Kellington was a busy little town. Gracie explained that it was the village a player started in when they first created their character. Jace realized he was no longer part of the shared Realm as it was suddenly not nighttime but several hours after noon and approaching dinner. Dozens of tutorials were scattered around the village, teaching different aspects of the game, including several simple FedEx quests for players to get their feet wet. It was also unique in that it was one of the few non-quest-related towns in the game that was its own MIM. Each player had a unique copy of Kellington, so it was impossible to meet another PC there, and you could explore the game in privacy and safety.
Jace had already taken down two level 15 characters and countless level ten monsters, so he felt most of the information he could get here would be worthless, but Gracie insisted that he walk through the combat tutorial as it was the only way to initiate the quest he actually needed. He was constantly stopped by NPCs that came up to him and welcomed him to town and told him where the general store was, where he could get a bite to eat, which townsfolk had problems with rats in the basement, or who were missing farm animals. He politely refused all the first-level quests offered to him until someone told him he could train with the local weapon master if he wanted.
A small collection of soldiers sparred on the western edge of town, and Jace watched from a distance as two men beat each other with wooden poles and the group leader shouted advice. Jace waited for them to finish, then walked up to the instructor and introduced himself.
“Welcome, Jace Thorne. My name is Garret Listinger. I am the weapon master in Kellington. Have you come to try your hand at fighting? We might be able to help you.”
The weapon master spoke woodenly. Jace could tell he was heavily scripted and not nearly as lifelike as Faylon, Xavier, or Caitlin had been. Also, Jace was given scripted responses to the training offer, each with a number next to it in case he was sitting at a keyboard. Jace tried reading one of them instead.
“Thank you, Garret. I would like some training.”
“Excellent,” Garret replied a bit too enthusiastically. “You seem to be quite advanced. Let’s see if we can find someone at your level.”
This should be interesting, Jace thought. So far, no one had even given the massive orc or Snowy a second look. The weapon master went over to a group of men, and then a gigantic fighter stepped out of the group. Jace could tell the game generated the half-orc on the spot, as he hadn’t been standing there before. The shaman was handed a pole that he could hold with two hands and was ushered into the center of the fighting ring. His half-orc opponent was easily as big as he was, with muscles bulging out of the guard uniforms designed for humans.
When the weapon master announced the fighting to begin, Jace’s vision flashed with a red border to indicate they were in combat mode, and the familiar dial sprung up around his opponent. Jace let the orc attack first and tried to initiate his parry ability. The first strike got through easily, and Jace winced. From the sideline, Snowy growled at seeing her master hit for the first time. He realized he had no armor and hadn’t cast a totem yet. He attacked back, swinging through the 20-slot, and the half-orc went flying.
“Oh,” the weapon master cried. “It looks like we have a fast learner.”
The half-orc got back up, and Jace put him right back down. So far, he wasn’t learning much. The weapon master ended the fight quickly and instead put a much smaller, quicker woman against him. Jace had his hang-ups about hitting a woman, but it didn’t matter because the harder he tried to hit her, the more she kept diving and jumping away. Jace found that when he started his attack, the 20 was a big obvious target, but as soon as the woman enacted her Dodge ability, the 20-slot shifted, and he ended up getting a 12 or lower and missed.
After a few more tries, Jace noticed that the 20 usually moved to where the 15-17 was initially, and if he aimed for that less optimal slot, which would also hit the woman, he could more easily adjust to get a 20 once she dodged. Gracie gave him the numbers of each attack, and he understood that her base AC was 17, but her Dodge ability was 16, so she had an effective AC of 33. Jace insisted to the Weapon Master that they continue this training a few more rounds, and soon Jace was able to get at least an 18 every time the woman dodged. At first, he had been reluctant to hit her, but now he cheered each time his pole cracked against her head.
They then went through the same thing with a shield-bearing dwarf. Jace had fought against enemies that had held shields, but they had never raised them. They just let the AC bonus work passively. This dwarf was different. He held a massive shield, and when he took the Raise Shield action, the 20-slot shifted again. Soon, Jace could predict where the vulnerable spots were going to be. Like Dodge, the shield didn’t protect the same places each time, so even with the dial, he didn’t always get 20s but could usually hit the dwarf.
Then came a tall skinny fighter with two straight swords, one long and one short. This NPC was designed to parry. Once again, Jace found his dial shifting on him at the last second as the defender maneuvered his blades to intercept every attack Jace had, but soon he was able to predict where the parries would be the weakest and lined up attacks through the 14-slot that turned into 20s once he hit.
In the end, Jace felt he knew much more about combat and understood that fighting against skilled opponents (not just goblins and ogres) would be more complex than just swinging through the 20-slot each time. When the practice was over, the guards congratulated Jace and invited him to the tavern for a drink, where they promised to tell him about a pack of kobolds that had attacked a nearby mine. Before Jace had a chance to go with them, a hooded stranger who had been watching from the shade of a horse barn strode over to him.
