Health and Safety Life Therapist Activity Report

The first thing I noticed was that the man’s nose nearly reached the goblins. The beak of his long white mask while crouched almost touched the tufts of greasy black hair on the goblins head. The little creature seemed to have managed to buy a kind of poultice or potion from him. It then scurried off into the dense undergrowth that crept at the edges of the crossroads. Lucky too some groups like the ones camped around here hunt those things for sport.

I was just loading up my new horse when he seemed to take notice of me.

I thought back to my days as a lad in Malbek, where a traveling salesman like him came through town and caused a huge fuss with the locals. I remember my mother saying never to trifle with an alchemist. Still the mysterious man behind the mask intrigued me even then. Now that he was walking toward me with purpose however, I felt like I shouldn’t have jostled my coin purse as hard when I loaded my pack onto Hastour.

Still he paced towards me with purpose, “Damn I shouldn’t have looked so hard, why can’t I just mind my own business” I cursed inside my head.

He came towards me and looked to my horse, “Fine steed you have, did you just purchase it?” He looked from my horse to me, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind the stained glass lenses on that mask.

"Yes I replied" slightly with less force than I would have liked to impress upon him.

"Ah" He gasped, "what happened to your previous one then?" he tilted his head slightly.

Hmm he’s probing for something; he may intend to rob me.

"Broke its leg three kilometers from here had to walk in with what I had and get a new one." I didn’t feel a need to lie but he still made me uneasy

"OH, quite a tragedy then, but I’m wondering do you often carry enough gold to buy a new horse, what is your trade friend?" Still ever so slightly he cocked his head to the side in a knowing, irritating way.

"Friend, I would prefer you took a few steps back. Not that’s it’s your business but I managed to liberate wares from a caravan. I know what you’re thinking but this was one that had gone of the main road and broken down in soft sand. Rather than continue to walk I came back and bartered what I could carry, enough for a horse." He hadn’t backed up or responded to my asking him to.

He took another two steps towards me and said “Pardon what is going to sound like a very strange request but I have to ask you to lay down flat on your stomach for a moment.” He reached an open hand out towards me.

With much trained forethought I pulled my sword off Hastour and leveled it to him, he was barely its length away.

"I believe ill pass, Friend"

I couldn’t tell if he was serious but he asked again adding, “Sir you are in grave danger and if you do not accept my help then you will most certainly die”

I let out a slight chuckle, “You call that a threat? You had better get on your horse and be off before I find a reason to use this” I motioned with the sword towards his mount.

He began to stammer out “Actually it’s an Optor, and…” I cut him off mid-sentence to let him know I was serious.

"I need you at a distance to me…friend" again I motioned him to mount.

He let out a sigh, and then turned his back to me, he motioned backwards. “Only trying to help” With that he was mounted and rode off. He actually seemed to be heading the same way I was. I briefly considered camping out one more night, but I had already been at this little site for too long. Finally I had the means to proceed to meet with my friend and I had to make up for lost time. Of course I met with the alchemist a little ways up the road but he simply gave me a salute and was out of site behind me.

Still I felt the need to put some distance between myself and him, I just hoped that big turkey couldn’t move too quick.

I rode out at full bore for a while, but soon felt a warm sensation almost euphoria. Satisfied I had put enough distance between him and myself I brought my speed down to a trot.

Later that night when I eventually made camp though that feeling had gone, it was replaced with dread.  I could hardly eat any of my rations it was so bad. I felt strange, I felt as though I was being watched. There’s no way, I said to myself. I tried to reassure myself that big chicken couldn’t possibly have caught up even though I wasn’t riding hard most the day. The man’s load must have been ten times as heavy as mine; it looked like he was carrying a chest as big as a piano on the back of that thing.

Still I didn’t sleep well.

The next morning I awoke dawn had barely broken but everything around me was unnervingly quiet. I decided to pack up cautiously, and quietly, it sounded as if the forest had died around me.

I wasn’t far now, so I rode to the meeting spot we had discussed and Darnerious had made a small camp. The whole ride I was constantly looking over my shoulder, I felt paranoid. Something in my head and heart told me that alchemist was going to pop up right behind me and dissect me for some reason. Everything considered I was happy to see a friendly face, until he greeted me, and his mouth moved but no words came out. He waved to me and I spoke back but his face became confused.

“ The group of men from Tull passed it around, so count yourself lucky.” At this point the man’s screams are drowning out all other sounds that only lasted until the gunfire started. A hail of bullets comes crashing into the place, two of the men get back to their posts at the windows and let fly return fire, big mistake, at this point the man who’s only wound used to be a gunshot was melting from the inside out his screams filled the air and without them pinning him he tried to get up.

Most of him accomplished this, his abdomen  was another story. It basically stayed stuck to the chair he was sitting in as the entire middle part of him gave way. He fell to the floor but at this point I think he was past all screaming.

People outside are really laying into the bar and one of the men gets hit bad enough to drop. So I put on my long white mask, the NTEC says these masks (now retrofitted with various pumps and filters) were a renaissance form of gas mask, again with them always mixing the new with the old.

So I reach in my bag and mix a few things, its rather trivial with my training to mix an aerosol, and an ingested toxin causing sleep. I smash the vial on the ground and it fills the room rather quickly the gunfire doesn’t stop not all at once but the people in the bar under tables and hidden are all fast asleep. Then not soon enough the people who turned their backs to me the moment the shooting started slumped over, peaceful one even looked like he was sighting his rifle. When all the shooting stopped I called outside as best I could through my mask “I’m coming out unarmed and wish not to be shot.” Vague comply about hands in the air but I took it and exited the bar, being careful not to step in the man on the floor.

