27 days remain of contest A, Tuesday.

With a crackling of electricity, I appear in the stone central courtyard of a fortress. The air is cooler here and the many NPCs who are busily moving around are dressed warmer than their counterparts at sea level in Port Yarrow. The heavy walls of the fortress reach high. I don’t have a view down, but it is obvious this is a place designed to withstand a siege. The top spire is adorned in hammered black metal, and I can see eagles fly into and out of the top—some look like they are carrying large tubes.

Morrigan leaps into the air with a wisp of ghostly essence trailing from the tombstone on my back. The familiar soars up and seems to be taking in the surroundings and keeping an eye on the eagles. A square-jawed, sinewy NPC in light cloth who had been waiting nearby steps up to us and looks me up and down.

“Welcome, regent, to Eagles Crest. My name is Simon, and I am the fortress manager.” He waves around at the NPCs. “I keep things with the personnel running smoothly here.”

Lightning cracks from the stone and Kian and Briar appear in snaps of color and crackling electricity, both nearly falling over from their first experience with fast travel.

“Damn this is cr—” Briar starts.

“Please follow me this way. Let me show you and your clan-kin the fortress controls. We will also cover fortress automation,” Simon says, walking towards the central keep. He continues, “You will also be able to set up fortress guardians, manage resources, and trade. Your defense and war effort, which includes scouts and spies, is also available.” Simon opens the large wooden doors to a hallway with arrow slits and an iron portcullis at the end. We enter and he continues, “Management can also be delegated to myself and I will work within boundaries you provide. Once per week, each Saturday, all claimed forts are up for capture. Capture is complete if the attackers overwhelm the defenders and hold the heart of the fortress at the stroke of midnight.”

At the end of the hall I can see ceiling drop holes, and past the portcullis there are movable barriers which can be used for defense. This leads to a main hall. There are stairs at each corner leading to a mezzanine which also has defensive blockades. I see that the floor has holes in it everywhere, as if I can flood it somehow from below.

“Is there a lever to flood this floor?” I ask.

“Yes, it is part of the fortress defenses. You can upgrade this defense from water to acid or even oil,” he says, watching Kian and Briar inspect the floor.

We ascend a set of stairs and continue into what I imagine is the side of the mountain. There are multiple rooms and tunnels carved from solid rock along the way. We continue up and then back out come across a large circular door. This door is odd and looks to be made of platinum with inlaid runes and has a large knob in the center.

“After you,” says Simon, allowing us to pass.

I grab the knob and turn; the door opens and inside is a room with a huge stone table and windows overlooking the fortress below. The windows have an unobstructed view of the approach to the fortress from the valley below. There is a short podium with a bookstand and an enormous book on it in one corner. In the other corner sits a podium with a large crystal ball. I look at the table and see that in the center, rectangular area are raised sections of the dark stone itself. The raised areas represent Port Yarrow and this fortress; the rest of the table is flat and smooth. This table is a map of the game world and what I have seen of it. The rest, as with the ‘fog of war,’ is not visible to me until we have scouted it or visited. The raised portions look carved directly from the stone itself.

Simon stands at attention near the door, watching me. I go to the book and see that there is a page with numbers that change while looking at them. It’s a live representation of the current state of affairs of the fortress, the amount of food, money, people, and so on, all detailed. There are also instruction pages if you flip to the back of the book. I walk to the crystal ball and with both hands reach out to grab it. My personal visual display changes to a three-dimensional display of the fortress itself. There is a dizzying array of options and menus for this fortress. I am going to need help to manage all this. I release the crystal ball and motion for Kian to look.

In one of the other corners, what I thought was a flat area appears to dip down. Looking in I see sand and rocks at the bottom. Simon interjects, “That is your guardian interface. I believe you have a coupon to provide a guardian for your fortress. If you would like to use it, place it into the slot there when you are ready.” He points to a slot in the stone surrounded by brass. I nod and continue over to look over the approach and the valley.

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“What is down there?” I ask, pointing to the valley obscured by clouds.

“Those are the plains of Yarland, and there to the left is Yarrow Pass,” he says, gesturing to a pass far down the valley with the plains. He continues, “To the right and down to the sea is Port Yarrow. You can see most of Yarland from here on a clear day.”

“Where are the other fortresses? The ones in this area, how close are they?” I ask.

“The fortress of Green Jade is in the swamp,” he points straight forward, “and is quite far away.” He stops and thinks. “However, with mounts you could cross the distance in several hours.” He points to the right of where Port Yarrow is and says, “About the same distance up the coast is The Leviathan Fortress, the one on the sea.” He stops and quickly adds, “To claim one, you must conquer its guardians’ lairs, and both fortresses are beyond your clan capability at this time.”

“Beyond our what?” Briar asks.

