Jake. 3rd of November.
Jake and Travis maneuvered their characters through the corn maze, careful not to break a single plant. It was possible and actually easy to fight all of the Animated Scare Crows, but they were not aligned with Chaos and it did not give much experience per kill. More importantly though, so long as the plants were unbroken, those who found the center of the cornfield could get a good title.
Lightfoot. (Copper)
No matter your character’s other stats their feet are more silent. This is a detrimental title for the [Tap-Dancer] class and can be removed by stepping on 15 musical instruments in a row.
“Have you ever met someone with the [Tap-Dancer] class?” Jake asked as he looked over his title.
“No, but it is a specialist of the Singer type.”
“Well, I didn’t think it was a Patter!” Jake replied almost indignantly.
Travis laughed and then said, “Well that will probably help me more than it will help you, but being harder to notice can be helpful. Especially if we get a report of a dragon cave being found. You do not want to be the guy to wake up a dragon and start the fight before everyone is in position.”
“What are the dragons like in the other server-worlds? Are they usually bad or just most of the time?”
“I think the majority are neutral and really uninterested with Law or Chaos, but they are almost always in Chaos’ service if in battle, as they like pay by usefulness shares and [Lords of Chaos] or [Chaos Choir Masters] are not stupid. One dragon is about as strong as a whole village, and their strength is rarely about the strength of limb and sharpness of teeth.”
“Do you think there are dragons for us to fight?”
“Probably, it is the archetypical target of adventurers from back before when history really got written down. Got to crush those snake heads. But let’s theorize as we walk.”
“Did you watch the latest ‘scrying of Chaos’ videos?” Jake asked as they crept away from the confused Animated Scare Crows.
“No, too discouraging. It also makes me want to boycott anyone who supports them, but my medications comes from Brightwell Pharmacy Incorporated and I don’t really want to go to my doctor about this.”
“Yeah, that would be awkward to explain, I have stopped going after any product I see advertised here. Even if they are not openly siding with Chaos.”
“That would probably help with my sugar intake per day, but I have not yet done that. It is frustrating, but it does make me thankful they don’t let advertising into the older server-worlds.”
They cleared the edge of the maze and Jake spoke again, “Well thanks for that. Do you have any other places you are going to hit, or should I get back to guarding my road-building friends?”
“I am thinking we go past your friends and go try to clear a swamp near them. Might lower their danger and make the road go quicker. Also I want to try to level up Wetland Strider.”
Jake looked over his character’s titles and frowned.
Leg Biter, (Steel)
For taking off ten legs in a battle, you have earned 7% odds of taking off a leg with every hit of a melee weapon, assuming other thresholds are met. If the target has more than two legs, this stacks by 3% per extra leg.
Furious Reprisal, (Copper)
For dealing +50% damage within a second to every opponent that damaged you in one fight. (Minimum of ten enemies present required). Future reprisal hits, if generated within a second, will do +20% damage to the target.
Kill-Streak, (One-Handed Swords) (Copper)
For defeating ten enemies with one hit each in a row, in future attacks, you get an effective +5% speed increase.
Lightfoot. (Copper)
No matter your character’s other stats their feet are more silent. This is a detrimental title for the [Tap-Dancer] class and can be removed by stepping on 15 musical instruments in a row.
Become Like Mountain (Iron)
For taking 150% your base health in damage while not moving in a single combat, you may now deal +1 earth aligned damage while standing still on earth or stone.
Joint Titles.
Avalanche (Copper)
For having a character with a melee based movement title and a ‘mountain’ title, you now are an Avalanche. When attacking from above, you do +2 damage.
They found the road and rapidly passed along it for a number of minutes before coming to the road head and passing the busy little pack of workers. There they exchanged greetings and then headed off towards a swamp.
Reaching it seemed to have a different mood. The grass was long and scraggily, the sky unclear due to the thickness of the mists and the pond, where visible, bubbled ominously. A houseboat in disrepair waited in the middle of the pond, dark stains coating the walls, while much of the woodwork was clearly the unwilling recipient of axe blows.
“We should just hire them to drain it,” Titus said as he gestured back the way they had come, before saying, “But I am not the head of an order of knights backed by the local king here, so I can’t just casually do that… Fine, we go wading.”
Jake smiled at the statement, but didn’t say anything. He was just glad he didn’t need to be wading in the ugly water.
