Jake, Junius, 7th, 2104.
Jake marched his fourth character in the ranks of the spearmen towards the orcs. It was unpleasant. The formation was a mix of players, marching at an unsteady pace and low-level non-player characters. There was barely any drill and all the gear was of the lowest quality. But it was necessary.
Two hours before the Discordant Gnomes had successfully blown open the gate. There had then been a furious mounted orc charge and explosive battle. Reinforcements had steadily been fed into the killing ground behind the gate, while the [War Marshal] broke two wyverns in the air above the castle.
Michael announced, “Well, that’s my third character. I think that is all I can do for tonight.”
Jake grunted and looked at the line of orcs. Everyone of the monsters was armed with a spear longer than his character was tall and obviously filled to the brim with combat drugs, fiery drinks or the blood of an unfortunate.
That the [War Marshal] was sending forward a wave of low-leveled characters like this, showed his determination. Or desperation.
While his first character was designed for situations like this, Jake was truly unimpressed with this character. It had a 3 on Voice and merely low stats elsewhere. This was no diamond in the rough. Jake found maneuvering awkward and anything other than a two-handed spear unbalanced for the character to use. So he crept in the third rank and tried to dodge behind others when attacks were made and made attacks through the gaps.
Then there was an orc’s spear in his shoulder and his character had fallen. He tried to rise, but was crushed into the mud for a half minute, taking almost as much damage from the feet of allies as from the orc’s spear thrust. The orc’s other attacks soon had opened standing room and Jake found his character could stand, but he was alone before the double line of orcs. On a quick thought he did not try to stand and the orcs marched over him, powerful strides doing a bit more damage. Once they had passed, a third line of orcs armed with great spiked clubs came along, striking the dead and wounded.
“That didn’t work,” Jake said as he stood his character slowly and spun the spear into a long guard. A club like the third line was using was not something he wanted to get hit with. Most likely it had a light numbing agent or anticoagulant to really assist in the skirmishing life style.
Jake was facing three of them. All of them grinned at his character’s shaking stance. Jake growled, but quietly as his mom had some elderly women over for a book club and he didn’t want to confirm their preconceived notions about the dangers of ‘video games.’ His character’s stamina was not great and he had taken some heavy steps from incautious and discourteous boots.
One of the orcs suddenly dropped back, an arrow sticking into the heavy coat it wore. Trying to take advantage of this, Jake had the character make a textbook spear attack. The nearer orc, his target tried to raise its club, but his aim was true and the orc took a catastrophic loss of hit-points that became fatal with the retraction Jake’s spear. The second orc’s face became a mask of porcine fury and it raised its club for a stroke. Worse yet, the third orc had broken the arrow in its coat and looked rather undamaged as it came forward.
Jake tried to outmaneuver their attacks, injure them enough for the fight to get back to one vs. one or put them on the defensive, but it just didn’t work. The character just did not have the stats necessary to keep up, and Jake made another muted grumble as his character was broken and killed.
He quickly cycled through the menus and rolled up another character. This was a generally average character, with a slightly superior bit of speed. He initiated and the character was in a wave of reinforcements, all player characters, moving at a trot towards the damaged gate.
Jake looked over his spear and was dismayed to see that a crack passed through most of the shaft. That was unpleasant, but he was not able to exchange it. They were already caught up in the press of battle. A lesser engine would have been glitching with this much movement happening, but the server-world did not fail.
Jake watched as the orc line broke beneath numbers and then the reinforcing orcs with clubs plugged the gap. They wouldn’t be able to trade favorably with spearmen, but their sacrifice would keep their formation’s losses from being catastrophic. Jake thought something was off about this, but couldn’t place it. The melee was growing fiercer.
A Brocoli company fighter briefly broke through the lines by himself, every blow breaking orcs, until he went down beneath a wave of spears. A ragged choir briefly buffed their position as reinforcing players tried to join in and lend their voices to the cause. It was almost overwhelmed by the chanting, as from behind the orcs came the elves.
Jake felt the hopelessness at the sight. Each figure moved with the practiced skill of a blade master, and each figure strung their bows as they advanced. Their smiles were the mere bearing of incisors and their gray speckled eyes looked vaguely into the middle distance. The smiles broke as they chanted together in perfect unison, as they implemented the will of their dark masters. As one the elves drew their bows. Jake fought the urge to duck as he saw the arrowheads begin to glow. The chant briefly overwhelmed the song of the Lawful choir, and into the tumult of battle fell the volley.
