by Matt Vancil
“I know not of this ‘French,’” said Bandaid.
“You know,” said Mansex, “when Chuck Norris runs, he stays in place, and the rest of the world spins like a treadmill.”
Noob blinked at her. “What?”
“What is a ‘Chuck Norris?’”
“I haven’t heard a Chuck Norris joke since 2004,” said Noob.
“We have,” said Yanker. “Daily.”
The Truth just groaned and shook his massive head.
“Oh ye of little faith,” started Mansex. “The Church of Chuck shall rise again, oh yes. Even now he watches over us, and one day soon, our savior will return and deliver us with holy roundhouse kicks and sacred beard grooming.” The Truth snorted.
“Anyway,” Yanker said to Noob, “you still on that bandit leader quest? He’s right around here.”
“Right here, to be exact.” Mansex had abandoned Greef and was now dancing over the corpse of a well dressed orc.
Reid moused over the body. It read Dromor, Bandit Leader. “Um,” said Noob, “He’s kind of… dead.”
“Well yeah,” said Yanker. “We kind of killed him.”
“A couple hundred times,” said Mansex.
Bandaid beamed. “We’re searching for hidden treasure, you see.”
“Farming a drop,” Mansex clarified.
“But he’ll respawn soon,” said Bandaid. “Return from the dead, I mean.”
“And then we’ll kill his ass again, along with the rest of him. Unless you’d like a turn.”
Dromor’s body faded and disappeared. A moment later, he reappeared in a corner of the cave seated on a small stone throne.
“Does anything stay dead in this game?” asked Noob.
“Not really,” said Yanker.
“Our world is full of miracles,” said Bandaid.
Dromor’s eyes locked on Noob, on his Level 1. He snarled “For the Insolace!” and threw himself towards Noob.
A force field bubble surrounded Noob. Dromor’s axe bounced off it in a shower of sparks. Noob glanced at Bandaid, who had just cast the spell. The Truth punted Dromor across the room, dropping the orc’s health bar to a sliver.
Yanker grinned. “Noob! Finish him off! You remember how.”
“I do!” said Noob. He lashed out, whip quick, and touched Dromor.
“That was Pickpocket again,” said Yanker.
“Yeah, just realized that,” said Noob. “I got a nice knife though.”
“Right-click!” yelled Yanker. Reid did.
Noob stabbed Drobor. The orc roared with exaggerated fervor and dropped dead in the exact same position his corpse had occupied before.
Trumpets blared. An explosion of light rippled up Noob’s body, and the number above his head ticked from Level 1 to Level 2 to disembodied applause.
“Huzzah!” cheered Bandaid.
“Ace,” said Yanker. “You leveled. Grats.”
“I’m so proud,” said Mansex, wiping away a fake tear. “Baby’s first steps! Now do that 98 more times, you’ll be as awesome as us.”
“As awesome as we,” said Bandaid.
Dromor’s body began to glow. Noob took a step back. “What’s with the corpse? It wasn’t doing that last time.”
“It means there’s treasure,” said Yanker.
“Right-click it?”
She nodded.
Reid moved the mouse over the body and clicked. A treasure menu popped up before Noob. In it was the head of Dromor, as well as a second item—a piece of parchment. Noob pulled out the head and examined the bit of paper. “What’s a ‘Moonchart Fragment’?”
As one,
“God damn it.” Mansex paced an angry circle around the corpse and punched the wall.
“What karma,” said Bandaid. “What cosmic irony.”
“God damn it!” Mansex cast a spell on Dromor’s corpse. The body levitated off the floor. “Rarest goddamn drop, doesn’t respawn for weeks, and Nooby-Pants here gets it? Eat shriveled leper dick, orc!” She hit the body with a lightning bolt. Burnt orc chunks fountained across the room.
“Fuck,” assessed Yanker.
“This is a sign,” said Bandaid. “This was not chance! Fortune favors this one, methinks.”
“Yeah,” said Mansex. “Or he knows exactly what he was doing and poached the drop.”
Noob wiped Dromor off his face. “It says ‘This item begins a quest.’ What’s that mean?”
“It means you found the drop quest we’ve been farming,” said Yanker. “Try to keep up.”
Noob looked up at her. “You were looking for this?”
“For about the last month or so, yeah.”
