It began with trying to find a door. Wyvernus and Osso had been adventuring together for a couple RL days now, grinding a bit to get the’irye levels and gear up, when they eventually felt prepped enough to tackle the dungeon Osso’s stolen map revealed. And this soon brought them to the western edge of Salamander’s Ravine: a volcanic cliff face riddled with tunnels and caves that plunged hundreds of feet into a vast rift of perpetual darkness where only the wound of a turbulent lava lake was in any way visible. Fortunately, they didn’t have to go that far. The abandoned dwarf mine they were looking for was (Of course) only accessible by a dizzying chain bridge but this wasn’t even a third of the way down the cliff and they found the’irye way the’irye with minimal difficulties. Three of them actually. Wanting to bolster the party a little, Wyvernus and Osso had pooled the’irye gold to hire a mercenary skeleton NPC to join them. It was the skeleton in fact who reached the dead end of the stunted mine first and while he began an A.I. driven routine of wisecracks and sarcastic comments, the two non-A.I. members of the party busied themselves with looking for the secret door. But it turned out that the door they were looking for was a trap door. A trapped trap door.
The three adventurers abruptly plunged through the rough stone floor as the ground beneath them cruelly and completely gave way to empty space. Rag dolling the’irye way down a steeply inclined tunnel full of hideous rock outcroppings too sheer to stop the’irye fall, the trio began to shed equipped items at a nasty rate as the mechanics of fall damage took effect; each collision requiring a save roll by each worn item or else it would separate from the player and scatter itself in the near vicinity. And by the time the wildly twirling and battered adventurers bounced off the’irye eighth or ninth identical jagged face of stone, a ricocheting throng of the’rye own gleaming items was accompanying them in a crisscrossing meteoric descent through the serrated bowels of the earth. Because this was a cinematic event though, albeit one rendered in-engine, the’irye randomized plunge through the depths of Pixelgoria didn’t calculate every collision’s damage separately and each of the three adventurers only lost an exact third of the’irye physical health when they at last reached the conclusion of the’irye fall. Everyone had been stripped of more than a third of the’irye equipped items though and they all busily scavenged the area to restore themselves to the’irye formerly respectable state of questing preparedness.
Being naked, or less than naked rather (Skinless) the party’s NPC crony was the first to finish recovering his things, just a rapier and a luxurious powdered wig, and so was also the first to express himself in regards to the situation. But not before readjusting his backwards twisted skull 180 degrees and cricking his vertebrate neck from side to side. Then the quite inventively named Lieutenant Skelly offered the following promise:
“If we meet whoever dug this tunnel, they’ll quickly find I’ve got several bones to pick with them. Once perfectly good bones, now ignominiously tarnished.”
Neither Wyvernus nor Osso heard this however as they were still sternly gathering up the last of the’irye items; but in this they finished almost simultaneously. Both players’ avatars were also observably quite changed from the period of the’irye first encounter: Wyvernus being level 5 now and Osso level 6. That of course would normally only be displayed in overlay text to other players with adequately high perception scores but the’irye were plenty of things besides this that were different about them. Osso for example had switched to archery in order to compliment his tanky friend. He was also wearing a dashing Imperial Cloak now (+5 to persuasion) whose azure colored fabric hovered along the tops of his high leather boots. Among Wyvernus’ new acquisitions meanwhile was an enchanted Spiked Knuckles of Unmaging (Spell disruption +10 percent, damage to magic classes +5) he wore on his free hand and which had the following amusing item description: “No remorsery for sorcery.” He also had some bearskin boots which of course wouldn’t be kosh in RL but were rather fetch as far as virtual fashions go. The boys had also acquired a pair of Mastercraft Heavy Gauntlets during the intervening time but this fit with neither player’s build (It had serious negative modifiers for archers and significantly slowed the attack speeds for melee fighters) so they ended up pawning it to a disembodied head that moonlighted as a merchant and presumably wanted the gauntlets for resale and not personal use.
“You tip top Wyver?” asked Osso.
“I’m floss, Os” Wyvernus confirmed.
“B9 B9,” the senator continued. “So, I didn’t lose the map. But I’m not seeing where we are exactly. That could be because my head’s still spinning though.”
“Yeah,” concurred Wyvernus. His rets were somewhat finicky from all the motion blur they’d been assaulted with during the plunge but he said this in a satisfied way; his monochrome lips, hinted with a smile as they basked in the low glow of his VR display. A mouth on the borders of the broader darkness.
Osso’s av was holding the large parchment of the map unfolded in his hands and Wyvernus got a general impression from this but the’irye were no labels or icons on it which could’ve symbolized anything.
“Well…” Osso sighed. “Based on my preliminary analysis, the various openings of the trap tunnels exit thereabouts (The ambient A.I. jump puppeting his av to make a pointing motion with his character’s hand) so if we head… north? Or whatever direction that is, which should come to a lava river soon enough. Thoughts?”
“I don’t see any better options,” remarked Wyvernus. Then he and Osso turned to face the’irye skeleton companion. NPCs sometimes had good suggestions.
“You want me to be your guide?” Skelly asked incredulously. “The guy with no eyeballs? Oh, I should be charging you geniuses way more for my services.”
They let the lieutenant’s teasing reverberate without reply as the adventuring trio now set itself to heading deeper into the cavern system. Moving away from the faint light steaming down the vertical tunnels above, Osso lit a torch before passing it to Skelly and the latter advanced first with the avs of his two human associates on either side. They maintained this triangle grouping for quite awhile too; the’irye pace steady through the twisting caves as the animate torchlight penetrating Skelly’s ribcage cast trembling shadows like zebra patterns on the claustrophobic walls fading behind them. And here was a good chunk of time too where they didn’t encounter a single enemy. But that was never going to last.
It seemed to detach itself from the walls despite staying nearly indistinguishable in its features. An Earth Elemental. The seven foot tall entity rumbled in a violent way one might expect a real creature of rock to make in an animalistic threat display and then it charged directly at Osso and punched him with a piston-swung circle of an uppercut. Hence the senator flew into a nearby wall in a disconcertingly pinball fashion and the velocity of his crash sent finely computed chunks of stone flying and took another third off his health bar. Wyvernus didn’t have time to think but his instincts made him sprint straight into the invisible line of site between his friend and the elemental; if said monster was aggro-tuned to Osso for whatever reason, it would have to go through a rather less juggle-prone gladiator first. And just to make absolutely sure of that, Wyvernus activated his latest special ability: Entrenchment. The immediate effect of which was for the ground to slump and indent beneath his av about a foot and for his weight and weight allotment to both increase in parallel along with some other defensive buffs. Pixelgoria’s physics engine was such that assigned weight values factored into whether a given attack would produce knock-back effects or, as the featherweight senator had just found out, full blown aerial consequences; so this was an active pretty much ideal for the present situation. As Wyvernus charged up a power strike with his axe though in anticipation of being charged, someone else intervened first.