{This is the guy we want,} Gracie said. {You must complete the fighting tutorial for him to come up to you. He is part of a module that someone added to the base game afterward, but it is still pre-VR.}
“You put on quite a show, stranger,” the man said once the other guardsmen had left.
“Thank you,” Jace replied, not bothering to read the suggested replies. Gandhi wasn’t running the interactions here, but it was still more adaptive than most scripted games he had played.
“How do you like that sword you are using? Would you be interested in something better?”
Jace looked down at the sword on his hip. It was the same one he had used in the deity module. It was a level 2 weapon and only did 11 base damage. His halberd was much better, but it didn’t have a sheath, and he had to carry it around, taking up one of his hands, so he kept it hidden in his inventory. “It does what it is supposed to.”
“How would you like the opportunity to have a custom weapon built just for you?”
“I’m listening,” Jace replied.
“Normally, the new adventurers I see here aren’t quite ready for my offer, but I see you are advanced.”
{I think you have to be at least level five to accept this quest,} Gracie chimed in. {Most newbies have to come back after they have leveled up.}
“I have a blacksmith friend in a nearby town who has some problems I think you can address. If you help him out, he will make you a fabulous weapon that outperforms anything you find in these shops. What do you say?”
“I think I like the sound of that,” Jace replied.
“Good. I will mark the town on your map. It is called Portsmith. Look for Quinton Farbender at the Bent Horseshoe. Tell him Dreston sent you. I don’t think you will be disappointed.” Dreston nodded one final time from beneath his hood, quickly walked away to the barn, and disappeared.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Jace stood still for a while, not realizing that he hadn’t moved once during the conversation until he felt released by some unseen force and nearly toppled forward. He took a few quick steps, and Snowy barked at him in alarm.
“That Dreston guy turns out to be bad, right?”
He could hear the shock in Gracie’s voice. {Yes, how did you know that? You are supposed to complete a mission for Quinton, and then he makes you an excellent weapon that fits your proficiencies. Dreston, whose real name is Racitor, confronts you later and demands the weapon. He claims Quinton short-changed him before and owed him a weapon, so he will take yours. You then have to negotiate the conflict between the two men, and you find out Dreston/Racitor serves some god that requires you to . . . Anyway, it is this big, long thing that you don’t need to get into. You just need him to mark Portsmith on your map. There is another side quest we need there. How did you know Dreston was bad?}
“During the conversation, I was frozen. Console players wouldn’t notice it, but it was obvious to me since I can move any body part at any time. Games do that when they want to keep you from interacting with a character before you are supposed to. It would destroy the mission if I had killed him or cast a spell on him.”
{I’ve read the manual on creating effective modules for ROI, which mentions design techniques to prevent players from breaking the quest narrative. Not introducing the villain until they are ready to fight the player is a crucial strategy. Anyway, none of that is relevant. You need to go to Portsmith.}
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After finding one of the several travel nodes on the edge of Kellington, Jace opened his map and navigated to the coastal city of Portsmith. Instead of fading out and then back in on a path leading into the town, Jace was given a fully immersive cut scene.
{Oh, yea. I forgot about this. They stopped designing these intros to locations once the VR took over because it didn’t make as much sense.}
Jace felt dizzy as his disembodied vision soared over the ocean, following the path of several massive ships coming into port. The docks of Portsmith extended far into the water, with palatial buildings and impressive warehouses fighting for valuable real estate closer to shore. If he were sitting in front of a computer screen, the majestic panoramic introduction to this vibrant city would have felt natural, but the 2D movie just felt odd from his VR perspective.
After a quick tour of the coast and a final zoom-out to give proper perspective on the city, the movie ended, and Jace found himself standing on the docks next to a travel node. He looked behind him and saw a ship in the process of unloading. He couldn’t move in that direction, but the game implied that he had just gotten off the vessel and was entering through the docks.
“So,” Jace said under his breath, not wanting to look strange to any NPCs that might hear him talk out loud, “where am I going? You haven’t really told me what this quest is.”
{That is because I know you will hate it, and I am delaying as much as possible.}
“Great. What do I have to do? Kill a bunch of baby penguins?”
{No, Portsmith has a much more tropical climate than that.}
“Gracie, just tell me.”
Jace noticed several people approaching him, and he tried to wave them off before they initiated a conversation.
{No, don’t ignore her,} Gracie chimed in as Jace tried to avoid a desperate woman in a modest house dress. {We need to talk to her.}
“Please, kind sir. Please help me. My husband has been missing for three days. The landlord has come for the rent, and I don’t know what to do.”
Jace shrugged his shoulders and selected the woman for conversation. “I believe I can help you, miss. What can you tell me about your husband?”
The woman only returned a confused look, and Jace glanced down at the suggested replies and tried again. “Where is the last place you saw your husband.”
“He took a job with Zachery Hegai. He pretty much runs the city these days and is constructing a lot of new buildings. He needs to clear trees on the city’s edge, pull up stumps, and then haul bricks and stone out to the build sites.”
“Sounds like hard work,” Jace replied, still reading from the prompts. It wasn’t something he would typically say, but he wanted to play it safe. “Was your husband cut out for the work? Maybe he got hurt.”
