by GR Cooper
"I don't know," wavered Owen, "it's a lot of work and, as near as I recall, not covered by our agreement."
"You can keep seventy-five percent of whatever ore you find in the tunneling," grinned Wulfgar.
The dwarf laughed loudly, "Ye truly are a dwarf-friend, and know the secret to our hearts!" He took the human's hand in his own - Owen's were huge, as big as Wulfgar's - and shook it. "I have no doubt our king will agree to the added codicil, assuming that the tunnel can be dug."
"Assuming it can be dug," nodded Wulfgar.
Wulfgar left the bottom of the little keep, walking down the last flight of stairs on the rear of the stone structure. Waiting at the bottom were a tall redhead, a black tiger and a very large dog. He smiled as he joined them on the grass.
"Did you think you were going to be able to sneak away from us?"
"Sorry," said Wulfgar, spreading his hands, "it's just been so freakin' nuts. I've been trying to get everyone setup before going back to Edonis."
"Why are you? Going back that is?"
"I need to try to figure out what the hell is going on here. Edonis is the only place I'll be able to do that." He reached down as Bear pushed his snout into Wulfgar's right hip. He scratched the dog behind the ears.
"Can you watch Bear while I'm gone?" he asked, "If he becomes a pain, I'm sure you can leave him with Lauren."
"I'm happy to. I'll even begin training him, if you want."
"Training him? How?"
RaNay smiled, "First of all, I'm going to grind him up to third level. At that point, he'll be able to get the Mind-speak skill." She tilted her head, "Assuming that you want me to choose that, that is. Since I tamed him, I'm still a co-owner, until you remove me."
He nodded, "Happy to leave it as is. Mind-speak? Is it what it sounds like?"
"Yeah. You'll be able to send thoughts to each other. At the lower levels, you'll only be able to send raw emotions. At higher levels," she smiled, "you'll actually be able to express more abstract thoughts."
She thought for a moment, "Well, he will be able to send thoughts. You won't, unless you develop the skill. But that," she frowned, "is a Tamer skill. Unless you dedicate yourself to that tree, you won't be able to communicate back."
She reached down and took both of Bear's ears in her hands, kissing his forehead, "But he's such a smart boy, he probably understands what you're saying."
Wulfgar paused for a second, reading.
"It's cool," he said, excited, "there's a sub-skill in the Familiar skill tree that's called Mind-speak. It sounds like I can do what you can, but just for my familiar."
She nodded, "That's cool. You won't be able to talk to Schwartz or any other tamed creatures with mind-speak, but it should work for Tim. You'll be able to send your thoughts to him, to control him. If he has a Mind-speak skill option, you'll be able to read his thoughts as well."
"How does it work for you? Can you speak to any creature with the skill, whether or not they're yours?"
She nodded, "Mmmhmm, and players or tamed creatures with the mind-speak skill can send raw emotion to any other sentient creature. You'll be able to use Tim and Bear to augment your intimidation roll, for example."
"Sweet!"
He thought about it for a moment.
"So, if you were to come up against another tamer you'd be able to mind-speak with their animals?"
She frowned, "Yeah, but if they're hostile, it's an aggro trigger. Just like walking up to them. I mean, it can work. I can try to, say, soothe them with thoughts of warmth or whatever, but if I fail, they'll aggro my ass from wherever." She chuckled.
"But sentients too? You could do that for an orc?"
"Mmhmm," she nodded, "but it's a tough roll. I'd have to be a much higher level, but, yeah, if I had enough on them, I could be like Obi-Wan Kenobi on the Sand-people. Make 'em run in terror. If they were riding horses, I could do it to them - just get the horses to bolt."
"That's pretty cool."
"It is. But it's pretty short range. If an army was coming down on us, I could probably get a few of the horses to bolt, but there'd be enough left over to run us down."
