eyes as he raised his weapon, an ingot of glittering green metal that he had been using as a paperweight. He held it high and glared ahead as he stepped forwards to swing it. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU…. Think… you're… doing….”

Devlin trailed off as his arm fell limp, swallowing. His mouth suddenly felt very dry, and it wasn't from the heat of the forge he had left behind. He was a fairly tall man, six feet of Pollonian pale skin, and he had been expecting to glare down at some farmboy a head or two shorter than him. That line of sight let him look directly at the thick, tree-like thigh of craggy, gray tinged skin. There was another thigh just beside it, each one as thick as Devlin’s torso. 

He followed them down first, too scared to look in the other direction… thick feet, human shaped but the size of serving platters, sank into the beaten path outside of Devlin’s shop. A line of footprints trailed back down the hard packed earth like it was soft soil. Devlin slowly raised his gaze up, now looking straight ahead at his eye level… right at a thick leather and fur loincloth, a belt like a saddle girth holding it tight above what must have been the creature's waist, rippling muscles across its barrel chest as he continued to look up. The creature was a good ten feet tall, almost twice as broad as Devlin, though that wasn't THAT impressive given his wiry build.

What WAS impressive, was the fact that his biceps were almost as thick as Devlin’s body. One of his long arms was hidden beneath a cloak that was drawn back, the other raised to just above Devlin’s head, frozen with one knuckle about to rap on his door. The hood of the cloak was lowered, revealing a pumpkin sized head, long black hair oiled and shiny as it fell around a face that looked surprised. Devlin was sure that if his face wasn't frozen in terror at seeing the cave troll standing outside of his home, he would have a similar expression.

“I…. Ummm….” Devlin let the ingot fall to his side as he looked up at those big brown eyes, the creature's clean shaven gray face blinking as it seemed to finally register him. Then it did something that made Devlin pale even further. It smiled. It's face broke into a wide grin, teeth like huge, enamel gravestones that seemed to have Devlin’s name written in them. The hand poised to knock his door in lowered, then reached into the cloak, and Devlin vaguely heard the clink of several metal things hitting one another from within it as he gaped. The troll rummaged for a moment, then pulled out a pair of oversized glasses, the lenses huge and round, the size and shape of several medallions Devlin had in the back room of his shop.

Delicately, far more delicately than Devlin would have believed possible, the troll put the glasses on his face, a finger the size of a huge sausage pressing them up the bridge of his thick nose. Peering down at him through the lenses, the troll smiled wider, and reached into his cloak again. It pulled out something even more surprising than the glasses this time, a thick black book. If Devlin had tried to read it, he would have had to open it on his lap, the pages covering him from waist to knee, but in those huge hands it seemed undersized, like a pocket journal. 

“HELL-OH.” the troll said, voice gravelly and low, rumbling like a boulder down a flight of stairs. It enunciated each word slowly and loudly, as though it had a mouthful of pebbles, or was speaking to someone hard of hearing, or slow of mind. Devlin fit into the last category as he gaped, jaw on his chest, struggling to process what it said next. “I... AM LOOOO-KING. FOR…” It stammered, humming and hawing as it flipped through pages in his book, finger suddenly coming down triumphantly like a javelin on a page. “SOO-VEN...EARS.”

 

Edited January 10, 2017 by Rawrbert
Tweaked the spacing