I was rollin' some ideas around in my head and I thought "You know, why not put these down on 'paper'?" These are just some products that I think would be extremely useful to DM's / Players and could fit in very well with the stream of books being put out by Wizards.

"The Customization Guide" - We all know we do it, or at least we all know we want to do it. D&D is touted as being a game where the rules take a back seat when the game can be better without them, or by changing them. Ironically, I think that's what makes D&D great; that it doesn't force players (DM's included) to go "Well, this isn't fun but the rules say we have to do it so lets just get it overwith." Instead it encourages the user to customize their experience and tweak it so that it fits just right. This book would contain a few different chapters. It would contain one on maintaining balance and how to engineer feats and powers for various levels and still maintain the balance of the game. It would contain another chapter on custom rules, with many examples of custom rules provided by Wizards that could be inserted into a campaign (a la Dungeon Delve) to alter the flavor or play style of the game. Another chapter would be on custom equipment and how to maintain balance when creating your own magic items. An offshoot of that would be ways to create custom artifacts and items with personalities.

"The D&D Guide to Role Playing" - So many players, from what I've seen, don't actually role play or when they do they do it in such a way that they still revert to thinking as the player, not the character. I would love to see a book just thick with ideas on good role playing. The first chapter could be on creating interesting characters and how to take a bland or broad concept and flesh it out and add things on to make it a more three-dimensional character. The second chapter would be an intro to role playing. It would contain a definition of what role playing is as well as a few "script-style" examples of play dialogue between players, showing what role-playing is and what it isn't (This could even lend itself to creating characters for the book that could reoccur throughout the book in different examples. That would be a lot of fun!). The thrid chapter of the book would be on role playing specifics and tips to achieve certain depictions. "If you're going for an evil character, you may want to think about themes like: treachery, deception, selfishness, superiority, etc" and "If you're going for a good character, you may want to think about themes like: benevolence, selflessness, justice, integrity, etc." There could also be examples for character motives and underlying motives that wouldn't be as aparant as those on the surface. Chapter four would be on character interaction and what different ways you can go about effective role playing with other people. A sub section of this chapter could also be devoted to blending role play with combat, instead of keeping the two separate or allowing one to overtake the other in a combat situation. There could also be a chapter for DM's with some ideas on how to take role play situations and different traits that the characters posess, and turn them into mechanics that could influence skill challenges and combat. Certain relationships and personality traits are there that could have the potential to alter many challenging situations. Perhaps lovers could get a +1 to defenses when defending eachother. Perhaps the druid with wanderlust gets a bonus when traveling? Things of that nature. The final chapter could be a chapter of inspiration. This chapter could contain a wealth of all sorts of different illustrations (There could even be a contest where players could send in drawings and the first 40 or 50 could get picked!) and character write-ups and ideas that other players could read over to help them jump-start their imaginations. I believe this book could be a MASSIVE hit and would be brimming over with great stuff for players to use.

"World, Campaign and Adventure Creation" - This book would contain formulaic advice and examples on how to craft worlds, campigns and adventures. It would have different examples of how to go about creating these things and a "step-by-step" procedure that a new DM could follow if they chose to. Chapter one would contain descriptions of what the main three things are and how they differed. It would then go into the core elements of those things (e.g. - A world contains some sort of environment(s), it is populated by beings, it may have a cosmology or a pantheon of deities, etc). These things would all, then, be detailed in Chapter 2, 3 and 4 (World, Campaign, Adventure, respectively). Chapter 5 would be about crafting environments. Chapter 6 would be about crafting cities, settlements, and populations. Chapter 7 would detail cosmology. Chapter 8 would detail how to create a campaign story arc and how to best put different types together (These are some key elements of an intrigue story, these are elements of an espionage story, these are elements of an action story, etc). Players could then look at these and immediately be getting ideas as to how they could create their own stories and have them be well thought out, planned, and organized.

Those are three products that I would love to see. There are more in my head for sure, but I think I'll save those for another time. In the meantime, check these out, think about them and let me know what you think! Thanks again for reading, all!

