Mastermind

by Steven Kelliher

  Scale was sitting awkwardly, one leg half submerged in the water and the other on the wet, dark sand beach, bloody and beaten. I knew he wasn’t feeling any true pain, but his ego was likely as swollen as his build. I could have let Sebastian and the crew give him another few licks, but I risked perming Scale if his HP dropped to zero. One of the comic book clichés Titan Online perpetuated was heroes pulling their punches so their villanous rivals could live on to fight another day.

  “How…” He found it tough to speak through his swollen mouth. “How did you know my superpower?”

  I tapped the side of my porcelain mask. “I know a lot of things, Scale. I know your powers, and those of many others beside you. I know how to pull strings.” I indicated the figures standing – crowding – around him, painting him with their shadows. “Most of all, I know how to win. And,” I bent down, meeting him at eye level, “I know what it feels like to lose.”

  Scale frowned at me. He looked like he expected me to whack him below 10% HP, winning me the encounter and knocking Scale out until the game respawned him back at his designated home point. I assumed this would be his watery lair nearby. But before the game respawned Croc, he’d lie there pretty much helpless for a while, giving me a window of opportunity to kill him. Truth be told, I thought about it. Scale might not be the sharpest player I’d come across, but he was stubborn. And carving out a nice little AI-fed ecosystem that earned him credits and insulated him from conflict with higher-tier villains – and certainly heroes – was a clever move, if a cowardly one.

  “You gonna perm me?”

  He almost sounded like he wanted me to.

  I reminded myself that I was a villain player now, so I could kill and not suffer extreme penalties like a hero would. Still, I wouldn’t get any Infamy XP for killing a player, so there was no benefit other than removing a potential threat. I admit I thought about it for longer than I should have.

  “No, Scale,” I said, shaking my head.

  Encounter Ends

  Scale vs. Despot

  Result: Draw

  Infamy Reward: Low Value

  The AI in Titan was incredibly sophisticated, designed with the specialty of understanding player intentions and motivations based on speech, tone, body language, and general interactions. It was made to serve the storytelling. After all, how could the AI judge which conflicts were the most significant, the most influential in the world, if it couldn’t weigh up not only the numbers behind the scenes but the unfolding drama between the players on a very human level?

  By announcing I wasn’t going to kill Scale and shaking my head, I’d made my intentions abundantly clear. Scale, cowed and unmoving, had also made it clear he was no longer prepared to fight back. The encounter was over.

  Scale must have just read the same notifications, for his eyes flicked from left to right and then back to me. I could tell he saw the mask now, and not my own dark eyes behind it. I sensed he was waiting for the follow up.

  “No, I’m not going to kill you. But things are gonna change around here. You’re gonna change, and for the better.”

  “I ain’t an NPC,” Scale said, spitting at Sebastian’s boots. I held up a hand to stay retribution. “Whatever power you’ve got isn’t going to work on me.”

  “No,” I said. “No, it’s not. You’re going to choose to work for me. And together, we’re going to do a lot of small things that might someday soon lead to one big thing.”

  “How’s that?”

  I nodded to the north, across the brackish river and over the cement breakers and the oil-slicked boats bobbing on their rotted moors. Past the bay and beyond the green fields at the edges.

  “How would you like to help me kill a god?”

  Seven

  Influence

  Scale wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’d certainly had the right idea when it came to his operation – if you could call hiding in the sewers around the docks and threatening low-level NPCs into giving you cash an operation.

  The AI had put together a fine racket in this part of town, one it ran through Madam Post and her greasy, soot-stained underlings. I’d thought about leaving the docks several times since arriving there, but where else was I going to find a stash of easily-coerced NPCs to farm? And, to be honest, the place was starting to grow on me.

