It doesn’t take long for Enno to realize that Saronium has arrived, and he hurriedly takes up his hunting clothing along with his magical carbine. When he meets up with Bryzax on his way out of the armory…
“Saronium is here! Get your gear in order and we’ll leave for the Caladon Bog!” Enno orders his herald as he reaches for his purse, making sure that he actually has the 2,000 gold on hand.
While Enno is busy counting the 2,000 gold from his purse, Bryzax is putting on his armor and a tabard on top of that.
Once they are finished, Enno prepares his flying carpet for the trip to the Caladon Bog. When they are some distance away:
“How glad am I to see you again, Saronium. It seems like everyone and their dogs in my palace paint you as a fear-monger, even though you were honest about the role of haunted park maintenance failures in driving Perseria to war!” Enno confides in the rental healer.
“That’s an absurd accusation! I just wanted Your Lordship to understand the risks of running a haunted park in ways that’s relevant to him” Saronium answers him.
“What should I expect out of going to a haunted park?” Bryzax asks her. “Other than ghosts being out to kill me”
“First off, the basics of haunted park etiquette. Because you’re new to haunted parks, you ought to say that you’re new to a haunted park at the start. Secondly, it is common courtesy to wait until everyone is in a boss room before pulling a boss”
“Pulling? What does pulling a boss mean in a haunted park?” a confused Bryzax asks her.
“Also, what would telling other people doing a haunted park with us that we’re new to it mean to them?” Enno asks, shaking his head.
“Veterans of haunted parks will be more patient with you if you say you’re new to it. They will explain the mechanics of each boss accordingly, more often than not”
“Mechanics?” Enno asks, realizing there is a specialized lexicon that every would-be haunted park entrepreneur must be familiar with.
“Mechanics are simply special abilities. Most often associated with bosses, but sometimes ghosts between bosses, often called trash by those in the haunted park world, might have one. Some haunted park aficionados claim certain parks have no mechanics, or at least not in certain difficulties, even though, strictly speaking, it’s not true”
“Difficulties?” Bryzax asks the rental healer, rolling his eyes.
The two then listen to Saronium talk about what difficulties mean in the context of which types of haunted parks.
As they arrive at the Caladon Bog, he realizes that the area around the Bog is a little desolate and much of the village built around it specifically to accommodate the needs of the haunted park appears to be made of timber.
When they get near the park’s entrance, the two realizes the portico has as many as eight queues, but two queues seem to be much longer than the other six.
“Why is it that these two queues are longer than the other six?” Bryzax asks his lord’s guest.
“They are, what we call in haunted park-speak, DPS queues” Saronium then explains what it means to be a tank or DPS, because they know where a healer fits in a haunted park, and why there are so many more DPS compared to the other two roles.
“I guess, I need to get into a DPS queue” Enno sighs.
“It might sound a little ridiculous to you, but get into the brutal DPS queue. I might be able to take Bryzax and three DPS through a brutal run of the Bog before you even get into it”
I ran that haunted park dozens of times. I could tell Bryzax what to do just fine, Saronium thinks about how she feels towards running the park as the two enter the park.
As his two servants of the day are running through the park, he is left wondering how he even heard about haunted parks to begin with. Wracked by doubt, he starts ruminating as he waits for his two servants along a slow-moving line. Why am I doing this? Did I put too much weight on the faction-wide benefits of haunted parks? I don’t remember very clearly how I first heard about haunted parks, maybe from a traveling jester or merchant. More likely a traveling jester.
A while later, Enno finds himself getting closer to the entrance to the park, as the people in the Bog’s brutal DPS queue enter the park, but neither Saronium nor Bryzax are anywhere to be found. He overhears frustrated DPS ahead of him in the queue clamoring for entry, out of frustration.
Over an hour after Enno entered the brutal DPS queue (only brutal and fatal queues were subdivided into 3; solo and normal queues are role-agnostic), he finally gets to be the first in line for entry. He crosses his fingers, hoping that Bryzax and Saronium are back.
“Now, Bryzax, the tank queue is empty!” Saronium pushes Bryzax to get to the brutal tank queue while she does the same for the healer one, his tabard being torn in a few areas.
The pair dash to the entrance of the dungeon, in empty queues, as if they sprint in two lanes. When they get to Enno, near the entrance portico:
“Finally, you’re both back! What took you two so long?” Enno asks the pair, stopping just before they step into the portico.
“There’s a first time for everything, and certainly for me, and there’s this new cuirass that somehow came with a magical back chest. It took me a while to change my cuirass!” Bryzax tells him about his first trip through the park.
Hopefully I might get one, too… a magical back chest I mean, Enno sighs as he enters the portico with his servants, and two more DPS: an axe-wielding arcanist and Mijanou, a saber-wielding dancer. As soon as the DPS enter the portico:
“Please be patient with me, I’m new to this dungeon!” Enno pleads with the other two DPS.
