These ghost stories resurface among the public weeks after the installation of the first boss. And taxing the banks means that Enno can rest easier than he would have otherwise, and not have to worry about paying for the park.
But when Mardonion comes to the palace to request an audience with Enno...
“Milord, the Haunted Park Construction Guild requests an audience!” Bryzax announces.
“I guess, some progress has been made. And we need to pay whatever we can out of the massive costs of the park...” Enno sighs. “I guess the installation of the ghosts is completed”
Bryzax then takes the quartermaster to the palace’s great room. With the quartermaster kneeling before Enno:
“Milord, now that the installation of your park’s ghosts is complete, the time has come for the next stage of the construction to begin. Closed beta” an overjoyed Mardonion reports.
“Closed beta?” Enno gasps. “What’s the meaning of this?”
“In the haunted park world, otherworldly people use remote-controlled ghosts to test the ghosts’ features, in both alpha and closed beta testing. Beta testing considers the visitor factor, which cannot be done with remote-controlled ghosts in alpha testing”
I would love to appoint Saronium as the steward of the haunted park, a position I deem of knightly rank. However, I wonder what is customary in a haunted park’s life cycle, Enno has a lot on his mind.
“Remote-controlled ghosts?” Bryzax gasps upon hearing about how alpha testing is made.
“A malfunctioning haunted park ghost can be dangerous to users. RCGs allow us to ensure that what we call in the haunted park world bugs can be fixed and ensure that visitors are not exposed to unnecessary dangers”
“And what does closed beta testing imply for us?” Enno asks Mardonion.
“Because you had ghosts willing to go the extra mile to get the haunted park up and running, I invite you to the first trial run of the park. Here, however, we can run bosses out of order, which you won’t be able to do once the park opens. Just get me to Concetta, will you, milord?” Mardonion asks.
“Concetta might have been able to get the lines for Janick done, but she has no experience of running haunted parks! You’re sending her towards slaughter!” Enno protests.
“Actually, it might be a good idea to get at least one person with no prior experience of haunted park crawling for this test run! You can’t assume all visitors at a given haunted park, especially from the queue, will have a certain skill level! And certainly not in the early days of a haunted park’s life cycle!”
“Fine, Mardonion, you win…”
But she did show some promise as a haunted park crawler based on her talent with alcohol magic! Mardonion keeps his opinion of Concetta hidden, while Enno slouches on his way to the kitchen, feeling as he’s ashamed of making his cook too involved with this whole haunted park business.
When the three men get to the kitchen, as Concetta is preparing cabbage:
“It seems like you would be a good fit to test the haunted park” Mardonion informs the cook.
“Why? All I know that could be of use in a haunted park is using alcohol magic! I know nothing about what makes haunted parks worth going to! Or even what fights in haunted parks are really like!” Concetta voices her concerns.
“The last bit is, unlike previous haunted parks, something we believe is crucial to consider before the park opens. Every haunted park crawler has to start somewhere”
“Who else are we going to do the test run of the haunted park with?” Bryzax asks the quartermaster.
“To be fair, most people new to haunted parks will be DPS or, occasionally, healers. Very few would even want to tank without any prior experience of haunted parks in a different capacity. Heck, not many even want to tank in haunted parks at all. Rest assured that someone else with some experience of haunted parks will run the test with you”
“Like who?” Concetta asks, sweating and trembling.
“Mijanou. She’s a haunted park veteran, and both Enno and Bryzax are part of the test run, too” Mardonion answers the cook.
“Mardonion, the only reason why I’m going to test the park with Bryzax is because I feel like some elements among the population would accept the haunted park but only if I run it myself!” Enno then turns to his two servants he plans to take on the park’s test run. “Gear up, you two, and we’re going to test run my new haunted park!”
So Concetta wears the witch set that she uses to practice alcohol magic, along with the mace from the Caladon Bog, Bryzax dons his armor, sword and shield, while Enno wears the suit he gained from that park, along with his magical assault rifle.
The trio then flies to the village where the quarry is, so when they arrive, they link up with the other members of the party. Mijanou and Saronium. When they arrive:
“Can you explain to me why these Perserian ghosts came all the way to our village just to taunt the first boss on the day of what you call its installation?” Mijanou asks the other four.
“Presumably some unfinished business in life. They apparently fought as infantrymen for Perseria during its civil war, and they blame the city’s ghost troops for the Perserian defeat. The ghost archer was far more sentimental than the other two” Bryzax formulates some semblance of an answer to the saber dancer.
They seemed to be implying that anusiya were shock infantry, daylami, heavy infantry, and what they call kamandaran didn’t seem to be held in high regard at the time, Enno reflects on this whole dispute. Nor living paighan.
