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Bert: Difference between revisions
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Bert's smart enough to be suspicious but so sure that his own intelligence will be enough to keep him from being scammed. He's also desperate enough for recognition and praise and to leave the Smelter that he takes the offer and with no notice/goodbyes sells pretty much all his meager possessions and maybe some borrowed goods and rides with the caravan with little besides the clothes on his back, burning bridges and probably already in debt before they even reach Erith. | Bert's smart enough to be suspicious but so sure that his own intelligence will be enough to keep him from being scammed. He's also desperate enough for recognition and praise and to leave the Smelter that he takes the offer and with no notice/goodbyes sells pretty much all his meager possessions and maybe some borrowed goods and rides with the caravan with little besides the clothes on his back, burning bridges and probably already in debt before they even reach Erith. | ||
The bookseller sort of tells the truth and did get Bert a job with Hadrian's Quill, a sprawling and prosperous operation owned by an Ubrketi man named Hadrian Corvinus. The work copying books, scribing scrolls, and brewing potions turned out to be much harder and stricter than promised and conditions, in a repeat of the Smelter, was more like a sweatshop attached to a high rent flophouse with immediate demands to work off debt. Again Bert not only works and survives but he also picks up new skills through both the grueling work and studying things of interest on his own in what little free time his job allows him. Hadrian's Quill and the flophouse Bert stayed in are located near the [[University of Flannary|University]] and has many faculty and student clients and over the next several months he interacted with most of the various other book/scroll sellers and libraries. Hakani fluency was somewhat easier to learn by already knowing the Dwarven alphabet, and the nearby [[Circus | The bookseller sort of tells the truth and did get Bert a job with Hadrian's Quill, a sprawling and prosperous operation owned by an Ubrketi man named Hadrian Corvinus. The work copying books, scribing scrolls, and brewing potions turned out to be much harder and stricter than promised and conditions, in a repeat of the Smelter, was more like a sweatshop attached to a high rent flophouse with immediate demands to work off debt. Again Bert not only works and survives but he also picks up new skills through both the grueling work and studying things of interest on his own in what little free time his job allows him. Hadrian's Quill and the flophouse Bert stayed in are located near the [[University of Flannary|University]] and has many faculty and student clients and over the next several months he interacted with most of the various other book/scroll sellers and libraries. Hakani fluency was somewhat easier to learn by already knowing the Dwarven alphabet, and the nearby [[Circus Librorum]] branch offered training in exchange for off-hours book copying work. | ||
After several months and working enough to be trusted on solo deliveries Bert is tasked to deliver a large special order of copied books and papers to an estate of a retired Baron, Henri Tourterelle, and warned to do so quickly and politely as the old Baron was a valued customer from a very important and still powerful family with many well-connected relatives among the university faculty and other city old nobility. Baron Tourterelle is also vaguely infamous as an eccentric and ancient shut-in and weirdo. Bert is let in to some Havisham-style residence to deliver the package by some ancient and silent butler and led a library where an even more ancient and decrepit noble sits behind a large table covered in books and questionable arcane apparatuses. Baron Tourterelle quickly checks the delivered items and asks a few questions about the translations and copying which Bert was able to answer as he had worked on them. He is then dismissed and let back out by the butler (no tip). A few weeks later another delivery there is much the same except the Baron asked Bert about some of the specific arcane theories in one of the papers and Bert offered his opinions of it. A few days after that 2nd meeting Bert receives a letter from the Baron directly, encouraging Bert to apply to the University and lays out detailed instructions on how to do so under whatever vague test-in options exist for poor peasants and landless refugees of promise. The Baron even indicates he would also send a formal letter of recommendation to one of his grand-nieces who was involved in the University admittance process. Despite Bert's doubts the admission process works and he is indeed accepted to the class of (1 ya) and finally leaves the flophouse he had stayed in since coming to the city. His "thank you" letter to the Baron is never answered and Bert never meets him again. He later learns the Baron died of old age during his first year of studies. | After several months and working enough to be trusted on solo deliveries Bert is tasked to deliver a large special order of copied books and papers to an estate of a retired Baron, Henri Tourterelle, and warned to do so quickly and politely as the old Baron was a valued customer from a very important and still powerful family with many well-connected relatives among the university faculty and other city old nobility. Baron Tourterelle is also vaguely infamous as an eccentric and ancient shut-in and weirdo. Bert is let in to some Havisham-style residence to deliver the package by some ancient and silent butler and led a library where an even more ancient and decrepit noble sits behind a large table covered in books and questionable arcane apparatuses. Baron Tourterelle quickly checks the delivered items and asks a few questions about the translations and copying which Bert was able to answer as he had worked on them. He is then dismissed and let back out by the butler (no tip). A few weeks later another delivery there is much the same except the Baron asked Bert about some of the specific arcane theories in one of the papers and Bert offered his opinions of it. A few days after that 2nd meeting Bert receives a letter from the Baron directly, encouraging Bert to apply to the University and lays out detailed instructions on how to do so under whatever vague test-in options exist for poor peasants and landless refugees of promise. The Baron even indicates he would also send a formal letter of recommendation to one of his grand-nieces who was involved in the University admittance process. Despite Bert's doubts the admission process works and he is indeed accepted to the class of (1 ya) and finally leaves the flophouse he had stayed in since coming to the city. His "thank you" letter to the Baron is never answered and Bert never meets him again. He later learns the Baron died of old age during his first year of studies. | ||