Chapter 2.
1st of Pompluy 2103
Jake Armstrong leaned back against his seat and waited for the computer to work. It was probably not good enough for this, but he was not going to miss his chance to get a free character in “Heroes by Decree.” He had agreed with his parents that money was tight and that they couldn’t afford to get him one (or three) characters like many of the kids at his school. But this seemed like an answer to a prayer that he was too embarrassed to pray; a chance at the game without having to spend money and a chance to play with his classmates, rather than just hear about their exploits a week or two afterwards.
“Please read and sign acceptance to our terms and conditions,” the voice guiding him through the set up process said.
Jake, as any sane person of his age, ignored the majority of the text, scrolled through it and clicked, “I have read and agree to the terms.”
He had noticed that he was technically too young to be playing. Laws had recently been passed that encouraged games to aim for an older audience and Jake was 9 months younger than the age demographic at which those laws had been aimed. Which was frustrating, but it was not like he had ever heard of anyone enforcing it.
Character creation was quick and simple. He had rolled up a character who looked like a fighter, which was good, because Jake was not planning to be base builder or try to learn the horrible singing magic. Videos online had made it clear to him that he wanted to be a lead from the front character, with a sword, shield and armor guarding his party.
As the videos suggested, he used the random name generator to pick his account name as the game world awarded a very minor experience gain if your name matched the world setting. His character ended up getting the name David of the Morgan Clan. Another useful feature with this was that if he ran into an in-game character with the last name of Morgan, they would be friendly to his character, treating him like a long lost cousin. This was way to encourage players to avoid the usual variation of their own name and combination of unsightly letters and numbers.
Through out of game chat he managed to meet with his friends and found the three other characters. Random generation had been relatively kind to them. The two guys were about average looking, brown haired and brown eyed, somewhat like their real life appearance. Jake’s own hair was less curly than his character’s hair and obviously they were all younger looking in real life. Jade’s character had the more ordinary name of Sarah the Soloist of No Last Name. Micheal, Jade’s younger brother had named his character ILookKool2457 in defiance of the setting and Jake had to shake his head at that. John Tailor’s character had been named Jonathan of the Morgan Clan, which Jake found interesting.
“So are we all ready?” John asked as he took the usual lead.
“I am regretting my name choice. I feel kind of silly,” Michael said with a laugh before adding, “But I don’t want to wait any longer. Everybody else picked fighter?”
“Obviously, of course the boys picked fighter,” Jade said with something of a fake pout before saying, “I knew I should have found a lady to join my choir.”
Jake was torn between supporting his fellow boys and being nice to the girl he liked, so he stayed quiet, while Michael picked on his sister.
“Enough of this. We don’t have that long. Let’s go out, find a monster, earn money and then park our characters in training!”
“I mean… I guess, but it doesn’t sound fun to say it like that,” Jake said weakly before he followed along. The controls were familiar in his hands from other free games and he thought in a few weeks he would be able to get better at it. Much better. Maybe he could get to the top of the Dueling Ladder?
They left the outskirts of town and followed the local guides advice to reach the ‘Medley Swamp.’ Per “Heroes by Decree” naming conventions, anything with a word that could be in the thesaurus alongside chaos was a place to find monsters and kill them.
They came across three multi-hued goblins, which was sort of unsettling. Those were supposed to provide a higher level of challenge. They were eating a horse or cow, when the party spotted them.
“Ok, here is the plan. Everybody keep your characters as quiet as possible. Jade, start singing your most powerful song and try to get it right the first time. They will probably attack as soon as they feel it.”
Jade made an uncertain sound and their her character began a note. It was high and it warbled, unprofessionally. The three goblins skin turned brighter green as they lifted their blood drenched mouths from the carcass that they were eating from, as they sniffed the air. Jade growled inarticulately as she furiously smashed buttons in the background and her character sprang forth fully into song. She managed to go a line before her character missed a note and the effect went from almost passable to deeply awkward. Jake, to preserve his image of his crush’s competency, turned the in-game volume off and tried to listen to the button mashing.
“Stop laughing at me, Michael!” Jade shouted.
“But its funny!”
John sighed and said, ”Let her focus. We won’t have another chance to surprise these three and we need the full effect.”
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The line quieted down as Jade’s clacking became more steady. The song improved, but the goblins were scratching at their ears and then they were moving forward, drawing their weapons.
John gave the order and the three fighters stepped in front of their singer. All of them had shields and swords or axes. The goblins were higher level than their characters, but Jake was excited to try out what he had heard. Supposedly, skilled enough players could entirely block physical damage with their weapons, shield and dodging, while still doing higher damage, if they had enough of a sense for the game. Jake thought he had that and he wanted to test it.
He furiously tapped out an attack order and drove the tip of his sword toward a goblin’s belly. The goblin’s filthy stick protected from the attack and his bone dagger drove at Jake’s face. He tapped the back key and successfully dodged the attack. The goblin tried to take advantage of this opening, but John put his axe through its arm and the goblin fell back with a missing hand.
Jake noticed that the wound was not especially traumatic to the viewer and felt a mix of emotions. He was at the stage where he wanted to see a bit of fake violence. But he also didn’t mind it not scaring off other players. Especially, Jade.
Jade finally finished her song and the goblins all fell down in an exaggerated fashion as they tried to cover their ears. Jake finished one of the the fallen goblins off with number of clicks, while Michael muttered about his controller slipping. The remaining two goblins tried to escape, but the party were able to bring them down before they disappeared into the swamp.
