:08/11/2251:

Before I had even finished loading into my starting city, my fingers were already dancing across the menu, hitting the 'logout' function. There was absolutely no way I was risking getting caught up in a time-gated quest or a pass/fail completion requirement without even being able to use the starting ability of my class. The Raven had made things difficult for me, sure, but I was no longer restricted to what I could watch on official channels. And I knew I could figure out everything that I needed to know after a few hours of vegging out in front of archived Druid streamers.

Matti looked up as I flew into the Axis Room, storming across the interface panels embedded into the walls and setting up my feeds. She raised an eyebrow at me, even as I worked. "You have responsibilities now, Magpie. Won't the company be missing your stream? It may not be core hours right now, but you aren't a student anymore. You need to step it up a little, don't you think?"

I simply shook my head, not even looking at her, "I've got a problem, Matti. I need to find streams from Druid players of DDO. Specifically, scenes in which they learn or use Shapeshift type abilities."

The interface panels all around the room danced into life, flickering and searching on their own, even as her nagging continued unabated, "And you don't think your viewers would want to watch you figure it out for yourself? I would assume that the basic abilities wouldn't be all that hard to get the hang of. You can't be hiding in here every time you have an issue at work, or no one will even bother watching you."

Matti's incriminations aside, it really was quite amazing what the game looked like on the official feeds. I had been so busy getting into the game that I hadn't stopped to tune in since my restrictions were lifted and I had no idea how big a difference it was between this and my old, Dark Net video files. It was the difference, really, between 2d, low res video and full, 3D emulation with limited sensory feeds. I paused my search for a moment, the fast-forwarding and database queries, to just sit and watch a few minutes of the archived video. It was a bittersweet feeling, witnessing the full depth and possibilities of what my streams would bring into people's private rooms and feeds. On the one hand, it was breathtaking and beautiful in ways that were hard to describe, but on the other, I couldn't help but feel cheated of all the countless hours I had spent in front of the grainy, pirated files. Bitter over every moment I had followed along with the exploits of my heroes and heart-throbs, watching an aborted, outdated version of what could have been... this. For over a decade. 

A quiet, bitter hate filled my heart and mind then, the same, familiar emotion that I had carried with me for so long. Ever since my adolescence, since the punishment that slowly, insidiously, turned the childlike love for my parent into something darker. Something wretched. 

Abandoning my own pity-party after some time, I cued up the videos I had found in my search to my feed. I didn't have time to go through and subscribe to my favorite channels on the DDO feed or find the official versions of some of my most beloved videos. But I did go ahead and subscribe to a handful of the druid player's streams. I would need to pick apart their unlocks at some point, and make a list of quests and NPCs that I needed to find in the world to unlock my additional basic abilities. And it wouldn't hurt to see how other players were making use of the class in the open world and see if there was anything there that I needed to bring to my own stream. 

Unsurprisingly, most of the streamers' videos were mute, dead things. They showed a lot of the mechanics, sort of, but the streamers didn't bother explaining anything, and any running commentary that was present did less to draw me into their videos and their lives, and more made me feel like I was watching some rudimentary AI attempt to speak. Their broken, lifeless commentary giving the whole stream a less-real-than-real (no Trademark) experience. 

The few that I found that were actually decent, though, I quickly followed. Knowing that I would have to watch and analyze their gameplay and their mistakes at some point in the future. Overall, I picked up on a couple of facts, though, which were enough to get me started. One, in order to unlock a new shapeshifted form, I would have to first kill an animal and eat its heart. It was one of the darker, gritty rules that the game had built its name on after The Dunwich Chronicles buyout, and the whole thing could be mostly avoided if you cranked up your content filters. Most of the time, all a Druid would have to do was be awarded the kill, and if no other Druids were in the party the animal's meta-form would automatically unlock. 