“No, sir. My husband was one of the strongest men in the city. Much bigger than you, sir, if you don’t mind me saying. He was tall with a black beard.”
Jace looked down at the woman from an almost two-foot advantage and doubted her words very much. It was obvious Gandhi was not running the show in this module. “What was his name?” Jace asked, following his script.
“Henry. Henry Tornsend. Please, sir, if you can find out anything, please let me know.”
Jace promised he would, dismissed the woman, and kept walking into the city.
{If you look down at your spells, you should have a city map icon you can choose. All of these older modules have them. The VR quests make you wander around until you find things.}
Jace found the map and pulled it up. It filled half his screen, and he assumed the glowing dot moving on the map was him. Only a few locations had labels, but he saw three points of interest. The Bent Horseshoe was only two blocks away, and the Tornsend home was close too, but Zachery Hegai’s work offices were on the opposite side of town. Jace found that he could select a location on the map, and his legs started walking in that direction independently.
“So, do you want to fill me in on this mission, or am I supposed to figure it out as we go? As enjoyable as it might be actually to play this game in my free time, I feel we have more pressing matters now.”
{Right. I will explain.} Jace could tell she didn’t want to. {Zachery is a wealthy businessman who made a deal with the devil. Well, not the devil, per se, but a fen witch. They met in a swamp up the coast a few kilometers, she saved him from something, and he promised to restore her, or something like that.}
“What is a fen witch?”
{It is like a bog hag. She is half-toad, half-human. A hideously ugly creature with powerful magic. However, she believes she is cursed and used to be a beautiful woman who now wants to be restored. Zach promised to help her in payment for saving his life. So, he chooses strong men from the town and sends them to her occasionally, and she sucks the life out of them, hoping that if she consumes enough power, she will eventually transform back into the woman she used to be.}
“And how does Zach pull this off without getting caught? It seems like a big risk for someone trying to rise to power within a thriving city.”
{Oh, he gets rich off the deal too. He has set up the hag as the chief madam at the city’s most exclusive brothel, the Gilded Swan. He keeps the profits from the whorehouse, and people assume the missing men ran off after cheating on their wives.}
Jace just knew it would be something like that. “Let me guess. The hag has the illusion item we need. She uses it to disguise herself as a beautiful woman and lures men to her.”
{See, you don’t even need me.}
“You want me to go into a brothel, fight through a bunch of prostitutes until I get to their boss, and then kill her to get the item?”
{Oh, no. You don’t need to kill anyone. At least not until you get to the witch.}
“I just walk in and ask to see the woman in charge, and they escort me to the top?”
{No, you walk in and allow yourself to be charmed by the first woman who approaches you. She takes you to her room. If you perform well, she passes you up to one of the four lieutenants in the house. If they like you, you are introduced to the woman in charge. The fen witch has a strict selection process, so she only gets the characters with the most Strength and Spirit, though I’ve never heard of her turning a Player Character away.}
Jace was quiet for a long while. “When this is all over. You and I are going to have a long conversation.”
{This is bigger than your %&*#@%^ chastity, Jace. None of us want to be in this situation right now. Let’s make the most of it.}
“Are you telling me to lay back and enjoy it?”
{If this is such a problem for you, work a solution. You’re supposed to be the super gamer, right? You can find unique solutions that no one else can. Admittedly, no one else who’s done this module has tried to find a different route, but I’m sure you can come up with something.}
“Have you done this module?”
Gracie didn’t answer for a while but then exploded on him. {Of course, I have. It is the easiest #$%&*# experience you can find in the $%#@$#$ game. You get 5k for killing the witch and another 20k for telling the widow her husband was cheating on her.}
“Killing the witch is easy?”
{Yes, very. If you follow the walkthrough on the wiki page I have up in front of me, you can’t mess it up. You stab her with her hair pick while she’s having an orgasm, and she practically explodes. You don’t even have to be proficient in light-bladed weapons.}
Jace took a few deep breaths and didn’t say anything for a while. “And then you can just pick up the illusion item?”
Now it was Gracie’s turn to be quiet for a while. Jace thought he could hear mouse clicks in the silence. {Actually, it doesn’t say how to get the necklace. She is wearing it, and if you stab her while she is sucking your mana, she explodes in a magical outburst, and all of her enchanted items go with her.}
“So, no one has ever gotten this necklace before. What if you try to grab it before you kill her?”
Gracie searched a while longer. {If you try to grab it before, she grapples and pins you to the bed. She only releases you once she climaxes. But then you are supposed to stab her.}
“And if you grab for the necklace instead?”
{I guess she keeps sucking your life. A few people missed the window to stab her, and they were paralyzed and then killed.}
“So, we have no idea how to get this necklace without getting me raped and killed.”
Gracie was quiet again. {You need to figure that out. I’m sorry. This was the only option I could find that met our parameters.} Her voice was almost a whisper.
Jace had been in auto-walk mode this whole time, ignoring the city around him, but now saw he was approaching Zachery Hegai’s offices and decided to put his game face on.