The unnamed woke from a dreamless sleep, stirring early the next morning along with a few others among the initiates. He set about making his bed and walked out to the main hall where three or four initiates sat talking quietly while plates filled with cooked sausages, eggs, bacon, and toast were laid out in front of them.
Despite the meagre spread, it was the nicest food the unnamed had tasted since arriving in Havenspire and he ate greedily, along with the other initiates who seemed similarly eager to devour the food as quickly as possible.
The notion of hunger in the world of Havenspire still puzzled the unnamed greatly. Given that he was now nothing more than a consciousness swimming around in an AI generated reality, why was it necessary to eat, let alone to sleep each night? Why did he grow tired as the day wore on?
As he raised the question the half-orc who had spoken up during their induction with Kalric proved to be a veritable fount of information. The big bruiser went by the name Tusk and, despite his fearsome face and imposing physique, he seemed quite amicable and happy to offer answers to the unnamed’s questions, speaking loud enough for everyone nearby to hear.
Tusk informed the gathered initiates that the earliest incarnation of Havenspire had been an utter failure, largely because it had erased many of the familiar patterns and inconveniences of human experience.
“It’s like when they first started producing electric cars,” the half-orc said, scratching at his stubble-covered chin. “They had to make an engine noise and add it in because people were too freaked out about how quiet the cars were. It was too hard for them to work out how fast they were driving, and it felt completely unnatural. Same deal with high-def TV. A bunch of people preferred the old grainy style, so even though their set could do high-def, they dialed it back because that’s what they were used to.”
The attractive young elvish woman who the unnamed had spotted during their induction was named Vella. Like her half-orc companion, she seemed eager to join the conversation, whispering loudly from her place beside Tusk, as though she were saying something she wasn’t supposed to say.
“I heard the same thing. People didn’t like living without having to eat or breathe or sleep. With the reboot of Havenspire, they brought all of that back in. Made the whole experience more tactile and natural. Then they moved everyone over and closed down the original simulator completely.”
The unnamed shook his head. “I thought the deal was that this place was supposed to be better than the real world. If everything’s the same, what’s the point?”
Tusk snorted. “Point is you get to go on living, dude. That’s kind of the main thing, isn’t it?”
“I guess, but I just figured this place would be…different. Like maybe we could do without all the pain and the need to eat and sleep and all that stuff. All the aches and pains and the tiredness. I just figured they’d remove all of that, or at least dial it back a little.”
Vella screwed up her nose. “But it is better, isn’t it? Or different, at least.”
She pointed past the unnamed to the lumbering figure of Naleth, making his way from the sleeping area into the main hall. The troll scratched his chin with one hand while scratching his crotch with the other and yawning loudly.
The unnamed smiled at the sight. “Fair point,” he offered.
“Besides,” Vella said, “are you honestly telling me you’d prefer a life without food?”
He shrugged. “Food’s never really been a big thing with me. Just fuel for the body.”
She seemed bitterly offended at the concept, leaning back with a hand on her chest, mouth wide open in mock horror. “Seriously? What about pepperoni pizza, or tacos? Are you telling me that life in Havenspire would be worth anything if they didn’t have chocolate?”
He leaned forward, smiling. “Do they have chocolate? I mean, I haven’t seen any so far.”
Tusk pointed to the ceiling. “They’d have it up there, for sure. All kinds. But we’re starting right at the bottom. We’re in the Undercity, so we’re not gonna find much good food down here.”
“Jalapeno poppers!” Vella blurted. “Bacon burgers?!”
The unnamed held up a hand in surrender. “Alright, I get it. Yeah, food is pretty great. Maybe if we work our butts off for the next decade, we’ll be able to afford a slice of pizza or a block of chocolate.”
He cleared his throat, wondering how to ask the next question and deciding just to go for it.
“So, where did you guys meet? Seems like you’ve known each other for a while.”
That wasn’t the question he wanted to ask. What he really wanted to know was if there was anything romantic between them, either now or in the past, but he let the question hang, hoping he hadn’t just walked into something he’d regret.
Vella turned and looked at Tusk and they both shared a knowing smile.
“There are places you can go,” she said, turning back to the unnamed, “when you’re first learning how to fight. They’re training centers I suppose you could say, but they’re not official like the guilds. Some of them are terrible too, but some are okay.”
She threw a thumb over her shoulder at Tusk.
“We met each other at one of those training centers. We were both fairly new to Havenspire and I was trying to figure out what my class would be. We started talking and became friends pretty much straight away.”
Tusk snorted with laughter. “She wanted to be a warrior when she first turned up.” He shook his head, looking her up and down. “Can you imagine? I was the one that convinced her to start working on rogue skills.”
“Not you though,” Vella said, grinning. “You knew from the moment you turned up in Havenspire that you wanted to be a warrior.”
“Yup,” Tusk said. “Learned what I could from Berrick and his crew, and they sent me to the training center. What was it called again? Tongsly Belch’s Training Hut?”
Vella giggled. “Yeah, I think he modeled it after the original Pizza Hut franchise. They even served pizza once a month, remember?”
Tusk groaned. “If you call that pizza. It was flat bread with a few olives and some cheese.”
