Light Online Book Three: Leader

by Tom Larcombe

  “Not so worried anymore,” Opron said. “I don't know why, but I just feel a lot more confident dealing with the players.”

  “Getting to know them will do that. Well, with most of them anyhow. With some of them it just makes me less confident about having anything to do with them. None of those spend a lot of time here at the inn though, so no worries on my part either,” Eddie replied.

  Opron finished his ale and stood, stretching and yawning.

  “You'll need to wrap the hilt on that, and it could probably use a bit more sharpening. But I wanted to make sure you got it before I had to leave. Now I'm going to go take a nap. Let me know if you want any more small pieces done before I leave, okay?”

  “Okay, will do. And thank you, this sword is awesome.”

  “You're welcome, Eddie. Thanks again for building me a smithy.”

  Opron turned and headed for his room. Eddie could read the exhaustion in the dwarf's posture and movement and found himself hoping that Opron hadn't pulled an all-nighter or something just to finish the sword.

  ~ ~ ~

  Later that evening, when most of his party was in the inn, Eddie braced Karl.

  “So Karl, ready for some more mapping?” he asked.

  “Where are we going to map? I've already got all the Forest of Fools in this area out to the third tier villages. I've got the dun— that place we went before. Allie and I mapped the Rat Woods yesterday, and I'll never hear the end of that from her. I've already got maps of the Meadowlands, where else?”

  “I need to go to Hammer Hold. I thought you might like to map the way, note side tunnels and the like for adventurers to explore. They should be the same levels as the Hammertop Mountains, so we'll want to go heavy on party members, especially since I'm sure Jern will want to sit this one out.”

  “You need to go? What do you need to go there for?” Karl asked.

  “The dwarfs want me to come there to negotiate for my charcoal trade. Plus, it'll let me get a better idea what they have for their side of the trade also.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. How were you thinking about increasing the party?

  “Well, I overheard Charles saying that a couple of his party have their forced day off tomorrow. I thought I'd ask him if he, or he and his remaining group, might like to go. I'm guessing it would be someplace new for them so they might be interested.”

  “That could work, he's one of the better tanks I've seen, in this game or others. At least as good as Jern, and higher level to boot,” Karl said.

  “Well, let me ask. Assuming you're interested,” Eddie said.

  “Hell, a new place to map? Bet your ass I'm interested.”

  Eddie nodded, then stood up and crossed the inn.

  “Charles? Could I have a moment of your time?” he asked.

  Charles, who'd finished his dinner and was nursing an ale, stood with his mug in hand.

  “Sure, what's up, Eddie?”

  “Got a proposition for you.”

  Eddie detailed out his intentions, and the fact that his party was still a little low level for the area, then asked if Charles wanted to accompany them.

  “Sure, I'd be happy to do that. You'd probably be fine though, when our group goes up into the mountains, we normally find smaller groups of orcs. The level recommendation takes into account the fact that the orcish settlements are swarming with orcs. Your group could probably handle the patrols just fine.”

  “Well, our tank won't be with us either way, so...”

  “Like I said, sure. Your tank have to take tomorrow off also?”

  “Um, not really,” Eddie said. “Our tank is an NPC. He's from Hammer Hold, but he ran away. He's afraid that if he went back they'd toss him right back into the Hold and not let him go.”

  “Criminal?” Charles asked.

  “Oh no, he's just younger than they normally let out of the hold on their own. I think he said thirty-five years old or level fifteen to be allowed to freely leave. I'm actually kind of surprised that the dwarf players haven't had a similar problem.”

  “They have, sort of. They're started at age thirty-five, so they're allowed out on their own,” Charles said. “I was talking with some of them. Most of them aren't... well, they aren't playing characters the way most players do. Some of them are a lot closer to you or maybe even Paul in how they do it.”

  “I know, Delgar's our player smith, or will be soon. Opron has to leave for a while in a couple of days.”

  “That's a shame, one of my group picked up a decent sword from him a few days back. I was hoping to get a custom one made for myself. All the longswords around here are kinda crap, you know? You can get some from the orcs, but I never saw anything better than a common there, and those are pretty darned rare to find,” Charles said.

  “Well, Opron did tell me that he let Delgar in on his tricks, so you might be able to convince him to make you one. Might be a bit still though, I think Opron has his smithing skill a lot higher than Delgar does.”

  “Good, I'm glad to know we'll have the option. By the way, I thoroughly approve of what you've been doing with those refugees. I wanted to help myself, but the rest of my group threatened to revolt if I took that much time off of adventuring.”

  “I thought most groups only went out once or twice a week?” Eddie said.

  “Most of them do, but before the inn was here, there wasn't much to do so we were going out on a daily basis, unless we were waiting on someone to respawn or people had their days off. Kind of got used to it, so we still do that.”

  “Not to be rude, but what level are you?”

  “Not rude at all. I'm level nineteen. You know how things slow down so much close to the top end of the Forest of Fools?”

  “Not really, I'm not that close yet, but yeah, even in the middle of the level range it's slowed down a lot.”

