Chapter One Act 1 What a wonderful day this was. It would have been better if I have the time to enjoy it. I was so late for the registration. The king issued a decree that legalized the formation of guilds by civilians. The sudden influx of monsters in the regions caused the kingdom to suffer a shortage of manpower since most of the troops were sent to the borders to guard against an impending invasion from our neighboring kingdoms. Hence, the king allowed civilian guilds to form so that traveling merchants can employ these men to protect their convoys. The decision was a wise one since it kept the trade routes protected, prevented illegal guilds and remotely, a chance for bandits to repent. The only condition he demanded was registration. Anyone can register as long as they feel apt to it. It was already noon when I reached the town square. Registration ends at noon. I stepped up my pace as soon as I saw people walking away from the square. Fortunately, the registrar was still there. Sitting behind a wooden crate, the old bearded minstrel was busy scribbling through the countless scrolls amassed beside him. The registrar was obviously not very pleased with my tardiness when I stood in front of him (or perhaps I was blocking the sun).        “What’d you want?” The registrar muttered, he did not even look at me.        “I wish to form a guild.” I panted, trying to catch my breath.        A cold chuckle. “Are you sure you’re capable of such a task? Are you even familiar with the job requirement?” The registrar retorted. He was busy penning a scroll.        “Yes”, I replied, trying to act tough.        “Very well”, he muttered and reached for a blank scroll.        “What’s thy name?” “Kelvin”        “Eh?”, he muttered under his breath and looked up. I saw a brief smirk when he saw my face. Annoyed but I was glad that he did not probed further.        “I see. You have the gold?” He began penning on the blank scroll.        “Of course, 10 gold pieces in full”, I said and handed him the bag of gold. It took me quite awhile to gather these gold. It also took a lot of consideration as this is a lot of money for a simple peasant like me.        “Fine, and who’re your men?” The registrar asked while counting the gold.        “None yet”, I did not have the time to find any yet, “I will gather them later.”        The registrar glared at me. “You can’t form a guild without any man.”        “I said I will get them later.” That was my intention, I was too busy working odd jobs to gather the gold needed for registration.        “No, you can’t. We need to know exactly who you’re employing. In fact, for every new man you recruit, you need to inform us as well. Why’d you think the king would grant registration in the first place?” The registrar grumbled and laying down his pen.        “But…” I hesitated.. He was right. It would be the best way to keep track of vigilantes.        “Alright, I still have some scrolls to plow through, you got an hour. After that I’ll confiscate these gold for your foolish act if you can’t find one”, he said and shoved my gold into his pocket. “Well, what're staring at? Get going now and find some goofballs. They won’t resist since self-employed fighters are no longer allowed after today. Then again, would they work for you? Hahaha…” He was still laughing when I left. * * * * * * * * The best place to look for talents would be the town’s most lavish tavern; well known for its fine brewage of rum and sumptuous food, one of the main attractions of this town. The tavern was extraordinarily crowded than usual when I arrived. Packed with unfamiliar faces, tall burly brutes and thugs of all kind, the tavern was doing well. The crowd were probably there for the registration. But it was obvious that they were already hired. It would be redundant to ask them one by one. I walked over to the bar counter and gestured the bartender over.        “So what would you have?” The bartender gestured (reusing my gesture) with a smirk, to his elaborate collection of wines and rum on the shelves behind him.        “They look good for a celebration. Only if you can provide me with something I can celebrate with”, I indicated to the drinking men. “I see your business is doing well. So I assume you would know who are still available for recruitment.”        “Recruitment?” The bartender gave me a stare down, shook his head in disbeliefs. But he gave in anyway. Wiping a wet goblet with a rag, he continued, “As far as I know, most of the brutes you see around here are pretty much taken. Actually, anyone drinking merrily around here is already hired. They are drinking under their guilds’ expenses after all…” I looked back at the drinking men again. For some reasons, the notion of employing them under my guild actually felt terribly repulsive.        “Hmm, perhaps…” I heard the bartender muttered vaguely despite the commotions in the tavern. The brutes sure were having fun. I turned back to face the bartender but he was staring at another corner of the tavern. Following his gaze, I saw a figure seated at a table at the corner of the tavern. The figure was alone but dressed in a rather awkward looking armor.        “Is he available?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the figure.        “No one has approached her yet. Maybe she looks intimidating; then again most guild masters won’t consider a female fighter. She is threading on dangerous grounds”, uttered the bartender and resumed doing his chores.        “She?!” That would explain the awkward looking armor, but that was not the point. “So she is available?”        “Probably. You are desperate, aren’t you?” Chuckled the merry bartender. But I did not bother to hear the reply, there was no time to waste. The time given by the registrar was running out and I still need to evaluate and negotiate terms if she turned out to be a professional. I walked briskly toward her table, keeping her in sight. I cannot afford to lose this chance. With every step, I found an increasing confidence. Remarkably well-built, dressed in light armor with long amber tresses, she would look intimidating to any wimps. Broad shoulders and thick arms, and a sheathed sword, a sword wielder she is. Just as I was falling into a dreamy state of entrancement, something blocked my view.        “BURP!” It seems one of the brutes got too much to drink. Getting drunk at noon pretty much tells the character of this scum. And trying to provoke someone isn’t either. Slumped like a brick wall, with his back facing me, he gestured to the female warrior.        “Eh? Hic. What have we –hic here? A pretty little thingy. Hic. Whatcha doin here? Woo. Little girls shouldn’t play with sharp objects. Hic.” The scum jeered. His breath stank so much even I can smell it from behind (or did he farted? Ewww). He slumped onto her table and burped, “How ‘bout a nice walk in the alley? Hic. I know a place. Hic. Real fun, eh? Hic.” I concluded that he was either really drunk or simply engrossed by the sight of a female warrior. Why? He was drooling. I think drooling was the last straw. She was fast. Spectacular if I might add. With lightning-like speed, she managed to clutch the drunk by his neck. Stood up and lifted him high enough to let him tip his toes while maintaining a straggling grip on his neck. Gasping for air, writhing in agony, she did not seem mad at the struggling drunk. Actually, I saw a brief sadistic smile. Nonetheless, I must admit she was stronger than I expected. It was obvious her actions were not gone unnoticed. Many of the fighters in the tavern stood up from their seats, most likely friends of this scum. Some waved their hands, appealing to the female vigilante to release the drunk. Others picked up their arms, readied to fight. The bartender frantically rushed over, attempting to stop a possible brawl. The commotion seemed enough to dissuade the female warrior. After looking around and glaring at the armed fighters, she released her grip. The drunk slumped onto the ground with a thud, gasping for air and was obviously showing signs of rage.        “*gasp. Bitch. Hic. *gasp Who’d you think you’re? *gasp hic, no one wants a girl hic, girls can’t fight, all they do is talk hic *gasp. Leave! Hic. No one wants you”, panted the drunk, flinging his arms wildly. Very drunk. Just as the female warrior was going to reply to that opinion, I instinctively shouted out my intentions.        “I DO!” Till this day, I still think that was the stupidest thing I could do. Feels like a marriage vow taking session. The tavern was dead silent, dumb founded by my reaction (I can hear the creaking wheels from passing carriages outside the tavern). The female warrior must have been caught off-guard by my reaction, an astonished look followed by a smirk then a straight face. The silence was broken by an abrupt snore. We stared at a drooling and snoring drunk; the alcohol intoxication must have taken full effect. The female warrior sighed lightly, picked up her sword from her table and walked toward the door. I was determined not to lose this valuable asset so I went her. * * * * * * * * We arrived at a suburban part of town. Small cottages. Vegetable farms. Clucking chickens and mooing cows. Alas, there was no time to enjoy the scenery. I finally caught up with female warrior’s stride and blocked her path.        “Let me introduce myself, I am Kelvin–“, she coldly walked away. I yelled behind her back as she was walking pretty fast.        “I am forming a guild and in need of talents. I find your skills most impressive and am willing to employ you– “.        “I don’t need pity from men”, she retorted. So was that her problem?        “I was not sympathizing with you. In fact, you were in full control of the situation just now”, I said. She kept on walking. I need a better reason.        “Fine, then pity me instead. I can’t register for a guild unless I’ve at least one man– I mean employee, but I haven't found any yet so I was hoping you can help me–” Did not work, still she walked. Need something related to her, people normally do not care about the fate of others. Why would she care about my guild? Time to turn aggressive.        “As of today, all self-employed fighters are deemed illegal. Registration is ending. I may be the only one left who is willing to accept you. I can see you are still keen on maintaining the warrior code. I could be your only hope. Are you really looking forward to hanging up your sword?” She stopped, I hit the mark but I need to add some “toppings”. Speaking to her back again, “Actually, I can’t pay you for your service either”, I said sheepishly. ”I’ve just enough gold for registration. So let’s make a deal. Let me borrow your name to register. Once that’s done, you are legally a professional. You can leave my guild and find a better paying one if they make you an offer. That's the terms for your contract, sounds appropriate?” * * * * * * * * He was getting onto his horse carriage when I returned to the town square.        “Wait!” I yelled in sheer desperation.        Clinging on the coach steps, the registrar glared at me, “Well?”        “I found someone!” I exclaimed. I was surprised when she agreed. Apparently, no one approached her at all. Male chauvinist pigs. It explained why she hated men.        “Name?” The registrar queried.        “Her name is Kallisto”, I replied and turned around to indicate her presence. The registrar gaped but regained his repulsive composure again.        “Fine, as long as there is one”, he muttered and climbed into the carriage, “I’ll pen your details on the way back.” Just as the carriage was moving off, the carriage halted abruptly. The registrar stuck his head out of the coach and waved his feather pen at me.        “You nitwit, haven’t tell me what’s the name of your guild?!”        “Eh? Name of my guild?” It never occur to me that I need a name for my guild.        “I don’t have time for this!” He looked at his scroll and grumbled, “Agh! I’ll just use your name.” “Kelvin’s Mercenaries”, he recited. “Alright, move on”, he muttered to the carriage man.        “Kelvin’s Mercenaries?” Kallisto shook her head and left. She made it sound even more dumb.         “What?! Hey, wait!” I yelled but the carriage did not stopped. Why would it? * * * * End Act One * * * * To be continued ...

