The caravans were something that a group of enterprising players had started. There were NPC caravans, but they refused to transport players or even hire them on as guards. At most, they would transport goods, but their prices were so high that unless it was a high-value cargo, it simply wasn't worth it. Considering that the guards they already had and even the merchants themselves were all over level 300, there was little to be argued. Most of the players hadn't even reached the high 80s.
The caravanserai didn't particularly care if their users were NPCs or players. As long as your gold wasn't fake, you were more than welcomed to hire a slot and promote your caravan. You still needed wagons and beasts to pull them, and those were invariably expensive.
HottoTrot21 was busily writing in her notebook. She was seated at a table in front of an empty caravan slot. The slots themselves were fairly large and even bigger inside. It was absolutely a case of Tardis-envy as one of her partners had put it. She hadn't refuted him at the time, wondering at the huge empty space and panicking on how they were going to redeem their loan from the Bank of Hartford.
Unlike most services, the Bank had RL ties. The loan was secured using her good credit along with her best friends'. Unlike the others, she'd taken the time to actually read the loan agreement they'd crowded into the immaculately decorated office to sign. If they couldn't make payments, the Bank would charge them real money to cover it, a lot of real money.
It had thoroughly convinced her that you could make actual money in the game. She hadn't paid much attention to the gold-buying spree that had happened when the cash conversion services started a few weeks earlier; it'd been little more than an amusing blurb on the evening news to her. HottoTrot21 had better things to spend her RL cash on that wasn't an admittedly fun game. Still, the loan agreement had made her pay attention to the current conversion rates, and she had to admit that if they earned enough on the caravan routes, they'd be able to pay actual bills with their earnings. She'd tried to explain it to her partners, along with the idea of being thrifty. She wasn't sure it had penetrated anyone's skull.
Right now, two of her partners were off checking the various prices of passenger carriages and supply wagons. The other partner was at the Beast Fair, looking for horses, oxen and feed animals. The feed animals idea came from an off-hand remark from one of the caravanserai's employees. It seemed that it would be easier to charge more if they provided hot, nutritious meals and so far, meat preservation spells were far more expensive than their scant budget allowed for.
HottoTrot21 massaged her temples. If they had a feed animal wagon, they would need to hire an NPC, or perhaps a player, to manage the animals. She wasn't sure how that was supposed to work. There wasn't a manual for running a successful caravan. Most of the successful ones—what few there were so early in the game—were too busy, or too shrewd, to help out the potential competition.
"I got us some wagons!" came the overly cheerful voice of her best friend.
HottoTrot21 looked up, her eyes widening as a veritable horde of wagons infiltrated their space, most pulled by a team of two giant horses and two centaurs.
"Yes, yes, just right over there. We'll deal with the separations," Virtuous Moon said, rubbing his hands together as he walked to stand next to HottoTrot21's little table.
She stared at the wagons, her mouth opening and closing. She knew the words she wanted to say but they just weren't escaping her brain. There looked to be six passenger wagons and twelve cargo wagons. Among the cargo wagons was just one singular feed-animal-looking wagon. By her estimates, it would hold perhaps a dozen hens and three or four cages of something else.
"Aren't they just dreamy, Hota?" Mockingbird bounced up to her. "They gave us a great deal and threw in the animal wagon for free!"
HottoTrot21 glanced at her friends and then at the centaurs who gave her sympathetic yet amused smiles before trotting off with their horses. The sight brought up the thought of how sophisticated the game actually was when you paid attention.
"How many people fit on the passenger wagons?" she finally asked.
"Well, we have two fancy ones that seat six each, and then two regular ones that seat ten and two low ends that seat fifteen. You should see the inside of the fancy ones; they are so nice! There's even a bathing room with bathtub!" Mockingbird bounced towards the wagons with excitement writ large on her pretty face. Her two brown pigtails danced with her movements.
