by Galen Wolf
We wait like three expectant fathers while the timer bar runs up to its end.
‘88%’ Bernard says.
Being an NPC, Geraint can’t see the timer bar at all, but I can. ‘93%,’ I say.
‘Nearly there.’ Bernard’s staring at the glass window in the metal furnace door.
Then there’s a cracking sound and the egg judders inside the furnace. ‘Open the door,’ yells Bernard. ‘We don’t know if it will survive the heat.’
‘It must do,’ I say but Geraint is quicker and opens the door with his tongs. The egg has cracked and there’s a tiny lizard thing crawling around in the glowing coals. It slithers its way to the door and drops out onto the stone floor. It’s about three inches long, looking something like a crested newt. It sits there on the floor staring up with blinking reptilian eyes.
‘That’s a baby Jabberwock?’ Bernard says. ‘It’s cute!’
‘I agree. Very sweet. Now you see the problem we have in getting its blood.’
‘What do they eat? Meat?’
‘Carrots, I think. Maybe other root vegetables.’
‘Potatoes?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Can I keep it?’
I glare at him. ‘No!’
‘Just to do research on it?’
‘Don’t kill it, Bernard.’
‘I won’t. How could I kill such a cutesy-wutesy likkle thing?’
Bernard reaches down and the baby Jabberwock scuttles into his palm. He immediately begins to stroke it and it makes a tiny cooing noise, so quiet it’s almost inaudible. ‘Right, you said I could keep it.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘So, I’m going off to find some carrots for it. I’ll be in my workshop.’
He disappears out the door. ‘Don’t kill it!’ I yell to his disappearing back, but he’s already gone. Geraint looks at me and raises his eyebrows. I merely shrug. We may have to kill the Jabberwock of course, but not yet.
I wave goodbye to Geraint and he gets on with his work. After a short walk, I’m back in my room. I decide to spend the two hundred skill points I’ve accumulated. As always, there are many things I could spend them on, but I know where I’m going to put them already.
I allocate points to the Smithing skill tree.
I’m up to 250 points in the tree already, so when I put another fifty in and get to 300, I get the ability to work diamond. Diamond when worked into a piece of armour gives a 10% chance to resist enemy critical hits, and because, like all minerals, the benefit stacks, if I wear five pieces of armour with diamond in them, I get a 50% resistance to enemy crits. And that is awesome.
At 350 in Smithing, I get Enhance. That gives me the ability to improve the armour rating of each piece by a further time, so stacking with double-fold, reinforce and refine, the new enhance skill gives 4x the base protection. It goes on weapons too. Very cool.
At 375, I get the ability to work with platinum, which has a base durability or damage rating of 700.
At 400 I get the ability to work with crystal. Crystal has a base durability of 1000. And then at 450, I get the ability to work with Smoky Crystal. This means I can work with Bernard now to unlock the vorpal effect. But only when we get Jabberwock blood.
I walk back to Geraint’s forge and spend the rest of the day improving my weapons and armour. I also take off the Green Knight disguise and once again I am Sir Gorrow of the Bloody Field for all the world to see with my arms of a green field with a bend gules on it.
Taking all my armour together now, I have Enhanced Crystal on five pieces giving me a base armour rating of 20,000, plus 100% resistance to critical hits, 50% unholy, cold, fire, electricity and acid resistance. I then add my 30% knightly bonus to that and a 10% mounted stacking bonus.
My sword, now Enhanced Crystal has 4000 base damage before enhancement bonuses from being a knight or mounted. It has anti-lycanthrope star silver, a bleed rune, dropsy 5%, Doublestrike 5%, and 25% critical chance.
I feel unassailable. I feel ready to take on Satanus himself. Then I remind myself that pride comes before a fall.
Just then Bernard bursts in, holding the Jabberwock under his arm. It’s the size of a small dog now. He’s obviously found a lot of carrots to feed it. He stops and looks at me in my new crystal armour.
‘Wow! You’re shiny!’
I smile. ‘What do you want in such a hurry?’
‘Ah Gorrow,’ he says, stroking the baby Jabberwock’s head. ‘I’ve figured it out!’
