Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.3      Making a Splash

1.3.1    An Obligated Noble

1.3.1.13 Cheesy commerce

The conversation moved on, to talking about foreign lands and past times, as the servers brought out tarts and fruit pies. Six boards were placed on the table itself, each laden with cheeses from a different region of Covob. Some of the cheeses were hard or wrapped in wax, but others were soft and moist. Getting them all the way to Torello still in good condition must be difficult, which meant this display was yet another subtle reminder of the Landi’s power and the size of their trading fleet.

She decided to take advantage of the opportunity, by sampling as many different ones as possible, and started by picking a small piece of Mahón Curado, from Savada in the Iberian Palatinate. She looked across at the captain sitting beyond Bulgaria, picking up the name from the annotations shared by their party members.

Kafana: “Captain Lavinia, is it your ship, The Abbondanza, we have to thank for the bounty on the table before us?”

Lavinia was a striking woman, tall and with dark copper hair held back in a long tight braid. Her brocade coat, with subtle gold frogging and a high collar, was subdued and serious, but the quirk of her eyebrow and the smile lines which twitched at the corner of her mouth said otherwise.

Lavinia: “In part. I’ve just returned from taking a rush delivery of gems, rare metals, bones and other components to Batille - they’re seeing increasing signs of pirate activity and their forges have been flooded with orders for cutlasses, ballista, and other ship weaponry. I brought back a good load of fine sand for the glass makers, coffee, spices and well packed alchemical reagents, with an ill tempered mage who spent three days below decks standing watch over them.”

Bungo: “Why not offer free passage to Adventurers, in return for them stowing dangerous cargos in their stashes? I bet they’d be cheaper than reality mages - no offense Camillo, just supply and demand - you’re going to be flooded with new Adventurers in a few weeks time.”

Camillo: “None taken. Not every carrack can afford the fees, and the larger the personal dimensional space, what you Adventurers call your ‘stash’, the more mana it takes to construct. Even then, there are limitations. Some goods, especially unbound magical ones, are affected by the transition - just like exports from the Scandic Union.”

She looked at the Scandic board and took a flat piece of cheese that was still warm from being grilled. It was slightly chewy, and squeaked against her teeth as she bit into it. Lavinia pointed towards Kafana’s plate, with her knife.

Lavinia: “Take cheese for example. The leipäjuusto from Lilleheim can be exported without problems. Västerbotten, which they make from the milk of the reindeer that roam the snowy plains of Lilleheim, is more expensive but turns crumbly as soon as it leaves their territorial waters. Worse yet, gammelost, which everyone from Muspel swears is a sign of the divine love the deities bear for them, ends up tasting like old socks.“

Soul Bound’s original server Morob, was aimed at players from Asia, but most of Covob was intended for European players. The Scandic Union however, in the north of the Covob map, was aimed at players living on the moon. Rather than forcing them to deal with a nearly three second lag, which would be fatal in combat, XperiSense had hosted part of Covob on the moon’s own server arrays, which of course meant that Earth-bound players (or NPCs) traveling there would face the lag. Instead of ignoring this, XperiSense had built it into the world’s lore, as a strange status effect caused by the Avalon incursion that had mostly isolated the Scandic Union from the other areas.

Kafana: “So if I want to see what it really tastes like, I have to take a 3000 kilometer ship voyage?”

Lavinia: “A bit more than that, because you stick to the safe channel negotiated between Avalon and the Teutonic League, if you don’t want to get attacked by the selkie for breaking a pact.”

Lavinia took a small piece of brown cheese from the Teutonic board, screwed her face up at the bitter taste, and then passed the board across the table.

Kafana: “What’s that one?”

Lavinia: “Milbenkäse. They call it the poor man’s ambrosia, and claim that any day on which you eat it doesn’t age you. If you want something tasty from that board, try the coolea from Uddel or, better yet, the gubbeen.”

Claudio took a bit of coolea and passed the board down to her. The gubbeen was coiled on the plate like a Cumberland sausage and, intrigued, she pulled back the wrap to cut herself a thin leaf-green slice. The fragrance was musky, almost intoxicating, and the taste as it dissolved upon her tongue was heavenly. Claudio leaned over and touched her hand, before she could cut herself more slices, speaking to her quietly.

Claudio: “A word to the wise. The only place you can buy gubbeen is the Goblin Market at Ath, and nobody knows how the droadan make it or from what. But there are some years in which it isn’t available, so unless you wish to become a resident of the Myrkvior incursion it isn’t wise to risk addiction. Eat of it sparingly.”

Reluctantly she put the cheese knife back down, and closed her eyes to savour the memory of the taste. Alderney, on Claudio’s other side, piped up.

Alderney: “I hear there’s now a tree-wed staying at the Scandic Embassy. Aren’t they part droadan? If we could get an invite to their party, we could ask about gubbeen.”