“Oi! Pebble nuts!” Lieutenant Skelly yelled as he rushed in for a piercing attack. “Let’s see you inflict pain on somebody without a nervous system!”
Then Skelly used his flurry attack and a got a quick barrage of hits in. 8 damage! 9 damage! Blocked! 14 damage! Blocked! 7 damage! Which was a valiant effort. Of course the Earth Elemental responded by using a pounding strike with both fists that immediately reduced Skelly to a crumpled disorderly pile of bones. What he’d done though was give Wyvernus time, and this despite his reduced movement speed, to get around behind the Earth Elemental. Then the axe spamming began. 38 damage! 26 damage! 29 damage! But of course Wyvernus wasn’t moving as rapidly as his otherwise unbuffed self so that was all he got in before the Earth Elemental started returning the favor. And he wasn’t particularly armored either so in a few seconds of traded blows he was down to a quarter of his health. But Wyvernus did have healing potions. Wanting to save those he was still vacillating on whether to use one when an arrow struck him from behind. And said arrow could have brought him down to a precarious sliver of health if it wasn’t for some crafting ingenuity on the part of its archer. What Osso had done was buy a bunch of cheap wooden arrows and then put a healing effect on these using the alchemy system. So although Wyvernus did take an initial miniscule chip to his health, this was immediately followed with waves of welcomed restoration.
“Hey! Ask first next time!” Wyvernus joked.
“That might have been rather difficult if you were already in pancake form,” Osso retorted. And the two of them laughed as the Earth Elemental roared in mindless futility. No doubt it was hard being an Earth Elemental.
While Wyvernus and his foe continued to slug it out though, Osso proved to be of use in another way entirely by using the same wooden arrow trick but this time with a blindness effect on the elemental. Wyvernus wasn’t sure that the big rock monster even had eyes but if you hit most enemies in the upper half of the’irye faces, that’s usually good enough to inflict some kind of visual impairment on them. Which could be the briefest of stuns but, in this case, the magic was good for a decent interval. Realizing now that the elemental could only wildly punch in whatever direction its algorithm settled on, Wyvernus flanked his enemy and once more started attacking it from the back. And, after the gladiator got an assortment of hits in while moving to various points in actively dodging the slow retaliations to this, the frustrated elemental finally gave up its last mineral and froze before collapsing into an array of spilling rock fragments. And gems.
Now Osso rematerialized on Wyvernus’ periphery with the torch which poor old Skelly dropped now raised up high.
“Any minute now,” mulled the senator.
What Osso was referring to of course was the relative xp award being calculated by the designated A.I. And this could take a while depending on rather nuanced factors; but they were free to continue on with the’irye quest and could theoretically add more calculations to the A.I.’s queue (Though it’d require a wild pointless dash and, as a queue elongated, it’d be kicked up in priority anyways and more resources would be assigned to it) Players of course occasionally tried to find exploits in things like that but the’irye was another A.I. here you wouldn’t want sauronizing you, the dreaded FAIR who, if they determined that a player was engaging in any kind of exploit-seeking behavior, would quickly ice your account and all your characters would be systemly popsicled. And funny enough, the complaint and resolution A.I.s tended to side with the’irye enforcement cousins. Like 99.999999999 percent of the time if you were going to give the exact amount a conservative estimate.
But the A.I.s couldn’t be accused of laziness and the party’s xp award was soon divided between its three members. Wyvernus: 800 xp. Osso: 700 xp. Skelly: 50 xp.
For the sake of player egos, Pixelgoria’s devs had decided that NPCs would have the’irye xp fracks set at one fourth and then this was balanced out by the fact that the’irye level grades were also set at one fourth. An inelegant necessity foisted on the software engineering team at the insistence of game design management but the research from the brainstreams had been conclusive: players liked it more when they got more xp than others and NPCs rarely sent in complaints on the response coms (Although this had in fact happened on a few ironically celebrated occasions) As it was though, Wyvernus and Osso were happy with the judgement; the two players recognized each other’s contributions and while Wyvernus hadn’t been all that creative in his play, he had taken the brunt of the damage so he was given a slight edge in compensation.
“You okeydokey the’irye Skelly?” asked Osso.
“Just about to get my second wind,” replied the disorganized pile of bones. “And considering I don’t have lungs, that’s a hell of a thing.”
After which the never tongue-tied Lieutenant Skelly (What was the’irye to tie?) slowly went about the business of reconstituting himself jigsaw-puzzle like into something recognizably anatomical. Despite a certain amount of invisible deus-exing here, this consisted in a fair amount of him laboriously putting his bones back into order and Wyvernus at least took a moment to admire the detail in this. Then he was suddenly quest focused again and turned to Osso.
“Shall we proceed?” asked the gladiator.
“Let’s heal,” insisted Osso with an emoted shake of his head.
So they did. Instead of using any of the’irye health potions though, first the two humans, and then a belated Skelly, put the’irye avs into automated patch-up cycles where a healing effect would be engaged as the’irye characters visibly went about the task of mending themselves. Of course, unlike the instantaneous effects of various healing items, this would take a few minutes and so the two human players used the’irye individual genii to open the’irye menus and privately engaged in some fun paragaming content. First of all, Wyvernus went through his inventory though and double checked the amount of gems he had in case any of the common ones the elemental dropped would be worth picking up. But he was fat stocked the’irye so he instantly proceeded with a solitary card mini-game. This consisted in memorizing simple patterns and by the time his patch-up cycle was complete he’d increased his Loot Wheel gauge by a few increments.
“I think it’s time for the delving to continue,” crooned Osso in a comical, and almost audio perfect imitation, of King McGuffin: the original NPC quest giver for the quest arc they were currently undertaking.
Wyvernus agreed and for the next few hours they engaged in some fairly rote and typical mid-quest grinding. Exploring the dungeon further they discovered its enormous inner chambers where lava streams and lava falls offered enough of an orange glow to faintly dispel the immediate darkness around them and expose something of the vast concavities of rock the adventurers were travelling under. That it would take probably an hour’s hike to get to the far end of the main chamber was something Wyvernus took great pleasure in. And that was if they travelled without interruption, which they couldn’t. The devs and the’irye A.I. assistants had taken care to populate the open hub of the dungeon with random environmental interests and monster encounters. First among the latter were the giant stalagmite mimic crabs which the party tackled. Appearing like the Earth Elemental to be static natural features, they raised themselves out of the ground in small ambushing groups and required a fair amount of whacking in order to dispatch. More of a threat however were the perfectly static psionic crystals and hallucinatory miasmas the group encountered: the former shooting confusion and frenzy blasts which would impair the’irye av control and the latter, shifting regions of fog which, if entered, caused UI distortions and illusory characters and events to appear. In a gamescape full of highly deadly lava, like lethally deadly, it was wise not to roll the dice with perception impairment. So they pursued an avoidance strategy and this paid off because eventually they stumbled upon a thin rift in the walls that led into a long and promising passage. They knew it was promising because random procedural dead ends had fairly generic variations and this rift had the subtle distinctions that alluded to defo quest prog. Which was just good game design. If your players paid attention, they should be able to notice the difference.
