“And they let you do that?”
“We own the property, and as far as the game is concerned that means everything below the building as well. As long as we stay within the limits we can do whatever we want.”
Shane frowned. “Why go through all this trouble, when Handrow is a safe zone?”
“Because we can't take chances. Not with this,” Travis said.
He didn't get a chance to ask any more questions, because they reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the chamber. It took Shane a moment to realize what he was seeing.
A vast area stretched out before him, the floor covered in cobblestone, the roof held up by thick pillars. He saw tables, stacks of supplies in one corner, racks of weapons in another, a board full of charts, desks with piles of paper stacked atop…
“What the heck?” he said.
“This is the gamble you're wondering about,” Alex said. “Completely underground at the moment, in the literal and figurative sense, but we hope to grow.”
“What is it?” Shane asked, his head still spinning.
“We're a loose organization of various guilds that are fed-up with the Iron Guild's control over everything. We're not quite an alliance, not yet. We're not ready to challenge them. We still need to gather our strength. But it will happen.”
“So you're just another version of the Iron Guild?”
“No, we're not,” Travis spoke up. “Our objective is very clear. We break the power of the Iron Guild, and we give everyone to have the right to trade freely. That includes the Iron Guild. They had a right to trade. They don't have a right to impose their will upon others.”
“He who fights monsters…,” Shane said, for some reason feeling especially flippant.
“True enough. But we realize that as well, which is why we came to an agreement. Once our objective is complete our association will disband.”
“It's like the concern you voiced to me when you joined,” Alex said. “We don't want to replace the Iron Guild. We want to allow everyone access to the trade so they can pursue their imagination in this world. Our organization has been founded on that. And I think you would be a good candidate to join.”
“What's your organization?” Shane asked.
Travis led him over to a wall where a flag hung. It was light grey, with a stylized wave embroidered on it in four shades of blue.
“This is our banner,” he said. “And our name? Our name is Rising Tide.”
Chapter Eleven
“We've got trouble.”
Brandon looked up as a Rho member he didn't recognize hurried into the room.
“What kind of trouble?” Ashley asked. With Alex gone she had effectively been left in charge.
“It's the Iron Guild. Looks like they're sending in one of their enforcement gangs.”
Brandon tried not to groan. Yet another one of the of the guild's ridiculous measures to throw their weight around. He had never been caught up in one, but Brandon had heard plenty about it in the docks, the cafes and other meeting spots around Beylan. The Iron Guild would periodically send gangs into the lawless zones to intimidate other players and establish dominance.
Everyone hated it, but no one could find a way to stop them. Anyone who resisted ended up on the blacklist, and the guilds that had their offices in the lawless districts did so because they couldn't afford more expensive properties. The guilds that could afford space in a safe zone stayed there to avoid becoming victims to the same scheme.
“What are we doing?” he asked.
“We're not going to do anything stupid, that's what,” Ashley said. “We don't have anything compromising here, so we can let them search us all they want. They're not going to find anything.”
“They can still do a lot of damage,” Teresa said. “And it's not like we're swimming in funds.”
“At least we didn't have to replace the cargo,” Ashley shrugged. “Look, I don't like it any better than you do, but what else can we do? If we fight back it's going to be impossible for us to make money by legit means, and we won't be able to maintain our cover.”
Brandon had to agree with her. Resistance wouldn't do them any good, not when their enemies had the means to crush them. The best they could do was to wait for the storm to pass. Iron Guild raids were just a cynical fact of life in this world.
But that didn't mean he had to like it. He stood up and headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?” Ashley demanded.
“Out for a walk.”
“Don't do something stupid that's going to get us all in trouble.”
“I won't. I know how to keep my head down.”
Brandon stepped out of the office and into the streets. He picked a direction and started walking. Another day, another instance of the Iron Guild trying to throw their weight around. He wondered if they even thought about how they were coming across to the rest of the players. Did they care, or were they just concerned about their own amusement?
It wasn't like the others could fight back, either. A few might lash out or resist if they had no other choice, but the vast majority of them knew the doom that would descend upon them if they tried. The guild simply had too much power, and they had it in all the right spots.
He heard a commotion up ahead and looked up in time to see an argument quickly turn into a shoving match, and then escalating further. Players hurried to clear the area as Iron Guild troops and resisters drew their weapons and began fighting.
Brandon turned away and decided to head back to Rho's offices. There was no use getting caught up in the middle of a brawl like this. Even if he didn't do anything the guild might mistake him for an aggressor.
And at this point the only think he could do was slink back into the shadows and bide his time. That was all any of them could do, really.
“So, are you an alliance?” Shane said, still trying to digest what he had been told.
“Like I said, we're not an official alliance. More like an underground association of sorts,” Alex said. “We're not ready to fight the guild. We're not ready to even challenge them at this point. We're still building our networks, and since we have to be so secretive about it the going is fairly slow.”
