text: [Themes: fantasy]
  
  You wake beside the cold ashes of the small fire only wearing your shirt, trousers and boots. Everything else, including all your coin, has been taken. You curse yourself for trusting the couple from the night before simply because one was a woman and try to take stock.
  
  You can't head North again, as in your current state you probably won't find another job for weeks and you can't even feed yourself so you're left with three choices: tightening your belt (well holding your trousers tight as your belt has been taken too) and heading to the city as fast as you can to hope for work/food there; hunting after the people that robbed you; or looking for the first trail off the road that might lead to a farm where you can ask for help or some work in exchange for food.
  
  > Quick March to the City
  You decide there isn't any other sensible option but to get to the city, and fast. You set off down the road at a fast walk and only stop to drink water from any streams or wells you see. You don't pass anyone else until a few days later you can see the city ahead in the far distance and collapse on the road exhausted.
  
  Luckily you fell near a well used field and the farmers load you onto their cart and take you the rest of the way into the city with a piece of bread to try to nibble on.
  
  Once inside the gates they leave you off and after you thank them profusely, they head back out to the fields. You use the last of your energy to get yourself through the now alien feeling streets to your old area of the city and are relived to find it almost completely unchanged. You go to an old way house you knew in the hopes that the same owner was still running the place.
  
  As you walk in the door a man behind a bar looks up and stares right at you for a full minute before saying "Well this is some triumphant return, look at the state of you!"
  
  You start to explain but the man cuts you off and sends you upstairs to a small room to clean and says to come down for some hot food when you no longer smell and look like a beaten up pile of crap.
  
  Once cleaned up and with a good meal inside you you tell your old friend the whole story and and he gives you two options. Work has been going well for him so he could give you a small room and meals and hire you for a low wage till you get back on your feet or you could up into the Iron district where the merchants and barracks have been hiring recently.
  
  > The Iron District
  You know that there is the option to join the guards as they are hiring at the moment, you'll get a basic wage but you have a bunk in the barracks and 3 good meals a day. Or you can approach the guild or large mining companies with your experience and hope for a starter job with one of them.
  
  > head for the barracks as the guard seems like the fastest way to get a roof overhead and food in your belly.
  You talk to the guard Standing outside the barracks, the home of the city guards and he directs you round to the recruiters. The Captain there looks you over once and asks your story. You explain in light detail that you had been working the mines for years but after being robbed had nothing left so you thought the guards would be a good way to get back on your feet. He thinks for less than ten seconds before passing you a quill to sign on the line telling you that many men had joined for worse reasons and that they needed more men on patrol.
  
  You sign up and after a few days initial training you're attached to a squad and send out for your first training duty. You have no weapons while in training but you are given city guard leather armor and helm and sent out for, as its summed up to you, "Stand behind the real guards in your armor and try not to look stupid for your first week". You manage this with flying colors (especially the not looking stupid part) then for your next training rotation your given a choice by your sergeant.
  
  You can join the training squad patrolling old town docks, the "walk up and down in armor and not look stupid" shift as he puts it (since you wont be armed for at least a month).
  
  Or the Iron district guard training squad, the "stand out of sight and don't interfere with the cites working people" shift.
  
  > The dock patrole, at least you get to walk up and down...
  Well, you were right, you did indeed get to walk up and down and it was passable exercise...
  
  Lets face it, its not what you wanted from your life, BUT after a couple more weeks you will become a full guard, proper wages and you get to have a better say in your shifts, not a bad job in all, just the training period to get through.
  
  The week goes as fast as the first one and the roof over head and hearty hot meals three times a day doesn't hurt matters at all. You actually take a liking to the patrol there as you get to stop and chat to the sailors and vendors along the dockside. The sailors there are self policing as a rule so you rarely have to step in to do anything dangerous.
  
  The weeks pass and as you become a fully fledged member of the guard you make the docks your regular patrol, its a lot longer of a walk from the barracks on the other side of the Iron district but you like the atmosphere and relaxed attitude of the work. The occasional sneak thief or pick pocket are the worst of the criminals on your watch and you get to know the locals on your rounds on a first name basis, you even have time and enough spare coin to stop in for drinks with your old friend on occasion after work and he seems happy about how you landed on your feet.
  
  Its really actually starting to look up for you as time passes, you have some small savings building up again, a good job that keeps you fit and your making friends with the other guards and the locals, who like having the guards around even if they aren't usually needed. You even foster some ideas about trying to stay in the guards and move up the ranks as you watch the two large barges from Carn approaching the docks. You think they are approaching a little fast but with all the minor disputes lately they are probably just trying to bluster and throw their weight around with the smaller fishing boats near the dock.
  
  Just as you think about their speed you see the barge furl sails and out oars to turn and think to yourself that you were right when you realize the other had gone full sail and had smoke rising from the deck. You rush to the dock edge with the other guards and a few sailors as you watch its accelerated approach. you all realize its going to ram the old wooden dock about the same time as you see a full scale fire burst out onto the deck. You quickly look for the other ship but it had reversed course and is making haste away from the docks.
  
  The sailors run for their ships and try to get them off the docks and you start forcing the crowd of gawkers away from the danger area but with the burning ship under full sail with the wind off the sea its only a few seconds more before it plows into the old docks and tears through them, crashing into two warehouses as it runs aground.
  
  You start to cry out a warning as you see the ship tilt to one side spilling burning barrels full of oils and tars. But they explode as they hit the ground taking all the barrels filling the ship with them in one huge fiery explosion. You don't even have time to turn away as the blast smashes you through buildings killing you instantly and starting a fire that would incinerate the whole of the Old District