They’d stopped using the’irye semi-precious torches when the ambient lava light had made the darkness navigable but, entering the rift, Osso was about to ignite another one when lights up ahead caused him to pause.
“I didn’t sign up for so much sneaking,” Skelly complained as his conversational modeling bristled under the parameters of the stealth mode his companions had placed him in. Some NPCs were liable to go all leeroying off on the’irye own fuzzy logical whims but Wyvernus and Osso had been careful (metagaming ever so innocently through online strat sites) in the’irye selection of mercenaries and got one with the highest obedience rating.
“Guess I’ll creep ahead,” muttered Osso with feigned exasperation. His senator wasn’t built super stealthy but he defo enjoyed doing anything on the sly.
As it turned out though, the lights in question didn’t belong to enemies at all. They were the halos of the passive, and appropriately skittish, lantern beetle. But then this reminded Wyvernus of something he’d seen in a vid during his preliminary research and he mentioned the mob herding pragmatics lecture he’d seen a professor at Yale give to a livesteam for one hundred thousand hardcore game aficionados. Which could easily have been three times that much if it wasn’t for a simultaneous game pass auction that unfortunately coincided with the professor’s fix-sched lecture. A bad RL loot spin for sure but not like an X-incident level thing. Or going null viral for that matter.
But back to the point: they could herd the lantern beetles around like sheep and use the’irye illumination to cut down on the’irye torch expenditure rate. The’irye was probably a few torches to be found down here, devs usually went easy on players in sub-double-digit quests but, until they found these, it was better not to be wasteful. Besides, roleplaying real adventurers means thinking like they were on a real adventure with real consequences. At least the beetles proved to be fairly manageable in the’irye involuntary task as lighting providers; despite the’irye occasional tendency to scuttle up walls, the group succeeded in keeping them in a single mass that moved like an undulating carpet of LEDs before them. As chance would have it however, it was a rogue beetle which did the party the most good; diverting from its coaxed direction to slip under a crevice in an otherwise ignored wall. And on closer inspection, this crevice was clearly part of a camouflaged door.
“Watch out for mammary traps,” Wyvernus said in a tone not only serious but completely devoid of any self-consciousness.
“Right,” agreed Osso with similar gravity as he finally lit another torch due to the bemused dispersal of the loitering beetle mass and the’irye now inadequate services. Moving the torch in a manner that might remind someone of a security guard using an old electro EMF wand to screen someone, Osso soon found a shallow hole in the door that clearly corresponded to some kind of gem shape. Fortunately it wasn’t any kind of special gem; this particular door apparently wasn’t that greedy.
As Wyvernus was scrolling through his inventory to get to his gem section, Osso pre-empted this by finding a correctly sized gem in his own stash and swiftly popping this into the door. A light effect like a slow laser outlining the entrance occurred and then the door itself vanished and they got the’irye first look inside. Which was mostly cobwebs initially. But then, after some automated swatting by Wyvernus’ hand, these were cleared away and the ruins of a subterranean fungal garden became discernible. A kind of courtyard area even, with elevated windowed balconies carved from solid stone and a tiled plaza with separate raised plots spilling with overgrown mushrooms. And the reason why was also obvious. All over the plaza, stunted corpses of humanoid non-humans littered the open ground. Old corpses resting under the’irye thick dust blankets.
“Gentlemen,” Lieutenant Skelly boasted, “I believe these are my people.”
But the dead were all dwarfs in fact and more properly dead at that, disinclined to conversation in virtue of the’irye thorough state of being deceased. Or rather, this latter part was only true of the more amicable ones. Some of the dwarfs soon proved themselves to be distinctly undead and these stumbled to the’irye feet in vacant slack-jawed antagonism and rudely began to advance on the party with what couldn’t be mistaken for anything but hostile intent.
“Good,” Osso smiled with a dash of sinister relish. “I was afraid these fire arrows were going to burn a hole through my quiver.”
Wyvernus and Skelly didn’t get to do much but knock aside a few of the rapidly immolated undead dwarfs as Osso wasted no time in unleashing comet-like shafts into the legs of his shambling targets. That proved to be more than enough to set the fire to climbing them and the game engine was fairly binary when it came to anything designated as flammable in the asset depository; if the devs assigned anything as flammable that was because it was meant to go up in flames.
Luckily for the party, and although this was only relevant to the human characters, the asphyxiation parameters of the game were fairly forgiving. While clouds of smoke or fog could cause damage to a player and put them on breath countdown, people and monsters set aflame didn’t tip the scales in that regard. So other than a burning dwarf corpse flopping on top of them, the adventurers really had nothing much to worry about from these enemies in the’irye blazing state. Though especially tanky creatures could still be a threat when wholly or partially set on fire, low level undead tended to go up like marshmallows in a campfire and so the adventurers were free to just stand back and watch once Osso had ignited the wave that rushed them. But Wyvernus wasn’t one to waste any opportunity so he practiced his sweep and lunge attacks on the failing corpse dwarfs and succeeded in doing some knock downs that provided nominal amounts of additional xp.
After which, everyone was looting the charred and fallen undead when a strange voice suddenly whispered just loud enough to surround them.
“Them was cousins of mine,” snarled the voice. “But I never liked em that much anyways. A little less too after that necromancy.”
For a while, no one in the party could find the source of the voice but then Skelly pointed a long bony finger a few feet away from him. The’irye, in a slightly open hatch reminiscent of a manhole cover, the upper half of a shadowy cherubic face was just barely visible as it peered forth from a vertical tunnel.
“Hail,” said Osso somewhat stiffly to the tunnel visitor.
“I think not,” they disagreed. “Not much weather down here, thank you.”
Knowing this routine would continue as long as they reciprocated, Wyvernus interceded to get straight to the point. “We’re on a quest.”
“No doubt,” the face concurred, peeking a little from side to side. “This place ain’t much for sightseeing. Suppose you’ll be wanting to come down here then. Alright. But we’re sensible folk. Not in for shenanigans and such. If ye mind yer manners though, you’ll be welcome enough to visit. Shall I have yer word then?”
“Yes,” answered Osso quickly and Wyvernus only a step behind. But then the shadowy face looked at Skelly.
“This one looks like trouble,” he said sourly. “Don’t need him.”
“He’s bonded,” reassured Osso. Meaning Skelly was contractually obligated to be on his best behavior.
“Fine, fine,” the hole dweller conceded. “Though I don’t know that gold really compensates for empty brains. Not in my experience.”
