1              Soul Bound

1.1            Finding her Feet

1.1.5          An Inscrutable Mastermind

1.1.5.22       Raiders

Kafana: “Before you all sit down and enjoy the feast, would you like a spell to remove the mud?”

Char made puppy eyes, nearly wagging a tail.

Mary-Lynn: “Char, you realise I’m going to upload a recording of that, right?”

Char: “Don’t care. Want clean.”

Alderney: “Before we forget, let’s exchange contact list details. It will help in combat, and I need to be able to contact you later, if I’m going to make things for you all.”

Shortly afterwards, they were all clean and sitting down eating. Kafana and Mary-Lynn put their heads together, and the smell of combat buff food was soon wafting over them as they planned the raid.

Nastya and Wellington conferred in private chat for a few minutes then nodded. Nastya spoke up.

“Here’s the plan. Crimson, you’re main tank. Bungo, you’re off-tank. You substitute in when Crimson is low, and deal with adds. Mary-Lynn, your only responsibility is keeping the tanks healed. Everyone else, use potions if your natural regen and buffs can’t keep up.”

“We don’t know this boss’s pattern, but if it is anything like bosses from Divine Mountain, expect it to enrage when lower than 20% health, doing double or even triple damage. It may also do special spells or skills such as AOE or summons at 80%, 60% and 40%. I have tactical control. If I say get back, you get back. If I say to alter who you’re hitting, or even to stop doing something entirely, do it, even if as far as you know it will be suicide. If I die, Wellington succeeds me on tactical.”

“I measured the troll’s regen during previous fights. It is very high. We won’t be able to spike the boss, so that means either dealing damage faster than the regen rate, or reducing the regen rate. Kafana, you’re on buffs before the combat, but during combat, except for maintaining those buffs, and aggro control if needed, your priority is slowing its regen down. Poison the bastard if you can. Paralyse, stun, beguile, whatever you can think of. Keep trying until you find something that works. Wellington will keep track of how well they work, and do runes for you.”

“Alderney, you’re a crafter and a scout. I’m not sure what you can do that’s helpful in combat, but Wellington says to trust you and you’ll find something. So, um, do what you want, just warn us if it will distract us or cause splash damage.”

“Tomsk, you’re a problem. Crimson, Char, Blaze and ChocolateTrain have fought together in close melee for years. They know exactly what to expect from each other, and what they can depend upon. I’m nervous of throwing you into the mix, because no matter how good you are at individual combat, you have no experience working with this particular team. You’ve got a legendary weapon, which puts your damage per second on par with my own bow, but I know when to ease off if Crimson needs a few seconds to get a firmer grip on aggro. How do you think we should best make use of you?”

Tomsk: “Did any of you bring over ‘Identify Vulnerability’ as a legacy skill?”

Nastya: “I used to have it but no, other skills were higher priority for me to save. None of us have it yet.”

Tomsk: “How about I switch over to a lower damage weapon with a longer range, and we set up shared orglife overlays so I can mark vulnerable spots on it for you? Trolls are pretty tall, so I should be able to land hits in the head area without fouling your teamwork. Unless you plan to use flying kicks?”

Char: “You got me. No, that’s for show, not serious combat. You can’t dodge once you’re in the air.”

Nastya: “Ok, show me the weapon you’re thinking of, and convince me. If not, just marking the vulnerabilities will still be useful.”

Kafana: “Buff food is ready!”

Mary-Lynn: “But don’t eat it yet. We could have done better in a kitchen or with more time. The strength is good, but the duration is only 10 minutes.”

Kafana put the picnic away, while Tomsk demonstrated the range and precision of his meteor hammers.

Wellington: {Kafana, go to social and switch over to the raid chat.}

{Sys, switch to raid chat please, and also show messages in text form over the head of the person who spoke if I will it to appear.}

[I’ll try. Switching now.]

Alderney: {I think I’ve found the boss’s lair. There’s a big cave entrance, a bit beyond the 9th Bridge on the northern side where there’s a rocky slope. Pity I don’t have any explosives. It would make for a beautiful avalanche trap.}

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Kafana: {If Wellington can duplicate Flavio’s amplification spell, that might do the trick.}

Wellington: {I’ll experiment.}

CrimsonMoon: {You guys don’t think small, do you?}

Char’s voice came over the chat, softly, almost hesitantly: {Tomsk-sama?}

Tomsk: {Char?}

Char: {Naming no names, but would I be incorrect to believe that you are the one behind the fight scenes in the Blood Slayer series?}

Tomsk: {I was not responsible for I or II.}

Char: {Nastya, you have seriously underestimated these Wombles. I would trust Tomsk to do anything in combat that he says he can do.}

Tomsk: {You are too kind. I also recognised your arlife identity from your moves, and hold your abilities in high esteem.}

