~Prologue~

Marissa

Marissa stared at her computer screen, absolutely giddy. Sure, new games came out all the time, but it didn’t matter how many times she had sat right here in her chair staring at the still grayed out ‘play’ button; it was always magical.

As long as things went well, at least.

She was under no illusions; she was counting down to a huge Massively Multiplayer Online game release, and those were notoriously buggy at launch. Not to mention the litany of connection issues and other shenanigans that she would no doubt encounter over the next few days.

Didn’t matter. She was still hyped up.

“Four minutes. Just four minutes.”

Marissa snickered at the equally excited muttering that came over their voice chat. “Relax, Kieran. The chances of us actually even getting to play tonight is, like, astronomically small.”

“Fine, Rissa. Go to bed then. It’s not like you’ll get to play tonight.” Kieran shot back. “Besides, it’s almost 9 over there, isn’t it? Just about your bedtime.” He teased.

Marissa did glance at the clock on the bottom of her screen as she responded, just out of habit. “I’ve got Julie and Sarah coming in tomorrow morning, and even the afternoon shift is fully covered.” She said snidely. “I don’t need to go in tomorrow.”

Kieran whistled. “Wow. The great Marissa letting her workers do their jobs. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Shut up. You act like I never take a day off.”

“Uh huh. And tell me, how much extra did you bake and prep today before you left for the night?”

Marissa looked up and away toward the corner of her study - not that Kieran could see her over the voice chat. But no doubt, her silence was telling.

She did, indeed, do a whole bunch of extra work before leaving for the day not only because she wasn’t working Friday this week, but because the bakery was hers. It didn’t feel right to her to just not do any of the baking for a whole long weekend.

“That’s what I thought.” Kieran said with a laugh.

“And what about y-”

“Canceled class.” Kieran interrupted her. “Besides, half the kids aren’t even gonna show up tomorrow.” There was a slight pause. “Five of them have already emailed me saying they’re sick. Little liars, the lot of ‘em.”

Marissa laughed as he paused again.

“Oh, well, maybe not Bree. She’s probably actually sick. Poor girl never misses class.” He said, sounding actually regretful.

“Damn. I skipped a bunch of classes in college. Especially my required liberal learning ones. Still got mostly A’s though.” Marissa said.

“You and everyone else.” Kieran confirmed. “I majored in Teaching, and still skipped. Can’t believe I got stuck teaching some of the freshman writing seminars. That’s prime skipping material right there!”

“No kidding. I think I attended less than half of the classes for mine. As long as you turned in the papers, literally no one cared.”

“And that is still the case. Two weeks ago, only three kids actually - Game’s up.” Kieran interrupted himself and Marissa immediately woke up. She had to click away from the game’s launcher once to get the page to refresh, but there it was. The inviting, bright green button.

They both went silent as they each watched the opening credits roll by. Marissa fought the urge to smash the enter key, space bar, escape, tab, and whatever else she thought might skip through the credits. She would absolutely do that next time, but this was the first time she opened the game. It felt wrong to do it now.

The expected names came by; the publisher, the game engine, then DanuSoft, the developers.

They were a new team, but weren’t exactly small. Evidently, they had started as a small team, wanting to put together as perfect an MMO as they could manage and were using AI to do so. The first few news stories about the game had been very wary of it for the use of AI, but over time they seemed to win the public over.

The developers had time and time again said that while they were using AI liberally, they refused to use it to replace parts of the work that they felt really required a human touch; art, writing, and the like were all handled entirely by the human team.

The AI was only used to help alleviate the work that no one really wanted to do; the most common examples given in interviews were things like in-between frames on animation and some random content generation, that they had assured players would make sense when they actually played the game.

It was enough to at least get potential players on their side, rather than rallying against them for using AI to develop art or other assets. Even Marissa could see how quickly its use could go wrong, though.

As it was, people had been clamoring to see the finished product for some time. There hadn’t even really been a beta test or anything of the sort, which was practically unheard of these days. They simply launched with a three-day head start for anyone who pre-ordered, ahead of its scheduled release date of Tuesday, November 28th.

The head start period, of course, started at midnight on Saturday morning for the East Coast of the US, which meant 9 p.m. for Marissa on the West Coast.

When the title screen flashed up, Marissa was pulled out of her thoughts. There it was, in big, bold letters on her screen:

Mag Mell.

The screen showed an image of beautifully rolling hills of gorgeous green grass, with an occasional tree or other natural scenery to break up the hills. The camera panned around the view, as if showcasing the landscape.

