The Wayfarers - Pilot Episode

The World of Willowatt is a realm of fantasy magic, steam-and-gear-punk aesthetics, and a variety of sapient species. Although the World holds several systems of Magic, they are not practical for wide-scale use, leading to the development of industrial machines emerging alongside the refinement of magic systems, leading to somewhat haphazardly leapfrogging developments in both mysticism and technology.

Recently, a small wandering guild calling themselves the Merry Men (it’s funny because the group is almost entirely female) has taken residence in Willowatt, registering with the Wayfarer Network and devoting themselves to the investigation and handling of especially strange incidents. Presently, five members of the group have assembled at one of the Wayfarer’s branch offices to see what work need be done this day.
 
-------------------------------
 
Today’s Merry Men Roster
Didsy Dolopia – Lopfollo (near-human rabbitfolk), jack-of-all-trades multi-magician
Raiment – Didsy’s living dress, string magician
Woodsy – Free-range Wood Goddess, wields “nature powers” (secretly an Avatar of Osha)
Crotia McLaud – Raven-winged elemental magician
Wander – Interdimensional teleporter, swordsman, slacker
 
-------------------------------
 
“Library Ghouls?” Rai laughed as she popped her hat off Didsy’s head, twirled once, and flopped back down. “We got one right here! Case solved!”
 
“Haha,” muttered Didsy, rolling her eyes up at her wearable companion. “So what are they after?”
 
“Last witness says they were just stealing all the books and bringing them down to the basement level,” said Crotia. “Then they started running out of the library and stealing all the written material they could find throughout town.”
 
“Sounds like a bunch of data horders,” said Wander. “Maybe we just hand them a bunch of smartphones and point them to Google?”
 
“Willowatt doesn’t have an internet yet,” said Didsy. “And even if we rigged a custom local computer for these things, I doubt it would be what they’re looking for.”
“You run into these sort of freaks before?” said Woodsy.
 
“No,” said Didsy. “But if they just wanted pure data, Willowatt does have basic computers. Including the libraries.”
 
“So they want the paper in specific?” said Rai.
 
“Who can say?” said Didsy. She turned to Wander. “Well, let’s be off.”
 
“Sure.” With a gesture, a portal swirled open, creating an open window to the edges of a small town some fifty kilometers away. “Ladies first.”
 
Crotia and Woodsy smirked. Wander was the only guy presently with the group, so naturally, that made him the last through.
 
***
 
There really wasn’t as much papery carnage as one might expect in the old library. Rather, it was the lack of paper that made it stark. The building was a fairly large neo-gothic structure with the usual piping and wires run through that informed much of Willowatt’s anachronistic early-industrial aesthetic. And yet, every single shelf had been picked clean. The doors, and several of the large windows, were left wide open, and occasionally, one of the “ghouls” would come rushing inside, ignoring the assembled group as they rushed armloads of books and papers towards the wide stairwell in the back. A minute later, they would come rushing up the stairs, empty handed, and run straight back outside, as if the building was on fire and they were going to be late for their firstborn baby’s birth.
 
The ghouls, such as one might call them that, looked like ordinary people, Humans to a one, albeit with quite disheveled clothes and hair. Curiously, they did not seem to sweat, nor stumble, nor appear tired, for all their exertions.
 
Didsy glanced around to see there was one figure, a possibly-young Owlyn, standing alertly behind the help desk, nervously glancing back and forth as the paper-horders hurried by. She flapped her feathery hands, muttering, “oh dear, oh dear, oh, that looks like they hit the school library, oh gosh, that looks like the mayor’s ledgers…”
 
The Owlyn’s eyes were indeed keen, but with the speed the ghouls rushed by, and how tightly they clutched their messes of books and papers together, Didsy could only assume the Owlyn librarian was unusually well-studied, or she had some innate mystical talent tied to books.
 
“Miss?” said Crotia.
 
The Owlyn glanced the group over in the space of a second, then kept flicking her eyes back and forth around the entrances. “You don’t seem with the snatchers. You here to investigate?” Her voice was light and high, but that wasn’t necessarily an indication of age for her kind.
 
“That’s what they pay us for!” said Rai, tilting a bit on Didsy’s head.
 
“I’m a librarian myself, so I have a bit of a vested interest,” said Didsy.
 
The Owlyn glanced at her again, then her eyes, already wide, widened a bit more. “Oh! Master of Tomes.” She made a small bow. “Welcome to our humble hall of records.”
 
Didsy bowed back. “Thank you, Keeper.”
 