CrimsonMoon: {Enough chatter. Let’s go smash this boss. Chat now reserved for priority information only. If it can wait until after combat, keep a lid on it. Move out. Nastya you have the mic.}

Nastya: {Tell System to engage your raid configuration settings. If you haven’t defined them, do so now. If you want a base to customise, copy Blaze’s.}

Kafana asked System: {Save my current setting please as Kafana Normal, and then configure mine the way that Blaze has her’s, and save as Base Fra Gamal Raid}

Her view changed. There were now ghost projections of where System thought people would move, and she could select between her own ghosts to indicate her own intentions. Friendlies were marked in green, neutrals in gray, hostiles in red. The right third of her vision was taken up with a timer queue, showing what she planned to do when, in the context of the plan lined up by the raid leader. The left third of her vision showed status information on herself, on targets and on allies, so she could see at a glance what effects people were under, when they’d run out, how much health and mana people had and how fast it was changing, as a moving graph over time.

This was going to take some getting used to.

Kafana: {Can you pause 2 minutes? I can cast some buffs now that will make it easier for us all to work together and to learn new things.}

Nastya: {Halt, group up. Mary-Lynn, Wellington & Bulgaria support Kafana. Kafana, tell us when you’re done.}

She cast her standard pattern of skill level buffs along with an intense learning buff on just her party, and a coordination buff covering all 12 of them. She sent the “Done” message, and meditated to get back mana while studying the new user interface configuration. Ah, yes, now it was making far more sense.

Something occurred to her. She sent a private message to Wellington: {How does the game handle INT? This is out-of-character learning. Is INT more than a stat? Is the game actually making me more intelligent in order to help me learn this stuff faster?}

He replied after a minute, which for Wellington was an unusually long time to answer anything. {I don’t know. I’ll look into it during downtime. In the meantime, thanks for the buff. I’m now making good progress on that sound amplification rune diagram.}

She held out a hand to Tomsk, who was also experimenting with the new setup. She projected the intention of being twirled in his arms over to his right side. He nodded and, when the action queue reached the set time, he picked her up and put her in the expected place without breaking step. This interface was amazing! Bungo joined in, then Alderney, and they proceeded to form a braid as they ran, swapping places with even regularity. Kafana was startled when the ghosts showed Tomsk’s sword sweeping where her head would be, but she reacted, altering her head movement intention, and smoothly ducking it.

She renewed the harmony buff and intensified it, now better able to visualise what she wanted it to do. She tried a variant of the learning buff, concentrating on not just intelligence, but specifically the ability to keep track of multiple things simultaneously and fast assimilation of data. They were nearly at the cave. She checked her understanding of the event queue, adding in an event for pre-combat buffs, and pinging it to Nastya for verification, then adding in position spots for Mary-Lynn, Bulgaria and Wellington to stop at where they could back her up. She queued up sub-events just for them, with a playlist of buffs, the targets, the priority on cost vs intensity vs duration, and pending gaps for Bulgaria to add visualisations and Wellington to add rune diagrams. She put a dependency upon starting the buff sequence of those gaps being filled in, and felt smug.

Until, that was, she zoomed out and saw the amazing branching dependency tree that Nastya had sketched in, with named sub-routines referring to saved combinations their combat team had already practiced. Playing this game at the level Fra Gamal played it really was a different league. Memo to self: never but never get into combat with a top clan.

They stopped a short distance from the cave and waited, buff food in hand, while Kafana cast buffs. Now she had three people supporting her, she took her time, going for long duration and intensity on each, trying to nearly drain her mana pool on each one, then meditating between each one to get their mana back. By the 6th buff, everybody’s eyes were crackling with blue lightning and she cast the calming spell she’d used on Alderney.

Kafana: {Ok, that’s the maximum safe limit. Buffs done.}

Nastya: {Bungo, go stash the goat down by the bridge. Everyone eat your food. Crimson, challenge due in 1 minute. Looks good to me, but your call. Go or no go?}

CrimsonMoon: {It’s a go from Fra Gamal.}

Wellington: {It’s a go from the Wombles.}

After that, little was said. It was all on the clock. People moved into assigned positions. Nastya on over-watch above the cave where she had a good view and could use her bow. The melee group in formation behind Crimson, with Tomsk 2 meters further back. Bungo between the cave and the caster group of Kafana, Wellington and Bulgaria, ready to protect them in case there were adds. Mary-Lynn surprisingly, was next to Tomsk.

“Troll, your food is all gone, your children are slain."

"Though large you be, your eyes I shall maim."

"Your cave I shall plunder,"

"your life I will sunder,"

"Fra Gamal shall be your bane!”

CrimsonMoon’s voice rang out in challenge. A few rocks skittered down the slope and the words of her challenge echoed back faintly from the cave “...your bane.”