Threadbare complete tr.., p.18
Threadbare - Complete Trilogy, page 18
They stared at the chest. Celia reached out a hand, and Jarrik caught it. “Nope.”
“Oh. Aren’t we going to open it?”
“We? Yes. You? No.” Beryl said. “Ready, Gar?”
“Ready. See, we don’t have anyone here with any rogue jobs, so… I’ve got the most hit points. Should be fine though,” Garon mused. “Worst I’ve ever taken from one of these popping a trap in this area is sixty.”
“Sixty!” Celia shrieked. She grabbed up Threadbare and her dragon and hurried to the rear of the group, who backed up and left Garon by himself.
“Here goes!” Garon yanked open the lid…
…and nothing happened. “Whew. Hey!” He pulled out handfuls that shown silver in the light. “Come back, we’ve got loot!”
The loot, as it turned out, was a good-sized pile of silver and copper coins, and a staff that shone with blue light.
“Blue is sages and water elementalists, right?” Celia asked.
“Mostly. I guess Bak’shaz could try to use it, Tamer’s a sage job…wait, you’ve got enchanter, don’t you?”
“Yes! Does this mean…”
“You get to use it until we’re out,” Beryl said. “But don’t get too attached to it. We’ll have to give it to the guards.”
“What? Why?”
“It’s the King’s decree. All magic items looted from dungeons must be turned in to representatives of the crown at the first opportunity.”
Celia picked it up. “Well, it’ll be fun anyway… wait, I could disenchant it at the end of this run. Ooh, it shoots little static electricity balls!”
“No good, it’s been tried. Disenchanting, I mean,” Beryl said. “The guards take the components and fine you half your coin.”
Celia sighed. “Well, it’ll be fun while I’ve got it I guess.”
“That’s the spirit.” Beryl punched her in the arm. In the same place as before. Celia was getting pretty sure it was bruised under her coat, but was too cold to haul it back and check. “Come on. Let’s get to the Catwalk.”
The catwalk was an agility challenge. Celia scooped up Threadbare for this part, and left him sticking out of the top of her pack. It involved crossing terrifying rope and plank bridges up the side of the mountain, which actually wasn’t as hard as it seemed, so long as you were careful and went slow. But this was broken up by divebombing attacks from winged cats, Flying Tomcats, as Bak’shaz helpfully identified them.
They weren’t difficult, but they chose the most inopportune times to attack, and their caterwauls were hard on the group’s sanity. But Jarrik reigned supreme here, using his archer skills to harass and drive them back, and finish off the ones that skirmished then tried to flee.
Threadbare, for his part, didn’t care. He’d heard worse from Pulsivar.
Though interestingly, it did raise his willpower a few more points and his new Stubborn skill to level 4 by the time they were through it.
Finally they came to the top of the peak, and a long rope bridge that stretched across a slope filled with tall pine trees, that reached almost to the underside of the bridge. It was shadowed there, down between the pines, and Threadbare’s eyes just managed to pick out slender shapes moving through the bristles of the evergreens.
PER +1
But it was what was above the bridge that was of more concern. A thing looking much like a squarish, spindly creature made of wood and cloth and fur and fangs floated in the air currents, glaring down at the party with suspicious eyes.
“That’s the Kittyhawk,” Garon explained. “And this is where we’re done. Fighting that thing on the bridge is suicide. I saw someone get knocked off once. And that was pretty much it for the poor guy.”
“Aye,” Beryl said, but she was squinting up at the Kittyhawk. “Fighting on the bridge would be suicide. But fighting it here, might just be doable.”
“We got some treasure and experience,” Celia offered. “I leveled, too. Are you sure we want to push our luck?”
“You got a ranged attack item, and I’m still pretty good on healing,” Beryl said. “And we’ve got Bak’shaz on the slingshot and Jarrik with his bow. As long as we dodge when it comes in for attack runs, we should be fine.”
“You just want to see what it drops,” Garon said. But he was considering it, Celia could tell.
Maybe this thing wouldn’t be too bad. Celia thought. “Okay, come here,” she picked up Threadbare again, and put him in her pack, with just his head poking out. “It’s a long way down and I’m not losing you.”