The unnamed nodded, trying to follow the conversation. It still didn’t tell him what he wanted to know, but he didn’t know the right way to ask that particular question, so tried to circle around it.
“How long were you guys there for?”
Tusk held up a single finger. “About a year. Maybe a little more. You have to pay to get in, kind of like a gym I guess. But they fast track you to the Brawler’s Guild if you end up in the top positions.”
Vella leaned forward. “You’re looking at number one and number two right here. Took us a year of hard work to get to that point, but that’s basically how we got here. That, and we had to raise the money for the entry fee.”
Unnamed nodded, sensing that the questions had run their course. Tusk grunted, following up with a smirk.
“We were never together, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he said flatly. “Just friends.”
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Vella went bright red, slapping him on the arm. “Tusk!”
“What?!” the big half-orc said. “It’s what he wants to know. It’s what every guy who meets you wants to know.”
Tusk turned back to the unnamed, leaning forward and speaking in hushed tones as he motioned toward Vella.
“Truth is, she’s not my type.” He lifted a hand and held his thumb and forefinger apart about two inches. “I like ‘em small. Real small.”
Tusk threw a thumb toward Vella.
“She’s too blonde and bony and—"
She jabbed him hard in the side and he yelped, grinning.
“I’m just saying, you’re not my type!” He turned back to the unnamed. “Besides, at this point we’re more like brother and sister, so it would be too weird.”
Vella rolled her eyes. “And big-mouthed brutes with tusks aren’t really my thing either, so it works both ways.”
They all laughed, Vella and the unnamed both trying to hide their embarrassment, while Tusk seemed genuinely unperturbed. He caught sight of something and leaned forward, grabbing the unnamed’s wrist and turning it so that he could clearly see the tattoo.
“What the heck is that?”
The unnamed pulled his hand away, cheeks reddening.
“Nothing. It’s just…nothing.”
Tusk turned to Vella, his eyes wide, a broad grin splitting his face.
“A custodian?” He turned back to the unnamed. “Dude, that blows.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” the unnamed said, pulling down his sleeve to cover the shameful tattoo. “It was the best I could afford.”
Tusk grunted as Vella elbowed the half-orc in the stomach. She frowned at him, her expression softening as she turned toward the unnamed.
“You shouldn’t feel bad. You’re here and that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter how you got here.” she shot Tusk a withering look. “Does it?”
The half orc nodded, holding his hands up in mock surrender.
“Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it. Flapjack’s sakes. I’ve just never seen anyone with a hashing custodian tattoo before. I heard that some people come here with a debt they need to work off and usually they’re setup as service workers, but I’ve never met someone with a tatt like that before.”
The unnamed chuckled. “You should see the stats that come with it. Basically, zeroes across the board but I have special skills like sweeping. It’s hashing ridiculous.”
He blinked, licking his lips and thinking about what had just happened.
“Blueberry syrup!” he blurted. “Griddle schnitzel egging butter! What the waffle?!”
Tusk burst out laughing, slapping the table as the nearby initiates turned to see what was so funny. The unnamed reached up and touched his lower lip. Something was wrong, very wrong. He could hear the curse words properly in his mind, but when he said them, they came out as gibberish.
“What the flapjack is going on?” he said, pursing his lips as though he’d just eaten something unsavory. “Why can’t I curse?”
“It’s the Didact,” Vella said. “There’s something built into Havenspire. It won’t let you curse. Not in a traditional sense, anyway. I don’t know why they decided to do it, but basically you can’t use any normal curse words in Havenspire. They come out weird.”
She smiled, leaning forward.
“Go on. Give it another try.”
The unnamed swallowed, a string of obscenities filling his mind.
“Pancake flapping butter burning flapjack!”
Once more, Tusk laughed uproariously, his eyes watering as he slapped his stomach. “Dude, you should see your face!” he shouted, barely able to control the fit of laughter.
“Hashbrown flipping bacon biter,” the unnamed went on, beginning to warm to the task. “Fluffy batter griddle!”
“Fluffy batter griddle?!” Tusk roared. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”
Gradually, the laughter died down and the situation began to settle. Even some of the initiates gathered nearby were smiling in recognition of what was going on. The unnamed was still more than a little unsettled by the forced alteration of his words. Inside his mind they were still exactly like they were in the real world, but as soon as he tried to voice them, they changed.
“That’s so weird,” he mused.
Vella nodded. “Takes a little while to get used to, but you’ll be fine. You learn to adapt.”
Wiping tears from beneath his eyes, Tusk let out a long sigh.
“Thanks, bro. Haven’t laughed that hard in ages.”
The unnamed gave a little mock bow. “You’re welcome.” He shook his head. “So, I basically can’t curse now?”
“You still can,” Tusk said. “You just need to be inventive. Most of them don’t transfer at all but one or two old school curse words translate pretty well. Thing is, for some reason they all relate to pancakes and that kind of thing. We’re not a hundred percent sure, but rumor is the lead programmer who built the second version of Havenspire was obsessed with IHOP or one of those breakfast food chains. When they put the language filter in something went wrong and it got all tied up with pancakes and maple syrup and all that junk. There’s a theory that maybe he did it on purpose. Like, maybe he was jacked off with the Company and this was his revenge.”
