by Kevin Murphy
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Dakkon found himself returning to the familiar territory of Griffin Square. The area was every bit as bustling at twilight as it had been when he first arrived in Correndin. With only one thought on his mind, Dakkon sat on an open bench to look through his new goods. First, he examined the bag itself:
|Name: Wayfarer’s Canvas Bag
|Item Type: Bag – Large Capacity
|Durability: 48/50
|Attributes: Water Resistant
|Description: Wayfarer’s bags are treated to withstand harsh weather conditions and contain a variety of pockets for any assortment of small to medium sized goods.
“Anything’s an upgrade to my bag in its current state,” Dakkon considered. “The water resistance will probably prove useful as well.” Next, he opened the bag and examined its contents:
|Name: Gentry Traveler’s Tunic
|Item Type: Armor - Cloth
|Durability: 20/20
|Armor Rating: 1
|Attributes: +4 Appearance
|Description: This tunic is made of twice layered cotton designed to look fashionable. The inner layer is soft and moves to prevent chaffing.
|Name: Gentry Traveler’s Pantaloons
|Item Type: Armor - Cloth
|Durability: 25/25
|Armor Rating: 2
|Attributes: +4 Appearance
|Description: This pair of pants is made of twice layered cotton, designed to look fashionable. The thigh regions have been reinforced with leather to provide a more comfortable experience while on horseback.
|Name: Treated Traveler’s Boots
|Item Type: Armor - Leather
|Durability: 72/75
|Armor Rating: 4
|Attributes: Water Resistant
|Description: These boots have been treated to resist the effects of rain.
|Name: Treated Traveler’s Cloak
|Item Type: Armor - Cloth
|Durability: 35/35
|Armor Rating: 0
|Attributes: Water Resistant, Cold Resistant
|Description: Traveler’s cloaks are slightly larger than most cloaks to allow space for a backpack to rest beneath them. This cloak has been treated to resist the effects of rain. The cloak may be pulled around its wearer to provide a measure of respite from the cold.
|Name: Chain Mesh Underlay
|Item Type: Armor Component - Chain
|Durability: 80/80
|Armor Rating: 7
|Attributes: None
|Description: This thin and light weight chain meshing is designed to be sewn into cloth or leather armor. It cannot be practically worn on its own.
Dakkon was gleeful. He was just about to buy new clothes and was certain he wouldn’t have been able to afford anything nearly this nice. What’s more, some of the clothes even affected his appearance, which he hoped would help him garner the favor of the thermomancer trainer he wanted to visit next. There was even a chainmail underlay in the batch. Dakkon assumed he’d need to have it sewn into his cloak or on top of an undershirt. He didn’t like the sound of the chaffing that the tunic so graciously forewarned him about.
“And now… the best for last…” Dakkon trailed of, building up his own sense of anticipation. “Inspect!”
|Name: Dark Stone Dagger
|Item Type: Weapon - Piercing/Slashing
|Durability: ?
|Damage: ?
|Attributes: ?
|Description: The dagger is made of dark stone that remains cool to the touch, regardless of environment. To determine more you must increase your proficiency in Identification, or visit an appraiser.
|Name: Dark Stone Scabbard
|Item Type: Scabbard - Small
|Durability: ?
|Attributes: ?
|Description: The scabbard is made of dark stone that remains cool to the touch, regardless of environment. To determine more you must increase your proficiency in Identification, or visit an appraiser.
“Pity,” Dakkon thought. It was a shame he wouldn’t be able to find out just how good the dagger was yet, but the state of Dakkon’s excitement was largely unperturbed. He was positively mirthful, and smiled broadly as he put away his newfound treasures in his large canvas bag.
Dakkon walked down the street, smiling merrily, and even complimenting strangers as he passed them, much to their chagrin as they denied to their acquaintances any affiliation with the walking disaster that Dakkon appeared to be. Dakkon made his way to one side of the river that flowed through Correndin, underneath Gadwick Bridge, and after ensuring there were no prying eyes to take offense, stripped down by simply dragging the rags out of his inventory and cleansed himself in the cold river water.
After washing up, Dakkon hopped out of the water, tousled his hair to shake out the excess water, and dried off using his new cloak before outfitting himself in his new gear. He admired the little avatar of himself in his inventory window, pleased by the change in wardrobe. Next, he dumped the canteens out of his old bag of horrors, rinsed their exteriors, and placed them in his new rucksack.
“I’m out of food in game, and I’m probably hungry in the real world,” Dakkon considered. There wasn’t a much better stopping point that he could hope for, and logging out for an hour and a half would allow Dakkon to treat himself to a celebratory lunch. The first day was a success—after a fashion, anyway.
Chapter 5: Reality Check
Dakkon thought to himself, “Logout!”
Instead of the disimpassioned female voice he had come to expect, a window explaining the logout procedure popped up:
|This is your first time initiating the logout sequence. Please take note:
|To safely logout, a player must be removed from combat for a minimum of 30 seconds.
|You may logout immediately by invoking the command ‘Logout Immediately.’
|Logging out immediately will leave your character vulnerable to attack for five minutes.
|Exiting in this manner will be a less pleasant experience.
|Are you sure you’d like to logout?
|( Yes )( No )
Dakkon selected ‘Yes’ and the world began to fall away from him piece by piece. The scene—bridge, buildings, water, and stones—left his vision as though plucked away like individual pieces from a chess board. A light mist covered his vision and the whole world went black.