“We even used them as remote-controlled ghosts to perform alpha testing. After all, we had two DPS and a tank in this trio, and they fought like, as they said, gyan-avspar during that test run!” Mardonion adds. “Like elite infantry, but we sold off their original gear when their role in the test was over”
“Are we receiving a discount for the last two bosses from the sale of these ghosts’ gear?” Enno asks the quartermaster.
“Unfortunately, their gear wasn’t nearly as expensive as the gear of the first boss, and we’d be lucky to get twenty thousand gold for all three panoplies, even if we sold their gear piecemeal!” Mardonion answers. “If you get wiped out at any point during the test run, I will need to step in to rez all of you”
“Wipe out?” Concetta keeps trembling.
“It’s what happened when all players in a party die fighting a certain boss in a park” the quartermaster adds.
“Saronium, this is Concetta” Enno introduces his cook to the rental healer, this time rented out by the Guild. “She’s new to haunted parks”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“The only reason why the Guild rented me out was because I would give them a better idea of what haunted park-goers call heal checks are actually realistic for that sort of park runs” Saronium explains herself. “If even I couldn’t manage to keep a party up, then the heal check is likely too big for the park’s intended audience!”
Which can only mean one thing: they are going to be testing the park in fatal mode. The highest difficulty of any given haunted park.
As they step into the fatal difficulty waiting lines, they go in and they only need to walk a short distance from the portico to enter the room of the first boss. Once the five enter the pushtigbans’ room (the Guild decided to label the first boss as such since it reflected their elite heavy cavalry station in Perserian service):
“The very basic thing is that you need to stay out of colored areas on the ground, usually orange or red” Saronium tells Concetta before they pull the boss. “Ready check!”
All four people report they are ready to pull the boss. When Bryzax realizes such, it’s then that he pulls the boss. Or more specifically, Marzban.
When the fight begins, both Marzban and Tissaphernes are focused on Bryzax, which makes Enno and Concetta stick together. And, of course, Concetta opens with the alcohol cloud, which has the effect of making the three ghosts buzzed at this point.
“Concetta, the best way to beat heavy cavalry is to unhorse them!” Enno points out to Concetta.
“’Milord, it seems like alcohol magic is ineffective against horses!” Concetta moans.
So while the quartermaster watches the fight unfold on a magical tablet, the magical meters installed in the wards allow him, and also MAA players using the add-on they call Breathalyzer, to know how much DPS and EHPS people are doing. As well as the damage intake, such as when Ermahgerd looses a flaming arrow on the two ranged DPS and they move out of the fiery circle as the arrow narrowly misses the alcohol witch.
But even when the alcohol witch focuses on getting the riders drunk, Enno, on the other hand, fires at the horses’ legs. Or the exposed areas of the horses’ neck and chest. Which makes Mijanou focus on getting to the legs of the melee aswarans’ horses after she hears about Concetta being told about how unhorsing heavy cavalry is the best way to defeat them.
Yet Concetta seems to be able to dodge the fiery circles left behind Ermahgerd loosing flaming arrows, but at the same time, seems to be the target of the boss’ auto-attacks. That is, the regular arrows. Which, in turns, forces Saronium to devote a significant amount of attention to keep her up.
Meanwhile, Bryzax attempts to get Marzban lined up in front of Tissaphernes, right before the latter makes his special attack by thrusting the xyston in a linear area. However, as they get increasingly hit by alcohol magic, the three aswarans swing their weapons increasingly wildly. And, of course, Ermahgerd being less and less accurate, while Enno keeps firing his gun at the horses in an attempt to unhorse any of the pushtigbans.
However, in his drunkenness, Tissaphernes blindly charges, not at Bryzax, who ducks to dodge Marzban’s wind slash, but at Mijanou.
Drat! Does being hit by alcohol magic make the bosses more unpredictable? Bryzax starts thinking, while Mijanou gets hit and trampled by a horse that Tissaphernes can barely control. And, since she got seriously hit, Saronium focuses on getting the saber dancer back to sufficient health.
That is, until a drunk Ermahgerd looses a flaming arrow that lands a little behind Concetta. Who’s so focused on getting the spell off that she fails to notice her feet being on fire.
“Concetta, get out of the fire! Now!” Enno hollers in her direction.
But Concetta isn’t listening to him for a few seconds, as she’s busy trying to get the moonshine spell off, aimed at Ermahgerd. Which is more powerful based on the number of damage-over-time spells already cast on the target. Then she steps out of the fire, but with her feet burned to a crisp.
Once the moonshine spell goes off, a shaky Ermahgerd looses one last flaming arrow, this time aiming at Mijanou. However, the arrow fell into an area between the other two aswarans.
Saronium facepalms upon seeing Concetta’s behavior in the face of standing into what haunted park runners call stupids, however briefly. And yet, with additional damage from alcohol magic, it seems like Ermahgerd is about to get unhorsed. Damn her! She acted like one of those DPS who eats stupids just to squeeze a little extra DPS!
