I awoke in the fetal position, shivering next to our dwindling fire, and being poked in the chest with a stick.
“Oy,” came a gravelly voice.
I opened my eyes to see a stocky man with flaming red hair and a somehow brighter beard. His four-foot frame was wrapped in threadbare plaid fabric that was part tartan, part toga – like he wasn’t sure if he was a highlander or an emperor. He was standing close enough to me that I knew he was whichever one didn’t wear underwear.
While his voice was deep and bellowing, there was nothing threatening about his demeanor. In fact, he looked a little happy to see me, which was weird. No one was ever happy to see me.
I rolled over to see if Miguel was awake. He was facing away from me, so I tried the local greeting of, “Oy.”
He responded by flipping me off. He was not a morning person, even with the sound of a Scottish dwarf nearby.
I rolled back toward Emperor Braveheart, who was still poking me for some reason, and I said good morning.
“Is it?” he asked, looking at our somewhat squalid surroundings. He scrunched his face and surveyed the market, as if he was worried that he may have missed something good about the world.
“No, it’s the same shite as always,” he assured me, shaking his head.
“Who are ye?” he asked.
“Nathan,” I responded.
“Strange name,” he commented. “I’ve never met an outlander meself, but me grandda’s grandda kept a list. T’was always Argorn, Gandalf, Thor, Morrigan, Cersei, Teren, Achilles, BigBallz76. Something exotic like that.”
“Some people call me Nate,” I offered.
“Naw, ‘tis worse,” he assured me. “Well, ye can’t help what yer named. Nathan it is. And yer mate?” he asked, gesturing toward Miguel with a stick.
“That’s BigBallz77,” I said in my best Barfalamew voice.
Miguel flipped me off again before finally facing us.
A poor night’s sleep on the hard ground, general fear of being attacked in our slumber, and the constant adrenaline surges at the slightest sound had left us groggy. However, once we stood up and washed our faces in the basin, Miguel was sufficiently excited to meet our first in-game character. We both began to buzz with the electricity that was the beginning of a digital adventure.
Sitting on the stumps surrounding the ashes of our campfire, we learned the fiery dwarf’s name was Bairn, which was admittedly cooler than Nathan.
“Well ye’ll be wantin’ to learn to fish,” Bairn said, as if that was obvious.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Dunno,” he responded. “T’was just taught that newcomers always wanted to learn to fish. ‘Tis a good skill,” he continued. “But I have always wondered what idjit don’t know how to fish.”
“We would love to learn how to fish,” Miguel said kindly, knowing that this first offered side quest was momentous. And helpful.
“But maybe some new clothes?” he asked hopingly, as if Bairn might be the town hunter and tailor.
“I’ve seen a few old rags laying around the market,” he said, gesturing. “Probably covered in lice and mold and bird shite. But still better than what ye have on.”
Fair enough, I thought, scratching at my burlap and bites.
Rummaging around the stalls, I eventually found a basic tunic, breeches, and boots – all dilapidated but serviceable. Sliding them on, I saw the words “Plus 3 Defense” briefly pass across my field of view, indicating I had indeed upgraded my armor, at least a little. In fact, I somehow felt a little safer, and definitely more comfortable.
I stepped back toward the campfire to see Miguel in a similar outfit, but green instead of grey, and perhaps a little thinner than my coarse fabric. Roguish as ever.
“Plus three?” I asked.
“Yup,” he responded, before turning back toward Bairn.
“Are there other skills you can teach us?” Miguel asked, his spirits lifting with the quick acceleration of gameplay: first NPC, first quest, first training, first new armor.
“Well, that’ll depend on what ye don’t know,” Bairn said aptly.
“Assume we’re idjits,” I suggested.
“Easy enough,” Bairn agreed.
“Well, ye know how to make a fire,” he said, poking at a few dying embers. “That’s good, what with all the spiders, hounds, wulvers, indriks, amaroks, kelpies, bogles and what have ye.”
I noted that the world was also full of terrifying unfamiliar creatures, wondering which of the previous night’s sounds belonged to each.
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“The well should be easy,” he went on, “since ye’ll be wantin’ water…”
He paused.
“The water’s at the bottom,” he said, eying us for familiarity, “but I’d use the bucket instead of crawling down there.”
We nodded our agreement.
“The Skeel Bowl I don’t use meself,” he continued, motioning toward the water basin we had just cleaned up with. “But ‘tis on the list of important features. And ye’ll be needin’ a switch from the magicka tree to make it work, but since I dunna know what she does I canna say about the switch.”
We fake nodded our comprehension.
“Then there’s the loom, the meadow, the forge, the copse, the tanner, and the graveyard,” he finished, before adding, “Oh, and the hole.”
“What’s the hole?” I asked tentatively.
“It’s where ye piss,” he said, as if I was, in fact, an idjit.
However, despite the thirst and hunger mechanisms, the game had apparently foregone the need for urination. So who’s clever now?
Pausing on this programming choice for an extra moment, I decided it was for the best. In survival games, realism could quickly become an annoying grind. Plus, while my new outfit would not have been problematic, I recalled some of the iconic armor I had worn in games before, and peeing would have been a dragon-slaying-level achievement.
Bairn continued the day’s lesson.
“First, ye’ll need a rod.”
He sat on a nearby stump and picked up one of the mid-size branches. He began by testing its flexibility, ensuring it had the correct balance of strength and give. He then carefully picked at his tartan until he found a loose thread and pulled at it gently. Very slowly, a single string came free from his neck to his toes, making the perfect line for the fishing rod.
