Some things were straight-up forbidden. Clan members couldn’t (or, at least, that’s what I guessed) kill each other. You could kill other players, but only in self-defense, and each instance was looked at on an individual basis by the clan council. The clan policy toward PKers was simple: they were not tolerated. You couldn’t disobey decisions handed down by the clan council, something I imagined was based on imperial policy. Obviously, you couldn’t steal from clanmates or the clan storehouse. Giving clan information to anyone on the outside was strictly forbidden. You couldn’t ignore a clanmate who needed help if you happened to be walking by (although that went without saying, as that’s presumably how any normal person would react).
So, life in the clan wasn’t a walk in the park, to say the least, as they had everything pretty locked down. On the other hand, there were quite a few advantages. The clan offered full and complete protection from everyone and everything, unless, of course, it was your own fault you were in trouble. As we had discussed in the pub, any PKers that tried to pick off a member of the clan were as good as dead. They were hunted down by many clan veterans who were only too happy to get in on the chase. They didn’t have anything better to do, after all (or at least that’s what they said), since they’d already beaten all the quests and explored all the locations, so it was a fun diversion. Actually, there weren’t many of those veterans, and that story wasn’t exactly true. The Fayroll world was so big—even limitless, I think—that getting around to all the locations and going through all the quests was impossible, not to mention the regular updates… Still, most important was that PKers knew not to touch anyone from the clan if they didn’t want problems. And that wasn’t just a Thunderbird policy; it was true of all the responsible, respected clans. Although you could still find people out there itching for a suicide who didn’t listen to the voice of reason.
The clan had information, weapons, clothes, components, everything one could need to craft things…within reason, of course. Anyone who wanted to learn how to do that could study with the clan master. The clan also had its own hunting lands or a few areas with different levels that newer players could use to level-up, safe from PKers. I would head to one of them the next day with the latest batch of volunteers.
And that was basically it for the rights and responsibilities.
“Got it?” Sergeant looked at me.
“Yup,” I nodded.
“Then be on the square in front of the fortress at 9 a.m. Moscow time tomorrow. We’ll head to Gringvort to beat up some skeletons and zombies. That’s it for now—get out of here.”
“Um…Master Sergeant, I can’t.”
“What? You know, you’re really starting to get to me! Stop with your jokes! Why can’t you?” The dwarf sprouted red spots, and even his beard turned pinkish.
“I don’t know the way out of the fortress…”
I knew better than to hope that a dwarf who was about to crush my skull would walk me to the exit. Still, he had some brain cells left, as he called to a Level 114 mage walking by, “Eilinn, are you on your way out?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Gerv threw this volunteer at me, and he has no idea how to leave. I don’t have time, you know how it is—ambushes to plan, betrayals to hunt down.”
“Got it. Sure, I’ll show him,” the mage replied amiably. He seemed nice, with a frank face, middling height, and intriguing staff: four clawed paws holding a crown with broken-off tines.
“Unusual, isn’t it?” Eilinn smiled when he saw what I was looking at.
“Yes,” I answered. “Epic?”
“Epic. Let me introduce myself, and we’ll get going. Sergeant always has a ton to do, and as far as I know, he’s leading an excursion to Gringvort tomorrow. It isn’t an easy location, takes a lot of prep work. Anyway, my name is Master Eilinn. And yours, my young padawan?”
“Hagen.”
“How did you know about our outing?” Sergeant jumped back into the conversation.
“No need to ask, since it isn’t polite to interrupt,” the mage said to the dwarf reproachfully. The latter was quiet, which I found very surprising. “But I wouldn’t expect anything different from you. I’ll be coming with you tomorrow to cover the volunteers.”
“Oh, you’ll be there tomorrow.” Sergeant lightened up. “That’s great. Who else is coming?”
“Rango, Reineke Lis, and Krolina.”
“Wow. It’s been a while since we had such a veteran group. What’s the occasion?”
“It just worked out that way,” laughed Eilinn. “Hagen, follow me. See you tomorrow, Sergeant.”
“See you tomorrow,” I said to my first boss in parting.
The stubborn dwarf ignored us and walked back into his room, pulling so hard on his beard that it almost grazed the lintel.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked Eilinn immediately.
“Well, two things. First, I’ve never seen a dwarf who wasn’t in a bad mood. Not even once. They’re all incredibly feisty and standoffish. And, to be honest, they’re all just plain greedy.”
“Well, not all of them,” I said, remembering the dwarf who gave me 10 gold when I was running around Aegan in my underwear.
“If you saw any other kind of dwarf, you’re lucky. All the ones I know are stingy bastards. Anyway, second, Sergeant does have it tough. He can’t walk.”
“What do you mean he can’t walk?”