Woodsy leaned over to Crotia, cupping a hand to the side of her cheek. “I keep forgetting she’s, like, an official and stuff.”
 
“Me too,” said Crotia with a grin. Neither had made an effort to lower their voices.
 
Didsy ignored them, as did Wander, who did his customary schtick of being too cool to involve himself unless necessary, leaning against the fair wall with his arms crossed. He gallantly resisted the temptation to pull out his smartphone to scroll through Reddit, given this wasn’t a World that had such devices. He also didn’t bother pulling out his ereader, just in case the library ghouls decided it should go in their horde. As such, all he did was manage to make himself bored.
 
“My name is Pirch,” said the Owlyn. “I’m only a junior Keeper, for what it’s worth. I am also a Script Magician, however.”
 
“Ah, excellent,” said Didsy. “Between that and your observations, do you have any insight as to what these things might be after?”
 
“I’m afraid I can’t say for certain,” she said. “They’re piling all their findings into a great cauldron in the bottom floor. Lots of Rune Magic. Despite my own mystic readings, I can’t make it out. My Scripting lets me decode most languages, but Runes tend to elude.”
 
“Yes, it is a separate discipline on a completely different wavelength,” Didsy said with a nod. She turned to the others. “Alright, Woodsy, Crotia, let’s head downstairs. Wander, you stay put and come fetch us on the signal.”
 
Wander, who had decided that a wooden Rubik’s Cube probably wouldn’t be too much a risk to distract himself with, held a thumbs up.
 
***
 
Now this was more the mess they expected. Papers were strewn about like piles of autumn leaves. Books were stacked to the ceiling in long walls. Rows of shelves had been pushed back to create a great open space, in the middle of which sat a cauldron four feet tall and fifteen feet wide. It was lined with glowing Runes, and though there was no fire, the floor had a spiderweb of orange marks, in the center of which the cauldron sat, giving the illusion of warm firelight coming up from under it. Some form of pale white smoke or mist filled the cauldron, but curiously did not spill over its sides, despite “bubbling” another foot higher past the edges.
 
Around the cauldron, a dozen people in robes were chanting in an unceasing whisper. Around them, another six robed figures were throwing books and papers into the cauldron. Upon the sound of a thunk or patter as the objects hit the bottom, there were surges of the smoke, and it became clear the substance wasn’t smoke or mist at all, but a mass of paper-dust.
 
“Oh, I see,” said Woodsy. “They’re trying to create a minor god.”
 
Crotia gave her a glance and a furrowed brow, while Didsy and Rai faltered their steps.
 
Turning, Didsy said, “How do you know that?”
 
“Seen it before,” said the horned forest spirit. “I recognize those runes, and the ritual. They’re creating an idol, more specifically. A “false god”. Mostly a minor magical golem they can command to do stuff for them, in exchange for feeding it whatever sacrifice they wish to. In this case, I guess it’s knowledge.”
 
“Once again, the chucklehead proves surprisingly insightful,” said Rai. “So, what should we do about it?”
 
“Well, we probably shouldn’t burn all the books and papers to keep them from continuing the ritual,” said Woodsy with a smirk. “That would just be rude. Plus, destroy all the library’s property.”
 
“We wouldn’t want that,” said Crotia, discretely snuffing the little fireball she’d been preparing.
 
“How dangerous is this thing likely to be?” said Rai.
 
“Hard to say without knowing what exactly they’re summoning,” said Woodsy. She ran her fingers around one of her horns, tucking back a lock of her hair as she thought it out. “I can’t really tell from here.”
 
“I can guess something that requires knowledge for a sacrifice might be something like a grimoire spirit,” said Didsy.
 
“We could just ask them, probably,” said Crotia rolling her eyes and gesturing to the robed group.
 
That’s when they noticed the chanting had stopped. All the robed figures were staring at them. And multiple “ghouls” carrying more papers and books were standing on the stairwell around them, as if they’d been waiting for the adventuring group to move the whole time, despite their apparent rush.
 
“Hey!” shouted Rai, tilting her hat towards the robed figures. “What are you weirdos up to?”
 
All hell broke loose. The ghouls started hurling their books, corner-first, at the assembled group of adventurers. Fortunately, they didn’t do much damage to the Woodsy’s toughened hide, while Crotia’s sweeping wings and Rai’s twirling skirt intercepted them, protecting Didsy in the process.
 
Didsy leaped down the rest of the stairs, landing in a wide open section between it and the assembled group around the cauldron. With a colorful flourish of her hands, she unleashed several lines of string from her finger tips, letting them waver like snakes ready to strike in the air.
 
