The "Best" RPG Ever-28

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Even in a world with such diverse-looking people, a part-dragon was apparently enough of a rarity to stick out in a crowd. When Mika landed her broom randomly in a shopping district of the city and started asking whether people had seen a girl with scales and horns she was pointed along Rose's track almost at once, and it didn't take very long before she was back in the familiar walls of the Broken Dragon Inn.

The dragon-girl was busy renting a room for herself, so Mika waited until that was done before trying to get into her natural line of sight and wave at her. Rose noticed it and bounded over right away. "Hi Mika!"
"Hey, what's this I hear about you going around with other girls?" said the witch with a fake-pout.

"Uh..w-well..." Rose tapped her index fingers' claws together, not at all sure how to take the question.
"Heehee, I'm just kidding with you! But you did kinda run off from the guardhouse after the captain was through with ya."

"Oh! Haha? Um..I didn't want to bug you guys anymore is all. And the captain lady said to explore the town some, and I was getting really hungry even though you guys shared some of your ration stuff on the way here so I wanted to go find somewhere with a lot of meat to eat for like an actual lunch, and.."
"Well, it didn't bother the others, but I thought it'd be nice to chat with you a little before you left," said the witch with a shrug. "To be fair I sorta distracted them as soon as we were outta there anyway. So you're staying in town tonight?" She subtly led the way over to an unoccupied table while the dragon-girl talked.
"Oh, yeah! It's, well I met some new friends I guess you heard about and they offered to have supper together and it's kinda late in the day so I thought getting an early start tomorrow morning back to my forest might be better."

"Good, good," Mika nodded. "People in town treating you well?" She hopped onto a chair and gestured at the opposite one.

Rose completely missed the offer to sit and leaned over with her elbows on the table instead. "Yeah, everyone's really nice! I thought a lot more people would be scared of me or something but the worst I got was a few people staring at me a little bit."

"Trust me, I know what that's like. You bought some new clothes?"

"Uh-huh!" She nodded. "They really liked my plants so I had a lot left over after I ate, and I didn't actually have a lot of outfits left and stuff."
"Well, you look good in that one. It's very you, too. Breezy and flowery."

The dragon-girl blushed and laughed nervously. "Eheheh." She finally leaned back and half-fell onto the chair behind her, and then looked around the inn for a moment as if trying to think of something to say.

"Uh, Mika...do you think I'm, dumb?" she said. "Like, uhh...when I say it that way it sounds like you've been insulting me or something but I don't mean that, I just mean...like, asking for an honest opinion?"

"Hmm.." Mika thought about what she'd seen of Rose so far. "...No, I don't think so. It does seem like you have some trouble expressing yourself though, probably just from not being around other people a lot. I guess if someone's not paying attention they might not be able to tell the difference, though."

"You think...the others can't tell?" she said.

"You mean Zack, Kath, and Nora?"
"Mhm," she nodded, "I'm not sure they like me much.."

"Well, Katherine still doesn't trust you because she can't read your mind, which is a really dumb reason; Nora I think likes you fine but she's just the quiet type most of the time. Zack...well, that's just Zack. Her default expression is a sour frown."

"Don't you mean 'his'?" said Rose with a slight headtilt.
Mika shrugged. "Not unless she's around to be bugged by it. I call people what I see them to be."

---

The library was a little like an Earth one, and a little...not. It was one story with a very high ceiling and the bookshelves were absurdly tall on average; there were big reading areas strewn about at random and a large area devoted to spellbooks including some sort of testing ranges and a clearly marked restricted section with the sort of armed guards one might expect a president (or maybe in this world a king) to have. Eventually Zack gave up on running into Nora at random in this maze and instead followed her scent from the entrance to a reading area with some very comfortable-looking chairs, one of which was behind a table with a stack of books taller than he was on it.

The elf was sitting hunched over with her legs crossed over an open book, looking both very much in her element and completely lost to the outside world. Not wanting to bug her, the knight sat down at the next chair over and leaned over a bit in an effort to see what the current book was on. He could get through about a paragraph before she turned the page; it looked like this book was a collection of myths or fables, and it was nearing its end.

Before long Nora closed the book and leaned forward to exchange it with another one, only to jump back into her chair when one of Zack's ears twitched slightly in the corner of her eye. "Oh! H-hi Zack, when did you get there?"