They quickly moved along, walking sticks testing the water ahead of them, driving off the natural snakes that lived in the pond and avoiding three separate sinkholes of indeterminate depth. Given their arms and armor those could have been as dangerous as the snakes. They reached the almost island that they were aiming for and the ugly tree.
Jake looked it over and commented, “Well you are right, this is a Chaotic tree. The tree is growing out of some bones.”
“Probably supposed to be one of the giant’s gardens back in the day. Having read a bit in the lore while waiting for another team of mine, apparently those giants are supposed to be the descendants of the ones that were driven off Bashan-Al-Hispania, the 11th server-world. I still have a character, a [Cavalier] who fought in that war. Haven’t checked on him in a while.”
“Is this the company’s way of saying you should have killed more of them?”
“Not really. Only three of the giants got away and they had to clone themselves with dark magic to even briefly have a population big enough to conquer this server-world. It is…” Titus abruptly cut off as a blade sang out of the water and from the water and then screamed as it halted mid-air some inches from the evil tree.
From the water stood a figure. Water sluiced off its archaic armor and its head was briefly concealed by the tree, before Jake angled his character to see its face. The helmet was opened and let him see the overgrown features of the undead giant as its eyes opened and revealed them to be a discordant mix of glowing green and a dead red.
It sank down and began trying to grab something while the name appeared above it, “Gath the Gardener.”
“What does it mean that the name is bolded?” Jake asked as he stepped behind the evil tree.
Titus started to answer, but then had dodge as the monstrous undead flung a boulder at him. It missed and tore a massive strip of grass out of the ground and shattered trees before moving outside of the area rendered.
Titus dodged behind the island and crouched in the water as the giant raised another stone and hurled it. It smashed through the hill top and then made a wave big enough to crash into both of them. Jake was just getting ready to wait it out, when he noticed that the tree’s branches were moving rapidly back and forth, but always nearer towards him.
“Probably that he is at least 19th level and that he definitely has minions somewhere,” Titus said before adding, “And we should run!”
They half ran, half swam out of the pond and raced ahead of the undead giant as it led forth its hordes. These were mixed between woodland creatures, that were obviously corrupted by dark things, emaciated from hunger and out and out undead skeletons dressed in an older style. The giant then pulled the evil tree up by the roots and planted it in his back before he began lumbering after them, unintelligible bellows summoning forth further hordes.
“Looks like we have set off a town level threat,” Titus said before more contemplatively adding, “I usually am the person coming to deal with these situations.”
“Who can we ask for help? John is online, but are any of your other friends?”
“Yeah, Bubba will want to help and I think I know a few other First Worlders who are online. We need to get the road builders back to safety though.”
This agreed on, they ran over to Keneth and explained the situation to him. He was not exactly pleased with his work being delayed, but given the darkening skies and the obvious scout squirrels that were surging around their position, it seemed expedient to retreat.
Given that it was a Blessed Road, the forces of Chaos could not use it for a speed advantage and the workers and the pair of troublemakers were able to quickly retreat to a predesignated battle area. Reinforcements from the three nearest towns flooded over; a mix of summoned town guards and players who were between quests and training.
Stolen novel; please report.
Among them Jake saw a disgusting sight. At first he thought it was a Chaotic scout that had joined them early, before he recognized the truth. The figure was a corporate streamer. Jake couldn’t remember what his channel was called, but his character in this server-world was distinctive. He was a monster, supposedly in lore he had conquered his ancestral chaotic heritage to come over to the side of Law, but that was just what the company that hired the streamer wanted to be the background. The character was half Centaur and half Gengees, which meant he had 4 horse legs and 6 humanoid arms, making ten limbs in total. This allowed him to run as fast as a song empowered horse, use multiple weapons and just generally show off, all the while he was supposedly ‘fighting up’ two or three levels. As though the fact that he could essentially play as three fighters at once shouldn’t effect his xp scoring and level requirements. And there he was, prancing about in the front ranks.
“So what is the situation?” John asked as he looked over the open area and the slowly appearing hordes of controlled animals and undead.
Jake forced his attention away from the streamer’s character and said, “I guess we started it. There is an undead giant who has summoned an army of… mostly skeletons, but also evil squirrels. He has a big evil tree planted in his back. You shouldn’t be able to miss it.”
“Ok. You seem distracted.”
“The half pony, half crab is distracting.”
