Eternity RPC Board
09-13-2016, 11:43 PM
“Ooh!” Elke squealed in dramatized delight. “It’s gorgeous!” And truthfully, it was. The silhouette and color reminded her of the lone Winged Wahoo tree that had declared itself at home in the middle of old Farmer Haidder’s barley field sixty three summers ago, as the story goes. She could imagine now the man’s overly sunned face and wiry tobacco-streaked beard as he rambled on about that stubborn-as-a-mule sapling that just seem to come back year after year.
“P’rtected by faes, eh ‘tis!” the old man would declare to a wide-eyed (and even more naïve than the present day) Elke. “Ah cut ‘t down, but th’ likkle imp joost springs back up e’en bigger ‘n stronger the next day!” Although Elke now held somewhat of a dubious trust in Farmer Haidder’s wild tale, there sure enough was an uninvited elm big enough to provide shade for a small family smack in the middle of his field. She had climbed that tree a hundred times in her youth, and when it was in full leaf, its foliage was remarkably similar to this lovely green toggle.
But her strong desire to sense the freedom of the sunny, pleasant-smelling outdoors was her primary focus now, and her praise for the trinket and the complementary goods being offered were less in sweet nostalgia for her homeland and more so that the great myopic beast would have no reason to return to the storeroom to find better wares for his customer.
“It’s absolutely perfect,” Elke reiterated, nervously brushing away a few long strands of hair from her face that had fallen out of their assigned place as she’d turned to look hurriedly for her coin purse. “Now where…?” She could hear the muffled jingling of coins from a bag within a bag, but her tendency to overcram her luggage meant she would have to do a bit of mining. Layers of charms, medicinal balms, survival equipment and for some reason a half-eaten fruit (which had turned just about everything in close proximity disturbingly sticky, which - in combination with the rank stench of this place - meant she was fighting back gags) had settled over the wallet like sedimentary rock. She would be better aided by a pickaxe than a wand at this point.
At last, the mage-turned-prospector unearthed the small leather wallet, breathing a triumphant and relieved, “Oh good!” It hadn’t occurred to her that these lumbering storeowners, in their culture foreign to her own, might request some form of currency other than little metal discs. Did trolls really spend cash? Largely ignorant to their facets not including those involving grinding humans into sausage meat, this was the first time the young woman was being presented with such a question. If trolls spent cash, what did they buy with it? She'd always heard they just took up residence in swampy caves and the weedy underside of bridges and other such unsavory locations, so it's not as if they would use it to buy decorative sconces. She'd also been taught that they had a penchant for eating any living creature small enough that they could kill by snapping in half - rabbits, deer, small children - so spending the money at the market seemed an unlikelihood as well.
With not many goods with which to barter, she could only hope that these two, seemingly expats in a primarily humanoid village, had adopted the local customs. Some aspects of their appearance certainly suggested that they had drifted towards a more civilized existence.
If not, maybe they’d accept a wilted, half-gone, covered-in-lint-and-dirt plum.
“How much, then?” Elke asked, and before allowing the others to get a word in, continued with a rushed, “No less than a few pieces of silver for something with that level of craftsmanship, I’m sure. And a couple pieces of copper for the sewing kit?” With a questioning pause, she glanced between Thing One and Thing Two.
“P’rtected by faes, eh ‘tis!” the old man would declare to a wide-eyed (and even more naïve than the present day) Elke. “Ah cut ‘t down, but th’ likkle imp joost springs back up e’en bigger ‘n stronger the next day!” Although Elke now held somewhat of a dubious trust in Farmer Haidder’s wild tale, there sure enough was an uninvited elm big enough to provide shade for a small family smack in the middle of his field. She had climbed that tree a hundred times in her youth, and when it was in full leaf, its foliage was remarkably similar to this lovely green toggle.
But her strong desire to sense the freedom of the sunny, pleasant-smelling outdoors was her primary focus now, and her praise for the trinket and the complementary goods being offered were less in sweet nostalgia for her homeland and more so that the great myopic beast would have no reason to return to the storeroom to find better wares for his customer.
“It’s absolutely perfect,” Elke reiterated, nervously brushing away a few long strands of hair from her face that had fallen out of their assigned place as she’d turned to look hurriedly for her coin purse. “Now where…?” She could hear the muffled jingling of coins from a bag within a bag, but her tendency to overcram her luggage meant she would have to do a bit of mining. Layers of charms, medicinal balms, survival equipment and for some reason a half-eaten fruit (which had turned just about everything in close proximity disturbingly sticky, which - in combination with the rank stench of this place - meant she was fighting back gags) had settled over the wallet like sedimentary rock. She would be better aided by a pickaxe than a wand at this point.
At last, the mage-turned-prospector unearthed the small leather wallet, breathing a triumphant and relieved, “Oh good!” It hadn’t occurred to her that these lumbering storeowners, in their culture foreign to her own, might request some form of currency other than little metal discs. Did trolls really spend cash? Largely ignorant to their facets not including those involving grinding humans into sausage meat, this was the first time the young woman was being presented with such a question. If trolls spent cash, what did they buy with it? She'd always heard they just took up residence in swampy caves and the weedy underside of bridges and other such unsavory locations, so it's not as if they would use it to buy decorative sconces. She'd also been taught that they had a penchant for eating any living creature small enough that they could kill by snapping in half - rabbits, deer, small children - so spending the money at the market seemed an unlikelihood as well.
With not many goods with which to barter, she could only hope that these two, seemingly expats in a primarily humanoid village, had adopted the local customs. Some aspects of their appearance certainly suggested that they had drifted towards a more civilized existence.
If not, maybe they’d accept a wilted, half-gone, covered-in-lint-and-dirt plum.
“How much, then?” Elke asked, and before allowing the others to get a word in, continued with a rushed, “No less than a few pieces of silver for something with that level of craftsmanship, I’m sure. And a couple pieces of copper for the sewing kit?” With a questioning pause, she glanced between Thing One and Thing Two.