The elves were not accurate. They did not care. Many of their arrows went high, or ground into the remnants of the walls. The glowing heads snapped and deformed and dimmed. The elves drew again, as one. Their second volley, like the first tore through the orcs backs as they tore a path through the lawful army. A third volley followed after and the mass began to reduce to a mob. Player characters and non-player characters alike feared the volley and fled from it, while the orcs desperately tried to take cover.
Jake stood stunned as he looked at where an arrow had torn through an entire file of troops. The poisons ensured that the lightest brush with it was death. He prepared to dodge, but it was too late. A moment after the fourth volley, he was back in character creation.
Jake rushed through the process to start a new character, as he could tell this was not good. He didn’t know if he could do anything here, but he did know that any casualties the enemies took here would not be fighting his character.
Aadvik Patel, Junius 7th, 2104.
Aadvik Patel, Lord of (e)Cycles, was not happy. He had tried. He had tried hard. But this was unsupportable. This was actively damaging to his brand.
This morning, when the word had gone out that a major city was on the verge of falling and that low-leveled helpers were encouraged, he had sensed a media opportunity. He had gotten up shortly after 5:00 AM his time and had spent the next 9 hours streaming. He had gone through over hundred characters. He had originally fought in the outer defenses and his loyal viewers cheered him. They understood that he was taking one for the team, playing a low level character like this and those who had been free had joined him. It had been fun, leading a band of followers and admirers to victories, fighting over the trenches and ruins of the outer works.
But near lunch, things had changed. Before his characters had been quickly rising in ranks and lost in the wild shifts of battle. An arrow from the deep mist outside the city wall, a wave of heavy golems crushing him in their passing, a misstep into a trap laid by a [Chaos Cultist]. But near noon, the chaotic forces started getting better. They sent orcs, elves and cultists. They sent goblins kitted out with weird energy guns, races he still didn’t know the names of, they deployed catapults at advantageous angles and permanently took the outer wall. They blew up the gate.
This was fine. Or mostly fine. It was the pattern of the game. However, towards the end of his stream, someone had released a clip of one his deaths. Aadvik had mis-clicked (a rhyme not lost on the clipper) and what was intended as a display of spear skill and the elimination of two rather pathetic goblins had resulted in him stumbling into a goblin’s unsheathed weapon and self-elimination. The slow-motion zoom in on his face, in combination with the music had made him look a fool. Before two hours had passed, numerous compilations with worse and worse titles appeared. They all ended with the original zoom and music.
Aadvik crushed the empty can in his hand and threw it into the wall. The can’s crushed form had produced a sharpened edge and it briefly stuck in the sheetrock wall. It slide out and clattered to the ground. Aadvik’s fury was unsated and he crushed the annoying can flat with step after step. The thick rubber in his shoes made it safe. When he had finished the crushing, he turned and sat heavily into his gaming chair. He spun the chair idly.
With an adjustment to his glasses, he picked up a cellphone and speed-dialed one of his team.
“Hello?” A sleepy voice asked.
“You watching the clips?”
“Yeah,” the tired voice broke with a yawn, which Aadvik had to struggle not to copy, “They are not good for us. I am thinking Steven or Jorge might be behind it. It would not be the first time that one of the other big channels hired a small account to go after us.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Aadvik nodded and thought as he looked out of his window.
There was another yawn and then his public image consultant made the suggestion, “Remember the big rule about online drama. It doesn’t matter if we don’t let it matter. Especially, as the setting is ending. Win or loose it is about to end and in a month, no one will remember any of this. In a year, we will look back at this an laugh. In five years people will joke about this happened a thousand years ago. Just ignore the comments, the compilations and focus on being big in the last week. Get in the group photo.”
Aadvik frowned and made his goodbyes. He started watching videos from one of his alts on Clipper and felt a himself grow cold. The comments and theorizing on his character deaths explained how he had never really played the game and that without the help from his ‘unfair’ advantages he was revealed as a fraud. A failure.
He looked over the streaming sites and felt a mix of shame and rage. The voices of disappointed family members judging his forsaking of their traditions for the modern life of a streamer, mingled with the comments of the trolls. The local streamers were doing better. Even the reviled brand agents were getting better numbers than he had, while the compilations signaled his defeat and embarrassment.
This was unacceptable.
If they were going to make fun of him, let them face him in battle.
He got his cellphone and sent out, “In a week, we are doing plan B.”
Jake, Junius, 9th 2104.
Jake had thought about ignoring the fall of the Grand Duchy. He was not a person with unlimited time, but it was a Monday and school was not looking too bad this week. So he decided to give it a try.
