Agronak was hungry.
The orc had not had a decent meal in weeks, since escaping the prison in Plainswatch. Plainswatch, he thought, had pretty good food. Really, it’s the best I’ve had since leaving the old farm. But, prison is no place for a bandit. In fact, Agronak greatly preferred the liberty of living in the woods, poaching and robbing other poachers for their food, their money, and their better-looking companions.
Agronak was in stolen clothes even now, as he stalked the…Deer, he thought, a stag with probably 1 hundred pounds of meat on it. His rough woolen trousers, made by a loving wife who had expected her husband home that evening, most likely. He did not make it home. Nobody escaped Agronak. His almost forest green skin shone with sweat as he thought about that one- a man hunting in the Baron’s woods, hoping that His Excellency, the Baron of Plainswatch would not have enough rangers to catch him. But oh, how that man would have been better off being arrested. Agronak didn’t take people to the city for imprisonment. Agronak didn’t kill this man quickly, either. Human and elf tasted roughly the same, like a combination of boar and dirt, but tasted better if allowed to bleed out slowly.
Agronak was not partial to man or elf as a meal but would eat what he had to. The ranger in these parts was an old man, nearly fifty, and could not possibly mind the woods this deep in- twenty miles was a hard voyage for anyone that old. And, Agronak reflected, the man was a father to three daughters. He’d be busy keeping them and couldn’t possibly spare the time to monitor the woods this far out. The Baron only had the one Ranger for the whole forest. In fact, Agronak was doing a good thing, he thought, controlling the deer population and keeping most of the poachers and bandits under control here, on the northern reach of the forest. In fact, I should probably make the trip south to the lodge and “get paid for my labors”. Maybe some gold, a bit of food, one of his daughters for a toy, I deserve it.
Agronak’s life had been a hard one. He knew the Men were coming to his homeland to enslave the Orcs- it happened all the time, and the Orcs never forgot. His father had told him to run, to live the old way, like a monster, and to wait until the word spread that a new settlement had been raised, that he could live like a person again. Agronak’s father had stalled the men long enough. Agronak did, indeed, deserve to eat. He’d heard in jail that there was a new settlement, on the Western coast. Farmland, high mountains to keep the elves and the men away- maybe twenty years’ worth of settled life. He’d escaped and had been waylaid in the forest. The harvest festival in Plainswatch would start soon, and all the traffic on the roads into town meant too much security, too many guards, and too many unwary travelers cutting through this piece of the forest to avoid the tolls.
He stalked the stag, which he could hear shuffling in a thicket of bushes near his position. He raised the iron mace, a plain weapon, taken from a solitary bandit earlier that day. His only option was to sneak up and strike the thing where it stood. As he approached the bush, he began to swing the five-pound piece of iron on a stick at it. He felt a blinding pain tear through his right side, felt like he had been punched, and struck by lightning, and stabbed all at the same time.
Agronak fell to the ground, coughing blood and pieces of lung through his sharpened teeth. Then the thing in the bushes moved. This was no deer, but a human girl, five feet tall, maybe one hundred pounds. She held a pair of daggers and jumped down to hold them to his throat. Another woman, looking like the young lady who was prepared to slit his throat, but smaller and younger, came out from behind a boulder, some twenty feet away, her hands holding a ball of fire between them. Agronak realized he’d been caught. A sneaky one and a mage, an archer hiding somewhere who had shot him, and one man bearing a sword who was approaching from his hiding place behind one of the trees near the bush he’d hoped was hiding a deer. He knew what that meant. He’d been caught by the ranger’s children. He, Agronak, Survivor of the Northern Raids, had been caught and captured by teenagers. Then, as his vision began to blur, he saw another woman come out. Dressed in leather armor and carrying a bow. Her rooster-red hair flowing in the breeze that would take his spirit back to the farms. “Agronak, escaped prisoner of the Baron of Plainswatch, you are hereby placed under arrest. Your life and property are forfeit to the Baron’s Ranger, whose claim to your life is that you were caught in the land he guards. What defense do you offer?”
Agronak could not breathe and could barely make the bitter sound that left his mouth in the effeminate human language. “I was…” he gasped, “hungry.”