“The song was supposed to keep them down for 20 seconds, that wasn’t nearly that long!” Jade announced with some concern.
“You are just not that good of a singer,” Michael said with the well-honed impudence of a younger sibling.
Michael made an undignified noise as his sister practiced some sort of real world violence against him and Jake had a moment of doubt about his crush. The moment passed as Jade said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you.”
Michael mumbled some apology of his own, indiscernible through the disorganization of his microphone.
John had his character clap his hands as he said, “Following the usual pattern, we should be able to find the treasure that the goblins were guarding.”
Michael looted the goblins and the loot was announced on a party chat. The game did not cater to a party member stealing from the group, if it was a formally recognized group.
Jake, John and Jade explored among the reeds along the swamp’s edge for about five minutes before they found the larger, crude shed that the goblins had based themselves out of. They found a crate of low quality cloth, another crate and a loom.
“So did we just kill off a goblin mini textile factory?” Jake asked his character tied the loom to his back.
John thought about it a bit before responding, “Maybe, though if that is the case, we might have only killed off the guards. I don’t think three goblins like that would have been working here. Though it is hard to tell.”
“I found the loot box!” Jade said as her kicking and breaking of tables and chairs finally yielded some use.
They broke it open after a few minutes and found a tidy sum of iron coins, not really worth that much, but early treasure was early treasure.
“So we got a loom, some low quality cloth, a soft-headed mace, 1 gold coin worth of iron coins and whatever broken table pieces we want to bring back to town,” John said as he looked over the party loot table.
“Should I not have broken those things?” Jade asked.
“It technically did make them easier to carry, but I don’t think random wood will be selling for that much. Let’s return to town and then find another target.”
Four Hours Later.
Jake lay in bed and tried to think over the day’s work. All of their characters, other than Michael’s character, had each earned a level, but it was unlikely they would get another chance to do that long of a session for a while. Jade had ballet lessons starting this time next week and John was a provincial level chess player, with a busy schedule. Jake had cross-country biking to contend with and while Michael’s schedule was mostly open, on Friday nights he had throw ball practice.
Jake had ended up being the party seller, as either he or John had to do it for the best returns to the local Morgan merchant. They had not found anything else as challenging as the goblins and had mostly just killed off Corrupted Mosquitoes and one Chaotic Lemming. Jake smiled at that fight. He had figured out how to block the crazy lemming’s attacks just by watching how it had made its first attack at Michael’s character and then he had managed to pin it under his shield and get an execute ability on it, which was supposed to be really hard at first level.
They had made sure not to log out in the countryside as that was not safe and three fighters logged out in the town’s school. Their characters would have a chance for improving their fighting ability or maybe learning a proficiency. The town’s school was not nearly the best way to do this, but since they had not walked to the capital, (that would have taken a few days of walking, assuming they didn’t get lost) it was their best option.
Jake dreamed of knights charging through the hordes of Chaos as he sank into sleep.
Breakdown of the Stats in “Universe of Heroes by Decree,” published on a obscure blog.
There are only four stats the player sees on their character sheet. Behind the scenes there are dozens of other checks and balances that the engine checks and determines stuff with.
First, is the Discipline stat. This is usually the one people like the least as it effectively just serves a protection from area effects when near at Chaotic high level opponent, or environmental effects from trying to storm a stronghold of Chaos. Like the other stats, this starts somewhere between 3 and 18 and it is generally around 8, 9, or 10 in basic humans. If you get a 3, just make sure you stay in unaligned areas or get an item to protect you. If you roll an 18, you should probably make the character a Patter as that gives potentially huge bonuses to that play style. Some worlds hide this stat.
Second, is the Sturdy stat. This is provides a direct modifier to how well your character takes damage, does damage and how much they can carry. Given the last factor it is important for all characters. I rolled up a Singer with a 3 on this and she had trouble wearing all her rings and carrying a staff. It tends to be 8 through 12 and is much easier to raise through leaving a character at a gymnasium or the equivalent for a few days. Even a half a point bonus is worth it.
Third, is the Voice stat. This controls how loud the character can be and how easy it is for them to sing. A roll of 7 or under has a negative effect to the character’s ability to haggle or get training, while a roll of 18 can allow a subpar player to coast to about level 5 difficulty without really understanding the mechanics of the game’s singing. The average roll is 7 or 8, however it is the easiest stat to train. Almost every settlement has a temple to a song god, a tavern, a choir or even a ‘scientific yodeling society’ on one of the less popular planets.
Finally, there is the Speed stat. This controls the characters walking speed (including interactions with encumbrance), attack speed, defense speed and the like. Movement speed is the easiest to improve, or ignore. Attack speed also does’t matter that much, because it can be easily improved with ‘songs of dispatch’, ‘rings of dispatch’ or other magical ways to go fast. Defense is hard enough and shifts enough between different weapons on the standard controller that defense speed tends not to matter. A character with a 3 speed is basically not worth playing, unless you love roleplaying as the wise old mentor who never moves.
If your character rolls four of the same stats (very unlikely because math) the game will give you a title of some sort. Four 18s, 17s or 16s forces an auto-audit of the account to avoid cheating and from my own play experience the audits are pretty successful. Four 3s get the title ‘Edge of Eternity’ and you play as a rickety old man or woman who has quadruple the usual skills open and may train people for multiple times faster than other trainers, for a higher fixed price and the world’s inhabitants (except on the Chaos blistered world of Titan) will give you good deals and treat you with respect. Most people don’t like that play-style, but it is interesting as an option.