Draya came from Mongoria, a small island nation a thousand miles southwest of the game’s main continent. It consisted of a central landmass a few hundred miles across, surrounded by dozens of smaller islands a tenth as big. The mainland was covered in mountains, trees, and rivers. It was a lush, fertile environment filled with natural resources. The principal inhabitants were based on the real-world empire of Genghis Kahn. However, instead of being master horsemen, they were expert sailors. The tropical islands surrounding Mongoria were filled with fruits, spices, sugarcane, oils, fish, and many other valuable resources. The people who lived there were called Celtigions, a beautiful race of humans with dark skin and sun-bleached blonde hair. They lived peaceful, prosperous lives. They didn’t have the ore or trees of the mainland, so other than primitive rafts and crude fishing spears, they didn’t have access to boats or weapons. At first, the Mongorians treated them fairly, trading resources back and forth and giving them transportation to many other islands that were out of reach of their rafts and canoes.
Eventually, a Mongorian leader named Gangris arose, who felt he could exploit this arrangement. Without the ability to defend themselves, the Celtigions were attacked and enslaved. With each island only home to a few thousand natives, they were no match for the invading forces and were quickly overwhelmed. The Mongorians no longer needed to trade for valuable resources and could take whatever they wanted. The conquerors fancied themselves great warriors, but they were slight in stature, and only with potent elixirs made from plants grown on the Celtigion islands could they be triumphant in battle. They had a few mages rise to power but quickly found that the islanders had a more natural affinity to magic. Any time a native worker showed promise, they were taken to the mainland and brainwashed in one of the magic schools until they served their masters with undying loyalty. These converted Celtigions were called bondmages by their former people and were often sent as vicious masters to punish unruly colonies.
Jace absorbed all this information as he moved around his stronghold, gathering supplies for their trip. There was no game information on Draya specifically, but Jace could guess her backstory. She was a Celtigion, and when she showed magical promise, her family smuggled her away to this continent so the Mongorians wouldn’t brainwash her. From what the CIA agents had found, the entire Mongorian region sprang into existence because someone had created a merchant quest where you had to work out a trade dispute between two diverse economies. They picked the coastal town of Haversport and then designed an aggressive trading partner called the Mongorians. The designer had inputted a few characteristics to define their negotiation tactics, and Gandhi had then simulated hundreds of years of history, which created the Mongorian/Celtigion relationship.
It was hard to believe what this game could do when the advanced AI was tasked with a project. It wasn’t enough to just create one ship captain with aggressive negotiation tactics. No, Gandhi had made 100s of years of bloody and oppressive history to satisfy the needs of one NPC in a little-played module. Jace didn’t know if Draya’s backstory was also simulated or if she was created with a template history. It made sense that she was willing to drink the dragon elixir to kill the Lich, as it was likely many of her people had also sacrificed themselves to save others, but it was yet to be seen if her backstory included other details that could be fleshed out.
Jace’s interactions with Trixna and Ester showed that NPCs didn’t need a detailed backstory to be inserted into a module but could develop them if pressed. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to press Draya too hard. Once they materialized next to the Harversport travel node, Jace wondered if even coming to this city was too much.
“Why would you take me here?” Draya asked, a tinge of hostility in her voice once she recognized where they were. “I don’t want to be here. Let me go back.”
They stood atop a hill on the road leading into the city. Below them, a large village spread out along the coast with the endless horizon of the sea beyond. It was early morning, the sun rising behind them as they looked to the west, and the town was just waking up. They were in a PVP Level 10 Hostile zone, but Jace wasn’t worried. Gracie assured him that most public cities like this, which were not strongholds, still had a strict legal system and city guards that would react firmly against hostile actions. A bounty placed on your head by an NPC guardsman wouldn’t travel to other places in the game like a PC bounty, but over time, word got around, and other NPC towns might refuse your entry. People mostly behaved in places like this. The unofficial bounty on Jace was lifted now that he had successfully secured Psycho, and no one wanted an arrow through their head for standing up to the powerful player.
The archer had traveled with them, but Jace was precise about his role in this endeavor. Psycho was to remain invisible the entire time. He was only to act if someone threatened Draya’s life. If Jace and the girl became separated, Psycho was to stick to the mage’s side and never let anything happen to her. It was little different from the bodyguard duties Drescher had given him, but it had a far nobler purpose, and Psycho accepted the orders without complaint.
