Viridian Gate Online- Doom Forge

by J. A. Hunter

  “Low profile,” I whispered as we rounded a corner. “Low profile!”

  “Not our first rodeo, Jack,” Forge said, taking point and picking up the pace.

  Straight ahead was a scene of shocking chaos. A town square with a small fountain at its center. A statue of a portly Dwarven woman stood at the center of the fountain, a hammer raised to the sky with one hand, while a flagon of mead was clutched in the other. Frothy water burbled out of the maiden’s cup, filling the pool below. Uniformed Dwarven guards filled the square, their gold-and-black tabards emblazoned with a mountain and an anvil, marking them out. And smashing against them like a battering ram were several platoons of Vogthar.

  The Dwarves fought in squads of five, mostly wielding axes or long-handled halberds, though several carried an enormous shield on each arm—the tankiest tanks I’d ever seen. Chainmail-clad priests chanted from behind. The courtyard was hemmed in by two-story stone buildings with slate-tiled roofs capped by intricately carved gables. All vaguely Viking-inspired. Poking out of the windows were Dwarven archers carrying heavy crossbows with elaborate cranks. A few even had repeaters to rival Osmark’s tech.

  The city guards looked neat, orderly, well trained, and professional. These men and women knew their business and knew it well, but the Vogthar had come loaded for bear.

  True, most of the horde were the standard gray-skinned foot troops, but there was also a double fistful of pale blue invaders—probably spawned from a dungeon with a Frost alignment—a full squad of heavy-armored [Eloyte Knights], a pair of robe-clad casters, and a handful of hulking wolflike [Vogthar Frost Hounds]. The hounds were nearly the size of a lion but built from hard-packed snow and studded with chunks of razor-sharp blue ice. The Frost Hounds weren’t common in the south, but I’d run across them a couple times while preparing for the invasion of Glome Corrie, and they were absolutely awful to tangle with. Dealt out debuffs like they were going out of style.

  Bodies lay scattered across the ground—Dwarves and Vogthar alike—but it was clear the Vogthar were capturing ground and would soon overtake the pocket of resistance.

  Unless, of course, some intrepid adventurers came along and evened the odds.

  Forge turned, glancing at me over one heavy pauldron. “We kicking ass and taking names or what, hoss?”

  I sighed and threw my hands up into the air. “So much for low profile. Total pipe dream anyway.” I nodded. “Yeah, do your thing. But no familiars, nothing that might give us away if you can help it.”

  “Hells yeah!” Forge barked with a grin. “Time to get some. You ready for this, pint-sized?”

  “Let’s rage,” Ari growled in reply, sounding excited at the prospect, though still cloaked from view with her powerful spells.

  Heavy footfalls pounded the air as Forge charged, issuing a ferocious war cry just before slamming into the back ranks of the Vogthar troops. His axe screamed as he hacked through leather armor, severing a lanky pale arm with a single blow. One of the Vogthar mages wheeled around, a chant exploding from its lipless mouth as it thrust a gaunt, claw-tipped hand forward. Despite the thick cobblestones lining the square, skeletal hands erupted from the ground, closing around one of Forge’s ankles like a clamp. Another shot up, latching onto his other ankle.

  The second priest barked out an order in some unknown tongue—the consonants harsh, the vowels guttural and hard on the ears. The Vogthar force split at once; one group, composed of the more common foot soldiers, continued their assault against the guards, while the other group spun and beelined toward us. The first mage raised its hands high, fingers flickering through a complex series of movements as fog bellowed out from its palms. That fog quickly spread like the plague, filling the town square with churning silver. The chant took on a new cadence, rising in intensity and fervor as shapes formed in the mist—an arm here, a glimpse of a gleaming skull there.

  Definitely some sort of summoner or Warlock. Probably the Vogthar equivalent of a Necromancer or Spirit-Caller.

  “Heads down, eyes shut!” Abby yelled, thrusting her staff straight up into the air, the fat ruby on top flaring with brilliant life. I followed her order without hesitation, curling my head into my chest and closing my eyes. A moment later, terrible heat washed over me, carried by a blazing hot wind; even through my eyelids I could see the brilliant flash of orange-and-gold light, as bright as the noonday sun. When I blinked my eyes open a few seconds later, whatever attack she had unleashed was gone, and so was the silver fog—burned away in a single wave of heat and fire.

  Her Raging Inferno Blast if I had to guess.

