Cinnamon Bun

Chapter Four Hundred and Eighty-Eight - Get Your Stuff Together

The mission's brief didn't have a due date on it, exactly, but as I read over the details it was pretty clear that the Exploration Guild kind of expected us to get to this sooner rather than later. "It's..." I looked up to the sky as we walked out. "Still before evening. Do you think we should leave for this mission today?"

Amaryllis hummed. "I would think so, yes. It'll require seeing who's interested in coming, of course, then preparing rations, tents, and supplies in general for the mission. We'll want to over rather than under pack."

I nodded. "Okay. Should we take care of that as a group, or, uh...?"

Amaryllis tapped her chin, then eyed all of us. "Calamity, come with me. I could use a pair of arms and I suspect your hunting skills and knowledge might help me."

"Alright," Calamity said.

"And what shall the rest of us do?" Desiree asked. "If I may enquire."

"Do you want to do the mission with us?" I asked. She considered it for only a moment before nodding. I grinned back. "In that case, Awen and I can get the other supplies we need? We'll need to grab our tent, maybe get another and some food, right?"

"Maybe keep an eye out for cheap cave-exploration gear," Amaryllis said.

"Ah, I think we can do that," Awen agreed. "What about the others on the Beaver?"

"That's where we can meet up!" I said. "We'll buy extra food and such, it's not like it will go to waste. And then we can take off before it's too late in the day to head out."

That seemed like a reasonable-enough plan. The area we'd have to explore was about a day's walk from Port Royal. If we were quick tonight we might manage to arrive early tomorrow, and then it would just be a quick trip back.

"I'll arrange a way to stay in contact with the Beaver," Amaryllis said. "If things somehow, inevitably, manage to go south, we'll have some allies to call upon."

That sounded good too. With that said and done, Amaryllis reluctantly pulled out her purse from within her leather jacket where it was tied to her coat by a small piece of braided leather cord. She deposited a dozen small coins into my waiting palm, mostly silver coins, but there were a pair of golden coins there too. "Awen, I'm trusting you to make sure that Broccoli doesn't overspend."

"I'm not that bad with money, am I?" I asked.

Amaryllis eyed me, then nodded. "I suppose you're not so bad."

I know how to shop for a deal, and I always picked from the discount rack when I could. I'd become very good at not spending money thanks to not having much money to spend. Plus I had Awen to help me figure out the conversion rates between gold and silver. I inspected the coins and noted that not all of them were from the same country, and even those that were had different shapes even within the same kind of metal.

As far as I could tell, locals just knew what was worth how much at a glance. I was pretty sure it wasn't a skill, but rather just something people picked up by osmosis.

"Alright! So one big tent, and enough food for... call it three days, just in case?" I asked.

"One tent?" Amaryllis asked.

"It's warmer that way," I said.

She shook her head. "It'd be wiser to have several smaller ones. Not to mention the ease of carrying them. But I'll leave that up to you. Do be aware that if you make a poor choice, I will be mocking and complaining about it at length."

I pouted. She'd definitely do that.

With our plans hashed out, we took off. Coincidentally we were heading in the same direction at first, which made our goodbyes kind of funny, but soon enough we split. Amaryllis wanted to grab a book first, then the rest of the stuff she was going for.

"Okay!" I said once we split off properly. "Food first, or gear first?" I asked Awen and Desiree.

"Ah, I think it would make sense to get the gear first," Awen said. "It's the bigger of the two expenses. Food can be cheaped out on, but it shouldn't be. Um, food also can go bad, so the later we grab it the better."

"Won't it be going bad as we speak?" I asked.

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She stared at me for a moment. "Any shop that sells food will have someone with skills to keep it from spoiling."

"Oh," I said. I hadn't thought of that. Or really noticed. There were probably some pretty big economic implications to an entire food system where things didn't spoil as quickly and therefore food waste was much lower, but I was here to have fun with my friend, not ponder stuff. "Okay then, gear first!"

We travelled to one of the middle sections of the city. There were probably a few nicer shops in the ritzier districts, but they'd also charge a lot more, and we were on a budget. Besides, middling quality stuff would be good enough for a couple of days.

Desiree pointed out a shop that specialised in delver gear, and we slipped into it.

The store was laid out with a counter at one end and three rows of racks in the centre. More gear was fixed to the walls. They sold a bit of everything. There were some weapons behind the counter, and armour on some stands, but it was less... knight-y armour and more tough leathers and gambesons that still had some good articulation to them. The kind of armour someone in a dungeon might want to have rather than someone looking for a fight.

"Hello hello," a woman said from behind the counter. "Can I help you, dears?"

I nodded and described what we were looking for. Tents with enough space to hold at least six, with maybe a bit more room than that. The woman's eyebrows rose as I asked for more stuff. Some portable cooking gear, ropes, a first aid kit, some blankets and towels--because having either was a must!--and then I noticed a small set of mixed potions that I pointed to. "What's that?"

"Ah, that's an emergency potion kit," she said. "General healing potion, anti-venom, anti-poison, a potion that slows bleeding, and another that grants night vision. You're buying a lot of gear, are you new delvers?"

I blinked and shook my head, then pointed to the pin on my bandoleer. "We're from the Exploration Guild," I said.

"Oh! Our eternal rivals," the woman said with a titter. "Don't be worried now, it's an old, old rivalry."

"Between those who delve dungeons and those who explore them?" Desiree asked. "Would the two careers not share more similarities than not?"

The lady nodded. "They're similar to the lay-person. But delvers dive for resources, to gain wealth and to empower and improve their community. Explorers delve to map out a dungeon and see what's within. They'll rarely face the same dungeon twice, and they have little need to learn how to properly exploit a dungeon."

I nodded along. That sounded about right. "I don't see why we'd need to be rivals," I said.

"Ah, but some Explorers think themselves better, and more often than not, Explorers are from a... richer class of citizen," she said. "Delvers, meanwhile... well, we think of ourselves as humble salt-of-the-world sorts. It's all hogwash, of course. We do have a standing discount for Exploration Guild members!"

I smiled. She was rather nice. I asked if she had any other suggestions, and she pointed to some water purification filters and some magical light sources, which were apparently common gear to bring along, but we didn't quite need any of that. We did end up grabbing a grappling hook, mostly because Awen wanted it.

Then, with the shopkeeper's suggestion, we crossed a few streets and made our way over to a small store run by an old grenoil who made trail rations for delvers. He had his own canning machine and made big vats of soup that he canned himself. We bought enough trail bars to keep a small army going, and a few cans of soup as well, because it smelled really tasty and it would be nice to have something warm like that while out and about.

Our last stop was to buy some hard-tack and crackers to snack on. They'd be tooth-breakingly hard if we didn't eat them in the next couple of days, but we always had some soup to dip them in!

And with that, we had just about everything we'd need to get going!

Now we just had to figure out who'd be coming along. That, and I wanted to see if I could figure out a way to train my skills while on the road!

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