by Adam Elliott
Guardian
Instantly the screen reacted, the right side of it filling with a few text boxes detailing the primary abilities, attributes and role of the class he had selected. It was information Cayden already knew, but even if he hadn't, the sudden change in his reflection would have interested him far more.
Up until this point, the mirrored face of the crystal had acted as just that, a mirror. With the selection of a class, however, the reflection in the mirror had begun to shift and distort, warping in unnatural ways before snapping back into sudden focus. The new reflection it showed was not his own, or at least, it was not fully his own. His features were there, and it moved with his motions, but the reflected image showed a man clad in ornate full plate, not a button down shirt and slacks.
It was all higher level gear, high enough level that no one currently playing had found more than a single piece remotely similar to the displayed armor chosen at character select. Cayden knew from his reading that if he went back and picked a mage, he would find the reflection in robes with a floating spellbook. If he picked a ninja, it would be wrapped up tight in armor so dim it would be barely visible in the reflection.
Again his finger itched, eager to see what Cayden the Necromancer, or Cayden the Barbarian might look like, but he resisted the urge. He was already hours behind due to the incident with the fog. If he fell down the rabbit hole of looking through every possibility he had considered these last few months, he'd likely still be clicking away come morning.
You have chosen Guardian as your initial class. This selection cannot be changed after finalizing your decisions unless you later decide to Wipe Your Fate Clean. Are you sure you wish to select Guardian?
Take a deep breath. Cayden was awful when it came to decisions like this. He'd had to stop play-by-email games of chess with his uncle as a child because his school work had started to falter from him spending hours staring at the board instead of doing homework. He pressed yes.
You have chosen to begin play as an Agares-Tabbris descended Guardian. These options cannot be changed after they are finalized. This is your final chance to alter your selection.
Are you sure?
Yes.
What is your name, Cayden Caros? Speak it aloud.
“Cayden.” He intoned. Many PC's chose a pseudonym, something to distance the person they were in the game from the person that they had been before. Cayden didn't begrudge them this, but he didn't need it either. The person he was outside this place was no different than the Player Character inside it. He was a gamer, through and through.
With that final pronouncement, the lights in the room flared and then grew dim. Before him the mirror shifted again, his reflection vanishing as the front of the mirror bubbled up. The crystal seemed to flow outward from the stone, like a lava lamp falling forwards. The semi-liquid crystal floated away from its pedestal to a fixed point in space, compressing as it moved. Within seconds the eight-foot tall mirror had compressed itself down to a handheld variant no larger than a smartphone, one that floated in midair in full defiance of God and physics.
“Sure know how to put on a show.” he murmured, reaching out to collect the slowly rotating device while humming the Zelda item catch tune. “Now which way do I-”
Directly opposite him, the seamless surface of the wall behind where the mirror had stood began to part. White light flooded into the now dim room, temporarily blinding him as he walked towards it. Another instance gate.
"Welcome Cayden, to Babel."
Chapter Three
Whoever thought walking into a bright light was a cool way to transition into the game ought to be shot. Cayden grumbled internally as he walked forward, one hand up to shield himself against the light. It didn't help in the slightest because the light wasn't coming from anywhere. It simply was. Still, the old habit was reassuring as he trudged forward, squinting against the offensive rays.
Like the fog at the tower's entrance, the light show was relatively brief. Just long enough for him to lose all sense of direction. It was a clever way to move players from place to place without the discomfort of dealing with the apparent supernatural. It also provided for one hell of a vista as the light dimmed. Slowly but steadily his surroundings began to swim into focus, and after a few solid blinks, he began to make sense of the shapes he was seeing.
He was on the crest of a ridge amidst a sea of rolling hills. There was grass under his feet, though he couldn't recall when the steps he had been taking had moved from artificial tile to natural turf. As his vision cleared up further, he began to make out moving shapes. Humanoid figures walking amidst the hills and fields, moving in and out of buildings.
The world before him was a paradise of sorts, albeit a terribly strange one. The grass was a more vibrant green than any he'd ever seen, the crops growing in the fields looked healthy and bountiful, even if he couldn't begin to place their alien nature. The sky was a heartbreaking blue dotted with a handful of puffy white clouds. It was warm but not too warm, with a pleasant breeze that served just enough to cool without proving a nuisance.
A hundred television shows and web streams hadn't prepared him to see it with his own eyes.
Albieth, the first level of Babel was a world unto itself, hundreds of kilometers in diameter and with a sky much higher than the one kilometer that should have been possible if the tower had even bothered with silly things like spatial physics.
For all anyone knew, Albieth was another planet, and the tower merely transported you there. At night even the constellations were different. Maybe the developer had made a portal to the Garden of Eden itself.
“Hell yeah! Let's do this! Leeeeeeroy Jeeeeenkins!”
Or maybe not.
The offending party turned out to be a trio of PCs. Newbies like himself judging by their gear and their enthusiastic reaction as they charged off in search of adventure. Not everyone could sit and enjoy the moment, he supposed.
