~Janet’s PoV~

Janet, in her avatar as GM Nazhai, discreetly sighed as the meeting dragged on into its third hour. Sitting on the dias as she was, with a handful of the other senior staff of Heraldic Echo, she couldn’t even escape into daydreaming, gossipping, or even real work. Not that the meeting was unimportant, far from it with the game’s global launch, but so much of what was being covered wasn’t especially relevant to either her or her department. And the bit that had been, she’d either already seen the reports for them or she’d see them in the morning. Or she had already dealt with them herself.

At the moment, a very junior member of the finances department was wrapping up a (thankfully) short presentation on alternate revenue streams. The only thing that had caught Nazhai’s interest, besides the presenter’s obvious distraction at being in VR, was the relatively low number of players that spent anything to customize either their home instance or hivatar. Nazhai smiled as she remembered the visit to one of the players who had. That player was going to be one worth keeping an eye on.

But, truthfully, the presenter was probably more distracted by his outfit than by actually being in VR—all employees of Heraldic Echo, including their newest hire, a payroll assistant, had by now had experience with the company’s full immersion VR and most had had experience with other forms of VR or AR as well. But all employees, whether they interacted with players or not, were mandated a style of attire for official actions within VR. That included staff meetings as well as interaction with the AIs or interaction with players.

It wasn’t a uniform, with everyone dressing identically but for sizing, but it was, in a way, a uniform.

Nazhai smiled again in recollection. This was a battle she had fought tooth and nail for, and had triumphed. Initially, the “trade dress” had been with white feathery wings, white robes or gowns, glowing halos, and accessories such as trumpets, banners, or scrolls. However, she had been very much against setting themselves up as “messengers of the gods.”

Her core argument had been that by elevating themselves above the players, they would start to see themselves as more important than the players—even if only subconsciously—and that would have been detrimental for the business and for player relations. Instead, she had argued, the staff was in service to the game and players, and their public presentation should represent that.

Thus, the current “trade dress” of employees was that of servants: maids and butlers in particular. However, the specifics of the stylings were left up to the individual employee, so it wasn’t really a uniform per se.

Most people had elected to dress like Nazhai herself did, conservatively. Hers was a long black dress, a white apron, and a little white ruffled hairband—though old-timey bonnets and maid caps were almost equally as common. Several, however, dressed in shorter skirts and deeper necklines, in a manner that would have been quite inappropriate in just about any other office. Those were usually not in Nazhai’s department, however.

The butler outfits tended to be more consistent, but that was mostly because there was less room for variety in men’s fashion: dark slacks, a dark or white dress shirt, and a dark suit jacket with coattails. For one reason or another, cravats were much more common than traditional ties or bow ties. Despite the relative lack of diversity, there were two who paired culottes and waistcoats with bolo ties.

Since the meetings were conducted in virtual reality, there were many—like Nazhai herself—who had chosen non-human avatars. Nazhai was Nekoun, a cat-based Beastkin, and the assorted Beastkin subraces made up most of the non-human avatars, though there were plenty of elves and even a dwarf or two. The most distinctive were a pair from the technical side who were clockwork golems and who had fashioned their appearance so that their bodies themselves were their uniforms, with rollerblade feet barely showing from under darkened bronze, bell-like skirts.

A few, a bit less than ten percent of the staff, were crossdressed, with women as butlers and men as maids, though some of them—especially those with elven avatars—were androgynous enough that it was hard to tell. And that was just with the avatars’ clothing. At least a few were taking the opportunity virtual reality offered and had crossgendered avatars. The wispy blonde elf on the dias with Nazhai was Dan Westbrook, the EVP of Marketing and Operations, but here in VR was known as Victoria Delacroix. Her outfit was almost more gothic lolita than it was truly a maid uniform, though the piratical eyepatch featured crossed feather dusters under a smiling heart instead of the typical skull and crossbones..

That was probably why the presenter was apparently distracted with his outfit. Finances fell under Victoria’s jurisdiction, and she was known to prefer her staff to match her style, so the fellow was one of the men with much more frills and frippery on his butler’s apparel than was otherwise common.