  You see, Titan Online, for all its bells and whistles, was still beholden to many of the same trappings that had both plagued and elevated RPGs since the early aughts. Fame and Infamy stood in for traditional experience points, with superpowers growing in direct proportion to stat gains upon a tier up. This was a player’s primary progression path. Loot was still a major component of the game, just not quite to the same degree as a typical fantasy RPG would have. And to get great loot, you sometimes need a lot of gold.

  Players with power sets like Scale didn’t really need in-game currency. He was a brute, through and through. He likely just wanted to get himself set up with a cooler villain pad, maybe some fun tech or even a vehicle. Could be he really was like a dragon – the player himself, not the character – and simply liked the idea of amassing a serious fortune of in-game wealth in the form of bronze coins, shipments of drugs and whatever else was trafficked through the docks of War Town.

  A player like me, on the other hand, couldn’t hope to compete with the strongest heroes and pesky villains of Titan City and War Town without some serious backing. More funds meant better tech. Better tech meant better weapons, for me and my growing army of sycophants… er, followers.

  I’d taken B5’s advice – he was quite talkative now that he wasn’t just a glowing shard in my coat pocket – and added to my Sphere of Influence. Axel and Alex were two particularly dumb, ugly twin brutes who hadn’t even been able to find work carrying crates at the docks. They hadn’t been hard to convince to join a cause that might reward them more richly than cardboard boxes and damp alleys.

  Scale had had the right idea, but he’d seriously lacked my ambition, and he’d balked at my timeline. Just as B5 was balking now.

  “General, why don’t we—”

  I gave B5 a pointed look and made a great show of twirling around in the swivel chair I’d had him install in front of the supercomputer. I’d made a few adjustments to the secret base since taking up permanent residence there. Well, B5 had made them at my request, using some of the coin Scale had been kind enough to part with on our behalf. B5 was as versatile and intelligent as an Ythilian Hive Stone should be, and he did what I told him to do. Moreover, he was competent, which isn’t something I could say for everyone in my Sphere of Influence.

  For starters, we’d put up more lights. A dark cave was definitely my speed, mood-wise, but I also liked to see my surroundings, and now the obsidian cavern had a pleasant shine to it, like the scales of a black dragon. The noise from the waterfall had been annoying for a while, but now it faded into the background like a metronome. It helped me think.

  On our lonely platform in the chasm below the dam, there was a planning table that would have begun accumulating dust if the place wasn’t so damp, and there were lockers and racks bereft of anything to fill them. But the supercomputer was lit once more, and I’d had B5 embed the alien core – well, embed himself – into the guts of the machinery, giving me access to his full archive without needing him to do the searching himself. I’d been poring over the records of players operating nearby for some time.

  Of course, there was a frustrating limit to the Ythilian tech. I couldn’t load out information on players above my tier level. A neat way to tie my own power growth to my increase in knowledge, and thus more power. Regardless, the core had other uses. Namely, researching NPCs. No limits on that front.

  “Sorry, General,” B5 said, not seeming to mean it in the least. “Why don’t we table thoughts of the weapons raid at this time? There’s nothing that will set you back faster than a failed Influence bid on major, connected minions.”

  “NPCs, B5,” I said, forgoing my twirling for the
moment to give him my most bored expression. “Call them NPCs. When you reference minions, I feel like you’re tricking us into underestimating them.”

  “Very well.”

  B5 still struggled with the distinction, since he was himself little more than an NPC. Still, he was higher-level than I had thought possible. Perhaps he was a new breed of AI-assisted tech. It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed my mind that my build was the latest test of an in-game archetype. Too many capes, speedsters and brutes around these days. Even the gadget-based heroes were a bit passe. But me? Whatever you could call me, conventional need not apply.

  I leaned back toward the supercomputer and switched my focus to an overhead map of the docks and the neighboring industrial sections of southwestern War Town. I saw the tiny white ‘I’ icons that represented my current squad, along with varied dots that represented the other NPCs in the area.

  An explicit breakdown of those under my Influence – the same as in my player UI – was always handily displayed on some portion of the supercomputer’s screen. Right now, it sat to the side of the map of the docks.