And then the expected menu displayed below the title. [Log In], [New Character], [Settings], [Credits], and [Exit Game] were listed before her, with [Log In] grayed out.

Of course, before anything else, Marissa immediately clicked into her settings.

The game was too loud in her headphones, so she needed to turn it down. She checked the graphics settings to make sure everything was set as high as was reasonable for her two year old PC. She checked the language settings, just in case. Made sure the camera controls weren’t inverted, because that was gross. Then she clicked through two dozen other, far less important, settings just to make sure everything was to her liking.

And finally, she made her way back to the menu and hit [New Character].

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First she had to select a server, but they had discussed this already. They would be playing on Tír na nÓg; she found it in the list, selected it, and moved right along.

As the screen changed, the expected menus, sliders, and headings all popped up, neatly arrayed around a bland 3d character model that was just begging to be customized.

Marissa wanted a female character, so selecting that was easy enough. But the available races weren’t exactly the classic fantasy races that she was used to.

“What race are you thinking?” Kieran asked. The sudden voice after a long silence made Marissa jump, and she laughed.

“I actually forgot you were still here.”

“As usual.” Kieran muttered. “Did you see anything that caught your attention?”

“Not yet…” She said, as she shifted through her options.

Human was clear enough. Then Elf, but they looked more along the lines of just a more fancy human; no long, pointy ears or anything like that.

Then she moved to Sylph, which she was familiar with, and Undine. Air and water spirits, respectively, she knew from their common usage in other games. In this case, the Sylph looked slight and dainty, which matched her assumption of ‘air spirit’ pretty well.

The Undine looked like it had more normal human proportions, but had a slightly blue tint to their skin. The default model had long, flowing hair that seemed to be floating as if in water. It was a really neat effect, and the image seemed pretty much in line with her thought of ‘water spirit’.

After that she had expected a fire or earth spirit, but what appeared was a Corvus; it looked like a humanoid crow, in a sense. It didn’t seem to have obvious wings, but there was a cloak of feathers draped around its body. And its head was feathered with a beak.

Next up was Fae. The default here was similarly human-sized, as it seemed like every option was, but looked by far the most alien to her. Not including the literal bird heads, anyway. Their faces were sharper than normal, and their eyes were bright, shocking colors. They also had the expected wings, though they were layered and flat against their back, giving the appearance of a cloak, just like the Corvus.

And finally was the Cait-Sidhe. They were a humanoid cat race, because of course there were cat people. The Cait-Sidhe didn’t appear to be fully fur covered, but their hands and feet were certainly covered in a luscious black pelt that traveled up the forearm and foreleg a bit. Their faces were far more human leaning than not, lacking any sort of fur, but they did have cat ears and a tail. Most prominently displayed was a bright white patch of fur on their upper chest, which was visible through a small break in their clothing.

“I think I might go Fae…?” Marissa said, still unsure. She was flipping between the various options, trying to make up her mind.

“I definitely am.” Kieran said, a smile audible in his voice. “Since this game is leaning into the whole Celtic vibe, I’m just rolling with it. Also, I was planning to play the great weapon focused DPS class anyway, and I get a kick out of a short faerie with a big sword.”

Marissa chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds like you.” Once again, she stopped on Fae and stared at it for a moment. “I was going to go with the Arrow class, myself. And if Fae can actually fly at some point, I think having the ability to do so on a ranged DPS would be good.”

“Makes sense.” Kieran said. “But you don’t want to be a Corvus? They look neat.”

“Sorry Kieran.” Marissa said, her voice flat as she selected Fae. “I know you like being the only person in our group that plays a certain race, but Corvus is not my style.”

“Yeah, that’s fair.” He said, then they both lapsed back into silence as they went through the various options - and there were a lot of them.

The Fae seemed to even have more options available than the other races. While their default height was human sized, the minimum on the slider was roughly equivalent to 2 ½ feet tall. Marissa didn’t think Kieran would opt for that small, but she wasn’t sure.

The face options also varied wildly. The default alien-like face could be swapped out for something more monstrous with a large maw and long, sharp teeth - but also for some incredibly cute or beautiful faces as well.

Even the wings offered some pretty well varied options, including the ability to choose no wings at all. When Marissa clicked the option to remove them, she received a pop up message that told her she would receive buffs to other stats in compensation for the removed wings - and that told her that keeping them would have some kind of mechanical benefit. Eventually. Probably.

The idea of a flying archer was too good to pass up, though, so she kept the wings.