~Andrew

Alright, this is a topic I've been wanting to hit for a while so I'm a little excited. The topic is the place of the gods in a D&D game.

In a D&D game, the story tends to have a certain scale. When you're fighting small kobolds and trouncing them left and right, you tend to feel pretty strong. Even a dragon, save possibly an ancient one, tends to still rest on a mortal scale. A game tends to step up a certain amount when the gods get involved. When the lords of the heavens step in, it changes things.

The thing I find really cool is trying to figure out the character of the deities that exist in the D&D mythology. There's Torm, the paladin God of the Forgotten Realms who is the defender of weak and helpless, the upholder of righteousness, and iron hammer of justice. How would a player converse with this being? How would a god who weilds power like he does, treat a mortal being?
What about Vecna, the god of the undead with a twisted view of the afterlife? His character is said to believe that beings should serve him in life and the afterlife. He is cool, calculating, pragmatic and self absorbed. If this is the case, how would he act if a player came face to face with him and wanted to talk? What would Vecna's reaction be to the suppositions of a mortal conversing with him at all?

I always enjoy, as a player, running into characters like this when a DM can bring them to life really well. I mean, they could just say "A man in shiny armor walks up to you and says 'Hi, I'm Torm.'" but that doesn't have the punch, does it? It's when the DM really gets into the skin of these higher beings, that the game takes on a whole new life.

What I wonder most is, what are the best ways to bring about these situations? How do you transition from being a tiny level one character who actually did have a kind of rough time with those little kobolds, to a character who is speaking face to face with a god? It really does make the game a whole new kind of epic.

The heroic teir (character levels 1-10) are very (usually) earthbound / believable. They seem to be filled with great deeds and the laying of a hero's foundation, to be sure, but usually things of the massively supernatural don't enter into the equation yet.

The paragon teir (character levels 11-20) seem to be the beginnings of greatness, where characters begin to see things and do things that average people wouldn't think is possible. The may perhaps venture to other planes, they may encounter supernatural monsters or beings of great power that aren't of the natural world.

The epic teir (character levels 21-30) are really when things crank into high gear. Characters are now approaching levels of power that normal, average people in the game world would not even think attainable. At level 30, a group of player characters usually have the combined power to actually pose a threat to a god. Most of them, thus far, are between levels 31-35, depending on the individual deity.

In 3.5 edition D&D, there was a book called Deities and Demigods and I thought that it was one of the coolest books there was. They not only had the pantheon they created for the D&D realms but they also adapted other pantheons from historical societies, namely Greek and Roman mythology. So, you could look in the book and find out how powerful Zeus actually was supposed to be. You can look up Ares or Athena and see what their characters are supposed to play like or what it would take to bring them down (if you wanted a fight that big).

There was one small problem. Most of the gods were SO huge that they were untouchable. They seemed to have powers that were just overpowered to the point that they were untouchable. This meant that, if a DM was going totally by-the-book, a player group could almost never beat a god. Ever. They had powers that allowed them to always go first in a fight. They had powers that were massive damage and some that were instant kills. They could incapacitate players for the entire fight and all sorts of stuff. Now, this was all well and good for the gods but not the players. Good luck having fun when the odds are stacked against you like that.

Now, with 4th edition, in a few of the books, such as the Monster Manual, Monster Manual 2 and Open Grave, they've put a few beings of higher power in these. Unfortunately, they're all of the evil persuasion because usually you're not fighting good gods, unless you're an evil party of characters, which tends to be rather uncommon overall.

That said, these gods have revised stat blocks and are deisgned to be encountered, fought and, with the right strategies, taken down. This makes for some cool ideas for introducing these powerful figures into a story and, at some point down the line, perhaps even having a confrontation with them!

Right now, I'm really hoping for a 4th edition Dieties and Demigods but we'll see what happens. There are two books coming out called (if I remember right) "The Plane Below" and "The Plane Above" which focus on the Elemental Chaos and The Astral Sea. Most of the evil gods reside somewhere in the Elemental Chaos and most of the good ones are in The Astral Sea. So, that being said, I really hope that if they're not doing a 4th ed Dieties and Demigods, they really detail those figures when the planes books arive. We shall see!