“Alright, folks, party’s over,” she said with firm authority. “I’m not opposed in principle to a mystical construction project, but you shouldn’t do so with grand theft as a method of acquisition.”
 
One robed man threw off his cloak, revealing a mass of muscle, and only a leather thong, beneath.
 
“Woah!” said Woodsy grinning as she came to join Didsy. “Dibs!”
 
“Keep it in your thong this time, will you?” said Crotia. “We should probably try to keep the building intact for once.”
 
The man now without a robe seemed to disagree. With a thrust of his arms, several chunks of metal tore itself from the rafters, and arrowed towards the group. Only swift, deft foot work kept the group from being skewered. An Iron Worker. Just what they needed. Probably the one who constructed the cauldron once his group was down here. The man moved to make another salvo, but Crotia had already hurled a Dust Ball at his face, blinding and choking him. Before he could get his bearings, Didsy was already leaping forward, pummeling him with her Jackhammer Strike. It felt like slamming her fists into a brick wall, but taken by surprise, she managed to nail the Iron Worker in a few key pressure points, and knocked him out quick.
 
Unfortunately, taking care of him only opened them up for the rush that followed. Woodsy was forced to turned and direct her own strength against the surge of library ghouls as they came at them like a wave. The horde being bottle-necked by the stairwell was her only advantage. Her muscles strained as she caught the tangled mass of bodies and pushed them back, head-butting a few immediately in front of her.
 
Crotia and Didsy, meanwhile, found themselves driven against Woodsy’s back as the remaining robed figured started hurling different colored bolts of magic at them. Crotia barely managed to throw up a barrier field to deflect most of them, while Rai busied herself with using String Magic to try and create a net-barrier to help hold back the ghouls.
 
“We gotta stop getting ourselves boxed in like this,” griped Crotia as she charged up a fireball.
 
Didsy charged up a fireball of her own. “Hate to do this,” she said. “But records can be recovered with the right Script Magics.”
 
The two mages hurled their fireballs at different stacks of paper, which were burned to ash in a flash. With the precision power of their attacks, however, the fire spread no further.
 
“Stand down!” said Didsy, shouting over the din. “Unless you want the rest of your offerings undone!”
 
The robed figures just hammered at Crotia’s shield even harder, machine-gunning magic blasts at it. When the individual shots failed to crack the shield, several of them charged up and combined their magics to hit with stronger volleys.
 
Woodsy relaxed her hold slightly as Rai finished binding the ghouls as much as she could, anchoring her net to the walls and ceiling, and hoping the bodies entangled would form a solid enough wall for more ghouls to get stopped by.
 
“We gotta call Wander for a bail out again?” said Rai.
 
“No,” said Didsy. “We got this.” The robed mystic’s concentrated attacks started cracking Crotia’s shield, forcing the winged sorceress to concentrate all her power on it, but likewise keeping them too occupied to notice Didsy using her own String Magic to send threads to the floor. The Runes had been drawn onto the treated wood and tiles with a sticky chalk, reenforced in place slightly by the flow of magic running through them. However, while it might protect them from the occasional careless scuff of a shoe-bottom, a dedicated scraping would still break them. Her threads, snuck along the floor, acted like concentrated scrubbers that swept away rune after rune, quickly cutting up the configuration, until the glowing effect on all the runes began to sputter. After only half a minute, the robed figures were suddenly in a panic as they realized their spell was being cut off mid-cast!
 
“No! What happened?! What did they—?”
 
There was a prompt, loud BANG!, and the entire room was suddenly awash in a fine layer of paper dust, the contents of the cauldron having exploded outward. Didsy’s group was only spared thanks to Crotia’s shield, but the force was enough to shatter the already-nearly depleted barrier, and the three women (and also Rai) were sent sprawling against the mass of ghouls.
 
Meanwhile, the blast not only knocked the robed figures on their asses, it also cracked a couple of the sprinkler pipes. Water rained down to mix with the dust, muddying the whole scene, wetting down the now scattered books and papers, and filling the cauldron.
 
As the three women (and technically Rai), got to their feet, the ghouls behind them all sagged wetly under the sprinkler spray. With a sudden haunting sigh, they all dissolved away, turning into wet paper scraps that disintegrated into light-gray slop.
 
“Paper-mâché golems,” said Woodsy, shaking her head. “Labor costs don’t get much cheaper than that!”
 
“No wonder they didn’t sweat,” said Crotia.
 
“Why do you always notice stuff like that?” said Woodsy.
 