“Yeah. I wonder if he has [Leg-Biter].”
Jake laughed at that and then said, “He could probably earn that from chopping his own extras off.”
“So unfair,” John said with a mocking whine, “He can probably train that skill by fumbling his sword.”
“I’m back, what have I missed,” Titus said suddenly.
“Jake filled me in. I am thinking we just form line here and try to weather the tide. Then a few of our elites push and take out the undead druid giant, or whatever he is.”
“If I had a mount… well if I was on any of the other worlds I play on, I would be leading a cavalry charge to hunt it out and end the main threat, but alas, no lance.”
“HOLD the LINE! I will DEFEAT THE CHAOS’ CHAMPION!” Boomed out the voice of the streamer.
Then before the army, the self-determined champion of the armies of Law rushed forward. Jake felt no good feelings for the fellow and watched with rising feelings of envy. He wanted to rush out, but he also knew his equipment was inappropriate to a charge. The half centaur zigzagged within feet of the silent undead horde and began shooting one after another out of the charging force. When one of them got in his way, he rode them down and crushed them beneath heavy hooves.
The force continued to come closer, while being harried by the self proclaimed champion. Archers called out, both town guards and player characters, demanding he move out of the way, but the streamer blocked much of the front and danced through the enemy, he put down one of his three bows and drew a massive glaive and began hewing through formations, the weight of his charge simply destroying thing after horrible abomination of a thing.
Then, out of a declivity in the ground, an evil tree appeared. The angry and undead head of the giant and then the whole thing was visible. It paused on the edge of the defile and roared a mighty sound, half way between a lion’s roar and a tree falling in a forest.
The streamer called out a challenge, but it was drowned in a concerted shout from the undead, which turned into a wavering, screech.
“They are singing a chaotic song,” John said as he drew his hatchet.
“You call that singing?” Jake asked before saying, “What does it mean?”
“The priest told me about it. Chaotic singing doesn’t have to sound like anything, but it does require energy. Those undead are getting weaker. Basically they are exchanging hit points for magic power. Anyway, they don’t know what it will do, just that it will honor their dark gods and do something.”
Waves of fire tore out of the skeletons, burning arms, ribs and legs into ashes as the very air crackled into different colors, oozed black sludge or cracked like a mirror near the louder singers.
“We need a choir to help with this,” Titus said as he observed the fire tearing through town guards and player-characters alike.
“Well their health is not infinite.”
“Unless they summon more health up,” John pointed out, before he said, “Look at our streamer friend!”
The half-centaur had been covered in lava and his limbs were all scorched, his bows snapping with the heat and armor dripping off of him.
In a few moments the fiery waves ended and the hordes surged forwards again. The half-centaur, fought fiercely with five weapons, one arm already destroyed, but his blades broke and he was overwhelmed.
“Hold the line!” Titus called with a group chat ability and stepped between John and Jake as the skeletons and corrupted fauna surged forward.
“Titus, you don’t have a shield, or armor.”
“Curse the silly impulse that made me try something different, I am not meant to be in the rear lines!” Travis called as he maneuvered his player-character back.
The line shuffled again. A few soloists began different dirges or chants and the bedlam of sound became near intolerable with the next low grumbling chant of the legion of chaos, echoed over the field.
There was a loud crash as a deer with three antlers hit into two Fighters standing beside them. A Patter started trying to leech the Chaotic energies out of it, but it bit his face and he collapsed. Jake looked away wondering if being six months older would really help him deal with that mental trauma that much better. It had been graphic.
He looked back in front of him in time to block and avoid getting run through by a skeleton with a spear. His sword flashed out and he took the skeleton’s arm. He stepped forward and crushed its foot with a heavy stomp, blocking the next strike with practiced efficiency. John was beside him breaking arms, shoulders and heads with his axe, while Travis darted through gaps and with each blow struck down a smaller creature. The line held and then began to push forward. Jake struggled to keep up, but Travis supported him and with heavy, iron guarded, stomping feet Jake crushed any that could not hold position. He took hits through his armor, but an unknown Patter restored some hit points and kept him on his feet. Other Patters followed and cleansed large amounts of chaotic energies before the broken undead could reassemble.
A minotaur-snake hybrid charged forward in a wriggling way, dashing hard against Jake’s shield. It broke along with his stance. Travis stabbed it eight times and then was flung a huge distance away as the hybrid sharply twisted its horns. John stepped forward and brought down his hatchet opening the monster’s head. It screamed, overwhelming the Lawful soloists nearby and Jake had to turn off his in-game volume again. But it finally died.