I knew though that that wouldn't work for my stream. I had turned off the filters and included in my description a promise of the "Raw, Uncensored" game. And while I knew that, for most of my viewers, so long as I included some explicit, sexual content, they would be satisfied. Especially considering the fact that 90% of my hundred current subscribers had been added after the loadout of my character Avatar had been added to my profile this morning... well, despite all that I knew that there would be a significant number of people who would give my channel up in disgust if I turned up the filters for even a single second of gameplay. And, I felt like, they were more of my intended audience than the viewers who were tuning in to get their rocks off and little else.

Plus, this whole decision had been predicated on the idea that this would be my final, be-all rebellion from my strictly structured upbringing and my Father's attempts to control everything that I saw and heard. I knew that if I willingly adjusted the filter, if I turned off the gritty details of my new world, in a very large way it would be admitting defeat. An implicit admission that Father was right, that I could be taught and trained by a trained psychologist like some stray dog. And even after my captivity was over I would be running right behind his metaphorical heels, unaware even that the leash was gone.

No, my resolution was quick and final. Not only would my filters stay off, not only would I bear the experience of cutting out and devouring an animal's heart, but I would be doing it with every chance I got. Whether it was the first kill or the hundredth, I swore in my heart of hearts that any who fell at my hand would find their heart soon removed and devoured by my own sweet lips.

I was afraid of it. The idea itself disgusted and revolted me. And it was because of that, not in spite of it, that I swore to eat every heart that I found, be it animal, monster or, yes, even be it human.

Finally, I acquiesced to Matti's bitchy nagging and logged back into the game. Yes, it was work as she said, but even so, I couldn't stop seeing it as my escape, my game, which culminated in all the dreams of my childhood being born and living a life in a realm of faeries and magic. And the world itself seemed to echo the sentiment as I entered, with it's More-Real-Than-Real ™ sounds and smells assaulting my senses on the streets of the glimmering town.

Checking my map, I found that I had been placed into a high elven city named Anthera. The center was built from glass and living crystal, the glittering, luminescent walls casting rainbows into the earthy streets below, living growths of hollowed rock towering over me. Each building, even here on the outskirts, loomed several stories high, and the scale and height of the cities' construction only grew and towered higher the farther into the city you went. Far, maybe some mile into the distance loomed the tallest building, the palace at the heart of the elven stronghold, a good five stories higher than even the surrounding structures. The entire thing was grand to the extreme, but as I walked the bustling street I found more wonders still.

The city was surrounded by old growth forest, redwood spinning away from the rock garden palace and to the sides of the road as far as the eye could see. A series of high, barely discernable tree houses dotted through the forested suburbs, stringing together dwellings of hallowed trees and wooden constructions in the farthest, highest branches. People crossing the rope bridges and leaning out across their balconies looked like insects, so high up that you could only make them out for benefit of their movements and the distant sound of their voices.

Just outside the city gates, on the road away from town, stood the traditional, granite portal stones. Carved in memory of the ancient ruins of Stonehenge, rumored to have once existed in the real world too, for a small fee they would port you to any number of other cities, towns, dungeons, or, for a much larger fee, even to other planets and starships. Though I knew that my newbie character would be limited in where I could port to, lacking the unlocks of the higher level, experienced players who I had seen use the service.

It was breathtaking, to the extreme, and it was some minutes before I remembered I was being watched. And that my viewers had been sitting there for some minutes now watching me stare like a slack-jawed yokel at the wonders now surrounding me. I sighed to myself, admitting internally that I was being absolutely no better than the mute, dull streams that I had judged so harshly just some half hour before, and I quickly took a breath and turned away from the startling vistas.

Walking over to the standing stones, I double checked and made sure my portal had automatically bound to this area. Then, with a couple of flicks through the menu, I found what I had been looking for. There were a couple of introductory areas still around, programmed by someone nostalgic for old-school games, where the settings and mechanics were little more difficult than killing a couple of rats and turning their heads in for rewards. 

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The forums hated those zones and there were roomers that they were being phased out, as less and less seemed to be available with every passing year. They were described as 'too easy' and 'mind-numbingly boring', especially after any semblance of a traditional leveling scheme had been phased out of the game. Still, it appeared that there were still a few of the areas that the developers refused to give up, attached to them out of some childhood memory or maybe just sad to remove content that had defined the game's experience some decades ago. Whatever the case, they were still perfect for someone like me. In that, they required little skill, resulted in some easy kills, and rewarded basic items that, due to my sub-race, I had started the game completely without. 

