“The lords will see you in just a few moments now,” the stuffy shirted gnome told them. He stood perhaps three and a half feet tall but somehow held a halberd. The axe shaft was twice as long as he was and it wavered awkwardly.

The party didn’t really notice though, absorbed as they were with the anxiety of the moment. The adventurers had been pacing for a good half an hour, well aware that if they messed up this interview they might as well pull up camp from Gennopolis and head off elsewhere. Yenrab’s stomach burbled with the stress of bottled up gas and his face was taut with displeasure.

Tracy looked over her friend with sympathy.

“Maybe, friend Yenrab, you should take a trip to the latrines?”

Yenrab looked back at her with a pained expression.

“Ya know I would if you all didn’t make me the party captain. I’ll take off to the crapper then they’ll call us in and I’ll be the sour snout that messed it all up for us all. They’ll be like, oh, hey, where’s your captain? And you’ll all say that I’m in the crapper. Then they’ll do some stuff with the papers and huff and haw and we’ll lose to the job to Some Other Guys.”

“Some Other Guys are a pretty decent group, mates,” Bern Sandros cut in, his midnight blue cloaks and leather quite the fashion statement now that he’d had the cash to have it tailored. “Enough so that people were telling me that SOG is almost certainly going to get this job instead of us.”

“Nonsense brosephs,” Wex added, his featureless mask fully in place, his mailed body edgy with anticipation. “We’re the heroes of Rising Action and Torus Strade. We’re a shoe in, right?”

“Yeah?” Bern questioned.

“Yeah bro,” Wex answered. “No doubt about it.”

Strings plucked in the corner.

“They came they saw they slew them all - hoorah hoorah - they are the Exterminators of Things that Hurt Us and Are Really Bad - hoorah hoorah - EoTtHUaARB came to save the day, everyone got hurt and there wasn’t much day but it all ended purposeful for the Exterminators of Things that Hurt Us and Are Really Bad . . .” Carric Smith sang, fading out at the end. He was dressed up in fancy and colorful clothing, not quite his style but today he had to dress to impress. And these fancy duds came from home with his name tagged to every article. At his side he carried his scabbard with the words ‘Momma’s Little Dumpling’ woven into its edges and upon his back was hooked his exceptionally manufactured hand crossbow whose name, ‘Lil Sunshine’, stood carved into its outward arc.

“What was that?” Bern Sandros asked the half-elf, his pointed ears and thin build a stark reminder of his mixed parentage.

“Shuddup. I’m working on it.”

“I’ve heard better cat squalls,” Wex opined. “And what’s with the duds? You look so not you?”

Carric simply scowled.

“The lords will see you now,” the stuffy shirt yawned, somehow still hanging on to that danged halberd.

***

The hall they entered resembled a courtroom more than anything else. The lords of the ruling council sat tall behind gavelled podiums of a deep brown oak, well finished and well furbished. The rest of the large council room was absent except for them, the wooden panels that composed it playing back their every sound as it echoed through the room.

A light squeal sounded from Yenrab’s end. Carric shifted and coughed to cover it up, though Yenrab’s very guilty face, and the sudden smell of dirty rear let the rest of the party know that this interview had to go fast.

The three lords stood from their high places. Each was dressed regally, but in glitzy and ceremonial garb as best befit their titles. On the left stood the Lord over Civil Affairs, elected, as they all were, for a single ten year term. He wore golden silks in the form favored by sages, and ceremonial eyeglasses clung to his face, though they were not necessary. Next, in the middle of them, stood a broad shouldered man with a scarred face. He was the General over Military Affairs, and his golden chestplate gleamed as only a soldier with a spit rag can make it. Last was the Diplomat over International Ties and Diplomacy. It was a long title given to a man who looked crooked and calculated, with eyes that were filled with wild intelligence. His garb was that of some majestic godlike courier and frankly it looked ridiculous.

“You have audience with the Lords Regent of the Republic, party, Ea-ot-the-ah-arb,” the diplomat spoke. To every person within these halls of the law, he was simply the diplomat because the law had no name. Or so the law exposited.

The party proceeded to line up as the formal words were spoken. Yenrab stepped forward to start this encounter.

“EoTtHUaARB, your, uh, graces,” Yenrab corrected them in a tone that, to those who knew them, indicated a bit of distress. Carric coughed again to cover a couple of creeping noises and Wex sneezed as the acrid stench reached his nose.