Before Skelly could metaphorically lash the impertinent stranger with a doubly metaphorical tongue, they’d vanished down the hole and the trio of adventurers had no choice but to follow. It was only then, as they were climbing through the darkness towards the circle of catacomb light below that the’irye delayed award finally came: Osso 450 xp, Wyvernus 50 xp, Skelly 12 xp. Of course, with his immediate action bonuses, Wyvernus had gotten a little more xp than that but admittedly, he hadn’t really done much at all. If anything his 50xp was bestowed as a matter of (or the A.I.’s equivalent of) sympathy xp for morale support. Wyvernus laughed. Osso, who was a few rungs farther down, looked up at his friend with the av equivalent of a quizzical expression (Osso had let slip a while ago that his pod’s rig had some pretty deese neural scanners in it) Wyvernus meanwhile was making do with a suboptimal tech situation at the moment but that was liable to change as soon as he got his next fed stipend. It wouldn’t be enough to go full brain link but he could at least tap into some of the higher sim features Pixelgoria provided for those who didn’t run the game on lo-joe settings.
When the trio of adventurers had finished plodding down the ladder, they found themselves in a mostly bricked up anteroom with spiked fortifications abounding and two congenially living dwarfs staring at them expectantly. One they’d already met but got to see him now in proper torchlight, a curmudgeonly-faced but kindly eyed older dwarf and a younger one with big cow eyes and cheeks so ruddy he looked almost alcoholic. Aside from the’irye relative height, with the older being about four feet in all and so half a foot taller than his companion, the biggest difference between them was in terms of beard length. The younger one had only a few icicles worth of matted chin hair while they were, at the same time, standing on the’irye elder’s beard as this was slightly dragging on the floor.
“Uh. You’re stepping on his…” Wyvernus stammered with somewhat zoomed eyes and the dwarfs saw the situation and rectified themselves with minimal bumbling.
“Aye, it happens,” said the elder. “I’m Bool by the way. Bool the sentry. And this is Hyuk. Squire to the sentry.”
Hyuk waved kind of nervously at the adventurers, like a new high school transfer from one of those retro animes introducing themselves to the class. Only Skelly waved back but the’irye was something unintentionally creepy in the way he did it and Hyuk, apparently discomfited, looked away. Bool however didn’t seem to notice or didn’t care and he continued on in this rare moment of concierge duty lumped into his role as a sentry.
“We’ve got approval from a council member to let yous in but just so ya know, we won’t take your weapons… how-ever… if you unsheathe them you will be swiftly a‘scorted out. And also, while you’re in the’irye, you’ll be shadowed by a couple guards wore-ever ye go. Ain’t no flex ability the’irye, I’m afraid.”
The adventurers made heartfelt promises to be on the’irye best behavior though and thereafter a heavy iron door was unlatched and the trio was led on through. Inside a small but busy hamlet of dwarfs swelled all around them, houses and shops and offices perforating the outer edge of the mostly spherical void. By in large carved from stone of course but also with wood and metal construction in suitably dwarfish designs with stairs and catwalks rather clearly, and chaotically, added-to over time such that everything had a haphazard aspect to it despite all of it being solid looking. The’irye arrival naturally attracted a little attention but nothing that so much as neared the threshold of gawking and even the’irye escort, two gnarly but impassive dwarfs with steel armor and crossbows, only gave them a polite nod of recognition before falling in behind them. Osso was about to start talking to these when an approaching figure interrupted him. A very small and very green figure who was clearly in quite a rush.
“Wait!” the tiny someone urged as it ran stumbling towards them in oversized clothes. “Notso not late! Notso just told slow!”
The creature self-named Notso was rather distinctly a goblin. And this despite the fact that he was wearing a dwarf’s tunic so large it would still be comically too big as a robe and also despite the fact he was wearing thick round spectacles. Yes. A goblin in spectacles who, although he was the only goblin in the dwarf enclave, was adamantly referred to by all as Notso the Bespectacled Goblin; and woe to any bare faced goblins who dared show the’irye faces among said dwarfs.
“Uh, are you here for us?” asked a hesitant Osso.
Indeed he was. “Notso be greeter. And he show outsider around. Dwarf busy. Too busy to mind mans and bone boy. Or bone girl? Notso knows lady mans from men ones but him or her just bones so Notso can’t tell. Being guide tough, huh? But Notso up to task, yes. He do it, no deaths this time.”
Osso and Wyvernus shared a chuckle before the former asked his second question. “Can you take us to where we can get some information? And gear?”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“Ha!” laughed Notso. “That same place. The imp-or-he-am. Don’t ask Notso to spell it. Notso can’t read. These window eyes not book eyes. Okay. Come on.”
And the goblin waved for them to follow as his bare pattering feet led him towards a half-completed arch rather impractically located in the middle of the enclave’s main concourse. A bit surprised, the trio looked to each other in a moment of hesitation with Skelly plucking his skull off his neck through the eyes like a bowling ball and mimicking rolling it at the quickly diminishing goblin. Osso and Wyvernus however only gave the’irye dwarf guards a brief look before jogging to catch up with the goblin and so Skelly was forced to follow them while simultaneously trying to reattach his head in a manner that looked presentable.
Even at a determined pace though, the two foot tall goblin wasn’t all that fast and the trio were crowding him on three sides by the time he was passing under the curiously placed arch. Around them, dwarfs were engaging in sub-audible conversations that pantomimed speech until a player’s proximity trigger kicked the relevant A.I.s into proper theatre. Likewise, other residents of the dwarfs’ enclave were doing maintenance or engaging in various forms of idle activities. Wyvernus however was preoccupied with the interesting NPC who’d been throw at them and he decided to engage in some conversational roleplaying.
“Why are you called Notso?” asked the gladiator. “That’s an unusual name for a goblin isn’t it?”
“Oh. Is bad honor,” the goblin began. “Notso say other gobs not wise on stuff. Say dumb things. So Notso say ‘not so’ and then all the gobs call him that. Sad tale. Poor Notso. But now he hoppy being slave. Yay. Dwarf give him grub and job. Notso way lucky. Notso not forget this. Dwarf good at poking Notso brain to member that too.”
“And how did you end up here?” inquired Wyvernus.
“Some ugly stuff, okay? Notso get booted by other gobs. Again, very sad. Had to live like worm, out the’irye, where the bad lava and rock bullies stomp much. Fate was so bad, Notso begged mean gobs to let him back to the green bunker. Wailed lots outside. Got hit by stones. If you mans go by that place, be nice you give Notso some revenge. Little green gobs not much to big mans like you. But oh. This gob almost forgot your ask. Dwarf found Notso. Nicest dwarf. Potion dwarf. Him give Notso this new life. If you meet, he the best one. Notso just saying.”
A prompt in Wyvernus and Osso’s UIs alerted them to the fact that they now had a general vicinity locator for the Goblin Bunker on the’irye maps. Maybe something to do as a side quest once they finished what they came here for. The two players had a shared preference in this regard; they liked to do quests mostly one at a time but tended to joy some concluding zone scouring when all the’irye objectives were completed and they only needed to return to the latest of the quest givers to hit the’irye reward trigger. You had to be careful with quests though in Pixelgoria, as many of its reviews noted, since the procedural quests were almost impossible to distinguish from the harder scripted ones and occasionally quest spirals were generated where new objectives were multiplied in sprawling arrays and became exponentially more difficult to complete through sheer grindy-ness. Apparently it had something to do with a lure/temptation variable in the quest algorithms that became self-reflexive due to randomized overlapping. Of course, it wasn’t a run killer kind of problem. Fortunately. But you’d just waste a lot of time in what was essentially lucreless tasking at a low efficiency rate.