He coughed again, chunks and blood escaping his mouth.
“Artos,” the red-haired archer called out, to someone Agronak could not see, “can we do this quickly? It seems cruel to let him suffer, and Gwyndel can’t heal a wound like this.”
“Oh, I can,” the golden-haired youngest girl said, “but I will NOT heal a murderer. It’s an affront to the Goddess.” “Shut up with that, Gwyndel,” growled the older girl, the one Agronak had thought was a deer hiding in the bushes, “he’s worth ten percent more alive- Orcs are expensive.”
A man’s voice spoke next, behind Agronak. “Elisteth, you’re the one who was going to cut him with those kitchen knives, you have no room to talk about damaging the hide. Besides, you know I don’t believe in selling anything that can speak.”
The body the voice came from stepped into Agronak’s view. This man was nearly six feet tall, muscular, with russet brown hair, wearing a simple shirt and pants, and held a plain but stout sword, it looked like steel.
“Agronak, I am called Artos. I received word from the Baron’s guardsmen on the road that you may be here. I hope you haven’t suffered too much.”
Artos raised the sword, it’s razor edge parallel with Agronak’s neck, and swung it rapidly, severing Agronak’s neck and allowing a gout of blood to shoot from the arteries.
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Agronak had been hungry.
########
"What the shit, Sam? I needed the gold off that bounty to get that new cuirass at the Festival!” This, thought Sam Sterling, will be a righteous pain in my ass. Hannah, who lived inside The Ancient World as Elisteth, was clearly furious. Her five-foot frame was hunched forward over her computer desk- a particle-board thing that Sam had given her as a Christmas present the year before- and she was banging her fists on the white plastic-coated surface.
“I don’t make enough listening to these idiots complain about the game to pay for armor AND groceries, so I’m going to need some jackass to make up the difference. And you KNOW angry Andy’s going to call in tonight complaining that the sneak damage’s math was wrong, and he shouldn’t have been stunned.”
Hannah and Sam worked at IntraTech, the game company that produced The Ancient World, as Customer Service Representatives. They spent their days hearing complaints about glitches- usually nonexistent ones, where players were just mad they’d lost a fight or made a bad trade- and offering some way to placate the raging children -usually in their mid-twenties and old enough to know that they shouldn’t be rude to people.
“Well, ma’am, I can’t do much about the auction price of a piece of armor. As you know, the prices are based on demand and keep the world running smoothly and as immersive as possible, but I can offer you five percent off your next full-year subscription.” Sam knew that she wouldn’t be buying a year-long subscription any time soon like he knew that he had ten fingers. That was the first thing they were given permission to offer in their workplace to placate customers and get more money out of them.
“Sam, you’re a real smartass sometimes,” Hannah said, chuckling slightly. “I guess we’ll just have to get to his loot stash after work and divide it up to be sure we have enough in everyone’s inventory on Tax Day.”
Tax Day, the day before the quarterly Harvest Festival, was the day that each player’s inventory had 1200 gold pieces deducted from their coin purse, or enough equipment in their inventory to sell it for the subscription fee. Money earned after Tax Day or during a festival was “Deadcoin” and could not be spent on Taxed Items- the items seized to pay for a subscription. Instantly after the festival, it became regular gold again and could be spent on anything.
The Harvest Festival the following week was the only time players could buy in-game goods at a cost below the usually exorbitant NPC Merchant prices, as the items harvested from subscribers without enough gold were auctioned off in each Barony’s capitol city. It kept the game balanced, the support workers were taught to say, by rewarding dedicated players with a discounted price on good gear and kept the casual players from becoming so overpowered that they could not find a challenge in the game.
The reality of it is that the players who can’t afford the gear have to grind harder, and it keeps the pay-to-win players who buy gold every quarter on top, thought Sam. And we’re going to have to scramble to sell all this guy’s items before midnight, so we can get real gold, not Deadcoin.
“It’s 1:30 now. We’ll get to work at 2 and be home by 10:30. We have plenty of time to get it unloaded and get the money. I mean, at least we’re not at risk of losing our memberships.” As employees, Sam and Hannah, as well as their roommate-coworkers Ellen and Marie (called Gwyndel and Sif in the game) enjoyed their free subscriptions to the game.
