Dreadstone shares a laugh with Draco over Curly's cautionary litany on the use of the handy haversacks, deigning to not accept the proffered document from the halfling until the little man eventually gives up expecting Dreadstone to take it from him and takes it back. "Son, I assure you I know perfectly well how to use such things," the ranger informs the quartermaster. "They been around for quite a long while, as you may have heard."
Still chuckling at Curly's presumption of ignorance, Dreadstone heads out into the streets, Gnaw falling into place at his side when the tiefling snaps his fingers and utters an almost bestial grunt at the nearly feral dog. Running his fingers through the surplus of coins he has so recently acquired, he contemplates how to best spend the wealth. With the military picking up the tab on his expedition supplies, and the extreme--perhaps a bit foolish, in his estimation--generosity of Stricia and Lone Wolf in sharing their winnings with the rest of the party, he has some walking around money.
It doesn't take a lot of thought to decide how to best apply the money, however. The weapons made available by the military were fine stuff, but purely mass production, standard issue stuff. A man of his experience and past career could wield something more sophisticated. If he was going to keep everyone alive, it was practically a necessity.
Dreadstone eventually finds a store that seems to stock the equipment of the quality he is searching for, and he and Gnaw go inside. The clerk behind the counter looks scrawny and pale; he's almost certainly never wielded any of these weapons himself.
"Excuse me, uh... sir," the clerk says, eyes fixed on Gnaw and apparently unsure how to address the horned man that the dog accompanies, "we don't allow pets in this store."
Gnaw responds by rushing the counter, snarling and snapping his teeth at the clerk just outside of reach. "He's not a pet," Dreadstone says calmly as the clerk attempts to keep Gnaw at bay with the end of a broom, "and I don't think he much cares what the rules are."
"Fine! Call him off! Call him off!" shouts the panicked clerk.
"Gnaw!" Dreadstone barks, "Come!" Reluctantly, the dog obeys, though he continues to growl and snap at the air around him. "What's got your dander up, boy?" Dreadstone asks.
With a shaking finger, the clerk points to a barrel filled with arrows near where the tiefling stands. "Might be that he doesn't like those arrows? They're treated with pheromones, supposed to make targets easier to track if you don't drop them right away. Seems to drive animals nuts, though."
That a fact? Dreadstone asks idly, picking one of them out and giving it a whiff. It well and truly did smell terrible. The way it drove Gnaw to such viciousness was noteworthy, however. It might be that these could be of use if he was going to be traveling with a dog and one and a half wolves
He drops a fistful of the arrows on the front counter. Ill take these. And give me an equal number of those whistlin types too, I think I might have a use for those too.
Will
will there be anything else today? the nervous clerk asks, hands trembling as he packages up Dreadstones arrows, never taking his eyes off Gnaw. Gnaw returns the favor by not taking his eyes off the clerk, practically foaming at the mouth with repressed rage.
Dreadstone grins. Oh, I can think of a few more items.
---
Dreadstone reunites with the others at the wagon, flexing his fingers to work the stiff leather of his new gloves, testing the flex of a new black-lacquered longbow and shining greatsword strapped to his back. Gnaw trots alongside him, trying desperately to kill the quiver of arrows that hangs from Dreadstones hip and rid himself of the offending odor. Maam, he says simply to Forrester, tugging on the front of his hood as though he were tipping his cap as he hops into the back of the wagon.
Inside the wagon, Dreadstone situates himself in the corner, Gnaw providing a bristly, ill-tempered buffer between the tiefling and the rest of the party. He does not indulge Lone Wolf in his brainstorming for a new moniker, nor Niko in his quest to come up with a team name. In his opinion they do not constitute a team. They are a collection of individuals currently working to the same end, but that is not the same thing as a
team, not really. A team provides synergy, a gestalt effort that is greater than the sum of its individual components. They are not there yet. Not yet, anyway.
During rest stops, Dreadstone attempts to work out what commands Gnaw already knows. Turns out that for a dog born and bred for pit fighting, Gnaw knows a fair number of commands outside of kill, and Dreadstone is eventually able to catalog a little over a half dozen individual commands that the dog knows. Now if he could just do something about the smell
((Alright, final shopping list for me:
Masterwork Greatsword
Gloves of Strength +2
20 Pheromone arrows (Pretty sure with Lone Wolf, Lady, and Gnaw, this has potential to wreck some shit)
20 Whistling arrows (Thinking theyd be good for distraction purposes outside of combat)
Masterwork Composite Longbow STR+2))