Jace looked for the archer, but he was already hiding in the early dawn shadows. The group leader could still see him if he wanted, but the game let Jace know he was invisible to virtually everyone else. Draya was so distracted by the town below them that she hadn’t even noticed the elf had been with them. “You set up this meeting, right?” she continued. “Couldn’t you ask them to meet somewhere else?”
“It would take too long to set up another meeting location,” Jace argued. “Why? What is this place to you?”
“This is where I was . . . smuggled,” she said slowly, the memories literally forming in her mind as she thought of them. “I was twelve. My older brother and his friend put me in a crate of bananas. I spent five days on the ship. The only thing I had to eat was the fruit. I can’t stand bananas now.” She paused as the thought of eating one passed over her face, and she almost gagged. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Do you trust me?” Jace asked.
She turned from the village to look back and up at him. He was in his human form but still towered over her. “I trust you,” she said but held on to the thought for a few moments before continuing, “but this place brings up too many bad memories.”
“You know that everything that happens to you has a purpose,” Jace said, taking some time to make an imprint on his valuable companion. “You can’t ignore this portion of your life because it makes you uncomfortable. If you want to help me, I need the whole you, not a distilled, incomplete version.”
Draya nodded. “I know you want to do good in the realms. And I look forward to helping you, but this,” she looked back to the town and the vast docks with ships arriving and leaving, “can have no positive purpose. It is only a black stain on my past that I want to forget.”
“Do you know what your name means?” Jace asked.
This drew her back to him. “What it means? It is what I am called.”
Jace shook his head. “Your name is Draeklynn Ember. Draek is an old-world spelling for drake, which is a baby dragon. A creature of fire. Lynn is a suffix that means a pool or lake. Your name means Young Lake of Fire. And your last name, Ember, I think that is obvious. A small coal that, if fanned and nurtured, can grow into a full blaze. Do you think your parents named you knowing you would be infused with a level 42 dragon when you were 18? How could they know that? No, what that means is that your life has purpose and meaning. Nothing that has happened to you has been by chance; even your troubled childhood had meaning. If you ignore it – if you push it away because it frightens you – you will never become the woman you were meant to be. I want to help ‘fan’ you into your full potential, but to do that, you need to face and overcome your fears. I will help you.”
Draya said nothing but only stared at the town below them, little memories returning to her every second. She was not naïve about how powerful she was, and she did truly want to help Jace. She just didn’t know how.
“I will make sure you and I both leave here together,” Jace said, careful not to promise anything more. He guessed Gandhi would make it hard on her, but he believed getting to the heart of her history was necessary and the only way to push past her childhood trauma. “But you need to trust me.”
Eventually, she nodded. Jace had saved her life, and their relationship status was still above 90. She might push back on some suggestions but would comply with anything Jace insisted they do. They moved down the trail to the city before anyone else came through the travel node. Even though it was a hostile zone, they didn’t expect any trouble. Behind the node, the path continued into the hills and led to farmland, lumber mills, and several other points of interest. NPC caravans regularly carried goods to and from the town; the worst you could expect on the road was a wolf or the occasional bandit.
Draya clung to Jace’s arm as they moved into the center of town a few minutes later, her eyes constantly scanning the people. Jace saw a few PCs wandering about. This was a city of commerce and trade; only players with unique goods to sell would come here to make money. Besides the merchant quest, Gracie wasn’t aware of any other modules that could be initiated from here. Some people had tried to get passage on a ship back to Mongoria, but the captains, called Khans, were very xenophobic, and no one was allowed passage.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Jace saw a few Khans walking around the city. They were tall and thin, with fabulous robes and tunics covered with gold, silver, and gemstones. The men all had black hair, thin mustaches, and elongated goatees that Jace remembered from seeing pictures of Genghis Khan. The women were equally tall and elaborately adorned with colorful makeup highlighting their lips, cheeks, and eyes. The Mongorians looked quite out of place among the ordinary people of this town, and Jace was sure that aided them in their negotiations with the local merchants. They looked like royalty, and with as much wealth as their trade runs brought, they were probably treated accordingly.
Most of the captains were accompanied by a Celtigion bondmage. They wore wizard robes with little adornment. They each had a thin silver collar that reminded Jace of the hideous control item that Trxina had used to dominate her roommate. Jace wondered if these necklaces had a similar purpose or were just to show the bondmage’s station. Possibly both.