“But you're planning on taking on the Iron Guild at some point, is that right?”
“That's right.”
Shane frowned. “How long can you wait, though?”
“We're running out of time. That much is very true,” Alex said. “But that's why we went through all the effort and expense to get our hands on the blueprint. It contains plans to a device with will radically change the balance of power when built.”
“What is it? I'm having a hard time believing that anything is going to threaten the guild.”
With such vast fleets and armies opposing them the only thing that would do something in his mind was a super-weapon of some kind, and those simply didn't exist for game balance reasons.
“It's not a weapon, if you're thinking about that,” Travis said. “Not quite. Resources and the control of them are the way that conflicts are won in this game. And this will help us do it.”
He turned and motioned for Shane to follow, then led him over to a group of desks.
“Fire crystals,” he said. “They're essentially the gunpowder of this world, but you know the problems we have with them.”
Shane nodded. “Yeah. Transporting them is terrible.”
Pure fire crystals were especially volatile, prone to combusting if touched by a single spark. When carried on a ship filled with roaring boilers and gears grinding together, the results could be catastrophic. The fire crystals that went into some engines had to be mixed with stabilizers, otherwise they'd likely blow the ship apart in a huge explosion. Those used in explosives needed similar mixtures.
And to top it off the crystals were some of the most expensive commodities on the market, even without accounting for the Iron Guild's interference. They gave players powerful personal and ship-mounted weapons like explo
sive shells, torpedoes, and grenades, but they could be so expensive that using them was cost-prohibitive, literally burning money. Most guilds stuck to using steam weapons and solid shot.
“Then you know what will happen if we increase the supply? Or rather, if we increase our access to them?”
“There's going to be changes. Huge changes,” Shane said. “But-”
“But how are we going to get our hands on them? That's the question, isn't it?” Travis said. He reached onto one of the desks and pulled off a large rolled-up piece of paper. “The blueprint has the answer to that.”
He unrolled the sheet and laid it flat on an empty desk. Shane looked at it, but all he could see was a mass of incomprehensible lines and curves. If he had the engineer specialization he might be able to read it. Then again, for high-level blueprints he'd need the correct perks…
“Can't read it, can you?” Alex said with a grin.
“No.”
“You're not the only one with that problem. So don't leave a man hanging, Travis. Tell him what it is.”
“Sorry, it's sometimes hard to remember that other people can't read the things.”
Shane shrugged. “I guess it's the same way when I'm trying to get someone without the helmsman specialization to steer the ship right.”
That at least got a smile out of the other two.
“Anyhow,” Travis continued, “this is the plans for a machine. A manufacturing machine, and its purpose is to make synthetic fire crystal dust.”
“Synthetic… synthetic fire crystal dust,” Shane said, his mind still not completely comprehending what his ears had just heard. “Is that even possible? And is that even an item?”
“It is according to the blueprints, though I've never come across it,” Travis said. “Regardless, we won't know unless we try. We're already working on getting a prototype up and running. And if it can do what it promises, then the balance of power may very well shift back in our favor.”
“But will it?” Shane said. “Getting weapons is one thing. Getting them where they're actually useful is another thing entirely. And then using them…”
“That's a difficulty, yes.”
“A fairly major one. We're going to be fighting against a guild that has a huge fleet, so unless we can manage to manufacture our own, how are we going to win?”
“We have funds. And we'll get more.”
“They have funds too,” Shane said. “More than us, and even if we manage to get a fleet their size, can we maintain it? Can with win once the war switches to attrition?”
“We'll have superior weaponry,” Travis said. “And what other choice do we have?”
“I don't disagree with the basic principle,” Shane said. “But if we're going to do this I want to make sure we have some chance of success.”
“It's a moot point right now anyhow,” Alex broke in. “First we have to find out if we can make the device, and then we have to test its capabilities. We can worry about our strategy when we have something we can use.”
Shane shook his head. “I think we should start thinking now. Coming up with a strategy to fight the Iron Guild.”
“Then perhaps that should be your area of expertise? We were considering founding a new guild for over action against the Iron Guild. Maybe you'd be a good candidate to head it.”
“How long has he been in your guild?” Travis asked.
“Not for long. But he's an experienced player. His entire group was, and they caught our interest. They were smuggling and trying to drive down the prices on the market before we recruited them,” Alex said.
“You're putting a lot of faith in them.”
“They check out.”
“You're sure about that?” Travis asked.
“Yes, and you should be too, else why would you let him down here and see this?”
Shane spoke up. “We have no connection to the Iron Guild. Your spies there can tell you that much, I assure you.”
He saw Travis give an aside glance to Alex.
“Did you tell him...”
“I did not,” Alex said. “Though I'd be very interested in how you managed to come to that conclusion.”
