Here is the fourth and final short story in this little series between books 2 and 3. Here are a few things to talk about.

First, I have done a lousy job cultivating villains in these books. I firmly believe that the main character in a story should defeat the villain at the end. If the bad guy keeps getting away, there isn’t much victory. I can make exceptions for a trilogy or series where you need to keep the villain around for the finale, but if you don’t defeat something, then what’s the point? So, in the first book, I built up a mighty squad of Drescher’s people and then killed them all. I didn’t spend as much time on the main villains in book two because I knew I would kill them. So, in this story, I will change that and begin to create villains that have more character and depth that aren’t just one-offs. Yes, this story is about the bad guys. The Realm of Infamy puts you in modules where you are forced to make horrible decisions to succeed. Jace and his friends find clever ways to do the morale thing and still come out ahead. Don’t expect that in this story. It gets dark at times. Oh, and I rip off another Disney classic. Also, this is the longest of the four "short" stories, and I will release it a little slower than the previous ones. I felt guilty about the shorter chapters in the first three, so I dumped the whole story in a day or two. This one is longer.

Second, I have done a horrible job of developing classes. When I started this story, I thought I could differentiate classes using Key abilities. A mage would be forced to make one of his Key abilities Intelligence, meaning he would have to take Intelligence feats every other level and would boost his Intelligence skills. Likewise, a fighter is forced to take Strength as a key ability. So, in my naïve mind, the two characters would be very different. However, you can take two key abilities. So the mage could pick Strength as their second key ability, fighters could pick Intelligence as their second key ability, and the two characters could be virtually the same. I didn’t want too many restrictions so fighters could cast fireballs and mages could wear armor. This isn’t working.

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So, I am drastically redesigning all the classes. This means I need to go back to the first story and retroactively design Jace so his Shaman class is more unique. Same with Esther. The result will be the same, but if you are paying attention to character sheets, you will notice that my new ones give class-specific bonuses every five levels, while the old ones don’t. Also, spells will be restricted by class. The character sheets I share for Jace, Esther, and the others in Book 3 will have these changes. Eventually, I will go back and fix the first two stories, but I'm not in a rush.

Lastly, the necklace that Jace used to take over the orc initially will show up again in this story, and I will fix it. When I designed it in book one, I did a lot of handwaving, turned it into a Mcguffin, and hoped no one would notice. But it doesn’t make sense. Since I used it to get Gromphy and am now using it again, I need a better explanation of how it works. So, here it is.

When you log into the game, your brain is scanned. Everyone has a unique brain scan. It is like a fingerprint, only three-dimensional and a thousand times more complex. Your brain scan is your User ID and your Password. When you create a new character, it is imprinted with your brain scan and remembers who you are. No one else can log in as your character unless they have the same brain scan as you. It is unhackable. It’s like a million-digit passcode.

For Jason, Gracie created a fake brain scan and put it in the necklace. So the game thought the NPC wearing that necklace was actually a real player. Then, when Jason logged in, she used the fake one she had generated instead of using his real brain scan. This means Jason can never play independently because if he did, the game wouldn’t recognize his actual brain scan and would ask him to generate a new player. It also means anyone who steals Gracie’s thumb drive with the fake brain scan on it can log in as Jace Thorne. Oh, the possibilities.