The first thing you do is buy books. There are several things you want to get it, and the sooner you get them, the sooner you can read them. You start with tracking, hunting, and wilderness survival. You look through the store, and you are lucky enough to find a trio of books on those topics, all by the same author. You mange to haggle with the owner of the store it get a reduced price for the set, only five slivers. You aren't sure how much you will be able to learn from a book, but it is definitely better then nothing.
After that, you start looking at more mystical topics. First, magical creatures, which is relatively easy, after all is said and done. You simply find A Compendium of Magical Life and purchase it for six silvers. Finding something for Ice Magic is a little trickier. Eventually, you find an old and dusty treatise on Ice Magic, The Exploration Of Various Topics Relating To The Function of Magically Created Ice, Cold, And Related Magical And Natural Powers. You just take a quick peak at to make sure it has a spell inside and buy it for a gold. You try to haggle down the shopkeeper, but he points out that, even if the book itself is worthless, any spell inside is worth at least that much and he holds to the price. It doesn't help that he seems suspicious about where you are getting the money you can afford this stuff with, but, since this is your last trip to the bookstore, you aren't too worried about it.
Once that is done, you head to the training area. The next few days are spent just getting used to your new abilities, running around the track, lifting the equipment, doing stretches, and just generally training until you finally feel the burn. You realize that are strong and fast, really strong and fast, so much so that you can match and exceed the grown men training here. But, there is still something missing. There is a sort of fluidity and self-assurance to many of the experienced guards that you just seem to lack. Eventually, the instructor comes up and questions you.
"You are stronger and faster then you have any right to be, and you have the start of combat instincts." He gives you a look that tells you that he is waiting for you to respond, to explain yourself but you stay silent. He continues anyways. "But you have very little skill. You don't know any thing more then the most basic block and attack, your form is atrocious, and your foot work is just plain terrible."
"But we will change that."
Instructor Re-roll: 1 d 100+35: 95
From then on, you throw yourself into your training. You wake up in the morning and practice, practice, practice all day long, stopping only to eat and drink. The moment you slide into bed you fall asleep, you are just that exhausted. But it pays off. After days of simply swinging a sword, of learning how to plant your feet, of learning thrusts, blocks, and parries, of having the instructor beat you in a spar over and over, you have received the fruit of your labors. The instructor has deemed you barely passable, which, coming from him and considering where you used to be, is a high honor. He still beats you in ever spar, but you manged to hit him in your last one!
You pay him a single gold, how far he helped you advance, and how quickly it was done, is worth that. After that, you decide to head down to the tunnels. This is going to be your last time exploring them, so you better make it count and finish them off. You head through the hole in the secret room, and start going through the mass of tunnels. And mainly, that is what you find for the next few days, just more tunnels. A few lead to the sewers, but you ignore those.
After you are done exploring each day, you read some of your new books. The one on tracking is just as you would expect, with stuff about how to recognize tracks, how to identify signs of passing, how to determine other details. Same with the one on Wilderness Survival, with stuff about how to find edible food, how to make and set traps, how to conceal your own tracks, while the one on Hunting seems to be a mix of the two, with a few bits throw in.
The magical books, however, are much more surprising. A Compendium of Magical Life is definitely the most interesting book you have ever read, with interesting details on various magical creatures, from the wood-throwing Agropelter in the Far West to the extremely poisonous Zhenniao in the Far East. Several entries even have illustrations! Which is sometimes funny, and sometimes terrifying, depending on the entry. The Exploration Of Various Topics Relating To The Function of Magically Created Ice, Cold, And Related Magical And Natural Powers is just as boring as it sounds, however, it still contains a hidden gem.
There is the spell you saw before, frigidus tactus, which is a touch based spell that freezes whatever you touch. While the book is very, very boring, it talks about a bunch of stuff, some of which you have never even heard of, like how water and steam are just another form of ice, that water needs to be boiled in order to prevent tiny creatures inside from making you sick, that humans are made mostly of water, that there is an entire ice cycle, and how it goes into the ground, up to the sky, though the plants, and even through people. Here is where you find the really interesting part.
In the section talking about weather patterns and the ice cycle, is a spell. Specially, a spell to call down a blizzard, the same spell that cost five gold earlier. You can't believe your luck, you now know how to cast voca glaciem tempestate duratus mundo negant calor frigus adduceret. You aren't sure when you will need to call down a blizzard, but better to have it then not to.
Soon enough, however, you actually discover something new in the tunnels. While you are squeezing through a tight crack, you find a open room with several crates laying about, as well as a table with papers lying on it. As you step in the room, you start feeling the worst pain you have ever felt. Your entire body feels like it is on fire, no, it IS on fire! You can feel the flames, even if you can't see them. Runes, hidden runes, that are now active and glowing underneath you, that is what is doing this. You dive forward onto the ground, getting off the runes, and the flames disappear. But not the pain, not the burns. You just lay there for a few minutes, waiting for the burns to heal. The one place you weren't burned, strangely enough, was your back, where you only felt a slightly painful tingle.