"Just a minute ago. Is Katherine here?" He hadn't smelled her, but that was too strange of a phrase to utter.
"She ran off j-just before we got here, I'm not really sure why. Um, w-where's the wolf?"
"I asked him to stay outside, I'm not really sure they'd appreciate a wild animal in here." He looked pointedly at the stacks of books. "You, uh..finding some stuff out?"

"Yeah, um.."

Nora thought for a moment, and began a summary of what she'd learned: "There are some history books here covering this city itself and the n-nation that owns it, but mostly I could only find a lot of myths and legends. It s-seems like the pantheon of deities stays consistent, and there is a lot of agreement on how some of the races got created. This 'frontier' is s-supposedly the site of a big war the gods had, but no two st-stories agree what the war was about or who started it. It l-left it full of monsters because of it, though, so they're supposed to have c-created the other lands for people to live in afterward."

"Hmm. So why are people coming back out here then?"
"Well, th-this city started as an outpost intended to warn of incoming m-monster attacks, but then they got the idea to use this as a p-place to fight the monsters, to keep the mother country safer. S-so, people who want to be heroes and fight monsters have to come out here because there are hardly any back there to even f-fight. B-besides that, outcasts and criminals and other people who want to st-start a new life for whatever reason come out here because it's r-remote. It's im-implied the story is similar for other frontier cities."

Since it didn't seem like he had any questions to that, she said, "D-did you, um, find the armor you were looking for?"

"Yeah. It looks pretty nice," he said, nodding, and pulled out the Gem of Brightness. "They used something with this gem thing to make it fit me personally, so it's fairly comfortable too. I mean, as much as a bunch of metal can be anyway. Where'd you learn to read so fast?"

"Uh, i-it's just speedreading. More like...skimming than anything else, I missed a lot of the details probably. B-but there's too much here to go through it all in an a-afternoon. I g-guess you just get better at it if you read a lot though, and w-with my condition reading was always safer than, um, going outside..."

"You didn't have any video games?" he asked, a little curious.

"W-well, sometimes. I j-just got used to reading books early on, and it appealed to me a lot more I guess. M-motion controls were obviously a b-bad idea, so I had to sk-skip out on those consoles either way..."

"That makes sense, I guess. Not every game used the motion controls, though."

He looked up and around at the library for a few seconds, taking in the vast number of books. "You said you learned something about how the races were created?"
"Y-yeah," Nora nodded. "The myths s-seem less confident about humans, but elves were humans b-blessed by, some god or other, they're not consistent on which one...there's nothing that says where dr-dragons came from but they're supposed to be intelligent and have enough magic to take on human form if they w-want, s-so Draconians like Rose are the offspring of a d-dragon and some other race. The ancestors of b-beastfolk like you and Katherine were actually animals with a lot of m-magic, either naturally or from a god's blessing, who used the magic to personify themselves after meeting humans and e-elves."

"Personify?"
Nora nodded. "I-it's a technical term for a specific kind of sp-spell that turns an animal into a mostly-human-looking person. B-but it's illegal to cast that spell."

Zack looked like he was thinking. "You know, some RPGs can have really good stories to them. If we ever get out of this maybe I can show you a few of my favorites."

The weaver nodded, "Th-that'd be nice." She didn't really believe in it as a possibility, but didn't want to upset him by suggesting that. Anyway, he'd used the word 'if', which didn't sound too optimistic to begin with.

---

Tsaron was an old-looking elf, which seemed like an accomplishment in and of itself. He had a bald-topped head with partially-gray hair circling the sides and back, didn't look particularly wrinkled but had a few scars and what might best be described as weathering. Or at least, this was what the person who answered the door looked like, whether it was the owner or not.

He looked at the two visitors for a moment, and said, "Well, how can I help you two?"
Katherine started, "Is this—?" and Aria said "We're looking for—" at the same time. They looked at each other for a second, and then the catgirl said "Are you—?" while the shifter began to say "Do you know if—?" Katherine glared at the other girl, realizing the first time had been an accident, but now she was doing it on purpose; Aria confirmed this suspicion with a poorly-suppressed giggle.