However, instead of affixing it to the stick, he handed the ingredients to Miguel, along with a silver earring he pulled from his lobe.
Crafting.
Miguel tied the string around the thinner edge of the rod, giving it several loops to provide the greatest strength possible. Then, after tying the earring on as a hook, he rifled through his stone pile for the perfect piece, which he found and tied just above the shiny metal to make a sinker. With that, he had a fishing rod.
“Crafting gives XP,” he told me, pride rising in his voice. “Almost to ten.”
Miguel then handed me the rod and said he had an idea.
He asked Bairn for one more string, which the dwarf happily provided. Next, Miguel found a more flexible stick, thin at each end but with sufficient heft in the middle. After bending the branch to give it a permanent arc, he tied the string to both ends, creating his first makeshift bow.
Clearly, he had considered his priorities as well.
“More XP. I’m so good at this,” he said to himself more than us.
He threw his starter bow over his shoulder next to his empty quiver, and said, “It’s safe here. Arrows can wait. Let’s go fishing.”
The dwarf happily led us out of the market and into the derelict streets of Walden’s Edge. We passed by what were once clearly tidy cottages, sturdy shops, and vibrant greenspaces. Now, we saw only the husks of all three.
“What happened here,” I asked as politely as possible.
“Naught,” he answered, with no sadness in his voice. “No war nor famine nor beasts of note. Just years of nothing, and as life moved north, the village crumbled in its wake.”
“Quieter now,” he added, seemingly quite pleased with this particular development.
Soon, we arrived at a pond on the edge of town. It included a small dock protruding into glass-like waters surrounded by reeds, all looking out onto grasslands that stretched away into the distance.
On the dock were a few stumps and a basket full of what looked to be perfectly made fishing rods.
Miguel asked, “do these still work?”
“Oh, aye,” Bairn answered casually.
“Then why did we make our own?” I asked.
“As my grandda always said,” Bairn responded, “the craft is in the learning, not the doing.”
Noted. This game wasn’t designed to give us things, but to teach us things. That would clearly be better in the long run.
After sitting on our stumps, me with a borrowed rod in hand, Bairn handed us bait from a bucket of nearby worms.
This part I did know how to do, both in games and in real life. Hook the worm, drop it in the water, wait.
We didn’t wait long.
The pond was seemingly well stocked, and each of us pulled out half a dozen fish in a matter of minutes, placing them in a basket also waiting on the dock. Caught up in the joy of fishing, I had barely noticed my XP counter also trickling toward 10.
“That’ll do us,” Bairn offered, already standing up and placing our fish in a satchel.
After pulling a small scrap of paper from his boot and consulting it, he said, “We’ll need to get to the Magicka Tree next.”
Not one to argue with boot paper, I set off behind him.
Our walk hugged the lake for a moment and kept us on the edge of town, the bright sun illuminating rolling hills and dense forest in the distance. While I knew what beasts and threats populated those spaces, they were quite beautiful from the security of our daytime village.
Soon we arrived at what appeared to be a large weeping willow, towering into the sky before dropping its enveloping canopy toward shady green grass.
Bairn sat solemnly on the turf, watching us until we joined him. This place clearly held some importance for him.
“This tree is a place of deep magic,” he said, his eyes wandering from its heights to its trunk to the very earth beneath us. “Especially for those who can wield it,” he added, eying us as if to say he couldn’t.
Without thinking, I pressed my palm to the ground, and very slowly, veins of light began to glow. They twisted and turned in every direction, but soon I saw that they all led back to the trunk of the great tree. Letting my view widen, I suddenly saw that the ground was the middle of the image, not the bottom. The lights beneath me were a mirror image of the tree above, thousands of feet of branching luminescence swirling in three dimensions. Finally, my mind stepped outside of itself, viewing the entire scene from afar, and I could see that we sat hovering in the willow’s massive power.
I felt myself take a deep, cleansing breath, exhaling every bit of trauma that had been building up inside me since the first tremors the day before. In fact, feeling the serenity wash over me, I thought maybe the pain had been trapped within my chest for much longer than that.
Sensing we had absorbed the importance of this place, Bairn continued.
“For me kin, this is where we talk to the fairies and fireflies, learning about the world beyond,” he said, gesturing toward the distant forest. “We can even be healed of magical injuries, though none have happened in my lifetime.”
“But for ye,” he went on, “I was told its branches are the beginning of yer power in this place, a world where ye are visitor, not resident.”
Bairn pulled a small blade from his belt.
“Let yerself wander,” he instructed. “Ye’ll find the piece meant for ye.”
Miguel took the dagger and stood, walking toward a portion of the tree he had already been eyeing. He quickly cut a foot of branch, as if it had called to him before he moved.
Returning and handing me the blade, I stood and moved more slowly. I walked penitently around the willow’s edge, my free hand filtering through the soft life hovering just above my head. Even in the midday sun, I could see each leaf give the slightest glow at my touch, starting rings of bioluminescence like raindrops on a pond.
Finally, one branch shone brighter than the rest, holding the light and my gaze. I carefully cut a wand-size portion, following the lines of light precisely. The branch dropped into my hand, sending shivers up my arm.
When I returned the blade to Bairn, he nodded his approval at our choices, stood, and began walking back toward where our day had begun.