Meanwhile down at the Verdant Oathkeepers guild. A strange man walked in the front door and spun around marveling at everything. From the training area and students in uniform standing around watching a pair of students sparing with a blonde Valkyrie. One of the students that was sparing was a dark elf who was missing a hand but it didn't slow him down while he worked together with a winged girl to hold their ground against the much more experienced warrior woman.
Everything was so much more amazing than it had been before. So much magic. He wasn't oblivious to the stares he'd been getting, but he was just so fascinated to see so much magic casually utilized. Everything around was just too fascinating and fantastic. No other cities were like this and no other places were like this city or this guild. Creatures, monsters, elves, orc, elementals.
He was some kind of anomaly himself since he was wearing a full plate mail set of armor. Well... mostly... he had the greaves on and some gauntlets, but he was more or less shirtless with a tattered cape that was made for a smaller and more feminine frame. Even though they were part of a set the greaves looked like they were simply thrown together. His gauntlets were also mismatched with one being of much better quality compared to both the greaves and other gauntlet.
Among his equipment there was one item that stood out even more than his shabby armor selection and that was the truly unique sword strapped to his waist. It was a mid-length sword in a rich auburn colored sheath that looked as new as the day it was made that had silver Celtic knotwork and runes along it. The hilt of the sword was an anomaly. There wasn't a discernable guard to speak of. Instead, the blade was made to look like it was turning into roots that intricately connected it a wooden handle. It curled to the end, forming a pommel that looked like a "T" made of leaf-covered tree limbs.
"Excuse me, sir...?" A large breasted Waspkin woman asked him from a long counter at the far end of the room from the entrance. "If you have a request or would like to sign up as an adventurer, I'd love to be able to help you." she said. She was sincere and earnest but also had the disposition of someone who had been practicing for a length of time and was desperately waiting for a chance to recite her speech.
"Um sure, I'm new in town and would like to sign up." He said and approached the desk. He looked around and then asked. "Is there a quest board or...?"
The waspkin flinched and then sighed sadly. "The Guildmaster has suspended all quests until further notice. All the adventurers are either taking shifts in the café or teaching until things calm down." She had short black hair and pulled it out of her eyes with one hand while she clutched a clipboard to her chest. Then she reluctantly set it down in front of him with the untouched sign up form. "I suppose that means you won't sign up or leave a request either..."
He couldn't bare to see her look so down and gladly accepted the clipboard. "I didn't say that." He grinned.
The waspkin was surprised and looked flustered but happy. "Oh then um..." she looked under the counter for something. "... I know I put a pen here somewhere. Forgive me, I'm new. The waspkin just recently swore fealty to the Queen of Calphian and were finally let in the City of Perils. After fearing the adventurers from the stories that I was told, it's a little surreal to be working for them. Ah! Found them." She reached for a pen and just barely handed it to him when a disturbance stopped him from writing more than his name.
"I can't believe you all are still here? Holding out in your hovel like the skittering rats that you are." A superior looking elf walked in with some lackeys. They all looked like they were looking for a fight. "Ah a new face!" the elf said looking at the half-dressed pale man standing at the counter with a clipboard.
"I didn't think there were any plebeians stupid enough to believe in this stinking hole." The elf took a step towards the man holding the clipboard, but a sword flew from nowhere and buried itself in the ground in front of him.
"I can't believe there are more of you piles of trash. I thought we already dealt with you?" A beautiful raven-haired beauty in a maid outfit declared from the second story loft in view of the front door.
"Don't worry, miss Starchaser we brought enough to deal with you this time." The Elven man plucked the sword from the ground and sauntered in as a crowd of ruffians filed into the building.
"It's MRS. Starchaser, you insignificant speck of swine droppings." The maid hissed.
A winged hound appeared at the top of the stairway next to the doorway that lead up to the loft. An elf male with short cropped white hair and an elf maiden that had orange and pink dyed hair were herding the younger uniformed children through a doorway. Meanwhile the older students stood by the winged Valkyrie and looked ready to face off with the rough looking men who filed in, but they were becoming swiftly outnumbered.
"As you can see, we aren't scared of you. But this place is a blemish on this city. Besides, we also have a bone to pick with that Guildmaster. The one that betrayed us and cost us our home." The arrogant elf mob leader declared and pointed his sword at the elf maid.
The newcomer holding the clipboard by the counter reached for his sword, but felt a tug on his cape. He turned to see the Wask girl looking at him earnestly from over the counter.
"This isn't your fight, you still have time to sneak out the back if you hurry." She whispered. She nodded her head behind her to her right. There was a hallway there and two doors along the far wall leading to rooms under the loft. The hallway itself lead to a set of doors that lead outside.
"It's too late for that, I already put my name down." He swallowed as he set the clipboard down and turned to the crowd.
Curious, the wasp girl picked up the clipboard and read the name at the top. The only thing he had written down. "Endalaust?" she said.
