"Hob, then," Jojo says, smiling tentatively. "...I'd offer you the same except that my name doesn't shorten to anything that still feels like my name."

"Understandable. Most names do not admit of shortening quite so enthusiastically, between us Roberts and the Margarets and the Williams we're rather hoarding more than our share." Oh No He's So Small, Help. "And with that-- Lady Aribeth, is there anything else I can do for you before I re-arm," hopefully the enchantment voucher situation has been sorted while he was dead mildly stabbed, "and we go snake hunting?" He taps the glasses Fenthick delivered. 

"Hm. If you want some magic that isn't a weapon or armor or spectacles, you can talk to the quartermaster, he's got a side shop and we gave you enough gold to get a cloak of resistance or a ring of protection. Other than that, I think what you can do for me is hunt the snake at your earliest convenience."

Ooh, he would definitely like to go see the quartermaster and peer interestedly through the glasses at what other magic items do individually. Aribeth is also extremely magic but in the way where he really needs to ever have heard a single flute before he has a hope of identifying anything in a symphony. And... yeah, he'll try to make conversation about his home planet when they aren't obviously in a horrible time crunch. "Will do, cheers." 

To the magic shop! 

The quartermaster has such a collection of magical accessories! Rings and amulets and belts and boots and cloaks and headbands and gloves and –

lots of stuff. He's willing to explain anything. Most of the stuff is abjuration-blue, some of it transmutation-orange, a few pieces other colors. If he asks for items within his price range, he's presented with the expected ring of protection ("fouls a blade like a padded jerkin, but over your whole body") and cloak of resistance ("strengthens your will and your reflexes and your guts, just a bit"), plus a pair of slightly high-heeled leather boots with velvet soles, a phylactery with room for a scriptural verse inside, and a robe made, for some reason, out of an enormous length of twine.

Well that sure is... a set of things. 

Phylactery of psychically warning you if you're about to do heresy?? Probably incredibly useful, to be honest, but also terrifying, let's never think about it again.

"You know, I would be enormously tempted by the robe did I have any intention of going near any ships," he says instead, which is also true. "You would be amazed how frequently sailors will look at you like God's own gift from the sky if you happen to have a spare coil of twine in your pocket. But the sensible choice here is probably the ring of being stabbed less, all things considered?" He's looking at Jojo, who knows any things about magic items. 

"A ring of protection rarely goes amiss," Jojo agrees. "I have one myself, since I can't wear armor per se."

Nod nod. He'll pay the quartermaster for a ring out of the gold Aribeth gave him, then, and on their way they shall go. "Can't like it's too heavy," he wonders curiously, already halfway to an ambition to getting Jojo a modern bulletproof vest, "or can't like it's a religious prohibition, or can't like your magic is electromagnetic? ... erm, that last one means in this context, has problems with metal specifically."

"More that it's too rigid than too heavy; my training has developed my awareness of my body and perfect control of how it moves, and if I'm restricted at all, I lose a lot of the benefit. That's why my robes have to be so loose, or else skin-tight and... minimal." His ears go slightly pinker. "Which is a choice some monks make."

Do not ask the mouse boy why his species has a modesty instinct when they have fur even though that is anthropologically fascinating. Or... μυς-opologically? It's been a solid two centuries since he was socially expected to have studied Greek. Anyway the point is that would be rude.

"Ah, that makes sense. ... if you get a chance to visit my planet I am going to be very interested in your professional opinion on the combat viability, in this martial art tradition, of kevlar." By which he means he's going to get Jojo a shitton of it and then watch gleefully as he becomes a tiny terrifying force of -- damn he really is feeling so much kinship for Batman right now. That dude is so valid actually. 

"Is it some kind of... toughened cloth?"

"Yes and no! It's an exceptionally tough cloth but it doesn't get that way by doing something to an existing cloth, it gets that way by being made of synthetic-- that's to say, a kind of fiber that does not occur in nature but a brilliant chemist figured out how to make it anyway because she's amazing." Hob loves materials scientists. "I gotta remember to tell Eltoora about that one, she was so interested in my jacket." 