  She’d cut the Warlock’s spell off before it could take shape, but unfortunately, the heavily armored Eloyte Knights and the formidable Frost Hounds had closed on us with lightning speed.

  Several converged on Forge, who was still pinned down by the skeletal hands gripping his ankles. The tank roared in defiance and lashed out with his axe. The weapon blazed red as it turned away striking blades and clattered on night-dark shields. Forge was a heavy hitter, but surprisingly, the armored Vogthar didn’t fold like a bad hand of cards. They fought on completely undeterred, their thick armor and even thicker shields deflecting his most devastating blows.

  Ari appeared with a flash of neon-pink light as she darted into the fray. She had a miniature bow strapped to her back, a quiver of blue-crystal arrows hanging at one hip, and a wicked sword in her hand that looked one part pirate scimitar, one part toothpick. The fierce little Pixy struck like a surgeon, hacking at vulnerable eyes and chopping at exposed necks. She was a whirlwind of colorful death. Bright and flashy as an underground rave.

  Apparently, she too needed a reminder of the definition of low profile.

  I tore my eyes away from the fighting and pulled free a scythe-bladed khopesh—somewhere between a short sword and a normal dagger. Lawbreaker’s Edge. I’d picked it up in the Realm of Order while tangling with a bunch of underwater Merfolk called the Ningyo. As a Maa-Tál Shadowmancer, I had a ton of cool class advantages, but using edged weapons wasn’t one of them. But Lawbreaker’s Edge ignored class restrictions, and though it didn’t deal nearly the damage my warhammer did, it might throw off any inquisitive onlookers. My warhammer was easily one of the most recognizable weapons in the game.

  I thrust out my left hand and unleashed an Umbra Bolt into the face of a blue-skinned Vogthar, blasting away a chunk of rotten meat and a chunk of HP. Another bolt hit the creature square in the belly, and this time its glossy-black eyes went hazy, unfocused. At level 5, not only did Umbra Bolt dish out 225% spell strength—for a devastating 513 points of Shadow damage—but additionally, it had a 20% chance of confusing enemies, causing them to randomly attack other hostile forces.

  The confused Vogthar wheeled around and threw itself at one of its companions, driving an ebony axe into the side of an unprotected Vogthar skull. Critical Hit!

  Elsewhere, Cutter appeared in a puff of smoke and drove a blade into a Frost Hound’s neck, dropping the creature though not killing it.

  “Jack,” Abby hollered, conjuring a halo of light around herself. “I’ll take out the regular Vogthar and the hounds—you focus on the knights. Them and the casters.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she stormed forward, wreathed in fire, spewing a steady stream of liquid gold from one hand while she clutched her staff in the other. Everywhere that beam of molten light touched flesh bubbled and smoldered, inky wisps of foul-smelling smoke drifting upward. Her supernatural flame sheared through HP like a hot knife, which made total sense. Aside from Holy damage, what would hurt ice-based Vogthar more than generous heaps of preternatural fire?

  I triggered Night Armor, surrounding myself with a second skin of shadow power, then cast Shadow Forge and one of my new Champion of Order abilities, Scales of Harmony, which gave me and my team a passive advantage when fighting against any creatures that strayed from the path of neutrality. We all got a bonus when duking it out against creatures with a Dark or Light alignment, and an eve
n heftier attack bonus against creatures of a Holy or Evil nature like the Vogthar. It also allowed me to level up my Champion of Order skills with every kill.

  Casting my array of passive spells took less than a heartbeat, but a heartbeat was a long time in the heat of battle.

  An obsidian two-handed longsword flashed through the air, ready to cleave me in two, but the knight wielding the blade was glacier slow. I sidestepped the attack, twirled my sickle-bladed khopesh in a vicious arc, and slammed the weapon into the knight’s unprotected skull as I triggered Champion Strike and Black Caress, siphoning off a portion of the knight’s Health. Despite the fact that I was using a bladed weapon, the creature’s head exploded like an overripe melon from the sheer force of the strike, chunks of bone and splashes of gore spraying out as the corpse dropped.

  I didn’t have time to dwell on the carnage, though. I was already moving on to the next opponent. I slashed and hacked my way through two more blue-skinned Vogthar, then turned my blade on a knight with its back to me, quickly removing one leg below the knee, before finishing the creature with a brilliant javelin of Umbra Flame at point-blank range.