Thanks for reading everyone and be sure to check out the new D&D Take pages on Facebook and Twitter! Let the comments begin!

~Andrew

D&D is a game with teeth. Combat is a big part of that. For some players, that's all there is for them. A lot of times, combat can, by it's own nature, overtake most other aspects of the game. If you look at the books, most things in there are combat related. Your character class is usually (by most players) chosen by players thinking "How do I want to function in combat?" because that is usually something that can't be tweaked. You class does certain things and other classes do other things. "Such is the way of the world"... right?

Well, I want to bring to light something that occurred to me when having a conversation with a gaming buddy of mine, and that is the existence, and importance of challenges OTHER than combat. The fact that a game can be challenging, exciting, invigorating, enticing and just downright fun without combat. Now, I know there are some gamers out there who would cry "blasphemy" at that but I stand by it. I think that it's very true. Here's some reasoning behind my thoughts.

When I game, and I'm sure this is the same for most other gamers as well, I love memorable moments. I think it's great when there are spots in the game that just stick with you that you just constantly remember because of how great it was. Now, usually something will stick like that when it's extraordinary in some way. It needs to stand out. With combat, that's actually a tad difficult because it's expected. In most sessions you (as a player) expect at least one fight, if not several. One way that combat itself can take itself down is when it's treated as a formality. "We're fighting goblins, lets get it out of the way, roll dice, make sure they're dead and we're not." I think instead, combat itself needs to be kept fresh and be set within the story and have context so that fighting isn't done for the sake of fighting (and I know a lot of DM's will put fights in there because they feel that a session without a fight is incomplete). If you must fight goblins, then by all means fight them, but give it a reason! Perhaps they're minions of a powerful black dragon hatching a scheme deep in an underground lair and the goblin raiding parties are really parties sent out to gather resources like wood and scrap metal for the dragon's machinations. If they want to draw out the dragon, perhaps they do some detective work to track down the goblin raiding parties and kill them off in order to draw out the dragon so they could have home field advantage! That makes the goblin battles a little more important.

But outside combat, and more important, I think, is the idea of a non combat challenge. Say that a player wants to own a shop, but they have competition in the town. What's the player do to rise above the competition? Kill the other shop owners himself? Hire someone to do it? Scope out the competitions goods and prices? Send hired hands around to take notes for him so he can adjust his goods himself? Trial and error? Curry the favor of a wealthy patron perhaps? Create high status through elitist behavior, claiming to only cater to a high society clientele? There are many ways to achieve this task, many opportunities for role play, character development and story development!

Perhaps another challenge might be hearing that city officials are being assassinated and you know that the baron, who you've seen to be a good man, is in mortal peril and you've got to help him. Perhaps that means becoming his personal guard. Perhaps that means placing someone in his stead and smuggling him out of the city. Perhaps, if you're the type, it even means finding the assassins so you can talk to them and see why they're doing this. Who knows, perhaps there's more than meets the eye?

There is also another breed of challenge that (players, listen up) the DM cannot engineer! There are challenges that you, the players, can create for yourselves. Depending on the choices you make, you can put yourselves in interesting positions where you can make the game your own and really put a spin on things. Perhaps you decide "Well, I'm a human, but I really want to get into the Drow (evil dark elves) city and what's more, I want a position of authority within the city." Well there's one heck of a challenge and one that the DM probably didn't see coming. How do you want to go about it? A classic disguise? Illusion magic? Blackmail? Brute force?

The point I'm getting at with all this is that I think the focus needs to come off combat, and if in your own experiences it is off, then keep it off. Combat, if it degrades to throwing dice and half-lidded stares from the people at the table (DM included), then it's not necessary. Each game should be an adventure and an experience with things that break the mold.