  Sphere of Influence – 8/15 Slots Filled

  Single-Slot Members

  1) Sebastian 2) Sascha 3) Hobb 4) Kayde

  5) Brooks 6) Mickie 7) Axel 8) Alex

  By selecting an individual member of my squad, I could double-check their specific stats and traits. I found it useful to check up on them all from time to time to see how firmly under my control they were. If someone looked to be wavering, I’d have a chance to intervene. Take Sebastian, for example:

  Sebastian, Common Thug

  Mind: 5

  Brawn: 15

  Agility: 10

  Armor: 15

  Charisma: 10

  Status: Loyal

  Key Trait: Loyalty

  Had to laugh at that double dose at the end. Not the most exhilarating of minion breakdowns, but loyalty was nothing to be scoffed at. I exited Sebastian’s breakdown, returning to the main map and overview of my Sphere. Plenty of extra slots to fill.

  “Guess I have seven new members to recruit, then, B5.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Sorry?” I asked.

  “You are correct in saying that you have seven available Influence slots in your current Sphere, General. But it is not always wise to fill them with thugs and dockside brawlers. In the Ythilian Hive, we would search for the best recruits for a given job.”

  I frowned. Judging by his look – I don’t know how I could parse so many varied looks from such a blank, steely visage, but there it was – he had likely explained this bit to me several times while I watched looped footage of Leviathan’s greatest feats using the Ythilian archives.

  “Higher-level NPCs will take up additional slots,” B5 said, now sounding as bored as he looked.

  “Makes sense,” I said, nodding. “Let’s see about Madam Post herself, then.” My eyes still roved the alleyways of the docks. I was beginning to know them like the back of my hands, or like the red lines in my kabuki mask, which I often saw reflected back at me as I stood on the stone walks above the river.

  “She’d cost fifteen of your influence slots on her own,” B5 said.

  I pulled up Post on the computer and sighed.

  Madam Post of the Doom Docks

  Mind: 50

  Brawn: 1

  Agility: 1

  Armor: 1

  Charisma: 5

  Status: Independent

  Key Trait: Ambition

  “Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket,” I said. “She can’t love the fact that we’re stealing from her, no matter how many excuses Sebastian and the gang give her. She already executed one of them for misinforming her. Gappy, was it?”

  “It was indeed the dock worker with the gap between his upper front teeth,” B5 said dispassionately.

  “I told Scale to find new recruits. He’s probably just as likely to kill them.”

  “Scale’s methods aren’t quite as… refined as we might’ve hoped. As you can see, your standing with Madam Post has now shifted from Neutral to Tenuous.”

  I checked my Reputations tab to confirm this.

  Reputations

  Madam Post (Doom Docks)

  Alignment: Tenuous (1858/3000)

  It was a nice change of pace from looking up players to being able to see all the information even on NPCs clearly above me in power.

  “Hmm. It seems Influencing her will be quite difficult.”

  “Indeed,” B5 agreed. “Her mind score is significantly higher than your charisma score. It would require a significant break in chance, as well as—”

  “A particularly fetching performance by yours truly,” I finished.

  B5 cocked his head as though measuring up a child. “Sir, are you aware of the ramifications of—”

  “Yeah, I’m well aware,” I snapped, perhaps a little harshly. I knew the game inside and out – well, its systems, at least. With an alignment of Tenuous, Post likely wouldn’t attack me in the open, but she was clearly aware of my interference in her operation. That imprecise number on the rep bar suggested I was losing reputation with her in a small trickling effect. It would be necessary to enact some sort of damage control before Tenuous turned to Strained, and then worse.

  “You must tread carefully around the docks, Despot,” B5 said. “This is why I advised against bringing Scale into your circle.”

  “You can say it, B,” I smirked. “You can say I should have killed him on the spot, taken the docks for myself.”