  I spun, briefly considered unleashing Night Cyclone, which would make short work of most of these attackers, then dismissed the idea. Unleashing a giant shadow cyclone was the next best thing to conjuring Devil in the middle of the plaza, and that simply wouldn’t do. There were less than a handful of Shadowmancers who had reached a high-enough level to use an attack like that, which meant it would be a red flag to anyone watching. Besides, we didn’t need it. Between the Dwarven guards on one side and us on the other, the Vogthar were on their last legs.

  Off to my right, Cutter darted forward, decapitating a Vogthar shock troop in twilight-gray leathers while Amara slashed and jabbed with a conjured spear. Dead ahead, Abby charbroiled a Frost Hound, leaving nothing but ash in her wake. The skeletal hands spell had finally dissipated, and Forge and Ari were now going toe to toe with the last of the knights and the Vogthar spellcasters, who were surrounded by eerie green light. Everything else was well in hand, but those spellcasters could still cause us trouble unless I put them down. Hard.

  I grinned, thrust Lawbreaker’s Edge forward, and called forth Umbra Bog. A patch of cobblestone, thirty feet in diameter, gave way to a bog of inky black tendrils. Curling fingers of shadow writhed in an instant, wrapping around legs and arms, temporarily rooting the last of the knights and the casters in place. Giving Forge and Ari an instant leg up. The Pixy unleashed a blast of prismatic light while Forge charged, shouldering one of the knights in the teeth, then swinging for the fences with his axe.

  While the mages struggled to free themselves from the clinging tentacles of shadow, I slipped into the Shadowverse with a thought and an effort of will. The world screeched to a crawl, color fading. I took a few deep breaths, relishing the momentary break in the conflict, and surveyed the field.

  The Dwarven guards had finished off the last of the regular Vogthar foot soldiers and were advancing on the remaining knights while their ranged support rained down precise arrow fire from above. Cutter and Amara were working in tandem, fighting back-to-back, while Abby was frozen mid-stride, her staff thrust straight out, a bud of flame blooming on the end. She’d burned the Frost Hounds out of existence—none remained—and the blue-skinned Vogthar were likewise gone.

  The Eloyte Knights had been decimated, and Forge was seconds away from burying his axe in the neck of one of the two spellcasters.

  The other spellcaster, however, had managed to slip away from the heat of the battle and was casting what looked like an AoE spell. Its face was frozen in a snarl, a chant clearly on its lips, a ball of noxious jade energy forming between empty palms. Yep. That was gonna be a hard no. I slipped up behind the spell-slinger, raised my khopesh, activated Stealth, then stepped back from the Shadowverse. Color exploded into the world, accompanied by the sounds of battle and the guttural chanting from the unholy caster in front of me.

  I triggered my Champion’s Strike ability as the blow landed.

  Critical Hit! The spellcaster’s head tumbled away, thudding to the ground with a wet splat as its HP bar hit zero in an instant. The green energy in its hands fizzled harmlessly; its knees buckled and down it went, dead in a heap of limbs and glowing green fluid.

  I wheeled left, searching for new enemies, but the square was quiet, the last of invading Vogthar dead.

  Good Deeds

  “WELL DINNAE JUST STAND there!” one of the guards barked, his words coated with a thick Scottish burr. He broke from the line of defenders, heavy boots tromping on the cobblestones as he moved. He was short, well under five feet, and built like a brick shithouse. All muscle and scars and beard. His hair was fiery red, his complexion ruddy, his eyes were like little chips of coal, and faded crisscrossing scars seemed to cover every bit of exposed skin. He wore the same tabard as the rest of the guards, but his uniform had an extra patch sewn onto the chest, likely marking him out as some sort of squad leader or commander.

  “We got wounded now, dinnae we?” he said, glancing at the downed Dwarves moaning around the courtyard. “So, start triage, ya bloody eejits.” He threw heavy, scar-covered hands into the air as though shooing a bunch of irksome pigeons. “Priests, get busy. These men are na gonna heal themselves. Archers,” he bellowed, glancing at the men still loitering in the buildings edging the square. “Ah wanna cordon set up—keep the looky-loos back, eh? Everybody else, loot these corpses.

