The throne room of Louis XIII, King of France, was ornate. Gilt and bright colors were everywhere, predominantly gold and red. A throne sat atop a two-step dais, with tall golden candle-holders on either side of it casting light. Barely-clad nymphs adored the candle holders. A huge crystal chandelier hung over our heads. The floor was inlaid, polished wood.
The courtiers around the room whispered amongst each other, hiding their expressions behind silk fans or manicured hands. The women were extravagant. Rich, sumptuous skirts billowed out past their waists and fell to the floor in heaps of ruffles, like the layers of a wedding cake. Hair piled two feet or more atop their heads and decorated with flowers, jewels, even live birds, or a small mouse. The men's fashions were no less magnificent. Men and women both wore full faces of makeup.
And here, down the center of the room, came striding a man in rich red robes. His cardinal's hat atop his head, the infamous Richelieu, accompanied by his loyal guards, approached the throne of King Louis and his queen. The cardinal extended one hand as the king turned to his loyal musketeers with a frown.
"Your majesty has placed your faith in the wrong persons for the last time," the cardinal exclaimed. "I hold here a decree of excommunication upon you and all the realm." A gasp fell over the court.
"Repent, your majesty. Confess, receive absolution, and I myself shall tear up this decree this very moment," the cardinal said.
"It is you who must repent," the king declared in an outrageously French accent. “You serve me, Richelieu. You serve France! You are not king here, I am!”
The court of Versailles looked from one powerful man to the other, whispers growing as the standoff continued. How would this end?
[Choose a side,] the system boomed. [Will you assist Cardinal Richelieu in reigning in the Sun King's decadence, or will you side with Louis and the musketeers and bring an end to the cardinal's reign of terror?]
Hey, Sage commented in chat, wasn't the reign of terror a French Revolution thing? That was not this guy, was it? Someone else with an R?
No. The system's mixing up a bunch of different things here. This Louis isn’t the Sun King, that was a different Louis, I said. This is Three Musketeers, not real history. Anyway, good job. I guess you were paying attention in world history in fifth grade.
I'm doing a correspondence class, Shad. Grandpa and Colonel Ames set it up for me. I want to be able to get my high school diploma, after all.
Why?
Because if you didn't drop out of high school, neither am I, Sage replied. Now, hush. I want to hear what happens next.
[If you chose to side with Cardinal Richelieu, you will cleanse France of the decadence which has affected her like gangrene, defeat the guileless musketeers, destroy the Queen's influence, and have Louis confined to his quarters until the Cardinal has managed to teach him humility and reason.
If you chose to side with Louis, the Sun King. You must defeat Cardinal Richelieu and his army of Swiss Guards.]
That's not right, Sage complained as the black-clad men with Cardinal Richelieu discarded their outer layer to reveal striped yellow, red and blue uniforms beneath. They weren't carrying halberds a minute ago. Anyway, shouldn't the Swiss Guards be in Switzerland?
Vatican. They're Papal Guards, Grandpa threw in. Didn't your European History correspondence class cover that? 1527 ringing any bells?
[Cardinal Richelieu will be assisted by the Swiss Guards and his own personal coterie of devoted monks. You must slay all his guards and force the Cardinal to surrender in order to claim victory here.]
We held our breath, waiting to hear what would be chosen, and then the system proclaimed, [Death to Cardinal Richelieu and an everlasting dawn for France. Vive la France!]
Get ready, I don’t see the other team yet but the encounter’s starting, I told my people. The courtiers turned and ran screaming from the room as another group of men appeared from the side. These were dressed in dark robes and suspiciously short. Sure enough, when I targeted them, my Inspect revealed that the so-called monks were actually kobold NPCs in monks' robes.
I sent a message to the main chat: It's Cardinal Richelieu. Sounds like there are going to be more Swiss Guards and monks, so prepare.
The Cardinal marched forward toward the king, who cowered back into his chair. Queen Anne rose and pointed one shaking finger at the Cardinal. "You have betrayed us. This infamy will not stand."
