Blood and Sand: A Wandering Inn Quest (Isekai/LitRPG)

Close vote between Elaina and Drokur, with Keliel drawing a hilarious 0 votes.

You're up early the next day, despite the comfort of your new accommodations. A month-long routine of waking before dawn to teach your students isn't easily broken, it seems. The manor's household staff regard you with some degree of suspicion and almost fear - your clothes mark you a [Slave] like them, but your separate quarters and direct connection to Livia means that your social position is unclear enough to cause them uncertainty. If they're not respectful enough, they could be whipped. If they're too respectful of a mere [Slave] - they could be whipped. However, if they treat you exactly as you deserve… they could still be whipped. Because they're [Slaves], and the [Majordomo] rules the household staff with an iron fist.

"Even the free staff?" you ask.

Elaina laughs at the question, which is strange and raises many questions, because her head is not attached to her body. Her head is, in fact, resting on a cushion as her body walks about the room, inspecting it for dust. You had stumbled across her while searching for the kitchens, and she had offered to guide you, once she finished her duties here.

You see one of her arms detach, connected to her armored torso by a spectral fog, so that she can run a finger across the ceiling. Her body walks across the room to raise it before her eyes. Her mirth sours, and she clucks her tongue in distaste. "Keliel is very good at ensuring the obedience of the slaves, but… less so at ensuring their competence. Which is what the free staff are for. He can claim to be the voice of his master all he likes, but Keliel is not the Sheik. He cannot lay a finger upon me."

"And the Sheik can?" you ask.

"He is Silk," Elaina says, as if that answers everything. And perhaps it does. "More than that, he is a Sheik of Roshal. One of their [Slave Lords]. There are few who can refuse him anything."

You frown. "Are there… many lords like him?"

"Hah! They are all like him. Cunning. Ruthless. High level. And of course, slavers. They have little interest in things that they cannot own. But if you meant how many? No more than a dozen in the world. You are fortunate to have been taken by one of them, even by proxy."

"Yes. Fortunate."

"Do not ever doubt it, [Slave] Roger Davis," she says. "A [Slaver] of that level is above pointless cruelty. An inexperienced or brutal master would not care for your way with words and numbers. You would be fodder for the pits - you have not the arms for the mines or the face for the brothels."

"I'm still a [Slave]," you say, fingering the collar about your neck. You're used to the weight, now, though it still scratches at your skin.

"Yet you sleep in comfort and address free Dullahans as an equal," she says.

You freeze, remembering - too late - that there is a vast social gulf between the two of you. A gulf that means something very real and painful here.

She laughs at your terror. One of her hands floats across the room and pats you on the back before darting back to her body. "Relax! You amuse me. If I cared for social status I would have spent my gold on iron and steel instead of wood varnish and paint," she says, glancing towards her armored body.

That leads into a discussion about how Dullahans have a similar, if not so formalized, caste system as the String People. Where the String People judge by Hemp or Cotton or Silk, the Dullahans display their wealth by the rarity of the armor they wear.

"We are flesh beneath this armor, like you humans," Elaina says. "But weaker. Fragile. My kin would deny it, but it is so. It is why we wear armor at all times, to the point we identify with it as strongly as the String People do their cloth. But we are not born with it, you see? So there is no stigma against changing your armor. For the String People it is not so easy. They can remove and replace parts of their body, but to do so with their head is… difficult."

"I see," you say. "Thank you for explaining that. I'm sorry if my questions were - "

Elaina waves your concerns aside. "Leaving questions unanswered is like leaving a hidden mess uncleaned. Just because you cannot see it does not mean that it isn't there - and soon enough it will start to stink up the room! And cleaning messes is my job. If you have any more - ask me. Not Keliel. That one does not like you, and cleaning your blood from the carpets would take hours!"

With that cheerful thought, she leaves you, having finished leading you to the slave kitchens. The other [Slaves] view you with even greater suspicion after your conversation with the Dullahan maid, but at this point you're somewhat used to being separate from the Sheik's slaves. You were kept apart for the entirety of the caravan's journey, after all.

It's still unpleasant, and your attempts at politeness only draw more fearful confusion until you give up and eat your food in silence.


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Livia summons you an hour before noon, and you don't recognize her until she speaks. Her nose has been replaced with something that better fits the size of her face, her cheeks are more narrow after having some excess stuffing removed, and her hair has been rethreaded with black silk that falls to her waist in shimmering waves worthy of a shampoo commercial. The stitches that outline her features glow with an iridescent light, drawing your eyes to them in a vaguely hypnotic fashion.