The undead giant came forward at the run, a second tree raised as a massive club. A [Paladin] stepped forward and caught the blow on his sword a burst a light searing the whole field as a fiery shield weakened the blow and folded. The giant screamed, but a [Holy Skirmisher] ended the audio assault by hurling a glowing javelin into its throat.
The giant pulled it out and leveled an angry eye towards the [Holy Skirmisher]. The [Paladin] tried to protect it, but was broken by the large club’s momentum.
Jake was forced to focus at the fight nearer to him as a six-winged toad came after him. He cut three wings off at once and wondered if his title would be improved. He crushed the mixed monster beneath a heavy boot and then stepped back as an ant-eater duck hybrid struck out and made a bite for his foot. He failed a parry and took the duck beak on his face. That was a critical and he nearly went down. He had to completely cover his face for the next half minute as the duck hybrid kept accurately sniping at his face, or lashing at his arms with the unusually long tongue. Titus then passed him, easily parried the three beak strikes the duck made, severed the tongue and both wings and then ended it with the knife in his other hand.
“For some reason it counts a dagger in each hand as a single attack, if they both hit. I am not sure why, but it sure does help at improving this title.”
“That does help,” Jake said he looked over the battlefield while he moved to help.
John’s hatchet broke and he switched it for another. A skeleton tore at his shield before John retaliated and tore it apart. His new hatchet left the pieces of bone sizzling with acidic spray. Jake was forced back to his fight as a deer-porcupine hybrid attacked him with multiple points.
His shield was soon covered in spikes and some had even pushed through, but his sword had passed the quills and the deer was no longer moving.
A wall of sound burst out as a soloist unleashed a song. Jake had no idea what they were trying to do, until ethereal golden bands flashed forward and restrained the feet and arms of the giant. They quickly broke but a second wave of chains tried again. These too were shattered without much struggle, while more new chains tried to bind the giant again.
A Patter suddenly slipped by and dodged his way through the horde of skeletons that were supposed to be guarding the giant. Cleansing power surged in his open palm and then he patted the exposed toe of the enemy leader. The power burned through and the giant’s musculature visibly weakened. The evil tree in its back took advantage of this and it began to absorb energy at a more rapid clip, ripping percentages off the health bar at a visible rate. The giant staggered and then fell to a knee.
John stepped forward and climbed the giants back. He reached the tree and began hacking at the trunk. With each blow the damage done regenerated and the giant lost hit points. The giant’s problems grew as Titus managed to maneuver between its legs and begin hunting for weak points. Jake and a number of figures with spears and halberds attacked to keep the pressure up and keep the giant from drawing the massive black sword at his side or lifting the shattered tree bough again.
“Go for his leg!” John shouted.
Jake stepped forward, only to get kicked back and lose two thirds of his health.
“Ouch,” he muttered.
“I would go for an eye, but I don’t want to break my kill streak,” Titus said as he shredded another corrupted squirrel.
John’s hatchet bit deep into the evil tree in the giant’s back and the health points drastically dropped again. The giant struggled to its feet and drew the black blade. Red letters lit along the edge and it sang a song, with words for death, pain and defeat rasping out along with a chorus of weeds, rot and mildew. The giant raised the sword with one hand, while singing a dirge. The grass rose and changed colors and began biting the players, while bugs exploded and already corrupted creatures surged forward into wild attacks. Half of the players around Jake fell before the giant’s sword descended.
Two specialist defenders were utterly overmatched by the blow and cleanly cut in half. Their shields and personal armor proved insignificant before the corrupted bronze. The letters bled from red to black and then a bolt of corrupting lightning swept into fallen bodies and raised them.
A new line formed to fight and town guards moved forward to try and stabilize the front, while many of the players started retreating. Jake saw that the battle was in doubt and decided to risk it all. He had lost his sword and and didn’t see time to find another, but did see a heavy axe. He did not have very many bonuses for that, but he didn’t think he needed them. It took a few clicks, but he gathered up the axe and headed towards the giant. A former player-character, black blood dribbling from a dozen wounds, lurched towards him, but with a single slash he ended it. Then he faced the giant.
