"Okay Cletus, spill on the Power and Skill Orb stuff, what are these?"
"Cletus flipped out his tome and scanned some pages. Not a ton I can tell you right now, this is something they want you to figure out on your own. But I can tell you a couple of things. First, it costs one power to equip an orb. Level two is early to get one so I would certainly equip it."
"What does a Leadership Skill Orb of Goblin do? And is there a limit to the number of orbs I can equip?"
"For now you have two slots of each of the four orb types..."
"Which are?"
"Hmm, I can tell you about two of the types now. The first is personal, which will affect only you. The second is Leadership. This will affect you if you are alone or the whole group if you are leading a party. As to what this orb does, you will need to experiment to find out."
"What is the other thing you can tell me?"
"Oh, almost forgot, Orbs have two powers each. One that is basic and one that is less obvious and that has both up and down sides to it. So something like plus 5% on attacks and a weakness to cold."
"How is a weakness to cold ever an advantage?" Lance asked.
"Aah, that is the trick, you can often apply these things creatively"
"So if I equip this orb can I unequip it later if I want?"
"Yes," Cletus replied, "but it will cost you Power to remove it. Three to be exact."
"So does Power have another use besides equipping and removing orbs?"
"Sure, it makes you more powerful." The little raccoon said with a sparkle in his eye.
Lance glared at his guide.
"Yeah, each one adds one attack and defense percent up to a max of 30 percent."
Lance equipped the Orb but felt no different after doing so. Shrugging he got up and moved to the bend in the canyon, enabled sneak, and peered around the corner. Nothing moved that he could see in the small camp or in the area beyond. He breathed a sigh of relief.
As he turned around he felt a sharp stab in his leg, not really pain, but definitely uncomfortable. Looking down he noticed that there were three goblins who had been caught in his trap; one of them was still alive and had just stabbed him in the leg. The goblin had been seared badly by the trap’s flames but was not dead. He quickly dispatched it.
As he moved back up the canyon to loot the Sergeant, he mentally moved his available attributes over to wisdom, sharpening his perception, and searched the larger creature. He did not want to take the time to remove all of its armor, but he touched the shield and sword and willed them into his inventory. He grabbed a small pouch attached to its hip, plunked it in inventory next to the other stuff, and then noticed a faint glow on the goblin’s belt. He deftly removed this and moved it to his inventory as well.
Moving quickly to the other three goblins he rifled through their belongings, finding 13 copper pieces, three goblin short swords, and a mishmash of useless pieces of clothing.
He slunk down the canyon and looked over the camp. There were four bedrolls laid out around a central fire pit and a small tent next to them. He went through the bedrolls, finding nothing, and then carefully slid open the tent flap. Inside the tent, he found a bedroll, a small chest, and a map. He grabbed the chest and map and put them into inventory as well.
"Ooh, a map", Cletus cooed. "I will overlay this." You can view your map by thinking about it.
Lance thought map and an image of the local landscape popped into his vision. He could see a crudely drawn map overlaying a near photo-realistic one of his immediate surroundings. At the back of the canyon, a large X had been drawn where the rock was; he guessed this was some sort of a treasure map to the ring he had found. As he zoomed out, the rough map seemed to indicate he was in a large valley surrounded by cliffs. In the middle of the valley was a forest and on the northeast side of that, a small town was drawn. Symbols indicating danger and death surrounded the town, but Lance figured that was drawn from a goblin’s perspective, not a human’s.
Lance slipped out of the tent and checked his stats. His health and stamina were both very low.
"How do I heal, Cletus?"
"Normally you would cast a spell given to you by your god, but you chose not to be able to do that. The other way takes a lot longer: pump up your constitution and sit down for a while eating some food."
Silent frustration filled Lance, he felt cheated. He moved all of his free attribute points over to constitution but did not sit. He knew that whatever the goblin sergeant had been waiting for must be coming still so he quietly slipped out of the camp with his sneak ability turned on. About halfway to the cover of the woods sneak failed, having run out of stamina. His pace was also slowed to a walk as well.
