SOLO: Unlocking Potential - Part 1

[Preston]

“200 gold... Each?” The flabbergasted tone was coming from a young man, attempting to haggle with an orc and a goblin. Preston was stroking his beard, pulling out loose strands and examining them before flicking them to the ground. The nervous habit was one that bothered him, but he was too deep in thought about the prices that had been given to him. “I can tell from here they're excellent quality, which is a testament to your skills. But, is that the best we can do here?”

The feral looking orc growled and bared his teeth. His toothy, extreme underbite seemed to protrude just a little more as he leaned in towards the boy. One deep red eye was focused on the haggler’s bright blues, where his other eye should have been was an old leather patch. He snorted and turned to an apprentice. Quickly the creature jumped up on an overturned crate by the table to interpret.

“Torvak is good known smith in Kerebas,” the goblin said, prodding a thick finger into the boy’s chest. He turned back and listened to the grunts and growls, guttural words coming from Torvak the orc. “He say, you take or leave. No more argue price.”

“Torvak, buddy, I wasn’t implying that you weren’t a great smith. By all means, I think your swords are some of the nicest I’ve seen on the whole island. That’s why I’m here, to make a deal with you. I can take these back to the capital and put them in my shop and you would be amazed at how quick they would sell. Let me do the travel for you, and you don't have to have beautiful pieces hanging on a backwall collecting soot.” Preston pleaded with the orc, trying to turn on as much charm and guile as he could. He pulled a small sack of gold from his belt and placed it on the countertop. “Look, here is seven-hundred gold.”

The goblin pulled the heavy sack of gold towards himself and opened it. His dark eyes reflected the glinting of the coins off the afternoon sunlight. If there was one thing Preston had learned quickly on Scara Brae, it was that goblins were as greedy as they were conniving. Shrewdly he looked back up to the younger human, scratching the edge of his cheek with a long fingernail. “What wanted trade for this gold?”

Torvak did not bother looking at Preston anymore, instead retreating back to his forge. “A consummate professional, just wants to get back to work. If this little imp could have just let me talk, he wouldn’t have had to bother the man.”

“A deal, here we go, finally.” Preston had found the Grak-Tong Smithy on accident while browsing the stalls of the market in Berkton. As a budding merchant, born and raised by merchants in Radasanth, he wanted to make a name for himself in trade. It was his experience and keen eye that had caught the layered steel blades hanging on the back wall of the shop. If he could get the smithy to work with him on exclusivity deals, he could make a fortune selling the weapons back to would-be adventurers and self-righteous idiots back in Scara Brae proper. “I want to look at those weapons on the back wall; the longswords, those axes, and that rapier with the basket-hilt.”

The goblin relayed the request to Torvak who reluctantly brought the rapier and other four weapons to the booth. They were placed gently on the table. “No surprise he didn’t want to part with them.” The boy thought as he cautiously lifted the rapier, “Even with steel, these are elegant, masterwork weapons.”

Preston tested the balance, letting the narrow blade hold perfectly steady on one finger just after the hilt. He slipped his right hand inside the basket hilt and admired the stunning detail. With a quick swipe he waved the weapon around, somewhat clumsily, and haphazardly to test it. As he did so he heard a welp of a shreak from his side.

“Oh! Pardon me!”

[Taskmienster]

I found myself calmly dancing between people and shuffling through the small crowd. It was the most people that I had ever had to deal with at a single time, but it was exciting. Berkton was always like going on an adventure. Back home there was a single road that split the town, and everyone knew each other. Such was the way of the hamlet, but towns like this were filled with enough people that there could be strangers. It was a thrilling thought; living in a place where you could run into someone you didn’t know at all. Or, much less, people not from Scara Brae that had come to visit. Nobody visited Tastow, unless they intended to stay, and even then I didn’t know how they found us.

“Excuse me, coming through.”