He smirked and and laughed lightly at the character he had rolled up. It was 4 across the board, except for a 3 in Voice, again . He would not even be able to make this old rascal call for help. He allowed himself to appear in the city keep and slowly made his way up to the wall.
“Get down soldier!” Came an order form a worn looking [Knight], who called out from a crouch behind a parapet. Long gray wooden boards, marked with burn marks and broken arrow heads eloquently explained the danger and Jake had his character comply.
“Good, man!” The [Knight] said forcefully and he gestured at the wall before continuing, “We are under observation by a half company of elves. They are backed up by a horde of orcs and probably division of grey sons.”
“Will my spear be of any use here?”
“Not if you put your head up. These elves have the ****** of a ********’s luck. Most of them are also using poisoned arrows and if you are grazed it is death.”
Another player, handling a poorly made bag of javelins walked up the stairs.
“GET DOWN!”
“Why?” The figure asked, in a smug, self-superior tone.
“There are elvish snipers! Get down!” The [Knight] commanded with some frustration.
“I should be fine. I have got a good roll. Two 18s…” the bragging was cut-off as an arrow punched through the character’s head and then exploded.
Both of them went lower as a dozen other arrows, each with counter acting effects sliced in, spaced just far enough apart so as to maximize their damage and not allow for an effective counter.
“That was impressive,” Jake muttered as he looked at the damage inflicted.
“That wasn’t even half the company. A [Holy Knight] got the whole company’s attention, and then hid behind a mantlet. They used [Siege Arrows] and that is where that low part in the wall is.”
“I am surprised that they just let ordinary soldiers have weapons like that,” Jake typed as he looked through the cracks in the walls and hesitantly held his spear. This was looking like something he would not be able to help with.
“Oh no. Elves, or at least these elves, are completely loyal to their [Chaos Lord]. From the lore channel I listened while bicycling to work, they are like a half-hi…” the [knight]’s explanation dissipated into nothing as an arrow with the force of a cannon struck through parapet, [knight] and parados.
Jake noticed a popup then, and scowled.
“End of Reinforcements.”
Due to the dark rituals and excessive casualties in the Grand Duchy, Players may no longer choose to start there. Players may still manually move in that direction.
Jake frowned at his spear and kept himself crouched behind the parapet as the elves were obviously still hunting for targets. He didn’t know what would prove to him that they were done hunting, but he was not going to sell this character cheaply.
From across the citadel came a huge explosion and looking over the parados, he saw that a section of the wall opposite him had fallen. Perhaps this would be an exceptionally short gaming session?
There came a blast from a trumpet, which a pop-up helpfully explained was a signal for their forces to defend a breach, but only if their section was guarded by at least three soldiers. Jake, alone on his section of wall, ignored the trumpet blast. Behind him he heard the tramp of feet, the clank of steel and the tinkling of bells as the [5th Lord of Discord] took the field.
Jake waited and wondered what would be the best option.
Then suddenly, the orcs began to raise a general squealing, oinking, roaring howl. When this had reached a fever pitch they left the battlements they had been hiding behind and retreated through the city, noise following in their wake, pole-arms wildly waved above their heads. Jake watched, but did not understand. Perhaps they were being shifted to the breach? Perhaps it was a lure to the defenders to leave the wall?
“Fat chance we would take it,” Jake muttered as he considered the utter slaughter a few entrenched elves could do to a force of sallying forth defenders.
Then, as though his thought had summoned them, 30 elves descended from their hiding places. They were perfectly silent, eyes locked into the middle distance, bows drawn and every movement perfectly controlled. They picked up rough, orc made ladders and rushed the wall.
Jake was briefly frozen by the sight, before another trumpet sounded and allies began throwing javelins. Each was casually blocked with bow staves, deflected with bare-hands or parried with undrawn swords. Jake looked on in horror as the three ladders arrived at his section of wall. Six elves at each section dropped their bows and arrows into chaotic space and drew multi-hued blades. Then the elves were coming up the ladders.
Jake grabbed his spear, be it intended for throwing or not and threw it down the ladder. The elf tried to block it with his sword, and sheared through the spearhead. The two pieces passed him without injury, but a fleck of the iron-headed spear touched one of the elves on the neighboring ladder. Immediately, it screeched and fell from the ladder, as it melted away from the metal. During this process, every other elf stood frozen, feral smiles replaced with a look of terror as their comrade melted to nothing. The empty suit of clothes, loose bits of armor and a warped bit of spear fell to the ground.