  B5 was silent for a moment as he considered how best to respond. “He is a super,” he said for the umpteenth time. “Your Influence over him extends only so far as his fear of you. And besides, Scale does not control the docks.”

  “Which brings us back around to the point.”

  “Madam Post will prove troublesome to Influence.”

  “But if I did Influence her, I’d gain sway over the whole region. Farming up Infamy will be much easier then. Still puts me a far cry from fighting Leviathan, but it’s one step closer.” I leaned forward in my chair, hungry for his affirmative answer. I had a habit of projecting.

  “In a manner of speaking,” B5 said, ever one to throw cold water on things. “Influencing Madam Post would likely take pressure off Scale, and by extension, you. It would also make the docks and those who work them – considerably more than your eight underlings – more amenable to your suggestions. But such a relationship would need to be cultivated, and any perceived betrayal from you would result in an all-out attack by Post. Currently, you do not have the allies or the firepower necessary to survive a coordinated attack by one of War Town’s most dangerous gangs.” He looked around, seeming to mark every stalactite in the vaulted heights. “Of course, one could likely hide here almost indefinitely.”

  “I find your lack of faith…”

  B5 didn’t so much as twitch a reaction, so I didn’t finish. Instead, I sighed and threw my hands up, standing to pace instead of spinning in my chair for a change.

  “What’s the inventory at?” I asked, trying to give myself a new angle to focus on.

  “One hundred and seven gold worth of bronze,” B5 said. “We have enough money to pay Sebastian and his cohorts for several months.” I looked at him as if he were daft. That prompted a satisfying expression, at the least.

  “They’re under my Influence, B,” I said, “and they’re low-level NPCs, as you said. I’m not worried about keeping them happy. I’m talking bigger. How far are we from high-end weapons and tech? From paying bigger fish? From making real noise? The bigger the fish we can fry, the more Infamy we – I – take in.”

  “It will take time,” B5 said, unable to answer such a broad question. “But yes, you will need to tier up if you intend to extend your Sphere much farther.”

  It was a classic chicken and egg conundrum. To take on Leviathan I’d need a major operation, and even then I hadn’t a clue where I’d start on actually killing him.
But a major operation, lots of high-powered NPCs under my control with the best of gear, would likely be the place to start. To get more powerful NPCs in my Sphere, I needed to tier up, but tiering up could take a long time playing the usual way. So, it was a question of grind it out or try skipping ahead by being clever and bold – or, as B5 was so fond of reinforcing, by being foolhardy.

  Getting Madam Post under my thumb would bring major dividends in terms of turf and security. Given my presence in Post’s territory was now formally ‘tenuous’, the best place to begin seemed to be ingratiating myself with her, influence or no.

  “We need Post on our side,” I said with finality.

  “I do not disagree,” B5 said.

  “Good. And before you start flapping those fluorescent green digital gums, I know you find my probability of Influencing her right now to be less than stellar.”

  “Without an increase in tier, I find it unlikely,” B5 confirmed.

  “Aren’t there ways to improve my chances?” I asked. “Of passing an Influence check, or of lowering an NPC’s inhibitions enough to make a success more likely?”

  It sounded gross to put it like that, but B5 had plenty else to judge me for before working his way down to that one.

  “Well?” I asked, spreading my arms out, palms open. “Any suggestions?”

  B5 blinked twice as if working it out. “You attempted to appeal to fear with Sebastian and the other dock workers. It didn’t work.”

  “Excuse me?” I pointed a gloved finger at the supercomputer’s black screen. Below the map was a series of boxes laid in two rows featuring the grimy, toothy or toothless facades of my glorious partners in crime. “Looks like it worked fine to me.”

  “Your Influence roll succeeded,” he said. “But you didn’t pass your check due to fear. At least, not fear of yourself. You appealed to their fear of Madam Post. That fear was a good enough motivator for the short term, but you solidified your Influence over those men and women a short while later.”