Chapter 16

So, what have you got?

More than you can use.

As the five of you finish panting from your mad flight through town and hide in the wine cellar of an affluent house you finally start dividing up the loot from the shop and find out what you have scored.

There are a plethora of daggers and throwing knives, mostly made of steel, (That smith must have known his trade.), as well as a few suits of steel chain armor, with gambesons included. You want to take one of those suits for yourself, but after you see how slowly one of the other cultists moves wearing it you decide against it. (For reasons best known to the Game Designers armor is much more encumbering when worn than when carried, though it weighs the same both ways.)

You also find yourself uncharacteristically aroused while you watch your fellow cultists changing. You've seen all of these girls naked before when going 'off shift' during one of the many many times that the town stayed booted up for days or even weeks with various adventurers entering and leaving constantly but never none of them present long enough to shut down the zone: yet now you find yourself looking at them in a whole new light, and like what you see... However this is neither the time nor the place to explore these new feelings: for now, back to redistributing gear!

There also are a couple of throwing axes and a battle axe, which the red haired waitress claims for herself, tucking the throwing axes into the waistband of her uniform: which shouldn't be possible since it's not a 'belt' but you expected the game to glitch a bit after the 'overclock' and are just glad it's doing it in your favor. There are three steel skull caps, which you distribute among your minions, favoring of course the redhead with one but not taking one yourself. You feel somehow that Armok probably likes the way you look in a blood spattered maid's uniform, and don't want to spoil the effect just yet by removing your frilly little band which actually sports most of the gore, having been right above the injury.

The real treasures are what you scored from the dead adventurers however!

For one thing there are seven 'Cheap Cloth Coin Pouch'-s which have a grand total of 178 Copper, 69 Silver, 34 Gold, and 5 Platinum coins in them. For a party of such high level they weren't packing much money, unless they had banking amulets and this was just a percentage of what they had on their person at the time. Then again maybe only the leader was higher level and the others were noobs, or maybe they weren't a party at all just the people who had been in the shop when whatever went down there went down? You probably will never know.

You redistribute the coins among the five of you, (keeping all the platinum for yourself naturally), and they tuck the pouches into their apron's pockets. It's a little known fact that the waitress uniforms include a four square storage compartment in their apron. This fact isn't even listed in their description, because back in the day rogues would try to steal the uniforms to get added storage space for 'mule' characters and the game designers got sick of having to jigger the economics so the restaurants could stay in business. They eventually made the uniforms NPC only items except any that were equipped to PCs at the time which became 'grandfathered' and are now worth thousands of times their list price, not the least of which is because some incredibly high level freaks have 'Maid Balls' where all the women have to wear one of the grandfathered maid costumes to get in the door. There has been talk that they are going to use the skin and motions of the uniforms for a high level female only item set at some point, but that rumor has been going around for four expansions and more, so almost no one thinks it's true any more. (Though many of course insist it WAS true, but the designers changed their mind when the info was leaked...) Moving on...

The other items from the adventurers mostly go to you, because they are exactly the kind of things you need, if not especially impressive, but the game doesn't give out an adventurer's best gear as treasure. (It used to be TOTALLY random, but people got pissed off when they lost their best equipment too often so it was changed. Not for NPCs and 'monsters' though, OH NO, that wouldn't be 'fair'*. The stuff stowed in your pack is still fair game though, they figure if an item is that shiny you will either lock it in your house or be wearing/wielding it.) There is a pair of sturdy boots, a bandoleer for holding throwing knives, white leather gloves that give a bonus to 'Ranged Attack', and a pair of light mana potions, but BEST OF ALL: there are the tawdry black leather pants of the would be **** that you killed! Finally! Your legs are covered and people can't see your panties when you bend over! Even better, though minor compared to being covered up really, these pants have been upgraded with the 'integral pockets' feature they added in the last expansion, and have two 1 square storage areas! You put your coin pouch into one of them, making it harder for rogues to rob you: since you ARE carrying 60 GP worth of Platinum in there.