The road to Driftwood was dangerous. I had to run away from six bears, five wolves, and a vicious-looking fox. Three pairs of bandits killed me, but I was keeping a sharp eye out for all the standing stones along the way and just kept running, not even trying to put up a fight. I was wagering a lot on my interpretation of the rules being correct, but so be it. It also convinced me I was looking at a scaling system. The mobs took three or four hits to kill me, despite this clearly being an area I wasn’t supposed to be in yet.

When I at last reached the town of Driftwood, it was exactly as I had expected. A squalid, moss-overgrown cluster of nests and buildings that had clearly seen better days.

The guards at the gate were both geese, their feathers bedraggled and their uniforms ill-fitting and rusty. They crossed their pikes in front of the gate and challenged me.

"Ho there, newcomer. Nobody enters Driftwood without paying the tax."

"What tax?" I demanded.

"The Drake’s entry fee. Pay up or get out. Thirty silver.”

I very much suspected that this was a scripted event designed to show you just how desperate and criminal everyone here was. I could pay their bribe, or I could try to get out of it. Possibly my response would dictate how the people in Driftwood responded to me later.

"Well that's interesting," I told them, "because as it happens, I don't have the money for the tax, but I do have a little coin here that you could use to toast my health at the inn after your shift if you'd just look the other way and let me by." I jangled my purse meaningfully.

The guards looked at each other. "Ten silver each?"

"Five," I told them, "between the two of you. It'll buy you a couple of pints."

"Oh, very well," one of the geese muttered. I handed over the coins and they stepped back. A notification popped up. [You have bribed a guard. Your personal reputation with the guards' faction has increased. Your willingness to engage in the seedier underside has been noted. Earned: One Treachery Point.]

I popped up my skills. Now all of the Treachery skills were open to me. There was Backstab, Blackmail, all sorts of skills, but I put my point straight into Sneak. You can never have enough points in Sneak.

That done, I set off into the city, which was under a seemingly perpetual gloom. I bypassed the grimy tavern and went to the market square where sad merchants were hawking their goods, then sat and watched.

A feathered man in a hood started skulking around the outskirts. He slipped in close to one of the merchants while she was selling a carrot to a passerby and then darted away again. I followed him down an alley. He looked up as I entered and quickly shoved something under his robes.

"I don't think that belonged to you, did it?" I said.

"What do you want?"

"I was admiring the skill of that grab," I told him.

"You're new in town."

"So I am," I allowed. "I'm here looking for work."

The hooded man laughed. "You think there's a lot of work to be found here?"

"I don't mean labor," I said, raising an eyebrow. "I mean work."

"Hmm?" He studied me, then nodded. "Right. You will have to talk to Billiard. He's the goose in charge of the thieves guild."

It didn't take me long to find the headquarters of the thieves guild. The building was shabby-looking but much larger and more impressive than one would expect from a small town band of thieves. I mean, just how many people in this town could be thieves before the economy would collapse?. Not that any of that mattered; this was typical video game logic. The thieves guild would be just what I needed to level up my sneaking and backstabbing skills. I was looking for ways to defeat enemies without leveling up, and stat-stacked backstabs would likely be the best way.

A seedy-looking goose hanging out near the door tossing a coin and catching it.

"Interested in seeing the gander, are ya? Well, he might not be interested in seeing you. We'll see. Right through there.” He indicated the large door that was the only exit from this foyer room.

The big room at the center of the building was a dining hall. The gander was a fat goose with an abnormally short neck. He sat at the end of a table laden with food and didn't stop stuffing his bill during the entire conversation. I told him I wanted to join the thieves guild, and he sent me off to an underling, off in a large side room where other geese stood around.

"If you're interested in joining, talk to Fast Hand Luke over there,” he said, indicating a shabby looking in one corner.

In the opposite corner from Fast Hand Luke lay a body on the floor. The name over the body was Lucky Eddie. Nobody else seemed to notice that one of their compatriots was dead; that was strange. I hadn't seen any players in town. Somebody must have been through earlier, but why would they have killed just one NPC?

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I approached Fast Hands Luke. He gave me an appraising look. He was a scrawny-looking goose with patched clothes.

He gave me the introductory quest: [Taking Candy from a Baby]. Six babies, in fact, scattered all around town. The quest was as easy as well, you know. I went around town, got near each one, and then used a one-time quest ability to pick their pockets. As I did, my Sneak ticked up a couple of times, but I didn't gain the pickpocketing skill for real yet. Six lollipops later, and I was back in the thieves guild turning in.

As I entered the main room, I saw that Lucky Eddie was still dead. I looked again and realized he was actually dead again. Before he had been lying in a puddle of blood with a knife sticking out of his back. Now his body was burned on one side and was sprawled in a slightly different direction. That was strange. Someone had come back in here and killed just one NPC again. It didn't make much sense.

Fast Hands Luke said some nonsense about how impressed he was and then gave me the follow-up quest. The turn-in also gave one point of Pickpocket.