While I used my staff in front of me to gently select my next steps, guiding people like sheep to let me through, Dustin was far less graceful. Despite his three and a half foot height, his frame was wide and he used it clumsily to push his way through. I could not help but snicker at my friend as he would come up to someone going the opposite direction, only to play a silly dance to figure out who was going to go which way to pass.

Eventually, we came up to a smithy. The Grak-Tong Smithy was our favorite in the city, partly because Mr. Grak was a master with metal, partly because Uncle Tong was always very kind to his nephew Dustin. It had been some time since we had last visited and both of us were looking forward to it. Dustin hurried ahead of me, excited to talk to Mr. Tong about any new creations.

It was then that I heard a cry of fear. People had filled in the gap left by the excited goblin, leaving me with no line of sight. But I knew that cry had to be Dustin. Frantically I shoved through the last layer of humanity between us and burst from them. The hair on the base of my neck shivered. My skin radiated a tingling feeling. A low growl came from the depths of my throat as I bared fang-like teeth and pointed the end of my staff forward.

A human had a long, thin blade of Mr. Grak’s pointed at Dustin. His arms were up defensively and I could see the fear as he looked only at the end of the blade pointed at him. I, on the other hand, was ready to attack and felt the warmth of my blood rushing through my body instantly.

“Oh, no no no,” the human called out almost immediately as I appeared. He cautiously placed the sword on the table with his right hand and held out his left showing it was empty. “This is not what it looks like, friend.”

“What. Is. It?” I spoke with a deep, grating tone. The voice that came out surprised me in a way, as if I was listening to someone else speak. “Explain.”

[Preston]

Preston withdrew as cautiously and quickly as he thought safely possible. With both hands raised, he tried to force a smile towards the new boy that had burst from the crowd. He squared his shoulders towards the child, wiggling empty fingers to show he had no other weapons. The merchant wanted to appraise the situation further, but the instance was one that had him looking fairly guilty of threatening a child. Additionally, there were a dozen or more people looking in his direction thanks to the scene caused by the red skinned boy.

“I put the sword down, you mind lowering your… staff?” He asked pleadingly while trying to crane his neck in different directions to ensure he was indeed looking at only a wooden staff. After being satisfied that the end was, indeed, not sharpened he sighed a bit of relief. “Look, the little green guy isn’t hurt at all.”

“Right?” Preston said as he looked back to the goblin youth and was leaning over to make sure. As he did so, the portly goblin put a boot directly into his shin. Immediate pain, the kind that your brain registers as a spot of lightning surrounded by fire, shot through his leg. “By all the blasted Thayne above!”

The goblin merchant started laughing. It was such a genuine, hardly laugh that Preston could not help but hope that meant that the situation was resolved. He found himself leaning back on the booth table and lifting his leg up, nursing it. He could already feel a lump forming just above his boots.

“You little green bastard,” he thought as he watched the younger goblin skirt around him towards the merchant. As he did so, the kid with the red skin and fangs - not to mention horns - lowered his staff and followed his goblin friend. While he passed by Preston he looked him up and down, sizing him up as much as accounting for the man. It was a feeling the young merchant was not too fond of, but only showed an open hand towards him.

Preston lowered his weight on his leg and could feel the throbbing node swelling against his pant leg. “That is definitely going to bruise and be swollen for days.” He turned towards the odd-pair as they talked to his goblin merchant. Surprisingly, the boy with the horns was speaking with both the goblins in what Preston could only assume was their native language. “Either that’s their language, or they all have snot on the back of their throat they’re trying to hack up…”

“Now that we’re all settled a little,” he ventured with a soft tone towards the kid, “My name is Preston, Preston Fletcher. Good to meet you. Are you and your friend ok? I didn’t mean to scare either of you.”