“How about your dragon?” Bak’shaz asked.
“No, let’s leave him out,” Celia decided. “I can replace him if I have to.”
“All right. I’ll get ‘is attention. We ready?” Jarrik asked.
The kids chorused their readiness, and prepared for battle.
The first arrow embedded itself deep into a cloth wing, and it zoomed in fast, dodging the static orb from Celia’s new staff. Bak’shaz cracked it with a slingstone and it turned on the little half-orc, veering in and spreading claws wide-
-only to be knocked off balance as the little dragon threw itself into its side. For all its size, the bizarre creature was very light. It whirled a few times, regained some altitude, and hovered, directing jets of wind down upon the party.
“Grab a boulder or get low!” Beryl called. “It can’t keep it up forever!”
Celia, skidding backward, just managed to grab a boulder in time.
The little dragon didn’t, and disappeared off the cliff, falling into the pines as it tried to flap non-functional cloth wings.
And Threadbare felt himself start to slip free of the pack. Desperately he grabbed on, using his full strength to hold himself tight to the cords keeping the pack shut-
-the cords that tore, spilling the contents of the pack to the forested slope below, and sending Threadbare sailing down to join them.
“No!” He heard Celia yell, and then he was falling…
THREADBARE’S CHARACTER SHEET
Name: Threadbare Age: 9 days
Jobs:
Greater Toy Golem Level 7 Bear Level 5 Ruler Level 2 Scout 2
Attributes: Strength: 54 Constitution: 61 Hit Points: 159 Armor: 25 Intelligence: 37 Wisdom: 61(66) Sanity: 89/98(103) Mental Fortitude: 15 Dexterity: 24 Agility: 33 Stamina: 67 Endurance: 35 Charisma: 35(40) Willpower: 27 Moxie: 62(67) Cool: 20 (30) Perception: 39 Luck: 40 Fortune: 78 Fate: 7
Generic Skills Brawling - Level 10 Climb - Level 6 Clubs and Maces - Level 7 Dagger - Level 9 Dodge - Level 2 Fishing - Level 1 Ride - Level 2 Stealth - Level 3 Swim - Level 2
Greater Toy Golem Skills Adorable – Level 14 Gift of Sapience – Level NA Golem Body – Level 9 Innocent Embrace - Level 2 Magic Resistance –Level 4
Bear Skills Animalistic Interface – NA Claw Swipes – 8 Forage – 7 Growl - 1 Hibernate - 1 Scents and Sensibility – 8 Stubborn - 4 Toughness – 7
Ruler Skills Emboldening Speech - Level 1 Identify Subject - Level 1 Noblesse Oblige - Level 1 Royal Request - Level 1 Simple Decree - Level 1
Scout Skills Camouflage - Level 1 Firestarter - Level 1 Keen Eye - Level 1 Sturdy Back - Level 5 Wind’s Whisper - Level 1
Equipment Rod of Baronly Might - (Level 5 Club, CHA +5, WIS +5, +10 Cool )
Quests
Catastrophe 2
The world spun as Threadbare fell, broken by the occasional THWACK of a branch, or SNAP when he hit one small enough that he broke it and kept going.
About thirty hit points later he came to a stop, with Golem Body up a level and Toughness increased as well. Snow sprayed around him as he dropped into a bank lightly dusted with pine needles, and he poked his head up warily, certain that the fall had been the least of his problems.
The second he did, the deep shadows in the trees fled. He’d had glowgleam cast upon him back in the tunnels, and it chased away the darkness in the little hollow.
What it revealed was far, far worse.
Tons of tiny minicores filled the shadows under the pines, skittering on the snow, hissing with tiny kitty mouths, and twitching their stingers. But as the light touched them they retreated, turning tail and scampering in fear.
All save for some who were clustered around a twitching green form some distance away. Red zeroes and ones drifted up, lots of them. Threadbare squinted, and recognized Celia’s dragon toy, fighting desperately for its existence against a mob of minicores. Well, that would never do! He ran over there, waving his arms and making the shadows dance on the trees. The minicores ripping up the little animated toy glanced up and rain for their venomous lives.