[Achievement “All Your Cheese Are Belong To Us” - sample the 75 most popular cheeses on Covob. Progress: 17 / 75.]

Bungo: “That sounds safer than visiting the Teutonic League to ask. The Immortals are based in Kalzburg, and we never did find Jincan.”

The Immortals were a guild of Soul Bound players, originally from the Morob server, whom the wombles had clashed with. They’d been kicked out of Torello for player killing, thanks to Kafana’s relationship with the priests of Cov, but they’d vowed vengeance, and Bulgaria believed that the trillionaire behind the guild, Ludwig Spreckels, might well try having them attacked in arlife too, to salve his hurt pride.

The next cheese board was from the Slavic Dominion, and didn’t contain many options. She picked a damp ball-like cheese labeled Dragon’s Breath, that contained peppercorns and shredded like mozzarella. Hmm, might work quite well with some of her recipes - she made a mental note to see if she could buy some in the market.

Come to think of it, the Dominion wouldn’t be a safe place for her either. Most of the people in her village who played Soul Bound, had created their characters in the Dominion. Only a few of them knew that she played too, and she rather wanted to keep it that way, if only to reduce the chances of people blogging that the person playing “Kafana” was called “Nadine”, and thereby letting Spreckels know exactly where to find her. If that wasn’t enough to keep her away from the foggy steppes, she’d heard that two other guilds specialising in player killing, YoDaddy and Storm Power, had also made the Dominion their home.

Herberto: “Did you ever find out why the Immortals were targeting couriers from the Messengers Guild?”

Herberto had turned up, at the head of the column of heavy lancers, to avenge the wombles after the Immortals had slain most of them, when the wombles had attempted to rescue Pierrot, an orphan they knew who’d become a courier. They’d discovered the reason on their trip into the Arsenal, and Wellington had asked Lord Landi to arrange for Pantalone to visit the Palazzo for a conference about it after lunch, but they didn’t want rumours starting and there were too many ears at the table, and tongues that might wag. Alderney kicked Herberto in the ankle, then whispered something in his ear, while Bulgaria provided a distraction.

Bulgaria: “Probably a quest. Not all quests are constructive, alas. I don’t know what leads to one being granted, but they usually seem to involve a difficult task.”

Virgil: “Do you mean that, if I were an Adventurer, I might get given a quest to attend lectures and study to be a mage, which would give me gold or items as a reward?”

Bulgaria: “Well, no, they don’t seem to be granted for things like training in a profession or making things, unless you are doing it for a purpose that’s not part of your everyday job: such as pleasing your mother or helping the steward decorate the Palazzo. They frequently lead you in a direction you hadn’t considered, or which ends up revealing new information.”

Virgil: “So it is a way for the deities to guide you? What’s it like, having your life controlled like that?”

Bulgaria: “You don’t have to accept a quest. And is it so very different from when your Lord arranges a marriage for you, or sends you off to work on a new project?”

Alderney turned to Claudio and said quietly: “I noticed that Dante, the smith at Villa Landi, was rather highly qualified for the everyday duties he faced. Do you suppose he might be available to work on a project in Torello for a season or two, that would also boost his own personal development?”

The two of them got into a discussion, leaving Kafana free to listen to other conversations and sample cheese. The next board was the largest, containing at least a dozen cheeses from the Burgundish Benevolence. The prettiest was the Gombardo Blue, whose fine blue lines threading through the pale ivory cheese make it resemble marble from the deep alpine caves where it matured. She took a slice of that, and a slice of the Burgerac Poacher - a smoked cheese with a hint of apple favoured by shepherds. The Burgundish region had a clement climate and much of Covob’s sheep and cows were raised in its bucolic pastures.

Bulgaria had picked an ideal distraction, starting a heated debate which half the table had strong opinions about. Herberto wound Tori up, by arguing that she should be matched with Pascale Trinci, on the grounds that he was the only one of her peers good enough to defeat her in a fair sword fight. Sienna shared her thoughts on the marriage between Pantalone and the much younger bride he’d arranged from a prominent Burgundish family, Signora, which had cemented an important trade relationship for his House. Lady Pia spoke with Wellington about Pantalone’s son, Captain Lelio, and the engagement with Dottore’s daughter, Suor Isabella, that the two of them had broken off, and the political problems it was causing between Torello’s various commercial guilds.

The meal took longer than she’d anticipated, but by the end not only was she thoroughly sated, her multitasking had advanced to level 16. Still…

Kafana: {Everyone ready? Torello’s whole financial system is at stake, and I don’t want us to be any later than we need to be. I hope Lord Landi has more reason than leisurely food appreciation for making them wait, because I bet it won’t be him they blame.}

Alderney: {Please. Nobles can’t possibly eat like this all the time. They’d look like beach balls and have to be rolled everywhere by a team of footmen.}