Arc 2 - Operation Reunion.

The next three days passed without significant incident. For the first time since he had logged in, Tantalus felt like he could stop and take a breath.

Immediately upon arriving back at the West Gate, Tantalus dispersed the spoils of Operation Eastern Front. One M1 Garand and five en bloc clips were gifted to FullDan, GatorKing, and Redgrave. Tantalus naturally held on to the last remaining Garand rifle.

Now that they had returned from Operation Eastern Front, Tantalus found that his fame had only increased. By the end of day on November 2nd, 2035, every Revenant in Osiris had heard the story of how five soldiers killed a hundred Deluvians without taking any casualties. As the story traveled down the grapevine, retellings actually began to become more realistic. Most people wouldn’t believe that Strike Team One had actually achieved what they claimed.

Mozaic’s video quickly became widely disseminated throughout the City. It provided proof that the Garands had actually been acquired by Strike Team One while they were out in the field. In hindsight, Tantalus realized that the recording was a good idea. It provided the only evidence beyond the Garands and the testimony of those present that they had actually achieved what they said.

A few hours after arriving back at the West Gate, Tantalus gave his looted wand to Riemann for investigation. The only thing either of them could immediately glean from the wand was that it was engraved with dozens of lines of text and that the wand was used to empower spellcasting in some way. The text was written in Iron Script. They would need to actually learn how to read Iron Script before they could make significant headway.

In the evening of Day Two, they held a wake for the Revenants who had fallen during the attack on the first day. Tantalus attended the wake. He placed a hand upon the open coffins of Dendrite and Enzo as he walked past them. They laid there, completely inert, still dressed in the clothes they had died in.

Tantalus also attended the funeral in the evening of November 3rd, 2035. A Methodist pastor oversaw the funeral. Ashcroft and Tantalus, alongside some of the relatives of the deceased, delivered speeches during the funeral. Ashcroft said that they would take revenge on GM, and Tantalus promised that the soldiers of Osiris would not be caught unprepared ever again.

It was distasteful, Tantalus thought. He would have preferred not to turn the deaths of Enzo, Dendrite, and a dozen others into a political tool, but it was necessary. The Revenants needed a reminder of what would await them if they did not resist GM.

Over the next two days, the Revenants of Osiris fell into something of a routine. Tantalus, for example, had a strict schedule. From 4:00 AM to 12:00 PM, he guarded the West Gate and trained Squads T1 and T2. From 12:00 PM to 8:00 PM, he sat at his desk and oversaw preparations for the assault. From 8:00 PM to 4:00 AM, he slept.

Nothing of notable significance happened during training. Tantalus taught his and Pixie’s squads the basics of shooting, squad formations, and wordless communication. They only had two days before they would be pulled into a significant battle, so they could not prepare their soldiers to the level Tantalus would have preferred. By the end of the two days of training, Tantalus figured that they had all at least reached the level of skill one would see in a D-rank player of Ninth Oasis. Two of the new players, Elias and Mirage, could probably be considered C-rank by the end of training. Tantalus was ultimately happy with how the training went. Elias complained most of the time, but he always did what he was told.

Most of Tantalus’s grief during those two days was caused by his work as a strategic officer. Within seventy-two hours of the game’s start, four Revenants had come to dominate the upper hierarchy of Osiris: Ashcroft, Mander, Cordelia, and Tantalus. This naturally meant that those four were forced to take on a significant amount of extra work. In addition to commanding their own forces, these four were saddled with other responsibilities.

Mander was put in charge of R&D, Ashcroft was put in charge of training the militia, Cordelia was made a liaison to the noncombatant players, and Tantalus was made a liaison to the NPC government. This meant that Tantalus spent a lot of time within the Ducal Palace speaking to a bunch of nobles.

Tantalus spent a significant amount of time explaining modern military strategy to a group of people whose understanding of military strategy was still stuck in the Medieval era. Most of the Captain of the West Gate’s advice went in one ear and came out the other. Tantalus said the sentence, “We should engage at long range, if possible,” a dozen times to a dozen different nobles before they started to get the concept.

It was amazing, Tantalus thought. They literally didn’t understand the concept of cover. The NPCs didn’t use projectile weapons beyond a thrown rock, so they didn’t understand the mechanics of ranged combat. He literally had to demonstrate to General Dogwood, the highest-ranking military officer in Osiris, how bullet trajectories worked. Squad T1 set up two paper targets a hundred feet beyond the West Gate, one mostly in cover and one out in the open. Tantalus then fired ten shots at each target. It was only when the General saw the number of holes in each paper target that the concept of cover really clicked.