But he’d arrived almost too late. The animated toy was in two pieces, stuffing spilling out of it. The upper part, its torso, wings and head twitched and looked at him with an almost sorrowful expression. Filled with feelings that his little fuzzy form could barely express, Threadbare picked the dragon up in trembling paws. He hugged the toy to him, then turned to glower at the shifting, buglike forms hiding in the trees.
Then he froze. Up above, far up in the pines, bigger Minicores clung to the branches, ignoring the unease of their brood below. They were on par with the one he’d taken out solo back in the tunnel, but there were about six or seven per tree, at least as far as he could tell.
He was glad he’d spotted them before he tried climbing out of this place.
PER +1
So. What now?
“Got it!” He heard Jarrik yell from above, and with a screech and a sound of more snapping branches, the large form of the Kittyhawk crashed down below, a little ways away. “Aw man, now we won’t…” the wind picked up, and Threadbare couldn’t hear the rest of the scout’s words. They were pretty far up there.
Suddenly, the dragon toy twisted, and looked directly at him. Its eyes had shifted, he noticed. They looked almost human now.
“Threadbare! Oh my gods. Where are you? What is this?” He heard Celia say in his ear, and turned to look for Celia, but didn’t see her. Then it struck him, she was a scout now. Wind’s Whisper was totally a thing she could do, and that was probably it.
The little dragon toy looked around. Then it tapped Threadbare on the arm with its nose, and pointed off in one direction. Threadbare stared at it. It tapped again, tugged harder.
Oh!
INT +1
Threadbare set off that way, following the dragon’s pointing head, looking around as he went. The bigger minicores stayed to the trees, thankfully, and the small ones shrunk back from his light. For now, he thought he was safe, as long as he didn’t run into anything that wasn’t a minicore and stayed a good distance away from the bigger ones.
A few minutes later, he came across Celia’s waterskin, the dried jerky that Mordecai’s sons had given her for lunch later, and the sewing kit. Also what looked like a spare set of trousers and some of her underwear.
Threadbare vaguely remembered seeing some of this spill out of her pack when the winds had ripped him out of it.
“Good! Listen, Threadbare, I need you to pick up that Tailor’s kit. I can’t mend…” Her words drifted off into hissing “That’s annoying. I can’t mend you from this distance, so you’ll need to sew yourself…” They faded again. A few seconds passed, and Threadbare picked up the tailoring kit. It wasn’t much, just a sturdy wooden box. He opened it to find needles, thread, and scissors inside, as well as several small patches, a few skeins of yarn, and a thimble.
“I’m going to teach you to be a tailor.” Celia said. “So you can fix yourself and get out of here.”
A pause, then she spoke again. “Gods this is skilling Wind’s Whisper up fast. Um, here’s what you do…”
It took the little girl a few more Whispers to get the idea across, but Threadbare got the notion. Once he was sure he had the steps down, he tried the first one; threading the needle.
Which, as it turned out, was really hard with padded paws.
DEX +1
DEX +1
Finally, more by chance than anything else he got the thread through the loop.
LUCK +1
From there, the needle went through one of the patches, pulling the thread along. Then the needle went through the little dragon. Three painstaking and crude stitches and one point of Dex later, Threadbare had sewn the patch to the little dragon.
By sewing cloth you have unlocked a crafting job; Tailor!
Do you wish to become a Tailor at this time? y/n?
Yes, yes he did!
You are now a level 1 tailor! DEX +1 PER +1
You have learned the Tailoring Skill! Your Tailoring skill is now level 1! You have learned the Clean and Press Skill! Your Clean and Press skill is now level 1!
The little dragon followed his movements, and the head nodded. “Okay. Now pick up a patch and start sewing it to yourself. Watch for the…”
She faded again. Threadbare waited a bit, then decided she wasn’t going to finish the sentence. He tried doing as she said-
-and stared in amazement as a brown frame of some sort of unknown material appeared right in front of him, just like the words did. This one said “Tailoring”, and as he watched it filled in with solid brown color.