The world spun into a liquid, water on air animation as the portal surrounded me. Light from the city cascaded across the edges of the portal, rising from the stone blocks of the device, filling the world with rainbows and the hint of dew and moisture across my skin. Instead of black, the loading graphic around me was a room of dazzling colors, as if I had moved into a rainbow and found it to be, not an illusion in the air, but an entire world in and of itself.

By the time the light cleared and the Church appeared in front of me, I was so lost in the sensations that I, again, spent several minutes staring in wonder and scarcely remembering to breathe. Sending entire minutes of dead air out across the web to my hundred odd subscribers. 

Shaking off my revelry, I walked over to the old man in front of the church. He was leaning on a cane but wore the battered remnants of a knight's proud and shining armor. He smiled kindly as I approached and called out, "Adventurer! Spare a minute for this lame old man?"

I walked over to him, staring at his face and trying to determine if he looked better in person or on my old broken streams. I decided after a few seconds of him staring back at me, lifeless, that the streams were, in fact, better. "Quest." I said, using the old, primitive voice commands that were required for these un-updated zones.

"Oh thank you, kind adventurer. I was once a proud warrior of Light before the orcs came. Now I am but this humble, broken old man before you. It is only one like you, a proud defender of the Light, who can..."

"Skip." I said.

The man's form shuddered a bit, his script resetting to the next bit of programmed dialogue. This NPC was a relic of decades ago before AI took direct control over most of the NPCs of the game, and before DDO had enough of a following where they could hire employee Roleplayers to take on key roles like this one. These starter zones were criticized for giving an outdated and poor introductory experience, but it was argued that only players with enough out of game knowledge to know how to find these zones in the long teleportation menus by name could even find these places. And so rather than being removed, the areas where generally found only by those who had some reason to be in them and a good understanding of what the game already had to offer.

While I had been off, lost in my thoughts, the old NPC had been ranting on into his next phase of scripting. I hadn't even realized that he was still going on without offering me anything. As I tuned back in, he was still going on about some tragic war and the need for new, younger heroes. If I was more of a lore nerd I would probably have found it mildly interesting. But, aside from the puzzles available, I had never taken all that much interest in the official history of the game.

"Skip."

"Skip."

"Skip."

... after some time, and skipping through more phases than I really found to be convenient, I finally was offered the quest update:

New Quest!

Bring back the heads of five wolves and two goblin wolf-riders.

Reward: Rusty Sword or Rusty Spear

The rewards for the first few quests were common, dirt cheap items. If I was willing to turn a few credits into gold I could have easily afforded better at digital Auction, but I figured it would be more interesting to my viewers if I went ahead and started with absolutely nothing. Working my way up from the bottom through clever use of quests and game mechanics. It wasn't something new, in fact there where multiple posted guides telling players how to do just that, but my spin on it was that I would start out in the older, un-optimised zones. Working my way up from the bottom even after the removal of the mechanics that used to make them actually work for fresh off the boat players, such as leveling systems and automatic ability unlocks. 

After describing a brief overview of the keyword commands and quest prompts to my viewers, I turned and walked across the manicured grass of the church away into the European styled woods. To all intents and purposes, I talked to myself as I walked, feeling somewhat ridiculous absent clear camera markers or live comments. Still, even though I checked my live chat and it was completely dead, I above all didn't want to turn into one of the mute hordes, dumping random videos on the public and expecting them to just figure out what was going on.

"Now I'm heading up Northwest to the wolf rider spawn site. These old monsters aren't using a true AI system and have predictable, scripted attacks..." It felt awkward, but it helped that I really liked the sound of my own voice now. And the musical notes kept me company as I walked across the somewhat lo-res field. 