Also in attendance were several of the higher-tier AI, or their representatives, those that kept the game world running. While most of them were set to diminutive, winged avatars—various sorts of faeries—Aurora Gamma, a facet of Mediator Aurora, took the form of a severe, bespectacled, dark-haired human woman. She appeared more of a governess than maid, and while still technically servant-themed, she looked much more like one to be obeyed. She was also on the dias, between Victoria Delacroix and Miguel Alphonso, the Lead Programmer. Nazhai mused that an outsider looking in might assume that Aurora Gamma, from her outfit, positioning, and demeanor was the one in charge.

But the meeting was now shifting to a phase where Nazhai forced her wandering thoughts back to attention rather than contemplation. A staff member from Statistics and Analysis was summarizing what they felt were important findings. Nazhai, like others, took notes.

“As you can see,” the staff member had projected a series of charts, “humans by far make up the majority of player characters. Around two out of every three characters that have left the tutorial instance—counting only characters created since launch—are of the human archetype with the vast majority of them being Yanari, probably for the combat damage subracial trait, or Elleran for the increased mana pool. After humans, about one in five characters overall are elf archetypes, Tale’a’Dine and Na’Dine predominantly. Ah, that’s the ‘Dark’ Elves and ‘High’ Elves, respectively. The other elves are about equally dispersed, with Qo’Dine, the ‘Sea’ Elves trailing.” Here, he shot an apologetic look to Victoria, whose avatar was one of the underrepresented elves.

“After humans and elves, most of the rest of the archetypes are roughly evenly split except the Faetouched. Several of them were created, but most were deleted in the tutorials. We’ll have statistics on what those players eventually settled on later,” the presenter frowned for not having the data immediately at hand, “but the general consensus seems to be that they found the racial metal vulnerability too limiting.” Tapping the percentage displayed next to Tallemaja, the presenter continued. “This number is a little misleading. The twenty-five players who have, thus far, stayed with this subrace are just barely enough to round the number up to the two decimal points we’re displaying on the chart. For them, it would be better to show 0.005% rather than 0.01%.”

The presentation continued even as murmurs of discussion centered on some of the clusters of attendees and as Nazhai made a note to follow up with the players who did remain in that subrace.

“Like the larger racial archetypes, these less popular ones generally show an uneven distribution of players. They tend to prefer dark or fire over the other elements for Draconic. Ghosts are between five and eight times more popular than the rest of the Undead subraces. And Lapis, Nekoun, and Vulpix Beastkin—Rabbits, Cats, and Foxes—comprise the majority of created Beastkin. This number though,” the presenter circled a 0.00%, “is a matter for concern. Unlike the Faetouched archetypes, we don’t have a consensus on why so few players have chosen the Tauros subrace. Perhaps it’s a matter of everything else being more popular, but of the half a million players represented in this data, there is exactly one Tauros, a girl, whom I believe we’ll be hearing about later….”

A faerie AI flitted up to the presenter, who nodded as she whispered something. “Apparently, there are four more Tauros currently in the tutorial, but we’d still need a five-fold increase before they even registered as a blip in this data. And as the number of players in the sample grows, so too does the threshold for being a blip.”

The presenter was replaced by another from Statistics and Analysis. This was a rather tall and imposing Tauros who shrugged his shoulders, “I can’t say why so few players have chosen this subrace, but I do have a few things to add. As you can tell by the number of players represented in the data my colleague displayed, we’ve easily passed the 100,000th created character. We had a huge surge once the sun started rising on the east coast. So all twenty heroes or heroines have been created. ECHO now has seven Chrysanthemum Heroines and eleven Chrysanthemum Heroes. The remaining two deleted their characters before completing the tutorial. One of those was in the Faetouched archetype and is now playing a human character. The other logged out and hasn’t recreated a character.”

Nazhai made a note to have one of her staff get in contact with that player.

“Before anyone asks,” the Tauros continued, “no player selected Imperial Lineage, though two appear to have seriously considered it. That means you story folk will have to find another way to get it out there. One of those two, by the way, was the sole Tauros player my colleague mentioned.” Here, his voice had a hint of pride, perhaps a spot of racial solidarity.

“There were, of course, several server firsts, which we all naturally expected, including, already the first player to reach level 5, which most of us had assumed would have taken a couple days. Three dozen different rare achievements were met, and a scattering of unique achievements. However, what I feel may be of most interest to some of you are these two.”