Cardinal Richelieu launched into his monologue, declaring all the flaws of the King of France and his court, most of which were probably true. He accused Louis of sullying the memory of the noble King, Saint Louis IX, the greatest and most pious king to ever rule France. This Louis had consorted with mistresses, indulging in revels and frivolity while his subjects bent their necks under cruel taxes. Apparently. Seemed like normal king business to me, but the Cardinal was really bent out of shape over it.
As the Cardinal monologued, his guards and monks spread out around the room in two circles. I kept my eyes open.
They’re here somewhere, I said in chat. We know it. The monologue didn’t start until someone made a choice.
Here they come, Grandpa warned, and a bunch of orcs strode in, swaggering in their chainmail space leotards. This particular group wore sashes across their chests, bright red and black and festooned with ribbons and medals, like they’d attended a military ceremony in North Korea just before this.
I counted twenty-five of them in five rows of five. The front rows were armed with pikes with gleaming silver edges, except for the two at either end of the front row who had something weird I couldn’t quite figure out yet. As they marched up and took their positions, they activated the energy field on their pikes. Sizzling blue light arced from one end of the blade down to the base.
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The next two rows carried rifles. The rearmost rank were their healers, with the ubiquitous healing wands that we'd spotted on most teams so far.
It was getting easier to understand what each of our enemies was capable of, since they relied so heavily on their equipment, rather than having innate skills like we humans. From experience, each of them would have one or perhaps two relevant skills. The halberd users in the front would have a slashing charge, the riflemen some sort of increase to firepower and accuracy, and a fast reload. The healers generally had the ability to quickly target their devices on one ally, then the next.
I was standing inside a loop of rope that Dwight assured me was actually an invisibility field, but I felt really exposed. My hat and coat weren't at all appropriate for this period. I was standing in the lee of a pillar well out of the way. Sage and Grandpa were across the hall, and I couldn't see either of them, which hopefully meant the fields were working as advertised, but if one of the orcs had a pierce invisibility ability or device, the jig was up.
There was an invisible barrier between the cardinal and the rest of the room. The orcs spread out, waiting as the cardinal monologued. One fired a tentative blast from his laser rifle. It splattered off the barricade, none of the npcs taking any note of it. He sighed and lowered his weapon. I could hear the team grumbling as they waited for the cardinal to finish his spiel. At last he turned to face the invaders.
"And what is this, Louis?" he demanded. "More treachery? You have hired mercenaries to attack a man of the cloth? This infamy will echo down through history, like Henry of England slaying Thomas a Becket at his own altar. For this sin of presumption alone, you shall spend a thousand years in purgatory. But if you do not stand down now, your eternal soul will be forfeit."
The barrier went down.
Two of the orcs in the front row detached themselves, marching forward, carrying energy shields as tall as they were, and long, springy green weapons that reminded me of pool noodles. They arrayed themselves on either side of the cardinal. The leftmost orc struck out with his pool noodle and hit the cardinal on the side of the head.
Richelieu turned to him, face red with fury.
"You dare! Guards, attack!"
The second of the tanks turned as the guards started in. He lashed out with his pool noodle. It extended into a rope twice as long and whipped across the room. Each minion it brushed past focused on that tank, rushing forward toward him. The orcs behind opened fire, mowing down the monks, or rather, kobolds.
The Swiss guard were a little more focused. They ignored the taunting tanks and marched on the body of the raid, their pikes lowered. The pike-bearing orcs turned to meet them as the rifle orcs mowed down the last of the kobolds.
"How dare you raise hands against my Benedictine brothers!" Cardinal Richelieu raised his hands towards heaven. "Come, brothers! Come to my aid!"
That was the cue for more adds. Now, kobolds were preparing to pour out of the tunnel and throw themselves onto the spears of the orcs. No doubt Captain Kobold was down there somewhere marshaling his doomed kinsmen to rush in and die.
At least, that was the plan. I don't think the orcs noticed that the new wave of black-cloaked adds were about a foot taller on average than the kobold monks had been. They didn't seem to notice there were three times as many as before, either.
