“Should we try to find some energy upgrades, also? Or additional common chronos?”
“Let’s consider it. Mida, can we borrow some paper to brainstorm? You can join us if you like?”
Mida gave over some paper and pens. “While it seems worthwhile, and I’m excited to hear how it turns out, I don’t think participating would be sanctioned by the University. I’m not the sort to be revolutionary, you know? Doesn’t mean I won’t chime in if I hear something neat or maybe if there is something that might help my research.”
“Is it okay to keep working here?”
“Yeah, fine.”
Alastair laid the paper on the small side table. Flor was again on the tiny stool but didn’t seem to mind.
Along the top, Alastair wrote out numbers one to thirty-two, with a mark at six, another at eighteen, and a third at twenty-eight. Then, along the side, he listed a few other factors, including a subheader called resources, under which he listed Mida, Amets, Arnar, Monks, Klaos? {…including the question mark…}, Nikolette, Irving (+ two thugs), 40 coins, slow chrono (32 minutes?), and finally an ellipse. On the other side, he wrote out Objective(s): Complete the City and defeat the evil Mayor.
To Flor, Alastair said, “What am I missing?”
She said, “I think that’s an adequate summary. Maybe add Pocks and Jubs under Klaos? I don’t think Horace would be willing to assist, nor would Rudolf, for that matter.”
“That’s why I didn’t list them.”
“I’m just trying to be comprehensive.”
“Whatever. So, our goal is to defeat the Mayor within twelve hours of arriving on the island, right? That probably involves breaking into the manor and engaging him in combat. Let’s assume he acts as an end-of-disc-one boss, and will therefore be pretty overpowered.”
Mida chimed in, “What’s an ‘end-of-disc-one boss’?”
Alastair looked up, “In a sense, it’s a distraction. In a dungeon, there would be normal monsters, then some more powerful mid-level boss monsters halfway through, and then the bosses at the end of the dungeon. The end-of-disc-one boss would be a monster that a player might consider the final boss at the end of the game if the player didn’t realize that the game played across several physical discs, usually with a larger, more challenging monster at the end of later discs.”
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“That’s not overly clear. What do you mean by ‘disc’? Like something to be thrown.”
“Um, no. It was a means in our world we used to record data and then pass that data into an electronic game system.” He waited. “I can go on if you like, but…”
“No, that’s fine. Thanks for the explanation.”
Alastair returned to his page and wrote, ‘disc 1 boss’ next to ‘evil mayor.’ “So, probably overpowered, perhaps with some sort of cheap shots, but hopefully not multiple stages.” He paused to see if Mida would comment on boss stages, but she didn’t so he went on, “We’ll need to figure out how to get into the manor first. Direct through the gates? Waterway entrance? Underground tunnels? Over the walls?” He listed all these out. “Too many unknowns without further research.”
Flor looked at the page. “Do you think we’ll have to fight waves of guards? Do you think we might acquire a weapon to act as a combat bonus? And you mentioned health potions, but maybe we should find one of those body modification shops to try getting permanent higher health?”
“That’s probably a few extra side quests. Should we assault the manor first and then adjust if we fail?”
“I don’t think so. Let’s assume that the mayor is persistent. Sorry Mida, we know you’re not. And that if we figure out a way to assault, we lose an element of surprise. Sure, maybe he doesn’t think we attack back to back, but what if he increases his guard or puts a watch on us?”
Alastair tapped the pen to his chin, “I’ll concede that we’re probably not ready to assault the manor yet. Sure, let’s see about increased health and weapons. Hey, Mida? Is there a way for an unaffiliated scribe to learn magic?”
Mida said, “Not that I know of, but there might be a spell shop in the Arts district who might know better.”
Alastair wrote that down. “I feel a bit overwhelmed. I think we’re going to have to grind, some.”
“So, let’s see if we can increase some useful stats. Maybe we can get Irving to trust us more and…ooh, I have a thought. What if we leveled up and tried the scheme against the mayor along the road again? We could bypass getting into the Manor by attacking him directly.”
Alastair thought about it. “It does likely mean facing fewer guards since he only travels with six in the procession. We know we can stop the carriages with a log. So we approach it as if we ARE bandits, including the intent of killing at the end. If we did this, we’d probably still need to level. Use the kids as a distraction. What about that person who called us out before? I wonder if that’s scripted, so we’d need to account for her.”
“This might take a couple of days to work through. And there isn’t a guarantee we’ll get out of the game after this.”
“It’s worth the effort if it gets us closer, anyway. We’ve got so many sub-objectives that we should get started. Angry Onion first? Yeah, Angry Onion first.”