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Writer's Note

It feels great to be creative again. "Choose Your Own Adventure" story isn't a noble idea. It exists before the era of video games in my younger days, in the form of books that readers can choose their fate in the exploration of the story. They will flip through the book from front to back according to their choices and read numbered paragraphs. The first book that gave me the deepest impression was Steve Jackson's The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the first Fighting Fantasy Gamebook. This was followed by the Lone Wolf Series during my high school days. As for now, there is also Myth2. No, not the real-time "Myth" PC game nor Jackie Chan's latest movie flick. Myth2, written with PHP and MySQL, an interactive story where you read the story and make one of two choices on what to do next, this continues until you come to a dead end and there is no things next, at which point you have the option to add to the story. But the problem with this idea is that the story tends to spin out of control. From a three-legged monkey to a pink flying elephant. The story becomes too bizarre to relate to or comprehend.

The idea for telling the story of building a guild comes from a number of sources, primarily from Mercenaries of Dosbar. I thought of re-telling the story of my endeavor in the game but I realized that anyone who had played the game would know the story too well. Furthermore, I would be copying someone's work and I would be repeating my past acts of re-telling my game-playing stories again (recall Script of Saga: Tales of a Thief). Anime also played a part in inspiration: Lodoss War, Mahou Senshi Riui and many other RPG like Anime. Hence, for those who are familiar with the animes, you will find some uncanny resemblance here and there. But "regurgitation" is not my style.

My initial idea was to do an online graphic novel about three bumbling mercenaries and their misadventures using animated GIF. But I did not.

Animated GIFs are hard to do, that is the experience that I have learnt from Script of Saga: Tales of a Thief. The need to go through each individual frames, the timing adjustments, frame by frame alignment dissuaded me from doing more. It takes too much time to do an animated gif and takes too much efforts to perfect one. It also needs quality sprites.

Sprites don't come easy and generally are not free. Fortunately for the gaming community, there is Reiner Prokein. A German game maker who has generously contributed the community with free 3d iso sprites, I have been using his sprites for various gaming projects for a few years. As simple as they are, his contributions benefited many game-makers who lacked the artistic touches to make good sprites of their own. I wanted to created graphic novel using his iso sprites since I could just concentrate on story rather than making sprites. Then I realized that doing a full graphic novel is equivalent to a animated gif. The work become immense to layer the entire storyboard with tiles. Moreover, I would run out of sprites images. Although Reiner provides an abundant of sprites, each sprite has only a set of images, sooner or later I am going to use up all the variations and would be reusing them again. In any case, for the three mercenaries, I came up with three images, they look too good to throw away so I am presenting them here for your enjoyment. They will appear in the story eventually but they are no longer the main characters of my story.

So I decided to render my own sprites, to lessen the load, I chose Poser rather than a 3d modeling software since I want sprites and  not models. The main issue about running out of sprites falls on the main roles in my story so I decided to continue using Reiner's sprites and models for lesser roles and the environment. Rendering my own sprites give me more options and flexibility in creating images. Plus the notion of kicking Reiner's sprites around with my sprites feels exceptional exquisite . But since I prefer not to render the entire novel as an image, small individual images will be rendered. That means it will look more like a novel, hence no more graphic novel. With less work, I can concentrate more on the storyline. I like sprites, I also like how Poser render realistic images so I decided that for every episode I will do two sprite images and one Poser. Due to the heavy preference for women in Poser and having only a few feminine sprites from Reiner, you will find most of the self-rendered sprites are women. Any protest?

But since I am using other people's work as part of my works, I must give credits to them for those interested to create their own masterpieces. Note that the copyrights are still applied to the original owners and not all resources are available for download anymore. I am not allowed to distribute these resources without the owners' permission even if they are freeware so I can't provide them as downloads, sorry.

As for the usage of the pictures showcased in the story, the Terms of Use is presented below, please read before you use my images!

All right, enough talk, vote now and see how I spin the story. I welcome all forms of comments, suggestions and complaints. The comments will be evaluated before being presented on this site, note that not all comments will be shown. Ideas for the story will be hidden so that other readers won't know the story outcome beforehand. But I will give you a reply/thanks and a reason for not showing your comments. Please be considerate. Blogs in my country are under the jurisdiction of state law; any racism, offensive and obscene comments are illegal and will not be displayed to the public. Thank you for your consideration. We welcome all healthy comments and encouragement.

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