“He just can’t. When he was 16, he got into a car accident. The car rolled, he was sitting in the back, and when it landed, something bent too far and snapped his spine. That’s why he started playing Fayroll. He’s almost always here, in fact.”
I felt terrible. Of course, he’d never served in the army. On the other hand, I couldn’t have known. Still, I started to get that gnawing feeling…
“Obviously, it hasn’t made him all that humble or pleasant to be around. But believe me, he’s a good person. And a true friend. Just believe me. You’ll see for yourself at some point.”
“What about everyone else who’s going with us?”
“You’re lucky. You got all three of the clan’s best players. Good fighters. Rango and Krolina have been in the clan from the beginning, and Lis joined a bit later. Rango and Krolina are hunters, Lis is a swordsman. So tomorrow, you can just relax and focus on leveling-up.
“Is there something to worry about?”
“Well, put it this way… The location is tricky, and it’s designed for Levels 29-32. You would never make it there on your own. The other volunteers are generally between Level 26 and Level 29, so they’ll get a good chunk of experience, too, especially at the beginning. That’s why they’re sending you there. You should get a bunch of goodies tomorrow, so your hamster will be happy. I imagine you’ll get some good achievements and 10 or 12 levels. As far as what makes it tricky, well, there are sometimes a few bosses among the skeletons and zombies. There’s a Level 46 leech and a Level 48 zombie king. They’re tough since they’re strong and they cast all kinds of crap. Theoretically, you could take them out, but you’d still die a bunch of times in the process. And you’d lose all the experience you got, so what’s the point? Anyway, if they show their heads, we’ll take them out.”
“That sounds interesting. Oh, and what did you say about a hamster?”
Eilinn smiled, “All gamers have a hamster sitting inside of them. When they get something free, it’s happy and sings. When they have to give something up, it whines and complains. Yours is definitely going to come out to play tomorrow. Just don’t be late; we’ll be porting at 9:05. And we won’t wait around for anyone.”
We’d gotten to the exit by the time we finished talking.
“It was nice meeting you,” said Eilinn. “I have to run, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Me, too,” I responded with complete sincerity. “See you then.”
I watched Eilinn walk away and clicked the button to log out.
Chapter Six
Gringvort
A quick gla
nce at the clock when I climbed out of the capsule shocked me; I’d been playing for quite a while.
That Mammoth is a sneaky son of a gun. I was on the job the whole day and even a bit more, I thought. But that idea was quickly interrupted by two more base instincts. I was hungry and…well, I needed to do something else. And that second one needed to happen soon.
Having eaten and cleaned myself up a little, I sat down at my computer. It was about time to get started on my article. The clock was ticking, after all. I looked at the open text editor in front of me. And looked, and looked.
“I need more material first. Then I’ll have this thing whipped out in no time… Later…”
I was about to turn off my computer when I remembered lying wrapped up in the blanket and hearing Elina and Gerv talking about the Great Dragon quest and getting to Rivenholm in ships. Nothing Gorotul said could be described as anything but a stream of consciousness. I had made a mental note to look up both of those—really, to figure out what Rivenholm even was. Also, I needed to see if I could dig up anything about that Wanderer. Maybe there was something online? Probably not.
I logged onto a forum and started with a search for the Great Dragon. As it turned out, I shouldn’t have skipped reading all the Fayroll lore when I started playing. The history was far-reaching, fascinating, bloody, and varied. It was especially rich in wars. There were the two Skeleton Wars, the three Wars of Loathing, and another dozen that went nameless. However, the most brutal and violent was the War of the Dragon. Some thousand years ago, long before there were ever any players, all the intelligent races in Fayroll clashed. On one side were the undead and unhumans under the command of the Great Dragon—a real one, fire-breathing with wings, the last of the hymenopterans in Fayroll. His ranks included skeletons and leeches, specters with their dogs of death, trolls, zombies, and orcs. On the other side, were the light and intelligent races: people, elves, and dwarves…well, and halflings and everyone else who more or less fell into those categories. The fighting started off small, and, naturally, the undead and unhuman started to lose. However, things escalated into genocide as whole dark races were wiped out in their native lands. That was when their leader, the Great Dragon, uttered a pronouncement, “If fate has not deemed us worthy of victory, our time has not yet come.”
He disbanded his forces, conceded victory to the light races, and petitioned for an end to the pointless killing. However, in exchange for his forces laying down their arms, he demanded that they be exempt from prosecution aimed at destroying them or extracting reparations in civil courts. The war was over, and they needed to get back to living.
The light powers acquiesced, pointing to both their own war weariness and, they said, their innate goodness. But they didn’t keep their word. It wasn’t deliberate, and it wasn’t all of them, but the damage was done. A few dwarf squadrons either didn’t know about the armistice or were goaded on by their eternal stubbornness to keep fighting, and annihilated a large tribe of orcs—green, toothy, and unarmed—after they got into a fight with some dark dwarves. In short, it was a mess.