The unnamed nodded. “So, whenever I curse, I’m gonna hear half a breakfast menu?”
“That’s about the shape of it, yeah,” Tusk agreed. “Flapjack is the best of the bunch and it’s usually pretty reliable, so I’d stick with that if you can. Schnitzel is pretty useful too, and hash. They all come up fairly often. Basically, if you use a lot of the same kinds of words, Havenspire will eventually lock in a few words as stand ins, and it will default to those most of the time. It does fluctuate every now and then though. Sometimes the sigil throws in a few new words you haven’t heard before, like it’s trying them out to see if they’ll fit better. It’s tied to your emotions too, so if you get really angry or you’re hurt, there’s no telling what might come out of your mouth.”
“Great,” the unnamed reasons. “So, they make us hungry and tired, and we have to sleep each night, and have neck pain, because they want to simulate the real world as closely as possible, but we can’t even hashing curse?”
Vella smiled and nodded. “Ironic, isn’t it.”
“It’s a bug,” Tusk said, speaking with a little too much authority. “Or a virus. Like I said, they tried to soften some of the harder curse words when they relaunched Havenspire, but something went wrong. The only way to fix it was to wipe out all curse words altogether and because of some IHOP obsessed programmer, now we’re all stuck with this schnitzel. I think they were going to try and sort it all out eventually, but the simulation got bigger and bigger and more and more complex until it was just too difficult to fix.”
Vella nodded. “A lot of people just stop cursing altogether. They get so fed up with all the breakfast food references and either invent new types of curse words or just don’t swear at all. Maybe that’s the intention, to train us not to swear. It hasn’t flapjacking worked for most of us though.”
She smiled wryly as she said that last sentence.
“So,” the unnamed reasoned, “you can chop a dude’s head off and watch him bleed out right in front of you, but you can’t say the word pancake? I mean, waffle!”
Vella giggled. “Try dang. That one’s still light enough that it doesn’t get blocked. You’re right though, everything is a little out of whack in Havenspire. There are other examples too, but the cursing filter is just bananas.”
“Okay,” the unnamed went on. “So, what if you’re actually wanting to talk about waffles and pancakes and stuff? Won’t that get confusing?”
Tusk snorted with laughter.
“How many conversations do you think are going on in Havenspire right now about waffles?”
The unnamed shrugged. “I dunno. There have to be a bunch of people having breakfast, right? At least some of those are probably talking about waffles or toast or eggs and bacon.”
“Pass me the hashing hash!” Tusk chirped. “For schnitzel’s sakes, can I get another flapjacking bacon butter flapjack?!”
He nodded to himself. “Yeah, I guess it could be a bit confusing. Never really thought about it.”
The unnamed nodded, grinning. “That’s why I’m here. To ask the big questions.”
They all laughed, joined by a grinning Naleth who had reached the table and finally stopped scratching himself. He was about to sit down when the clanging of a loud gong cut through the air. They all flinched, turning to see Master Tacticus deBorst Kalric marching into the main hall and bellowing at the top of his voice.
“Up and out, little lambs. It’s time to earn your keep!”
He was wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing the day before and seemed vividly alert, as though he’d already been awake for hours. The unnamed wondered how they even told time in this place, given that there was no sign of a clock and no natural light from either sun or moon that reached into the hall.
“Today you’ll learn the basic skills through which you will prove your worth to the guild. You will learn to sweep and polish, clean and mend. For the next three days you will devote yourself body and soul to the tasks you are given. Each day, you will spend the early morning hours fulfilling your chores before heading down to the Rat Run sparring rooms to commence preliminary training.”
A younger man came walking up beside the Master Tacticus, tall and well-built, with Asian features and a black band tattoo running across his eyes. He offered a disarming smile as he sauntered over and stood next to Kalric.
“Mars Leo is our youngest veteran here at the guild. He will be your guide through the various tests and trials that you must complete in order to gain entry into the Brawler’s Guild. He will teach you your civic duties and responsibilities to the guild and one another. He will instruct you on the basics of combat and tactics and outline the precise requirements you will need to meet in order to progress in your guild training. He will be hard, but fair and you may rest assured that everything you endure here he has already gone through himself, and far more.”
Leo tapped his sigil, and a trifold tally showed up above his head. The unnamed examined the stats along with the other initiates.
** TRIFOLD TALLY **
Name: Mars Leo
Rank: 17
Titles: Bare Fist Brawler Champion, Rat Run Champion
House: Mars
Class: Brawler (hand to hand specialization)
Guild: Brawler’s Guild
Constitution: 30
Strength: 30
Stamina: 40
Agility: 84
Intelligence: 20
Overcharge: 1
Feats: 2
Contracts: 153
Dungeons: 4
“I’ll leave you in Leo’s capable hands,” Kalric said. “For those who show sufficient resolve and ability, I will see you again once your preliminary training is complete. Honor through service!”
Leo waited for the older man to leave, standing with his hands behind his back and examining the group with a smile.
“Welcome initiates, to your first day of hell.”