Looking for Group

by Alexis Hall

  [Group][Solace]: You don’t think it’s weird?

  [Group][Orcarella]: well maybe a bit at first

  [Group][Orcarella]: but what’s weirder? playing a game because you like it or playing a game because you feel you have to?

  [Group][Solace]: Is that how you feel?

  [Group][Orcarella]: sometimes

  [Group][Solace]: :(

  [Group][Solace]: *hugs*

  [Group][Orcarella]: but i enjoyed tonight

  [Group][Orcarella]: reminded me how it used to be

  [Group][Orcarella]: and i liked running that heroic with you

  [Group][Orcarella]: and this is nice too

  [Group][Solace]: Yes, it really is

  [Group][Solace]: Um

  [Group][Solace]: If you wanted, we could maybe roll some alts

  [Group][Solace]: Go all the way back to the beginning and say good-bye to the old world before they nuke it in the next expansion

  [Group][Orcarella]: they’re really doing that?

  [Group][Solace]: I saw something on MMO Champion this morning

  [Group][Solace]: It’s going to be called Genesis and crazy machine gods are going to rise up and try to remake the world

  [Group][Orcarella]: what? again??

  [Group][Orcarella]: i thought we stopped that shit two patches ago

  [Group][Solace]: No, that was foreshadowing

  [Group][Orcarella]: lol

  [Group][Orcarella]: so what’re we going to roll?

  [Group][Solace]: Something new? For both of us

  [Group][Orcarella]: my old main’s a human

  [Group][Solace]: And I’m not playing a high elf on principle

  [Group][Solace]: They betrayed my people man

  [Group][Orcarella]: kk, that leaves kobolds medusas or dorfs

  [Group][Solace]: Also I kind of want to be hot

  [Group][Orcarella]: so no kobolds then?

  [Group][Solace]: How about medusas?

  [Group][Solace]: I’ve never seen the starting area

  [Group][Orcarella]: me neither

  [Group][Orcarella]: so when’s good?

  [Group][Solace]: I can do whenever

  [Group][Orcarella]: how about tomorrow

  [Group][Orcarella]: o wait shit

  [Group][Orcarella]: got a thing

  [Group][Solace]: Wednesday’s raid night

  [Group][Orcarella]: thurs?

  [Group][Solace]: It’s a date.

  [Group][Orcarella]: cool

  And it was only later, after they’d said an awkward goodnight and Drew was lying in bed running over the conversation in head, that he tripped over the d-word.

  He knew he was probably overthinking, but that didn’t stop him from overthinking.

  It was probably just a turn of phrase.

  But if it wasn’t, then that was . . .

  . . . good?

  Drew was pretty determined not to get himself into a tizzy over a nondate with an imaginary elf on the internet, but he couldn’t really help it. He managed to get on with things, and people didn’t seem to notice he was slightly distracted, or if they did, they didn’t take the piss. He made decent progress on his project and rolled along to Sanee’s birthday thing on Tuesday night. Andy couldn’t make it and Tinuviel had shown up with a random philosophy student called Ocean, which, Drew was depressed to realise, left him as the only one without a date. Well, there were a bunch of people from the course there too, some of whom were probably single, but they didn’t count.

  It was a pretty good evening, though. It basically went the same way as it had last year. Steff had baked a cake with The cake is a lie piped delicately over the top in bright-green icing, and Sanee got into a really bitter fight about The Stanley Parable with a random guy. Sometimes Drew thought Sanee liked arguing about video games more than he liked playing them. Eventually people drifted off and the survivors found themselves trying to play Twilight Imperium, drunk, at three in the morning.

  Drew passed out sometime around his third turn and woke up just in time for lab, with several plastic spaceships embedded in his face. He survived the day but was kind of out of it for the raid that evening. It was all a bit of a blur, and he got through it on Pepsi Max and muscle memory. Despite having a tank on his way down from a cheap-wine-and-board-games bender, the guild took the next three bosses down relatively easily. They wiped a few times but Drew was pretty sure none of them were his fault.

  He left the guild celebrating, face-planted into his pillow, and woke up the next morning weirdly missing Solace. They hadn’t talked much during the raid, and he’d got strangely used to hanging out on a rock in Alarion.

