Jake March 3rd.
“Glad to have you back,” Travis said as he had his character shake hands with Jake’s new character.
“I guess I couldn’t stay away forever.”
“What they did is hardly my idea of fair. Especially, just giving into a streamer’s demands for you to be banned,” Travis said in a hard voice.
“That probably wasn’t what did it. I got a lot of hate from his followers. One of them probably figured out that I wasn’t old enough to have an account yet, so I am guessing they just reported me for being underage. Anyway, yesterday was my birthday and I thought I would sign on today. So I did.”
“What are you going for this time?”
“Legs,” Jake said and then paused until the silence became oppressive and explained, “I want to get the leg-biter title again and just try to get it up to gold. The way I see it, mobility denial is good.”
“Ok, that is less weird when explained. You going with the same load-out?”
“I think I will go for full plate armor, once I can afford it, and just go for a two-handed sword. I have been practicing with a historical sword-fighting group and it has given me some ideas. I mean a shield and sword is safer, at least in real life, but two-handed swords are cool.”
“Any idea how you will get your leg-biter title?”
Jake nodded and then said, “Where we got it the first time. Assuming it is still there?”
“Last I knew. You want company?”
“No thanks, I think I can solo it from memory. Once I get a specialization again I’ll plan to join up with you.”
“If that is the way you want to do it. I respect the lone quest mindset.”
“Oh, well, it is not that exactly. I am just listening to my homework and I can’t really talk and do that at the same time.”
Travis laughed and then saluted with his character before leaving.
Article published on the Manfred Town Times on March 8th 2104.
Recently, a student from the local Manfred Town High School distinguished himself by rescuing a little old lady from two robbers. The robbers were taken into police custody, before being sent to the local Manfred Memorial Hospital. As of this morning they have not been returned to police supervision.
According to witnesses, a Mrs. Winslow, widow, long time community organizer, retired teacher of primarily the local third grade for the last sixty years and a well known choir member in the local church, was assaulted while walking to her grandson’s house. The two robbers pushed her over and kicked her an unconfirmed number of times, before the student intervened with his baseball bat.
The police chief reports that the student was determined to stop the robbers, ‘so that they couldn’t get away with this,’ citing the recent rash of violent actions most likely taken by these same robbers. So he took his crow’s ball bat to their knees, ankles and shins.
The student is reported to be in good condition and due to editorial policy we will not be giving his name, but we are pleased to report his act of heroism and that despite the assault suffered by Mrs. Winslow, she is expected to make a full recovery.
Jake, March 10th 2104.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No thanks,” Jake said lightly and then added, “I would prefer to just not think about it and focus on playing the game.”
John paused for a few moments and then he said, “Ok, that makes sense. I don’t want to be rude, but are you going to be ok playing this game? There is a lot of leg-breaking and stuff in this, will that like… cause problems?”
“No. I had not even thought of that comparison.”
“Seriously? That is the first thing I thought of when I heard about… the incident.”
Jake sighed and said, “Let’s just play.”
John nodded and then added, “Where do you want to meet up in game, I haven’t been on much since you got banned?”
“The Gray Heath? I want to see if I can earn a title from taking on large numbers of undead at once, and those are comparatively low stats, high numbers, which should give me some time to get into my form.”
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“Seems reasonable for me. Mind if I switch to my secondary character? This one is not going to get anything from fighting hordes.”
“Yeah that’s fine.”
John took about two minutes to switch to his Patter. It was a generalized anti-Chaos, martial artist, self-healer combination. Inferior at all of those paths individually, but it allowed for a much safer solo adventuring play style.
They followed the numerous and well-blessed roads and surged up through three whole provinces before arriving in the Gray Heath. According to information given online, it was the site of the final battle of an ancient human kingdom that had been overwhelmed by the giants. The bodies had been animated by a burning hatred against anyone from one of the kingdoms or groups that had not helped them back in their hour of need. It was widely speculated that if the heath could be entirely cleared, there was a valuable resource buried under the battlefield. Hints as to a ‘Greater Artifact’ had lured in thousands upon thousands of adventurers and they had been grinding against the hordes for a while.
The issue was that even if there were thousands of players, this had been an army for a whole nation. Worse, their elites grew in power with each player-character’s life force that they devoured. So while things generally favored the respawning players, the attrition rate was not absolutely in their favor.
As they neared the battlefield they spotted a ragged line of Fighters and a few Singers desperately trying to hold back another wave of simple skeletons. Given that these were from the outer segment of the old army they were untrained, unliked peasants. None of their clothes, arms or armor had survived the intervening centuries and the skeletons attacked with stabbing finger bones. Individually, they were not that frightening, but as there were at least a thousand still on their feet surrounding the force of fifty-ish layer-characters and numbers were telling.
“I wish we had Travis and a few of his new [Paladin] friends. They could ride through that mob entirely,” Jake said as he tried to get a feel for the battle. He was not blind to the possibility that discretion might be the better part of valor.
They received a chat directing them to a proximity channel. When they joined this they heard a stiff voice order, “3rd Choir, now is your time to shine!”