Corbin felt himself spinning like a slowly roasting lamb on a spit and could vaguely smell the lingering fragrance of orange and ammonia. After another two revolutions, the pod faced him upward and erected Corbin into an upright, standing posture. The air-filled bags holding him stationary deflated in seconds, and the door to the pod slid free. Corbin was a dam about to burst, and scrambled out of his pod in a mad, albeit short, dash to his restroom.
“That seems rather dangerous,” Corbin thought to himself. “Maybe I’ll have to look into those in-and-out tubes…” Shuddering at the thought, he decided that, for now, he’d simply refrain from drinking an excess of liquids before entering the pod.
It was a little after noon and Corbin wasn’t particularly hungry, but he knew that he was low on food supplies and would need to restock. Maybe by the time they arrived, he’d have regained his appetite.
“Pixie!” Corbin spoke the voice activation command for his brand of AugSys, an augmented reality computer system with a built in AI assistant that was as commonplace in homes today as televisions were at the turn of the century.
A tiny winged simulation of a woman wiggled its way out from between the cushions of Corbin’s sofa. “Would you like me to schedule a cleaning service?” The newly freed hologram inquired.
Corbin sighed. “No thanks.” He walked over to the sofa and sat down on the cushion beside the little faerie who was launched, as if by his comparably large mass, up and over onto the armrest opposite where he was seated.
Corbin looked up at the blank wall in front of where he sat. “Connect me to the grocery store and pull up a clock with
the current time of day in Chronicle, please.” The pixie on his armrest yawned and perfunctorily flicked her wrist towards the barren wall which transformed into a massive panel displaying ‘Friday Super Value Sale,’ courtesy of PKT Mart. With an additional nod from the pixie, an elegant clock appeared on Corbin’s coffee table displaying time that passed by at an abnormally quick pace.
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Corbin used his break from the game to set his affairs in order for the next few days. He ordered new food, sent an apologetic message to his supervisor for missing that day of work, showered, and tuned into a couple of Chronicle-based livestreams. Corbin’s favorite of the streams was one called ChronCast. ChronCast styled itself in the manner of larger news networks and had become so popular that several copycats had already emerged. The majority of the coverage was streamed from inside the game, which—at eight times speed—would have been information overload for someone trying to follow along at home. However, the success of the original stream allowed them to launch a real-time equivalent which gave the high and low points of what was happening on the faster-paced channel.
Since there was over a week’s worth of new content from Chronicle every single day, watching the highlights was very entertaining. Battles, quests, injustices, bounties and more tended to be covered once, then were dropped for the next story. If you weren’t watching at just the right time, or following the in-game stream, you’d simply miss the information. There was that much happening. If ChronCast harped on something for more than a short period of time, then you knew it was something big.
Just when it was time for Corbin to log back into the game, one report piqued his interest. There was a request for help from the village of Greenburne, a little way to the west of his location in game, where some sort of unidentified monster race had been sighted and was attacking villagers. “It must be a relatively low-level area to be so close to a starting city,” thought Corbin. “If the village still needs help after I become a thermomancer, I’ll head that way to join the quest.”
Corbin hopped back into his pod a little later than he had intended, having learned what he could about Greenburne from watching the stream, and was eager to step back into Chronicle. The door slid shut above him and he gripped the handles before he was instructed to do so. The capsule tilted back at a 30-degree angle. After the sturdy bags of air had inflated, lining his body with sensors, the pod began to revolve and, taking that as his cue, Corbin said, “Engage!”
The cool breeze on his face smelled like a lime green popsicle.
Chapter 6: Real Ultimate Power
When Dakkon came to, he was standing beneath Gadwick Bridge where a group of four familiar men—one large, one small, and two of medium statures—were threateningly huddled around a fifth, broomstick-shaped man with slicked back hair and a worried expression on his face. Dakkon and the four thieves—who had aimed to mug him the day before—locked eyes. After the surprise appearance of their previous day’s prey, now dressed in quality clothes that hinted of good fortune, the matryoshka doll men glanced at one another to ensure solidarity of purpose and… when they turned back to confront Dakkon he was already up the hill and gone. A quick look over his shoulder told Dakkon he had made it to safety. He could just make out the form of the four bruisers’ other target fleeing over the crest of the old bridge.
“I’ll have to be more careful about where I logout,” Dakkon noted as he breathed fully after his unexpected exertion.
Despite having just eaten in the real world, Dakkon’s stomach growled insistently. Taking the hint, and being entirely out of food, he stopped by a merchant’s stand advertising ‘Everything, on a stick!’ and bought dumplings boiled on a stick, chicken fried on a stick, and something approaching miniature hamburgers on a stick for one copper apiece. Had the meal not been so portable, taking him quite a distance towards his destination by the time he had finished eating, he would have kissed the merchant who sold them to him. The food was fresh, delicious, and invigorating. “Assuming the devs aren’t sadists who programmed heartburn into the game, I’m going to love it here,” Dakkon thought, contended.