The Tauros presenter gestured, and a projection of two players appeared over the assembled staff. One was a young Tauros girl—rather, the young Tauros girl—in white who was wielding a bow that seemed too fancy for the tutorial. The other was an atypical elf in red. Rather than thin and waify as elves generally were, she sported a figure that was all sensuous curve. Her gold-embroidered robe had a perilously low neckline and almost seemed painted on. Beyond its provocativeness, however, the level of detail in the embroidery and the sheen of magic it radiated suggested high-level gear. Likewise, the glowing skull wreathed with golden vines that she was using as a focus was obviously beyond what any player should have found within the tutorial.

Everyone on the dias sat up straighter and focused on the two images. Aurora Gamma was surrounded by a faint nimbus of floating numbers and symbols, and a handful of lesser AIs popped into existence around her. The same intent focus appeared to be shared by the other staff as well since the sussurrations of whispered conversations ceased.

“We will start with the elf,” the presenter said, and the indicated image panned out to show the elf facing what appeared to be an enormous, shimmering, six-legged unicorn. The beast was many times the player’s height; were they to stand side by side, the elf wouldn’t even be as tall as the height of the unicorn’s silvery horseshoes. The unicorn reared up and pounded the ground with its forelegs, sending out an ever-increasing ripple of light that reached almost precisely to where the elf was standing before fading away without causing any harm.

The elf smirked, raised the skull, and sent off a magical barrage of her own. Bolt after bolt of incandescent violet energy streaked toward the unicorn, most to sputter out against a shield of light the unicorn raised, but some few broke through and struck the beast, leaving scars of darkness on its otherwise pristine, radiant white coat. Bolts expended, she knelt and meditated, paying no heed to her opponent’s attacks, as none of them ever reached her. Then she rose and repeated, sending spell after spell to strike the beast.

“This continues for quite some time. For all of our convenience, let’s speed this up by a factor of 100.”

The scene then jumped into overdrive, and while the unicorn’s attack patterns changed as it hit certain thresholds—beams of light from the horn first, then later something like shooting stars falling all around it, then finally a double stomp sending out concentric ripples of light—the elf remained standing, or kneeling for mana recovery, just outside the range of its attacks. Throughout it all, the unicorn’s coat of white fur was being singed and corrupted by the few bolts from the barrages that made it through its defenses, turning more and more of its fur dingy and dark rather than radiant, until at last the unicorn was thoroughly blackened and collapsed to its knees, bowed its head, and dwindled in size, shrinking from a monstrous height to barely taller than the elf.

As the end of the battle was happening, the replay slowed down to closer to 1:1 time, and then and only then did the elf move from her spot. She strode, strutted almost, forward and approached the defeated-but-not-yet-dead monster. The look it gave her was a mingle of malice and pleading, though she appeared to pay it no heed. Reaching forward, she snapped off its horn and placed her trophy in her inventory even as the beast disintegrated into ash and motes of violet light.

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The whole replay took a little over four minutes. The Tauros presenter raised his hands to forestall to storm of questioning and exclamations that seemed likely, “Please. I know or can guess what many of you are thinking, but there’s one other to view, first.” He gestured toward the projection of the young Tauros girl with her bow. “The encounter you just saw began before the one you are about to see, but it also lasted significantly longer. Watch.”

The scene with the elf diminished and the other expanded to fill the space. “This, too, will be sped up, though not as drastically.” And the fight between Madelyn Alexis and Sar’Glagalth began again, replaying for an audience that she had never considered watching her. When at last her hard-fought victory was earned, there was a profound silence throughout the entirety of the audience chamber.

Someone coughed, and like a spell being broken, people began talking one to another, when from the back of the room arose a cry, “She cheated!” For a moment, Nazhai thought it was going to be a diatribe against the elf, who surely had benefit beyond what should have been in the tutorial, but the shouter continued. “She was exploiting! No Beastkin should be able to transform that frequently! Strip her of her achievements! Ban her, even!”