"I think the answer to all of those is 'yes'," he said. Then, looking at the psion, "I know pretty well why you're interested in meditation...a bit strange you aren't rather familiar with it already."
"Well, I am, but a refresher course couldn't hurt," she said with a shrug.
"What about you?" he asked of Aria.
"I have a demon sword that's giving me bad dreams and generally trying to make me insane. Being able to shut out its voice sometimes would be nice."

"Mm-hm.." The elf nodded. "Well, I wasn't doing much this afternoon anyway. Come on in." He lead the way through an average-looking kitchen (a strange choice for the front door to open to, thought Katherine) and a small hallway to a room with a red rug covering the floor.

"Well, this is my meditation room." Besides the rug the interior of the room was empty, but the walls were another story. On every square inch seemed to hang a different kind of weapon: Swords, daggers, spears, staves...there were a few unusual-looking pointy, sharp, or blunt things that neither visitor could quite identify. Some seemed to be plain if well-crafted and cared-for pieces, while others had precious gems decorating them or glowed faintly with some sort of magic.

"You like it?" said Tsaron, after giving the shifter and catgirl a moment to stare around at them. "I more or less put it together myself. You two are adventurers, right?"
"Yeah," said Katherine.
"I used to be one myself a long time ago," he nodded. "My party had a...disagreement and we parted ways."

"Let's get started, shall we? Go on and take a seat anywhere," said the elf with a small gesture at the floor. Both of the girls sat cross-legged facing the same way, and Tsaron sat down opposite them. "All you really need to do to get started is take a deep breath," he said.

The idea of meditating had always seemed dumb to Katherine on Earth, so she'd never actually tried it before. But somehow...just taking a deep breath and deciding to try and meditate made it come naturally. Aria had more trouble; after a few minutes of having her eyes scrunched closed she opened them again, making a face. "Ugh, it's not working.."

"Well, closing your eyes isn't always the best choice. After all, it amplifies your attention to sounds, smells, and touch, all of which can be awful distractions." He pointed to a jeweled sword on the wall. "Sometimes I find it's best to keep my eyes open and pick something right in front of me to focus my attention on. It's actually easier if it has interesting features rather than being just a blank wall, which was part of my reason for decorating this room this way."

"So what was the other part?" asked Aria.

"Well," he shrugged, "I had this big collection collecting dust, and...at least this way folks can appreciate the look of them."

---

Rayna looked through the collection of outfits in her arms, the ones Dr. Kellen had picked out for herself so far. "Hmm."
"What?"
"You sure this is okay? It's all dresses and stuff."
"Is it?" She took a closer look at them. "...I suppose so. I was only picking out what looked comfortable. Is there something wrong with that?"
"Not really, I guess. Just a little surprising. Lynn didn't want anything frilly like this. Although...I did think you might be a little motivated by not wanting to have upskirt shots happen every time you fly up in the air."

Clera blushed slightly, but said, "Hmn...the shorts will take care of that." She started over to where a bunch of various-colored bike shorts were being sold.

"So..I'm surprised this didn't come up on the way here, but what kind of class did you pick? I know it's some type of healer, but.."
"The...menu object called it 'Empath'. I don't actually heal others, I take on their wounds and then heal myself."

"That seems..unnecessarily painful."
Dr. Kellen shrugged. "I get the impression it has greater capacity to save lives at the price of a higher risk to the user."

After a moment of picking out shorts that seemed like they would fit, Clera said, "So what did you do for a living? Before this, I mean?"
"Oh, uh, Lynn and me are let's players. We, uh, record ourselves playing a game and talking about it, and put it up on the internet for people to watch. Actually, we were gonna do that with this game too. Woo, mysterious CD arrives in the mail, you know?" Dr. Kellen just nodded.

She sighed. "I guess it sounds kinda silly to someone whose occupation is actually saving lives."

"No one should shame themselves for any occupation. If people are willing to pay for what you do then there is value in it," said the doctor. "It is a kind of comedy show, right?"
"Yeah. I mean, we tried to stand out by being more analytical about the games we were playing, but there was a lot of snark and making fun of dumb stuff in the game, too."
"For people going through hard times...you have no idea how important it is to have something to laugh at."

The winged girl looked over the collection of clothes again. "I think this will do. Are you certain we have enough?"
"Yeah, this is barely a dent in the pay we got for the bird," she nodded.
"Then I suppose we should go back to meet with the dragon again."

"I bet you never thought you'd say that sentence."