Dakkon knew where he needed to go to meet his prospective thermomancy trainer thanks to some small-scale reconnaissance carried out while he watched ChronCast in the real world, so making his way there was a simple matter of putting one foot in front of the other. When he arrived at the master’s abode, Dakkon was disheartened to see that the house was little more than a shack to the side of a busy thoroughfare. The ramshackle state of the building didn’t exude the sense of the prosperity he expected. Dakkon didn’t feel that the site was nearly impressive enough for a master of any art. Despite this misgiving, he strolled up to the front door in his fine new clothes and knocked.
Within seconds, the door was open, and a squat, well-dressed man with a round nose looked Dakkon over eagerly. “Why, hello!” the man bellowed in a voice deeper than his countenance would suggest possible. “Hello, indeed! Tell me, traveler, what is your name?”
“Dakkon,” Dakkon said, with a slight bow he hoped to be fitting of his attire.
“Welcome to my humble home, Dakkon. My name is Chillwane Barthonomanius Farkaster,” the egg-like man paused briefly, weighing the impact his name had upon the visitor before continuing, “but my friends call me Chill on account of my profession, I’m sure. Please, do come in.”
Unfazed by the complex name the master had been branded with, Dakkon obliged.
Once inside, Dakkon began, “Master Chill, I have heard that you are a lord over flame and I’d like nothing more than to learn of your art.”
Chillwane looked disheartened, but unsurprised. “I’m no flame lord. You seem to be confusing thermomancy with pyromancy. Pyromancers control fire while thermomancers control heat in a more general sense.”
“So… that means… you can’t cast flaming death from your fingertips?” Dakkon asked.
“I can’t help you there. Not without harsh spirits to light aflame and hurl, anyway,” Chillwane said while shaking his head, “This happens two or three times a day, I’m afraid.”
“So… what you’re saying is…” Dakkon paused, “You can still light things on fire?”
“Why, yes. I can do that,” Chillwane said. “It works in the other extreme as well. I can freeze water at a whim. It’s quite a convenient skill to have in the heat of the summer. Makes you a real champion at parties.”
“That sounds pretty interesting,” Dakkon lied. In a world where you can open portals to far off lands, fly, and rain fire from the sky, lighting tinder and chilling drinks was entirely unremarkable. The fact remained, however, that regardless of its capabilities, he needed a class to start with. It was, in many ways from what he’d read, the first real step players took toward receiving quests and commissions “Plus, I can change my class at any time,” Dakkon thought to himself.
“Well, I’ll be! Although you’ve come here expecting to wield the power of fire, you’re still interested in trying your hand at thermomancy?” Chillwane admired. “That’s most unusual.”
“It may not be what I expected, exactly, but it sounds like a fine profession. I’d be pleased to learn it from you,” Dakkon said.
“Very well. I haven’t had a new student in quite some time now. When would you like to get started?”
“I’m eager, ready, and willing,” Dakkon said. “Would starting immediately be too hasty?”
“Hah! I like to see some spirit in a young man.” Chillwane smiled. “There’s no time like the present, as they say. To be honest, despite your words, I still wasn’t sure you were interested. It wouldn’t be the first time someone said they’d come by the following day, never to show up. Say, I’ll knock off half of the apprenticeship fee I normally require and will only charge you 15 silver.”
“I’m broke,” Dakkon said. There didn’t seem to be any point in denying it.
“Well, come back when you’ve got the money, then,” Chillwane sighed. “I’ll give you the same deal sin
ce I’ve offered it already.”
“I really need the training. Can I pay you back through the commissions offered to thermomancers… after completing the training?” Dakkon asked.
“Thermomancer work doesn’t exactly pay all that well in this climate.” Chillwane rubbed his forehead with his fingers. “It could be months before you make that much if you account for living expenses.”
This was opposite of the news which Dakkon wanted to hear, even if the state of Master Chillwane’s house forewarned of such. Still, he was there and ready to learn. “Would you accept something else in barter?” Dakkon suggested.
“Well, what did you have in mind?” Chillwane shrugged.
Dakkon produced the Chain Mesh Underlay from his bag and handed it to his potential trainer. “Would you train me in exchange for this?”
“Deal,” Chillwane said happily, swiping the underlay from Dakkon’s hands.
“Tch. I should have found out how much that was worth first,” Dakkon silently rebuked himself.
“Well then, let’s get to it, shall we!” Chillwane said merrily, as he beckoned Dakkon into an even smaller room in the back of his humble home.
Every wall of the back room looked as though it had been layered with cooked clay. Some areas were cracked, but there was no circulation of air. The area was stagnant. In the center of the room sat two stools. One looked to be made for sitting upon, while the other looked to be made for stepping on to retrieve something just out arm’s reach. Chillwane sat on the properly sized stool and motioned for Dakkon to sit on the miniature one. Dakkon squatted on it and looked up at his trainer.
