(Virtual Room in NERV HQ)
“YES!”
Isaac was not alone in cheering as the virtual report from Ziunov began playing across the galactic networks in game. It had taken a little bit of work to arrange things with the main game AI, but he’d managed to get one of CNN’s main Ihm Imperium correspondents to get out to the border, intending to report on the tragic crash of a freighter, and doing a feel-good piece about strengthening FTL safeguards to prevent something like this from happening in the future, putting him in the right place at the right time to report on the news coming out of the southern continent and send it to the galaxy.
Turning to one of the technicians, he said, “How are the metrics looking? Is it getting visibility on the populated worlds?”
“Yes, the translation of the Latin text has caused several high-level members of various governments to call emergency meetings. They’re managing to keep the people calm so far, as this was an isolated incident on a remote planet.”
“Good, just as intended, then.” Isaac turned to the tech who was focused on the forums. “How are the players taking the news?”
“Between the CNN report and the message posted to the forums, they’re going wild. The first actual dungeon in game is something they’ve been waiting for, and the Ihm players are excited. They’ll probably be flooding the place as soon as a base camp can be established by the entrance to the dungeon.”
“What are we rating the difficulty as? I don’t want elites just steamrolling the place.”
“Mid-level difficulty for experienced teams, high-level difficulty for solo players due to numbers and variety of enemies. Instances are in place, so no more than six people in an instance.”
“In-game reason why the discoverers only lost two, compared to the Nomads going in who will be losing more?”
“Dungeon was not fully set up yet, so they were able to storm the base before all the mobs had spawned and the traps were set. Later groups will get the same basic layout, but the difficulty will be as intended.”
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Isaac nodded. “Excellent. And the players have been informed that this is merely the first dungeon discovered, and more are out there, yes?”
“Yes, but the information is propagating slower than we projected in the Free Worlds Alliance and Confederacy. Local events are causing competition for space in news cycles, both in game and on the forums.”
Isaac looked like he had been personally attacked. “What the hell is competing with my dungeon rollout? Don’t tell me some damn fool found the X’thari Gateway address and invited them in!”
Morgan laughed as she walked into the virtual room. “You ought to know that by now, Isaac. No good deed goes unpunished, it seems. The Black Star Company has been dealing with quite a few attacks since they helped beat off the X’thari attack on Nuevo Edo.”
Isaac took a deep breath. “So he didn’t go and invite the X’thari into Known Space?” Morgan shook her head, and Isaac sighed. “Fine, fine. I can handle it. What did he do now that kicked my carefully planned masterstroke off the news cycles?”
“Well, first you should know that his tactic of ‘making examples of people so that everyone else is too scared to move against him’ has been working wonders so far. Our analysts say he probably prevented about sixty-three percent of the potential attacks just through his actions against the pirates who attacked his people and the groups that tacitly supported them in the Badlands. He’s also worked well with those people who have treated him with respect, and that’s kept other groups from joining in. The syndicates on Dimiya refused outright to attack him, or let their people attack, and the military also refused, unless they got written orders signed by the President, since attacking immortals with WMDs is a really stupid idea in their book, especially when there’s no security need for hitting them.”
“So who was after him?”
“Senators and business interests. They were upset that the Civil War ended before they could drag the Confederacy into it and get some spoils, and then he went and made Nuevo Edo a free port on top of that, preventing them from establishing a controlling presence in the other arm of the galaxy.”
“And Black Star isn’t one of the companies that responds to ‘normal’ tactics. Got it.”
“Yeah, so when they convinced the Kul’tirans to send their ‘mercenaries’ after his ship, he blasted two ships to dust, captured the fragment of the one that was left, and ransomed the crew, including the daughter of the leader of Kul’tiras, for north of four million credits, plus what he sold the scrap for. THEN, he went back to Dimiya and publicly seduced a Senator, before apparently taking her place at a meeting of the conspirators and killing them all. By the way, he’s still playing the shapechanging thing as a ‘unique psy power’.”
Isaac humphed in disgust. “Fine, I guess the fallout from all of that is almost equal to my dungeon rollout. But only because it is local news!”
“Yes, yes.”
“So, our boy solved one crisis by making a bigger one, and we’ve given the players something to take their minds off Black Star for a while as they start exploring looking for dungeons. We’ve announced that First Clears of a newly discovered dungeon will get enhanced loot, so that will convince people to go looking.”
“That about sums it up.”
“Good, good. Well, it is five o’clock, so I think this deserves a night leaving early. Want to go check out that new movie that just came out?”
“I already bought us tickets.”
“I swear, you are the perfect woman.”
“And don’t you forget it!”
The two of them politely ignored the sounds of giggling and mock gagging from the technicians in the room watching their ‘moment’.