Then the whole room exploded into shouted arguments and counter-arguments. As was typical, the people of the least import were shouting the loudest, and the people whose opinion mattered most were silent. From a brief glance around the dias, Nazhai noticed that the rest of the senior staff were thinking as furiously or near as furiously as she. Victoria caught her eye and inclined her head, but said nothing.

After about five minutes of unproductive accusations and recriminations, a loud “Enough!” boomed across the dias and filled the chamber, nearly causing the virtual walls to buckle.

That was Director Sonovich making his presence known. For personal reasons, he eschewed virtual reality and instead attended via telepresence—a face on a monitor, the display of which now grew to match the size of the battles that the staff had just watched.

“It does seem that the Beastkin racial might need further tuning. We will discuss that presently. However, I daresay that girl would have found a way to succeed regardless. Whatever advantages she had that she should not have had, she at least took the game, its world, and that encounter seriously. The other, the elf harlot, she was disrespectful. That was no fight; that was no challenge; and those were certainly equipment beyond her means. I want a list of all equipment those two players had in their possession as well as the sources of those equipment— Yes?”

“Your pardon, Director,” the Tauros presenter began, “But my colleagues had anticipated this request.” Text, lists of their equipment, was then superimposed on both projections of the players. Nazhai’s interface, and she assumed the interface of many others present, chimed with a new message containing a copy of the information.

Equipment for Player Madelyn Alexis:

* Traveller’s Basic Headband (Ornamented) / source: character creation

* Traveller’s Basic Robe / source: character creation

* Traveller’s Basic Sash / source: character creation

* Traveller’s Basic Cloth Slippers / source: character creation

* Ring of Limited Wishes (charges: 3 / available charges: 1) / source: GM Nazhai via process system.addToInventoryWithMessage

* Traveller’s Basic Quiver / source: initial equipment chest

* Traveller’s Basic Longbow / source: initial equipment chest

* Traveller’s Basic Dagger / source: initial equipment chest

* Traveller’s Basic Staff / source: initial equipment chest

* Heroine’s Basic Brass Brooch of Defense / source: Chrysanthemum Hero(ine) Reward Chest #10

* Enchanted Zulathan Great Bow of Water / source: Enchanted Zulathan Great Bow (unattuned) via Rare Loot Chest, Tier 1 via guaranteed tutorial drop from penultimate encounter

Equipment for Player Jazzybelle Ten’kage:

* Crescent Tiara of Unrivaled Willpower / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Lust-embroidered Scarlet Robe of Unrivaled Charisma / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Gloves of the Unseen / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Enchanted Corsette of Deflection / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Shadow Walkers / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Shadowfury, Accursed Orb of the Deathseeker / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Scintara’s Wedding Ring / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Scintara’s Corruption / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Godsilver Band of Regeneration / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Pendant of Attack Nullification (charges: 999 / available charges: 928) / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Favor of the Undying / source: unknown (item log missing)

* Corrupting Godsilver Soul Cage (contents: Corrupted Tiabeth, Fallen Guardian of Light, Shattered Shield of the Righteous) / source: unknown (item log missing) contents source (Tiabeth, Guardian of Light, Shield of the Righteous / tutorial encounter ID: k999a4.6)

“Well,” the Director’s booming voice was sardonic, “that makes it pretty clear who was cheating.”

There was silence for a long moment punctuated only by the faint sounds of several staff members popping out of the meeting, leaving a ghostly afterimage behind. Chiefest of them was Gawain, the avatar of Heraldic Echo’s Chief of Security. Nazhai had never met the person behind the avatar—which was not uncommon as virtual reality made telecommuting much more feasible—and didn’t even know the name, face, or gender for Gawain’s real-world presence. No doubt that was exactly as he preferred it.

Finally the silence was broken. The same accuser in the back began again, “That cow didn’t just have an exploit to take advantage of, she also had to have foreknowledge of the fight. Why else choose water for her spell and bow and then choose a stone monster to fight? Why was she the only Tauros? Did she have insider knowledge? The log shows that Nazhai deliberately helped her!”

More than slightly disgusted, since the shouter was ignoring the obvious apparent collusion between the overgeared elf and an insider, Nazhai rose to speak but was gestured back down by Victoria.