"Just Laust, is fine." He said.
"I'll put it on your tombstone." She said as she set the clip board under the desk and switched it for a Halberd. She took up a stance with a shield from behind the counter. "...and now I'm defending adventurers. Who would have thought?"
That was when one of the doors down the hallway by the exit swung open with a loud squeal.
"You guys are so noisy, is it someone's birthday?" An elf emerged from the back room like the dead rising from the grave. He was wearing a dark half-thrown together outfit like a pirate. He seemed to have traded a cutlass at his side for a cleaver hung at his lower back. He yawned like he had just woken up from a nap, but the bags under his eyes said otherwise. Even more ominous was the flash of bloodlust that flickered right before the door opened.
Laust gasped as he recognized the man. It was... another player. Like him. One he recognized from what seemed like a lifetime ago.
"Are you the Guildmaster?" The arrogant elf pointed the sword at the pirate. Or at least where he was. In the flicker of blink, the Guildmaster stood a hairsbreadth from the tip of the sword.
"Aye, I'm Cal, the Guildmaster." Cal looked around. "You should know better than to draw a sword in public... It can be..." Cal reached up and pinched the flat sides of the blade and tilted his head slightly as an oppressive fear washed over the room. "...Dangerous."
Laust looked in the corner of his vision where a notification alerted him that he had resisted the effects of a familiar ability known as [Aura of the Dread Pirate]. An effect he was given resistance to.
The Arrogant Elf tried to put on a brave face and pull the sword away, but he couldn't manage it. It was as if the blade was locked in space.
"Cute, but I'm tired of games." Cal cast a dispel on the sword and it disappeared. However, it didn't dispel the effects of Cal's frightening aura. "I'd rather not kill you myself. Nor stain my floor with the cowardly tar slinking through your veins. Instead, I will just curse you. All of you." Cal leveled his eyes over the crowd as they tried to move.
Cal grabbed the arrogant elf's face with his whole hand. "May the tides of fate forever bury you with misfortune. And may lady luck cast all her spite on your heads. In the coming war your destiny will reflect on your choices today. If one in one hundred were to die in the siege, you will be that one even if you are on the opposite side of the city. If you ration your food, it will spoil before anyone else. And every time you raise your sword against another it will cut you a hundred times before it cuts your enemy. In the name of Perilous god of luck, I curse your fate with a gruesome and tragic end. A coward's end worthy of your sins. And may this curse also compound with every soul who stands with you against me should they also choose to spit in the face of a Perilous God." Cal threw the elf into the crowd, toppling them over.
Cal looked down at the elf with the condescending intensity of a Dread Pirate Captain. "tell your masters that you failed to intimidate us. And one more thing..." Cal pulled his cleaver out and cut the palm of his left hand. He squeezed his cut hand over them and let the blood drip on them. "...I was much better with curses and killing than I ever was with Druidry, and I am still an exceptional Archdruid."
When the last drops of blood fell on them every free space in the large room filled with the faintly blue wispy outlines of a pirate ghost army. But not the sweet cuddly kind that he had run his errands. These were horrors and wretches from the bottom of sea half eroded and covered with seaweed, rusted chains, mangled with half-formed mutations, from humanoid in appearance to complete aberrations of evil specters. Each was marked with a pair or set of glowing red eyes aimed at the intruders.
Then dark inky portals appeared in the air dripping with black tar that splattered on the ground. Some undefinably huge creature reached through the portals with ghostly black tentacles. Each as thick as a man was tall. The tentacles reached for the mob as a hungry thrum vibrated the air. The pressure of the thrum made it near impossible to breathe or even think.
"I wonder if you've ever felt the hunger of the Kraken before, it's overwhelming, isn't it? Did you know he was originally created by the gods as a weapon to consume other gods? But they couldn't control or kill him. So they let him consume half of the world and sealed him while he slept. But he still dreams, and his hunger grows every day." Cal said ominously as if telling a ghost story as the very light seemed stolen from the room. And icy chill made the slimy sounds of the of the tentacles even more potent.
"I'd run if I were you, but I wonder how far you think you can run from the hunger of a monster even the gods feared. I wonder... how long your LUCK will hold out." Cal smiled with sadistic glee the glowed like fire in the haunting vision. "Do you feel lucky... well... do ya... punk?"
THUD!
Cal punctuated the point by throwing the cleaver into the ground between the mob leader's legs, inches away from his crotch.
Someone screamed and the mob dropped everything and ran out of the place. Like it was haunted. Only the leader remained. He had completely fainted the moment the cleaver landed, and had been left behind.
After a few moments passed, everything Cal had summoned faded as if it had been nothing more than a dream. He retrieved his cleaver and put it away.
Even though Laust hadn't been affected by the fear effects he released a the breath he hadn't noticed that he was holding.
"Cabinboy, take out this trash." Cal said to the one-handed dark elf while kicking the fainted elf's foot.