  “As fer ya lot”—he rounded on us, eyes narrowing, mouth turning into a scowl—“stay right where ya bloody are, eh? Ah’d have words with ya.” The remaining guards broke into action as the disgruntled and clearly suspicious Dwarf marched across the impromptu battlefield, giving the Clerics and Priests a wide berth, though stepping carelessly on the dead Vogthar. “I’m Raginolf, captain of the Cliffburgh Guard.” His gaze landed on me like a hammer blow, flicking from the khopesh to my dusky, Murk Elf complexion. Definitely suspicious.

  I braced myself for the ass-chewing of the century. I’d spent plenty of time around staff NCOs in the Marine Corps, and I knew a pissed-off enlisted man when I saw one.

  Instead, Raginolf surprised me by extending a gnarled hand with stubby, sausage fingers. “Well met, and thank ya fer the help.”

  Uncertain, I took his proffered hand and pumped it several times. It was like shaking hands with a bear. “Eh, just glad we were here in time to help out. We haven’t been this far north before. Is that sort of thing common up here?”

  He dropped my hand and glanced over one shoulder at the bodies strewn around the square. He turned back to us, faint worry etched into the lines of his face. “Nae.” He folded his blocky arms across his barrel chest. “The raids have been gettin’ worse fer the past month or so. Once, mibay twice a week, usually at night. This though. Nae. Havnae seen the like before. Ya said ya havnae been this far north before—where do ya hail from then? What brings ya all the way tae this frozen bit of land? Merchants, maybe? Cliffburgh isna exactly a tourist attraction, especially na fer Travelers.”

  “A small social quest,” Cutter said with a dismissive wave, words sweet as honey as he glided forward. He patted me on the shoulder, allow me, as a blindingly bright grin spread across his face. The guard seemed friendly enough, but his questions were probing. Cautious, without seeming overtly hostile. As nice as he was, he wasn’t sure we were on the level. We really didn’t want people poking into our business, and with Honeyed Words, Cutter could disarm the man far better than I ever could. Hell, Cutter was confidence incarnate.

  And as he often said, confidence opened doors no key ever could.

  “We’re running messages for a Southern lordling. It’s good luck indeed that we happened to arrive, though,” Cutter continued. “Unfortunately, friend, our business is a wee bit time sensitive. But I’m thinkin’ a man like you might be able to give us a hand.” With a flick of his fingers he pulled a fat golden coin from thin air. “We’re looking for an inn. A plac
e called the Smoked Pig.”

  The guard grunted, still looking suspicious, but less so. He took the coin, but instead of pocketing it, he shoved it right back into Cutter’s other hand. “Keep yer money, lad. Ah dinnae know how they do it in the South, but around here, guards will help a law-abidin’ citizen free ah charge. Now, as fer your Smoked Pig. Aye, Ah know of it. Down in the armpit of the Low Quarter. Cannae imagine what business a Southern lordlin’ would have in a place such as that, but...”

  He paused and shrugged meat-slab shoulders. “Who can bloody understand the mind of nobles, eh? Normally, Ah wouldnae let you lot in, nae without a fair reason in dark days like these, but on account ah what you done fer us here, well, Ah’ll give ya a pass. But, fair warnin’.” He paused, spearing each of us in turn with a ferocious glare. “Keep yer heads low, eh? A bit ah goodwill only goes so far in the north. Ah wouldnae forget that if Ah were in yer boots.” He tapped a gnarled nose like a tree root with one fat finger. “Especially nea in a place like the Smoked Pig.”

  As he finished talking a pair of notices popped up, one right after another.

  <<<>>>

  Secret Quest Update: Assist the Guards

  You have saved the Cliffburgh Guards from an advanced Vogthar incursion and won over the Captain of the Guard, Raginolf Rugar. Your relationship with Cliffburgh Guards has increased from Unfriendly to Neutral. Your personal relationship with Raginolf has increased from Neutral to Friendly. He may be inclined to turn a blind eye to minor indiscretions, but don’t push his kindness too far—it is hard won and not easily regained!

  <<<>>>

  Map Update

  Congratulations! Your in-world map has been updated with a new location: The Smoked Pig.

  <<<>>>

  I waved away the notifications.

  Raginolf’s back was already to me as he moved toward the bodies, which his men were busy picking over. The gamer inside me bucked at the idea that they should get to loot the corpses since we’d done most of the heavy lifting, but the truth was, Vogthar—even advanced ones such as these—rarely had items worth taking. And besides, it wasn’t exactly like the Alliance was hard up for items or money. Maybe we didn’t have the resources that Osmark and the Legion had at their disposal, but we were still doing just fine.