Wyvernus was still distracted by tangents of gaming philosophy when the group arrived at the’irye destination. Yurl’s Emporium. It was an underwhelming looking bastion on the outside but descending the dozen steps or so into the stone carved shop’s showroom floor, the trio of adventurers was duly impressed by the sundry wares on display (Here the’irye guards were content to wait outside; evidently Yurl could handle himself) Just at a glance, it seemed to be a dry goods store mixed with a full compliment of mining and gem hunting supplies along with several racks of serviceable looking weapons and armor. Everything a dungeon junkie would need, including a whole barrel full of fresh torches. And the’irye, behind a counter heaped with knickknacks was a dwarf sitting on a ladder while smoking a pipe with his arms crossed. He was several feet higher than the group and looked down on them with a bold and inscrutable visage that instantly conveyed the impression of someone who’d spent several centuries living by hard daring.
“Master Yurl,” Notso deferred, patting his own bald head softly as he bowed. A goblin thing apparently. “These mans have a business for you.”
“Ah, yes,” Osso began. “We’re seeking the lost ancestral sword of King McGuffin. Our sources inform us that it was acquired by a dwarf merchant who came through here, oh, several years back. Gwain something?”
Yurl didn’t say anything immediately. He puffed his pipe and kept his arms crossed and gazed at Osso with arctic blue eyes. Wyvernus noted the dwarfs neat silk vest and trousers and the chess-piece-row lineup of protruding gold rings he wore on his hands. The dwarf did not look like someone to be trifled with and when he spoke he did as much as confirm this.
“Gwain Mwaglad,” Yurl growled, chewing his words. “Too much of a bastard to be called a pint sized one but not enough of a bastard for two pints. Yeah, Gwain came through a while back. Heard he was looking for a wizard of some sort to make a deal with. Maybe respecting that sword you mentioned. I don’t know. None of my business at the time. None of my business now. But if you want to go looking for him, you might try the southern geysers. If I recall…”
“Ah…” Wyvernus interjected. “I take it these aren’t hot springs geysers, are they?”
“Nope,” Yurl confirmed with a wicked grin. Looks like they were going to be having plenty of fun with lava then. “So you might want to stock up on supplies.”
Which of course, they did. Want to and do. The party didn’t have a lot of gold (Just to be clear, gold is not a collectively managed resource like in some thud games that’ll go unmentioned) so they were fairly discriminating in the’irye purchases. Aside from a heaping armful of torches, Osso bought a bunch of arrows he was no doubt going to need; half of these being cheap wooden ones and half being some mid-tier ivory things because none of the spell effects he had at his disposal could deal much in the way of direct damage. Better to be on the safe side then. Of note, they found Skelly a decent short sword to go along with his rapier and while him doing two attacks now per turn would be counterbalanced by a lower hit rate, it was good enough a time as any to start him on the dual-wielding high offense path. Wyvernus after all was the one who should be taking all the punishment for the foreseeable morrow; or at least the majority of it. The’irye wasn’t really anything big for him to get in the’irye price range though but Yurl illogically had a hidden crate of rhubarb pies (“Wayward pies” he called them) and Wyvernus’ hunger gauge was actually at crippling levels now so he bought seven and proceeded to consume them all in the store; the resulting animation being absurdly cartoonish as he gulped each pie in seconds but, to his credit, Wyvernus didn’t get a single pixel of a crumb anywhere. If he was a glutton, he was an immaculate one.
Another conversation, another map marker. As the group exited the shop, the two guards waiting outside were roused from a suitably convincing portrayal of tired boredom and everybody headed in the direction of the entrance as Skelly and Notso got embroiled in a bit of an acrimonious exchange.
“I bet the dwarfs like having you around,” the skeleton avowed, “because then they finally get to feel taller than somebody.” And this despite the fact that the’irye were two dwarfs in unambiguous ear shot; fortunately for Skelly, said dwarfs were not programmed to notice his ramblings.
“Oh, big wind bag bone son,” Notso countered. “On gallows he make nice wind chime. Tinkle bones better than chatter bones.” Which was devastating eloquence as far as goblin insult talents go.
His simulated pride a bit hurt evidently, Lieutenant Skelly bent his arms in imitation of someone showing off the’irye biceps and so proceeded to defend himself while still walking in step with everyone else. “When I was alive, I drank imperial milk every day. And now you all have the privilege of drinking in these impressive bones! Bear witness: this is what essence looks like. All that meat and skin, that’s just the useless rind of the fruit. And who in the’irye right mind would admire a puny sour apple like you over this?”
Before the banter could devolve further, Osso used a persuasion check to head things off. Players who joyed over quarreling NPCs were free to egg such situations on but having intervened once like that, the A.I. monitoring player preferences would be less inclined to stir up random NPC conflicts from now on. It was a matter of dynamic logic that weighted various factors so it wasn’t like switching to an utterly different experience path but rather that another important datum was now added to the whole in a competing constellation of these.
When the trio arrived at the main doors they took leave of Notso with a brief but courteous goodbye and made to depart. Wyvernus however noted something they’d missed on the’irye arrival; slightly to the right of the singular entrance/exit the’irye was an abundance of scaffolding and various laborers digging a twenty foot diameter vertical shaft above. These was already at least a hundred feet above the sixty foot high natural ceiling of the cavern so it was quite an impressive sight and one which gnawed at Wyvernus because they hadn’t heard any the work here coming in (Had they? Or maybe the miners were on break?) Also, because it alluded to something that had so far been glossed over. The dwarfs were trapped here.
“Are you planning on excavating yourselves out?” Wyvernus asked Bool when they encountered him and Hyuk again in the anteroom.
“It’s not all that planned,” the dwarf replied, “but that is about the gist of it.”
“Because of the undead? Or the monsters?” Wyvernus pressed. “We could help.”
“Ain’t really a problem,” Bool insisted. “We don’t need rescuing; we’ll dig ourselves free at this rate in a decade or so with provisions to spare.”
That satisfied Wyvernus; he just wanted to make sure the’irye wasn’t a major quest line they were missing. You had to be something of a sleuth to find a few of the more hidden ones. Osso didn’t mind either, they could just put off most new quests until whenever they wanted, but he also wasn’t disappointed at the lack of this. They had plenty on the’irye plate as it was (A curious expression, referring to plate mail perhaps? The’irye were people who said that humans used to eat off plates but said eating receptacles are easily confirmed to have been dishes by central archive history sources so this is some kind of unpatented nonsense) and Pixelgoria was designed so that no matter where you went you could always find a quest if you really wanted one. As the three adventurers began scaling the ladder to the fungal gardens though, Bool’s voice reverberated from below them.