Hot air rises. We’d better finish this interview in a hurry, he thought to himself.

“What do you need?” Tracy stepped up beside him. The rest of the party scowled but the lord laughed and then, with a motion at his fellows, they were all seated.

“Party EoTtHUaARB,” the lord pronounced correctly, speaking it exactly as it is spelled, “we are here to beseech an adventuring party, the best one I suppose, to do a mission of a military matter.”

The general stood back up, his armor gleaming as the rays of the afternoon sun poured in through the windows of the Assembly’s dome. The building was quite majestic and, were one to write about it, surely they would give it a tremendous amount of description due to its powerful and statuesque beauty.

“We’re talking about Cadorna Keep,” he growled out. There was something about grizzled combat veterans that turned them half-feral. They always growled.

“Our Freeholder’s Republic is holding strong, but since we lost that keep during the Revolutionary War, it's been hard as the Elemental Plane of Earth to keep it free of pirates. And we’ve been getting goblin and orc tribes marching through our borders and dragging long boats in.”

“Someone needs to build a wall, A huge wall. A tremendous wall!” the Diplomat exclaimed fervently.

“We’ve been over this,” sighed the lord. “Who’s going pay for it?”

“I told you,” the Diplomat exclaimed again, standing up. “They will!”

“Fleer of Villages!” the general cursed. Yenrab started. When the heck did my folk hero titles start becoming curses, he wondered.

“Look, enough partisan bickering. Let’s just focus on the task at hand. Adventurers, what we need is a group to land on the island. We will have transport ships take you there and they will come back to pick you up the next day. We need you to map the place out and tell us what is where and where is what. The island has been under some sort of curse and we will send a military to occupy it whilst clerics of good cast this bad magic out. For your services we will give you the princely sum of,” the general looked uncomfortable, “Five-hundred gold pieces.”

Why is it always gold pieces or silver pieces, one of The Gamers griped. Do they just march around with jagged chunks of unstamped metal in their pockets? How much is that anyways? Like five dollars? Five-hundred dollars? Why not something cool, like pieces of eight?

Oh, look at that, an even more powerful figure observed. The weather outside has turned rather rough. It’d be a damn shame if a stray lightning bolt came blasting through that window.

The voices of The Gamers faded away.

“Bloody hells we will,” Bern Sandros broke in. “You want us to stay twenty-four hours on a haunted island for the cost of a good set of mail? No thanks, mate. Pass.”

“Bern, bro,” Wex the wood-elf cut in, his mask removed to show off his dark skin and even darker eyes. “Mask has granted me the power to scare the undead. It’s right.”

Bern soaked that in, and then nodded. Yenrab motioned with his hand, using a broken bit of Thieves Cant that Bern had told him meant hurry up (but actually meant I am a giant talking turd with a lot of money. Please rob me.)

Tracy, though, twirling in strange ballerina-like pivots and slides behind them, all at once stopped.

“One-thousand gold pieces,” she stated in a coquettish lilt. “And a few magic items.”

Then she raised her fist and winked at Bern.

“Power to the People.”

“Yeah!” Bern agreed. “Power to the People!”

Carric fiddled a bit with his lute and stepped forward to take over negotiations.

“That’s one-thousand gold dollars -” the faraway Lord of the Gamers sighed - “and a few magic items. Take it or leave it.”

The Diplomat looked as if he were about to start to argue, his finger raised to make a point, and the lord looked as if he were already ready to oppose the Diplomat, no matter what it was that he actually said, but the general spoke loudly and in a commanding voice that shut both up rather quickly.

“One-thousand gold pieces, er, dollars and a few magic items, but you guys lift the damnable curse then,” he growled.

“Deal,” Carric smiled. Yenrab took the opportunity to run away from the room in a strange waddle, his thick orcish legs bouncing him back and forth like a toddler learning to walk. But Bern and Wex slapped hands and Tracy cheered, making jazz fingers at the moon goddess, whatever that meant.

“Say,” Carric asked out of the blue. “Why did we get the job and not the party SOG?”

It was the general’s turn to smile, his eyes stony and satisfied at a deal well done. “Oh, Some Other Guys? They got the job first. There was just nothing left of them when we came back to pick them up.”