Ascend Online

by Luke Chmilenko

  “Hold! Identify yourselves!” A distant voice called out, causing me to start.

  I looked around and saw a bit of commotion stirring towards the gate as a pair of guards were motioning at something on the other side of the river bordering the village; I was too far away to hear what was happening at the other end of the conversation.

  Moving quickly, I jogged through the village towards the noise as other villagers nervously peaked their heads out of their homes, many were still understandably on edge. A third guard heard my rapid approach and beckoned me with a look of relief on his face.

  “Lyrian! There are people here asking for you by name.” The guard eyed me cautiously. “They look a bit worse for wear… I think they may be bandits!”

  I frowned a moment, before laughing. “Bandits?! Well, let me have a look at them.”

  As I peered through the gate, a ragged group of Adventurers came into view. With each of them covered in dirt, mud, and wearing burnt clothes I could definitely understand the guard’s caution.

  On the other hand, I could have a bit of fun…

  “Well aren’t you the filthiest group of casuals I’ve seen this week!” I smiled at my friends. “Bout time you all made it! Did that shortcut have you all swimming through dirt to get here?”

  “Is that you Lyrian?” I heard Misha’s - Sierra’s voice reply. “Please tell me it’s you, so I can fire an arrow right into your face and not feel bad about it.”

  “Sierra, no.” Zach’s – Caius’s voice replied. “Let me strangle him a bit first.”

  “Ugh. Fine.”

  Aren’t friends great?

  The guard beside me looked at me in bewilderment. “Sir…?”

  “They’re expected, and despite their looks, not bandits,” I whispered to the guards.

  I laughed and waved at the group. “Fine. I guess I’ll let you all in, try not to dirty up the place, though.”

  A moment later, the guards had the semi-repaired gate open, and we were all patting one another on the back while trying to catch up since we’d logged in.

  “You guys look like you had a rough trip.” I eyed them carefully and saw that their gear looked fairly damaged. I waved them to follow me as we made our way into the village, and towards the Town Hall. I quickly took a moment to get my bearings and a closer look at their character choices.

  Peter, now known as Constantine, looked to be a pale-skinned half-elf with long dark hair. Armed with a single Shortsword and a backpack, he walked confidently without a single care in the world as his eyes took in the village.

  Misha, having chosen the name Sierra, caused my heart to skip a beat, flame red hair flared behind her as she moved with unearthly grace – there was no doubt in my mind she was a full-blooded Elf. In her hands, she held a bow, making her earlier threat much more believable to me.

  Zach, chose the name Caius, and was also a half-elf – though, in contrast to Constantine he was dark skinned and almost unhealthily thin, I idly wondered how he would have followed through with his desire to strangle me; he barely looked strong enough to stand up under the weight of his clothes! The only item of note I saw on him, was a plain wooden club.

  Heron, taking the name Halcyon, was human through and through, tall, dark haired with a full beard I was confident that he took the same regional specialization as I did. He didn’t seem to have any weapons on him – just a single backpack slung over his shoulders.

  Deckard, now known as Drace, was an absolute mountain of a man, standing taller than everyone else in the party, including me, looked to be human, but I was fairly sure chose some sort of sub-race due to his size. He had a backpack strapped to his shoulders as well, in addition to a plain wooden shield and Shortsword.

  “Yeah, I’m not interested in making that trek again…” Constantine looked around the village as we walked. “Eberia is placed in a weird spot geographically, despite not being too far distance wise.”

  “What do you mean?” I hadn’t thought about it until now, but a two-day journey from a capital city wasn’t really that far to travel or for the area not to be already settled.

  “The city is built on the coast,” Halcyon explained. “But it’s also in a bit of a cul-de-sac due to a cliff range that blocks it off to the north and northwest with the ocean being directly towards the west and south.”

  “The only natural way to higher elevation is to detour three or four days east and then to make it here you’d have to cut back northwest and backtrack for another three or four days.”

  “That still isn’t that far, though.” I mused. “Shouldn’t this place be already settled then?”

  “You’re forgetting about The War,” Sierra said.

  “Oh, right! What was that all about?” I asked, the Primer only having mentioned that Eberia had just ended a war with a nearby Orc tribe.

  “Oh boy… where to start? They gave us a pretty big history lesson during the ‘Call to Arms’ event back in Eberia.” Sierra shook her head as she started to explain. “Let’s take a step back first… Eberia, the nation, was founded by a group of refugees from the Ascendant Empire roughly forty years ago. Led by a handful of major noble houses after the Empire began to fall apart.”

  “What happened to the Empire?” There had been no mention at all about the Ascendant Empire in the Primer.

