Day 1: NPC Friendships/Rivalries
Bonus Characters: Dino Ghiranze and Vyv Dordan
Being a freelance jeweler isn’t all fun and games. Especially not when you don’t exactly have access to the resources needed for such an occupation. Or when the town you’re trying to set yourself up in doesn’t have the sort of folk you’re trying to cater to. Duscae wasn’t known for its wealth, but Dino had started there because there was an abundance of precious metals and gems to harvest from the area. When it came to actually selling his wares, however… no such luck.
After setting himself up with a nice inventory—a good number of materials, tools, and pieces he’d already made—Dino set out for Galdin Quay, hoping to appeal to the wealthy that passed through and stayed the night. It took awhile for him to be noticed. People weren’t exactly going to Galdin to buy jewelry, and they often passed him by without so much as a second glance, even if his jewelry was rather nice (and with all of those status benefits? Who could turn that down?)
About a week and a half into his stay at Galdin, Dino finally made enough gil to try one of the fancy dishes at the resort. He figured it was probably a bad idea to spend so much gil on just a meal, but he’d earned it. Dino had only sold three or four items in the last couple of days, but that was better than the zero items he was averaging at the beginning of the week.
Dino wasn’t sure how to feel about Coctura when he first met her. She was nice, but that was the weird part. Being around all these demanding, rude people all day usually caused people to be the opposite of nice. Dino, well, he was the opposite of nice most days just because he could be, but it didn’t help that he was around such folk all the time now that he was in Galdin. And yet she was a literal sweetheart.
After that first meeting, whenever Dino was giving himself a break or there weren’t a lot of people in the resort that he hadn’t already tried to peddle to, he’d go and visit Coctura. He usually couldn’t afford to eat anything, but it was still nice to have someone to talk to, someone that he could call a friend. She eventually started giving him the plates that “didn’t turn out”. (Dino wasn’t sure what she meant by that—every dish she gave to him tasted marvelous).
So it became routine. Every day Dino would find time to visit Coctura and keep her company while the restaurant wasn’t busy, and she would give him a free meal, her pretty smile included at no extra cost.
Everything was going swimmingly until Dino ran out of materials. He’d been doing so well (after he’d reluctantly dropped his prices, at Coctura’s insistence) that he’d run out of all of his pre-made jewelry, and was having to make new pieces every other night or so to keep up with the demand. Now he had about three pieces left and no extra materials, and he needed more. He’d already been to all of the local spots he knew of to gather any gems and metals. He’d have to go back to Duscae to be able to find a enough to keep himself from having to harvest anything more for awhile.
Coctura frowned at him when he told her. “It’s going to be lonely around here without you,” she told him.
“I’m only gonna be gone a couple-a days.”
“And what if you get yourself into some trouble? You’ll be gone longer.”
“And miss out on your cookin’? Who d’ya think I am? I won’t be causing’ no trouble, I promise. I’ll be back in a couple-a days tops.”
When Dino came back, a sack of materials in tow, Coctura informed him that she’d started asking all the hunters that passed through to bring her any precious stones and materials they found along the way in exchange for a little bit of extra gil. She’d said it with a smile while she handed Dino a plate before he could even say hello.
“I missed you too,” he said instead.
My first piece for @npcweek’s #npcweekend
I saw the prompt and Dino’s name and spit this thing out in a half hour xD