by Galen Wolf
"Can you see the settlement tab? If you were sufficiently high up in the government of Vinab, you would have a settlement tab for your home city itself. All our members have access to the lower levels of the ranger settlement tab. That's all you'll need for now."
I selected the settlement tab and saw there was a building and technology tree. The technology tree was shared among the rangers' settlements and the Guild had fully researched it. You could only build some of the buildings when the settlement grew and you had built their precursors. The buildings that were available to us for this starter settlement were basic housing, fields, a sawmill, and a Corn Mill. Of the military options, only a stockade was available and no barracks until the village advanced to level 2.
Ahn said, "Can you see the resources available for building? I've supplied those from our stores at Woodheart."
I checked the supplies available and saw we had 20 wood and 10 stone. "I see them."
Ahn nodded. "So, do you see the buildings on the building tree? We need to create some houses then get NPCs out into the woods felling trees to provide timber, create fields and producing food. That'll allow the population to increase. As the population increases, we can produce comms, start building some fortifications, and ultimately start to raise troops and they are our main aim here." He pointed. "When you found a village, the Developers give you three free Resource Units to set it up. After that, all RUs will need to be generated in the village itself."
I nodded. This was clear to me. This kind of building tree was familiar from various games I'd played. It shouldn't take me long to master it.
"So, select the grass between the river and the road." Ahn pointed to where the eagles sat.
"Better move the eagles first." I laughed.
Both Ahn and I whistled and the birds flapped up and landed where we were on the bridge. With them out of the way, I mentally selected the Build Housing tab, and a glowing white rectangle appeared that I placed over the grass. When I had it situated correctly – so not half hanging over the riverbank but on the flat ground. I looked to Ahn for confirmation.
"Yes," he said. "That looks about right. Place it."
Mentally I placed the rectangle and hit Build Housing. There was a rumbling sound and clouds of dust and a basic house raised itself from the ground. The walls were of the same grey stone as the bridge and reeds that looked like they'd come from the reed-beds in the river bends nearby thatched the roof. Thin fabric stretched across the wood framed windows in the place of more expensive glass.
As I watched, an NPC woman in peasant garb emerged from the house looking dazed. She stood outside the house gazing at it and scratched her head. Then her husband, a ruddy faced young man who looked used to working outdoors, came out the door. He looked as amazed as her, and I wondered what it must be like to be born into this world.
Ahn beamed. "You built the first house!"
I smiled back. This was fun. "Do I need to send them to do any work in particular?"
Ahn nodded. "If you look now, you'll see you have an NPC population tab. You can divide that to send different proportions of the village's population to do different tasks. But as we only have two of them that won't be too time-consuming."
I looked up at my HUD and saw he was right. Beside the village – still without a name - there was one house and a population of two. One male and one female. "No children?" I said looking at Ahn.
"They won't have children until they feel secure. And that means they need to have enough food coming in. So now build another house – put it on the other side of the road."
I repeated the process and placed a glowing white rectangle opposite on the other side of Ermine Street. I selected the build button and another house similar to the first appeared with the same rumbling sound in a cloud of dust. Another couple emerged from the front of the house also looking extremely dazed. They dressed in similar fashion to the first couple but there were differences in clothing – the man for example had a different colored smock and he was a red head and his wife a brunette, whereas the first couple both had black hair.
I checked the HUD and saw that the village now consisted of two houses and had a population of four. I also saw that we had used up 12 of our wood stocks. That meant each house took 6 timber. Each house had also used 3 stone.
"Have you named the village yet?"
"Do you want me to do that?"
"Sure, but remember we've already chosen the name – it's to be called Pennred." I looked up at my HUD and as I thought the name - spelling it out letter by letter inside my head. The name emerged blinking on the cursor line and I confirmed. I felt a tremendous rush of joy. I'd created the village. In a real sense it was my village, and I hoped it would thrive and the people who came to live there would be happy. It was a slightly ridiculous wish because the purpose of this village was to prepare us for war, and Pennred would undoubtedly bear the brunt of the Horrabian advance.
Ahn regarded the two houses. "Good job. Now we need these people to work and build the population. As soon as we can we must get a stockade—check you have that possibility now on your HUD."
I looked up and saw the stockade needed 30 wood. I said that to Ahn.
He sat on the wall of the bridge. "We need to collect resources, so if you want to send the men out — one to fell trees and the other to look for building stone. For the women - set them the task of building gardens. They can plant vegetables in those gardens and feed themselves. Each of the houses can have one garden."
"That's a bit sexist," I said. "Getting the men to do the men's work and the women to do the women's..."
"If you feel like that," Ahn said. "You can swap it around. I don't really mind. I guess I'm just a bit traditional."
I shrugged. "Let's leave it for now."
I looked up at the HUD and saw there was a command to assign work to different members of the population. First of all, I had to split the population into categories so I split it into four. I guessed that as the population increased each category, which only had one in now, would grow and there would be more people available to do various kinds of work. It seemed I could split the population into as many categories as I considered necessary.