  “Well, the Ascendant Emperor was apparently obsessed with the idea achieving Godhood, and the entire empire was built around the near fanatical belief that the Emperor was a god.” Sierra continued to fill me in as we took seats at a table in the Town Hall. “As the legend goes, and I’m paraphrasing here. On the day that the Emperor was destined to Ascend – something Otherworldly took offense at the idea of a mortal ascending to Godhood and within the span of a few weeks the entire Empire was razed to the ground.”

  “Shit.”

  “I know, right?” Sierra took a breath before continuing. “So during The Fall, it was pretty much a mad scramble to get off of the Old Continent, people dying left and right. Cities vanishing overnight. That’s where our noble houses come in. They put aside their differences and evacuated an entire city – loading it up into barges, ships and boats, setting off into the blue.”

  “Eventually, they landed on this continent and as luck would have it, found a completely abandoned, ruin of a city – Eberia. Complete with a massive wall blocking access from the sea straight to the mountains, all protecting fertile farmland within.”

  “Well, that’s convenient.”

  “I’m sure the developers thought it’d make a great story,” Sierra said shrugging the coincidence away. “Anyway, they set up shop in the city, declared a noble King and began to rebuild the city. The problem was, the Orc Tribes got wind of the settlement, and as it turns out, the ruins were kind of a holy city to them. A memory of their past masters, the Nafarr.”

  “So they went to war.”

  Sierra bobbed her head in acknowledgment. “They did.”

  “The Orc Tribes are largely scattered throughout the South East, which put them in a prime location to block access to the greater continent. They bottled up the Eberians and tried to dig them out.”

  “From all accounts, it was a brutal war,” Sierra explained. “But with the war on Eberia’s doorstep and their supply lines protected by massive fortifications. It ended up as a massive stalemate for decades.”

  “So what changed all of that? The Orcs came to their senses and decided to leave?”

  “The Dark Elves did, if indirectly,” Sierra answered. “Over the decades that the Orc Tribes were at war with Eberia, the dark elf empire continued to expand westward. They simply ran over whatever few minor tribes remained behind, putting them to the sword and burning their villages.”

  “Eventually that news made it back to the major orc tribes, and they were forced to abandon their campaign here to save what they could of their home. Not all the tribes agreed to that, and a great deal of infighting broke out during the withdrawal.”

  “D
on’t forget about the Eberian Prince going off and killing himself,” Constantine added helpfully.

  “Oh, I’m getting to that!” Sierra hissed, raining down half a dozen blows on Constantine. “Don’t ruin my story!”

  Clearing her throat. “Right. So Prince Rainier, Heir to the Throne. Decides that on seeing the orc tribes withdrawing that it would be a great idea to sally forth with the entire Eberian Army and crush them individually.”

  “It turns out it was a flawless idea.” Sierra made a chopping motion with her hand. “The army absolutely devastated the divided orc forces, and Rainier was rumored to have personally killed half a dozen orc chieftains during the battle. In a single battle, he completely cut the head off of the orc leadership.”

  “Problem was that a lifetime of war breeds a lot of hate, and he didn’t want to allow a single orc to escape and lost sight of the battle. He pulled ahead of the army and just like that.” Sierra snapped her fingers “He was surprised by an ambush, filled full of arrows and left for dead.”

  “Just like that?” I was surprised at the anti-climactic ending.

  “That’s war,” Sierra said bluntly. “It doesn’t care who you are.”

  “With the prince dead, Rainier’s son, Swain became heir. Just in time too – because age finally caught up with King Cyril leaving the very young twenty-year-old, King.”

  “Twenty?! Can he even be left alone unsupervised?” I started to get a better idea of the political landscape of Eberia. “How can they expect him to run a Kingdom?”

  “Poorly, most likely, since he comes off as a colossal dick,” Constantine grunted. “Kept going on and on about himself during the event, and how we should be so thankful for his leadership and all the money the crown spent on training the adventurers. I give him less than a year before he’s killed by a player.”

  “You think so?” I asked as the group nodded their assent empathetically. “So quickly?”

  “You didn’t see Eberia… so you didn’t see the other players.” Constantine explained “We saw a blacksmith get robbed by mob – simply because his gear was on display and easy to take. Another vendor was stabbed to death in the street because someone liked the hat they were wearing.”

  “Sure the guards came in, broke some heads and threw the offenders in jail. Apparently killing an NPC unprovoked will get you thirty days of online jail time. If you log out, the timer stops.”

  “That’s harsh, but a good idea I think.” I nodded. “NPCs won’t re-spawn like we do.”

  “Yeah… players are slowly getting the message… but by majority people are acting like this is just any other MMORPG and that NPCs are made to be walked over, it’ll take time for the consequences to sink in. Right now, the only rule Players are playing by is the rule ‘Might Makes Right’.”

  I sighed and nodded. “Then we need to make sure we’re the strongest players around until they do.”