The elves all gave a continued moan, like a wind rippling through a forest. Then they again ascending the ladders, eyes glassy, smiles wide and incisors exposed. Jake vaguely remembered that they disliked iron and looked around him.
The [knight]’s undrawn sword looked the nearest thing and Jake had the character draw it. Without heavy armor, he expected this to be a short resistance, but he decided to be pleased if he could hit another elf.
Then there was the sound of a horn on the wind and the elves, as though by compulsion turned to face the noise. Without a word they descended and abandoned the ladders and sheathed their swords and restrung their bows. With a quick and less coordinated pace they began to retreat to the houses, but they were too late.
Travis, controlling his [Paladin], leading a dozen [Paladins] and twenty [Knights], [Hussars], [Men-at-Arms] rode from among the ruined houses. The elves released arrow after arrow, but something like a shield enveloped the cavalry and the arrows fell to the ground, unexploded and spent. The elves then spilt into two formations, half taking ten steps back and shooting arrows in volleys, while the other half drew swords and waited in a scattered formation to receive the charge.
The charge continued at the gallop and one of the elves screamed out as the iron point of a lance melted through its chest. Their blades flashed, but their main cutting effect was blunted by the songs guarding the relieving cavalry and the weight of the charge was irresistible. Iron horse shoes crushed and [paladins] struck mighty blows. The cavalry turned and prepared for a second charge.
Jake quickly scrambled down the wall, as he saw one of the elves stepping away. Its expression remained unchanged as it drew back its bow and snapped a piercing arrow through one the of [Paladins] next to Travis and the air shuddered as the white banner he bore began to fall. Travis snatched it, before it could touch the ground, but had to drop his sword and let it hang on the loop at his wrist to maintain the maneuver. The elf released another arrow, which exploded against the shielding effect. A third arrow broke the effect, while a fourth clipped one the [Knights]. The cavalry let out a war cry and tried to take out the remaining elves, but there were still a number of them and they were releasing arrows as they moved towards high ground.
Jake reached the edge of the ladder and came up behind the elf. It had already released two further arrows, but he did not allow another. With a single thrust, he drove the blade into its back.
Nothing happened.
The elf’s movement unaligned his sword and a brief clink of metal warned him that the elf had been wearing an ultra light metal armor beneath its clothing. Jake could barely process the movement as the elf unstrung its bow and drew out its sword into a two-handed grip above the head.
Jake knew the stance and tried to parry. The elf’s first move was a feint and the second delivered an almost lethal strike. The hours of training Jake had taken were enough to deflect it from being instantly lethal, but the poisoned blade had grazed him and the character would be dead in five seconds.
But what had his instructor taught him? Killing in a sword fight is not too hard, as long as you are willing to accept a blow. And if your opponent is metaphysically allergic to your weapon, this was easier still. Jake’s iron mastered the elf’s hand with a light slash through its sleeve and the creature’s weird expression broke into one of terror as it melted. Its attack, which would have taken his head, ended as the arm melted into itself and the strike lost its intent.
Jake briefly saw that the cavalry, Travis at their head, were succeeding, before the poison finished his character off.
He took a break and stretched, to get things back into their proper feeling. When that was finished he stood and went for some water. That had been tense. He wondered what was up with the elves, but not enough to look up a documentary on them or read about it. If he met them with his two-handed sword and the powers of a patron of Justice, he had little fear of it turning out badly. And he had had enough of being a low-leveled Fighter. Though it had been fun surviving to see the edge of the relief. It was not something he would forget.
He came back and logged in after going for a long jog and taking a shower. He checked his messages and was somewhat sad to see that he had been invited to join the relief force, but it had just missed him. Still, given the danger he was also glad to be able to not face that choice. Losing level 1 characters by the truckload was somewhat stressful, but risking a max upgraded character was much harder. Travis had survived and the chaotic forces were driven back. The city was mostly destroyed and it was unlikely that the [Grand Duke] could lead a large force to help anyone else, but the city remaining in his hands was much better than a decisive defeat.
[Merchants] hawked videos of the retreating forces and Jake was pleased not to see an elf among the escapees. The [5th Lord of Discord] had been killed in the retreat and two of the five space ships had been destroyed. Which was good, because those were terrifying. Jake had no desire to be flanked by a force of extra-planetary threats mid-battle. They were rather weak to song effects, but as someone who did not have access to those, that was not especially comforting.
Jake spent a little while training his Parrying skill and finally maxed it out on his character and then left him at an inn. There were no more major areas of growth he could he find by passive training, or at least none consistent with his path of growth. The final battles would be done through his current strength and whatever goods he found mid-battle.