As Lance finally moved into the cover of the forest, he felt as if there was something distant that was oppressing him, it felt like a very heavy weight pushing on him from somewhere to the south. He decided to wait for a moment to see if he could learn anything and hid behind a large bush next to a tree. He found a good spot to rest and view both the camp and entrance to the valley while remaining concealed.
What is that feeling, Cletus? Lance thought at his assistant.
Cletus flipped open his book and pretended to be looking for something. Lance knew this was unnecessary, but did not mind a little showmanship. That feeling of oppression? That is the feeling you get when you should run away. This means an opposing creature or player with a much higher level than you are in the area.
Thanks, Cletus, Lance replied.
So, are you going to run away? Cletus asked.
Nope, I am hidden and the valley is a good way off. Figure I am safe here.
You likely are, but whatever is coming is a big bad for sure. Get ready to run if you need to.
Lance sat silently, watching his stamina and health climb.
While he waited, he opened his HUD and pulled up the notification regarding a new skill.
Hey Cletus, will I get new skills every time I level?
Nope, His assistant replied, They use Fibonacci numbers, something about adding the last two levels together. Ends up being you get new skills at 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on.
Selecting the notification brought up a new screen:
[You may choose one of the following skills.]
[1. Climb - Scale walls and cliffs significantly easier.]
Lance had wondered if he would be offered this skill and felt like it would give him a lot of increased utility. A solid choice no matter what else was offered.
[2. Backstab - Attack an opponent from behind while using sneak for significantly greater damage.]
Again this felt like a standard skill but a powerful one. His concern was that it did not give any details on what “significantly higher damage” meant. Lance was also not sure he wanted to build his character in that direction.
[3. Martial Dagger - Integrate the ability to use your dagger into your martial arts ability.]
Lance could see a lot of possibilities here and it felt as if the system was giving a nod toward his earned martial arts ability. If he could cut an opponent while he was throwing or grappling, he could nearly double his damage output while using martial arts. He wondered if there was any real value here for him since while earning his black belt, he had already studied how to integrate weapons into many of the attacks he knew.
[4. Speed Trap - Select a trap type and a trigger before a battle and then rapidly create small traps during battle.]
When Lance saw this fourth choice, his mind began to race. The ability to rapidly set traps during a battle could be a game changer.
He considered each of the options a second time, but in the end, he could not see a better option.
[Congratulations, you have learned the skill Speed Trap.]
Lance seemed to instinctively know how to use the skill and, so he would be prepared, set his Speed Trap to earth damage triggered by any enemy in the area.
After a few minutes, he noticed what looked like a disturbance in the air but on closer examination realized that it had a tag over its head.
Lance noticed that his stamina was maxed out and enabled Sneak. The moment he did, Borgakh's head whipped around and scanned the forest edge in his direction. Lance froze. Eventually, she turned her focus back toward the camp and dismounted. She looked small riding her elephant, but when she was dismounted it was clear that she was huge. Lance did not know how large orcs were supposed to be but if they were all as big as her he knew he was in trouble.
Borgakh walked up to the upset wraith and began a discussion. The wraith seemed to bow to the orc again and again as if it were apologizing. Borgakh walked into the canyon and emerged a minute later clearly angry. The priestess looked at the wraith again, pointing to the ground as if to say wait here.
Lance did not wait a moment longer, he backed away deeper into the woods as silently as he could and then turned and moved quickly away from the area.
After some time, Lance thought it strange that Cletus had not commented on this interaction, "I thought you would offer more commentary as I am playing."
"Early versions of me were considerably more vocal, but many of the beta testers didn't like it and they had to tone it down. There is a setting for this in your HUD. If you want more spice I can certainly bring it." Cletus winked at Lance and smiled.
Stolen novel; please report.
"Thanks, maybe later."
Cletus put a little pout on his face.
"No, I don’t mean it like that. I appreciate you and you have been very helpful." That seemed to satisfy Cletus so Lance let it drop.
After a while, Lance had another question, "Cletus, can I learn to wield a sword?"