Vorpal
‘You figured what out?’
The baby Jabberwock is purring under Bernard’s arm and the light from the forge casts an ominous shadow on the rock wall behind him.
‘This.’ He points at the Jabberwock.
‘You mean the blood?’ I say it in a whisper like I’m worried the Jabberwock will hear and get upset. Geraint’s behind me, and he’s stopped clanging his hammer on the anvil.
‘Yes, the blood. I read the recipe. It’s sneaky the way they’ve worded it.’ He chuckles to himself. ‘But what do you except from devs?’
‘Get to the point, Bernard.’
‘Yes, sorry. So, did you read the recipe?’
Since we found the Smoky Crystals we’ve both had access to the recipe for vorpal weapon enhancement. I did read it when it first unlocked, but not since. ‘Tell me?’ I say.
‘So. See this bit? It says:
‘Once the ability is unlocked, the Vorpal Weapon Enhancement can be crafted into any weapon in the same way a normal weapon enhancement is created. Place the chosen weapon on a crafting forge and add a Smoky Crystal and Jabberwock essence in two of any of the five free crafting slots.’
I scratch my cheek. ‘Yeah, Jabberwock essence. So where does the idea of blood come from?’
‘Aha! Follow the links.’
I mentally select the links on my HUD and I get a definition of Jabberwock.
Jabberwock: a rare reptilian creature found in the north of Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia.
‘Doesn’t say anything about carrots, see?’ Bernard taps his nose. ‘They’re not giving everything away here.’
I sigh. ‘Bernard, what are you going on about?’
‘Follow the link from the word ‘essence’.’
‘Very well.’ I select that link and I’m led to another text entry.
‘Essence is the core element of a mineral, plant or animal used in many crafting recipes. In minerals, the essence is often obtained via crushing the mineral; in plants by creating a tincture with water or alcohol from the leaves or flowers, and in animals the essence can be extracted from bodily products such as blood.’
Bernard’s eyes are gleaming. ‘You see?’
I nod. ‘That’s where we got the idea that we needed the Jabberwock’s blood.’
‘But it isn’t blood!’
‘It isn’t? It says it is.’
He shakes his head vigorously. ‘It says, “such as” blood.’
A light dawn. ‘Ah,’ I say. ‘So it’s not necessarily the blood. It’s just something we can extract the bodily essence from.’
He grins. ‘Cunning, aren’t they — the devs? They would have us kill little tiny Raymond.’
‘Raymond?’
‘Yeah, Raymond here. I named him.’
The Jabberwock’s purr gets louder as Bernard chucks it under the chin. Then he reaches in his inventory, pulls out a brown substance the consistency of mud and thrusts it towards me, stuck on his fingertips.
I step back. ‘What the heck is that?’
‘It’s Jabberwock poop. We can extract the essence from that.’
I shake my head and pull back my hands. ‘You can extract it, Bernard. You’re the alchemist. Come back when it’s done. In the meantime, I’ll grind the Smoky Crystal.’
‘Fine. But hatch another one. Raymond needs a girlfriend.’
‘You’re sick, Bernard, you know that?’ All the same, I take another yellow and black egg from my inventory and with Geraint’s help place i
t in the furnace. Once it hits ‘start’ temperature, the timer bar appears and we count down until there’s the familiar cracking. I open the furnace door and another little Jabberwock appears. Bernard scoops it up and Raymond looks with interest at his new friend.
‘Right, I’m going off to make some tincture. But first I need to get more carrots from Jason.’
I’m called away from the game by various things and when I get time to do more than just look in, three game days have gone by.
I call a meeting of Uchtred, Jason, Geraint and Bernard in my chambers. When we’re all seated I say, ‘So bring me up to date.’
Uchtred goes first. ‘So the eagle regiment is back up to full strength of twelve and patrolling above the Secret Valley. Halberdiers are eighty-two and archers are sixty-eight.’
‘What about the heavy cavalry?’
‘Only eight of those so far,’ Uchtred says.
Geraint grunts. ‘But they’ve all got meteoric iron armour, shields and swords.’
Jason says, ‘We’ve got four more horses ready, but we need recruits to put on them. The population isn’t breeding as fast as I’d like.’