  That afternoon, when he should have been shading a chair, he caught himself freestyling with the drawing pad, and his doodles grew into the outline of an elf and orc sitting next to each other by the ocean.

  Sanee leaned over from his terminal. “Dude. Are you drawing fanart?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Looks good.”

  “Thanks.” He said, Thanks. He meant, Die in a fire. There was no way Sanee was going to let this slide. He tried to head him off anyway. “It’s just my HoL character and a guildie.”

  “I don’t think the world’s ready for girl-on-girl, orc-on-elf action.”

  “We’re just friends.”

  Sanee gave him a look. “Yeah right, because I always sketch pictures of my friend’s video game characters.”

  “Dude, I’ve been trying to make a chair that doesn’t look crap for an hour. It’s this, or Bejewelled.”

  “Oh man, step away from the PopCap. But, seriously, you should totally send this to her. Chicks really go for this stuff.”

  Drew eyed his screen dubiously. It’d actually come out pretty well in a fanarty kind of way. “Wouldn’t that be creepy as hell?”

  “It’d be creepy if they were naked.”

  “Thanks, that’s really helpful.”

  “Stop being a wuss, and go for it.”

  It was probably a bad idea, but Drew opened the guild forum and PMed the picture to Solace. He tried to come up with a nonweird message, failed miserably, so he sent it without comment.

  “You do realise,” said Sanee slowly, “you probably just sent a cute picture to another dude.”

  The thought had crossed Drew’s mind. Rule One of the Internet: assume everyone is middle-aged, male, and a serial killer. “I told you, we’re mates.”

  “Then I’m sure you’re not going to be remotely disappointed when she turns out to be a burly Yorkshireman.”

  “Maybe I’m into that.”

  “That would explain why you’ve never had a girlfriend. And I’m not counting that crazy chick you hooked up with last year.”

  Drew gave him the finger. “I have had a girlfriend. We broke up when I came to uni because we couldn’t do long distance.”

  Sanee launched into an enthusiastic rendition of “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada.”

  Drew pulled on his headphones and went back to his chair.

  About halfway through the afternoon, he got a PM back from Solace. This came when I was stuck in a super dull solid state lecture, and made my day. Thank you so much. I love it. I’m looking forward to seeing you tonight. I rolled a diabolist. She’s called Aconite. S.

  That evening, Drew sat down at his computer and looked at the Heroes of Legend character creation screen for the first time in two years. He clicked on the Medusa icon and the system generated him a ridiculously stacked, bright-blue dude with a pornstache made of snakes. He winced and clicked the Female icon. Pornstache vanished, and was replaced by an implausibly curvy young lady with a python Mohawk. After a good twenty minutes of fiddling around with hairstyles, faces, and skin tones, Drew had managed to put together someone he liked. Someone he thought he’d be okay to stick with for eighty-odd levels, but who didn’t scream “I’m a miserable nerd-boy and this is the only way I can get to look at a hot chick.”

  He hovered over the character classes. He was tempted to
go for a myrmidon so he’d know what he was doing and wouldn’t look like too much of an idiot in front of Solace, but he’d already got one and he was supposed to be trying something new and outside his comfort zone. On the other hand, his inner pragmatist pointed out that as Solace had rolled a pure DPS class, they really needed someone who could heal and/or tank.

  Oh screw it, he clicked Elementalist. They were supposed to be this super adaptable hybrid class, which meant they’d wound up being slightly crappy at tanking, healing, and DPS. They’d basically been unplayable in vanilla, but they’d been buffed to the point that they were now just really hard to play. Viridium, the guys so hard-core they were actually paid to play, had famously had a storm elementalist for their MT since Rise of the Underworld.

  Okay, he had a race, a class, and a face he could more or less stand. Now for the hard bit: the name.

  He stared at the little black box, his mind completely blank. It was a shame Dave was taken. He briefly considered Davella but that would probably get pretty old, pretty quickly.

  He alt-tabbed, fired up Google, and since the medusas were vaguely Greeky, searched for Greek girls’ names. He tried a bunch and eventually managed to get Efthalia. It sounded a bit like she had a lisp, but by that stage, he’d kind of given up caring.