[Taskmienster]

I could feel the heat in my body still boiling. Even as I walked past the human, who had taken a steel-toed boot to the shin, I took note of everything I could. He was heavier-set than I was, a fair amount taller as well. He had a single weapon on him I could see, some type of curved long knife at his side. I didn’t know enough about weapons to properly identify, but I estimated it to be fairly heavy. His clothes were not flashy, but obviously of higher quality. His beard was kept trimmed, and there was a scent of lilac.

How I knew lilac I was not sure. Or how I could smell him. The scent lingered and hovered around him like a cloud, faint. He had bathed within the past two days. Additionally, his heart rate had initially spiked, but the heavy tone was slowing just as quickly. This man, he was a calm soul. As I looked at a bead of sweat dripping down the edge of his cheek Dustin elbowed me.

My stupor ended abruptly and I snapped back. Never in my life had I felt like I could smell cleanliness, hear heartbeats, or almost taste the salt from someone else’s sweat. As i looked back to Dustin, it seemed that only a moment had passed. I turned away from the human and back to the pair of goblins.

<”Valic, how are you boy? Oh, he is nobody to worry about.”> Uncle Tong dismissively waved at the man, who was rubbing his shin. <”Some wanna be merchant, barak”>

I looked at Dustin and tilted my head at the last word. He mouthed nob with a cheeky grin, as if it was an insult. The man certainly looked like he was comfortable with money, I would have hardly considered him upper class. <”Doing well Mr. Tong,”> I said as I bowed slightly in respect. <”We just wanted to stop by and say hello since we were here for the day.”>

<”It is always great to see you and this little one,”> Mr. Tong said as he ruffled the greasy mop of hair on Dustin’s head with a bony hand. The two of them began talking about a new weapon Dustin wanted and I listened as best I could, certain words being completely lost on me. Some of it was regional diction alone. Mr Tong had spent the better part of his life traveling to and from distant, tropical lands where the language was almost different enough not to be understandable.

As I listened the man approached me with a kind greeting and extended a half-attempted apology. “I’m fine and so is he.”

“Mind telling me how a Tiefling wound up in some tiny village, speaking goblin?” The man asked me. I looked at him confused. “You know, it’s not common to see many Tieflings around this island. I haven’t seen one in Scara Brae at all since I got here at least.”

“What is a Tiefling?”

[Preston]

“Oh boy,” Preston thought as the unexpected question caught him off-guard. He slowly combed his gloved fingers through his hair a couple times before scratching his scalp. [I] “How do you explain a whole race of people?”

“Well,” he said, opening his mouth to respond, but he stopped with the shake of his head. He pondered the phrasing, especially regarding a tiefling. It was a group of people he had little interaction with, but the rumor was that a demon and a ‘core race’ made to create a half-demon. The darker rumor he had heard was about pacts with Haidian demonic lords. “You see,” he continued.

“How ‘bouts ya spit it out,” the kid said with a slight grin and a look at his goblin friends. It seemed he had grown a bit of confidence.

“Alright then,” Preston shrugged. He lowered his hand from his head and pointed it at the boy’s hair, specifically at the small horns protruding from beneath the mop. “You have horns, which by itself isn’t a giveaway since there are other... species that have horns like a satyr and fauns. You also have a red skin-tone, and I can see the sharp canine teeth when you smile too. And I bet,” he said confidently as the boy’s confidence began to wane slightly, “I bet if I was to guess, you have a tail that has a mind of its own too, huh?”

“What do you know!” The boy rushed quickly back into the crowd. As he passed by, he pulled his hood much higher up on his head and his face pulled deeper into the recesses. The goblin, with a half-skip to catch up, rushed by Preston as well, but not without another haphazard swing of a boot at his other shin.

“Oh, come on kid,” Preston pleaded as he dodged the goblins attempt. It was as much in frustration at the green brat as it was at his own frustrations having upset the young tiefling. The merchant cupped his hands around his mouth to amplify his voice as he called into the crowd towards where the young boys disappeared. “I didn’t mean anything by what I said, I was just trying to explain what a tiefling is!”