The Celtigions stood out with their darker skin and vibrant blonde hair among the normally paler and brown-haired residents of Harversport. There were elves from the northern woodlands and dwarves from the mountains to the east, but the bondmages were easily the most eccentric people they saw. Draya wore her student attire, a light blue knee-length tunic with a sash tied around her waist over dark gray pants and a white short-sleeve shirt. Her new staff was collapsed and hanging from a belt under her tunic. She had a dark brown cloak to ward off the chill of their mountain home, which was unnecessary in this warm coastal city, but she kept the hood pulled high over her head to hide her red hair and dark complexion. Still, the pair drew several glances from the people around them, and not just from the few PCs who recognized Jace.
At level 16, Jace didn’t expect any level 10-13 PCs around him to give him much trouble. They were only here to try and sell their gems or rare spices. Since the level 21 mage Psycho had killed had been broadcasting their encounter to her many followers, everyone knew Jace could handle PCs several levels above him. Even though Esther and Psycho weren’t seen walking beside him, they could be lurking in the shadows.
However, the NPCs wouldn’t know to give him the same respect. Most Mongorians looked his way, and their eyes lingered on his shorter companion. If they had any magic detection spells, they would know how powerful she was, and while Jace wanted some interaction with Draya’s past, he hoped he wouldn’t draw the attention of every Khan in the city. In addition to most of them having a bondmage escort, they also had 4-6 heavily armed guards trailing them.
Jace hurried them through the streets and found the restaurant Gracie had picked for their meeting with the dwarf PC who had previously worked in Stormhold before the North Koreans moved in. Draya was right; they could have met anywhere in the realms, but Jace wanted to kill two birds with one stone and thought this was the best opportunity.
The Restaurant was called the Captain’s Nest and was set up high on a mound behind most of the shops with a clear view of the southern docks. Jace led Draya up the steps to the elevated building and across the open deck, where several patrons took drinks and enjoyed the cool morning before the sun rose high in the sky. Though this should technically be the breakfast crowd, the AI was smart enough to realize that just like ship captains would come to port at all times of the day, PCs also often didn’t care about expected meal times.
The patrons inside the diner were well-dressed, and Jace figured the name attracted a higher caliber crowd and informed those looking for a rowdy time with ale and women to go elsewhere. Mongoria wasn’t the only trading partner of this city; captains of different types and dress styles filled the room. Jace noticed that once they entered, they were in a Non-PVP Peaceful zone, further emphasizing the professional nature of this establishment.
A hostess brought them to an empty table along the wall, and Jace let her know someone else would be joining them. They were a few minutes early, and she brought them water and a menu. Draya’s head remained on a swivel at first, but she didn’t see any Mongorians in the Captain’s Nest, and she relaxed a little, letting her hood down and unbuttoning the front of her cloak.
“We should talk about it,” Jace said. “What do you remember?”
“My time at school has made my past a blur,” she replied, sipping at the cool water, “but walking these streets and seeing the Khans,” she shuddered and took another drink. “It’s all coming back to me.”
Jace waited patiently for her to get her bearings as her mind searched out the best place to start. “I lived on a small island that grew sugarcane and processed palm oil,” she began. “The Khans showed up once a month, and someone was beaten if we didn’t meet our quotas. Sometimes people were taken. And if we were really short . . . they would use the bondmages. Esther told me you can summon lightning. So could they. I assume you only use it on monsters, but they would call down strikes on our leaders and fathers. I saw a bondmage that used to be my neighbor nearly electrocute his own father because he was a gallon shy on production one month.”
Draya shook her head and drained the last of her glass. “When I started to show promise in the magical arts, my older brother got scared they would take me too, brainwash me, and then bring me back in a few years to torture our father. He kept looking for a way to get me out, and when we were loading a ship one day, he and his friend found a crate of bananas from a previous island that was only three-fourths full. They emptied half of them, told me to climb in, and then piled the bananas back on top of me.”
Draya brought her hand to her face as she tried to fight back her tears. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my parents. But my brother insisted. He said they could detect magic in people, and it didn’t matter if I didn’t do anything. They would come for me, and I had to get away. It was a long trip, but I remember every second of it. When we got here, my crate was sold to a local farmer named Corvin. My hair was different back then and blended nicely with the fruit. I could see out of the crate, and the streets and town haven’t changed much in six years.”
“What did the farmer think when he got you back to his farm?”