Despite the enemies that Tantalus was no-doubt making, he was soon granted the position of Chief Strategic Officer of the Osirian Revenant Division (CSO-ORD). It was Tantalus’s understanding that this was the highest position that an “irregular” soldier could hold.

Tantalus also had to organize the Greycloaks. Within forty-eight hours of the Duke making his threat, the number of soldiers under Tantalus's command had ballooned to over two hundred. All of these new additions were noncombatants or, as they were described on official documents, “support” soldiers.

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Tantalus created a system for the support soldiers to indicate the level of danger to which they would be subjected. Some spots among the support soldiers would have a “yellow” danger level, and others would have a “green” danger level. Yellow danger level soldiers were noncombatants who would still travel with the Tantalus and the Forward Operating Base (FOB), while green danger level soldiers were noncombatants who would stay within the nearest settlement whenever possible.

The support soldiers were put into various departments, and Tantalus placed various players in charge of those departments.

Eska, one of the women from Prometheus, Inc., was placed at the head of the Personnel Department. She was officially named Tantalus’s Chief of Staff, and she was put in charge of dealing with interpersonal disputes between the soldiers of Tango Company (the official designation of the Greycloaks). Tantalus gave her wide-ranging authority on matters of personnel, mostly because he didn’t want to deal with such things. As such, Eska came to hold a significant amount of power within the Greycloaks. Her danger level was yellow.

Cadmium was put in charge of the R&D Department. He primarily worked with Mander on the mass-production of the Garand. This job was quickly shelved, however. Mander and the R&D Department soon realized that this job could not be completed before the Duke’s Assault, so they instead began working on the mass-production of ammunition. They were able to create a thousand cartridges of .30-06 before the assault began. His danger level was green.

Kuro was put in charge of the Logistics Department. He and about forty other Revenants were tasked with delivering and maintaining the equipment required to prosecute a war. Tantalus himself viewed the Logistics Department as the most important of the support departments, and he would take significant efforts to make sure that the supply lines would be protected. Before the assault, Kuro’s primary job was preparing the vehicles which would be used to transport the guns and ammunition. His danger level was yellow.

On November 5th, 2035, Tantalus sat back in his chair and inspected his character sheet.

Character Sheet

Name Tantalus45 Level 13 Blood Points 130/130 Mana Points 38/38 Race Revenant Fortitude 13 Strength 13 Agility 15 Wisdom 14

Attribute Modifiers: Strength Training (3), Mana Training (12)

Talents Dead Magic (s) Holy Blood Rapid Healing

Traditions Known: Source Magic, Elemental Magic

Source Elemental Create Object Earth Pillar Lift Object Fire Bolt Shield Fog Cloud Freeze Lightning Bolt Wind Knife Wind Wall

Over several days of regimented training, the number on Tantalus’s character sheet had gone up significantly. His level now sat at a healthy 13, and his Strength had also gone up as a result of significant physical exercise. However, Tantalus was much prouder of the skill he had gained in magic. He had seen Riemann cast every elementary-level elemental spell, and he had integrated it into his move set.

After the battle outside the walls, Tantalus's Menu had changed to include Source Magic. His spell list had changed to include the Shield spell. Tantalus quickly realized that this Shield spell must have been the same spell that the Wendigo had used in its fight with FullDan, Mozaic, Ashcroft, and himself. Tantalus had copied the hand seals and the chant used by the Wendigo, and he had been able to mimic its spell by visualizing a barrier surrounding his body.

Some of the professors at Mandelbrot U were able to answer Tantalus's question, "What is Source Magic?"

These professors said that Source Magic was essentially magic that utilized the fundamental building blocks of reality. Such things as gravity manipulation and altering reality at the atomic level. It should have been impossible for someone to cast Source Magic without having a strong grasp on the base material of reality, they said. It would usually take someone months before they could even begin to cast Source Magic, apparently. Tantalus figured the "fundamental building blocks" they were talking about were space-time and quantum particles or the lines of code that GM used to run the game.

Back in the present, Tantalus looked down at the ever-larger stack of paper that had accumulated upon his desk. By then, he could read Iron Script, but he would frequently need to reference his cipher for less frequently used letters like “z” or “v.”

As he sat in his office staring at the ceiling and holding an unlit cigarette between his fingers, he had a thought. The preparation was done. All that was left was the fighting and dying. Of himself and the other veterans of Ninth Oasis, Tantalus was not worried in the slightest. He was, however, worried for the new recruits. They would certainly run into enemies while they were out, and some would certainly die. Tantalus’s thought was simple:

How many people will die during this assault?