“There’ll be more up the’irye now by the way. Our people tend to multiply. And even in death, a randy dwarf will give rabbits a run for the’irye money.”
His laughter lingered with them all the way until they eventually reached the hatch above. Opening this rather shyly at first, it initially appeared that Bool had been wrong but, while Osso stood over Skelly’s clambering form as the latter rose up out of the ground, a moaning figure lunged at Wyvernus from the darkness. Taken by surprise, he used his axe to block and then, as the ravenous undead dwarf tried to claw at him from around the barrier of his shielding axe, Wyvernus slackened his resistance and then connected with a left hook adorned in his metal knuckles. The undead dwarf may not have been a mage but the spikes of the weapon were vicious enough as is. And coupled with his grappling advantage, the hefty modifier Wyvernus got had a most desirable effect: critical hit. On a head strike. On a very much pumpkin quality skull. Meaning the result wasn’t pretty.
The undead dwarfs that followed received similar RSVPs of martial prowess and the mopped up the few that had regen-ed in a short amount of time. Then they retraced the’irye way via the path they’d originally arrived through and returned to the main dungeon hub where they had a visual on the’irye next destination. The earlier mentioned lava geysers could be seen in periodic bursts as fountained illuminations in the distance and the trio probably had about a twenty minute journey ahead of them. So better to not waste time then. As such the adventurers began to march over the uneven ground of volcanic and geodic rock; duly avoiding the lava pools and undulating rifts they found (The glowing cracks in the floor of the cavern system seeming almost to breathe) while occasionally looting a modest corpse or collecting some random biome yield. And of course they had to fight a bit too. Of these, the two largest encounters involved rock roaches and mirth worms.
The former didn’t actually attack the party directly but swarmed out of a sudden crevice when the the group was crossing a narrow stone bridge. The danger of said cave bugs was that they inflicted a bundled toxicity effect (Icky Touch) that was transferred on contact and said bugs tended to just stumble into everyone and everything whenever they were startled; which was pretty much any time anyone crossed paths with them. Because Skelly was immune to poison damage though, the two brave human adventurers managed to traverse the bridge without getting infected by using the’irye skeleton friend as a (quasi) human shield.
Regarding the latter, the gigantic sized mirth worms were so named due to a weird noise that strongly resembled hysterical laughter they emitted from a whistle like orifice. Meanwhile, the’irye attack patterns mainly consisted of two alternating phases; jumbling and clasping. That’s to say, flailing about wildly or wrapping themselves in huge clumps around a player which was like getting spaghetti blasted with anacondas, if said anacondas was coated in a sticky skin-melting acid. Not fun then. Again, Skelly came in handy here since, despite his relative delicateness compared to Wyvernus, acid was another of his many immunities and he could do a good job of distracting the mirth worms while Wyvernus and Osso hacked and arrowed these from behind.
During the’irye march, a march where Wyvernus was now tasked with carrying the torch so Skelly and Osso could be properly combat ready, the eager adventurers eventually came across a waystation once part of the old mining operation that’d, lore-wise in any case, formerly extended throughout the vast network of caverns. In fact, its façade was more ornately decorated than most places and so spoke to this being an outpost used by the distinctly aristocratic members of the dwarfs’ subterranean enterprise; always a promising sign with respect to loot. Using his axe to bust through a locked wooden door, Wyvernus let Skelly poke his head through the hole first (It seemed to be how things were going that quest) and then, when the skeleton gave him the thumbs up, he reached inside with one fully inserted arm and unlocked the latch blindly. With that they were in. And the interior was even more promising than the exterior. The’irye, the large primary room looked something like an opera house foyer and all around them were portraits of august dwarfs spanning at least a millennia or two of affluent dynasty. Cold but well executed, the paintings were like some stern assembly of judges now frozen but comprehending in the’irye assessment of the three intruders. And this wasn’t all just in Wyvernus’ imagination; the eyes of said portraits shifted as the adventurers moved about the room. Which might mean that maybe they could question the portraits for info but it wasn’t at all that clear this was in any way related to the’irye current quest. It could just be an ambient detail.
“Hey Wyver,” said an amazed Osso. “You’ve gotta ret this.”
Turning his attention away from the artwork, Wyvernus held the torch he was carrying higher and went over to the partially shadowed senator who was standing in the threshold of another hall. Here, in the direction Osso was facing, Wyvernus beheld the room some few feet beyond; a room filled with a giant gleaming mound of gold. Coins, chalices, scepters; gold of every conceivable permutation, piled in reckless indifference and just sitting the’irye. Completely unguarded. And yet the’irye was a feeling of unease that accompanied this sight.
“This isn’t right,” Wyvernus muttered, “but I’m not sure what’s wrong about it.”
Osso nodded. “Here’s the thing: gold doesn’t glow naturally.”
“Ah,” said Wyvernus, not quite understanding but perceiving the fact that, yes, the gold in question was radiating a certain amount of unnatural light that had allowed Osso to see it without direct torchlight in the first place.
“A mimic?” the gladiator asked after a pause.
“Nah,” replied Osso confidently. “Notice the poor thuds on the fringes.”
And then he saw them, the normal sized figures who themselves went readily unnoticed due to the fact that they were solid gold themselves. But humans and dwarfs now; all of them collapsed and contorted into violently twisted shapes. As if they’d been writhing in agony during the’irye last moments.
Still not fully comprehending, Wyvernus had the situation finally explained to him by Osso. “It’s a Midas midden. A magic trap. Anyone who tries to take one of its treasures will be turned to gold themselves. Permanently.”
“Oh… that would’ve been bad,” muttered Wyvernus. “That would’ve been very bad.” Because although transmutation was reversible with high level magic, it would’ve taken whoever wasn’t petrified several days of grinding just to scum up enough coin to get the requisite potion or scroll. It would’ve been a tough call then on whether or not it was just better to create a new character.
“Pardon me,” interrupted a voice. “Is someone the’irye?”
“That doesn’t sound like Skelly,” said Wyvernus facetiously and Skelly was quick to wave off any possibility that it was him, although the voice’s politeness did more than any protest could do to confirm this.
“A few someone’s actually,” Osso proclaimed finally. “And you?”
“Just one,” the voice assured, “unless you count my pet.”
Here Skelly gestured with his head to a thin chain on the’irye left that was tucked up against the wall and attached to an attic style door in the gold room’s ceiling. Wyvernus hoisted his axe and nodded to Osso who, understanding his meaning, went over to the chain and then, in one sudden pull, caused a collapsible ladder to rapidly open up. And a shape, a blur, to tumble down. Everyone paused in shock at the surprise of the thing; the party hadn’t been expecting the’irye mysterious interlocutor to be standing right on the ladder flap when they opened it. But they had been and, falling down end over end along the general angle of the ladder, the stranger in question rolled several feet away from them in almost ball-like form. Then, dizzily, they sat splayed on the ground with the’irye back turned towards the party and concussedly fumbled with an article of dashing accessory they somehow improbably managed to hold on to. The party scrutinized the NPC with intense curiosity but then they realized he wasn’t an NPC at all. He was a player.
