Pepper: Combat References, Stories & Token

Pepper was born in a small town on the icy northern plains, where winters stretched on endlessly, and residents rarely ventured outside—so her childhood was spent almost entirely indoors. Her father had a habit of collecting books, and their home held countless old volumes recording legends, monsters, and ancient civilizations from around the world, with adventure stories leaving the deepest impression on her.

She would pin the place names mentioned in the books onto the wall, until eventually an entire wooden board was covered in pins; since every adventurer in those stories always carried a journal, she prepared one for herself too. But instead of grand adventures, hers only ever recorded her own stumbles, misidentified birds, and wrong turns—and since she was especially self-conscious about looking foolish in front of others, this journal was for her eyes only, its cover labeled "Book of Embarrassing Moments."

Before coming of age, rumors spread of a mysterious creature outside town, and she took it as a sign, stuffing the journal into her bag and setting off alone—only to wander into a Paolumu's territory, get driven back by its fury, and end up rescued by a passing adventurer. Back home, she apologized to her parents and promised never to go off alone again.

But that night, she quietly added one more line to her journal: Next time, I need someone to take me along!

That adventurer stayed in town for several days, and Pepper went to ask them every day about equipment setup and how to navigate the wilds. Afterward, she was taken along on a few nearby expeditions, gradually building up the most basic experience. She had long kept her spending money in an iron box, at first just for the comfort of knowing she could set off at any moment. Later, she heard that the Crimson Crest Adventurers were recruiting people willing to travel long-term—this Guild tracked anomalies at sea, aiming to chart unrecorded lands.

She poured out the iron box and counted it twice, confirming the amount was just enough. The night before she left, her pack lay spread open on the table: potions, dried rations, firestones, and that journal. She tightened the straps three times over, and just before heading out, she took a single pin off the board covered in place names and tucked it into her side pocket—as if carrying a small piece of that wall along with her.

In her early days with the Guild, Pepper made frequent mistakes as she struggled to adjust to the squad's pace: tying supply bags backward, slipping in the mud, mistaking a quiet forest for safe ground. She still cared about looking foolish, so she kept writing every mistake into her journal as before. Her writing style stayed in that same fairy-tale voice—a bird puffing its cheeks to warn its flock, seemingly gentle tracks leading to a large monster's resting spot—but what she added afterward changed: monster characteristics, the misjudgments she'd made at the time, and how to avoid them next time.

When the Guild's Felyne illustrator, Furencio, came across the journal, he offered to add illustrations, and the two of them spent several nights turning it into a fairy-tale-style handbook. After that, teammates often came to borrow it before setting out—easy for newcomers to read, and useful for veterans to review.

By the third copy, the Guild had taken to handing it to every newcomer who came aboard—Pepper herself ended up the most embarrassed about it of all.

After arriving at Aesoland, Pepper started a new journal, this time writing adventure stories, turning her experiences along the way into plotlines, with the protagonist named Peppa—she didn't want to use her real name in the story.

She had a habit of reading her newly written passages aloud to everyone at the Gathering Hub, and both the Rutaco and the Felynes listened intently, saying it was more interesting than any legend. When she read the pages about the Radiant Paolumu, the Rutaco looked up and asked, "So what happened to that adventurer named Peppa afterward?" Pepper froze, unable to answer. She flipped back through the pages to check—Peppa had always been recording from the sidelines, while the truly dangerous parts were always handled by other teammates first. Out of consideration for her, the Guild had never once let her face danger alone. It wasn't all that different from her days back home in the north, reading stories by the window.

At dawn the next day, she submitted the investigation request for the Radiant Paolumu to the quest counter, signing her name unusually large—more prominent, even, than Peppa's in her own story.