Choose Our Own Adventure
Leadership is a Four Letter Word
By Jason (Aeston) Rosa
Well the idiots I found myself with were pretty stupid, so I thought I might as well find out if they were stupid enough to listen to me. I summoned up my best voice of authority (it starts in the diaphragm you see, the trick is to yell, not to shout) and started doling out orders to people who I knew would be useless without my direction, and I suspected would still be useless even after they had it.
First of all, that troll. At this point there was only one wagon-guard left and I’m pretty sure he was only focused on the fact that whoever buried him after he met his demise in the next few seconds would be sure to find out that he had soiled himself. Since Kenna the murder-elf seemed like she knew how to use those swords she was always menacing about I sent her to put their pointy end into that slobbering lumbering reject from a fairy tale.
The man hiding behind the cart wasn’t far from getting disemboweled by those goblins, but I knew how to deal with that too. Despite the moniker of “priest”, any follower of Aurora I’ve ever met has definitely been suppressing a deep homicidal rage. I told Simon to go give those greenies some “religion” and I saw the flash of light behind his eyes that told me all I needed to know about how they would end up.
Finally, as I concluded Chloe was the least offensive of our lot (a low bar to be sure), I tasked her with chasing after the young woman to try and convince her we had the situation well in hand and that she would be safer with us than without us (all probably untrue but I don’t see anything wrong with lying for a good cause).
Moments later the dust had cleared. The troll was dead and the guard that had somehow survived the encounter was gazing at Kenna with a disturbing amount of admiration in his eyes. Simon was stepping over the bludgeoned bodies of the goblins and helping the young man up on his feet, and Chloe was walking back towards us, her arm around the young woman, speaking whatever platitudes were necessary to keep her calm.
The very thankful young man spoke with a haughty tone to his voice, but explained to us that he and the young lady, who was his sister, were the only children of a very wealthy merchant family in the lands of Sharangil. This pair, who claimed they were a lot more capable than they looked, were on their way to Blackwood to attempt to negotiate some trade deals when they were attacked by a bargain-basement set of monsters.
Their manners were pretty good, since they were happy to offer us a considerable reward for helping them and extended an even more reasonable reward if we continued to escort them to their destination. I shot Chloie a look and she shrugged indifferently. I didn't relish the idea of adding babysitting to the list of tasks I was now all-of-a-sudden-responsible for but as I said before, I am a greedy, greedy man. In the end...