  Then he settled back in his chair to watch the introductory cutscene, which was all arty splash screens and ponderous voice-overs, explaining how the medusas had once been the proud rulers of a mighty empire, struck down for defying their gods blah blah cursed blah blah stone gaze blah blah snakes for hair. It finished up with a fly-over of the Island of Krytos. Here and there he could see starting-level characters bunny-hopping through the ruins as they collected ten whatevers and killed twenty whatsits. For truly of such deeds are legends made.

  The first thing he saw when got control of Efthalia was a pretty little medusa sitting under an olive tree. She jumped up and waved, her long, jewel-coloured snakes wriggling excitedly.

  Aconite has invited you to join a group: y/n

  Aconite is now group leader.

  [Group][Aconite]: Hi

  [Group][Efthalia]: Hi :)

  [Group][Aconite]: Have you checked out the dance animation yet?

  Drew /danced and Efthalia writhed in a circle, hips and snakes swaying provocatively.

  [Group][Efthalia]: i should probably stop doing that

  [Group][Aconite]: Hee

  [Group][Efthalia]: thought I’d try ele tanking

  [Group][Aconite]: Thought I’d try harnessing the fell powers of the nether realm to rain death and destruction upon mine enemies

  [Group][Aconite]: I don’t often get to DPS

  [Group][Aconite]: I’m excited

  [Group][Efthalia]: don’t get too excited

  [Group][Efthalia]: you’re going to have like one spell

  Aconite began to twist her hands in mystical circles as dark energy gathered between her fingertips. After three long seconds, a burst of shadow tendrils exploded from her fingertips, dealing seven points of damage to a hapless kitten.

  [Group][Efthalia]: !!!!

  [Group][Efthalia]: wow you are pure evil

  [Group][Aconite]: Bwhahahaha

  [Group][Aconite]: Kittens of the world tremble before me

  [Group][Efthalia]: probably a good thing youre a healer

  [Group][Aconite]: :)

  [Group][Efthalia]: we should get a quest

  There was dominatrixy-looking medusa called Magistrix Venetezia standing conveniently close by, as if she expected a never-ending stream of young medusas to appear before her, ready to undertake any number of menial and arbitrary tasks. Drew clicked on her and a lengthy text box popped up. Normally he skipped this stuff and went straight to whatever it was he was supposed to be killing, but he was pretty sure Solace would want to read the whole thing.

  It turned out that the power of the medusas was dwindling because Reasons, and this meant that all the people they’d turned into stone over the centuries were slowly turning back, but had gone crazy on account of having been statues for hundreds of years. Which meant it was the sad duty of all young medusas to seek them out and murder them in the face. For, like, honour and fate and shit. Drew accepted this noble quest and bounced up and down to signal his readiness to Solace.

  [Group][Aconite]: I think there’s another quest over by the fallen temple

  [Group][Aconite]: Might as well get them both

  The two of them jogged obediently over to the temple where Magistrix Demetria suggested they should practice using the mighty legacy of their once great empire to curtail the damage being done to their fragile homeland by the island’s ravenous fauna.

  [Group][Aconite]: So, you want to murder innocent prisoners or turn goats into stone?

  [Group][Efthalia]: goats are a menace

  [Group][Efthalia]: I was on this school trip once and one nearly ate my DS

  [Group][Aconite]: Did you kill it for the XP?

  [Group][Efthalia]: I would have done but it was red for me

  [Group][Aconite]: Hee

  Drew took his questing pretty seriously, so he pulled up the map and plotted the most efficient path between the land of the terrible goats and the lair of the completely nonthreatening prisoners.

  [Group][Efthalia]: kk follow me

  [Group][Aconite]: Sir yes Sir!

  [Group][Aconite]: Lt Goatkiller reporting for duty

  [Group][Efthalia]: do have any idea of the penalty for mocking a superior goat killer?

  [Group][Aconite]: Court martial followed by immediate cessation of chocolate rations?

  [Group][Efthalia]: lol

  Drew was grinning as he led the way through the ruins and up a kind of shallow escarpment to where some goats were peacefully grazing.

  [Group][Aconite]: Omg, check them out, destroying the ancestral homeland of our people.