When they'd been picking names, Hota had wondered that Mockingbird had been available, but after thinking about her friend's ubiquitous presence in half a dozen other games, she came to realize that no one wanted to chance being mistaken for her. She hadn't played games in a while, wanting to concentrate on her studies and had been slow to realize that her friends had a certain reputation in MMORPGs.
It'd been a lark that she'd bought the capsule. Flush with graduation money and a serious job offer in hand, she'd let herself be talked into buying one. Now she wished that she'd taken her vacation sooner; instead of starting when the servers first opened, she'd merely registered her name (she really wasn't the 21st person to think of her username) and then went about the business of starting her professional life. Her coworkers talked about the game occasionally, and it was from them that she learned that money could possibly be made from the game.
She'd scoffed until she heard about one of her coworker's sons who was paying his tuition using the game. That had given her pause. Tuition was scarily high nowadays. So, she'd thought, why not and called up her best friends. They'd been ecstatic that she wanted to party up with them and told her about the caravans that had recently become popular. Which led to her being mired into her current circumstances.
Hota blew the bangs off her forehead. On her ledger, a vast amount of money changed hands and new balances formed. She rubbed her forehead once at the sight.
"They cost how much?" She asked as she stood up, her useless pen falling to roll across the table. The notebook was updating the caravan's account balances and the idea page was no longer available to juggle 'what ifs.' "And tell me the truth."
"They were only about 780 gold," Virtuous Moon answered in a small voice. "A piece."
"A piece! We only had ten thousand to spend!" Hota hastily counted the wagons again. "That's—oh, carry the five and insert a zero—that's over thirteen thousand!"
"We threw in our savings as well. So, we still have about five grand for pack animals?" Mockingbird said with a cheerful grin.
"We took out a loan of ten thousand. We're on the hook for ten thousand, and you tell me that we could have gotten less!" Hota raged.
"You're going to get wrinkles frowning like that," Mockingbird informed her solemnly. Then the perennial smile flashed again. "It'll all work out. The first trip will be a bit rocky, but we should eke out enough to cover the vig."
"The vig," Hota replied, flatly before she threw up her hands and stalked out of the caravan slot.
"So, you're running a caravan, lassie," one of the centaurs was waiting outside.
"And you are?" Hota asked, stopping and staring.
He was worth staring at. He looked a lot like Liam Hemsworth, only welded onto a strong horse's physique. His piercing blue eyes were twinkling with curiosity, and a suspicious twitch of his lips said that he really, really wanted to laugh.
"Name's Arlan, Arlan McCleod," the centaur extended one giant hand in her direction, smiling when she reluctantly shook it. "My clan is the one who sold the wagons to your gullible little friends." He shrugged. "No problem being gullible but if you really took out a loan, then I'd suggest running your caravan to the Farthenham Hills. There isn't a caravan heading that way for a few months or so."
"And why are you helping us?" Hota asked.
"Got a friend who needs stuff shipped that way. Ask the caravanserai for the proper pricing, and you're going to need oxen bulls to pull the wagons if you want to get there in any timely fashion. Horses are flashy but need too much rest for that distance." Arlan shifted his hooves restlessly. "If you take my advice, I'll let my clan know. We have stuff to go to my friend's place."
"And people as well?" Hota guessed.
"If they go, they'll go as hired swords to guard your caravan," Arlan replied. The smile gained a snarky edge. "Don't worry. They won't cost much, but grown centaurs don't like riding in little wagons, my new friend."
"But there are wagons?"
"Much more expensive than a new caravan can afford." Arlan turned and walked away. "It's all just a suggestion, mind!"
Hota watched as he joined up with the other centaur near the end of the lists. The other centaur had a palomino back and long golden hair reminiscent of a certain male model. He also had the looks to match.
Considering, Hota somehow knew how her friends had been gulled into buying the wagons. She just bet the eye candy had female equivalents.
*****
Cora sat back and sighed. She needed more things. Not natural things—she had plenty of those. She had an abundance of those to be honest. She frowned at the display screen on the wall.