The tanks shouted to each other, and the one who had been on minion duty stepped in, whacking the cardinal with his pool noodle. The cardinal turned to face the new threat as the first tank stepped back toward the onrushing monks. Their healers were doing a good job keeping everyone up. I admired their discipline. They had lost only a few so far.
Now as the second wave of monks spread out, it was the time to change that.
Everyone in position? I asked.
I got a flurry of yeses in chat.
Great! Let's do this.
I activated Fastest Gun in the West and zoomed right into the midst of the orcs. As I ran, I threw Call ‘em Out, catching everyone's attention. They turned to me, just as Alison ordered two of our support casters to cast buffs on me. Lauren threw her 5-second invulnerability shield over me, while Macy, the cheerleader, gave me "Star of the Show." It increased the effectiveness of my taunt by an extra 10 seconds, while also making it harder for anyone to actually hit me.
The orcs shouted in dismay, just as the newly arrived monks all threw back their hoods to reveal the happy, smiling faces of Misfits Guild members. Mitch laughed as he threw Spike Their Trunks, and the rifle-bearing orcs' weapons exploded in sticky, dissolving, syrupy mess. Sage cackled in glee as she threw down Mucking Out the Stalls under what was left of the raid. As Call ‘em Out wore off, Lara threw orange grenades, kicking up huge clouds of smoke.
Cardinal Richelieu laughed triumphantly.
"And so the hand of God punishes you for your insolence. Now you will see..."
He was ranting and raving, and I ignored him as I fired shot after shot at point-blank range into the orcs around me. They were struggling to get their weapons onto me. It was complete chaos.
As rumor had gotten around of what we were doing, our enemies had gotten a little more clever. They were starting to scout out ahead of time, looking for us, to make sure that we couldn't interfere. But since only three of us had been hiding in the room itself, the rest waiting in the tunnels that only the NPCs and us members of Team Tunnel Rat could access, they'd been taken off guard.
It wasn't always going to be this easy, I thought, as we dispatched the last of the orcs. This group was pretty well funded. A single wipe, even with our 10x bonus, wouldn't knock them out. But it would help spread the reputation we were trying to cultivate.
What we really needed to do right now was play for time. If all of the other teams fought their bosses as hard and fast as they could, we'd have no chance. Someone would make it to the end while we were trying to deal with someone else.
So we were adapting. We were going for shock and awe tactics, hitting them off guard, doing things they didn't expect, ruining their best attempts, making them use up consumables that would be expensive or impossible to replace.
If we could make them hesitate to step outside of their bases, make them think twice about starting a boss fight, or wait until they had twice as much manpower or equipment on hand, then we might just buy ourselves another day, another hour, to pull out a miracle.
Any sign of them regrouping? I asked Jones, who was on overwatch outside of Versailles. This whole instance was Alexander Dumas themed. There was a terrible prison below the palace containing the Man in the Iron Mask, the Count of Monte Cristo, and a couple other famous prisoners, while up above were numerous royal-themed encounters. The orcs were the only team in the instance who had made serious inroads, downing one of the prison bosses before coming to take on the Royal Court encounter.
Nah. Not a peep out of their camp. Pity, we've got a lovely ambush lined up here just waiting.
Stay on the map for an extra 15 minutes. If you see the orcs or any of the other teams on this map come out of their camps, hit them hard, try to take down a few, and then retreat I said.
Team Mongoose and the Grignarians were on assassin duty today. The Grignarians had already racked up dozens of kills and were eager for more, since they got a fraction of the soul coins that it would cost our enemies to respawn. Team Mongoose was just as effective and just as cheerful, motivated by professionalism rather than coin.
As Cardinal Richelieu wound down his victory speech, I checked in with my team. We hadn't suffered any casualties this time.
"Good work," I said.
"How come these assholes have a victory speech?" Grandpa asked as he watched. "I mean, all the orcs are dead. Who's going to hear it?"
"It's just a rule, Grandpa," Sage said. "These guys always have to have a victory speech, same as they have an opening monologue."
"Hey," I said. "That gives me a great idea for our next exploit. Sage, what do you think about..."