“Dammit, Sam!”
Sam cringed as he heard Ellen-Gwyndel’s shrill voice, a higher-pitched and younger version of Hannah’s, coming from the bathroom off the living room where the four of them had been playing. He knew exactly why she was shouting. The four of them shared a bathroom, and he’d been in a rush to get logged in to catch Andy-Agronak when Marie-Sif said she saw him in the forest near their favorite place to set up camp and log out. He may have forgotten to rinse out the shower.
“It’s fucking disgusting. You’re like a sasquatch, leaving hair all over the house like this.” She was clearly not happy with her four-year-older sister’s paramour today. She’d just moved in with Sam, Hannah, and Marie (all best friends from the time they’d started middle school) a week prior, after graduating from college, and had no idea how unusual this was. Sam was ready for work now, and she was the last one who needed to get cleaned up for the three-minute walk to the office building where they all worked. He decided to have some fun. Marie and Hannah shared a knowing glance, having seen the flash of trickery in his eyes.
“Christ on a unicycle, Ellen, I was shaving the sides of my head. It’s not like I was cleaning up the Boys.” He knew she’d thought that the hairs were from further south than their actual origin. Sam wore his hair in a tight Undercut, with the sides shaved to the skin and the top nearly two feet long, tied into a bun most of the time. This did not seem to alleviate her fury.
“Sam, you’re a pig. I’m going to rinse this trash out, but so help me if you do it again, I’ll end you.”
Sam heard the shower start, and knew he’d have his moment soon. He walked into the tiny kitchenette and turned on the hot water in the sink. The shout of surprise from the bathroom as the shower ran cold brought laughter out of the three older roommates. They needed a laugh today. The day before Tax Day was always a long one, and today would be far worse- it was the first Friday after a Con.
######
IntraTech- Ancient World Support
Internal Use Only
Memo: War Helm Mark 2 Release/ MagikCon Support Notes
First off, thank you to the support staff who worked the New Your MagikCon booth this year. We had 853 new installations/subscriptions, all of them using the Mark 2 uplink system. What follows is a brief reminder about how the system works in case any of the new users call in with a technical issue or any existing Mark 1 user calls about an upgrade.
Remember, we are all about immersion. This is the first thing you need to remind customers of when explaining the new equipment. The old War Helm was great, offering audio, video, and limited tactile immersion. Using the old Mark 1 was a great way to access the World. However, Mark 2 is far more immersive. With the recent FDA approval, we can tie into the brain directly and provide full A/V experiences, as well as sensations that are as real as they can be.
The biggest change is that the user’s mind is now plugged directly into our servers- the brain is the interface tool. Once the War Helm Mark 2 is on the user’s head, the new War Helm uses sensitive internal electronics to scan the cerebral activity, and the system begins a full copy- like copying a file on your computer. This copy is opened on our servers and is used to operate the game. At the end of the session, the copy is pushed down through the War Helm and the memories of the gameplay are merged back into the local copy of the mind- the user’s brain. This makes the Mark 2 what it is- it makes the game real to the player, as real as the memory of that time Sam got drunk at the Christmas party and ended up trying to gift-wrap his desk chair.
You’ve all gotten set up with the Mark 2 for your personal accounts, so you’re familiar with this. You should stick to this explanation of the subject. Remember, we should NEVER mention that cerebral activity in a Mark 2 user is wholly hosted on our servers. We have safeguards to be sure that the user’s brain is always reactivated, but it’s better not to use the terms “brain-dead,” “technically,” or “die because of an internet connectivity problem.” Marie, this means you.
In other news, please welcome Ellen Gordon to the Mark 2 support team- she’s Hannah’s sister, and a recent graduate from MIT with a degree in Neurocomputing.
Please continue limiting breaks to 5 minutes in the first half of your shift, and 5 minutes in the second half- a cigarette can’t take that long to smoke, and you shouldn’t be eating anything that takes longer than that at work.
Thanks
Derek Halson
Support Director