Kindly Bones

**The party visits a bone mage.**

## Synopsis

Juniper wonders to himself what kind of game he is stuck in, considering that the 'tutorial' in the Risen Lands brought him near death multiple times and took three days to complete. He tries not to think about the possibility that the game's narrative is being written around him as he plays it by a hypothetical game master, railroading him onto certain paths such as meeting Amaryllis.

Juniper, Amaryllis, and Fenn walk the streets of Barren Jewel, with Juniper paying attention to the various sounds and sights around him. The group arrives at the bone mage's shop, called Kindly Bones, which is strung up with thousands of bones hanging from the ceiling. The owner greets them and introduces herself as Magus Bormann, and the party gets down to business negotiating a price for healing Juniper. The woman agrees to heal all of Juniper's injuries for half a million tcher, which Fenn had obtained by pawning off various loot previously. The healing takes some time, and Fenn leaves as the process begins.

Juniper asks about the proces of learning bone magic and Magus Bormann replies that she spent five years at the Athenaeum of Bone and Flesh. As the bone mage explains the positive traits that may be tapped from bones, Juniper notices a correspondence with the mental and physical statistics in the game layr and brings up the possibility of tapping knowledge from bones. Bormann says that it is possible to tap memories from bones, but not much more, and Amaryllis interjects to say that Juniper should stop asking questions.

Juniper asks about the possibility of learning bone magic outside of the athenaeum. Bormann replies that it is illegal under imperial law, and Juniper reveals his ignorance by his blank-faced response, and Amaryllis explains the politics to cover for him. The conversation ends, and Juniper looks at his character sheet to see how the healing affected his various statistics. However, he sees nothing noteworthy except for his hitpoints ticking up.

Fenn returns and mentions that Amaryllis needs some attention too. Bormann looks at Amaryllis's hands, and the party is less willing to talk about those injuries. Juniper says that Amaryllis has rat rot, passing off his knowledge of the disease as secondhand information. When Bormann tells the group that she can't give them confidentiality as patients, Fenn opts to pay the full rate of fifty thousand tcher for no-questions-asked healing.

Fenn decides that the next thing for the group to do is to wash themselves at a bath house. She had also found out the reason behind Amaryllis wanting to go to Barren Jewel, and is unhappy about not being told about it. The group returns to their rented room in silence.

## Featured characters

* Juniper Smith
* Fenn Greenglass
* Amaryllis Penndraig
* Magus Bormann
* Arthur Reimer *(mentioned only)*

## Quotes

“The argument goes that there is a limited number of good, useable bones in the world, and though new bones are being made all the time, that still leaves a limit on how many are created a year, both through natural processes and on farms. A lackluster bone mage pulls less from a bone than a superb one, which means that a weak bone mage goes through far more bones, depleting a scarce resource and overall increasing the price of much-needed healing in the long term. I’m sure that the players in that game are transparent to you. The Athenaeum of Bone and Flesh gains in power if they’re the only source of accredited bone magic, existing bone mages get to take out the competition and keep their prices high, the Athenaeum of Quills and Blood sits on the fence for a bit because on the one hand restricting healing to accredited bone mages means that blood mages have some benefit from decreased competition, but on the other hand it lowers the relative prestige of blood mages and those who teach it because now there’s this bottleneck of privilege, and then there are all the farmers, hunters, trappers, et cetera who make their livings, in part, off providing bones, and they’re of course staunchly against this change in imperial law because of how it affects their bottom line, on and on until you have hundreds of voices arguing with varying strength that the imperial law is either good and bad, and eventually the vote gets decided by some combination of money and influence rather than whether it’s actually good policy.”

—**Amaryllis** talks politics to cover for Juniper revealing his ignorance.

“Looking much better! Though I suppose you should be, for half a million tcher.”

“He was lucky. The arrow in his leg just missed his femoral artery. The one in his stomach managed not to pierce any internal organs. Whatever you were doing, I would highly suggest that you not do it again … though if you do, I hope that you remember me.”

—Both **Fenn** and **Bormann** are pleased with how the transaction went.

“I’m thinking that a bathhouse is the next thing on our list, some place that we can wash off the stink of our misadventures. Also, Juniper, you’ll be glad to know that I found out why we’re really here. No friends, but no enemies either, that might have applied to a dozen places that we could have gone. There’s a deeper meaning to why Barren Jewel was so very, very non-negotiable.”

“We should keep our voices low. We can discuss this in private. I had planned to, after we’d gotten some rest.”

“Suit yourself.”

—**Fenn** takes charge of the group's next steps after finding out why **Amaryllis** wanted to go to Barren Jewel.
## Notes

### Continuity notes

* Juniper recalls the ***Cowardice*** affliction given to him all the way back in chapter 1.
* He also provides the name "Amenity" for a hypothetical alternate version of Comfort.
* Upon arrival in Barren Jewel, Juniper comes across people from various fantastical races:
	+ An upright creature with chitinous plating and mandibles (possibly one of the Harmonia).
	+ Three elves.
	+ A turtle-like creature (possibly a Testudine).
	+ A normal-looking woman with leathery wings.
	+ Some dwarves.
	+ A floating cyan crystal roughly the size of a toaster.
	+ A lanky eight-foot-tall man.
* Magus Bormann is noted to have black spots running down from her ears.
* Though the currency on Aerb had been shown to be the obol in earlier chapters, Fenn pays the bone mage in tcher. This will be briefly commented on in the following chapter.
* Reimer's "Blah, blah, blah, politics." refrain was first mentioned back in chapter 9.

### Real-world references

* *Super Meat Boy* is a difficult platform game with short levels intended to be completed after many attempts.
* Juniper mentally contrasts the people and the environment of Barren Jewel to video game NPCs and locations.
* While trying to get a frame of reference for what athenaeums are, he imagines that they are something like "super powerful universities". Amaryllis will tell him never to make that comparison aloud in chapter 20.