by Deck Davis
“It’s exactly what I’ve always said. Buy a chair at a store, and it’s just a piece of wood to sit on. Make it yourself and it represents work, sweat, achievement.”
“I’d hate to try finding somewhere to sit in your house, then. But when Soulboxe really took off, they hired a new team of writers and told them to refresh everything. Get rid of clichés, stab them in the belly, gut them like-”
“Bee…”
“Sorry. But that’s what the new writers did. They overhauled the races, ripping out the less popular ones while freshening up the ones people recognized. That’s the key. People say they want something that’s original, but what they really want is something they recognize, so they don’t feel completely lost, but with a twist.”
“So they kept orcs and stuff around, but changed things up?”
“The orcs in Godden’s Reach must be part of that. They’re slowly tweaking the other races, too. Maybe they haven’t gotten around to overhauling the dwarves yet. Change is a good thing, but too much change is like drinking too much beer. Good when you’re doing it, but you’ll regret it the morning after. You have to pace yourself and learn to handle your drink.”
“You drink beer?” asked Tripp.
“Lucas brews his own beers, and he once programmed some for me to try. He said the code would make it taste like his own beer to me. I prefer wine. I didn’t tell him that, though.”
It didn’t take long for them to find out what the dwarves were like. After walking for 45 minutes, the dwarven town loomed into view.
While the orc settlement was all black buildings and grass, Mountmend felt like a medieval rural town, with cobbled streets and stone buildings covered by thatched roofs. Each building was styled individually, from the color of stones used to make it, to the shape of the building itself. It made it look less structured and more like a hodgepodge of houses and shops thrown together. Tripp liked the originality of it.
Right beside the Mountmend gates was a statue, and Tripp had a growing feeling of familiarity as he looked at it. He got closer and, sure enough, he knew who this was, though he hadn’t seen him depicted this way.
This was Godden, cast in iron and shown as a dwarf. So, Godden was both an orc and a dwarf, was he? Someone was playing with the truth.
Mountmend was busy and crowded, the streets lined with every business you could think of from hunting shops with windows full of bear traps and bows, to potion makers who displayed glass vials full of liquid that covered every color of the rainbow. Delivery boys pushed carts full of fruit, vegetables, beers, and wine, whistling as they walked, moving out of the way of players who hurried by.
The dwarven NPCs were well-dressed and groomed, with slicked-back hair and perfectly trimmed beards. The women were slight, athletic, and most didn’t pay attention to Tripp and Bee as they walked through the town.
As well as the dwarven inhabitants, Tripp was pleased to see people with player tags milling around. Some walked with absent gazes as if they were checking their maps as they traveled. Maybe they were completing quests, or perhaps some of them were like him; looking for an NPC to train them in a skill.
There were lone players heading toward shops and NPC quest givers, only stopping to complete their business. Other players walked or were standing in groups, some relaxed, others working out the terms of duels that would need to take place in the plains. The bitter, almond-like smell of manus filled the air as mages showed off their spells, filling the air with rainbows of light. Sunlight gleamed off swords and axes and armor so well-crafted that Tripp could barely take his eyes off them.
Leaving the town gates, their route led them through a warren of streets, most of which had houses on either side. The streets were cramped and the cobbles were dirty, and they soon became a thatchwork of different turnings and dead ends. If he didn’t have a map tracking his progress, it would have been easy to get lost.
Soon the maze of streets opened up into an oval courtyard, and it took his eyes a while to adjust to the sudden brightness of the open air after threading through the darkened streets leading to it. Shops lined the circumference, and there was a giant bronze statue of a dwarf in the middle. Water poured from his mouth and splattered into the fountain. A passing player flipped a silver coin into it.
It was in the plaza that Tripp heard the voices of a dozen players chatting with each other. Their common meeting spot was a building that looked a little like a church, except there was a sign out front that read ‘Dwarven Adventurer’s Guild.’
Bee zipped away from Tripp, heading to a shop on their left. Joining her, he saw a shop window with dozens of swords and axes gleaming from inside, each new and sharpened and with price tags as pain-inducing as their blades. It was an impressive display of killing equipment.
Bee’s golden eyes widened as she stared at the weapons, utterly transfixed. She was practically salivating. “We have to get me a body,” she said.
“I watched a video stream where a guy did that. You have to go find a rare artificer in a place where there were lots of mountains with lava running down the sides.”
“I feel like I went there once,” said Bee. “But I don’t know…it’s as though the trace of the memory is there, but I can’t reach it.”
“That’ll be your last play through with whoever that was.”
“Can we try to find it? I want to be able to do things. Hold a sword or eat some ham like you had last night.”
He felt bad for her. There were so many things people took for granted, and here was Bee with a digitized mind that had every appearance of possessing true AI. In effect, that made her a person, didn’t it?
Or had the Soulboxe devs stopped short of giving their guides true intelligence so that they didn’t have to deal with the ethical dilemma of forcing them to stay in the game? Tough one.
Whatever the answer, he decided that as soon as he had enough gold, enough exp, and he could take care of himself, they’d go and get her a body.
“Come on,” he said. “The armorer is this way.”