I ordered one of the men to fetch timber, and the other to fetch stone. I watched as a saw appeared in one of the NPC's hands and a pickaxe in the other's. The forester wandered off into the Old Forest to the right of Ermine Street and disappeared. Soon I heard sawing. I guessed that when he had done, he would bring the timber back. My HUD showed how much of each resource the village of Pennred had. We had eight timber and six stone.
The quarry man with his pickaxe over his shoulder wandered off to follow the forester into the woods. I guessed there would be rock falls in the forest he could quarry then bring back the stone.
I had a thought. "But what if they wander into Horrabian territory and into the Forest of Nightmares?"
"That could be a problem", Ahn said. "I'm hoping that the river will act as a natural boundary. Of course, they could walk over the bridge but let's hope their AI keeps them on our side of the river at least to start off with. If they venture into the Forest of Nightmares at Level 1, the creatures in there will gobble them up."
We couldn't afford to lose population, but I knew no way of stopping them from wandering. Their AI would make them forage and find new resources within a certain distance around the village. I hoped there would be plenty on our side of the river until they grew in level and could defend themselves.
"What now?"
"Get the women to work!" Ahn laughed.
I assigned both the women to the same group—that was gardening work. Once I'd done that, I saw trowels and baskets of seeds appear in the women's hands and they both went behind their own houses and dug the earth over to prepare for planting.
"So, our priority now," Ahn said. "Is to get enough timber to build a stockade around the village. That'll help keep out the wild beasts and provide a level of security. Also, we'll build a g
ate across Ermine Street so we can tax traders coming up and down the street. Eventually, when we produce enough resources we at Pennred can send them back to trade with Vinab and that will earn us welcome extra revenue and help buy the stuff we can't produce ourselves."
I looked around. I had a tremendous feeling of satisfaction. Both men had disappeared into the forest and the women were busy at work creating their gardens. "How long will this take, and how long before we get enough timber to build the stockade?"
Ahn grinned. "So many questions!"
"But really."
"What will happen will be that they'll continue working and bring enough timber and you can keep an eye on the stocks with your HUD, no matter where you are in the Greenwood. Soon the population will begin to expand. After the stockade, I think we should build a Corn Mill by the river to use the power of the water to grind our corn. That means we need to have cornfields."
I got up and paced up and down. "I'm very excited about this. I just want it all to hurry up so we can build a population and really establish the village." Then a dark thought entered my mind. He saw it on my face.
"What's up?"
I tightened my jaw. "How long before Horrabia notices we established the village?"
"This is a busy road", Ahn said. "It won't take long. But to do anything about it they'll have to mobilize forces and march them down through the Valley of Tears. And we should know if they're doing that well in advance."
He rubbed his beard. "And of course, they're not officially at war with us—and this is our territory. We have every right to build a village in the Old Forest."
"We have every right until Horrabia takes it off us."
I looked at the houses. It wasn't even a village yet, I suppose it could be called a hamlet, but I had a strange emotional bond with this place and a care for the NPCs that I'd created by a mere thought.
"It'll just take time," Ahn said. "Let's leave them to it."
4
Old Tom Complains
Ahn and I flew our eagles high over the Old Forest to alight on the platform at the Rangers’ Guildhouse. He had Guild business to do and disappeared into his office. I had planned to go poison picking, and maybe look for a fight. I hadn't fought a duel all day and, as my deputy guildmaster Ajora had told me, the only way to improve my PVP skills was to fight, so I needed to rumble.
There was a social grouping tab on my HUD, which allowed me to select groups if I was interested in doing any dungeons. Adjacent to that one was a list of people looking to duel to improve their PVP skills. It was sorted by level to make sure opponents were reasonably matched.
I had fought a number of duels now and was quite pleased with my progress. My poison knowledge was getting good and I was able to mess up my opponents more than half the time then kill them before they killed me. The whole secret to PVP combat in The Greenwood was that healing and damage were so finely balanced that without any added afflictions upon your opponent, he would simply heal up. That meant the combat would go on tediously for ever until one or other of you ran out of healing supplies. The purpose of the poisons used by the rangers and thieves was to prevent healing and put your opponent at your mercy. Runesmiths used their runes for the same reason and Wizards some of their enchantments. Players were extremely clever and creative with their poison use and could disable an opponent amazingly quickly. Of course, as I had found out when I ran into Loki the thief – the thieves were able to use their poison selections to cripple then rob their opponents instead of killing them, though usually they killed them too when they'd bled them dry of their possessions.
That made me remember Elfhair. She hadn't logged back into the game and I wondered perhaps if she'd been serious when she had told Achilles she wasn't going to return – that she had, in the end, had enough of the cruelty and vindictiveness of some of the players in the Greenwood.