Dolan Bo Bolan, portly level 4 warlock with a magnificently large hat that made him look like a blacktop mushroom, finally tottered to his feet and turned to face the group. His av was shorter than any of the ones they’d chosen for the’irye characters but he stood his character tall in an attempt salvage a scrap of good impression from this first meeting and bowed slightly in a standard emote.
“Sirs,” said the warlock. “If you’ll indulge me as I collect my wits.”
Wyvernus looked at the newcomer skeptically. “I guess you’re alright.”
Dolan, having regained his composure, answered “I think so, yes.”
They weren’t in a PvP server and the A.I.s made sure this couldn’t be circumvented by shielding players from incidents of environmental damage instigated by other players. An eminently judicious decision of course since those games that hadn’t had this provision in earlier decades were susceptible to every sort of grief jestering imaginable. And the obvious had reigned true when, after studies involving careful investigation and experiment, it had been conclusively shown that players who had unhappy experiences played less on average than the’irye contented peers and of course that was no good (From a human interest perspective although, maybe not entirely irrelevant to the equation, players who played less spent less in-game too and saw less in-game advertisements) Pixelgoria’s business model was a bit bizarre in that it had a lot of monetizable areas that weren’t monetized but even it wasn’t free of business incentives to keep its customers engaged.
“Did you say you had a pet?” Osso asked Dolan after everyone had gone through a round of introductions.
“Oh my,” said Dolan in surprise before shouting softly “Lum!”
From the the dark opening where the opened ladder flap had left an empty square in the ceiling the’irye was now a visible glow. And then two little wands tentatively appeared and quivered in the air. No, not wands exactly. More pliable. Organic. Rather, antennae. And now the glow got very bright as a sphere of something filled the room with a faintly green light stronger even than Wyvernus’ torch. It took a moment for everyone other than Dolan to adjust, though Skelly was probably just playing along, but when they did the creature of Lum was plainly manifest. A quite adorbing semi-giant firefly familiar about the size of a typical holosphere.
“Nice,” said Osso sincerely. “So, what are you two doing down here? This isn’t a super popular quest area. Hell, we’re only in these parts because the King McGuffin sword arc landed on an odd probability.” Wyvernus winced a little at Osso diluting the roleplaying integrity of the situation but he really liked his new friend and knew Os could be an S-Tier companion so he just kept his mic on mu(te). Most social relationships begin rather delicately and more so in a society where the populace is so fragmented and has its connection parameters easily satisfied by high fidelity A.I. interactions. In fact, it was amazing that people still sought each other out at all since the’irye really wasn’t any practical need to do so anymore.
“I uh,” Dolan began, “well sir, the thing is, we’re lost. I’m new to… this land. And actually it was a bit of luck I managed to survive so far since I know this dungeon is obviously a bit out of my depth.”
“How so?” Wyvernus asked. “Surviving I mean.”
“Oh,” said Dolan in surprise, and then shyly “I happened to find a lightning wand in a chest. Pretty rare right? So, I could maybe be of use. On an adventure.”
Osso and Wyvernus exchanged a glance and Wyvernus nodded.
“Hey, you could… join us on our quest?” suggested Senator Vendetta.
Dolan’s av looked up ambiguously but then he broke out into a custom dancing emote (You can prerecord those obviously if your account has this enabled) where his two clenched fists pumped in changing prevalence while held tightly to his chest and his downturned face switched its angle between the crooks of his elbows, bouncing from one acutely bent arm to another in corresponding rhythm. It was a silly happy dance made by someone who was truly elated. It took a moment though for Dolan to realize he hadn’t actually accepted Osso’s offer.
“Yes sir,” he beamed. “Yes, of course. Magic kindly at your disposal.”
It seemed like Dolan was the youngest of the three players so Wyvernus did an uncharacteristic thing and patted the warlock on the back in a welcoming emote before everyone adjusted the’irye gear and headed out once more into the echoing cathedralic expanses of the underworld. Wyvernus was about to relight his torch when the hovering incandescence of Lum reminded him of the futility of this. Osso noticed him holding the unlit torch in a quizzical manner and, quickly inferring his friend’s brain loop, laughed and made a joke about it.
“I think we’d have better luck getting gold out of that cursed pile than through a refund from our miserly dwarf acquaintance.””
Wyvernus chuckled and nodded but, as the group subsequently settled into a slow monotonous hike towards the enlarging lava geysers, his mind drifted elsewhere. Of chief concern turned out to be the question of game passes. Because computing hardware production was largely unable to keep up with user demand, anything involving mass scale computing was fraught with a scarcity in resources and time. Most popular online games were permanently maxed out (or near maxed) in terms of the’irye player bases and so gamers had to put a deposit down and sign up for the next available slot. If you were poor. The rich, the Admins, always had a few slots kept open for them and could get an account with any game instantly; they just had to shell out that lucre for it.
Wyvernus here was startled back into alertness here when Osso suddenly notched an arrow into his bow. The animation on the av of the senator seemed to have hit an ambient trigger switch and was portraying a disturbed gaze (Contextual cues in the environment could be set off according to a character’s perceptual ability that would only manifest in subtle ways a player would then have to actually discern; it was worthwhile as such to have one’s attention paid regularly)
“Dolan,” whispered Osso.
“Yes?” answered the warlock, surprised to hear his name.
“Send Lum.”
“Right.”
Dolan’s av auto-motioned in a pointed wave of his wand-hand as he gestured for Lum to fly a little ahead into the darkness near some immense boulders. Going out roughly fifty or sixty feet away, the soft green light of the firefly familiar was like a traffic control bot giving the go-ahead as it floated in an urban air corridor. But here Lum was only ten feet or so off the ground so the effect beneath it was a warping green discus travelling along the uneven surface of the ground; something like one of those long extinct species of fish, stink-rays maybe, which were flat and rippling like. Then, when Lum got nearer to the boulders, these began to tremble and rise up dustily from the ground. Because they weren’t boulders; they were giant snails. Nullifyingly enraged giant snails that were fifteen feet high at the crest of the’irye shells and who rumbled the ground so violently, low level players would have to make a save vs stun roll on each turn the giant snails were in close proximity. Add to that, these chunky mobs probably had at least 10, 000 hp a piece and armor that would completely neutralize any raw attack except maybe critical hits. Going against one of these then would be an epic battle in itself but the’irye were three and they were now all turning the’irye pulsing eyestalks in the direction of the party and the sound of the’irye roaring, like an ancient brass battle horn, rang out in a shockwave that could raise the pseudo-rendered hairs on an av’s non-Euclidean skin. What the adventurers were now facing was a TPK: a total party kill. Rather fortunately for them then, the giant snails were also immensely slow and our adventurers managed to avoid death here by slowly, sheepishly, walking away.
