(Y6, December 27th-January 8th)
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The morning saw everyone early at the gates of the Earthen Keep. The seven of the eastern expedition, of course, plus Vantegaard and Birkathane, who were not just seeing their friend Quandocor going but also heading out for a last week of grinding. Vantegaard was just under the limit of 300 Vormacinus had set and probably could get it easily by grinding his non-combat skills, but more levels couldn’t hurt. He didn’t see how to squeeze 100 levels total, but he wasn’t going to qualify on a mere technicality. They would probably not bother with dungeons without the benefit of Lay of the Land, but there were lots of things reasonably sized prowling the wilderness near the keep. Duoing the purple cats seemed a good way to apply many skills.
Since Talokainy had Respawned only a few days ago, it made little sense for the expedition to Recess there on-site and have him wait. They would all take a five-day Recess once at Manticore’s Buff before entering the no-man’s-land that separated Beta from Deva’s territory.
As for Vantegaard and Birkathane, they still had about seven days until the full raid was finally assembled, and they would all Recess then, according to plan. That meant they would have at least three if not four, days in common with Quandocor back on Earth. He should pop up there well before they would be heading back to the Earthen Keep.
The expedition and its follower couple walked eastward along the known paths for the first hour. There were plenty of game paths – despite the much simpler ecology of Northworld, animals ran around when not hunted by the invading Gaters.
But at one point, the two groups separated. Vantegaard and Birkathane had a list of areas with easy rank 30-or-lower critters to grind on when tired of annoying Otocolobus and a pair of minor 20+ dungeon locations, which they might or might not end up trying to see. So, they had to head north while the expedition kept going east.
There were big hugs and “See you in a week!” and then Quandocor turned back to his expedition. The six others hoisted back their backpacks and turned eastward, following the semi-regular road toward Manticore’s Buff.
Thalokainy took off to whistle some travel song, with an endurance that would have shamed a Roman legionnaire on the march if you did not realize he was a thousander with extra-human qualities and applicable Skills while on Northworld.
Quandocor probably had the lowest stats overall of the expedition, meaning he had to actually exert himself to keep up with the others’ brisk walking, but when it came to walking, he had an enormous advantage. Unseen Meditation replenished stamina, which was still used for all physical efforts, including walking, and did not require him to stop. He could basically do that all day.
Unseen Meditation
Tier 1 Presence
Action
You can enter a state of meditation and no one ever sees you doing that.
Mental, magical, and physical energies recharge at an accelerated rate while you are meditating. You are less likely to be noticed during meditation, and enemies will turn their attention away. Meditation is interrupted if you take action, but you can move freely.
Maximum meditation period: 86 sec
Cooldown: 4 min, 12 sec
Vitals recovery: 21,5 per sec
Chance to be noticed: 75%
Skill level 86 (base 25)
Advancement: 84%
At the first stop for lunch, the tracker/ranger remarked on that endurance.
“Okay, you cheating.”
“The advantage of spawning in weird places like Fanduk. Everyone, and I mean everyone, got a Meditation skill during Setup. Not all tier 1 like mine, but one, without fail.”
Theavilast threw him a frown, reminding him that the locational interference was still kept under wraps. Out of the seven, only Quandocor, the Cartographer, and the two Earthen Brethren were in the know. Quandocor was unattached and intended to remain so, but he didn’t want to sabotage his friend. After all, he’d convinced him that returning to the Cartographers was the best move. Not just for the joint expeditions and finally getting closure on those traumatic debuts on Northworld, but because something as major as locational interference would require analyzing an entire world, and there was no way he could do it on his own.
“Wait, I heard about that on our forums. Sorcerer land, everyone gets a head start on magic. So that’s where you spawned first? That reminds me of Hyboria. You know, that plateau up northeast, where you have all those mace barbarians,” Jonkartman noted.
“That’s me you’re calling a barbarian,” Theavilast replied.
“But you all spawn with heavy blunt weapons in hand. Figuratively speaking.”
“Okay, maybe. I had Pummel and Swing Left from Setup. And I got Door Knocker on my first lottery.”
Quandocor took mental notes. He assumed Vantegaard would already be aware of the rumor. He’d already mentioned a note on the Doriath, the Alpha area where many people roleplayed elvish archers since archery-related skills were massively over-represented on spawn.
“I’d rather have a tier 1 Meditation like that guy,” Jonkartman countered. “That’s the best.”
“Probably ranks on top,” Quandocor admitted.
“Double or triple-A?” Theavilast asked.
“Meaning?”
“Anyone know the triple scale for Skills? No?”
Almost everyone, save for Berkleyyan seemingly, nodded back in the negative.
“That’s a ranking system pioneered back in the day on the All the Skills website.”
“Didn’t you Cartographers absorb this one?”