You remember those memorable moments I was talking about earlier? Well, those are created by doing original things. By getting creative and active with the game and taking situations into your own hands. Have fun, get crazy, get inventive! Those memorable moments will come when you do what's not expected and really stretch the bounds of what you thought you could do.

Well, with that, please comment away, as any thoughts are much appreciated! Thanks for reading!

~Andrew

I've just had a thought about players, mainly. I realize that a lot of my posts tend towards DM's and what they can do with their games but I want to touch not only on the value of role-playing, but the value of role playing a character that's interesting.

So many players I've seen have these characters that, when you ask about them, the players tell you their job.

"He's a fighter with a big sword!"
"She's a sexy bard who can woo any man with just the sound of her voice!"
"He's a cleric who casts holy healing spells!"
"He's a rogue who steals stuff!"

Are these descriptions? Sure. Are they three dimensional characters? No way. Are they ones a three-dimensional character can be built off of? Yes

The trick, when making a character, especially for D&D, is (contrary to conventional thought by a lot of new players) to look at the class as a part of the character, and an addition, not the base. What you do is a part of who you are but personality is first. If you have a fighter with a sword, that doesn't tell you how he grew up. It doesn't tell you how he got to where he is "today". It doesn't even tell you why he is a fighter. Kids aren't born beating the daylights out of things with bladed weapons. They're almost all born as cute little defenseless beings who want nothing more than to eat, sleep and go to the bathroom. How does one go from that, to a hulking, muscle bound warrior wearing plates of metal and beat up leather, facing down a beast that belches fire and hoards treasure that could rival that of entire kingdoms?!

The answer is pretty simple. Life experiences. As a player, there are certain things you don't have power over. The initial layout of the game world, the plans for the game's story in the DM's mind's eye, the price of the ale in the tavern (although haggling is an option always lol), etc. One thing you DO have power over is who your character is. This, I feel, is the greatest part of making a character.

First, think up a name. Find something that resonates with you. Find something that makes you think "Yeah, this inspires me to be this character." Whether the name inspires awe, disgust, strength, loyalty, intrigue, etc; pick something that you'd want to be referring to yourself / your character as for a pretty good length of time.

Usually, for me at least, once I have a name, it almost forces an image into my mind. A massive barbarian perhaps, covered in hair with a knife-blade-shaved head with rough stubble all over his face and hands the size of dinner plates. A hunched over cripple grasping a cane with a deadly gleam in his eye. Perhaps a young girl who's in her 20's who seems relatively innocent, dresses modestly, but with calloused hands, perhaps alluding to something else about her. All these character appearances can present possibilities for who your character is.

After visualizing the appearance (doesn't have to be super detailed, just a general idea so that you can see the character in your head) you can think "Ok, how'd they get here?". Perhaps our big barbarian was actually a young school teacher in a village. There's something out of left field. Perhaps he got fed up with his life, bored and unfullfilled and one night he decided to go for a brief camping trip into the wilderness. While he's out there, he's visited by a vision that leads him, sleep walking, through the forest. The vision is actually a magical enhancement by a dark spirit wandering the wilds. It leads him sleepwalking through an open portal into the Shadowfell (a dark, mirror image plane of the regular world). Waking, he doesn't know where he is, excepting that he's in a dark forest and doesn't feel right. He looks around and realizes that this is where the malevolent spirits live and darkness prowls freely. He's forces into a wild state and ends up honing his body and becoming a beast of a man instead of the intellectual he once was.

See that? All you do is think about a base to where he is and then connect where the character starts, to where he is when the game starts.

To spice things up, you can throw in interesting things about your character. Sure he was a school teacher but perhaps for some reason he's got no sense of smell. Maybe he's always been afraid of squirrels after being bit by one while collecting accorns as a little boy? Perhaps he was helping chop wood one day but hit his leg and they had to amputate below the knee, so he's in great shape, but is missing his right leg from the knee, down? These things make for characters that are original, eye catching, and characters that have some meat behind them. Who cares about a 2D cardboard fighter? But a school-master from a little village with some wander-lust, who's missing his right leg from the knee down, with a fobia of squirrels and no sense of smell... Well, I wanna hear about THAT guy!