  “Well, it's the same with the Mountain. Especially if you kill the same things over and over. I'd swear there's an experience penalty if you're continually killing in the same spots. Which is why I'm happy to accompany you.”

  “Well, we'll meet up at the smithy at about nine tomorrow morning and head out from there, okay?” Eddie asked.

  “I'll be there, I may bring another member or two of my party if that's okay.”

  “The more the merrier, but I don't know if there'll be combat or not, it's supposed to be the safe route for player character Hammer Dwarfs to follow,” Eddie said.

  “That's fine, it's somewhere new. Plus, I heard some of the player dwarfs talking about side passages. If there are enough, maybe I can convince my group to go exploring down there one of these days and see something new, you know?”

  The following morning, Eddie's group, minus Jern and Becky, were all waiting at the smithy. Delgar had convinced Pellin to guide them, although Pellin was still only level five, so if there was combat he'd have to be in the middle of the group. It was only going to cost Eddie five silvers, so he tried not to complain.

  Charles came up the road on his own.

  “Sorry, the other two decided to go explore that Rat Woods area you talked about. Despite it being much lower level than they are, they still wanted to say they'd been there. So it's just me.”

  “Works,” Eddie said. “Are we all ready to head out?”

  A series of nods greeted his question and he turned to head for the cave in the spur of mountains that the smithy was built next to. Charles came up alongside of him.

  “So, you know this area at all?” Charles asked.

  Eddie shook his head.

  “Nope, that's why we've got a guide. One of the dwarf players that showed up recently is coming along for that purpose.”

  Pellin had a sheet of paper out and was examining it.

  “We wrote down the directions when we came here, in case we got lost and had to get back to the Hold,” he said.

  “And you couldn't have just sold us the directions?” Eddie asked.

  “Um, well, Delgar asked me to get him a few things fro
m the Hold while we're there. Don't worry, I can carry it all and won't slow us down on the way back.”

  Eddie shook his head.

  “Alright, well, we're going in now. You want to be up front or just call out the directions?”

  “I'll come up front for the moment,” Pellin said, “but I'll drop back if we get attacked.”

  Ten minutes into the caves and Pellin was cursing.

  “This tunnel, it wasn't here before, I'm sure of it,” he said.

  The tunnel in question looked like it had been blocked off by a rock slide, but the rocks had recently tumbled out and were scattered around the corridor they were in, revealing what was obviously a worked tunnel. The tool marks were visible on both walls of the revealed corridor. They definitely weren't recent, but they weren't natural either.

  “We're expected at Hammer Hold, but on the way back...” Eddie said.

  Charles turned and grinned at him.

  “There's my other reason for coming with you. I've said it before and I'll say it again, things have a way of getting interesting around you, Eddie.”

  “Pellin, you still know where we are?” Eddie asked.

  The dwarf nodded, looking nervous.

  “But I need to add this into the directions in case anyone else goes to use them,” he said.

  Eddie waited as Pellin looked around helplessly.

  “Anyone got something to write with?” the dwarf asked.

  Eddie chuckled as Karl dug out a quill and ink from his inventory. It only took a minute for Pellin to update the directions, then they continued on.

  As they traveled the tunnels, they could hear things, most likely orcs, off in the distance, but none of them came close and Eddie had to remind himself that the path was supposed to be safe so players could use it.

  On the other hand, that tunnel was not part of the path, it branched off of it, he thought.

  Hammer Hold, or at least the main part of it, was built in the middle of a massive natural cavern, stalactites and stalagmites decorating the ceiling and floor respectively. In the middle of the cavern stood what was essentially a stone fort that went from floor to ceiling as well. Pellin had told them that there were tunnels both up and down out of the Hold, so that it wasn't as small as it looked. All around the Hold the cavern floor was planted with mushrooms that were easily as tall as a Hammer Dwarf.

  It really doesn't look very small anyways, Eddie thought, so if it's much bigger than it looks, it might be huge.

  They approached a portcullis set into the wall of the fort and Eddie stepped out front.

  “I'm Eddie Hunter, I've been called on to arrive here for negotiations with your elders in matters of trade.”

  The guards stared at him impassively for a moment before one of them turned and entered through the dwarf sized door alongside the portcullis. The other guard simply kept his eyes on them after saying:

  “Wait.”

  The wait wasn't long, only about fifteen minutes. When the other guard re-emerged from the door the portcullis began to rise. Two more guards emerged once it was high enough and they indicated for Eddie and his party to enter behind them.

  “I'll meet up with you later, gotta go run my errands,” Pellin said, from right behind Eddie.

  No-one seemed too disturbed when the dwarf player broke off from the rest of the group so Eddie didn't let himself worry about it either.

  Once he made it to the chamber with the elders in it, and the guards had determined that Eddie was the one offering the trade, the rest of the group was asked to remain in a waiting area while Eddie was ushered inside.

  The negotiations were swift, but harsh. Eddie made his offer and told the elders what he wanted. He also provided them five pounds of the charcoal as a gift so they could see exactly what he was offering. He told them what he wanted, metal ores, not just iron, and informed them that he could also provide wood and many different types of food if they so desired.