“I think Armangest’s predecessor made the owner a good offer for the databases, the forums, and everything else. He quit maintaining the wikis afterward and took crafting, I hear.”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I’ll have to ask Van about it, Quandocor noted.
“Anyway, the triple scale ranks Skills on three different axes. The first is grinding. You have skills you can easily grind that give you loads of XP and levels, and hard ones. You can essentially go from F for skills that can only be used in very narrow circumstances, or cannot be used twice in the same place, or like that Panglossia stone, can’t even gain XP no matter what, to A-skills that you can use at all times for loads of experience.”
“A-tier on that, obviously. I don’t even need to have expended lots of vitals to use it because it counts the ones I haven’t unlocked as 0, so I can start meditating at any time and go on for the full duration.”
“And it gives 1XP per second?”
“That’s the usual for ongoing skills, right?”
“So, A for the grind. There are skills for which the ranking changes. Some are hard to start, but then you can grind them better as they go up. It’s rarely F to A, though, more like D to C or maybe B.
“The second scale is usefulness. F skills for stuff you can only do rarely and don’t do much of. Like crafting.”
Jonkartman raised his middle finger, laughing.
“… to B or A for things that make a huge difference, in combat or everyday life. Well, in this case…”
“A-tier skill. Give me 86 seconds, and I can pretty much grow back all my vitals – except health – to full or near full. And critters tend to ignore me while I’m doing that.”
“Cheater,” Jonkartman whispered. Audibly.
“While there are Skills that go up and down in utility as they level, I can agree. Even when you started…”
“I’m a necromancer. And yes, it works on that vital. In fact, I have to be careful about not meditating until I’ve drained any corpse, or I can’t grind that other Skill because I am full.”
Groans came.
“And that leads to the last of Brixaby’s axes of ranks. Stat synergy. That axis differs between everyone for a given skill. It’s based on your Skill’s tier – the higher, the better – but also how many tiers of other skills feed on the stat. Since the higher the stat, the higher the skill and XP you get from its use, all other things considered.”
“Well, it is tier 1, although I have other stats in which I have as many skills…” Quandocor started, and everyone started to smile.
“… but I also have a reasonably grindable tier 1 in it.”
Jonkartman theatrically facepalmed.
“And that’s a triple-A skill,” Theavilast raised her hands in mock dismay.
“Told you I was Fortitude-based. 60. The nearest is Resilience at 41.”
“There are two-thousanders that have stats under 60. Although these are their worst skills and starting stats, usually.”
“The realm of the triple-F. Hard Pass. I forswore the lottery,” Goglas finally commented.
“You get what you get. You got a triple-F, Quandocor? Must have, to balance that shit.”
“Going to hide my weaknesses,” he replied lightly.
Walking along the road, following Thalokainy’s whistled march songs, Quandocor reflected on the Cartographer’s skill classification. He’d tried, for fun, to see if he had another triple-A skill before realizing that none truly matched. Even what he thought was character-defining, Lay of the Land, was maybe a B- or even a C+ skill. It was not really grindable outside of wandering a lot, of moderate utility save for maybe once or twice a day if you were hunting for treasures or looking for a settlement to rest, and had little stat synergy with Intuition, although the coming of his new tier 3 ritual had helped on the axis.
It made him smile. Although he had to admit, Unseen Meditation was truly a boon, but to be thought exceptional for a Skill that he was sure dozens were now running around with back in Fanduk? He supposed that more progression-obsessed people would probably value triple-A over anything.
He wondered how many triple-A Chip-on-a-Shoulder Vormacinus ran with. To be fair, probably one or two more. You might get to two thousand by sheer perseverance, but you didn’t get that raiding reputation by being underperforming in your build. Until now, you lucked into a build, but Vantegaard and the Cartographers would soon change that.
He came up along Theavilast. Like all of the expedition, she ran with a fairly filled-up backpack and gear fitting for the Northworld chic. Leather of strange origins, reinforced or studded things, and the large hammer clipped at her belt. Quandocor wondered about that. It looked more like a weird copy of a movie prop, indicating either a dungeon find or some particularly imaginative and inspired crafter.
“You remind me of Van,” he said.
“How so?”
“Nerding out about Skills. He’s all about critters himself.”
“Ah. Well, that’s Cartographers for you. There are two categories that gravitate there: nerds and explorers. The ones who want to know everything, and the ones that want to go over the hill and find out what you don’t know.”
“And the map makers. We had one with us on the Pyramid expedition, Maelia.”
“I was sad when I heard that one. She was making unmatched artistic maps among everyone else we have on staff. She was even remaking some beta and gamma maps when she thought the map maker was too bland. People like her, that’s the Venn diagram intersection. Nerds that want to draw something everyone will want because they’ve never seen its like.”