So, take a look over all this and really think about the great things you can come up with. Your imagination is the limit. I'm also totally happy to help come up with neat ideas as well. Things can always be enhanced. Role playing an average D&D class is dull. Role playing a character with a background is awesome. Players, this is your chance to make your character and your game experience be the best it can be. A character who's designed well can totally drive a game and make for some memories you'll remember for years and years. Do yourselves a favor and put your heart into it, because you'll get more than that back.

ENJOY!

~Andrew

So, after waiting a few days, the time finally came. The sun had dipped below the horizon and the city changed from being a place of liveliness and movement, to one of shadows and quiet. Rollan stepped out of the inn and went down the street as before. He turned into the alley and went down to the bend at the other end of it.

Rollan sat on a wooden crate, back in the darkness, and waited for Cedric. Minutes passed that felt like hours. He was nervous. He didn't want to admit it to himself but Cedric seemed the kind of man who didn't do your "normal" kind of work. What was it he did exactly?

Well, he thought I guess I'll find out...

"You've been sitting here for five minutes and you're already antsy."

Rollan almost fell over. He looked around and from a darkened corner stepped Ced. How long had he been there? How was it that he hadn't heard him? Had he just been watching him the whole time? Chuckling, Cedric came over.

"You better be able to keep a cool head tonight. If you don't, who knows, you just might lose it."

Rollan gulped.

"Now, you swear to me that not a soul hears about our doings tonight. If they do, well, I'll just let your imagination wander."

And wander it did.

"Follow me." And with that, he leaped up onto the crate that Rollan had been sitting on, grabbed the edge of the roof and nimbly hoisted himself up. Rollan got up on the crate and pulled himself up too. He was in good shape but not near as lithe as Cedric seemed to be.

Once up on the roof, he saw there was a second level to the roof, which Cedric had already climbed up on. He was crouched, looking over the point that was protruding over the street. He looked this way and that, looking out even to the harbor, where a few tall masted ships were docked. Cedric motioned for him to come up. Rollan did.

When he was up, he moved over to Ced and got down. He looked around and didn't see what Cedric was looking for, but even so, kept down and waited.

"Ah ha..." whispered Cedric

"What?"

"Look down there" He said, pointing down into the street. A nobleman was walking along, the street below, moving in the direction of the docks. "That's our man."

"He is? What's that mean?"Rollan asked, unsure of what to do.

"We tail him, but not on the street. Dirt leaves tracks, shingles don't." And with that, he started running, low and light, across the rooftops. Rollan followed.

They ran, keeping their heads down, quietly across the rooftops, skirting the edge, to best keep an eye on their prey. He moved along, walking quickly. His long tail-coat flapped loosely behind his legs and he kept his triangular hat tilted over his face. His hands were jammed into his pockets and his shiny leather boots moved briskly through the dirt streets. He took a right down a side street, still towards the docks.

Rollan and Cedrick followed by the rooftops, hopping the gaps between the houses. They kept a constant eye on the man walking through the now only lamp lit streets. They jumped across more roofs, only seldom hitting a loose shingle or an extra wide gap. The city was dense so it made roof-running none-too-difficult.

They came to the rooftops near the dock and watched the wealthy townsman walking along the dockside. He ducked into a building about a hundred yards away from Rollan and Cedric. Rollan looked down and saw that it was an old shop about with a creaking sign swinging in the chill breeze. The sign had the image boar's head carved on it, the lines painted in black. The sign was weathered and pockmarked by the salt in the spray from the water. The windows were boarded up and no light was coming from inside.

"C'mon" said Cedric.