Shane shrugged. “It's simple logical deduction. You were willing to come out and tell us that you were smugglers, even though you know that there's a bounty out for information. And yet you were willing to trust us.”
“Maybe you seemed especially trustworthy,” Alex smiled.
“If you actually thought that then I'm flattered, but let's be real. If you were willing to give that information to a complete stranger then either you're extremely stupid, or you have a way to keep that information from getting out. That means an insider in the guild, and it also probably means that they're high up.”
“My, that's quite a good deduction,” Alex said. “And I think that's another reason you're a good candidate for a leadership position.”
Shane wanted to protest, but he thought better of it. No use closing the door on opportunities. Besides, if he wanted to get things done he might need the extra pull that came with the position.
“Let me ask you one more thing,” he said. “Your objective is to open the sea lanes to trade without interference, whether that's from the Iron Guild or anyone else. Is that right?”
“That's right,” Travis said.
“Then I want to see if we can come up with some way to make that happen. But to do that I need to go over things with some other people. Can I do that?”
“It depends on who they are.”
“They're your team, right?” Alex said.
“Yes.”
“Then that's fine.”
“Can you trust them?” Travis said.
“Yes.”
Alex nodded. “Yes, I've seen no problems with them either.”
“Then I'll trust your judgment,” Travis said, though he didn't sound terribly pleased about it.
“I'll be discrete about what I tell them,” Shane said, trying to reassure him.
“That would be good.”
He didn't want to do anything in the virtual world, not with so many spies around. Maybe a meeting outside of the game was in order.
Log out
“Thanks for hosting us,” Shane said as he and Brandon stepped through the door.
“Hey, we have the biggest place. Besides, we can drink while we're talking in the real world. Can't do that in a virtual reality.”
Shane laughed, and a few minutes later they had all settled in around the dining room table.
“So what do you have for us?” Bailey asked.
Shane gave them the details about what he had been told earlier. None of the others spoke until he had finished.
“Huh, so that's interesting,” Brandon said. “I can't say it was surprising, though. You heard what happened while you guys left the district, right?”
“I don't get why they're doing gang raids like that,” Kelvin said. “It doesn't make any sense. Everyone already knows that they're dominant, but now they're going out of their way to attack the other guilds. They just walk up to their doorstep and literally punch them in a mouth.”
“Well, the Iron Guild is pretty much a really large, really organized band of griefers at this point,” Bailey shrugged. She grabbed a bottle from the case.
Shane took a bottle as well. “It's getting to the point where there's enough players that hate them enough to ignore what they can do.”
“The question is whether it's going to do any good,” Brandon said. “A brawl broke out in the street during their raid, but what did it really do? The guild responsible got blacklisted from the trade routes.”
“They want to build a fleet large enough to take on the enemy and open up the trade routes, or at least that's what Alex tells me,” Shane said. He took a drink.
Kelvin shook his head. “You know that's never going to work. Unless they can magic a whole bunch of cash out of thin air.”
“That's what I told them. But they seem convinced that t
hey'll be able to do it,” Shane said. “I question whether it's going to happen or not. Even if they get equal numbers we're going to lose ships when we start fighting. And we're not going to be able to replace them.”
“So let's think about this another way,” Brandon suggested. “If we can't match them in numbers, what can we do? The obvious thing would be to make stronger ships, but is that going to be enough?”
“Actually…,” Bailey said. “We were talking about that earlier. What we could do to make a better ship. Kelvin wanted to add torpedoes.”
“That's the best way I could think of giving our ships good armament without adding a huge amount of length,” Kelvin said. “It was just an idea, though. I'm not sure if it's practical.”
Shane thought about it for a moment. “The Iron Guild has their fleet, but the majority of it is small patrol ships, right? And they're not much bigger than our ship. So what if we did something different? We focused on making a warship that's big enough to crush those.”
“How are you dealing with the bigger ships?” Bailey said.
“If we're using torpedoes then you can threaten a much larger ship,” Brandon said. “Kind of like how different countries used torpedo boats and destroyers to threaten cruisers and battleships. Of course, they hunted in packs.”
“So maybe that's our ticket,” Kelvin said. “If what they say is true then we're going to have access to a lot of fire crystal dust, which means we can pay for torpedoes. So we just have to come up with a good ship design to support that.”
“Now I want to start designing,” Bailey said. “But I guess I'll get with Jocelyn at some point to talk about this. She has a pretty good knack for making things like this.”
They continued to talk, and Shane felt his spirits rising a bit. For the first time in a while it looked like they could actually do something to strike back against the Iron Guild. It was only in its infant stages, but at least it was something.
And that was all that mattered to him right now. Shane didn't want to give up the world that had occupied hundreds of hours of his time, introduced him to so many friends, gave him many good memories with them.
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