"Huh!"

Their compass vibrates as they cross Gulnan's trail, which apparently goes southeast, into the Beggar's Nest.

Well, in the greater sense that's not great, because anyone she's hurt in the process of going to ground is likely to have been especially unable to defend themselves or get the police to pay attention to them. But on the other hand-- "Fenthick mentioned one of the common uses for illusion magic is cosmetics but that costs money, right?" 

So anybody wearing a lot of it is relatively unlikely to normally live here. 

"It does," Jojo confirms. "I'd be surprised to see much in the way of vanity illusions outside the Blacklake district, honestly, but the Beggar's Nest especially shouldn't."

Nod nod. Time to learn about how the lower classes live in this lovely city with its lovely wealthy city center full of trees and wizards and bars where the beers are healing potions. 

Presumably worse, but by how much? 

He's likely seen better and worse. It's cramped and dirty and a fire hazard, like every ghetto; it's got some plant life, some animals besides rats, battered but clean water pumps on the corners.

The Wailing Death has been no kinder here than in the rest of the city. Corpse pyres crowd the streets, spitting meaty smoke. Beggars sport weeping lesions and cough horribly. The air stinks not just of death but despair. 

Jojo shivers.

He haaaates plagues. 

It doesn't seem strikingly low on the terribleness range of its approximate technological era accounting for the plague, at least, which is auspicious if he finds that proximity to the religious leadership results in having to talk to this Lord Nasher. 

Supportive shoulderpat. "We're going to fix it, hopefully." 

Follow follow the magic compass. Keep an eye out for signs of magic. (...is Jojo detectably magical?) 

Jojo has some magic items on him, but they're as dim as Hob's. A blue shimmer on his finger, a red flicker around his gloves, an orange glow on his robe.

Around them, there's not much magic at all... except, that pyre over there? The one that never got lit? There's a blaze of green, suddenly, originating in its center, and then the dead begin to twitch.

ah. hm. it is probably not supposed to do that. 

"Zombies incoming, I think." 

Jojo settles into fighting stance and looks around, noticing the twitching dead after a few seconds. "Thanks for the heads-up."

He heads over and axe-kicks one of them face-first into the curb while they're too busy getting up to fight back.

"Gladly! Love the new glasses very much." 

In the Academy, Hob had fought with a sort of frazzled, alarmed backfootedness, reactive and anxious and frantically compensating for being wildly underequipped and trying to wield an unfamiliar weapon in even less familiar circumstances. Which still isn't nothing, because he's not far from the peak level of combat ability Earth humans are capable of having without magic, but it wasn't great.

Now, though-- now he feels rather more resilient and alive than he maybe ever has in his life, and he's not far shy of being as hard to damage as a knight in full plate, and he moves with the smooth unhurried confidence of a man whose proprioception extends through the steel toes of his boots and the hanging tails of his favorite jacket and all the way out to the very pointy spear-end of his gloriously ugly new spiked polearm. 

In the spirit of not being insultingly overprotective he will preferentially stab things which are not in Jojo's immediate reach, but he's also... definitely not staying out of zombie punching range as much as he could be with a reach weapon if that were his top priority instead of, like, maybe third, behind flanking and damage output. 

Oh, that's fine, Jojo isn't either. He's bobbing and weaving and striking like a wasp, because for all that the zombies' slamming fists can dent metal, they're pathetically slow, and Jojo is so fast.

Between the two of them, the zombies don't last long.

Excellent. 

Does the corpse pile from whence they came show any signs of being ongoingly magical?

Nope! Just a regular pile of (now-mutilated) corpses.

"It isn't unheard of for the dead to rise on their own if the bodies aren't treated respectfully," Jojo says. "But not all at once like that. I think this was enemy action."