Day 9 A.F.
“We can’t keep sitting around and waiting for something to happen,” Darius said to his informal council. They were all sitting around a large oval table in the appropriately named council room, that had come with the construction of their new Village Hall.
“We haven’t been sitting around,” Chad countered. “I’ve been working with the recon drone, sweeping the surrounding area, as well as scouting around the fog.”
“Not to mention all the scavenging we’ve done in the abandoned small towns,” Marcus reminded his nephew.
“I know, I know,” Darius sighed. “I’m just on edge. We’re supposedly at war, yet we haven’t seen hide nor hair of those monsters since their first attack three days ago. We’ve managed to get two of the three War Activities completed for the Warmonger quest, but we haven’t made any progress on the quest in the last two days.”
“I understand how you feel,” Chad said. “For all we know, they are building up their forces even more. I’ve tried sending the drone back in to get another look at them, but every damn time those specters find it in just a few minutes and they start draining its power supply. I don’t dare send it in again, unless we want to risk losing it forever. I have a feeling they are targeting smaller groups of people. I currently have the drone scouting out the north and east areas outside the fog zone. If they are sending out forces to collect more people, we’ll know of it. Is there any chance of getting another drone? We can only cover so much area with just the one.”
“I don’t know. I spent a bunch of war points to expand the wall even more the other day. Let me see what we have to work with…” Darius pulled up the Settlement interface and looked over the summary tab. “So, we have four hundred eighty-nine war points left. The recon drones cost three hundred, so we have more than enough to get one more. That leaves us with one hundred eighty-nine points left for equipment and consumables. We don’t have enough for more upgrades, not if we buy another drone. Does everyone agree that another drone is what we need right now?”
“Hold up, sweetheart,” Emily interjected. “I think you’re forgetting something. This is supposed to be a council, right? And we all agreed to follow standard council protocol? So, first Chad proposes to get a drone. We second the proposal, after that we talk about it, then we put it to a vote. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to go?”
“Right, um… sorry about that,” Darius said. “I’m not used to this whole group thing.”
“Oh, you’re fine sugar. I’m just trying to keep things clear. I know it may not be the most efficient process, but it does make sure everyone gets heard, and no one is pressured to vote without getting to object beforehand or something.”
Darius took a deep breath. “Right, so Chad has proposed that we should get a new drone with our available war points. Do we have a second?” Darius felt himself die a little inside as he gave in to the bureaucratic protocols. It was so much easier before when he would talk things over and then just do what needed to be done.
David, their resident researcher, raised his hand. “I second the proposal. Information is Power, and we’re seriously lacking in information right now. Aside from being able to get more information about this Necropolis place, we can still use the drones to help find other people and either bring them here or establish diplomatic relationships with any other Settlement out there. We can't be the only one around.”
Everyone around the table fell into discussion, going over the pros and cons of spending the points on another drone vs getting another upgrade or some other equipment or resources. The talking droned on for nearly an hour until they finally brought it to a vote. Looking around the table, Marcus, Chad, Ethan, Avery, David, and Emily all voted yes, while Zumu abstained from the vote.
With the vote settled, Darius used the war points and a new drone and charging station manifested on the table in front of him. Chad picked it up and carried it outside to deploy while the rest of the meeting went on. The meeting ended up lasted for several more hours before it was, finally, over.
Darius let out a groan as he stretched his stiff muscles. The seats were comfortable enough, but he had never been one to sit around for half the day. He was about to do a few limbering exercises when he was interrupted by an unexpected window popping up.
A new Path of Power has been unlocked on Earth
Congratulations, Bartholomew Ferdinand, for unlocking the Path of Blood
“What the hell?” Darius swore.
“Huh, interesting,” David said. “I didn’t realize new Paths could be unlocked. I mean, I suspected other Paths of Power existed, given what those first series of windows said. But a new one unlocking… what kind of Path would be called Blood?”
“I can think of a few,” Ethan offered. “Maybe some kind of blood bending, or blood magic, but I think the most likely is it’s a vampire Path.”
“But what kind of Vampire?” Avery asked.
“What do you mean, what kind?” Ethan asked back.
“Well, you have your Anne Rice Vampires, like Lestat. You have Nosferatu, Dracula, the vampires from World of Darkness, or, if you count, the ones that sparkle like some kind of blood drinking fae, them.” Avery finished with a shrug.
“Wait,” Ethan said while holding up his hand. “How do you know about so many different kinds of vampires?”
“Dude, did you forget who introduced you to tabletop roleplaying games? Plus, I read a lot. Did you think there were just one kind of vampire?”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“I mean, yeah, I kind of did. But hey, we never played World of Darkness. You introduced us to D&D and Pathfinder.”
Darius ended up just walking away as the two geeks devolved into the merits of one game over another. The new Path of Power was interesting, but just standing around speculating wouldn’t get anything done. So, he went to check in with Chad, the lucky bastard who had an excuse to ditch the rest of the council session.
“So, any word?” Darius asked when he found the man. He was in Ethan’s Enchantment workshop, making use of the Alchemy station.
“I have the new drone in position along with the original,” Chad replied as he ground some kind of herb. “I’m just calling them Drone one and Drone two, by the way. Anyway, Drone one is making long sweeps on the northeast quarter of the Fog, but it takes an hour and a half per sweep. Drone two is doing the same to the southeast side of Albuquerque. Each one makes a forty-five-mile arc, covering their quarter of the circle. I’m keeping them in Power saving mode for now, so they can’t really go faster than thirty miles per hour unless something happens. If they detect a group of undead leaving, they will fly back at top speed until they get back in range and report in.”
“Good, not knowing what they are up to is making me itch.”
“How did the rest of the meeting go?” Chad asked.