The Great Dragon learned what had happened and, enraged, pronounced a curse on the light races. But he designed that curse as a quest. A super-mega-extra-rare quest. In fact, it was so rare that not a single player in the history of the game had found it. What it included was a mystery, though its reward was not—the ability to call forth all the dark armies and in essence become the Dark Lord. The rumor went that the ability was somehow limited, but nobody knew what that limitation was. Enormous amounts of time were spent by all the clans trying to find it, though how to get it, who gives it, and what you have to do were all unknown.
A few players had gone on about how they’d found the hallowed quest, though they all later turned out to be False Dmitriys[7] looking for a free ride.
After creating the curse, the Great Dragon went missing, and there were no more mentions of him in the lore. Maybe he died, or maybe he went into hiding. But most likely, the developers pulled him out of the game and saved him on a backup copy somewhere on a backup hard drive.
So if Wanderer actually did get the quest, it wasn’t surprising that he’d try to get as far away from everyone as he could. If I were him, I’d have gone off into some desert or cave for a hundred years or so. And if that were true, it wouldn’t have been surprising that the Gray Witch was gunning for him either—but how did he get it in the first place?
And then I read some about her, as well. The Hounds of Death were a great, exacting, and merciless clan that came about when two earlier clans joined forces: the Gray Kittens and the Jets. The Gray Witch was the leader of the Gray Kittens and took over the newly formed clan. She was clever, vindictive, unscrupulous, and vengeful, though she was also rational and calculating. She never allowed emotion to get the better of her, and she could ferret out benefits for herself and her clan even when they were hidden behind seven brick walls. She personally compromised the leader of the Jets, who also wanted to be the leader of the new clan, with a detailed and brutally devious plan. It ended in him being denounced as a rat and, based on the clan charter, getting kicked out by a council resolution. Whenever anyone (generally from the old Jets clan) objected, she loftily asked, “And who said you have the right to go against the clan and demand anything contrary to the decisions of the council?”
Still, under her leadership, the clan became the game’s best by a number of metrics.
Anyway, judging by all of that, it was logical to assume that Wanderer had uncovered something there. Otherwise, the Gray Witch wouldn’t have deigned to go after him personally with an offer. There wasn’t anything in the forums about Wanderer, on the other hand, or at least I couldn’t find anything.
What I found about Rivenholm was much simpler. When the game began, there was just one continent—Rattermark, the one I was currently on. A year and a half before I joined, however, a global update was released that included an entirely new one called Rivenholm. There were two ways to get there: either you could list it as your starting location (apparently I missed that option when I registered) or you could sail across the ocean, which was much tougher. The problem wasn’t even that ships were expensive. It was that getting there was hard and dangerous—so much so that a small convoy didn’t stand a chance.
Convoys faced harpies, garudas, and stymphalides from the air, while a Kraken of immense size and monstrous strength ravaged them from below. Anyone left swimming in the water after their ships were destroyed were eaten by sharks. After all, it was an ocean. But the highlight of the trip were the pirates lurking in the waters surrounding the extensive Tigali Archipelago, smack dab in the middle between Rattermark and Rivenholm. They did what pirates always do—steal and kill, eat and drink, and make everyone they took captive walk the plank. Interestingly, they were all NPCs, as there wasn’t a “pirate” class, players could choose to be. So, they were our Pirates of the Caribbean. Jack Sparrow. Sorry. Captain Jack Sparrow.
Incidentally, if you were killed while at sea, you were sent to the nearest respawn point. By default, that was in Rattermark, as there aren’t any respawn points at sea, and players respawned there without their ships. A dozen clans had lost their fleets that way.
So, just see if you can get there. And it was so tempting; there was almost nobody there since new players much preferred the settled continent. It had strong clans, guides, and a settled way of life. Sure, there were pioneers and enthusiasts who wanted to try new dungeons, new spells, and new quests… Clans also started sending scouts there, but while those scouts did have some time to level-up and explore…they still wouldn’t stand much chance against a landing of high-level players. So all the top clans started readying fleets. The rest simply didn’t have the resources. The Hounds of Death had theirs ready, and it was no surprise that Elina wanted to join them.
“Cool,” I said, having digested everything I read. “Tolkien doesn’t have anything on this…”
And after setting the alarm in my music
center for 8 a.m. I went to sleep. I slept like a baby, calmly and free of nightmares. It was just before I woke in the morning that, for some reason, I dreamed about Spartacus, who sat at a monitor and said, “If I’d only known I could get better armor at the auction… I’d have bought some…”
More Than a Game Page 7