The armorer’s shop was just outside the oval plaza of the dwarven town, at the end of a path lined with flowers. The sign outside showed a repair hammer and a suit of armor, with the words ‘Konrad’s Krafts’ written on it.
Inside, there were shelves lined with daggers, hand shields, hammers, and sheets of metal. A bronze chestplate was nailed to the wall, and a plaque underneath it read ‘Konrad’s first chestplate, created when he was six.’ The shop smelled of iron and polish, and metal shavings were scattered over the floor.
Konrad was taller than the average dwarf, and it seemed that he liked to work shirtless, judging from his sweaty body. That was the first sight that greeted Tripp when he pushed open the door; Konrad with his back to him, his skin glistening wet, leaning over a shield and hammering it furiously as if it had just spat in his beer.
Tripp mentally juggled his list of top ten sights he had never wanted to see, putting the half-naked, sweaty dwarf in at number five.
“I’m feckin’ busy. Come back in an hour,” said Konrad.
“Konrad?” said Tripp.
When the dwarf turned around to face him, Tripp saw that he was blind. It was obvious he hadn’t been born that way, though, since where his eyes should be there were two gouges of blackened scar tissue. Looking at his scars made him shiver.
Konrad set his hammer on the workbench. “An orc in my shop. Been a while since I saw one that wasn’t wearing feckin’ robes. Robes on an orc – what’s all that about? And what’s with their flowery stink?”
“You can see me?”
“I can sense you, and I can smell your armpits. You know there’s a bathhouse east of the plaza, yes? It wouldn’t be a crime for you to use it.”
“It’s impressive that you could tell that I was an orc. And that you can work on metal, come to think of it.”
Bee floated toward Konrad, who swatted her away, sending her swirling to the left. Tripp flinched and reached for his bone dagg
er, but then stopped himself.
Huh. So I’m feeling protective of Bee already, he thought.
“Lay a finger on her again, and you’ll be laying on your back,” he said.
“You think a pussy like you has the balls?”
Bee floated to Tripp. “This is going well,” she said.
She had a point. He had stuck out more than a two-headed cow in the orc village, and that place had been his best bet. If he ended up fighting with the armorer in the dwarf village, that meant he’d need to go and see the humans.
Even if the players wouldn’t care about a fellow player being an orc, the NPCs were bound to be programmed to behave like asses to his kind.
“We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” said Tripp.
“I didn’t realize there was a right foot for us to get off on, because like I said; I’m busy.”
“How can you work on armor and weapons if you’re blind?”
“Do you need eyes in your fingers? Does a master bard need to look at his lute every time he changes chords? What’s it to you, anyway?”
“I’m an armorer and I’m looking for a master to teach me.”
Konrad cupped his chin with his hand. “Hmm. Have you learned the armorer skill?”
“As low level as it is, yeah.”
“Just so happens I might have a use for you, then. My last apprentice died.”
“He died?”
“Aye. Horribly. Teach things the conventional way, and all you’ll get is conventional results.”
“This sounds interesting…” said Bee.
“I’m not sure I want to die horribly,” said Tripp. “I’m told that it hurts.”
“Yeah? I don’t want a pussy for an apprentice, either. Get out of my feckin’ shop before I shove a sword up your rump and toast you over a lava pit.”
Bee floated even closer to Tripp. “You know you can’t really die, right?”
“I know, but it’s the pain I’m thinking about. I mean, what kind of armorer dies learning his craft? What kind of teacher lets him?”
“The kind that can teach what others can’t. Or won’t, as it happens,” said Konrad.
“You said you wanted to create stuff,” said Bee. “You said you wanted to be a master crafter. Here’s your chance.”
“What exactly would this involve?” asked Tripp.
“First, you’ll have to prove yourself to me. Ask around and they’ll tell you that Konrad doesn’t take on pussies as apprentices.”
“Yeah, you mentioned that. How do I prove myself?”
“It’s as simple as an inbred goblin. I’m an artificer as well as an armorer, and I have a client who wants shock resistance added to a sword. Here’s your first lesson, lad; to add magic damage resistance to an item, you need to find a part of something that causes that damage in the first place.”
“Right,” said Tripp, feeling excited. Even just learning a snippet had set his synapses firing.
“Can you think of anything that causes shock damage in Godden’s Reach?”
Tripp tried to think. He’d never seen Godden’s Reach on any of his streams, which was part of the problem. So far he’d seen the frorargs, who dealt fire damage, and then there was the…
“You mean the sleels?”
“Aye. Bring me a sleel tentacle, and I’ll take you on as my armorer apprentice. That’s where the real feckin’ fun begins, my big, green lunk.”
Konrad stuck his hand out. Tripp offered his own, and Konrad squeezed it. “That’s a good shake,” said the dwarf. “I can tell a lot about a man by his grip. Bring me a sleel tentacle, and you might have the makings of a real armorer.”
Quest updated: Become Apprenticed to an Armorer
Update: Konrad the dwarf armorer might take you on as a pupil. First, you have to bring him a sleel tentacle.