~ ~ ~
Wulfgar pulled himself up into the opening, raising himself until his eyes were just above the level of the floor. He slowly looked to his left then right as his eyes adjusted to the light. Coming up from the darkness of the rat tunnels underneath Edonis into the dimly lit palace, awash in the flickering fires from ensconced torches lining the walls, made for a quick adjustment.
Holding onto the edges of the palace floor, he dropped his head back into the opening created when Rydra had pushed up on the hinged tile - indistinguishable from above from the thousands of floor tiles when closed. As soon as Wulfgar and the little thief had entered the palace, they would drop the trap-door shut again, then begin their looting of Clive's home.
He smiled down at the thief and their guide, a large, dark-gray rat; about the height and girth of a medium sized dog.
"All clear," he whispered.
He pulled himself up and into the room, kneeling and looking around before reaching down to give Rydra a hand. When he looked down he saw that their rat guide had already left, having fulfilled its weekly obligation to Rydra. Wulfgar gripped his friend's hand and pulled as the thief climbed into the palace.
Rydra crouched next to Wulfgar and lifted then, slowly, dropped the trap door back into place. He ensured that the opening was no longer visible before looking up to Wulfgar and nodding.
The pair of infiltrators slowly stood and moved toward the far wall, deeper into the castle. Wulfgar stretched as he looked around the room. He was still a little stiff from the ride but not, he mused, as stiff as he should be; not after the day's ride he'd just had.
After leaving the budding wall rising up near Marchstone, he had leaned forward and put the spurs to his horse. While it didn't have the stamina to gallop the entire distance back, it was able - being a computer simulation - to run for very long distances, then trot while its energy regenerated. The pace ate the kilometers and he was quickly over and past the troll bridge.
He had scanned the territory around the river and the bridge across it and filed it away as an excellent spot to begin the defense of Marchstone should Edonis decide to invade. He could bottle up a much larger force at the choke point of the bridge - indeed, he might even be able to fortify it. This would be the spot that the opening moves of the war would be fought.
Wulfgar had smiled at that thought. He had no doubt that war was the logical outcome of his course of action. Then he frowned. If perma-death had really been established as the rule of law in this world, war was no longer an abstract entertainment. Even if it wasn't, he had seen no indication that NPC's could rez. He felt a sense of responsibility - one that Corwin would no doubt belittle - for the people of his village.
He decided then that he would not instigate a war with Clive. He would, indeed, do whatever he could to prevent it. The thought of John Tailor or the little barmaid whose name, he chided himself, he had yet to learn, coughing blood on the battlements of the wall Wulfgar was having built wasn't a pleasant one.
Even discounting his feelings, attracting NPCs to the village was difficult. It required him to play - and win - a constant city management 'game' to increase the town's Influence and level. He vowed to study the rules more than he had any game before and to dedicate himself to it. To attract NPCs, and other humans for that matter, to settle in and grow his realm was the only way to 'win'.
And 'win' he would.
After the bridge, the road flew quickly by under the hooves of his mount. They flashed by Tim the Enchanter's village. It looked deserted. Neither his erstwhile nemesis nor the asshole's henchmen were in evidence. That didn't surprise Wulfgar; if resurrection had been turned off, he imagined that after a few deaths and a few days, people would start to figure that out. The logical conclusion of that would be that players would begin to flock to the safe spaces of the world. For this valley, that mean
t the city of Edonis. Wulfgar imagined that the inns of the city were likely full to bursting, and quests that held any kind of danger were going unselected, much less unfulfilled.
The rest of Wulfgar's wild ride served only to reinforce his opinion. He didn't, as far as he knew, come across another player on the road. Even NPC's were less common on the road than they'd been on the outbound journey, as though they were mirroring the caution of the players.
By the end of the day, Wulfgar had completed his headlong return, dropped off his foam slathered mount at the inn closest to Edonis' northwest gate, and run to Rydra's apartment, in the building next to the Magicstrate's office.
Rydra had warmly answered his knock, embracing Wulfgar and pulling him into the room, where they quickly caught up and, after discussing their plan, left for the rat warrens beneath the city.