The follow-up quest was to learn about the guild; it was a follow-and-talk quest. I followed a granny goose as she waddled about the place, introducing each of the NPCs in the building. She led straight out of the room and into a large chamber with trainers scattered about.

I inspected each one as she introduced us. There was someone to train up Sneak, another for Pickpocketing, and still another for Blackmail. Though they had no skills I could learn yet, they did offer an introductory quest related to their skill. I picked them all up.

There were also some crafters around the place, but these were pretty generic. One for leather armor and one for daggers. They each offered a single recipe for free, which I grabbed.

Finally, we came back to the main chamber where the gander was still stuffing his beak. "And if you're interested in something a little more dangerous," Fast Hand said with a waggle of eyebrows (did real geese even have eyebrows?), "you can always talk to Lucky Eddie over there.” He pointed to the corner with the dead duck.

My escort quest was over now, so I went to take a closer look at the dead body. He wasn't still-dead; he was re-dead. The body had shifted to a different position, and instead of burns he had a ‘poisoned’ debuff.

I left the thieves guild and went to knock out the starter quests. It was obvious which order I needed to do the quests in; they were all connected. The one to pickpocket was getting various trinkets off people around town. The one for burglary was to steal a letter from a desk in a mansion, and then the final one for blackmail was to use all of those objects and forge some blackmail evidence.

It didn't explain what it was; it just said, "Blackmail evidence: 0/1.” After I got the trinkets and letter, I combined them with a simple click, and then turned them into the blackmail victim, who promptly promised to give the Thieves Guild whatever it is they wanted.

Then it was back to the thieves guild headquarters for the turn-ins. The rewards were minimal, but they did unlock the trainers. I used what little gold they gave me to train in Sneak, but what I really needed was to find a backstab trainer and poisons, both of which could be useful.

Lucky Eddie was still dead, and his positions hadn't changed this time. As I looked him over to confirm, the body suddenly vanished. That was promising; maybe it meant he would respawn soon. I hung out and waited.

Sure enough, less than a minute later, he popped into existence in front of me, alive and well. I stepped up and initiated dialogue.

"If you're looking for something a little more dangerous, you should seek out the Duck Bro-"

I leapt back as the duck was suddenly engulfed in flames. He thrashed around for a moment, quacking plaintively, and then fell over, charred and dead. No one else in the room reacted. That was weird. Something was going on here. This was definitely not the way the game was supposed to work. If he was just telling me about some sort of Assassin's Guild, then the sudden death might be scripted, but if that was the case, I would expect the other NPCs to react, and they hadn't. Earlier, they had referred to him as if he was still alive.

I hadn't seen what caused the fire. No one in the area seemed to appear to have cast anything.

I turned the body over and saw the remnants of a trap underneath him. When I touched it, it crumbled to nothing with a pop-up saying I didn't have the skills to use it. I hadn't seen it before it had triggered. The Sneak skill tree did include trap detection, but I had no points into it.

Now this was a mystery that I really wanted to solve. The key to a good exploit is spotting things out of place, areas where gameplay didn’t work quite as intended. This had all the hallmarks of a potential exploit.

Going out, I searched the town until I found a potions vendor. I was short on money, but they also offered another alchemical recipe if I would make some potions for them. They only needed minor healing potions, which I had gotten the recipe for earlier.

A few moments later, that turn-in got me a fire and frost resistance recipe, and the vendor could also teach me to make me fire resist and poison resist. It blew most of my gold, but I grabbed them. Since I didn't have the money to buy the supplies, I went out into the woods to gather the mats. This took quite a while of sneaking around and picking herbs while trying not to get spotted by bears or wolves. A little voice in my head worried that Rok’gar and his team must be getting ahead of me by now, but I banished it. Slow and steady would win this race.

I was able to accomplish it with no deaths, but only by dashing back into town with a wild animal on my heels twice; each time, the guards ignored me, but the beast lost interest as soon as I passed through the gate. You’d think my bribe would have gotten them feeling well disposed to me, but no.

Finally, I had what I needed to implement my plan, and I went back to the thieves guild. Lucky Eddie was dead again, this time with the greenish tint and poisoned debuff. I put my potions in the hot bar and waited.

It took the better part of an hour, but he finally respawned. I immediately spammed him with the three resistance potions I had been able to make and initiated dialogue.

"Looking for something a little more interesting? You should seek out the Duck Brotherhood. Ow!"

He was briefly interrupted when a fire trap exploded under his feet. The flames warmed my face, but I resisted the urge to jump back; they didn't actually damage me. The triggering of the trap had taken out half his health, and the remainder began quickly ticking down.

I hurriedly went through the rest of the dialogue, selecting an option to ask for more about the Duck Brotherhood and then where I might find them. I whipped through the text so fast, I didn't have time to read it. What little I registered was full of vague innuendos but confirmed my suspicion that they were an assassination guild.

Just as I finished the dialogue options, a [Quest Accepted] pop-up appeared. An instant later, Lucky Eddie fell over in a charred heap, dead.

Something was starting to be clear. Someone out there did not want me to have the quest chain to join the Duck Brotherhood. Which meant it was my new top priority.