Chapter 2: Party Up!

To maintain peace and order in the country of Runeveil, the rulers rotated with the seasons. In summer, the Beastarian King held power; in fall, the Human King; in winter, the Orc King; and in spring, the Elf King. Each king governed their own kingdom year-round, but during their assigned season, they ruled over all of Runeveil.

As you can probably guess, this agreement was eventually broken by the orcs. But we’ll get there later.

Our party has been together ever since we were kids. We just naturally banded together. There’s no crazy origin story, like us escaping a dragon’s den together or us being summoned by a Great Wizard. We were all just from Apple City and grew up together. Finding a party was important because, in theory, you’d stick with your party for the rest of your life. Unless, of course, your party members got eaten by a dragon, or electrocuted by a Great Wizard or something. Or, you know, just disbanded.

That was unnecessarily dramatic. Sorry about that.

Anyway, despite it being a popular goal, actually forming a full party was pretty rare. Parties typically consisted of four roles. First, a warrior — someone big and strong enough to carry heavy armor and weapons. Talos had always been big for his age—destined to be a warrior from birth. Not a knight. Knights were the fancy soldiers who protected kingdoms.

“A warrior in shining armor” just doesn't roll off the tongue as well. Sorry again.

He made a great leader for the party. And by “leader,” I mean more of a figurehead. We all know who the real leader is… or at least you do.

Right?

Next is a ranged attacker, like a wizard, mage, or archer. This was the most versatile role, since it was fine to have just one, or two or any type. Alva filled this role perfectly; he almost never missed a target…at least while sober.

The next mandatory role was a healer. Quests can get very dangerous, so every party needed a healer. I like to call myself a “support healer”, because I do more than just heal. Not only have I memorized dozens of spells, I also use my magic to transport needed items to me. I like to call this my “zero bags” technique—I never have to physically carry items. Oh, and I also obviously have healing magic.

In other words, I’m amazing.

The only reason people even know my role in the party is because of my adorable hat that I am rarely seen without.

Curse you, bedhead.

If your party only had one ranged attacker, like ours, the fourth slot became a flex role. You could have a rogue — like Uri — although rogues were getting rarer these days. Or you could pick up a specialist like a necromancer, a tank (someone purely there to absorb damage), a familiar or a summon. Since most towns required a party of four for quest eligibility, confident parties with less than four people hire what are called “helphands” which just fill in the fourth slot to satisfy eligibility in exchange for a small cut of the quest reward. The flex role was probably the most important role as it separated the good parties from the great ones. I’m grateful for Uri.

Now as you know, humans are…interesting. Even more complex than the party system is this thing called reality.

Let me explain.

Let's say a boy really wants to be a warrior when he grows up but he only grows to the whopping height of 5’ 4’’ like me. He couldn't really be a warrior then, probably couldn't even hold a two-handed weapon upright. Or let's say you do grow to the correct height, but then your childhood friend who you vowed to be in a party with also wants to be a warrior. See where this could get difficult?

This is why parties were pretty uncommon. Needless to say I got really lucky, we found each other early and really meshed well together. Most people just found a trade or followed in their parents’ footsteps. I’m very happy I found a party, not that I didn’t want to become a textile worker like my mother or a blacksmith like my father, but mainly because I loved adventuring, exploring new lands, and meeting people from other cities. I really enjoyed the small little moments in between the big ones. Those stuck more with me for some reason.

About my parents, I occasionally wrote back to them detailing our adventures and my mother would always write back asking if any of my party members asked for my hand in marriage yet. I lost track of the times I had to explain to her that I see them more as brothers. Little brothers at that. Now that I think about it, I see them more as my children. Yes, that was more accurate. But don't get the wrong idea—I still love them all, just as a mother hen loves her chicks.

Now once your party was formed and you reached 18 and were officially able to start questing, your foot is only slightly through the door. The logical next step is going on quests, right? But high paying quests could take you anywhere in the country, so you needed to have reliable travel.

AKA: horses.

But horses were not cheap. So you needed coin, and lots of it. And what's the easiest way for a newly formed party to earn coin? You guessed it—quests. So it’s quite the predicament.

So, unless you belong to a rich family, you typically do a lot of walking early on. My party was not rich, so we walked. But on the bright side, for me at least, my legs had never looked better.

The cheapest horses were 10 gold coin, which was 100 silver coin or 1,000 bronze coin.

For those not good at math:

1 gold = 10 silver

1 silver = 10 bronze

We knew it was going to take a while, but everyone has to start somewhere, right?

Now that we’ve got worldbuilding out of the way, I can tell you exactly how our journey began.