“Fine, I guess. Even with the bonuses to growing crops in the greenhouse, it’s going to take at least a month for the first crop of potatoes to come in, almost two months for the rice. But we will start having some fresh vegetables available for harvest in another week or two. The leafy greens, radishes, and what not.”
“I can imagine how expensive it is to keep having to buy enough food from the System Marketplace.”
“Yeah, not only that, but the only thing keeping us from advancing from a Hamlet to a Village is food production, and it doesn’t seem to count our hunting.”
“Hey, isn’t that Emily lady working on finding goats and chickens or something?” Chad asked.
“She is. She was a vet and lived on a farm before, so she at least knows something about raising animals. Unfortunately, everywhere she’s looked so far for livestock has come up with nothin. The monsters already raided the domesticated animals for easy meat.”
“Is there anything from the System Marketplace? Can we buy live animals from there?”
“There is, but it’s expensive. Everything’s gotten more expensive since Stage two of Initialization kicked off. We’re hoping we can find some suitable animals before we resort to having to spend credits, though from the looks of things, we may have to shell out the dough.”
“Hey Darius, I’m glad to find you here,” Ethan said as he entered his workshop. “Oh, sorry Chad, didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Naw, you’re all good. We were just chatting. What’s up?” Chad asked.
“this isn’t about your old games, is it?” Darius asked. He was ready to bail again if the conversation took that kind of turn.”
“My old games? Oh, no. nothing like that. You remember all those pieces of Quartz you found when you got all that clay for Marcus?”
“Yeah, what about them? They were pretty enough, I suppose, but not all that useful.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. They’re dead useful. I’ve been running some tests on them and you won’t believe the results.”
“So, they’re good for enchanting?” Darius asked.
“They’re straight fire, no cap. But it’s not just the quartz, crystals of all kinds are amazing with enchanting. I managed to pick up some jewelry from those mansions we raided a couple days ago and ran the same tests on the stones in them. Some were fake, but the real ones… I mean, just look.” Ethan handed over a notebook with a bunch of writing in it, but it was practically illegible.
“Dude, your handwriting is terrible. What does all this say?”
“Right, my bad. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to actually write anything. I’m used to typing everything out on my computer. Here I’ll go over the highlights. Ill start with Quartz, since it’s so common and we have a bunch of them. So first, a one-inch point has a Mana capacity of one hundred fifty units, the MAR is eight units per second-“
“Wait, MAR? what’s that?” Darius asked.
“Okay, let me take a step back. When it comes to enchanting, everything has five categories regarding its Mana properties. First is its Mana Capacity. That’s how much usable Mana it can hold safely. This will vary depending on how a lot of factors, like size, quality and what not. But what I’m testing for is the baseline for average quality for the basic unit of material. Next, we have the Mana Absorption rate. This is the MAR, and it represents how fast it can absorb mana given to it. Both of these is measured in simple units of Mana, or Mana Points. You following me so far?”
“I think so. Go on,” Darius replied.
“Next we have the Dissipation Rate. that means how much mana it looses over a given amount of time and is represented by its alphabetical rank going from F, where it loses between one and ten mana per hour, to A rank which loses one to ten Mana per decade, or even S-rank which is so perfect that it never loses Mana. Something like that is an enchanter’s dream material.”
“Right, losing Mana over time is bad,” Darius summarized.
“Right, the worse the dissipation rate, the more often the enchantment will need maintenance. Next is the Mana conductivity. You can consider this to be the Mana throughput. The more conductive the material, the more efficient it is and the less waste it generates, kind of like copper wire vs gold for electricity. The last property is the Aetheric Matrix Strength, or the AMS. This is how strong of an enchantment you can put in it. It's rated on a scale of one through ten, but for our purposes, it’s really only one through six.”
“Why is it only one through six?” Darius asked. “And what do those numbers mean?”
“Well, the number represents the tier of enchantments it can hold. At a one, it can only hold Novice tier enchantments, at five its master tier enchantments, and six is grand master, the pinnacle of mortal enchanting. Above those are the realms of the gods, apparently. Seven through ten are divine and transcendent tiers of enchanting. And no, I have no idea hoe potent those levels of enchanting are, I’m still only working with Novice tier.”
“I think I’m picking up what you’re putting down, at least in general. So, about that quartz?”
“Right, Quartz. It has a base capacity of one hundred fifty, MAR of eight per second, D ranked Dissipation—that’s one to ten lost per week—D ranked conductivity, and an AMS of two, so it can hold up to apprentice ranked enchantments. You might be asking why that’s important. The answer is this, this is all from an uncut, one inch point. Compared to say, steel… well, a one-pound bar of steel holds one hundred mana, an MAR of six per second, DR rank of E, E rank conductivity, and an AMS of 1.”
“You know, this all sounds a lot like science. I thought it was supposed to me magic?”
“You know what they say, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, right?”
“Dude, you’re making my head hurt with all of this. Don’t give me the technical details. Just tell me what this means for us.”
“It means that if you can get us more quartz and other gemstones, we can use them to make more powerful enchantments. That can mean better weapons and armor for everyone, better tools, better, well… everything.”
“I’ll see what I can do, and we can let the gatherers know to keep an eye out for more of that stuff. Sound good?”
“Sounds great.”
A loud beeping noise came from Chad’s direction, causing both Darius and Ethan to turn. Chad had just picked up one of the Drone controllers and was looking over the display.
“What is it?” Darius asked.
“Gather your Quick Reaction Squad. The undead have left the fog and they are heading almost due north. And be prepared. It’s a bigger group than what came after us.”
Darius activated his Power Armor, feeling its myriad plates sliding over his body and locking into place. “I’m on it,” he said before blasting out of the workshop and calling his new squad on the PA system once he was hovering over the hamlet. Not quite able to help himself, he shouted, “Avengers… Assemble.”