He waited a moment and it was almost a moment too long. The giant took a stance like a farmer cutting the grass and then made a wide swing, his sword’s song singing of doom, chaff and grapes rotten on the vine. The instant before it hit, Titus was in the way, using a complicated parry. It failed to stop the blow and the character died beneath the attack, but Travis had given Jake a chance.
Jake stepped forward as the blade finished passing over his character’s head and made an attack for the giant’s right leg. It hit and [Leg-Biter] improved. The giant was already off-balance because of the massive swing it had just performed and this was too much. In the next instance, the giant had fallen over and rolled onto its back crushing much of the tree through its own ribcage.
Jake thought that was the end of the fight for a moment, but then the evil tree pushed up and out and the torn and ruined giant’s body began to disappear. Humming and woodwinds poured forth and the bursts of chaotic lightning, thunder and smoke spread out. Words of decay and praise to dark gods merged with the attacks and Jake saw his character was rapidly weakening from the magical assault.
Other characters retreated as the tree grew more and more powerful, but John maneuvered his character back into place.
“How are you managing?” Travis asked.
“I think my class is protecting me from most of the damage. This is both a standard and champion of chaos, somehow. I think because the giant was kind of carrying it?” John said absently as he rapidly, but steadily pushed buttons.
His character’s hatchet methodically cut limbs off of the tree. Each hit clipped two or three off and with each hit more and more of the giant’s corpse was devoured by the tree. Its lightning could do nothing to John’s character and while his shield was damaged, his classes buffs allowed him to take hits from the trees limbs until the whole skeleton was eaten and the tree was almost as bare of foliage as a telephone pole.
A broccoli eater tried to steal the glory by running in and breaking the tree, but the lightning that had had no effect on John’s character because of his class, crashed into the new target over and over again until the character began to literally melt, despite his insane damage resistances.
John then broke his hatchet hitting the trunk. He drew his spare and began cutting, until the tree’s rotten innards were revealed and it barely stood. Thunder rumbled up from the corpse devouring tree’s interior, but when a light wind swept the field, the tree fell without a final attack.
Jake leaned back into his chair and looked over his titles. They were nice, but he was mostly glad they had not had to fight this in his town.
Breakdown on the new Cinematic CHAOS Scene in “Universe of Heroes by Decree,” published on a obscure blog. (Published on the 9th of November)
This is probably the last one of these I am going to review. They are impressive, almost too much. There are just too many references for me to effectively track. Other social media platforms are also full of people figuring things out and my blog’s real role is studying game mechanics, not literary references.
Still, it is a big deal that the neutral eight-legged horses from server-world 9 are going to be mounts for the dark elf contingent under the [Gaunt Lord of the Hunt]. Those horses are basically the equivalent in power to low tier dragons demigods. According to the videos of players who have fought the wild versions, they are no joke and given that the whole herd was singing the 13th Chaotic Hymn of Doom, I think they are even scarier on this server world.
As far as company/advertisement watching, the singer Mo has commissioned a goblin look-alike to sing his hit song “200 Love Glow Pops,” which is not improved by the change of instruments Three new jewelry companies have added their rings and chokers to the incredibly long list of places you have been advertised by in this game where you could buy engagement rings if you wanted them, which is insane when seen on a corrupted pegasus’ tail or a tattoo companies logo painted across a legion of blood-drenched degraded cave dwellers.
The most unsettling was the WQRS Seminary advertisement, with a priest in vestments leading a dark chant by a dozen goblins mounted on the backs of mutated hyenas. Given their Exalted Guru’s recent statements about ‘radical acceptance’, this is on brand, but I am still at a loss for why anyone would want to be associated with Chaos. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
Also there was a scene of chaotic bears eating an ordinary lion, that is going to give me nightmares. Like real nightmares. I visited the zoo as a child and saw them feed lions and like, I don’t know if spirit animals are real or not, but I am pretty sure the lion is mine. Really it was too realistic. Really, if we did not have laws against kids playing, I would use that scene as the primary reason for kids not to have unrestricted access to computer games. It was wild.
Final note, the thread about the ‘danger of Chaotic altars’ is probably going to be an issue. According to the lore, those who successfully sacrifice 10 lawful or 100 neutral creatures at one of these altars can be made a [Champion of Chaos] or some variant of it. On most worlds that is worth at least ten to fifteen base stats and other than the direct blessing by a [High Priest] or [Righteous King], it is the highest amount of experience that a character can gain for one action.