Summary:
Calin the fighter has been on a bad streak that seems to last forever. One bad bar bet might just be the hair of the dog to undo it.
Alternatively: What happens when adventurers don't obey common sense suggestion? Hilarity and smut. Being Dommed by one muscle mommy. Hair washing.
Notes:
Back to writing after a decade long hiatus (don't do drugs, y'all). Let's see if I have the pent-up sexual frustration to keep this going.
Chapter Managemen
Chapter 1: The Hows and Whys of the Adventurer's Guide
Notes:
Welcome to my brainrot. Enjoy your stay
The humble Adventurer's Guide offered many helpful suggestions. How to dig a hole for doing one's business in the wilds. Recipes for hiding scents from kobolds, ligers, and wyrms. Which mushrooms were safe to forage and which were more likely waiting for some chanced bipedal delicacies. Dry? Sure. But the uptick of longevity for the aspiring questing newbies, it turned out, came down to the dry details.
It even contained a section on cultural sensitivity within the party. Truly a life-saving marvel. Really minimized the intro-party stabbery. How else were they going to grow into a traveling warband? By not getting stabbed in their sleep, for starters.
It also stated the following: "Never fight with the tavern keeper. It is known. They may be anything from a retired warlock, to an ex-criminal, to three particularly stabby goblins in a trenchcoat."
But what of the barmaid? A forgettable fixture of any local tavern, theirs was a presence that made sure food arrived and the tables got wiped. Tedious. Thankless. No one ever thinks of the humble barmaid.
But it took a lot to babysit drunks as an occupation, and so caution should extend to the barmaid by default. As one luckless fighter would find out.
Innscliff Tavern sat in the heart of bustling Saltfret, between the gaping maw of Arcino’s domain and the rest of the civilized world. The actual distance was not exact, as debate on map accuracy continued to swell in proportion to the egos involved. The lively establishment greeted all who sought glory in the frontiers. Some were craftsfolks, ranchers, farmers. Practical folk who looked for a new home far away from the Empire where taxes can be paid by a spit and a hello. Others were the problem solvers. Haunted trees? Adventurers. Secret cults? Adventurers. Grandma’s body looted by a necromancer? Adventurers.
This night was different. A particular band of adventurers were experiencing a problem they could not solve.
The matter of loot.
"You're not listening! Look!" Calin gestured to their studded armor, right at the part where the leather strap was holding on for dear life. Souvenir from their last fight with a roving band of cultists on the way to Saltfret. "I clearly need it more than you."
"You barely did anything," Fink added with the delicacy of a stealthy fart, where the luckless fighter stood downwind.
"I was the bait!"
Brisees, the venerable pillar of patience and fairness, rolled his eyes from the plate of ham hocks and steamed potatoes. "You spooked them! Right when I was trying to sneak behind them.
Calin bristled at this. "Fine. Yes, I spooked them. But you can't even use that armor."
"I'll just sell it. Buy myself something nice." Brisees waved a forkful of tender potatoes at Calin.
"... Can't we just have a nice, quiet dinner like that table over there?" said Jossaini. Her eyes longingly drifted to said table. Using her spells to heal up a bar brawl aftermath was not what she had signed up for. Vig simply shook his head in reply.
Fink leaned over and whispered. "Of course not. Calin's being a prat."
"Am not!"
Calin, arms wide in her outrage, swung against something solid. Remembering that they weren't seated a corner nor Calin with her back to the wall, she looked up to find a woman. A solid oak barrel of a barmaid, with dark hair tucked in a messy bun. Sweat beaded off her forehead down to a glowering expression. She balanced a barrel on one shoulder as she turned to face the table.
"Watch it."
The rest of the party were quick to apologize for Calin. Calin, being of unsound mind and desperate for new armor, disregarded her entirely.
"Calin." Jossaini elbowed the fighter. "Calin. Apologize."
"Oh. Sorry."
The barrel woman seemed to decide it was as much manners as she was going to get from Calin and continued on her way. A collective sigh left them as another Calin-related crisis was averted.
Until Calin's train of thought switched gears and she spoke up again. "Aren't barmaids supposed to... " Calin waved. "I don't know, be dainty and delicate?"
Jossaini's face twisted sharply like she experienced a bout of particularly volatile allergies to stupidity. She, like the rest of the party (minus one idiot), opted for silence as the husky barmaid slowly turned.
"You're one to talk." The looming barmaid waggled an eyebrow down at Calin. "Fighter, is it?"
The party’s luckless meathead met her eyes in a challenge. "You got it."
"Hey, boss!" The barrel woman shouted across the tavern to the beaded man behind the counter. "Can I have that leave now?"
He looked to the party, then to barrel woman, blinked a few times, and said, gruffly, "If you break it, you fix it."
The woman huffed in satisfaction and set her barrel down. By the sound of it, it was not light.
"How about a wager? Arm wrestling. Let's see if you have fire left in you."
The resident half-elf cleric and part-time common sense shot Calin a look from across the table. A warning. A futile, worn-out warning, one of many that Calin had been having trouble heeding as of late. Brisees had called it a death wish. Fink still called the fighter wax-for-brains. Vig just kept shaking his head. Legends had it that he would have occasional bouts of vigorous silent disapproval when he remembered what Calin had done with the cart. Their feet were sore for weeks.
And Calin? Blame it on the trick of ale or Calin being too deep in her own pity party, but she saw not what the rest of the party had gleaned. That someone who could lift that many barrels was not someone to trifle with.
They collectively wish that this barmaid would go easy on their favorite dumbass.
The crowded excitement began to disperse from the table when it was evident there was nothing else to witness except secondhand embarrassment. Most patrons returned to their seats, brushing the wooden splinters off their bodies as needed.
There was Calin, in stunned silence, a gloating barmaid, and Calin's party, hands changing coins in muted amusement.
"A bet is a bet," came the barmaid's sing-song voice.
"It certainly is." Her teeth ground so hard she was sure they would shatter.
"It certainly is...what?"
Truly, Calin had never been one to back down from a wager. But perhaps Jossaini was right. Calin was plagued by what the cleric had dubbed "an odd case of 'really knows how to pick them'". A combination of bad luck and questionable decision-making. Calin was never the party's first pick to open chests or walk through doors. Hell, there was even the time with a random goblin trap while searching for a place to relieve herself.
Facing the barrel-like barmaid, Calin swallowed the last of her pride. A blush had crept up her neck as she seemed to find it in herself to grit it out.
"M'lady."
Jossaini and Fink burst into laughter. Brisees and Vig grinned into their mug of ale. Their good humor made her skin prickle and burn.
Thus began Calin's 24 hours wager to obey the winner.
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