Chapter five: the client is always right

After the shower and some sleep James came downstairs to find Kira already starting dinner. He just decided to head to the church to talk about the gathering a little and opened his front door to find Diana standing on the gravel path between his house and road. Just past her were the four adventurers from yesterday. He puts his palm to his forehead and speaks softly. “ God damn it Diana!" 

He then moved to take charge of the situation. “ By the four heavens what happened?" 

Diana turned surprised seeing James angry and Kira just appearing behind him a moment to see what was going on. “ Grandfather said he needed to do something in town and for me to watch his post till he got back." James walks past her and checks on the four one by one. “ Kira I need a full revive set here!"

Kira came out with a box with a red cross on it and sets it down and opens it revealing various potions. After using a revival potion on each one of them they each got a health and mana to follow up with to restore them to full. That must not have been cheap she knew. “ Apologies, she is a guest. Give me a moment." 

James goes back inside and comes out with a lantern and a pouch. “ I hope you do not hold it against her. Your order of a lantern. It was meant for another client. I also have three power cores for it here as well."

Their leader gets to his feet with Kira's help and looked surprised being rewarded for getting his ass kicked. “ That would not be fair. We just came to deliver the materials and pay part of the fee."

James considers it, or acted like he did. “ I understand. I will take what you will give and I will forget the rest. Take the lantern and power cores. The other client is a good Tom and I will sweeten his agreement for the added wait."

Diana was not sure what just happened as the four thanked James for the lantern and turned over several iron and copper ore, some thunder crystals and a bag of seedz that showed a total of just over twenty thousand on it. James hands Kira the stuff he just got and she goes back inside as James looks at Diana as the four leave. “ Look, he clearly never told you his job. He is to keep people from stealing my stuff. See the iron wrought fence. Everything in their bounds is mine."

James lets her look around and a bright chest near the entrance catches her notice. “ Why is there a treasure chest in your lawn?" 

James smiles a little bit. “ Part of my agreement with the church is I keep a donation box. I usually throw my extra seedz after some drinking in town into it. Yet almost every time when some new group comes by they take the money out. All the locals know what it is so they put money into it too if they want and it is easily accessible by a father to take the money when they come to collect it. Makes my life easy and theirs. Usually only new people that come up here want to do business with us so your grandfather confronts them about it." James lets her ask her next expected question. “ Then why not post a sign saying it is a donation box?" 

James says nothing to let her look again. Right beside the treasure box was a sign. She completely missed it because she was focused on the treasure box. “ Now look on the wall of my shop."

Diana turns and sees the rules. After reading them she has another question and James starts talking before she could speak. “ The things I make require a certain amount of intelligence and skill to operate. Howard is not easy to defeat in combat but he is rather aged as well. So he assesses my new clientele. If they can best him they got the skill needed. After that I negotiate and see if they are intelligent enough. It is a complicated system but it works."

Diana takes a moment to put all the pieces together to understand. First is the treasure chest. Most adventurers would loot it without giving it a second thought. Giving valid cause for Howard to intervene. Instantly making them the bad guy being thieves of church donations. Because there was a sign right beside the chest it can easily be argued just cause for a fight. Because Howard is a guard of the shop they will not harm him but they will fight showing their skill of arms to him. Depending how they do they move onto the next step where James would negotiate with them pointing out the fact they stole from the church and the fact they fought Howard and showed the skill to win James has them in an instant advantage able to ask almost anything for what they are wanting and not be in the wrong for doing so. It was a clever use of the laws and system.