The cobblestone lined pathway hadn't changed much from five minutes ago, still submerged in a sea of brown raggedy players mostly shuffling through the opening tutorial quest, but at a glance things were beginning to seem that bit ore interesting. Maybe it was because more people were forming parties, fiddling with the HUD mechanics and laughing at how absurd it would be if this was IRL, there were even a few PCs already walking around with portions of [i]actual[/i] clothing, catching many eyes in there general direction.

All of a sudden, as if to capitalize on his passive observation, a somewhat small girl stepped immediately out infront of him and extending her hand in a rather brash manner. She was obviously a PC, if her "uniform" of starting rags didn't make it obvious enough then her extravagantly twisted, snow-white hair would have hammered the point home, but...
"Wahh!, a small person appeared out of nowhere, by chance are you a guide fairy?" Bishop made a pleasant grin, he could figure she was probably trying to leach off of someone for quests, maybe she was at a loss for where to continue the starter quest. In an overly dramatic manner, Bishop took her hand with both of his own and replied "I see Lily, I Bishop, cannot ignore the cries of a lost maiden, come! we shall endeavor to finish this noble quest together!" and with that he continued off towards the blacksmith, half dragging the puzzled girl with him.

Not that they were far from the blacksmith anyway, in fact the girl's timing was somewhat suspicious, not in a particularly bad way though like she had scouted PCs already questing, which wasn't something he had figured out how to see, not yet anyway. Bishop addressed the same counter bound female NPC from before;
"Hello Madame, I have returned with the precious bag of nails you seems to have been lacking" "Ah! wonderful! Thank you so much for going out of your way for this village, it would be really troublesome for us to have done all the preparations ourselves this year!" She was almost as overly dramatic as Bishop, and she was AI controlled. "Ah, it was not an issue" he responded, "Now, if you could reward myself and the maiden he-" [b][i]From merchant to merchant - 1/3 complete[/i][/b], his HUD abruptly interrupted his fun. "Aw it's a chain" he said in a solemn manner, with indifference the NPC continued, "Oh, maybe you should return to the merchant who supplied you these nails, I'm just a lowly blacksmith assistant but they're far more traveled than I am, I'm sure he'd share some useful advice with you, especially now that you've done a favor for us."

"Thanks dear, maybe we should~" and with that he turned back to his recent party member, "It seems we'll need to partake in more walking Lilz, maybe the merchant knows how we can get some clothes!, shall we be off?" not intending to start physically dragging her around again.