CHAPTER 17
He left the armorer shop and stepped out into Mountmend, narrowly avoiding impalement at the horns of a charging billy goat. He let the goat and the dwarves chasing it run past him. The goat skipped left to right, back legs flaying out, as the dwarves took turns in trying to grab it, and soon all three were out of sight.
Tripp watched them go, feeling numb within himself and cold without, and he let the chilly breeze shock a little blood into his cheeks.
“We better find ourselves another armorer,” he said, crestfallen, and then headed toward the plaza.
Bee followed him. “You’re aren’t going to take Konrad’s quest?”
“Kill a sleel? That thing was level 67. Have you ever seen snake keepers feeding live crickets to a python? I imagine it’s not much different than me shaking my dagger at a sleel. He can go get his own tentacles. I’m going to see the human armorer in Goddenstone and persuade him using my charm. Nobody ever got killed by a giant eel that way.”
“I’m not saying your charisma wouldn’t work amazingly,” said Bee, “But you have a quest now. Boxe5 has watched the way you played, and he’s re-written aspects of Godden’s Reach for you. The human armorer won’t help.”
“He won’t take me on as an apprentice?”
“It’s dynamic questing. He’ll train other players in the game, but not you. Boxe5 will have programmed him to refuse you.”
“That doesn’t seem like it fits with their credo of choice.”
“You have to put someone under pressure to see what they’re made of.”
“I guess that makes sense. I need to think about this. Let’s find somewhere quiet.”
Walking out of the oval plaza, he cut left and then walked down a cobbled road, spotting something in the distance. Soon, they came to an open garden on the east of the city.
A sign out front read ‘Black-eyed James’ Memorial Garden – Please show some feckin’ respect.’
The dwarven attempt at gardening wasn’t great; it was full of nettles, vines, thorn bushes, roses with giant pricks. The roses had been pruned so that each one was perfect in its symmetry, and great care had been taken to sculp a nearby hedge into the shape of a dwarven family of three, the mother, father and child with their hands to their foreheads as if they were staring into the distance. It had a calmer air than the town itself, and the scent of petals was nice to breathe.
Tripp settled onto a bench. A plaque on the bench read ‘Dedicated to the brave dwarves who fought alongside Godden to claim the Reach from the Weavers.’
“The devs want complete choice for the player, right?” he said. “So how does closing down my option of training under other armorers fit with that?”
“There’s another credo you are forgetting,” said Bee. “Or maybe you don’t know about it, because the dev who stood for it left the team and the air was a little frosty afterwards. They wrote that dev out of the game completely, you know; you won’t see their name on the website, in any of the lore books, nowhere.”
He leaned forward, interested. “I never heard of this guy.”
“Girl. Julia, she’s called. So, Lucas stood for having choices in the game, and Rathburger was all about the grind. Julia said the most important part of a game was for there to be consequences. You poke a hornet’s nest, you get stuck with a million stings.”
“Makes sense. What’s a choice without consequence, right?”
“Lucas loved it, and he persuaded Rathburger they should let Julia implement what she wanted.”
“You know a lot about Lucas.”
“Whenever he enters Soulboxe to tweak any of the DFs, he tells us about himself. The guy can’t shut his flapper even for a second.”
Tripp smiled. “I’ve seen his streaming channel. He’s a likable guy.”
“Lucas told me about old games he used to play. Ones where the NPCs were real idiots compared to here. Where the worlds were like boxes, where everything happened the way it was programmed to. Sounded kinda archaic, honestly, but he talked about it with nostalgia.”
Tripp thought about some of his best memories as a kid. He thought about him and Rory waking up before Mom and Dad on the
weekends and then sitting in front of the TV in their pajamas. They had a controller and a plate of biscuits each, and they’d play games while the rest of the world was still asleep.
Those memories were special to him because back then, nothing bad had happened yet. Mom was still there, Dad hadn’t screwed up their lives. All they had to worry about was beating a level or killing a boss enemy.
He didn’t just understand Lucas’s nostalgia toward pixels on a screen; he could feel it.
“Playing a game, even the old ones, wasn’t just about staring at a screen. When the game was done right, you were there. The right storylines hit you with emotions,” he said.
“You sound like Lucas now.”
“And you sound like you have a crush on Lucas.”
“Shut up.”
Tripp smiled. “He’s right to be nostalgic about this stuff. Even if it was a game without a storyline to draw you in, then maybe you remember playing it with someone you love. Whenever anyone mentions Volkien’s End III, I can picture me and my brother Rory up at 6 am on a Sunday morning, kneeling on the carpet a few inches from the TV and with a packet of cookies next to us. If I ever hear the game music anywhere, it takes me back. Those were some of the best times of my life.”
“Wow,” said Bee, making Tripp realize he’d talked too much, maybe shared a little too much. “Lucas once said that to me almost word for word. Only, he had a sister, and he didn’t sound so morose about it. For one of the best times in your life, you sure don’t seem happy remembering it.”
“Sorry. It’s a sore subject for me when I get started on it. Things haven’t been great for me and my brother since we grew up, and it’s easier to think back to those times when we were buds.”
“You know, I’m going to suggest to Lucas that he should meet you, the next time I see him.”
“You can do that?”