And yet, because her feet were burning to a crisp, Concetta goes up in flames, right before Ermahgerd gets unhorsed, before Saronium could do anything. Her charred corpse lies right next to Ermahgerd’s horse.
But the fire from the last flaming arrow also caught up to the horses of the other two pushtigbans, making them dangerously close to being unhorsed themselves. Especially since all three horses are now panicking all over the place. In their fits of panic, the horses throw their riders off, which is where, to the eyes of Mardonion, the second phase truly begins: when all 3 are unhorsed.
When the 3 ghosts are unhorsed, their dismounted selves see changes to how their existing mechanics affect the players.
It’s then that Concetta gets rezzed: when the existing fire circles from the last 2 flaming arrows get extinguished.
So even when the ghosts’ intoxication levels decrease somewhat, by virtue of Concetta not having cast spells, the three ghosts still act a little inebriated. Could one of them get delirium tremens in short order?
But now they need to watch out for not only the attacks of the bosses, but also the panicked horses running around the room. And when Concetta gets rezzed, Saronium needs to heal not only the alcohol witch, but everyone else since, even unhorsed, they take hits.
Bryzax gets caught into a wind cone when Marzban uses his wind slash, and not only gets knocked back, but his own movement also gets slower. However, Tissaphernes swings his xyston wildly, hitting a panicking phantom horse in its legs.
Ermahgerd, on the other hand, looses flaming arrows more often than before he got unhorsed, and still attacks haphazardly. This time, however, the flaming arrows have an explosive component that projects shrapnel indiscriminately.
“Everyone! Focus on killing Ermahgerd!” Enno yells, realizing the implications of the archer firing more incendiary bombs than before he got unhorsed.
And yet, maybe mechanics damaging units indiscriminately seem to be, once again, making DPS checks easier. Especially when bosses can be put into the circles of fire left behind by Ermahgerd’s incendiary bombs he calls arrows. Marzban and Tissaphernes are becoming oblivious to the fire because Concetta resumes flinging alcohol spells at all three.
However, the phantom horses’ panic end when they sustain burns due to Ermahgerd getting arrows in their way even though he intended otherwise.
After the panicked horses die, Enno fires a burst at the archer’s head, and, after taking a lot of hits up to this point, Ermahgerd dies from a headshot. But this entire situation of using fire bombs left and right makes it more difficult for Enno et al to move around the room, even with Saronium doing her best to keep the party up.
Once the fire circles are extinguished, they find it much easier to dodge the incoming attacks, and even then, the party seems to be using what otherworldly entities called Massacre à l’Alcool (MAA) players refer to as the friendly fire cheese.
Whenever possible, they either put Tissaphernes within the cone of Marzban’s wind slash, or Marzban directly in the line of thrust of the grivpanvar, but because both are drunken, it’s easier said than done. And not simply because their attacks are much more erratic, or their steady decrease in coordination.
Yet, Enno uses spray-and-pray to hit the two aswarans, who are too drunk to mount much of a resistance by then. Much to Bryzax’s relief, who had it rough by being constantly hit by the melee ghosts. This almost seems... unnatural. I didn’t think they would have that kind of effects! Horses panicking like live ones I might have understood, Bryzax sighs when Marzban is defeated.
And yet, somehow, Mijanou has aggro on Tissaphernes. She uses her agility to get on his back and hack away at his armor joints and then limbs. And finally his head.
Once Tissaphernes’ phantom head falls, the loot chest appears and opens.
“We were getting demolished in there! This loot better be worth it!” Bryzax sighs.
“I’m surprised that Concetta was that good with only gear worth a few hundred gold” Enno comments on her prowess with alcohol magic. “She’ll only get better”
While Enno grabs his boots, and Bryzax, his breastplate, Mijanou is left wondering what use she has for her gloves, since her current gloves are deemed to be at least as good as the gloves dropped by the park. Same goes for Saronium and her pointy hat. Meanwhile, Concetta collects a robe that’s a massive improvement over her current robe. Both in terms of power and style since it gives a regal allure to her.
“If you could please excuse me, I need to throw up from casting alcohol magic!” Concetta warns her party, before casting another spell that purges her blood of alcohol, but at the cost of vomiting.
“My payment for this test will come from selling whatever gear you can’t wear” Mijanou tells her lord.
“Same here. This is so going to be a collector’s item since it’s from a brand new park!” Saronium adds.
Meanwhile, outside the park, Mardonion feels like that, even with alcohol magic, and the resulting intoxication of the bosses, they cut it close to the enrage timer. And they would have been demolished without Saronium! I think we’re going to need another test run without an alcohol wizard, even if it meant otherworldly people using remote-controlled ghosts of roughly the same strength; it seems like this boss suffers from alcohol intoxication.