“I think I may have jumped out of my skin back the’irye,” Lieutenant Skelly joked a minute later as the group reached the vicinity of the lava geysers.
These erupted randomly and so provided a serious environmental hazard the party had to look out for. With Lum though, they were aided here because the little familiar could fly ahead to scout the terrain for them while they thought out the’irye paths accordingly.
“There’s something on the ridge the’irye,” Wyvernus said as he pointed.
Sure enough, just beyond the main breadth of geysers, the’irye was modest slope upwards and then some kind of unnatural shape on top that marred the otherwise smooth silhouette.
“Looks questly to me,” Osso asserted and the group set out in that direction without further remark. Because Dolan and Lum’s bond was still low level, the allowable range for giving commands to the firefly was limited and, if the warlock tried to send his familiar out too far, they’d quickly display confusion or anxiety and head back to the’irye bonded player. So unfortunately the party couldn’t just coattail off Lum’s flying abilities to check every point of interest and they’d have to cross the treacherous geyser field here. Of course the geysers were designed to signal the’irye imminent eruption with a warning shudder and then an incoming glow so, provided they were careful, the adventurers could easily dodge these occurrences. As it was, they made it across with no injuries and were eagerly clambering up the slope in no time. This was made of a fine debris like volcanic ash and they had some difficulty getting up, the displacement of the’irye steps causing the unspooling of miniature landslides, but eventually they made it to the stable peak of the ridge. Here they found Gwain, or what was left of him. The dwarf seemed to have reached a half undead state where, realizing this, he took the easy way out and ended his life with his own sword; a figure now, desiccated with time, half propped up by the blade jutting a foot and a half from his chest. But something else captured even more of the group’s attention. On the other side of the ridge, a vast lake was visible in the distance; a lake of lava and on this a single dark island from which a fortress towered, solitary against the infernal vastness.
“Oh. I’m sure whoever lives the’irye will be very hospitable,” Skelly scoffed.
GLOSSARY
active – Shorthand for activated ability.
Admins – Members of the top class who administer capital. On a planet of roughly two billion people, they number less than a hundred thousand and are the only human beings who have legal ownership over property (Personal “possessions” now all being purchases constrained by licensing agreements; everything a Hedon “owns” conversely can be confiscated through contract violation)
adorb – To be endearing or cute in a largely spherical shape.
B9 – Good.
brainstream – A polysensory real-time sympathetic replica tapping directly into a person’s mental and empirical perceptions. Allows the “viewer” experience the thoughts and feelings of said person in a sort of superimposed virtual state.
Davidic Extinction Incident – Or DEI. Refers to the nuclear attack on the state of Israel in the year 2112 CE that almost completely destroyed those formerly known as the Jewish people and the remnant of the Palestinians. Which parties exactly are responsible for this is still a matter of open debate and one of the more popular conspiracy theories asserts that the state of Israel was created by Crypto-Nazis specifically so that as many Jewish people as possible could be herded into a bounded area and eliminated in a single terrorist attack. The aftermath of course was that the members of this religion outside Israel rapidly secularized and now those formerly known as the Jewish people are so few in number the’irye classified as Judaic Christians by the International Monitoring Authority for Religions and Spiritual Ideologies (IMARSI)
deese – Okay, not bad.
deus-exing – Used to describe anything in-game (Animations included) where the devs just decide to make something happen without any appeal to narrative or logical justification.
dom – Dominant, dominate. The best.
FAIR – Forensic Artificial Intelligence Review.
fam – Familiar/familial
fix-sched – On a fixed schedule. Past tense.
fracks – Fractional awards in MOMRPGs. Chiefly xp and coins but not always.
Hedons – Members of the bottom class, the Hedonists, who make the’irye living via serf work or exist in standby to exert pressure on the’irye employed counterparts. The term Hedonist is used disparagingly to perpetuate the false view that the bottom class enjoys itself more than the top class, the Admins.
holosphere – Common technology found in domiciles and public spaces that has holographic projection capabilities in full xyz panorama. Usually suspended in the air through maglev stumps but cheaper models will occasionally be suspended by a single tether or placed atop thin poles. Most models metric in at about 72 cm in circumference (Or just slightly smaller than a basketball if you are in to archaic sports history games)
jump puppeting – The act of suddenly taking control of another’s body. Can be done in RL via cybernetics but is more common in virtual environments. In this context, the A.I. is analyzing the situational cues provided by Osso’s actions and speech to inject an animation on the fly.
kosh – Pronounced “kawsh.” Originating from the Judaic sect of pre-Renewal Christianity. Meaning acceptable or socially tolerated. In this instance, Wyvernus is using it in reference to the fact that animal products and agriculture are completely abolished. Not out of any widespread cultural veganism though but because old advances in technology made it so that the purely synthetic manufacturing of biological products became much more efficient and the copyright holders of these techniques used the’irye economic leverage to get animal rights legislation passed for purely cynical reasons. In reality, less than 5 percent of the species which existed at the dawn of the 21st century have survived. Much of the work of extinct pollinators for example is now done by insect bots (Species were not revived despite the technological means to do so because habitat loss and environmental toxicity would just quickly extinguish them again)
leeroying – To rush heedlessly towards danger. Origin unknown.
lo-joe – Any ordinary standby who ain’t flush with funds.
Loot Wheel – A reward system for Pixelgoria players where an in-game wheel is accessed through the player UI and spun for randomized rewards; this can range from game currency to unique items and more.
lucre – Any individual reward allotment from a reward system.
null viral – A reference to the Null Virus that wiped out cloud centres in the middle of the 21st century and caused the Great Regression. Tech in fact has yet to catch up to its pre-Zero Day high. Saying someone is going “null viral” then is an insulting way to arg the’irye obscurity is spanning fast; that the’irye quickly being ostracized or forgotten to the point of nodal obliteration.
paragaming – Those aspects of the game that aren’t contingent on navigating one’s avatar around in space but rather consists in mini-games revolving around things like the player’s recreational items, memories, experience, dream quests, reading, mental sleuthing, problem solving, etc.
physical health – The damage system in Pixelgoria is heavily influenced by its roguelike ancestry so many forms of damage have some degree of independence from each other. Physical damage of course is the main negative effect of melee attacks but it can also be caused by magic, elemental, poison, and other damage types. However, certain forms of damage have the’irye own bars entirely; poison for example can weaken physical health through its prevalence but can also kill a player outright if the’irye poison level reaches its max. So too, sufficient hunger causes negative status modifiers while also killing players when its own maximum is reached. Another damage type that’s important to consider is asphyxiation, either through drowning or smoke, which stacks negative modifiers and is also lethal if no form of adequate intervention is forthcoming.
regen – Or regened. Refers to the regeneration of monsters in a zone or any other self-increasing quantity (Mana regen, limb regen, etc)
sauronizing – Gazing at someone or examining them extremely closely and generally with non-benevolent intent.
X-incident – Bad Thing. See entry on the Davidic Extinction Incident.
Zero Day – When the global data loss occurred that initiated the Great Regression.