Draya shuddered. “I thought Corvin was going to send me back. Surely he knew what I would be worth, and it was a lot more than a fourth of a crate of bananas, but I think he saw how scared I was and took pity on me. Instead, he said I was his servant now and had to pay him back for all the bananas I cost him. So I worked for him. I wasn’t very strong, but I could make ice, and on a calm day, I could generate a breeze to make his windmill work. His wife was a baker and used the bananas he didn’t resell to make bread and muffins. Corvin said they were the best, but the smell of bananas made me sick.”
Draya turned her palm over and produced a small flame for a few seconds. “I had never been trained in magic, but it came to me easily. I worked for him for two years. I must have paid off what I owed in the first few months, but he kept making excuses to keep me around, like I owed him for the food I was eating or the clothes I wore. I think his wife didn’t want me to leave because she always wanted a daughter, but they only had two grown sons. The boys thought I was a freak because of how I looked and what I could do, and I was a lot younger than them, so I wasn’t worried about having to marry one of them. Plus, the family kept me hidden whenever guests were on the farm. Corvin knew I was an escaped slave and must have assumed there was a bounty on my head. Anyone who saw me could come back here and sell the information that an escaped Celtigion was at the farm.”
The hostess came by and refilled the water. “Then the attack happened.” She paused for a while as the memories solidified in her mind. Jace wondered if Corvin actually existed and if, as she was telling this story, Gandhi was also programming these memories into the farmer’s mind. He didn’t have much free time in this game, as it was his job, but it might be interesting to try and track down Corvin and see if he remembered Draya.
“Three bandits attacked us one night,” she continued. “It was a good farm, and they made money. I think the attackers were from neighboring farms and were jealous. Anyway, the two sons tried to beat them off but couldn’t. The thieves had them both injured on the ground, and I had to do something. So, I hit them with a cold spell. I knocked one out and froze another for a few seconds. While they were trying to recover from my attack, I ran to get Corvin, but when we returned, they were gone. His sons were on the ground, mostly okay. The farmer thanked me but was worried one of the bandits had seen me. The sons said it was too dark, but my hair was so bright back then you could practically read by it in dark room.”
Draya’s red hair had fallen past her face during her story, and she tucked it behind her ear after concentrating on the new color for a few seconds. “The sons treated me better the next few weeks, but Corvin was beyond anxious. He was sure that any day a contingent of Mongorian soldiers would show up and take me away. Finally, one day he told me I was leaving. I was 14 and ready for boarding school. There was a school in the middle of the continent that could help me learn about my powers, and they didn’t know anything about Mongorians or Celtigions, and I would be safe. It was a sad goodbye, but I was excited. I would actually be able to see other people and not have to hide all the time. He got me passage on a trading caravan by telling them I was a battle mage and could help defend the wagon. Luckily, we weren’t attacked in the few days it took to get to the school, so I didn’t have to prove myself. The next four years flew by, and then I went to the Magisterium Academy in Gershire. That’s where I was almost fed to a lich, and I think you know the rest.”
It was a nice, tight story, and Jace was glad he had taken her here to explore it. Of course, she was still probably hesitant to use her powers against an enemy, which made sense. If the only times she had seen a Celtigion use magic to attack someone was when they were mind-controlled into doing it against their own family, he could understand her trepidation. Plus, while Jace had no intention of turning her into a slave, their relationship bordered on the Master/Servant dynamic. He could command her to do anything, and the game would force her to do it. If she didn’t like it, their relationship would suffer, and she could eventually leave him, but until then, telling her to throw fire at someone else would force her into the action and trigger too many bad memories. He had convinced her it was just a game at Torrintank Keep, but in an hour, when he would need her to fling fire at storm shamans, NPC guards, and North Korean PCs, that would be a more challenging ask.
Before he could figure out how to approach that problem, he saw a burly level 14 dwarf walk into the Captain’s Nest. Gracie let him know that was his contact. Draya saw that her boss was making eye contact with someone else and turned to see the dwarf walk up to their table, and she moved to another seat so the newcomer could sit across from him.
“Jace Thorne,” he said in a gruff, dwarven voice. “Didn’t expect to hear from you.” His eyes went to Draya momentarily, a bit disappointed she wasn’t Esther, but from what he had read of Jace in the few minutes he had to prepare for this meeting, he understood that there was a rumor the resourceful player had someone working for him that could sling dragon fire. The girl looked like a child, but her flaming red hair and the “Level 16” floating over her head were no joke.
“My name’s Quaron Sledgehand. Nice to meet you.” He took a seat and looked thoughtfully at his audience. “So, you want to invade Stormhold?” he said, signaling to the hostess that he wanted an ale. “Good luck.”