‘Okay. And Bernard, what about the Jabberwock tincture?’
‘The shit tincture?’
I nod. ‘Though you could have put it more delicately.’
He chuckles. ‘Yeah, I’ve got a couple of bottles. Got one here as it happens.’ He takes out a glass flask containing a swirling brown liquid that looks like it has small chunks in it. ‘Did you do the crystal?’
When I logged on for a short while, I did manage to crush some Smoky Crystal with a pestle and mortar. I say, ‘I’ve got a box of it in my inventory.’
‘Let’s go then.’ He gets to stand up.
I look to Jason. ‘What about enemy movements?’
‘They’re still sending patrols. They know we’ve got a settlement here I’m guessing.’
I blush thinking that it was me that let the cat out of the bag in Elizabeth Bathory’s presence.
He continues, ‘But so far they haven’t found us. I guess it’s a matter of time if they keep looking.’
‘Carrionburg’s busy. They’re still digging out Smoky Crystal and shipping it north. Not sure they’ve got any, ahem, ‘tincture’ though.
Laughing, I say, ‘I think we’ve got the only Jabberwocks. So they won’t have. Where are they by the way?’
Bernard says, ‘Raymond and Dorothy are up in the fields in the Secret Valley. I think they’re in love.’
I groan. ‘Please. And stop calling them stupid names. They’re just Jabberwocks.’
He ignores me with a snort. ‘We’ve got the ingredients. Let’s go and craft some vorpal.’
I see the meeting’s done now so I stand. ‘You come too, Geraint.’ The black haired smith nods and follows us silently to his forge.
We stand there, the sweat beading on our foreheads, the glare of the forge making everything yellow. ‘I’ll do the bellows,’ Geraint says and starts pumping. Air plays over the charcoal and soon it’s glowing red and then white. ‘Ready,’ he says.
There’s a weapon crafting template with a slot for the weapon and then five slots for ingredients. We’ll only need two this time.
‘Your sword?’ Bernard says, pointing at my scabbard. I draw the blade and place it in the crafting slot. The heat fades slightly and Geraint has to pump the bellows again. I reach into my inventory and pull out the box of Smoky Crystal granules. I use the ladle from the water butt after drying it off and spoon out two heaps of dark Smoky Crystal into one ingredient slot. Bernard takes his brown liquid tincture and unstoppers the flask. A pungent odour floods the room.
‘Woah! What the hell’s that stink?’ Geraint says.
‘Tincture,’ Bernard replies and pours the liquid into the second ingredient slot, leaving three slots empty.
‘You need to do the next bit from the HUD,’ Bernard says, like I’d forgotten. I select the tab and there’s the CRAFT button ready to be engaged. With slight trepidation, I hit craft and another timer bar pops up, but it doesn’t take long and after five seconds the crystal and tincture disappear. The sword looks the same, but when I check its stats, it says:
Enhanced Crystal Longsword
4000 base damage
50 Cold Damage
150 Fire Damage
400 Holy Damage
10 Bleed Rune
Star Silver Anti-Lycanthrope Effect
Doublestrike 5%
Of
Dropsy 5%
Demon-Slayer 5%
Vorpal 5%
That’s a heck of a weapon. I will pray and get the same stats on my lance too.
‘It worked!’ I say.
‘Fantastic!’ Bernard gives me a high five. ‘I got XP from that. Now I want the vorpal on mine too.’ He takes out his alchemical sword that glitters with runes that shift slightly in the light from the forge fire.
I leave him the box of crystal granules. ‘Feel free to grind some more. There’s some more in my chambers.’ Then I turn to the blacksmith. ‘Geraint, do you still have the weapons for the heavy cavalry? You haven’t delivered them yet, have you?’
He sucks his teeth. ‘Yeah I done it already.’
‘Okay, speak to Uchtred, get them back and vorpal them? Also, the spears of the halberdiers. Please do that too.’
He nods. ‘Sure thing, boss.’
Bernard’s bent over the forge, about to craft vorpal into his sword. ‘Where are you going?’ he asks as I walk out.
‘I’ve got some things to think about,’ I say and walk out alone.