Then again, neither could he. Cayden had a stream to get started, and for a speed runner, he sure was wasting a lot of time admiring the skybox instead of forging ahead.
With the awe passed he set to work, dropping his bag to the ground with an unceremonious thud. From it he withdrew the majority of his kit, placing it piece by piece along the ground beside the bag until he was sure he had everything he needed. There wasn't much, a pair of gloves and stylized eyeglasses to match, a trio of baseball sized quad-drones, his cell phone, the miniature mirror and the last of the packed lunches his mother had sent him off with. Cookies included.
The phone and the mirror were his first focus; the devices awkwardly juggled from hand to hand as he switched them back and forth between his dominant hand as needed. Despite being a creation of pure, reality defining lunacy, the mirror was bluetooth, wifi and 5g compatible. Because of course, it was. Powered by what might as well have been voodoo magic, the mirror made a far superior alternative to any cell phone, especially since he didn't have to pay Sprint for the privilege. A quick trip to the settings menu on each device had his contacts, apps, and preferences transferred over with ease, and a few more paired the mirror to the remaining objects still laid out on the ground.
Minus the lunches.
Satisfied that all of his tech was now linked to the new device, Cayden pocketed the mirror and leaned down to scoop up the gloves and glasses. The gloves went on first, the specially fitted leather creaking as he opened and closed his grip to test the range of movement. The glasses were next, and for a brief moment, he scolded himself for not donning the polarized lenses before walking into the overwhelmingly bright light.
“Suited up, and ready to go.” Cayden mumbled to himself as he adjusted the glasses one final time before touching a sensor just above his right temple.
A barrage of text appeared in the air before him, filling up the top third of the glasses with rapidly scrolling semi-English. The start-up programming jargon continued just long enough to annoy him before the display in the lenses wiped itself and replac
ed it all with a single word. Connected.
"Drones one through three, assigned positions." He ordered. In unison the three little quadcopters revved their tiny engines, and lifted from the ground, moving to assume a three-point perimeter around him at roughly three meters distance. Cayden had spent some time digging through blog posts and industry discussion on the matter, and a three-meter gap seemed to be the best for catching detail without losing total track of the action.
“Video record. Start streaming one through four in ten seconds.” Cayden took a last moment to steady himself. It had already been one hell of a day, but he'd promised an early, day one stream. His streaming channel had been part of what kept him sane these last two years, and he was loath to give it up, even if it the extra distraction might not be ideal.
A glance at the Heads Up Display on his glasses indicated which of the three drones was camera one, and he turned to face it as a digital countdown moved from five to four, three to two...
“Better late than never, right. You guys down in Australia must be ready to string me up by my toes for making you wait in the middle of the night.” A small snicker slipped his lips, and he gestured out to the incredible landscape spreading out behind him. "But as you can see, after a few glitches, here we are. Albieth."
"Now, as much as I want to get started and let you guys watch me fall over myself trying to kill a boar or something, we gotta talk mechanics. And yes, I know, I know..." Cayden didn't even have to see the chat to know it was undoubtedly being flooded with complaints at him dumbing down his channel for the lowest common denominator. He was damned if he did, damned if he didn't, so he might as well use the opportunity to go over mechanics one more time. "... everyone knows how Babel works. Except those who don't. And from the interest in the AMA, I figure I at least owe it to new viewers or those who have never watched a Babel stream before to give them a quick rundown, okay?"
“So. Where to begin. Well, for starters, let's look at my character sheet.”
Cayden snapped his fingers twice, and an Alternate Reality menu sprung into existence on his glasses. The polarized lenses included a micro-projector that would have been impossible only a few years earlier, beaming a lifelike image directly onto his retina in a way that caused zero eye strain with near perfect fidelity. They also had the added benefit of a high-resolution front-facing camera, and when synced with his mirror they had the processing power to combine the footage with the projection he was seeing. In essence, they allowed any viewer to see both his HUD and his full field of vision.
Of course, the AR glasses were only half the prize. Or perhaps a third? The remainder came in the form of the custom tailored haptic gloves he wore. Sensors built into the fingertips of the first three fingers allowed him to interact with anything being displayed by his glasses, providing force feedback that made the invisible menus feel nearly as real as the mirror he had been tapping his way through mere minutes ago.
Both devices were fully connected to the magic mirror weighing down his back pocket, allowing him to access any of the dozens of menus on that device with a literal snap of his fingers.
"As you can see, my rig is all custom fitted, third generation AR. None of that eyestrain-inducing near eye display. And again, thank you so much whoever it was who sprung for this setup." His benefactor had chosen to remain anonymous, but even a month later Cayden was still baffled that anyone would drop the close to $10,000 USD cost for a total stranger on the internet, even if they did like his streams. "But everything you are seeing is the same as if I were interacting with it on the mirror itself. It is just way easier if I don't have to pull it out of my pocket."