With that, he slid silently down the side of the roof, let his legs slip through the space between this roof and the next and held himself up from falling by bracing a hand on either roof edge. By spreading his feet and pressing them against the opposing walls of the two buildings, the slid down the smooth, stone walls, landing effortlessly on the dirt ground. Rollan slid down the shingles the same, but hit a roofing nail head sticking out of the wooden shingles, which spun him round. He began sliding backwards and panicked. He fell back, his feet went over his head in some kind of awkward backwards roll. He ended up on his stomach, facing up the incline of the roof, sliding towards the gap fast. His feet went through the opening and he scrabbled with his hands, just barely catching himself on the edge. There he hung, feet dangling fifteen feet above the ground, fingers starting to ache and slip...

Here's a question for you. What do you do when you want to get some dice rollin' and you can't? I'm sittin here thinking "You know, I haven't had a face-to-face D&D game in... one long stinkin' time." So, I suppose, what I'm askin' is what do you do when there's no game to play?

For myself, I try to get myself into some good stories. I've become a fan of some great fantasy fiction. Some of my new favorite authors are Joe Abercrombie, Glen Cook, Scott Lynch, and Patrick Rothfuss. Now, these guys are just some great inspiration.

I think that reading fantasy like this, that breaks the classic Tolkein-esque mold, it breaks the idea mold as well. With that comes stuff that can enhance our games and our creativity in a way that the old stuff can't do so well.

That said, I love Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. Lord of the Rings has laid so much foundation for fantasy culture that it's now impossible to disassociate the two. Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, citadels of unknowable evil powers and bastions of good and light that are staged, precariously, on the brink of oblivion and staving off a threat that could destroy the world as we know it. Those are classic principles that are central to fantasy literature and fantasy thinking in general.

In fantasy, one of the great things is that good and evil are usually so well and clearly defined. That said, in a lot of the stories I've been reading, there are characters who may be closer to the dark side than Gandalf. Most of these characters toe the line between the light and the shadow. I enjoy this, and I'll tell you why.

With a good character, you have some limits. You have a code of conduct that must be followed in order to stay true to that character. If you have an evil character, you're rather in the same spot. With characters in the middle, you have more canvas to work with and more story possibilities.

With a character in the grey, it gives you a wider idea of ranges to play with. Your character can be a villanous scoundrel perhaps with one little touch of good in him that's buried under layers of leather and blood, in order to protect themselves from pain. Perhaps your character is a paladin who is absolutely righteous, or so it seems. Perhaps underneath the skin, perhaps even unknown to him, there is a deep seated prejudice or a part of him that is so committed to ridding the land of evil that he would commit one evil act to prevent a greater evil from happening.

There really are unknowable combinations and ideas, but I feel that the authors above really capture characters that are conflicted and feel mortal. Most of them feel as if they encounter problems that we can sympathize with.

So, I think that my way of coping with not having dice in my hands when I want some D&D action is to crack a book or do some game or blog writing.

How about you guys? What do you do when Dungeons are nowhere to be found and Dragons are nowhere to be slain? Movies? Other Games? Other ideas? Let 'em roll!

~Andrew

Rollan walked silently while going as quickly as he dared. The streets were all but empty, with a few drunk stragglers tottering back and forth, some simply collapsing into incoherent lumps on the ground waiting for the dizziness to wear off. Rollan hurried along and ducked around the corner he saw Cedric (or at least, who he thought was Cedric) go around. There was no one here but the figure seemed to have been moving quickly. Rollan looked at the ground and saw footsteps in the dust. They were vague and even as he looked, chill alleyway breezes were blowing them away, but they were there all the same. He followed down alley between the tall buildings on either side.

The alley made a right turn and so did Rollan but then, as soon as he turned, he stopped. Where were the tracks? He was following them and now they were just gone? That didn't make any sen-

Then, at that moment, Rollan felt movement behind him and where once was only air, there now was a fine, slim dagger lightly resting on his throat. Hot breath warmed the left side of his face.

"What do you think you're doing?" it breathed.

"Would you believe just going for a walk?" Rollan slowly said, not wanting his throats movements while speaking to nick the knife sitting closer than he would like.

"No, I wouldn't."

Rollan didn't want to admit to snooping. A fellow that could do this... well... he's rather dangerous. He held his tongue.