Wulfgar peeked around the corner of the large room and into a long hallway. Halfway down the space was a single door. Guarded on either side by tall, straight, and wide guardsmen, just as Rydra had described. Guarding the entrance to - something. Rydra assumed that whatever was behind the doorway was worth guarding and whatever was worth guarding was worth stealing.
Wulfgar smiled at the philosophy.
The plan called for Wulfgar to distract and draw the guards away from the door, while Rydra - the player with the lock-picking and stealing skills - would loot the room. Wulfgar would keep the guards busy for as long as possible; since Rydra didn't know what was behind the door, he didn't know how long it would take to loot. Rydra had given Wulfgar a rough idea of the layout of this floor of the palace and, assuming no other guards were around, he should have no trouble leading them on a merry chase.
At Wulfgar's item-enhanced level, he had about two and a half-minutes of Stealth to draw them off. Rydra would close and re-lock the door once he was through, so that if the guards returned they would find nothing amiss. If Rydra had not returned to the rendezvous point after thirty minutes, Wulfgar would again draw off the guards to allow the thief space to make his escape. What Wulfgar did after the successful distraction was left open to circumstance.
Wulfgar had an idea of how he could pass that time.
Wulfgar activated Stealth and began moving down the torch-lit hallway. He moved fast, for once worried more about his stealth timer than he was silence. As he passed the pair of sentinels - each larger than Wulfgar's considerable bulk - he hissed into the silence of the palace. His sibilant exhale startled the guards, previously as unmoving as any of the Queen's Guard at Buckingham. He saw, from the corner of his eyes, their heads move toward each other as Wulfgar hurried past.
He began to trot as he approached the halfway point past the doorway until the next room. His footfalls began to sound out and he was gratified by hearing the sound of the guards beginning their chase.
At the end of the hallway, the hallway opened back into a room that matched the one he'd first entered - again, matching Rydra's description. Wulfgar began to run, pulling a tall candelabra until it fell crashing to the ground behind him. He sprinted down the length of the room and leapt into the bottom of a stairway that curved upward from within the opposite wall. He glanced back into the room as he ascended the stairway and saw the pair of guards nearing the end of the room. They were gaining on him.
Redoubling his efforts, Wulfgar pounded up the stairs until they ended, several floors above. He had passed by several openings that had showed flashes of large rooms - literally palatial - on the way up. At the top of the stair, leaving Wulfgar what he estimated to be less than a minute of stealth until his timer ran out and his ten-minute cool-down began, he emerged into yet another long hallway. He sprinted to the end and pulled opened an ornate doorway. He looked back just as the two guardsmen emerged from the stairwell. Their faces showed the triumph of hunters that have just run down their prey as they saw the door begin to close behind Wulfgar. They knew that he was trapped.
There was only one way in and out of King Clive's office.
Wulfgar looked around frantically. Having achieved his destination, he needed to be able to make sure that the guards didn't interrupt him. He glanced around the room for a chair - something that he could lever underneath the door handle to prevent anyone else from coming through.
Then he laughed.
The door opened outward - if he pushed a chair underneath the handle, it would simply fall into the hallway when they pulled the portal open.
He dropped to one knee, looking at the handle. There was no lock. His mind raced, trying to think of some way to give himself enough time and space to accomplish his mission.
"Don't worry, they won't come in," said a familiar, friendly voice.
Wulfgar turned and stood.
He was in a beautiful, cavernous room. Dark, speckled marble stretched to the further wall, fifty meters away. Lines of white marble columns, five meters apart, spread the length and width of the square room, except for one open space in the middle. Long shadows reached from the columns toward Wulfgar, and he had to raise his left hand to shield his eyes from the stark, evening sun that shone through the floor to ceiling windows on the far side of the room. As if by his command, the windows filtered the light, darkening themselves to cut the glare. He lowered his hand, and looked toward the center of the room.