"Bit of a fun fact, but the tower does have an AR component built in. The problem is that it's bugged." Buried in the options menu of the mirror was a selection to activate Player Character heads up display. A few early adopters had noticed this setting and toggled it on. Last he'd heard they were still in a coma. "Clearly the developer could have benefited from at least a little bit of beta testing. That isn't the only bug in the game either, which is good. If you've been watching my channel long enough, you know that speedruns thrive on glitches. It also adds a lot of credence to the theory that the developer... crap, I'm rambling again. Right. Menus.”
The menu before him had a total of 8 categories. Simple, though he knew each of them was filled with an assortment of submenus:
Player Info
Inventory
Abilities
Map
Journal
Social
Collections
Achievements
"Now a lot of these are self-explanatory if you've played any MMO, so we're just going to be focusing on specific mechanics for the time being. That said, let's hop into Player Info to start."
Cayden extended two fingers and pressed them to the button labeled Player Info. It took a little getting used to without the sensation of a physical button, but the gloves themselves constricted around the tips of his fingers applying a pressure similar to what he would have experienced pressing down on the real thing.
The menu blinked out of existence at his touch, replaced an instant later by a pair of two foot tall, stark gray rectangles filled with information. He'd have to customize them later, though he'd be damned if he let his followers select his background after the Demon Chocobo incident at Awful Games Done Quick.
The window to his right was a standard paper doll that would have looked at home in any one of a thousand RPGs going back decades. If Cayden had to guess it's inspiration, he'd have gone with a slightly more fleshed out Might and Magic. A somewhat cartoonish representation of him stood menacingly in the center of the image, with thirteen arrows pointing to various spots on his person. Empty squares sat at the end of each of the arrows, the boxes filled with a shadowed outline of the proper gear for that slot. Helms, shoulders, rings, amulets, boots and so forth.
The screen on his left was text and numbers, a breakdown of his character as it currently stood, a small 'details' button to the side indicating that this was only the simplest summary:
Name: Cayden
Gender: Male
Bloodline: Agares-Tabbris
Class: Guardian 1
Experience: 0
Next Level: 1000
Strength:1
Dexterity: 1
Vitality: 1
Energy: 1
Stat Points Remaining: 40
Max HP: 540
HP Recovery: 0.2/Second
Max MP: 10
MP Recovery: 0.2/Second
Max TP: 240
TP Recovery: 0.3/Second
“Yeah. A Guardian. Bet you thought I was going to play a mage, didn't you?” Cayden's penchant for playing spellcasters in the MMO's he streamed was well known. As was, unfortunately, his penchant for botching the run by dying as spellcasters.
“For the uninitiated, a Guardian is one of the warrior branch classes. It exists as a hybrid Tank/DPS class which is ideal for the style of semi-risky play I've routed myself. Just enough tankiness that I can survive the occasional surprise, while not losing so much in damage that I simply can't keep up the pace I'm looking for.”
Cayden turned his attention to the statistic screen, a pointed finger indicating his remarkably low stats. “As some of my more astute viewers may notice, I suck right now. I selected Tabbris as my Throne, so I should probably get those points distributed before some even worse newbie runs a train of mobs through the starting zone.”
The same finger now tapped at the small plus sign next to the four statistics, dumping the points as he explained each in turn. "If you've played RotG or any copycat MMO, you recognize the four stats and what they do. Strength is a 1:1 percentage bonus to damage and effects TP growth. Dexterity does the same for my defenses and TP. Each point in vitality gives me forty more blessed HP, and unlike Strength or Dex, I get twenty TP instead of ten per point since it is my primary stat as a Guardian."
"And finally, our dump stat." Cayden chuckl
ed. "Eventually I'll find some gear with +Energy, or I'll come up with some alternative that fills in the gap. Honestly though, outside of a handful of must-haves like teleport there aren't any spells I'll ever be picking up. So here are our final starting stats."
Name: Cayden
Gender: Male
Bloodline: Agares-Tabbris
Class: Guardian 1
Experience: 0
Next Level: 1000
Strength: 12
Dexterity: 15
Vitality: 16
Energy: 1
Stat Points Remaining: 0
Max HP: 1140
HP Recovery: 3.2/Second
Max MP: 10
MP Recovery: 0.2/Second
Max TP: 790
TP Recovery: 4.3/Second
“A little more reasonable, wouldn't you say?” Cayden mugged for the floating cameras. “So next we will go over how t-”
A sudden guttural growl from his left broke into his explanation. Its source was a very pissed off looking, three foot, green-skinned humanoid. A goblin.
Among the weakest of all Babel's creatures, goblins such as this rarely ventured so close to player spawn points, and even when they did they seldom aggroed onto players without provocation. He'd been joking when he talked about a newbie running a train of monsters over him, but apparently, the game was taking him seriously.
The Order of Virtues, damn. Cayden realized suddenly. The last of the traits bestowed by his Goetia was a brand, in his case, The Order of Virtues. The brand could be found on the back of his palm, though it was only visible with high-level magic and served as little more than flavor for the mechanical effect of his choice. Every brand came with a particular set of starting reputations. It was a way for players who wanted to be bad to start at odds with the good aligned factions and be accepted into devious communities without having to grind reputation by Pking or slaughtering NPCs.