"Friend," the voice said in a tone that was anything but friendly "you've got five seconds to say the word explaining yourself or I bleed you like a stuck pig and make sure you sleep in the sewers."

"Following..." said Rollan, not wanting to provoke the figure more.

The blade moved from his throat, a hand gripped his shoulder and spun him around to face the mystery assailent. As he figured it probably was, it was Cedric. Now the knife was pointed at him but at least he had a face to look at, albeit one vaguely lit by the moon. The face looked none-too-pleased.

"Why are you following me?" The tone demanded a quick reply.

"The way you tossed coins down in that tavern! I tried to ask about it but, well, you remember how that went..."

"Give me a reason not to still throw you down into the sewers."

"I wanted to see where you make that kind of coin. I live on coppers and here you toss a bartender gold?! I want a piece of that pie. I want to see what you do."

Cedric slid the knife back and grinned.

"You want to see what I do."

Rollan didn't know what to say to this so he held his tongue.

"This is what's going to happen. You meet me here three nights from now and I'll give you a task. You complete this task and you'll be on your way. You fail and, well, lets just say failure isn't an option worth your while considering. If I catch you following me again, and I would catch you, you'll dye your own clothes red, understand?"

With that, Cedric snapped his arm around Rollan's head, bringing the pommel of the dagger into the back of Rollan's head, knocking him out cold.

The next morning Rollan awoke, shaking the cobwebs out of his head, awakening a throbbing pain in the back of his head. He brushed his hand back, feeling a raised lump the size of a walnut. That guy hit hard...

Rubbing the back of his skull, he went back to the inn, found Gregory and asked about an apothecary where he could find some remedy. He directed him across town. Following the directions, he moved along the city streets, staggering a bit from the thud of his own feet resounding in his own head. Follow a guy like that he thought. What in the world was I thinking.... Real smart, Rollan, real smart.

He reached the point the directions pointed to, which landed him in front of a run down shack of a place. The windows were boarded shut and it almost looked worth condemning, except that there was a neat little wooden sign hanging on a nail on the front door with a crude picture of what seemed to be an herb carved on it. Rollan was no artist but even he though it wasn't a very good picture.

He walked into the shop and the inside was absolutely different. The smell of rich, smooth incense was all around as were more potted plants than Rollan had seen in one place in his entire life. The walls were hung with silks and heavy linens in rich deep blues and maroons. There were candles burning around the room, giving it a hazy, flickering light.

Out of the back of the room came a woman. She wasn't what Rollan expected. He'd expected some old, crippled hag who was bent over with bone problems and a raspy voice. She was not those things. She was tall, for a woman, at about six feet and slim. She looked to be in her mid thirties and was dressed in silks like those on her walls. Her hair was dark blonde, almost brown and the candlelight reflected off trace lines of light gold. Her skin was fair and her eyes were sharp.

"Can I help you?" She said.

Rollan realized he'd been staring. So taken aback was he by her appearance that he didn't think to say anything.

"Oh, uhm, oh, I need something for my head. Got mugged last night and they hit me pretty hard. Got a nasty bruise."

"Ah, I thought you'd actually pose me a problem that took solving. You want this salve. Just massage it into the bruise and you'll feel a tingling numbing feeling. That'll take care of the immediate pain. You then want to boil this in a tea. They're Moguish leaves. The fibers break down and have healing properties that will reduce swelling. Drink that every few hours and keep that salve on the spot. You'll be feeling better in a day or two. Also, don't do much strenuous activity."

"Wow, thanks."

"That'll be ten silver pieces."

Ten silver pieces? That was almost all he had! That would only leave him with a few copper.... Well, going with Ced better pay off. Grudgingly he handed over the coins and thanked the lady and left. He had an odd feeling left in his nose, probably from the incense, he thought. He trudged back to the inn, gave the innkeeper his last coins to cover a room for about a week more with basic meals.

He drifted off to sleep, thinking about the coin he'd have soon and in the back of his head, seemingly where the pain also was, was a lingering wonder about what it was that Cedric actually did and, now, he didn't have much choice of whether to participate or not... He was broke.