A large desk sat, facing him, a tall backed leather chair on the other side of it, facing away, toward the window wall. He began to approach, slowly, silently. The desk, two meters wide by one meter deep, shone. It looked dark - mahogany, Wulfgar thought - but reflected the last rays of the muted setting sun through the shaded glass windows.
"I've got a bone to pick with you," said Wulfgar, as levelly as he could. He walked toward the chair, which began to turn.
"I imagine that you have several," said Clive as he clasped his hands on the desk that was now in front of him.
"Shannon," growled Duncan, grinding his teeth.
Clive nodded.
"I didn't really resurrect her, bring her here, did I?"
Clive shook his head. Duncan thought that he looked a little sad; that did nothing to lessen his rising anger.
"Then it goes without saying that you knew that she was fine. That she didn't need my help." He shrugged, raised both of his eyebrows, "That I died - committed suicide - for nothing."
"Not for the reasons that you thought," said Clive. "But for reasons, I assure you."
"What are they."
Clive looked pained, "I can't tell you. I'd ask you to trust me, but I imagine that's beyond hope at this point. Everything I told you about this world, about why it exists, is true. You are a casualty in a bigger cause, but you won't remain a casualty. I assure you. You are not only preparing yourself for your role to come, you're preparing me for your role to come. Preparing my people and the peoples of many species."
"Your assurances don't do much to assure."
Clive stood, "I understand. I didn't expect them to. Not yet, anyway," he turned and walked to the window and looked out toward the western mountains, highlighted by the setting sun. Somewhere nestled there was Marchstone.
Duncan watched the alien for a moment, then moved his hand to the hilt of Shepherd's Bite.
Clive seemed to read his mind, "Yes. You can kill me. The rules of this world apply to me as much as you."
Duncan's hand remained gripped around the short sword that Lauren had crafted for him.
"Then why change the rules?"
Clive turned back into the room, "It's part of the experiment."
"That's a shit reason."
"Perhaps. From your point of view. From my point of view, it's necessary."
"To study us," growled Duncan. "Well, I'm tired of being studied. The reason that I was here is a lie. Shannon doesn't need me," he pulled out Shepherd's Bite and pointed it at Clive. "I think I'm done being your guinea pig," he said walking forward. He reached Clive and pointed his blade underneath the alien's chin, "I think I'm done with all of your bullshit."
Dunc
an turned and dropped Shepherd's Bite onto Clive's desk. He began to walk back toward the door, "I'm done. I think I'll head out and see how my space station is doing. How my faction is doing. How the rest of my friends are doing." He looked over his shoulder. Clive had a little smile across his face.
"Do you think I'm kidding? That I'm bluffing? My friends here can do fine without me. They're all setup as owners of the village. They can run it or abandon it as they like. They don't need me."
"I don't think you're kidding or bluffing," said Clive. "And I understand that you have me over a barrel." He looked deeply into Duncan's eyes, "Alright. What do you want?"
"To stay? A lot," Duncan turned again. "First, turn on resurrections again."
Clive shook his head sadly, "That I'm afraid I can't do. Whatever else you might think, trust me, this is necessary for this phase of the experiment."
Duncan noted the word 'phase'. That indicated, to him, that it might not be necessary once this phase was over.
"How long will this phase last?"
Clive raised his eyebrows, "I'm not sure. Perhaps six months. Maybe a year."
Duncan shook his head, "That's not good enough. Decide. Now. Set a deadline. You're asking us to live in a world with rules? Fine. But those rules have to be fair. Not arbitrary. If you want to understand anything about humans, the first thing you have to understand is that being unfairly treated pisses us off. So, there you are. You've learned something. Give us something in return."
Clive raised his hands, "It really is necessary, for now."
"Fine," said Duncan, negotiating. "Turn it back on for one week. Resurrect all those who are currently dead. Send out a system message to all players and let us know that there will be a temporary perma-death and tell us how long it will last. Otherwise, I promise you, any and all adventuring will cease. People will hold up in the safe places and not venture out. There will be no data for you to collect."