"Right now you could swing it around but you would not do much damage. Fighters and Thieves get new weapons at levels 5, 10, and 15, if you chose a sword then you would suddenly be a lot better and learn a lot faster. It is possible to learn on your own, but it takes massive amounts of time, more like learning in the real world."
**********
Walking through the forest was turning out to be quite a pleasant experience. The trees were a beautiful mix of pine and oak with occasional clearings filled with long grass with ferns at the edges. The sharp smell of the pine mixed with various wild flowers to form a glorious aroma that felt healthy and exciting. When Lance could no longer feel the oppression he found a warm spot in the sun on the edge of a clearing, sat down, pulled a biscuit out of his inventory, and began to eat. His health and stamina bars began to slowly rise.
He figured this would take a minute, so he took the time to investigate his HUD in more detail. He appreciated that when it was visible he could still see through it and found a setting to change the opacity. He also found and enabled a setting to delay all messages until after a battle was complete, which he felt was a good choice since he had been distracted by messages already. He also looked at the numbers behind the three status bars. His health was 12 out of 23 and his stamina was 20 out of 53. Both health and stamina were rising at a point or two per minute. There was a third stat called mana which was currently 0 out of 0. He was certain this was the stat that allowed you to cast spells. "Hey, Cletus! Mana lets you do magicky stuff, right?"
"You got it." Was the reply from the raccoon hovering near his right shoulder.
He found the option to return to his offline home and thought for a moment. "Cletus, if I go back to my offline home what happens to me in this world?"
"No stats like health or stamina will recover. Basically, your body will disappear from the game until you decide to return. When you do you will be in approximately the same place."
Lance pulled up his map and zoomed out until he could see everything from the canyon to the town on the goblin’s map. He had made good progress and was maybe half an hour away if he kept moving at a solid pace.
It took nearly half an hour before his health and stamina were both maxed and then he continued his hike. While the map was far from perfect the distances were pretty good and Lance arrived safely at the outskirts of the town a little later.
**********
As Lance drew near to the town, the feeling of dread increased steadily causing him to wonder if he was heading the wrong way and should have heeded the warnings of the goblin map. As he crested a final ridge he could see a bunch of humans, maybe a village worth, all bunched together on the eastern edge of the small town. Just beyond them the orc priestess, Borgakh, whom he had seen at a distance earlier was again the source of dread. She sat atop her Elephant and seemed to be considering something. Lance ran the rest of the way into town and joined the crowd in front of her.
"It is hard to believe" She was saying, "that so few humans have shown up to play. My orc horde grows and you pitiful pinked-skinned wimps just trickle in."
Lance considered what she was saying. From what he had studied before entering the game, all prison inmates played as Orcs and would be a permanent fixture once they were in as they had no choice to leave. Several state prison systems had a contract with Fantasy Mainline and their inmates would just continue to pour in. Humans came from free people who had a choice. While pre-release excitement had run very high, once word had gotten out that it may well be a one-way ticket for paying customers too, the interest had waned. This meant that there would certainly be a lot more orcs than humans in the game. The humans could expect to find allies in the dwarves who had come in through the Veteran's Administration and the elves who were welfare recipients from various agencies. Getting them to come and defend the humans may be a hard sell.
"Do you boys know what the difference in numbers means?" Borgakh said flatly looking around.
No one responded.
She sighed, "It will be a lot less fun crushing you with my horde."
"What?" A man with blonde hair wearing a cloth apron said. "But that's not fair."
Borgakh spun on the speaker, "Fair, who said anything about being fair." She laughed uproariously, "It is going to be my delight to crush you, to destroy your town. And when you decide to rebuild I will come with my friends just as you are almost ready to reopen and I will crush you again." She looked off into the distance to the North."The temple will take a little more time, but eventually, I and my boys will tear that down too. Stone by stone we will erase all evidence of Jearian from this valley." She turned and urged her mount forward and then swiveled back one more time. With a salacious wink, she cooed, "See ya soon boys."
The crowd of humans, mostly level 2 or 3, stood there agape watching as the level 12 priestess lumbered away on her elephant. Soon the dejected crowd began returning to town in small groups or singly, some with heads bowed, others shaking their fists in impotent rage.