The two DPS nod, and their run through the Caladon Bog begins. The eerie atmosphere of the swamp they tramp through makes Enno feel uneasy, but only seems to amplify the feeling like the ghosts of the park are out for them.
But it doesn’t take long for Enno to notice that shiny red dots are blinking out of nowhere. And don’t stay blinking for very long. However, the axe-wielding arcanist flees like hell when these flickering red dots start being accompanied by creepy noises.
As Enno starts shaking and sweating, the banshees start chasing the adventurers as the fog thickens. So much so that the arcanist is running around the swamp like a headless chicken.
I must do something, quick! Dark thoughts seem to consume Enno as banshees close in on him, making his palms sweaty. And even his own trigger finger, causing him to fire the hunting carbine more erratically than he would like.
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The first shot only grazed one banshee on its lower body at point-blank, while the second shot narrowly misses and hits the muddy soil. But a hurt banshee screeches in pain, causing the other banshees in Enno’s general area to chase him around.
And hopefully cause him to fall over on that very muddy ground, because the banshees hope Enno’s ears, along with the other adventurers’, break from the loudness of their screeches.
Yet, this creates an opportunity for the arcanist, who is sent running all over the place because these very screeches disoriented him up to this point. It makes the banshees’ locations clear to him. Or at least clear enough for him to cast Contamination and Affliction, damage-over-time spells. And then Contagion, which causes the magic to spread to nearby banshees. Those hit by the spells keep chasing the arcanist around.
But at the same time, that banshee hurt in pain from Enno’s first shot warps to his position, kicking him into the ground. As he’s about to lie flat in the mud, he fires another shot just as the banshee is about to stab him. Between two dying trees.
“Always be... casting!” the banshee yelled at him, in a creepy tone, before the shot at point-blank caused it to vanish before his eyes.
“Come on! You’re not supposed to stand here, nor flee, and be scared!” Mijanou tells him as another banshee jumps at her.
Damn it! I lost aggro on this blob of banshees! Bryzax realizes that the arcanist pulling mobs, as many of these as he can get, makes him afraid that the arcanist will die before the banshees will. Or other swamp monsters will kill him, really.
Speaking of swamp monsters, Enno gets back up, and uses the commotion caused by Mijanou to try to find his way back to his servants. Where are my servants? Enno wonders while he runs into a different kind of monster with a snake-like lower body. And fires at the creature lurking between trees. Twice.
“Saronium! Sa! Ro! Nium!” Enno keeps yelling, in hopes that she can locate him.
Yet, as he fires a third shot at a wounded monster, a banshee rushes to the monster’s aid. The banshee casts a spell on him, hoping to disorient him. A sweating Enno attempts to dodge the spell by making a sharp right turn, and hoping it hits a dying tree instead of him.
But when the spell narrowly clears the dying tree, the pink magic bolt pursues him across the mangrove. As the spell is about to catch him, he starts hearing the screech of yet more banshees, unsettling the lord.
He went within range of some more of these banshees, but repeatedly hearing these ghosts screech gives him headaches. Nevertheless, he fires in the direction of the banshee that breathed down his neck as that creature entered his line of sight.
And… the pink bolt hits him in the neck. Now he can no longer see the swamp properly. so rather than seeing trees and other swamp vegetation, he’s seeing… torture instruments.
“Eeek!” a delusional Enno yells, while torture instruments are flying everywhere around him, albeit as hallucinations.
Feeling like these flying torture instruments are out to grab him, he shoots at every such implement he can get a line of sight on, in hopes that these implements are actually banshees or some other variety of ghosts in monster form.
In his bewitched state, he shoots at a much faster rate than he did thus far in the park, but not always the most accurately.
To the likes of the others in the party, like Bryzax, it looks like Enno has finally started to pull a bigger share of the party’s weight in clearing the swamp’s trash. Especially since he hears more gunshots being fired. Finally, my liege has started to shoot at these pesky banshees the arcanist ran around like a headless chicken to pull!
But if the others in the party appear delighted by the ghosts being taken out, Enno, on the other hand, still feels like, as the torture instruments are shot down, or destroyed, their delusional shards threaten to hurt him as they fall from the foggy sky.
In his lord’s mind, one by one, metal shards fall, forcing him to dodge, as he believes broken shards of torture instruments to be dangerous. However, what appears to be a broken rack and pinion hits him on the head…
“Ouch… am I… bleeding?” Enno touches a cut to his forehead inflicted by what he feels is a broken rack and pinion, but the cut appears inconsistent with such.
And then he stops seeing illusory torture instruments as practice targets, so he runs around this section of the park looking for Saronium to patch him up. And firing at any banshees and other monsters he can still locate on his way to her.