For ease of use, she'd coaxed the mayor's ledger to hang on the wall and then had expanded it. It still showed a distressing 3 (14)/800 for the population of her little town, and an ever-growing amount of resources. She'd puzzled over how the resources kept increasing until she'd discovered Sycamore directing a wagon to dump a pile of cut stones into a depot she'd barely known she had.
If only the stones had still been granite blocks when they arrived. Instead they were a variety of cornices and carvings and decorative bits Cora had no clue to use.
Sycamore had explained that a lot of people found the town pretty interesting and were willing to donate random things. Cora would rather they donate their random selves, whoever the mysterious 'they' were. A town wasn't going to grow without a population and she'd rather not let any players know that she had a fledgling town. At least not until she had someone here to look after things while she ran the million and one errands that kept popping up. Blue couldn't be counted on to do much more than lazily patrol the town's boundaries.
While inexperienced at playing games, Cora was more than experienced at human treachery. There were more than a few players who'd literally kill her in real life for the chance to be mayor of a town, especially since the exchange platforms had opened not so long ago. With the current rate of one gold for ten dollars, a town was a gold mine waiting to be exploited, even an empty one like hers.
Cora would rather have a bunch of NPCs, but it was a hard slog. First, she had to convince them that it wasn't a waste of their time to move to her little town, and there was precious little here to entice them. Plus, it wasn't as if the random wagons showing up even stuck around to see if there was anything she could ship back.
With a sigh, she considered the building menus. Since she'd dumped the tiny stone shards out and created the mysterious stele, she'd been very curious about the town walls. There wasn't an option to build them under the usual 'Stones' tab. Instead, there was a tab labeled 'Shards' that the option existed under. It was already greyed out so she couldn't change her initial choice.
Cora peeped at her inventory. Since she'd been mining for ores, she had another five piles of the shards. They were a curious thing; it wasn't a guarantee that she would get one while mining. They only popped out when she got a gem or some sort of rare stone or ore like mystic iron or marble.
The Wilderven mine was pretty fruitful and popped them out rather frequently. It was yet another reason she wasn't keen on letting anyone not an NPC know about the town. Cora was even hesitant about telling her friends and family, and she knew they could be trusted.
She stood up and dusted off her pants. Cora hated leaving her little town, despite its barren style because it was hard enough getting back. She was only level 9 at the moment, and leveling was a hard thing with her current job. The town's transportation circles were all one-way, and she'd been informed that she couldn't change it until she'd reached level 10. At least the wildlife left her alone instinctively.
Mayor wasn't her job. Her current job was still Leader of the Wildlands. She was only roughly one corn harvest away from finally upgrading it past the last level. She wasn't sure what would happen when she did but was very curious to find out. At least she could sell part of her last corn harvest. Sycamore had assured her that it wouldn't go bad in the silos, having asked her teachers.
Cora found the idea of schools for the NPCs fascinating. She was positive that there hadn't been one in the previous games she'd played, but before she got her game capsule, it had been a long time since she'd had the free time to indulge herself. She thought of asking her friend Heidi or perhaps her cousin but thought that would be opening a can of worms.
Her cousin and friends thought she was mining in some isolated spot near the beginners' area, not that she was stuck in the Wildlands which even the most advanced player still hadn't reached. The general level of the Wildlands' monsters rested well into the upper 300s, far beyond the leaderboards where the top level listed was a bare 101. If not for the fact that it was listed on the official maps, even Cora would have difficulty believing it existed.
Picking up one of the gunny sacks lying in a pile by the door, she walked out. One gunny sack would fit half the harvest. Without it, she would need a wagon or four to haul it to civilization. Cora made a mental note to dump the shards into the proper stele before taking the teleportation circle to Morlade. Her cousin had mentioned that someone there was trying to make whiskey and needed massive amounts of corn.
She could only hope that the more regular variant she'd acquired during her last trip qualified. Heavens knew that it provided less experience per harvest than the prettier Blood Corn.