Nazhai was still fuming and considering the possibility that the unknown accuser was in cahoots with Jazzybelle Ten’kage. She didn’t know who it was, but one of the many good things about having meetings in VR is that everything would be logged. Some of those now-absent security personnel were probably making their way to an employee’s FIVR pod right now. But rather than dwell on something that wasn’t in her area of responsibility, she maintained her polite mask and focused on what Victoria was saying.

“—moreover, that young Tauros achieved far better results with mostly starter gear than that cheater,” Victoria gestured an elegant, gloved hand at the still image of the elf in red, “did with a whole set of ill-gotten equipment. I happen to know that the Scintara questline isn’t active yet, so those two rings shouldn’t even be in the game, much less the tutorial.

“Now, as for the Ring of Limited Wishes that the young Tauros used, two of them were handed out due to game-breaking bugs that were encountered. Both of them came from Nazhai, as player relations is her department, and the rings were previously established to compensate for time lost due to bugs.

“In fact,” the EVP of Marketing and Operations was definitely on a roll, warming to her subject as she continued. “In fact, the player in question sent us feedback detailing what she felt were possible cases where the ring might be too powerful. The two charges she used for it, for a full restore, were something that we,” her gestures indicated the whole of the dias, “explicitly decided was still okay even after the girl raised her concerns. And she was informed of it, was she not, Nazhai?”

Here, Nazhai rose and nodded. “We did temporarily cap the skill and class level gain abilities so that they couldn’t raise a player above 20 pending a further review, but during development, the full restore option was given a lengthy activation to make it harder, though not impossible, to use while fighting. I will note that she appears to have only used the full restore in order to be able to activate her Hidden Nature, and that only because Hidden Nature drains all remaining mana when it expires. Under the old system, when I went through the earlier version of the tutorial, Hidden Nature required a full mana bar to use.

“That was changed, I believe, when the Vulpix were added, since a spellcaster would have found it difficult to use the ability reactively.” She shot a glance to the lead designer, who nodded. “And it has gone through several iterations since, I believe. I haven’t used the ability in ages, myself, so I haven’t kept up on it. Johannes?”

The Tauros who had been presenting shook his head, “I’ve actually never used it. I joined late enough that I was able to go through the non-combatant tutorial. My character is the village blacksmith, way out back of beyond.”

Then, if the ring is legit, what about her bow!?” The accuser seemed to have friends—or accomplices—as the voice was different. “The elf looks really bad, with the item logs missing, but that bow is still too fancy for the Beasktin’s level.”

Near, but not upon the dias, an aged, grey-furred Ratkin was gesturing for recognition. As Ratkin were Lesser Beastkin and thus non-player races, this staff member was someone who obviously had a significantly major difference between his official and unofficial characters.

“Go ahead, Talos.” Victoria acknowledged the Ratkin as she sat, smoothing her skirts, and gestured for Nazhai to follow suit.

“I have been looking into that,” Talos spoke with a voice quavery with his avatar’s apparent age, yet still surprisingly firm. “The bow was legitimately earned, but it is a bit stronger than should have been awarded in the tutorial. The reason for that, though, is simple. The encounter she fought was stronger than she should have encountered, so the guaranteed rare chest from that encounter contained a better loot table. It seems that Madelyn Alexis there inadvertently discovered a bug, or rather an oversight, in our encounter scaling.” He looked and sounded a bit sheepish since, as the head of instanced encounter design, that was his area of responsibility. “Some of you may remember when we were considering a ‘challenge mode’ for instances, where content would be harder or more rewarding.” There were nods from many assembled, including all on the dias. “One of the mechanisms we were experimenting with was to have players limit their skills upon entering the instance, with the more skills disabled, the better the rewards. The challenge would have come from having fewer skills—and thus attributes as well. We haven’t yet implemented it because it’s been very difficult from a balance standpoint. Some builds are much more dependent on having multiple skills supporting each other.”