Off to the edges of the spawn, I tossed a rock at a spawn off to the side, mulling about on its own. My aim was so bad that I didn't even manage to trigger an agro-frame, spinning wildly into a nearby tree and bouncing off lazily. "I'm now... moving just a little bit closer. I'm going to go with an underhand pitch here and see if I can get the rock within five feet of the creature." I threw, watching the rock slowly pitch forward and landing... a good six feet off target.

It took about three more tries, but I finally managed to bounce an underhand pitch off the creature's foot. Doing, apparently, zero damage. The whole process was quite a lot harder than it looked. Even still, I finally had its attention, and I moved to draw it away from the other spawn.

It came at me fast. Faster than I expected, rather. As in the old videos it always looked like the creatures moved at a gentle lope. Here, in front of it, it didn't seem that way at all though. I knew it would wait until it was approximately three feet away, it would pause for a quarter of a second, and it would lunge at me. But knowing that and reacting to it, it turned out, were two completely different things entirely.

In the end, it was all I could do to stick out my arm, putting the hard bone of my left in its mouth and letting its teeth sink in. It had been going for my exposed mid-drift and, I knew, if it had managed to land a bite there it would have done critical damage under the new systems. It hurt. A lot. In fact, if I had been present of mind enough to remember my settings and do the math, I would have realized it hurt approximately 5% more even than it would have if it had happened in real life. But I wasn't thinking about status or numbers. In those moments but a single thought was going through my head.

"AHHHHH. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. What did I get myself into."

5 Damage received from wolf bite.

HP:  35/40

The long teeth left my arm with a wet sucking sound, grinding painfully against the bone and muscle as its mouth released. I tried to count, as was my plan, my voice shaking as the pain and fear flooded through my body, "Five... Four... Three..."

But my timing was off, and the five seconds had already passed just as I had gotten to three. The creature lunged at me again, drool flying from its lips as its teeth darted back in for another taste. Again, it was all I could do to try and elbow it away from my mid-section, fear forcing me to move but pain shying my limbs away as I tried to stick my arm out again. 

The creature's aim was off, taking a glancing blow from my elbow as I tried to flail it away, but still, its teeth met my body, digging into my side painfully and grinding its teeth against my floating ribs. 

8 Damage received from wolf bite.

HP: 27/40

I went down to one knee, screaming, as its teeth left my side and it again backed away. Prepping for another lunge. I realized that the pain was distorting my perception of time. There was no way I could count down from five and eloquently dodge its next attack, the way I had planned this in my head. Instead, I somehow forced myself to hold out my uninjured arm, keeping a barrier of flesh between it and me, and I braced myself for its next lunge. 

Even having expected it, the pain took my by surprise as the teeth ate deeply into my skin. And even as my other arm swept over and trapped the wolves' head against my bitten limb, I heard myself screaming in tones that I had never heard before in my life. It was if a faerie bell choir was being slaughtered in my throat, their tiny, soprano screams of terror vibrating to the rhythmic sound of a hundred dropped little bells. 

4 Damage received from wolf bite.

HP: 23/40

I thrust forward my gossamer strands of my wings, reflecting the light as they suddenly darted forward. The glass-like tips smacked and sunk into the flesh of the wolf, three of the pointed ends hitting their mark against the wolf's thick hide. One of them made a long, light gouge against the wolves' shoulder, hitting the shoulder blade and bouncing off. One lodged itself between the creature's ribs, entering maybe a half inch before colliding with and embedding itself in the thick bone. And the third tip, the third tip entered deeply inside the creature's neck, tearing open its flesh and burying itself several inches.

It was a massive critical, and the numbers floated over the beast like bubbles in the air. But I didn't even have the chance to see what they were, how much damage I had done beyond the first couple 1-2 HP strikes. As the creature died, even before the light faded from its eyes, I heard the sound of a massive crack. A sound echoing out from its mouth, filling the grassy hillside with the sickening crunch of bone.

20 crushing Damage received from wolf bite.

HP: 3/40

Crippling Injury: Right Arm

1/2 HP removed in a single blow!

CON:  Saving against shock

Failed.

And my world went dark.