Turns out the local law enforcement had been firing into the bar since they thought the robbers to be torturing the patrons. When I explained everything how the man had foolishly stolen my skin acid and how they were all quite incapacitated the Police Chief was not exactly keen on letting me go, but seeing as how I had just as he put it “melted a man” he saw fit to not take the chance in stopping me.

Bridget was still tied up where I left her, snoozing on her side flicking off flies that landed with her long reptilian tail.

So I Kicked the receiving switches, and the stand again spun to life but this time compacting rather than un packing, when it was finished I wheeled it over to Bridget and hauled my now packed stand onto her back. Once everything was fastened I bid the town adieu, but promised to return one day.

“My friend is dying over there, if you don’t give me potion for his wounds, ill peel your face off and show it to you” he said this with a grim satisfaction rolling over his face.

I began to speak but he grabbed me and pulled my canvas bag free from my arm, pulling out a rather large bottle and walking over to his friend. I collected my bag from the floor and returned to my story.

The moment that bottle was emptied he recipient began convulsing wildly.

“I rode into Tull and tied Bridget to a street light. I pushed my stand free of its harness and wheeled it a few feet away from Bridget at this time the crowd was growing rapidly. I hit the few switches on the side that start the process of unpacking itself, With the usual whimsy I get before speaking to an audience I stepped up unto the small stage as it was unpacking itself , and As loud as I could I Expounded the NTEC standard dialogue, that I had tweaked slightly to suit the stage.

““Good evening good people of Tull, my name is HSLT Derringer, but please forego the title and just call me Dare.””

 “It’s quite an amazing effect the unfolding stage calls upon the crowd, its entrancing for them to watch me prancing back and forth along various moving platforms as the stage rights itself and sets up the shop. The machine is quite a marvel of design really, a self-serving self-operating autonomous vending unit.”

To the crowd I continue “I sell potions, elixirs and bottled gold. I have everything that you could ever desire to put the spring in your step back into your step.”

 “After this point I bring someone onstage” “Is anyone amongst you suffering from afflictions most vile?” “A few people raise their hands but I go for the sale, I choose the one with visible boils or hideous scars, there’s always someone who got in a bar fight or dug too deep in a radiation well.” I say this to no-one in particular as the group of men are busy trying to restrain the man who drank my vial.

 “ you sir stand-up” I mime this to the cowering bar patrons, “Be healed!” I shout raising my fist to the sky, I drop a few dozen coins through the air to my other hand, “You simply insert a coin and the machine does the rest it presents you with a large golden philter filled with shining liquid that when drunk will heal a man back from the brink of death!”

“After the man drinks it and is cured the line is fifty meter’s long so I leave the machine to it.”

 I draw one beady eye towards the group of men who are trying to restrain the gunshot man; he’s coughing blood and screaming. “I usually head to a bar, and as I did in this case some group of low lives took a vial from my bag, more than likely the same one you fed to your friend.”

“Hey Potion man!” A large man bellowed, accompanied by five others as they entered into the bar. They had guns and bags, of what I assumed to be full of gold.

“I have been called many names my friend but I am mainly a physician”, I simply went back to my drink at the bar, and some of the people around me cowered and hid actually everyone seemed to be quite afraid of this group.

Really when it comes down to it my job title matters little, my job description on the other hand.

The man pushed through the shrewd crowd cowering within the bar and his accomplices took up positions on the windows. One man was injured though it didn’t seem too serious.

 The one who bellowed came very close and drove his knife into the bar beside me, “I said hey potion man and you turn your back on me and mine, why should I let you take another sip of that drink?”

I began “well I was riding into the town of Tull last week and I was just causing a huge commotion with the townsfolk. You see Tull is one of those third generation towns with a railway that used to go through it. When the Putt-man railway company went under all their rail yards became unoccupied, and a bunch of people in the major city’s lost their jobs. I drive off the point, the commotion. See people often ride from town to town on horseback, but the National Traveling Eugenics Corporation sees fit to equip its salesmen with something faster and larger.”

At this point the burly man looked at me like I had just spoken french.

“Right I forgot my actual job title for which you may have been confused earlier is actually Health and Safety Life Therapist, not that it matters, you call me potion man, but my more common moniker is witchdoctor or Alchemist.”

He looks very irate and I can see distinctly now that his confusion was boiling to rage, he smelled something fierce as well.

“Now like I say horses are fairly common but my company equips me differently seeing as I need to transport a lot of wares, tell me have you ever seen and Optor before?”

 I tap his arm holding the knife in the bar lightheartedly but retract it as his hand loses all color and his face grows in increasingly alarming shades of red.

 “Well I tell you the people of Tull never had either, let me paint you a picture if you didn’t see it out in the street. Optors are genetically engineered birds mixed with raptor DNA, the NTEC has found that splicing animals with previous genetic ancestors can provide quite impeccable work horses, imagine the instincts of a primal beast and the calm speed of an ostrich, either way it makes for quite the travelling companion”

He seemed to be too busy wrenching his knife from the bar to take any notice of my tale.

“To the people of Tull I must have seemed most strange riding an almost twelve foot tall ostrich turned reptile with scaly legs a body covered with scales and feathers , long beaked snout with sharp razor teeth, carrying what would look like a oak standing piano on its back, as well as myself. I tell you Bridget can be quite the handful along the road, and that shop is not light. Though the Optaraptor is quite a majestic beast at most times, it is also known to be very ornery when trifled with.”

At this point in my story the large sweaty, and rather blood speckled man who was trying to rob me pulled the large hunting knife from the bar and held it to me. (It seemed that he was rather fed up)

“I need a healing potion for my friend with the bullet wound.”

There was a whole lot of commotion going on about the place; the other four men were looking through the windows with pistols and rifles ready. I could hear a faint bell ringing in the distance.