Of which the numbers are steadily dwindling since it seems like the arcanist did hit-and-runs with them. And Bryzax joins in with wide swings, followed by Mijanou. Which make the monsters take hits around these two parkgoers.
As the lord arrives near Saronium’s position, he can sense that she’s a little disappointed with him having gotten lost in the swamp. And gotten injured by the trash’s attacks. Like this injury that doesn’t feel like a hit from a broken rack and pinion.
When he arrives at the entrance of the first boss’ room, his forehead hasn’t stopped bleeding as he gets to Saronium:
“Not one moment too soon! I guess the trash hit you with one fear spell too many?” Saronium asks her employer of the day.
“Yeah, I got lost because the monsters made me frightened!” Enno answers his rental healer.
“One more thing: it’s common courtesy, in haunted parks, to let the tank, here, Bryzax, pull the boss. Also, watch out for spots on the ground changing color!” Saronium then casts a spell on his wound.
“What would happen if spots on the ground change color?”
“You must stay out of the spot, or else you’ll get hurt, maybe even die!”
She then explains him the core mechanics of this boss, Bunyip, as relevant for a ranged DPS, before all five enter the first boss’ room.
“Pulling in three, two, one…” Bryzax signals the start of the fight.
As soon as the fight begins in a patch of bog containing an abandoned sawmill, powered by a water wheel, the arcanist and Mijanou both ride atop the boss’ back, a giant seal with dog legs. Right before a conical area turns red behind the boss.
Which makes Enno turn to the boss’ left, opening rapid fire, almost in a spray-and-pray fashion. But given the size and range of the target, which is almost point-blank, he manages to land some hits.
I might have understood the saber dancer. But why is the arcanist on top of the boss? A puzzled Saronium cleanses the nausea off the arcanist, who goes through his rotation.
After the arcanist casts his gangrene spell, the boss enters a state where no further damage can be dealt to it, forcing both DPS on its back to get off the boss to deal with more monsters.
Enno sees zombies going after both Saronium and the arcanist, firing at them in the distance as these zombies clamor for brains. Is it normal for zombies to go after magic-users? I might have fought, like, wolves, bandits…
“Milord, behind you!” Bryzax yells at him.
Enno feels the heat closing in on him, and tries to flee from it, feeling like this magical fireball being fixated on him is not going to do him any good.
“What should I do?” a sweating Enno asks his herald.
“Bring the fireball to the saw!”
Enno then proceeds to run to the sawmill, where the fireball follows him. As he dashes into the wooden shed, he wonders if the mechanic is about causing a sawmill’s pillar to catch fire or it’s about melting the circular saw. And he hyperventilates as soon as he enters the wooden shed, skimming the saw. And so does the fireball, apparently, causing the saw assembly to start spinning.
With the sawmill’s shed catching fire along with the saw, and Enno being some distance away, Bryzax knows time is short to bring the boss to the burning sawmill, and, hopefully, the shed doesn’t collapse on him. By then, the boss is playing catch-up against Bryzax.
As the boss is about to enter the shed, amid a shed about to collapse, Enno fires at more zombies that are going after Saronium. The zombies move faster than what people usually expect out of zombies.
But then everyone in the so-called room hears strident saw noises, startling even the zombie adds. This makes the zombies much easier to pick off since they freeze in place.
However, with the arcanist going out of mana, he rushes towards the paralyzed adds, swinging his axe at them while he recovers his mana.
As the boss, drawn to Bryzax, advances past the burning shed, its belly gets sawed off. The bunyip’s blood splats around the saw assembly. Especially as it bleeds dry, both Enno and the arcanist keep chipping at it, with bullets and spells respectively.
The result of the boss getting its belly sawed off is clear: a growing puddle of blood, centered on the saw, appears as the boss bleeds dry.
When the boss is done being sawed, its lifeless, yet ghostly body stops moving, and blood has been spilled all over the burning sawmill. Whose flaming roof crashes upon the bunyip’s corpse.
At this point, a magical chest appears next to the boss room’s exit.
“Woohoo! My first boss kill in a haunted park!” an ecstatic Enno shouts for joy as he opens the magical chest containing the loot.
Where does the loot come from? Do haunted park-goers even ask about the logistics of the loot they chase? I feel like loot is going to be the main expense of running a haunted park once it’s in operation, and the maintenance schedule is the other big expense, Enno thinks about the operational costs of his future park as he opens the chest containing five magical items.
Bryzax claims his plate boots, which feel like an upgrade over his current plate boots. Meanwhile, Enno finds a hunting vest that looks quite different from his current one, and with a magical chest strapped to it. As for Saronium, she finds satin slippers. The arcanist gets a shiny new mace, while Mijanou gets new white gloves.