09 Miss Emerald Lips

The guild master told me that veteran adventurers got the big jobs, and those were handled as hush-hush. There had been two publicly available tasks.. ones with lesser rewards but more honest patrons.. and those had gotten an interested crowd. One was about a farmer's kid who had gotten lost. That sounded like either a parenting issue.. or then a wildlife matter in which case the kid was wolf fodder or something.. or, maybe it was a love story. Who knows, maybe the kid had gotten bored of milking cows and taken up juggling or tinkering instead. Why someone would involve adventurers for such, and what adventurers could do about any of those, sounded odd. Anyhow, some pointy-eared guy had shown an interest in it, probably because it took place in the wilderness. Maybe there was a story to it.. and maybe he and Coill might meet somewhere in the woodlands.

Lots of questions. So the more interesting thing was the other story. It involved a real quest and a real employer. When pointy-ears bolted, the group of new people was a man short, so they said a pretty please to Drai when he dropped by at the guild house, and a group was formed.

Drai told me that the group consisted of a slender hottie with complexion like mine... I've got to meet her at some point. Hm. What happens of two half-orcs have children? Do they get a full orc child? Another half-orc? A quarter-orc? A two-quarters-orc, which would mean a half-orc? ...but there was also some human female who liked to wear metal.. those are always handy, metal heads for the front row and stops attackers and arrows, and females smell better than males. And there was something small with lots of scars and a half-animal half-machine science project that crawled across the tables on eight or so legs. That one sounded.. like a walking do-not-try-this-at-home lesson. But, it is good that he had emerged alive from whatever had happened to him, and that shows that the gods are either merciful or then lazy at collecting souls for the afterlife, and that the life spirit is strong.

Oh, my sweet lovely, I don't give a toss
for any save one with skin the color of moss
Not for the woman with gold for hair and sword
and armor of steel, no, she's pink and I am bored
by the thought of her lips.. like rubies some called
so dull.. but yours, soft and sweet like emerald..
May you both be kept safe by Drai and Mr Scarred
..who is either incompetent... or then a wizard..

Or both, I suppose. But wizard blow stuff up, regardless of whether they are good at wizardry or not.

The team followed the elf.. pixie.. gnome.. something around town, and finally to a trading house where honorable Jeremiah.. story says that he likes to have a pint in the evenings at some high-class drinking establishment with a young woman as his good-luck charm, and bet on dog races. Apparently the charm works as Jeremiah has a habit of winning quite often at the games.

But what Jeremiah told them to do.. proved to be quite hazardous, which explained why this time they would be actually getting paid.