The Crucible Campaign

2: New Paths

.^^ Stone-Skin ^^

— Teagan —

The tavern was very loud. Perhaps that's a vague, pedestrian, über-common trivial statement, but it held meaning to me.

After all, my senses were incredibly and impossibly ultrasensitive, ever since I woke up in that cell. Smell, hearing, sight, even the vibrations in the floor were tactile and obvious to me. Together they almost built something, mentally, compiling into an Echolocation-Like mapping ability, and giving me a full view of the room, from every angle, which should have been impossible, but here I stood, feeling the room.

Caroline patted my rear, pulling me alongside her, and I smiled, enjoying the familiar flirting, one of the only things that made sense, so far. Tommy and Cassidy fought over one of the two seats that would fit them, as Caroline claimed the second, another familiar thing.

I ended the debate by sitting in the chair, next to my wife, and looking at them pointedly. They grinned bashfully, and situated themselves on a bench they dragged over.

A short woman, squat and hardy-looking, waddled over, and growled something in a language I didn't know. Caroline returned the comment amicably, and then gestured at us, apparently ordering food and drinks, because the woman grumbled something, and waddled away. Before I could ask what had been said, she was back, and plopping five mugs of a dark brown, frothy liquid onto the table, along with a plate covered in a few barely carved pieces of what smelled like veal.

I blinked slowly. "Okay, that's the second time you've known a Language I don't... the reversal is a bit annoying, to be honest."

She grinned. "I know! It's fun, though, yeah? All yer nerdy books is comin' true! She asked for a thing called a Traveler's Silver?" She looked at the two guards we'd kidnapped and then apparently befriended.

The bigger, green one, with ivory tusks at the corners of his lips, nodded. "Aye, Silver is the main currency of this 'ere continent, what we call the Silver Ridge. Gold is a currency, as well, but that's rich-folk currency... don't think I never even held a Gold Piece..." he hummed, and scratched his head.

The blue-skinned and horned individual nodded. "I had one, once. Bought my ship with it, before she scuttled on a Roving Reef." He shook his head sadly.

I quickly calculated the necessary prices of a fully crewed sailing ship, at around $600,000, for a lower-end, yet sturdy vessel, and shivered at the thought of one coin being worth that much money. Even the alternative, that he was speaking of a smaller, 1-2 man sailboat, worth approximately $10,000, was absolutely terrifying. "Tragic." I murmured.

He shrugged. "As fate wills. Anyway, I'll pay for your dinner, it is the least I can do, after blasting you through a wall or two!" He laughed good-naturedly, and flipped a silver coin to the passing small woman.

She caught the coin without looking, and nodded, tucking it away. "T'ank ye." She grumbled, and waddled away again.

"That's a Jester's Silver, by the way. Bigger than a Travelers, lesser denomination than a Noble's. It's in set tiers of ten, for silver, but the bigger coins are usually up for negotiation, when gold prices dip or rise, according to the surplus or demand of gold and other metals." The grinning tiefling added.

"Interesting... What language was she speaking, at first?" I asked quietly.

Caroline looked down at me. "Seemed like Swedish, to me. Understood it well enough."

I shook my head. "That was Not Swedish. It sounded Hungarian, to me, which is odd. I feel like if this is a dream, it was designed very oddly... Fever-dream style."