This stirred something in Lance, he understood that the Artificial Intelligence for NPCs like Borgakh was supposed to be off the hook, but this seemed out of balance like the game was broken. Games like this were supposedly hard to balance so that all of the players had an equal chance, but this seemed completely messed up. He shook his head as he headed into town. Someone should fix this.
**********
As Lance walked toward town he noticed that while everything looked extremely real, there was something missing or wrong. He figured out what was missing as he was entering the village which the system usefully identified.
There was no trash, filth, or unkempt soil here. It felt like the game was hiding something. Monty Python's peasants would have despised this place.
Looking up he got his first good look at another player, a tall and rather strong-looking woman in chainmail armor. Considering her level, she must have gotten into the game before him. The plate above her head read,
"Jearian, is that her god?"
"Yup, Jearian is the God of Men, Neutral Good alignment. Basically, he is the ‘be nice to people but do whatever you like’ god. Jearian doesn’t ask much of his followers but also does not offer that much either. Basic healing spells as you progress and some solid mapping spells. Of course, his followers can go to his temple for daily blessings."
Traville was a very small town, it looked more like a village to Lance, but if the game called it a town; Who was he to complain? It had a short main street with a few inns and businesses surrounded by a grouping of houses with a market at the east end of the street and a temple area just north of town. It looked to Lance as if one of the vendors was finishing cleaning some sort of a spill. Many of the homes had small fenced areas with sheep or goats; some seemed to have workshops attached. Lance noticed a smithy and walked over to speak to the proprietor, who he was surprised to see was a player,
Dorian was a rotund man but well-muscled. Shoulder-length brown hair framed a middle-aged face. He looked up from his work at the anvil and greeted Lance as he walked up, "Howdy friend, how can I help you?"
"Hey Dorian, what did you think of that?" Lance motioned his head in the direction Borgakh had gone.
"Kind of depressing actually. I want to be a smith, to learn how to craft amazing items, to serve my fellow humans by making them more well-prepared. But this threat..." He shook his head, "This is existential, I struggle to think of something worse. It's like the game is broken or something."
Lance nodded his head, "Something needs to be done, this is evil." Lance shook himself, "In any case, I would love to see what you have for sale and maybe work out a trade from what I have found so far. But first how in the world did you get the role of a smith?"
"Aah, I am not the official smith, but as soon as I got here I talked to the NPC smith about apprenticing under him and he agreed to take me on."
"Wow, that's cool, this game really is amazing."
"That it is friend, that it is.", Dorian smiled and a trade window popped up.
On the right side, a scrollable window popped up containing a number of items.
"Nice thing about this interface is that little switch up at the top of the window," Dorian said.
Lance looked away from the items and quickly found the switch, "Show only usable items."
"Nice.", Lance turned the switch on and the list was reduced to a total of three items.
> Iron Dagger x 3 - 8 cp
>
> Iron Caltrops x 2- 14 cp
>
> Steel Dagger - 1 sp
"Cletus, how many coppers are in a silver, etc."
Cletus flipped open his book and intoned, "100 coppers in a silver, 100 silvers in a gold, 100 golds in a platinum, 100 platinums in an electrum."
He took a look at his own inventory. He had forgotten about the pouch and chest. He would have to look at them later. He moved the four short swords over to his side of the trade window and asked Dorian what they were worth. A total of six coppers for the lot was the answer. "That seems a little low," Lance responded.
Dorian sighed and pointed to a pile of daggers and swords that were all similar to the ones he was seeking to trade sitting in a corner of his workshop. "I am planning on melting them down for iron, that is their only value. Normally I would figure I could stock up on items, but with the future so uncertain." He shrugged.
Lance moved the shield over and asked again.
Dorian looked with more interest. "I can give you 15 coppers for that."
Lance moved the short sword over.
Dorian held his hand out, "Let me see that."
Lance summoned the sword into his hand flipped it in the air, caught it carefully by the blade, and handed it hilt first to Dorian. The smith looked the weapon up and down, turning it in his hand.
