The Chained Watcher

Cautionary Words

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Welp, the report went over about as well as he'd expected. Caution was advised, and resource gathering missions were arranged to get the stuff they needed for elytra and invis pots. Some of the strategists had looked worried that he would have something to add, but apart from specifying that those were wyverns, he stayed quiet.

Some rudimentary housing had come up during the short time he was away, so he found where the rest of the Hermits who'd decided to join the expedition were while fiddling with his piece of 'borrowed' tech. Xisuma caught sight of him first, raising a hand in greeting before noticing the distinctly different style of item he was holding.

"Grian? What's that?"

Absently holding up his ill-gotten goods, Grian turned it on while checking the publicly available information the device could access. "Hmm? Oh, I got it from the military base on the surface."

Xisuma's exasperation towards his tendency to borrow things comes out in full force. "You stole their stuff already? Grian, we've been here less than a week!"

"I'm not stealing it, just borrowing! Besides, if they lose that fight they're not gonna need it back." Xisuma's eyes narrowed, his doubt clear to see.

"Hey, don't give me that look, I didn't steal it just for the sake of stealing. Tech-based civilizations are hard to judge just by how they look on the surface, and none of them follow the exact same progression path. At least with magic-users I can get a rough guesstimate of how powerful they are, but how am I supposed to know how strong their weapons are without checking?"

Pulling up an image of an electro-magnetic sniper rifle, Grian raised one of his own eyebrows. "I don't know about you, but I'd rather not get an arm shot off by over-the-horizon weapons."

"Uh huh. And what's your verdict?"

Several of the other Hermits were looking interested in the conversation, but he continued regardless. "Pretty decent tech, but it doesn't have anything extremely unusual or incorporate magic yet. This place does have more latent magic in the air, but it's the kind that doesn't usually behave for newbie wizards, which should explain the tech side of things."

Something about that battle had struck him as a little odd, though. "What isn't as clear is what magic-wielding wyvern riders are doing here when the civilization is so clearly tech-biased."

False's eyebrows raised, and she asked disbelievingly, "The what riders?"

"Wyvern riders. Wizards on the backs of wyverns."

Scar leaned forward over a decorative fence excitedly. "Dude, I wanna go see the dragons!"

Grian frowned, best to clarify this before the misunderstanding can deepen. "They're not dragons, they're wyverns Similar appearance, but dumb as a brick. I would recommend you try not to call wyverns 'dragons' in front of an actual dragon, by the way. They tend to take offense, like an egotistical guy who got lumped in the same group as a bunch of monkeys."

He can see Tango's confusion, likely at how he knows this, but that's a problem for later. First priority is making sure none of the Hermits do something stupid and get themselves hurt. "Now, I know I'm not exactly the most qualified person to tell you this, but this kind of place is potentially a lot more dangerous than the other world. Rushing into things has a non-zero chance of getting you killed, so always make sure to have an ender-porter set up and stay in signal range."

Sending a pointed glance at the four who got caught last time, Grian continued. "Channeling my inner Xisuma, there will be no going out impulsively here, especially if you don't have some kind of failsafe or backup plan in place for if and when something goes terribly wrong."

Already, he can see the retorts forming about his own lack of caution. "And before any of you point out my own apparent recklessness, I've got my own failsafes and fallbacks too. Especially if we're running into a potential High Tech civilization." A bit of an exaggeration, but overstating the threat will keep them from underestimating the possible threats.

"What do you mean, 'High Tech'? Do they have stuff like phones and cars?"

"Eh, kinda. Every Tech civilization has their own flavor of phones and transportation, except for the occasional fleetingly rare statistical outlier. No, I'm talking spaceships, laser weapons, and mechs."

He navigated to an image on the 'borrowed' device, turning it around to show them the picture of the planet. "From what I've got from this, my guess would fall somewhere between a normal Technological-based civilization and High Tech. They've probably got a couple off-world colonies if there's somewhere close that's near enough to habitable to be terraformed."

"And as for weapons, the most common at this level should be kinetic weapons like guns and occasional high-end laser/pulse weapons. Also, almost all of these types of civilizations end up with some kind of nuke, so let's try our best not to reveal where home base is, alright?"

Tango tilted his head slightly, answering for the rest of the Hermits. "We got it. Is there anything else we should know, Mr Encyclopedia?"

Grian's expression flickers. No, he can't pretend he doesn't know these things, not when something might happen to them if they don't know about them. Especially if this is a High Magic plane.

"Yeah, you know how I mentioned wyvern-riders earlier? Well, a place with enough wyverns for a normal faction to use as mounts is usually somewhere at least one of the big factions will keep an eye on. I'm sure you all can guess what one of those big factions is." Waiting, the Hermits' expressions go grim as they realize what exactly he's talking about. He continues.

"Well, at least we shouldn't have to worry about them acting too openly... This is because of one of the other big factions, one which you can find almost everywhere. Not sure if you've heard of them before, but they're called the Listeners. Most normal factions actually have some level of dealings with them, actually, except for the Watchers."

At this, he grimaced. "Most of their members actually have some variety of deep-seated trauma associated with the Watchers, and the two factions are basically locked in a perpetual war with each other. If a Listener finds a Watcher, they'll almost always get in a fight, or call in backup if they don't think they can handle it."

"Anyways, Tech! Most of these civilizations have some form of citizen identification, whether it's just something like a card or birth certificate, or if it's a microchip embedded in their skull. This means that we're not gonna be able to blend in nearly as well here as we do in a medieval society."

Hesitantly, he offered, "I don't think this civilization is advanced enough to chip all their citizens? Don't take my word on this, some do it as soon as they can and others never do."

Other possible obstacles... "Other than that, uh... Oh, money! Once a Tech civilization reaches a certain point, most transactions start getting done using some kind of credit instead of physical coin. If we're lucky, there'll be a way to trade materials for some kind of card with credits on it, but accounts might be linked to ID, which we won't have..."

He shrugged. "Oh well, that's a problem for the future. As it is, it'll be a bit hard to sell stuff without a decent grasp on the language."

Well, that should be all they need to know for now. "Tldl-"

Impulse interrupted him. "Don't you mean Tldr?"

"Well unless I'm mistaken, you're listening to my words, not reading them."

"Fair."

"Anyways, as I was saying, tldl. Stay safe, don't act impulsively, don't go alone, and please, whatever you're going to do, run it by X first? We might joke around calling him our 'dadmin' and whatnot, but you know how he would feel if anything happened to any of us."

Quite a few of the Hermits chuckled at that, before dispersing back to whatever they had been doing before he got here. With that, they should at least be careful, so he can go exploring without worrying too much about a repeat incident happening.

~~~