"Oh welcome, come in! What can I get you?" the bartender smiled, placing a half-cleaned mug at the counter. The glass still had a lock of brown hair inside, as did the floor. He found it pretty hard to keep his establishment completely hair-free. That was one of the downsides of being a satyr, a being with the body of a man and the standing legs of a goat.
The door to his establishment opened with little creak, and yet no one was coming in. The pretty face of a black-haired girl poked inside and stared back.
"Oh, it's you! The adventurer, err, Nim? Rim?...Min! Back from the basement? I trust everything went well?" The woman nodded. "Then come on in. Show me!"
Min narrowed her gaze, glaring daggers at the man. "Close your eyes."
"No. Last time I did, you smashed all my pots."
"They might have contained treasure!"
"If so, that would have been my treasure!"
"Come oooon!" Min pouted, puffing up her blushing cheeks like a blowfish. "People might be staring at my butt!"
The satyr bartender sighed. "Fine, but make it quick!"
The innkeeper shielded his eyes. He heard the door closing, then the faint pitter-patter of little footsteps as Min approached the bar and dropped something on the counter. "You can open your eyes now."
To the satyr´s shock, dead rats protruded out of a linen bag atop his nice, formerly clean bar. "I just cleaned! Couldn't you have put this on the floor?"
"You didn´t say where you wanted your twenty dead rats. You are lucky I didn´t toss them over the window! Carrying this sack around was anything but pleasant."
"Fine, I guess the job's done. Here's the reward." The bartender dropped a handful of copper coins on the counter, before taking back three. "Minus, the pot-repairing fee."
Min was crouching behind a barrel next to the bar. Only her hand rose above the counter to grab her payment. She was almost completely naked. Her only garment was a little cape she repurposed as a loincloth. While it kept her crotch hidden (wind permitting) it covered nothing of her puffy nipples or the slim behind curving beneath her back.
"Great! I can finally buy a pouch with this!"
"I would recommend pants personally, but whatever floats your boat."
"Eh, in my experience, I would lose them by the end of the day anyway. Speaking of, don't you have another job? Preferably something a little more exciting than pest control? Like ...capturing bandits? Killing monsters? Retrieving an artifact from a ancient booby-trapped dungeon?"
"Girl, I'm not a job board, I just serve drinks. And I don't see how you could do any of those jobs if you don't even own a dagger."
"I'll find a way. I always do!" Min declared proudly, her face finally poking above the counter to smile confidently at the satyr. She was an adventurer for another world, fated for greatness!
She just had to start completing serious quests to build up her reputation. Then people would take her seriously! Also, you know, she had to remove her stripping curse. That would help her reputation as well. Hard for a heroine to be taken seriously without any pants.
Sadly, to most, she seemed to be either an incompetent buffoon who can't keep her pants on, an extreme thrill seeker, or a borderline pervert.
Hell, even if she could somehow become a counterfeit Conan the Barbarian, and defeat all the monster´s in the world in her birthday suit, Min wasn't too keen on being known as a nudist savior. She shuddered just thinking about the statues they would make of her for posterity.
Min unconsciously grabbed her milky thighs. She hoped they would at least take some artistic liberties with her sculptures to give her a more heroic physique. How come she wasn't tanned with all the running around outside she did? Was it another part of the curse, or was this world's sun too weak?
"Come on, everyone knows you can always find a quest at the inn. What do you have for me?"
"Nothing, unless you want to work a shift as a bar-maid. Afraid I don´t have any uniforms I could spare for you, thought."
"I might have a job for you!" a jolly man said, jumping from the barrel Min was hiding behind.
"Goodness!" Min jumped back in surprise, falling bum-first on the wooden floor. A man wearing a colorful onesie and a horned hat jumped out of the barrel like a real-life jack in the box. His outfit was almost as loud as the bells in his hat, painted in bright yellow and red stripes. "What the hell?! Who are you?!"
"Sorry dear, didn't mean to startle you, but Isn´t it obvious? I´m the royal jester!" the man replied with a overly-exaggerated curtsy.
"W-what were you doing in that barrel?" Min asked.
"Yeah, where is my beer?" the bartneder also asked.
"I waiting for my chance to appear, of course. I wanted to meet the naked adventurer that came to our doors. My sources say you have something called the Jester's Curse. How could I miss something like that? ... Oh, and your beer is outside. You should probably drag the barrel in before the Sun ruins it."
"Argh... typical." The bartender quickly ran outside to salvage his drinks, leaving Min and the Jester alone.
"Great, even the clowns look down on me," Min lamented. Realizing that the man was still looking down at her, she quickly crossed her legs and folded her arms around her relatively small chest. No reason to give him something else to laugh about.
"Well, it IS my job to make fun of people. But this time, I didn't come, specifically, to make fun of you! I came to offer you a job. It even comes with a free uniform! Neat, huh?"
"Who cares about the uniform? It will probably explode or something at the worst possible time…"
"Oh, I hope so. That would be hilarious! And, being hilarious is 94% of the job! How would you like to be a jester for a fortnight or so? It's a great gig. You get free food, a free bed, and can insult anyone you want without consequences. Like the daft goat over there! His beer is so weak; you would think he makes it out of his own milk!"
"Hey! I heard that!" the satyr yelled, rolling the barrel inside with some effort.
"See? No consequences!"
"Yeah, but people laugh at the jester, not with him. I receive more than enough mockery already, thank you very much. I´ll have to decline."
"Exactly, girl. Instead of fighting against the current, I say swim with it. Use your curse to your advantage. And hey, if you do a good job, you might make pals on the Royal Court that can help you out in the future."
Min wanted to retort, but the Jester was right. This was a good opportunity for her to make some powerful connections. And since she would be a jester, it didn't matter if she made a fool of herself in front of even the King. That was to be expected. But there was something that wasn't adding up...
"Why do you need another jester?"
"Some of the Kingdom's nobles aren't fond of the reforms our dear King made after he found out he had vampires in his family. They don´t think highly about treating our non-human friends, like our bartender here, as almost equal to us."
"Vampires? What?!" There were vampires in this world?! That didn´t bode well.
"Long story, don´t worry about it. The point is he has to go to a Landmeet, and I have to accompany him to keep everyone in a good mood else arrows start flying. So, there is a temporary vacancy in the castle."
"Ok, but why can't you leave the castle without a jester?"
"Hahaha, don't talk nonsense girl, the jester is as vital as the king to the well-being of any kingdom…" The jester crouched, lowering his voice to whisper at Min. "Come closer..."
With some suspicion, Min scooted over and tilted her ear´s towards the Jester´s mouth.
"Ok, here's the real skinny. The pompous stick-in-a-mud the king calls his son is staying in the castle, and the three daughters of Duke Algerie are coming to visit to make a play for the throne. Your real job is to stop them from seducing the prince. A marriage to the Vineisse duchy would be disastrous to my liege's plans. The jester stuff is just a cover. What we need is a spanner in the works."
"Ooooooh, court intrigue." Min's eyes glimmered; she was already imagining herself in the middle of a court plot with backstabbing ministers and noble houses. The kind of things she wanted to see in a fantasy world. "Why didn't you lead with that? Of course I'm in!"