“Mmmhmmm....”, Rubyin Par put the ale down. There are moments where you understand that you should listen and Kimmi Nen knew that this was one of those moments. Hanging to the lips of Rubyin the aspiring scribe wrote down every word of his admittedly slightly tipsy talk on how to start out as a warrior.
The Journeyman Warrior
Starting out as a young boy, a realm such as The Panultima Endeffect is a tough one. If you have nobody to help you out with money – parents, relatives, friends – such an undertaking becomes a venture at least as difficult as in real life. Particularily on this Siege Perilous. Knowing about all this, because I myself had been at this point one remote day, I wish to help you, aspiring warrior, to accomplish what I accomplished, to one day be able to live a modest life style befitting a warrior.
A warrior is not only a man of steel. More than anything else, he must be a man of wits! Look around the realm, see the agressive professions that earn their money with blood. Nobody, not even the strongest (and dumbest) mace fighter, does anything without thinking. This is particularly true when you start your self-education and need to pay for your education whilst still feeding yourself, but also when you are a grown warrior thinking about where to go to shed blood for the familiar blink of coins dropping into your pouch.
Considerations you better make
Make no mistake, being a warrior is one of the most challenging professions in the world. You are at a serious disadvantage to the remote professions, such as the mages. To survive battles, you must be capable of either parrying or healing very well, for your foes, they will not only make modest attempts at hitting back. Since you will be in melee a lot, bruises should not be something you fear. A pretty warrior is most certainly no warrior at all. If this is what you expect, then hear further and do not worry about the difficulty of learning just that.
Now, before you start out, also consider this: You do need the right starting skills. If you do not have them, you should be something else, not a warrior. You’re already poor, that’s a given. If you had rich parents, you would probably make out to be an Alchemist, not a warrior. But that is not all, of course. You need a solid knowledge of Resisting Spells. Neophyte is not enough. Apprentice is. “Why do I need to be good at Resisting Spells?”, I hear you ask. The answer is simple. You will not be learning sufficient in this skill as you venture into the world to gain skills. A mage learns magic resistance much more naturally, as he casts spells upon himself to playfully see how much impact his word has to the world, yet.
So you need to be proficient enough at magic resistance right from the start or have rich parents that will pay you a mage to train with, but we already know that you are dead poor, hence you want to be a warrior. Another skill that you should already have a feeling for is magery, but with magery it will suffice to be a Neophyte. Magery is a life saviour, for it will allow you to recall out of a dangerous scene should you be in the posession of a recall scroll. Again, you won’t be learning any magery, so you should already know a little of this skill.
Starting Out
Welcome to Britannia, warrior. You certainly have not earned to be called a warrior yet, but I will still do it, I know it will sound great to a grasshopper such as yourself. You have a practice shield, some kind of practice weapon (a sword, a club, or whatever). And your dagger. Take care of your dagger, it should stay with you for the rest of your life – and you will need it, because it will feed you.
It’s time to leave home. Wave good bye to your father and to your mother who is by now probably crying since mothers always do, make it short and painless, because you are a warrior now. Walk down to the small path close to your house, follow it until you cross a broader road, then follow that until you again reach a bigger road, and so on. You will eventually be on one of the famous old roads of Britannia, going out into the world for real.
But where will you be going then? You need to find a town with decent infrastructure, low prices and preferably lots of small animals running around which will be feeding you. You cannot afford professional training such as you were to receive in Serpents Hold and you want better company than available in Jhelom since you are not skilled enough to hang out with the people there just yet. Ask people you meet where you should go. If you have atlas with descriptions of towns, use that. I, myself, started out in the arcane town of Moonglow.
The people living in and around Moonglow are not greedy, money is more a burden than of value to them, so prices are low. Moonglow has a great fauna for an aspiring warrior and all facilities you need, such as a butcher and a tailor, will be there. You will also have much company from mages, which will help you to learn and appreciate that there are other professions than yours in the realm. Undoubtedly the biggest plus is that there are a lot of young female mages in Moonglow, and since all male mages tend to be of slight and fragile build, you will just be the hit with them.
Arriving at your first destination
The first thing of importance to you will be a trip to the bank, where you will deposit any money you may have got from your parents. You won’t be needing any of it. We will find you a place to sleep and some food to eat. And you will probably shed the blood the first time of your life.
As a warrior, you will live, eat and sleep outside for a long time, so get used to the procedure that will follow now. Head outside the town, find a place where some smaller animals gather. As your melee skills are very low, take small animals, as you grow better, take on bigger animals that are more dexterious. Chickens and small birds, rabbits and lambs are great to start out, move up to stronger animals such as hinds only when you feel more comfortable at wielding a blade.
Gathering Necessary Resources
You will need wool, kindling and meat in your everyday life as a warrior, all of which nature provides for you. Money is also needed, of course, but you can make money utilizing these three resources already.
Little surprisingly, wool can be obtained by shearing sheep with scissors. Be careful though, a hungry warrior might be tempted to first kill the sheep for the meat it gives and then shearing it. Alas, this is not feasible because bloody wool serves no purpose – so shear them first, and only then go about killing them. What do you need wool for? At a tailor’s you can use a loom to make yarn out of your wool. Most tailors will let you use their loom for free, if you do the work yourself. Utilizing their spinning wheel too, you can make cloth out of yarn, a very valuable resource. Cloth can either be sold, or, much more sensible for a warrior, can be made into bandages which warriors of course use to heal themselves using their healing skill.
Kindling is useful for a variety of purposes. Kindling is easily obtained by etching a tree’s bark with your dagger. Obviously, the older the tree, the more kindling it will yield. Using kindling you can – wherever you may be – start a little fire, which is very handy to cook some meat. A practice that is often neglected is selling cooked meat only. Dumb people will eat cooked meat and sell excess meat that they don’t need right now to a butcher, I have seen it all. This is foolish, warrior! First of all, cooked meat weights less than raw meat, secondly it will gain you a higher price. So, you can use kindling to cook meat easily while hunting and be able to hunt longer without having to return to town due to weight concerns. Another useful purpose is that a small campfire, with only a little camping skill, lets you sleep well and warm wherever you may be, even in a dungeon! It will keep the beasts off you and you can safely disconnect your soul from your avatar for much needed sleep.
Meat, well, we covered that already. You need to eat every once in a while and meat will serve just that purpose. Meat is not as practical as fish steaks, of course, but you don’t have the money for that yet. Excess meat can be sold, even, and earn you a little extra coin which you are meant to bring to the bank rather than spend it in the next inn! You will need it for replacement weapons.
Training your skills
An aspiring warrior should choose his goals wisely. Everybody has a different path, of course, and you too might have. However, there is a typical path which most of the famous warriors of the realm have gone to raise their skills. It makes no sense to hop right into a dungeon before even reaching Adept status.
You will generally want to try to raise your body’s attributes before intensively working on your skill. This, because it is a much known fact, that your attributes are more easily trainable while you are young. You tend to do more simple tasks, hence you get more strength and dexterity out of them. Keep your skills low and focus on training your attributes.
As a warrior, you can gain skill in your preferred melee weapon skill whenever you hit something with your weapon. Likewise, you gain skill in parrying whenever you parry off a blow. If you count one and one together, the more often you hit something – or are hit by something – the more often you will gain in your skill. Hence two things are particularly important for your training as a warrior: Have high dexterity. The faster your hands move, the faster you will wield a weapon too. Then, use a fast blade. Try out different blades and find which one you are most comfortable with. It will most likely be a light blade, maybe even a dagger or a knife. You will not do much damage with it, instead you will quickly be proficient in your skill of choice.