I walk down the passage carved into the heart of the mountain. This is my Silver Drift. It’s my home. I trace my fingers along the walls. With my enhanced Mining skill I can see all the minerals now, platinum, chromium, diamond and crystal. And yes, here and there are veins of Smoky Crystal. It must underlie all the geology here up on the moor from Silver Drift right over to Carrionburg.
Up in the fields, we’ve got the Jabberwocks and with the supplies of mega-sized carrots that we grow in Fitheach’s eternal Sunlight spell, their poop will be never ending. And we’ve got the Smoky Crystal too. Can I give this up? Even for the formidable skills of the paladin.
That’s what I wanted to ponder. I was going to go to my chambers and look up the Baron Class Skills and compare them with what I know of the paladin skills.
So with paladin for the first two hundred skill points invested in the paladin prestige tree, I get:
Heal: heal 10 points per level instantly
Heal Friend: heal all party members for 10 points for every level you have instantly
Extra Health: 10% Bonus to Health
Regenerate: Passive constant 10% regeneration of total health every five minutes
Resist: Stacking 10% resistance to all damage types.
Defeat Evil: +1 to critical multiplier against evil opponents, so x4 for a sword and x5 for a lance.
Toughness: 10% stacking bonus to armour rating.
It looks good. It would make me almost unkillable on the battlefield. I then check Baron prestige skills:
Fertility: 10% bonus to population growth rate increase for both villagers and animals and crops.
Management: 10% reduction in running costs for all buildings (including dungeons).
Speed: 10% increase in movement rate of troops.
Healing: 10% improvement in healing rates for troops.
Wealth: 10% increase in production of all comms.
Defence: 10% increase in durability of all buildings.
Pretty boring. But almost essential if Silver Drift is to survive.
I sigh heavily. I don’t know what to do. I want to be an awesome holy warrior, leading from the front, I really do. If I’m honest, I want it to be me, not Gawain or Lancelot or Parsifal or Galahad, or even Mercurius, who takes down Satanus in the final battle, but my village, if it’s to pro
sper, it needs to grow faster and be more productive and tougher. We need to churn out regiments armed with the best materials we can find. Not so glamorous, but important.
I’m still lost in thought when Jason comes into my chamber. I snap my head up. ‘What’s up Jason?’
He looks worried in the candlelight. He winces. ‘Bad news. We just lost four foresters.’
I’m immediately alarmed. ‘How?’
‘Beastmen in the forest above Secret Valley. First there were some pterosaurs patrolling but the eagles took them out. Looks like they had infantry support though.’
‘What happened to the beastmen? Did they get away?’
He nods. ‘They ran fast when we sent some archers. My guess is that it was just a reconnaissance patrol. They’ve been probing and searching all over the area for weeks so they were bound to find us eventually…’
I stand. ‘Has Geraint got all the vorpal done on the troops’ weapons?’
Jason hesitates. ‘I don’t know. I can go ask him.’
‘Please, get it done. Then send me Uchtred.’
Jason nods.
I say, ‘We’ve been hiding in a hole for too long. We’re going to ride out in force.’
He stands quietly. ‘What’s your plan, boss?’
‘We’re going to burn Carrionburg.’
Riding to War
Getting ready to ride to war takes a game day. A game day we don’t have because now we know enemy scouts have spotted our settlement and escaped to tell the tale we can be sure speck of resistance in the middle of their occupied territories. It won’t be long before they come for us.
Our troops can’t easily cross the high hills around the Secret Valley so we have to close the dungeon to adventurers and march them through its passages and corridors until we get to the front door. Thank the Lord the enemy aren’t outside there yet, because they would massacre us before we formed up.
The troops marshal outside. The day is cold and the sky cloudless as I sit on Spirit to the right of the line. There aren’t many of us, but by the heavens we’re well-equipped. Geraint has done us proud with the meteoric iron weapons and armour and they’re better than most of the enemy will have. The cavalry and halberdiers have vorpal weapons now too. We’ll just have to see how that turns out, and whether it’s the killer advantage I believe it is. The cold sun glitters off the shields and swords of the ten heavy cavalry that are lined up to the left of me.