In front of them stood a man with a halberd disdainfully balanced over his shoulder as he led the choir. The ten Singers sang a deep and rumbling song through their characters and guided the fighters through voice chat.
“Any idea what they are singing?” Jake asked as he began attacking a group of slow to catch on skeletons.
John’s character moved behind Jake’s character, hitting each of the defeated or knocked over skeletons with a wave of cleansing energy that kept them from standing up or being reanimated by a higher level undead. Eventually, the skeletons turned and faced them and they started having pressure.
“Maybe it is to slow undead reactions?” John said before explaining, “These guys are moving pretty slowly.”
“Yeah. Not the most lively undead we have run into.”
“If that is a hint you are thinking about making undead puns, you can stop right now,” John said as he got the equivalent of a critical and burned an entire skeleton to ashes with an ordinary attack.
“Alright that was pretty cool,” Jake complimented as he shortened his sword into a close fighting mode and began doing strikes with the hand-guard and pommel, breaking targets and crushing bones rather than severing.
“I should have just brought a mace,” John muttered as he took another raking of chipped bone fingers across his face.
“I am somewhat embarrassed not to have thought of that either. Do we need to fall back?”
John considered a few moments, cycling his character through a number of stances that focused on resting the palm on an opponent rather than striking. Even if the skeleton thus afflicted did not fall, they did freeze up for five to ten seconds and where they had been touched was cleansed and crumbled away. He then had his character shake his head.
“Was that on purpose?”
“Yes! Non-verbal communication can be done this way.”
“How was I supposed to know if that was your fighting style or not.”
John went silent for a moment before responding , “Now I feel stupid. I should be playing this guy like a Karate expert.. Or whatever it is. I should play up the martial artist definitely. I wonder if my feet could…”
Jake cut him off with an exasperated, “We are falling back!”
“Oh. Yeah, let’s do that.”
The pair fought forced their way towards the nearest edge. Just as they were reaching the edge of the horde, the song reached a thundering height and a wave of purifying light surged across the field. Bones were stripped of chaotic protections and subjected to time as it should have passed in a moment. Dozens of skeletons simply melted out of existence, while the piles of those that marked the fighting were likewise claimed by the cleansing light. Injuries on the Lawful forces healed and every weapon was wreathed in blazing light.
“No more retreating!” John called out.
“That took out like a third of them!” Jake replied with equal excitement and they turned back and pushed through the mob.
The choir now repeated the refrain for a final, slower version, as the skeletons that were damaged disappeared. When it ended, things began to return to the norm, but with the skeleton’s front ranks thus broken, morale was lifted and they went back to fighting. The cleansing flame remained a fixture on the weapons of the fighters and every blow that connected seemed to guarantee a downed skeleton.
Ten minutes later the same effect swept the field, but to an even greater degree, destroying and cleansing almost all of the remaining low ranked skeletons. As it finished the two wandered back into proximity voice chat to say hi. After exchanging in game contact information for future battles and greetings with a few of the choir and their well-armored guards they talked a bit more.
“So Celsius, your choir was really impressive, I haven’t ever seen any-group that well coordinated.”
Celsius’ pleasure at the compliment was obvious, though his response was an attempt at humility, “We are a good bunch. The name 3rd Choir does not imply that we are not first rate!”
“How are you able to get so many Fighters to work with you. From the forums I had the idea that it was really hard to get a large scale cooperation like this done,” John asked.
“Oh, most of us here are from the Sons of Jake guild.”
John snorted and asked, “What is that?”
“You guys remember the big fight with the steamer guy who uses a weird six legged, six armed thing, back in January?”
Jake muted himself, while John gave the affirmative.
“Well some guy named Bubba, from the First Worlders group started organizing the people who sided with Jake. We don’t know why Jake got banned, but Bubba thought it was a corporation thing, so… a lot of us just hate the advertisements. So we are a guild dedicated against chaos, companies and streamers.”
“A noble creed,” John said with a smile.
They talked for a little while longer, before the formation leader informed the guilders to prepared for the next fight. The Fighters and Singers confirmed that they were back to full hit points, stamina and that they had the necessary supplies for a long fight. Three more Singers and a group of Fighters came over, while a few others made their good buys before signing out. Non-guilders followed the same pattern as various friends were told or more general requests made on social media platforms.
“Why are we fighting over the Gray Heath?” John asked Celsius as the scouts began racing about and trying to rouse hordes of the undead and lure them towards the battle line.
“All of the theory says that while the main forces of Chaos will come from the Northern side of the map, the spots that are associated with the older chaotic rulers and battle sites will be more unstable and even open to incursion type events. We have a forum where someone has compiled a list of 300 such known sites and it is our goal to clear them all out before May 1st.”
“How it is going?”
“This is the first and we are like… five days behind schedule,” Celsius gave a frustrated sigh before having his character begin flourishing his halberd, “We thought the records of a whole nation’s army destroyed and left undead were exaggerations. They are very painfully not exaggerations.”
“Well, I don’t think my friend or I can join your guild, but for tonight at least you have our swords… or his sword and my fists.”