A Winding Course

**introducing, the new friend.....................,**

**FENN**

## Synopsis

Juniper—replenished by the level up—puts his points into MEN, reasoning that skills like Blood Magic or Rifles depend on it. The first thing he decides to do is to find Amaryllis, in part because she is keeping some materials that the soulcycle depends on to function. Juniper thinks about abandoning the quest and simply getting out of Silmar City, but he stays on track out of respect to the spirit of the game.

Thanks to Verisim Mode, Juniper has no idea where Amaryllis would have gone—and he doesn't know her well enough to anticipate her actions. Juniper decides to loot stores to find things like clothes, maps, and a backpack. Because of the nature of the catastrophe that had hit the Risen Lands, many stores are still intact.

Juniper enters a clothing and supply store using his void tunneler and tries in vain to increase his Deception skill level by hiding in various places in and around the store. Juniper finds some useful things, such as water and a shoulder pack.

During this time, Juniper is trying to understand more about the differences between Aerb and Earth—to better distract himself from his predicament.

Juniper continues to search for different stores, not seeing very many undead around. A few signs draw his attention—*Silmar Velocity Services*, *Planus Tattooing*, and *Eckhart Prognostications*. He eventually finds *Able & Adler Booksellers* and starts skimming books in a section labelled "Magic"—books with titles like *A Tour of the Elemental Planes*, *Insights into the White Spires*, and *Bessemer: A History in Steel*. He reads *A Commoner’s Guide to Revision Magic*, hoping to unlock the skill. He learns that revision magic can undo physical and magical effects but not other magics, and that it is taught at the Athenaeum of Claw and Clocks, but is interrupted by an umbral zombie breaking through the glass storefront.

Juniper manages to evade and escape the monster and finds a corner store carrying maps of Silmar City—maps that show the way to Sorian's Castle. Juniper slowly moves towards the castle, and three blocks away he meets a blonde woman in fatigues, carrying a big bow, and sprinting in the opposite direction. She calls out to him to follow her, which he does, as she is being pursued by two umbral zombies. She dispatches the conglomerated monsters with her bow, which has the ability to turn an arrow shot from it into hundreds or thousands of arrows.

After some small talk, made especially awkward by the unusual circumstances of their meeting and their mutual desire to not reveal too much information, the half-elf woman introduces herself as Fenn Greenglass, and Juniper gives his name in turn. In course of the conversation, Juniper manages to increase ***Deception*** to level 5 and unlock ***Flattery***.

Juniper mentions Amaryllis as a friend but doesn't reveal her identity, and tells Fenn that he and his friend were dropped out of a plane into the Risen Lands. Fenn tells Juniper that he can come with her party—for his safety.

## Featured characters

* Juniper Smith
* Amaryllis Penndraig *(mentioned only)*
* Poul *(mentioned only)*
* Juniper's father *(mentioned only)*
* Fenn Greenglass

## Quotes

I don’t think I can overstate how great it was to have all my blood back. It made me almost empathize with vampires a little bit, because if it felt this good to have all my blood back in my body, how great would it be to add in *even more* blood?

—**Juniper** reacts to the level up's healing effect.

“What exactly brings you to this part of town, hooman?”

—**Fenn** attempts to get to know Juniper.

“I’m just sort of bumbling around.”
“Bumbling around. I, too, often find myself wandering about in cities deep in the heart of exclusion zones, carrying makeshift pistols. There’s something that’s so freeing about being lost, don’t you think? An exhilaration that comes with being untethered from even the bare knowledge of where you are in the world, hrm?”
“Sure. That’s … a nice bow you have there.”
“Family heirloom, very valuable, but occasionally one likes to fire a volley of arrows. Your own … pistol? It’s very … rustic.”

—**Juniper** and **Fenn** flatter each other.
## Notes

* When thinking about vampires, Juniper notes that he ran a campaign called "Contratto". *Contratto* is one of Alexander Wales' original short stories, published under the cthulhuraejepsen pseudonym. As Juniper observes, the vampire clans in that story each had a single point of failure—killing a vampire also killed all of the vampires they'd sired.
* He also name-drops the "Castrato Caverns"—no details are given as to which campaign this location was used in, but apparently a dwarven matron sent the party there as part of a storyline involving "castrated dwarven criminals". The party instead chose to raise some dire goats, much to Juniper's horror.

### Real-world references

* Juniper reminisces about going with his father to help people out in the town of Reading, Kansas after the EF3 tornado strike in 2011. Apparently, with the exception of the trees, the town was back to normal in just a few years.
* Juniper ponders the differences and similarities between Earth and Aerb as he explores Silmar city:
	+ Written numbers are the familiar Arabic numerals, but prices are followed by the currency symbol "ð" (likely the symbol for obols).
	+ Buttons are used instead of zippers.
	+ Onjects that would be made of plastic on Earth are instead of made of metal (for shoelace aglets) or canvas or paper (for bags).
	+ The city's streets are laid out like Paris, but use the Japanese addressing system.
	+ Pencils consist of paper wrapped around some black core material that dries up and crumbles after some time, rather than graphite.
* Juniper compares the stories-tall zombie voltron to Godzilla.