Once you recover, you start looking around the room. You got set on fire to get in here, it better have something good. You look at the table first, where you find a bag counting fourteen gold coins, as well as a bunch of old papers with numbers and seemingly nonsense letters, like FBC and BYR. They are likely records, this was almost certainly some kind of smuggling opperation. You do wonder why they left all their goods though. Perhaps they were arrested or killed?
Next, you check the crates, where you find mainly old, moth bitten fabrics. They seemed like they were once brilliantly colored, but have since faded with age. But, within one crate, is a set of masterfully crafted, at least to your untrained eye, chain mail underneath the fabric. It is made of some shiny gray material (steel, maybe?) and when you touch it, yellow glowing runes appear on it, before fading and leaving just small, almost unnoticeable engravings on the links of the mail. Someone put a lot of effort into this armour, to write runes on ever single chain mail link. You take it and the money, while you start looking for another way out. You are NOT going through that trap again. If you weren't able to heal like you are, you could have died. Or if you weren't resistant to fire.
You move the crates around, to see if there is anything under them, and you are rewarded. A trap door, leading down to another tunnel, and you jump into it. You start walking along the tunnel, and eventually you recognize where you are. You must have explored most of the whole system by now, although most of it doesn't lead to anything more interesting then someone's basement or the sewer. You make your way out of the tunnels, and head to the inn to get some rest.
In the morning, you start on your final preparations before you leave. The first thing you do is start making something with that pelt you got a while ago. Normally, you would have to pay for all the tools in order to do anything, but you manger to convince another leather worker to let you burrow their workshop, mostly due to sympathy at your father's death. While you were tempted to make some leather armour before, you don't need it with your new chain mail, so you work on making a fur cloak instead.
It is more difficult them you anticipated, since you usually worked with standard leather instead of fire or pelts, but you get it done in the end. It turned out well, if you do say so yourself. A nice gray fur cloak, with shiny bronze clasps, it looks a bit out of place here, in one of the poorer areas of the city. You designed the cloak so that you could close it and conceal what you are wearing, so you could keep your chain mail on underneath it without anyone realising, and as well being able to use the hood to conceal your face.
After thanking the man who let you use his shop, as well as reassuring him that you would sell the cloak for a lot of money (if you ever sold it), you start on buying supplies and selling what you don't need. The map is pretty cheap for only twenty fiver coppers, or a quater of a silver, and shows the different city states around, including your own, as well as the roads and geography, although it isn't very high quality. The supplies end up costing you four and a half silvers, mainly because you bought jerky. You have been craving meat lately, and you decided to indulge your self just this once. You did find quite a bit of money in the tunnels, after all.
Then, you sell both the vest and the chain mail. You get four slivers for the vest, mainly because you got rid of the blood stain using the workshop you made the cloak in. You mange to get a whole gold for the chain mail, mostly because it is made of iron. Iron is very scarce in your region, with the last mine, which was very small anyways, having dried up over a hundred years ago, and no others have been found with in your cities territory. All the iron you use has to be traded for, and some still use bronze weapons. You were lucky enough to get an iron blade for relatively cheap, probably because you were in the guardsmen training, but it still isn't very good.
It certainly isn't anything like steel, the making of which is a closely guarded security among those that know how, and that doesn't include anyone in your city. If it did, your city would likely be a lot more prosperous. Only the rich can afford steel, and you aren't even sure if you have ever seen it. Some forgein adventurers (basically wannabe heroes, although sometimes they actually do become a hero) may have been carrying some, but it isn't like you have ever gotten a close look at one of their weapons. Your father knew a blacksmith that would talk about it all the time, though. He said it was his dream to work steel. He died of the green wound after he cut himself cleaning a rusty blade, though.
Anyways, with that done you say one last goodbye to Carlo and eat the very last meal of stew, the staple of your diet for the last few weeks. Only one question remains. What are you going to do on your way there?
[] Go on a hunt
You have been craving fresh meat ever since you got back to the city. While cooked meat is still good, it is never as good as the fresh stuff.RANDOM EVENT
[] Anatomy
Those books are hard, difficult, and they are boring. But you have a dictionary, you can probably get through it. Maybe.
[] Treatise
There is that book with all those weird ideas and information. It is boring, and you are sure that there are no more spells in it, but maybe this information will help you? It is about Ice Magic, even if it goes off on tangents.
[] Spellbook
You haven't really looked through this recentally, but it is a magic book. It probably has something interesting in it, if not always useful.
[] Write In
Maybe you have your own idea on what to do?
OCC: Finally, after a whole week of working on this. Well, you get a taste of what having an instructor can do for your training. Rerolls, bonuses, etc.