  [Group][Efthalia]: horny bastards

  [Group][Aconite]: lol

  [Group][Aconite]: So, strat?

  It took Drew a couple of seconds of eying the goats quite seriously to realise this had probably been a joke.

  Then he realised he’d left it too long to just laugh, so he had to pretend he’d been going with it all along.

  [Group][Efthalia]: kk this is a 2 phase fight

  [Group][Efthalia]: in phase 1 we cast the only spells we’ve got

  [Group][Efthalia]: then in phase 2 one of us remembers to cast stone gaze

  [Group][Aconite]: You actually thought about that for a second didn’t you?

  [Group][Efthalia]: :(

  [Group][Aconite]: Aww, you’re cute

  Efthalia summoned the elemental forces of fire for 2.5 seconds and lightly singed the goat for three points of damage. It lowered its head, and charged her for five points of damage, which was a significant chunk of health.

  [Group][Efthalia]: omg nerf goats

  Shadows engulfed the goat and it flumped sideways with a despairing bleat.

  [Group][Aconite]: Woot! SB crit for 8!

  [Group][Efthalia]: Wow, it’s like playing with Bjorn

  [Group][Efthalia]: also we were supposed to use stone gaze on it

  [Group][Efthalia]: not just keep DPSing like a noob

  [Group][Aconite]: :(

  [Group][Aconite]: But that’s what DPS do!

  [Group][Efthalia]: you mocked the goat strat

  [Group][Efthalia]: and now look what’s happened

  [Group][Aconite]: You’re just jealous of my imba deeps.

  Efthalia lobbed another impressive-looking but mechanically underwhelming flamebolt at the next goat, and this time Aconite swooped forward and petrified it. Three seconds later the goat recovered, and so they just killed it dead.

  [Group][Aconite]: Take that you caprine fiend!

  [Group][Efthalia]: you what?

  [Group][Aconite]: It means, um, goaty

  [Group][Aconite]: Now I think about it, it’s not that insulting

  [Group][Efthalia]: lol

  Five min
utes later, they’d petrified and slaughtered the requisite number of goats, and Drew pulled up the map again to see where they needed to go next. He was halfway there when he realised he’d left Solace behind. He wheeled about and saw her standing at the top of the escarpment, looking out to sea. He ran back to join her.

  There was a gradual slope down to the golden beach and the turquoise sea and the shell huts of the angry crabmen who Aconite and Efthalia would probably be asked to kill in about three levels’ time. In the distance he could just about make out the edge of the next island, and beyond that marble columns of the once great city of Minea. Beyond even that, he almost thought he could see the mainland, although it was almost certainly a skybox.

  [Group][Aconite]: I’ve never been here before

  [Group][Efthalia]: You haven’t done [World Explorer]?

  [Group][Efthalia]: I thought it’d be just your thing

  [Group][Aconite]: I’m working on it

  [Group][Aconite]: But I didn’t want to just zoom over everything on my [Tainted Pegasus].

  [Group][Aconite]: It’s World Explorer not World Ignorer.

  [Group][Aconite]: So I’m kind of doing it on foot.

  [Group][Aconite]: And I don’t want it to become a chore so I’m spreading it out.

  [Group][Efthalia]: wow you’ve really thought about this

  [Group][Aconite]: *blush*

  [Group][Efthalia]: no its cool

  [Group][Efthalia]: most of my achies are raid stuff and the stuff you get automatically like level x or do main quest y

  [Group][Efthalia]: I kind of never saw the point

  [Group][Aconite]: I’m not sure either

  [Group][Aconite]: Either it’s stuff I would have done anyway so I don’t see why I need an achi

  [Group][Aconite]: Or it’s stuff I wouldn’t do, and an achi isn’t going to make me

  [Group][Efthalia]: heh

  [Group][Efthalia]: Tinuviel would say that achievements validate nonstandard modes of interaction within the gameworld

  [Group][Aconite]: Is that someone from your old guild?

  [Group][Efthalia]: no that’s a friend off my course

  [Group][Efthalia]: it’s like her actual name

  [Group][Aconite]: I don’t know whether to feel pleased for her or sorry for her

  [Group][Efthalia]: weirdly it sort of suits her