She rolls her eyes at your confusion. "I said I was summoning a [Tailor]. Papa knows several. What do you think of the stitches? They were soaked in liquid magicore."

"They're very… noticeable?" you say. You're not sure what beauty standards among String People are like, and you're very sure you don't want to think about whether a child meets them.

She frowns, tapping at her cheeks. "I like the look, but… I keep noticing it from the corner of my eyes. If I don't get used to it, I'll have to have it redone. Which I can afford on my own, because of Papa's bonus!"

She means she can afford it because you taught Katrin well enough for a class consolidation. Livia herself had nothing to do with it. You do not think anything good will come of pointing that out. Still, you suppose there's worse things the girl could be doing with the fruits of your labor than turning her face into an RGB enthusiast's dream.

"I think they're beautiful, Miss Livia," says Sophie. The [Handmaiden] is seated before her mistress, meekly submitting as Livia runs a blue crystalline comb through the Hemp girl's hair. The cloth that makes up Sophie's hair parts and smooths as it passes through, the mess of tangles lying straight and smooth - almost silken. Livia runs her fingers through it, and Sophie leans back into her touch.

"Perfect!" Livia says, before setting the comb aside on her dressing table. "Now, we need to find someone else for you to teach so I can re-do Sophie's stitching to match mine. I sent a Street Runner off to the Merchant's Guild last night, and they sent back some offers."

Livia pulls a stack of mismatched papers from her desk and hands them to you. Calling them 'papers' is a little generous - there's parchment, some sort of stained leather (vellum)?, and a hodgepodge of other materials. You look up at Livia, confused.

She avoids your gaze. "You're not exactly high level, and all the people I know who lease [Slaves] do it for gladiators or housework," she says.

You look back to the… papers. You get the feeling that she's not comfortable outright saying that she has no contacts, has no idea what she's doing, and has no ability to market you. So the only people who express interest are the poor, the confused, and the desperate.

It doesn't take much reading to confirm your suspicions. Of the nine letters, two sound like scams, three offer a bulk rate for hard labor, and one is inquiring about the rights to your corpse should you perish in the next thirty days. You'd thought it was some sort of life insurance offer at first, but no, there's a [Necromancer] who's buying bodies in bulk for some sort of 'arcane project,' which sounds like the sort of Obviously Bad Idea that someone should reach out to the authorities about.

Is it, though? The guy's not making any effort to hide what he's doing. You assume it must be legal, then. Weird.

Either way, the [Necromancer] does not seem to be in any need of your sort of [Teacher], so you toss his letter into the reject pile with the others. Leaving you three real candidates.

The first letter is on a simple sheet of paper, except the ink shimmers with flecks of actual gold. It's from an [Alchemist], who is 'seeking one educated in the particulars of commerce' to explain to him why his high-quality elixirs and potions sell for so much, and yet his 'supplies of gold continue to dwindle in a most unwelcome fashion.' You assume that he needs a crash course in accounting. Or maybe someone's ripping him off. He can't be losing too much money if he still has enough to write letters with liquid gold… or maybe that's where the money's going. Either way, that sounds straight up your alley.

The second letter is on some sort of official-looking parchment, with a complicated wax seal that you, obviously, do not recognize. It turns out to be from the city government of Shakobar, who are asking for "a [Diplomat], [Negotiator], or talented [Merchant]" to intervene in a dispute the city is having with the Circle of Eastern Zeikhal, an organization of [Druids]. The [Druids] are complaining about environmental damage caused by water condensation spells and weather magics leading to desertification, while local [Farmers] insist that such claims are overblown. Environmental economics wasn't your field of specialty, but you think you could break down the situation so that someone in the city government could make a decision. That's what economists do, really - turn complicated scenarios into numbers.

Your final letter is an interesting one, because it comes from the local Adventurer's Guild. They're seeking a consultant to explain to Bronze and Silver-rank teams the 'economic realities' that have forced the Guild to reduce compensation for various bounties. Getting a detailed look into the economics of adventuring could be interesting, though the job itself largely sounds like getting yelled at by adventurers after you break bad news to them. Of course, if the guild is lying about being short on cash, you could - in your role as [Teacher] - explain to the adventurers what a "union" is.


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[ ] Teach the Alchemist

[ ] Teach the Druids

[ ] Teach the Adventurers