He looked down at his side just as the bar finished filling in, and with a flicker of motion so fast he wasn’t sure he’d seen it, the patch was now sticking to his side
.
Your Tailoring Skill is now level 2!
You have been healed for 10 points!
Threadbare tried it a couple of more times. He found out that all he had to do was get the needle in and start a sewing motion, and so long as he fiddled with the needle, the little bar would fill up and the job would complete itself in about ten seconds.
Which was good, because that patch he’d sewn on the dragon had taken minutes. This was a lot faster. Two more patches and two more tailoring skill uses later, he was feeling much better. He was also running low on patches.
“Listen, Threadbare,” Celia said in his ear again, “Can you climb out of here now?”
He pointed up at the trees. The little dragon craned its neck, and studied the clustered large minicores.
“Okay, that’s a no. Hold on while I talk with the group.”
After a moment, in between the rising winds, Threadbare heard shouting from above. Mostly Beryl’s voice, though Celia’s was mixed in here and there. It eventually died down.
“Okay, that’s settled.” Celia’s voice was tight and low. “We’re going to beat up the Kittyhawk again, and go further in…”
“So just keep moving forward and we should meet up somewhere at someplace Jarrik calls the…”
“There should be a connection between the two paths. He didn’t know how to get into that hidden area, but you stumbled into…”
“Oh, and wait a bit. Then see if you can find the Kittyhawk corpses. He says there might be loot…”
Threadbare nodded, patted the dragon on the head, and looked back in the sewing kit. Only four more patches left. And he was going to have to go through a lot of stuff to get back to his little girl. Would it last? Probably not, not at a flat ten hp per patch.
What to do?
He looked around, and then his eyes fell upon the bright, fluffy panties that had spilled out of Celia’s pack. And the trousers, larger than he was.
Well, patches were just cloth. And cloth was cloth, wasn’t it?
INT +1
He hauled out the scissors and got to work, skilling up tailor as he went. He hit level 2 at the job, happy enough to have the extra dex and per. Wasn’t much, but hey.
A few minutes later, he had rigged the trouser pockets into carrying packs, and the panties got sewn together into a shirtlike tunic. The stuff he couldn’t wear got cut into patches that went into the tailoring kit. The wooden box would just barely fit into one of the packs, so that was good. That just left one thing to carry.
You have equipped a Pantunic!
He studied the dragon toy remnant, and it looked sadly back. It was his link to Celia, at least until it deanimated. He couldn’t carry it in a pack, because she was looking through its eyes somehow. It needed to see. It needed to be somewhere it could see without tying up his paws, while he was fighting or climbing or whatever.
So where could he put it?
And then he had a wonderful idea!
Reaching down, he grabbed the dragon toy, carefully moved some of the stuffing back inside it, and stuck it on his head. A few stitches to hold it in place, and it was up there peering around, sitting comfortably above his fuzzy ears.
You have equipped a Draco Chapeaux!
And words flashed up, entirely unexpected.
By creating and showing off your own unique clothing style, you have unlocked the Model job! Do you wish to become a Model at this time? y/n?
Threadbare stood there in his panty-shirt, pockets hanging off of his back, his new hat flapping its wings to stay balanced on his head, considering the new option.
Then a noise from above, and he broke off ruminating to watch a second Kittyhawk come crashing down. He marked where it fell and went back to considering this… model… thing.
He really had no clue what a model was or what he’d done of note, but it was a new job, and those made him more powerful. And judging by the things he’d seen in this dungeon, he could use all the power he could get.
So yes, he guessed he wanted to be a model.
You are now a level 1 Model! +3 AGL +3 CHA +3 PER You have learned the Dietary Restriction skill! Your Dietary Restriction skill is now level 1! You have learned the Fascination skill! Your Fascination skill is now level 1! You have learned the Flex skill! Your Flex skill is now level 1! You have learned the Self-Esteem skill! Your Self-Esteem skill is now level 1! You have learned the Work It Baby skill! Your Work It Baby skill is now level 1!
Well nuts, it didn’t boost anything he used to fight? Oh well. At least agility would help him get around more easily.
Right. Next order of business, the Kittyhawk corpses.