“It helps to actually study the things you fight,” said the winged woman. “Then you might get a clue how to beat them.”
 
“Oh, so you’d already figured out they were paper?”
 
“I was getting there!”
 
“Ah, we did alright either way,” said Rai.
 
Didsy stepped up to the nearest robed figure, who was stirring back into consciousness. She placed a foot down on his chest. “Alright. What was this about?”
 
“Your horned brute had it right,” said the surprisingly handsome middle-aged man, his hood falling off as he tried to push up against Didsy’s hold. “We needed an idol-god. And you had it right, almost. We needed something to process and compute more complicated rituals.”
 
“For what?” said Didsy.
 
“None of your business,” he snarled.
 
“To crack the DimNet!” came a high voice from on high. The group turned to see Pirch at the top of the stairwell, holding a gun to Wander’s head. It looked like an old-fashioned flintlock, but the three mages could practically smell the toxic magic bleeding off it. One shot from that would put a radioactive hole through a tank!
 
Wander just gave his travel companions a flat look and a shrug. “Sorry,” he muttered.
 
“Shut it!” Pirch hissed. She glared at Didsy, who stepped back from the robed man. “Master of Tomes! Surely you know the importance of the Dimensional Network! To access the data of the Multiverse, just think of how Willowatt could advance as a technological power!”
 
“I won’t say you’re wrong to have ambition, but there’s a reason the DimNet is locked off from most Worlds,” said Didsy. “The Worlds are structured the way they are because they are designed to exist in their balance. Throwing too many alien systems together in one World causes the breakdown of said Worlds. You can’t just plug Willowatt’s computers into the Network as-is and expect to just suddenly have everything work smoothly. There are knock-on effects that—”
 
“Fuck you! I’ll do what I want!” said Pirch. She shook the gun against Wander’s head. “I mean it! Get the ritual going again! Help my fellows get it restarted! The ambient magic is still strong, if we can get it back up and running within the next thirty minutes, we won’t have to start all the way over!”
 
Crotia leaned forward to whisper in Didsy’s ear. “Never heard of the DimNet. What’s that?”
 
“She very likely just stumbled upon the PlayNet somehow,” Didsy whispered back. “Saw enough to figure out it’s an inter-World communications system.”
“What do you want to do with her?”
 
“Just knowing about the PlayNet, that’s a hell of an imbalance to leave just sitting around,” said Didsy. “We’ll need to appeal to the top.”
 
“What are you muttering over there?” said Pirch, her shrill voice causing Wander to wince. “Get to work!”
 
Didsy looked to the Owlyn’s hostage. “Wander? To the Meeting Room.”
 
The young man quirked an eyebrow at her. “You sure about that?”
 
“It seems she’s a little confused, and needs some real answers.”
 
“Also, this is officially above our paygrade,” said Rai.
 
Wander shrugged. “Alright.”
 
“What are you talking about?” said Pirch, eyes wide. “What—” And then she was gone, her gun falling out of the air for Wander to catch.
 
“Lettie’s going to be pretty annoyed with you,” said Wander. “How many is this now?”
 
“If the Omnys didn’t want messes to clean up, they wouldn’t keep setting up dominos,” said Didsy. She turned to the other robed ones who were slowly picking themselves up off the floor. “So. What to do with the rest of you?”
 
The man she’d been holding down earlier got up, dusting himself off. “Well, we’re just spell-swords for hire, really. No idea what she was on about with the whole DimNet thing. We just do what we’re paid to do.”
 
“And now we’re not getting paid,” gruffed the Iron Worker as he got to his feet.
 
“We got our front pay,” hissed a raspy feminine voice from under a particularly shadowy robe. “And I always make sure to secure the follow up ahead of time.”
 
“So we’re done here,” said the handsome one.
 
“Done and gone,” said the shadowy woman. The group suddenly jumped into the cauldron, and the Iron Worker levitated it off the floor. A green set of runes that had been etched onto the underside of the cauldron flared to life, and the whole group vanished, leaving the adventuring group standing alone in a giant pile of wet papers and a ruined floor.
 
“So…” said Woodsy, looking at the mess. “Think they’ll pay us extra to clean up?”
 
“You know they won’t,” muttered Crotia, flapping droplets off her wings.
 
Didsy sighed. “Let’s just report back to the guild and hope they don’t dock the damages from our reward again.”
 
END

The Wayfarers in Honey Select 2.
Left to right: Wander, Woodsy, Crotia, Didsy & Rai

The Wayfarers in Koikatsu.