The Ratkin shrugged, posture radiating embarrassment. “We have the ability to ‘de-equip’ skills disabled except for a select group of testing staff, so the encounter and reward scaling should have also been disabled. Unfortunately, the scaling also appears to have been active for players who went into the encounter without yet having chosen some of their skills. Since this player in question fought that skeleton while only having three of four primary skills selected, the encounter was tougher than it should have been. The algorithm also seems to have weighted her specials and uniques too heavily, making the encounter even tougher. A tougher encounter, thus better rewards.” Talos shrugged again, “Nothing nefarious involved, but she—and presumably many others—benefitted from errors on our side. However lucky she may have been, it was still very definitely player skill and pure grit that got her through the encounter with Sar’Glagalth. I, and my staff, will have to try and reproduce what she did, but I wouldn’t want to solo him at level, much less so drastically underleveled and undergeared. It’s not going to be a fun experience.”

There was a long moment of silence in the face of that remark and Talos’s obvious admiration. Not even the shouting accusers from the back seemed to have anything else to add. Finally, Aurora Gamma spoke.

“Encounter scaling in all instanced content is now disabled unless all participants have testing flag 4K909JCF set. There are seven players currently engaged in scaled combat whose rewards will remain higher unless the encounter is reset due to failure. There are 27,438 players who left the tutorial who have fewer than eight skills set. Of those, 19,310 completed the combat route of the tutorial and thus received higher than expected rewards. Recommendation: small currency compensation for unaffected players to offset the difference in value between the average expected vendor values of expected and higher-than-expected rewards. Calculated difference: 2.1337 silver coins.”

“Make it so, Mediator.” The Director’s voice filled the chamber again. “As for those two, put a hold on their accounts pending an investigation. I don’t see how Madelyn Alexis did anything wrong, so hers will probably be perfunctory. Nazhai, Talos, and Gawain will speak to her and will lift the hold unless something significant arises. As for Jazzybelle Ten’kage, I find it hard to believe that she is innocent. Gawain and his staff will speak to her as part of their investigation and make a recommendation to me, but her hold remains until I lift it or have it replaced with a ban.

“I will want to see a full summary all the rares, uniques, specials, and server firsts achieved as well as the circumstances under which they were received. That will need to be on my desk by the morning, but this meeting has gone on long enough. Unless an emergency arises in the next hour, you may stand down from all-hands. Unless you’re on the duty schedule, you may log into your non-GM characters at that time. Dismissed.”

The chamber quickly emptied save for a few small groups talking here and there. Nazhai herself was responding to a couple messages from her staff and looking forward to finally getting back to the inn she spent most of her off-duty time at. Being senior staff had its perquisites, and being able to write her own duty roster was one of them. Other than the all-hands period, and of course any situations that escalated to her, her duty hours were normal business hours and one weekend a month.

Before she could leave, however, she was approached by Victoria Delacroix, who rested a hand on Nazhai’s shoulder. “When you and the others go to meet Madelyn Alexis, I want to be there as well.”

Nazhai looked up, slightly startled. “Sure, unless Gawain says otherwise, I don’t see it as a problem. Why, though? It doesn’t seem like—”

Victoria held up a finger, “First, that fight. Think about it from a marketing perspective. With a little editing to, well, condense the battle to its salient moments, it would make an incredible trailer.” Another finger joined the first, “Second, she’s playing an underrepresented race. Drawing attention to her and her successes may have other players create Tauros characters of their own, trying to emulate her. And finally,” a third finger arose, “she’s cute. But more than cute, she’s successful and she’s one of our Chrysanthemum Heroines. Five of my staff already forwarded me draft advertising proposals using her avatar. Think of her as a possible mascot and how that might also affect an underrepresented race.”

Nazhai nodded.

“I want to come along not just to meet her and see if she’s as cute in person as she is in image, but also to possibly negotiate a deal with her. In any case, how’s your inn going? I think I may pay a visit to Kystari soon.”

“Huh?” Nazhai was a bit confused by the apparent non-sequitur. “The inn is doing well and I’m having fun relaxing there, but Kystari is a long way from the sea. Isn’t it a bit out of your element?”

Victoria’s grin became almost predatory. “Perhaps, but it also has a young Tauros invited to visit, doesn’t it? Piracy isn’t all I do as Natalya Mistsworn. I haven’t yet had a good model to display my dressmaking efforts. Sailcloth isn’t all I sew, you know. Picture Madelyn Alexis and Mona in matching dresses, perhaps a pink-and-white variation of this since sweet lolita seems more suitable for them than gothic lolita….”

Nazhai smiled.