  The charcoal was whisked out of the room almost as soon as he offered it and he was asked to rejoin his group and wait while they tested it. This time the wait was a bit longer, but when he returned to the room the elders seemed to be happy with what he was offering.

  All in all they spent about four hours in Hammer Hold, not seeing anything but some of the main corridors and the room Eddie had negotiated in. He could tell there were shops along that main corridor, many of them showing metalwork, but wasn't afforded an opportunity to browse through them at all.

  Eddie came away with a trade agreement, to begin as soon as he could get the first load of charcoal to the dwarfs. But he didn't come away with any more knowledge of Hammer Hold.

  Maybe they'll be willing to show us trade goods instead of just raw materials after we've had this trade going for a while, he thought. Because the quality of the metalwork I saw on display in the windows of those shops seems much better than Opron's stuff. We players might advance faster, but if a dwarf NPC has been working metal all his life, he's going to be much more skilled than a player at this point. At least I think that would be the case.

  Pellin had rejoined the group while they waited for Eddie so once they were escorted out of Hammer Hold, they were good to go.

  “Alright, let's get back and see what that tunnel is. It looked man-made to me, I saw tool marks on the walls,” Eddie said.

  ~ ~ ~

  When they made it back to the new tunnel, Charles took the lead as they entered. Eddie was right behind him and the rest of the group was strung out a little bit with Pellin in the center. As they made their way into the tunnel, Pellin called out. He was only about three paces beyond the rock slide and staring at the wall.

  “This looks like a coal vein, bring a light over this way, would someone?”

  Tiana shifted her light spell from over her own head towards Pellin. He poked for a moment, scraped at the wall with his finger, tasted it, then turned to the rest of the group.

  “Yeah, that's a seam of coal in the wall there. Right off the safe passage like this it could probably get mined easily as long as whoever did it paid attention and fled to the safe area if threatened.”

  “That's nice, but we've got a pretty steady supply of charcoal now,” Eddie said, “I don't know if it would be worth it.”

  Pellin shrugged.

  “Well, it's there if anyone thinks it is.”

  They continued deeper into the tunnel and it was less than fifty feet before Pellin called a stop again.

  “See this?” he said, excitedly.

  He was pointing to a nodule of stone that stuck out of the rock wall.

  “If I'm not mistaken that's a regenerating iron ore nodule,” he said. “The hammer dwarfs go nuts over these things, post guards on them and everything.”

  Eddie's eyes widened, he had some suspicions now and it wasn't long before they were confirmed.

  “Um, Eddie,” Charles said. “You might want to see this.”

  Eddie took a few steps forward so he was even with Charles. The tank was staring down a side corridor, the first they'd encountered in the tunnel. Right at the very lip of it lay a human skeleton. A pickax lay discarded off to one side, probably having fallen out of the person's grip when they were killed. That they were killed was fairly evident. There were two stubby little arrow shafts, broken off, that were penetrating the rib cage of the skeleton.

  “That's weird. You'd think the corpse would be long gone,” he said.

  Eddie knelt and placed his hand on the skeleton.

  Loot, he thought.

  He came away with what looked like several chunks of ore, streaked with silver.

  “Huh,” he said, showing Charles. “I always thought that silver didn't show up like that much, assuming it is silver anyhow.”

  Pellin overheard him and made his way to Eddie. A quick glance at the rocks in Eddie's hand and the dwarf looked up at his face.

  “Yeah, it's silver. The game just makes it easier to refine all this stuff. Regardless of what you might need to do in t
he real world to extract it, here you just crush and smelt the ore. The game kinda disregards what minerals should be close to one another too, so you can get iron and silver in the same mine, even if it isn't a big one.”

  Pellin looked around, then down at the pickax that was still on the ground.

  “That's what this is, isn't it? An abandoned mine?”

  “I think it might be. But I also think that I can hear something moving around somewhere in it,” Eddie said.

  He gestured for the party to be silent, and it wasn't long before everyone else heard it as well. The 'Chink, chink' of what sounded like pickaxes on stone, the occasional faint shouted cry, and the decidedly non-human language that those cries were made in.

  “So yeah, not quite abandoned after all,” Eddie said.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Eight

  Odin, in his guise of Geirvaldr, strode out of the forest. The goblins he'd just slain were a nuisance, nothing more, but they'd given him something he needed. He had access to gold, as much of it as he wanted, but he'd noticed that among the travelers, at least in this area, gold drew attention. He needed the smaller types of coin that he'd taken from the goblins in order to remain unnoticed, or at least relatively so.

  As Geirvaldr strode through the open meadows he smiled. He knew he was an AI, knew that he'd been built to run this world, with assistance from some other AIs, but at the same time he had the memories of a past patched into him. The memories he'd been given showed this to be a similar, if more temperate, terrain to those in his memories. He couldn't help but compare the two.

  This land is fertile, fields here would do far better than those I remember. No wonder this Eddie that Freyja is so enamored of began with a farm and is trying to get more in place, Geirvaldr thought.

  The first buildings he saw as he made his way towards the crossroads that seemed to be the center of the population in the Meadowlands were a series of houses, far more comfortable than the huts and hovels he recalled in his own memories of a past land.