“They are a huge reward for a dungeon raid of twenty-four players,” Kian says. “They are wild, man. Just the three of us can’t enter alone. We have been given a crazy head start here. In a week, two tops, we are going to have to defend this place against potentially hundreds of players. This is the only conquerable fortress in this region, and maybe even the entire game right now. Nobody will be able to conquer the other fortresses for several more weeks, most likely.”

I hadn’t even thought of that; we are a juicy target sitting here in the wide open right now. Players will be pouring into Port Yarrow from the newbie zone from here on out. From activity in the chat channels another region has beaten their starter dungeon as well, which means that region warfare is coming. If our region, Yarland, is not united and we are fighting each other, then when a neighboring region is united and attacks, we will be easy to dominate. With the gold costs to fast travel, mounting a full attack would be expensive.

We need spies and scouts, we have to know what is coming.

I go back to the crystal ball and access the interface named PLATO. I check on how much spies and scouts will cost. Spies are 50 gold and scouts are 10 gold each. The fortress bank icon blinks and I see that there is 1,100 gold in it, that won’t last long. There is a note on the spies that you need to scout something first before sending a spy. I quickly purchase five scouts and I am notified they are in the courtyard awaiting instructions. I can issue instructions for each from here, so I send them out in each direction—I need to lift the fog of war. With a second thought, I purchase one spy and I task him to watch Port Yarrow and see if there is anything going on there.

I look through more of the options and see that the fortress is level one, and it can be raised to level two. It requires more resources that we have to buy, however. I have to build a stone quarry, a market, and a barracks. The cost is 250 gold. I see in the interface that inside the mountain is a stone quarry, and a market and barracks are erected in the main courtyard. Advancing the fortress level makes the walls fill in a little thicker and taller. The population increases according to Kian, who is looking at the book. The next level requires upgrades to the previous structures and a fortress guardian. There is also an option for an alchemy laboratory for 100 gold. We all have the alchemy skill and I have a multi-use skill book for it, so I figure it is a must have. I buy the laboratory and we each get a quest to level our alchemy skills.

I decide that I should select our fortress guardian now. I pull out the ticket and go to the slot. Inserting the coupon brings up an interface with a note of thanks from the devs. I look at the options and my jaw drops, I can choose among several epic guardian bosses, all of which are powerful. I can see each one is geared toward certain kinds of fortresses. My choice is among The Great Kraken, The Horned Balrog, and The Frost Dragon.

“Okay, we need to choose,” I say, and explain our options.

“Could you imagine a Kraken on top of a mountain?” Kian says.

“It’s obviously meant for the sea.” Kian says.

“I would guess that the Frost Dragon would be the one designed for this fortress. I mean, it’s cold up here,” I say.

“The Balrog could also be,” Kian quickly says.

“The dragon can fly, maybe we can ride it?” I say. Kian and Briar both get smiles on their faces.

“Dragon!” They say in unison. Dragon it is.

There is a rumble and I see in the interface that deep in the fortress, in its center, there is a pedestal of stone. The stone is the heart of the fortress and it now has a dragon named Frostcracker wrapped around it, sleeping. I check the dragon and it is a rank five epic guardian. We can sleep well at night knowing this guy is here.

I see the automation options, so I go into those menus and I almost squeal in glee. I can set a multitude of defense options and management by Simon. I can even change his demeanor and how subservient he is. I leave him at the default settings for now. I change the option so he will start getting resources for advancement and start to focus on exploration and spying first and military might and expansion second. It looks like he can handle the minor things. The larger issues he defers to the regent of the fortress, me.

There is also a greyed-out section for affinity, which looks like we can gain elemental affinities, or even mental or magical ones. There is a scripting section with default scripts for us players when we are logged out. I can set myself up with a script to do certain actions if we are attacked. Things like summoning clan members or resurrecting dead NPCs. It claims that if you learn the scripting language, you could do a pretty impressive series of actions. Another section is for allies and trading partners, where most everything can be managed by Simon or a designated clan member. I add Kian to the designated clan member list and step away.

“Oh really?” He laughs as he gets the notification.

I go look at the book to check the help section. I read about fortress guardians and the aspected affinities. Wait, we need to attract more guardians? We can have up to five guardians—one main guardian and four guardians who are lower rank. So, I have a rank five and I can have four rank four guardians as well. Additional guardians are only available from specific quests which will become available as the fortress levels up. This is going to be a bit of grind.

The quests for the new guardians and resources are posted in the courtyard inn. The inn is where we are expected to log out, as we will gain rested buffs when we log back in. We can have real-life notifications to our standard VR goggles when there is something of note happening at the fortress.

Morrigan flies into the room and lands on the table; she hops around and pecks at Port Yarrow. I see the fog of war beginning to lift from the table map as the scouts set out.