The developers of the Greenwood had constructed the game so it was a raw PVP environment. This meant there was a tremendous thrill from success in PVP but you were not protected from repeated killing by your opponent. That is if you chose to resurrect. Once you died if your ghost could leave you could choose to enjoy the protection of the gods. And that meant you could not be attacked by any hostile forces until you cast off the protection. Although divine protection of that nature kept you from being harmed, it also restricted which skills you could use. As soon as you used a skill that was offensive you lost your divine protection and were vulnerable to attack by another player, or an NPC.
Most people did not keep divine protection for long. But even so, some evil players had worked out methods of repeatedly killing an opponent to drive them down to Level 1. They would threaten, "I'll kill you down to newborn," because every time you were killed you lost a level. Normally you could lick your wounds and go off and resurrect with divine protection. However, there was a technique that was considered griefing, but never prevented by the devs. That was to put down an Anchor rune to stop a ghost leaving, then read out a resurrection scroll or cast the Resurrection spell. Your enemy's ghost would resurrect there and then and not be able to escape the Anchor rune, so you could kill them again. This was considered extremely bad form by most players, and was only practised by the vilest and most cruel.
But that is exactly what happened to Elfhair at the hands of Loki and Attila when they captured her and took her to Horrabia. I spat as I vowed to see the day our armies marched on their city and razed it to the ground scattering them like burning leaves before the wind.
However much the loss of Elfhair grieved me I had other things to do. I kept checking the HUD every minute almost. I saw that the timber stocks in Pennred were slowly increasing and that my NPCs had found more stone in the forest and were quarrying. I also saw that some food was being produced from the two gardens.
I whistled my eagle Aquila and mounted on her back. Within seconds she took me soaring above the Greenwood, launching off the Rangers’ Guild house platform. We flew west over the Jeweled Tree then along Ermine Street until my two little houses came into view. I was delighted to see puffs of smoke from the chimneys. It made me feel like my NPCs had really settled down. Then I looked up to see a notification on my HUD that a baby had been born in the village. I was the proud uncle of an NPC child!
I found a place to leave Aquila at the south-eastern edge of Pennred hamlet. I wandered around, but made good use of my time by searching the woods around the village for herbs and poisons that I picked and prepared and placed in my herb pouch. I also wandered down to the river and waded knee deep in the water searching for aquatic herbs. That took me a good couple of hours and I got 25 batches of Marath from the river which reduces willpower save in an enemy by 10, as well as a good 15 batches of Xarak which causes dumbness. From the forest edges I got Aconite, which is useful against werewolves, and some Lallo, which causes 300 to 500 health damage.
As I picked, I checked the HUD to see the progress of Pennred. After an hour or two, we had enough resources to build a Corn Mill by the river. I was in two minds whether to build another house first and get more population or to build the Corn Mill to produce more food. Producing more food would increase population. If you build houses when there were not enough people wanting to live in the village they would stand empty. I thought about contacting Ahn for his advice, but no. He left this to me and I am up to the job.
I decided to build another house. I placed it along the first one near the river's edge. I also noticed that my woodsman had cleared some of the forest on the eastern side of Pennred. That clear land could now be used for fields or houses. I checked my population and we now had two children. Soon, I would be able to put them to work. It seemed rather cruel to put children to work. I know they were only NPCs, but they were my NPCs – I felt like they were my people. For the first time since coming to the Greenwood I felt I had added to its value myself. Up until now I had merely benefited from the goodwill and help of my friends, and the hatred and cruelty of my enemies, but this creatio
n of the village of Pennred was nearly all mine with Ahn's advice, and I had enhanced the world of the Greenwood by its creation.
I now had a population of six adults and two children. I put the new man and his wife both to work clearing a field. I planned to grow wheat in that field and I was hoping once the field was cleared and planted and the crop came to harvest, we would have built the Corn Mill.
I was still conscious the village was completely undefended, but I didn't have the resources to do everything I wanted all at once. It would come in time. I spent the rest of that day wandering around the village watching the NPCs work.
They created two fields. One of which was planted with wheat and the other of which I planned to use to graze cattle. I would get cattle from a trader in Woodheart. Ahn had already told me he would spare some.
I then built another house giving us a total of four, because I thought the population expansion would give us extra labor. By that evening, we had enough resources in the form of timber and stone to build a Corn Mill. I placed the larger white rectangle by the river's edge just on the outskirts of the village. I thought the command: build, and there was a larger rumble and a larger cloud of dust than the houses, and the Corn Mill emerged fully formed. The wheel was turning in the frothing white-water as it appeared, and we were ready to mill our wheat.
From my observation point sitting on the thatched roof of one of the houses I saw trading carts go up and down Ermine Street between Vinab and Horrabia. Most of these were steered by NPCs but there were one or two player characters. I knew it would not be long before news of the founding of the village reached the ears of the government of Horrabia, if it had not already.
I looked over and saw that the wheat was not yet ripe. I allocated all six of my adults to cut wood. I had enough food from the two gardens we'd developed to get us through the night.
