Marcus, Aaron, and I sat in a lounge located on the first floor of the southern building. It was decadently comfortable, just my sort of place with dark stained wooden walls and plush seating everywhere. There was a table with some kind of game and even a full bar. A few people had been in the room at first but soon cleared out when they caught on to the mood of their Guildmaster. The three of us had drinks in hand and I sipped on a whiskey in a fine crystal glass. It had no ice but for once I didn’t care.

My thoughts were miles away and the other two were silent as well. It wasn’t the murder that was bothering me now so much as the entire shift of my expectations. I’d come to this world thinking of playing around, killing some stuff, finding some cool loot, and generally just having fun. The mechanics with the mental commands and the character progression made it all feel like a game but so far I’d felt like I was just living my life more than anything.

It made me wonder if people were truly prepared for the realism that Novarra offered when they came here as ‘Travelers’. I strongly suspected that most would come for the adventuring and, if they chose to stay at all, many would end up in the more mundane and everyday aspects of life. Choosing to be a merchant or a baker or a musician wouldn’t seem so strange to people once they saw the teeming market just outside or smelled the scent of fresh bread or heard an instrument no one had ever heard before.

My thoughts were drawn back to the present when Marcus finally said, “So, it seems the Razor Moons are making a move.”

Aaron nodded but since I had no idea who the Razor Moons were or what that implied I stayed silent and waited. There was still too much I didn’t know. At least the whiskey was good.

“Sorry James, I should explain what happened today,” Marcus went on, turning to look at me in his seat, “Publicly, the Thieves Guild is a single entity and stands united. In fact, there are six separate Guilds that make up what is known as the Thieves Guild. We are one of those, obviously, and our territory here in the City of Towers is the western half of the Market District along with a small piece of the adjacent West District. The east half of the Market District and a small part of the slums in the East District is run by the Razor Moons.”

I nodded when he paused to show I was following and he continued, “Things are… tense between us at the best of times but any overt moves will draw the ire of the other Guilds, if only to preserve the balance. What we were doing today was checking on a problem that was recently brought to my attention by the City Guard.”

The shock must have shown on my face because he laughed a bit. Then he went on, “You see, it would be impossible to operate as freely as we do in the market, and elsewhere, without the Guard catching on. Fortunately for us, the Guard is incredibly corrupt as a whole. We regularly bribe them with sizable payments to look the other way when it comes to all of our activities, with the understanding that we will be as discreet as possible and handle our problems internally.”

Marcus sighed and drank from his glass. He looked into it as if for answers but didn’t seem to find any. Then he looked back at me and said, “I received word that a part of our last ‘payment’ to the Guard contained counterfeit bars. Rather than retaliating immediately, the Captain instead let me know about it privately because we, and by we I mean the Shadow Fangs, have made our payments regularly for some time. The Guards may be corrupt but they are not blind, they’re one of the few factions in the city who know about the divided nature of the Thieves Guild and so each of us pay them separately.”

“The Razor Moons, however, have lately been making violent inroads into parts of the market that aren’t theirs. They were never exactly known for subtlety before but now they’ve gone too far and the Guard has been forced to act against them,” Marcus explained, “It looks like the Moons have now decided to undermine us with the Guards to divert attention away from them. Thankfully, we managed to find the source of the problem, but we’ll still be paying a very large sum to make up for the fake bars that got passed off and it damaged our credibility.”

Marcus rested his glass on the arm of his chair for a moment and drummed his fingers along it, obviously deep in thought. He seemed to emerge from his fugue after a couple of minutes and addressed me again, “You don’t need to worry about the Razor Moons just yet. I have plans that I’ll need your help with. But first, I want Aaron to take over your training and make sure you’re prepared for it and whatever comes next.”

Aaron looked over to Marcus with an expression that looked as shocked as I felt. The taciturn man’s face soon cleared, though, and he said to me, “Sell off the jewelry to Bert first but don’t buy any Orbs yet. Meet me in the north building when you’re done.”

With that said, he drained the dregs in his glass and walked off without another word. Marcus still seemed a bit lost in thought so I finished my whiskey and made my way over to Bert’s shop in silence. When I got to the counter the dwarf asked, “What’ve you got fer me?”

I began pulling out the jewelry I’d stolen from the store. There was quite a bit more than I’d realized. Gold, silver, diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires glittered up from the mound of treasure on the table when I was done.

“Well damn, what’d you do, rob an entire jewelry store?” Bert asked with a laugh.

“Yeah… I guess I did,” I said softly.

The bald dwarf seemed to pick up on my mood and sorted the items quietly. After a while he whistled and said, “That’s worth more than the coin I have on hand. The total comes out to 6,220 gold. I can give you a thousand of that and store credit for the rest or a bank note if you’d rather.”

My eyebrows rose at the amount. “The thousand gold and credit is fine for now,” I told him, “I’ve got to do some training but I’ll be back after that to check out what you’ve got in the way of skills.”

He nodded amiably and pulled out a large sack from behind the counter. It landed on top of it with a loud thud and he pushed it over to me. I opened the top of it and peered inside. I’d never seen so many coins before, it was like a pirate’s wet dream.

I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to carry it, I thought it might break my back if I tried to lift it. Then I remembered the magical pouch and started moving handfuls of coins into it, only to watch them magically disappear into thin air before hitting the bottom. The sight brought a smile to my face.

Not exactly looking forward to more training, I was nevertheless curious as to what it would entail. When I got over to the north building I immediately spotted Aaron waiting patiently in the foyer. He didn’t say a word just gestured for me to follow him and we made our way to one of the practice rooms with the humanoid targets.

Looking around, I wondered what we would be learning first. When I turned to Aaron he was looking at my armor critically and said, “That armor you’re wearing is all leather. It’s classified as Medium Armor but you clearly don’t know how to wear it properly. We’ll start by fixing that.”

What followed was a crash course that ended with me gaining three different skills: Medium Armor, Dodge, and Daggers. Aaron was a brusque tutor but very patient and incredibly knowledgeable. He gave me a wealth of information, some seemed like common sense but most was totally new to me. As the pop-ups came up for learning the different skills I set them aside as fast as I could in order to concentrate on what he was telling me. Eventually, he stopped the flood of information and asked, “What are the levels at now?”

To my surprise, all three were at ten exactly and I told him so.

“In each skill tier, at least for Novice, Apprentice, and Journeyman, you can be taught the first ten levels of the skill by someone who is at least two tiers higher than you,” Aaron explained, “So, a Journeyman can teach Novices, an Expert can teach Apprentices, and it requires a Master to teach Journeymen.”

“Interesting,” I said, “So how do you go beyond level ten?”

“Practice,” he said and drew his knife, “We’ll start with your Medium Armor and Dodge.”

Then he grinned and I got a very bad feeling.

“So,” he said, “What were you saying about my nickname again?”