"This is very fine craftsmanship." Dorian’s head snapped up, "Where did you find this?"
"My starting area had a goblin sergeant, this was his weapon."
Dorian shook his head, "This is a weapon worthy of level twenty at least, what was the goblin, level four?
"Three actually."
Dorian shook his head again, "Nothing magical at all here that I can perceive but this thing seems to just radiate power. Finest work that I have ever held. Doesn’t make sense that a goblin sergeant would be carrying this." Dorian paused for a moment and then said, "I can’t afford this," he handed the sword back to Lance, hilt first.
Lance considered for a moment. And then opened the pouch that he had found on the same goblin. Upon opening, the pouch contained 5 silver, 63 copper, and one dull agate. Lance pulled up his inventory page and noticed a list of coins and gems at the bottom of the display he had 5 silvers and 79 coppers and the agate to his name. He pulled the two caltrop sets and the steel dagger into the trade window and added 1 silver and 5 copper pieces and confirmed the trade, Dorian also confirmed from his side and the items and coin disappeared from his inventory replaced by the items he had purchased.
"Speaking of enchantments, who around here can identify items?"
"Well", the smith replied, "I can take a look. If there is something I can’t figure out for you, I can tell you where to go. No charge for a little help."
"Well, first things first." Lance lifted one of his booted feet up, "What can you tell me about these."
Dorian looked at the boots for a moment before breaking out in a belly laugh. "I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but the dev who coded those was having far too much fun."
Lance smiled back, "No problem, but can you let me in on the joke?"
"They are called the Boots of Fit Bitty", Dorian began giggling again and finally spurted out, "The user must achieve ten thousand steps each day or a mild electric shock will be administered. The curse is broken after 100,000 steps." Dorian broke down completely, "These are a unique item, what a find."
Lance broke out in laughter too, what a strange thing to experience in an immersive game. Lance looked again at his boots and was able to see all of the information that Dorian had shared with him, he also noted that he was already over seven thousand steps for the day.
"How did you identify that item by the way?" Lance asked.
"When I was taken as an apprentice that was one of the perks I gained. I can identify armor and weapons up to a given level right now. Not sure how to quantify that, but I just try to identify them, and either it works or not. The master smith who is apprenticing me droned on for a while about various things, but one of the bits I caught was that at level 5 I will be able to take on a profession and leave my class behind. He says I am useful to him now, but after that, he says I will move much faster in my skill and actually progress my character through my crafting." Dorian looked excited about this.
Lance pulled the belt out of his inventory and handed it over to Dorian.
Dorian's eyebrows raised, "You had a rich starting area for sure." Then his brow furrowed as he focused on the belt. He continued to look at it for several seconds and then handed it back to Lance. "No can do compadre. This one is beyond me." His eyes darted up above Lance’s head and then back to look at Lance. "No god, are you a Crescent or a Cross?"
"Why do you ask that?", responded Lance, but he thought he knew the answer already.
"Those are the only two groups who refuse to take a god that I know of, but I am guessing most will end up giving in eventually."
"I’m a Cross and I am going to suffer through whatever it takes."
Dorian nodded, "Then I don’t think you are going to like what I have to say. There are three mages who have a small shop at the edge of town. They can certainly help you with the belt, but you may not want to. That place gives even me the creeps."
"Thanks", Lance said as he turned to leave but then thought better of it and turned back around, "This place looks kind of empty, I thought it would be bustling on launch day."
"Yeah." Dorian said, "Apparently some of the beta testers who were Crescents went out and started a rumor claiming that people couldn't control their bodies anymore after leaving the game. I think that they are just pissed about the god thing myself. People are saying that players are not signing up as expected, but once the truth comes out we should see a rush. But I don't plan on ever logging out so..." He shrugged.
"Last question, have you met any other crosses yet?"
"There was an elvish mage here a few minutes ago. Name was... Flashy or something like that. He asked for where he could get some ale, so I pointed him over to the Bird and the Baby." Dorian pointed to an inn just across the street.
Lance gave Dorian a smile and a wave and headed to the inn.