“I heard Van saying you had over a hundred people in your Guild.”
“It’s very pyramidal. On top, you have the officers, like Armangest, Vastragal, Vasilikulik – which you knew – and half a dozen others.”
“Armangest isn’t the highest level, no?”
“He spends most of his time managing the Guild. Hates Earth, yet doesn’t go and level his fighting skills. Everyone else was quite happy to put him in charge since that let the rest go out and explore. Then, there’s the Full Cartographer layer.”
“That’s you. And Van.”
“After what happened… it was the least they could do.”
“Also, what you need him for.”
“You’d have to ask Vastragal; she’s the one who set all this reparation stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised. Full Cartographers get access to all databases and all resources we have. They can ask for other agents’ help to organize projects – within the remit of the Guild, that is. Each with their favorite area, sometimes overlapping, like me and your friend’s mapping of locational interference. I would probably help if I weren’t busy otherwise.
“And then, you have Agents, Probationary Agents, Associate Agents, and Sponsored Agents. Probably a hundred of those latter.”
That one triggered a distant memory in Quandocor.
“Sponsored Agents?”
“We give them a Silvergate; in exchange, they report on anything that happens within their community once they spawn. New skills, new critters, weird occurrences… locational interference.”
“Van mentioned being one at the beginning.”
“Yes. It is the same thing as Associate Agents, except Associate gets paid – a pittance, but still – while a Sponsored gets a Silvergate for free and gets promoted to Associate after a number of interesting reports. It’s a low-cost, steady data investment.”
“It’s a big business, you mean. You know, I was supposed to dismantle your Guild as Silvergate traffickers.”
“I was shocked when you told us of your background. Good luck with that since it is semi-international. But FBI 0 – Northworld 1, right?”
Not quite. If Van can rejoin the Cartographers, maybe someday there will be a place for me again in law enforcement.
I doubt it.
Unless they make a Northworld unit, that is.
“Ware incoming,” Thalokainy suddenly said, interrupting his whistling.
True to the warning, Quandocor felt the critter’s presence to enter his Sense of Life and Death range. Something around rank 39.
The beast that bounded out of the wooden area north of their path looked odd. It was a horribly slimmed caricature of a dog that looked like its head had been shrunk horizontally. The creature sniffed, its head sweeping to gauge its potential prey.
Those preys were going to remain potential. Quandocor had raised his staff, but he might as well not have bothered. Ice appeared under the predator’s paws as a swarm of stones rushed him, parallel to a Varmatan rushing at a speed that suggested a targeting Skill. The axe in his hands rose and sliced.
Quandocor let his staff rest back on the packed earth of the path. Just before him, Thalokainy had a bow out, loosely hanging, an arrow held out in his other hand without even bothering to notch it yet. Thalokainy had smoothly unclipped her own hammer, moving it in lazy circles.
Not to be entirely idle, Quandocor reached out to drain some stats, transferring those to Varmatan, but he might not have bothered. Ten seconds later, the would-be canid collapsed, and he flicked his axe before hanging it back on his backpack that he had not bothered to drop before engaging.
“I liked the high veteran escort with the Pyramid expedition, but that’s even more savage,” Quandocor noted.
“Let the Brethren have fun,” Theavilast replied.
“At 40, we do need a group with my two friends. Usually. What was that thing?”
She threw her hands up in ignorance, to his surprise, and Berkleyyan replied instead.
“Epicyon Pressor. The hunting more-than-a-dog. Don’t ask me how that got named. As usual, it’s the Cartographers who do that.”
“Ernesto Carillo wanted real-sounding names for all the critters they were finding. He’s one of the true old-timers, back from late year 1. He was, what, the eighth? Or ninth Gater. Something like that. People kept the tradition,” she answered. “I leave that for the initiated.”
“Anyway, they’re a common occurrence south-east. Hunts solo and keeps a wide territory, so you don’t find many. They usually don’t range that north. I wonder what disturbed this one,” Berkleyyan completed.
“Timeout over. Let’s go. The earlier we reach Manticore’s Buff, the sooner we can do a Recess and then tackle the serious stuff,” he immediately added.
“I’m probably going to invest a couple points in Resilience,” Quandocor said.
“Up to you. Stamina is more significant for the onset of AS than pure Resilience,” the officer commented.
“Well, I’d add a few levels, but…”
“You’d add maybe a couple of hours, and we’d waste more letting you try to solo stuff. Well, if we cross a sub-20, maybe,” he countered.
“No, you’re right. I’m good. I can grind a few skills outside of combat.”
Well, he might not gain too many levels, but he’d been slightly ahead of the other two. At least they would have the opportunity to catch up during the week since he doubted the raid would give them opportunities to get XP while going south.