Marissa and Kieran both spent a while working on their characters. There was a little chatter here and there, but most of the time was spent getting everything just right. Swapping eyebrows around to make sure the default expression looked good, or opting for a different, less severe mouth.

The worst part was ten minutes into the whole ordeal, Marissa realized there was an option to directly alter the mesh and sculpt the face. At that point she knew she was doomed to spend at least an hour in the character creator, though it didn’t exactly surprise her.

And an hour and some change later, she was looking at her finished character.

It was a serious, somewhat studious looking Fae woman. Marissa had opted for one of the more adult, beautiful looking faces, and made her expression look serene but serious. Her body was well proportioned, and looked on the more fit side.

She had opted for a long braided hairstyle, that sat neatly over the character’s right shoulder and draped over her front. Slightly darker makeup options gave her character a more dangerous look with some eyeliner and shadow, as well as a complimentary lip color.

When she was satisfied with the general look, Marissa moved into the class selection.

Classes in Mag Mell were called [Paths], with each Path further broken down into two [Dedications]. The game also fully utilized the classic MMO Holy Trinity: Tanks for soaking damage and threat, Healers for keeping a party alive, and DPS - or Damage Per Second - which was responsible for actually making sure enemies died as quickly as possible.

Marissa, in most games she played, opted for archers. She didn’t have a strong reason beyond just liking the general vibe of archetypal hunters and rangers. In Mag Mell, this led her to choosing the [Arrow] Path.

Arrow was a ranged DPS Path, that was further broken down into [Seeker], which was focused mostly on using their bow and arrows, and [Keeper], which was more focused on utilizing nature based magic in addition to their bow.

For now, Marissa couldn’t actually pick a [Dedication] yet as you apparently unlocked them at a later level, so she was just left with [Arrow] as a [Path] for now.

The selection did, however, alter her character’s starting gear. The character she had created was now wearing leather armor with a hood, mostly utilizing dark browns and greens; very woodsy colors.

Before choosing a name and finishing her creation, Marissa went back and altered the character's hair and makeup colors slightly, just to better match the ranger aesthetic. With that finished, all she had to do was come up with a name.

Marissa had always been just the worst at naming things. The struggle was nothing new for her. She would often steal names from various media franchises she liked, or would alter something to fit appropriately.

In this case, she leaned back in her chair to think about it. She grabbed the mug of tea that was always on her desk to sip at. She always had an electric mug warmer at the ready, too, because she didn’t always finish her tea before it was cold.

She stared down at the tea in her cup before metaphorically throwing her hands up in surrender.

“I give up. Your name is Hibiscus Jade.” She said, as she typed it in. She was drinking hibiscus green tea. And Jade just sounded better than Green.

“Hibiscus Jade, hm?” Kieran said over the voice chat. “Good to know, so I can find you whenever we finally get in.”

“What do you mean ‘finally get in’?" Marissa asked as she clicked on the [Confirm] button to finish character creation.

And then she was greeted with a screen that every video game player absolutely dreads.

[In Queue]

[Position in Queue : 152,984]

Marissa let out a heavy sigh as her head thumped onto her desk. The impact knocked her glasses askew, and as much as she wanted to fix them, her prevailing desire was to lay there, defeated.

“I guess you just hit Confirm?”

“Yup.”

“What’s your spot?”

“152,983.”

“I’m at 151,258.”

Marissa just thumped her head against her desk again.

“How long have you been looking at the queue screen?” She asked. “And how much has it moved?”

“Uh, about five minutes. And it moved like 30 spots.”

Marissa shifted her head to the side so she could vaguely see her monitor out of the corner of her eye. The queue number hadn’t really changed.

“Fuck this. I’m going to bed.” She declared, before sitting back upright so she could clean up her desk for the night.

Kieran laughed. “I’m probably right behind you. There’s no way this queue goes down in a reasonable amount of time, and I’m tired as is. I’ll catch you tomorrow?”

“I’ll be here as soon as I wake up, yeah.” Marissa said. “Gonna leave the game on overnight. If we get lucky, maybe we’ll wake up to either a short queue or just already be in the game.”

“Gonna take some really good luck for that. No doubt they have AFK timers to kick people out if they stand still for too long.”

“Then we hope that we wake up before the queue runs down, yeah?” Marissa said, knowing that her hopes would surely be dashed when she woke up in the morning.

“Cheers to that.” Kieran said, then audibly held back a yawn. Marissa couldn’t fight back her body’s responding yawn either.

“And that’s my cue.”

“Ugh, don’t say that word -”

“Good night.”

“Night.”