  Chapter 13

  “So with The War, it makes more sense why this place hasn’t been settled until recently. But how did you guys get here so soon?” I asked, hoping to get answers to their threadbare appearances.

  “Well, while we were messaging a few days ago, I overheard a few members of the Surveyors Guild talking about a network of ropes that they had set up to help scale the cliff without having to trek around the ridge,” Constantine explained. “Long story short… we had a few issues, but we made it up without too many problems.”

  “I almost died!” Caius exclaimed.

  “Bah, you’re fine.” Constantine waved a hand dismissively. “Besides you’ll probably die a ton of times in this game.

  “That’s not the point! You could have waited before setting fire to the ropes!” Caius continued, now glaring at Drace.

  “That wasn’t my fault!” Drace grunted. “I just did what I was told!”

  “Wait, what happened?” I gaped at my friends.

  “Oh, he’s just annoyed because we lost some gear.” Constantine shrugged. “Nothing too serious.”

  “And that we may technically be kill on sight for the Surveyor’s Guild now.” Sierra deadpanned. “Or face jail time if we’re ever caught by them.”

  “Wait, WHAT?!” I shouted.

  “Okay, so maybe they were going to use those ropes to create a lift.” Constantine continued to wave his hands around dismissively. “And maybe it wasn’t so much as just setting the ropes on fire, but the entire supporting structure.”

  “And other players,” Halcyon chimed in.

  “Why… would you just decide to burn it?” I shook my head at the story unfolding before me.

  “Because they wouldn’t listen, even after I threw one of them off,” Constantine explained as if it made perfect sense.

  “Okay.” I rapped my knuckles on the table, getting everyone’s attention. “I’m going to need the full story here, because what we’ve got so far… just isn’t adding up.”

  “Ugh.” Constantine rolled his eyes. “So we weren’t the only ones that found out about the rope system, and there was another group of people that were making the climb with us. Follow?”

  “So far so good,” I said giving Constantine a thumbs up.

  “Right, so during the climb we were mixed in with the other group of players climbing with us. The thing is, once we got to the top. They decided they didn’t want to play nice anymore and killed the two guards stationed there. Then they told me to strip and drop all my gear onto the ground.”

  “So naturally you told them to suck a bucket of dicks,” I said, still following the story.

  “So naturally I told them to suck a bucket of dicks.” Constantine nodded. “They didn’t take my advice and tried to get handsy. So I decided to throw one of them off the platform.”

  “Seems appropriate,” I replied in full agreement.

  “Well, they decided that they didn't like that either and by that point, two more had finished their climb.” Constantine mimed fighting with his sword. “I kept them at bay long enough for Drace to finish his climb.”

  “Not with a sword,” Drace cut in. “But by smashing a lantern against the side of one of their heads in a wooden structure.”

  “Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea at the time. But I barely knew what end of a sword to hold back then.” Constantine shrugged. “I’m better at it now.”

  “Right.” I rubbed my face. “So you’re fighting for your life and now the place is catching fire.”

  “So then I yelled at Drace to grab something that’s burning and to set the ropes on fire.”

  “So I did.” Drace nodded. “And set rope the other members of their party were climbing on fire.”

  “I was climbing it too!” Caius yelled.

  “Bro, calm down. Sierra caught you. You’re fine.” Constantine waved at Caius’s complaint dismissively. “You worry too much.”

  “Right, so after that the gloves came off,” Constantine continued to explain. “Drace and I managed to keep them from killing either of us until Halcyon made it up the other rope… and once he did, they didn’t have a chance.”

  Constantine ran a hand through his hair. “But by that point…” He made a whooshing sound. “The place was completely aflame. Caius lost his pack when he fell, and Sierra had to cut hers loose when she caught him.”

  “Then it all burnt down,” I finished.

  “Pretty much.” Constantine nodded. “After that, we had to split supplies on our way up here… with the five of us roaming creatures weren’t much of a problem…”

  “Until we ran out of food and water,” Halcyon added. “Did you know that you stop regenerating health if you haven’t eaten?”

  I nodded. “Yeah… found out the hard way too.”

  “Thankfully Sierra managed to find us some wild potatoes.” Caius acknowledged with a nod in her direction. “Kept us going until today.”

  “Well… we have plenty of food here you all can have.” I smiled at the group while I collected my thoughts. “So… are you sure you’
re kill on sight with the Surveyor’s guild? Or you think you might be?”

  “We… might be?” Sierra said. “I didn’t get a message… and my character sheet still lists me as neutral. But it wasn’t a real secret that we were making the climb.”

  “It’s not like there was a sign-in sheet either!” Constantine exclaimed, before a thoughtful expression came over his face. “They might be able to piece it together. Technically the other group killed the guards, then we killed them.”