“Hey, it’s yours.” He offered her the fragment. “I don’t need it.”
“No dice,” said Mansex. “It’s bonded to you. It’ll be in your inventory until you delete that toon.”
“Oh.” Noob examined the parchment. It was some sort of astrological chart. One of the constellations looked familiar. “What does it do?”
There was no reply. He looked up to see
“Guild chat,” said Yanker. “One sec.” They kept conferring. Mansex fireballed another clump of orcs in the hall. Eventually Yanker turned his way.
“So,” she said, “we find you amusing. How’d you like to join our guild?”
“For the record,” said Mansex, “I voted against you. Because you suck, you see, and I don’t have the time to babysit a lowbie.”
“I don’t know…” said Reid. This isn’t why I’m here. “I wasn’t really—”
“Grab some XP?” continued Yanker. “Finish some quests? Share our loot?”
A bell rang in Reid’s head. “Quests! Yes! There’s a quest I’m on, actually. I’m looking for the Godsword. Have you seen it?”
Yanker raised an eyebrow. “Funny you should mention that.”
“Another sign,” said Bandaid.
“Okay, raise your hand if you’re not looking for the Godsword,” said Mansex. “Anyone? No? That’s what I thought. I sent that one out over realm chat, by the way. And what’s a noob need with the Godsword?”
The guild all looked at Noob for an answer.
“‘Tis a fair question, lad.”
Noob looked at his feet. “It’s kind of embarrassing.” That wasn’t answer enough for them, so he continued. “I need it to get my fiancée back. I did something I— … well, I hurt her, and she’s gone. I don’t know where. The Godsword’s my only clue. And if I can find that, maybe I can win her back.”
Mansex shook her head. “Please tell me that was RP and not IRL.”
“Don’t be a wanker,” said Yanker. “It’s real life.”
“Oh!” Bandaid’s hands fluttered around her face like confused doves. She was so excited she could barely speak. “Oh! Oh, such a noble quest! The search for true love, that which drives us all!”
“Not me,” said Mansex. “Beer and pussy, here.”
“Silence, whore! Noble Noob,” Bandaid took a knee before him.
“Oh, Jesus.” Mansex hid her eyes on The Truth’s shoulder. He patted her on the back.
“I pledge to thee my aid, my counsel, and my friendship, that you may swiftly find your lady love.”
“Thanks,” said Noob. What else was he going to say?
Yanker yanked Bandaid back up. “So, what do you say? You’ll cover more ground with a group.”
Why not? I did promise myself I’d make progress tonight. “Sure.” Trumpets blared.
A scroll unfurled on Reid’s screen: Yanker has invited you to join Pwny Xpress. Accept?
Reid clicked “yes.”
5
Guild War
TIP: If you find yourself lost, try asking a more experienced player for help!
Yanker escorted Noob out of the mine past row after row
of torched orc corpses. The stars were out when they returned to the surface.
Bandaid and The Truth had bid them farewell and logged out in the cave, but Mansex still had a few minutes left on her Empowered Fire buff, and wasn’t about to spend that time not setting things on fire. Yanker and Noob could see her in the distance, lobbing balls of glowing death at any hostiles in range.
“You made the right choice,” said Yanker. “Guilding up’s the way to go. Things are much easier in a group.”
“I did make it out of the caves alive,” said Noob.
“There you go. It gets harder to solo the higher you go.”
“I can imagine.”
“Die in pain, man-pig!” An orc leapt at Noob from the cliffside above the cave. Yanker casually stabbed it on the way down.
“Guess she missed one.”
Orc miners started to respawn outside the cave, one after another. Yanker walked right through the middle of them, too high level to pull their aggro. Noob, however, was not.
The nearest orc made it two steps towards Noob before dying on Yanker’s sword.
“I wanted to thank you, by the way.” Yanker wiped her blade clean. “For coming back for me. After that griefer jumped me in the woods?”
“I thought I’d gotten you killed.”
“Well, kind of. I wouldn’t have even been in there if I hadn’t been running an escort quest for your sorry butt.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“I’ll wear your—!” Skin? Pants? The orc was dead before he could say what.
“But the fact of the matter is,” she wiped more blood off her sword, “you came back. Rezzing in that zone, at your level? With a PVP jerk waiting for you? He probably only kept killing you because you kept coming back, and he took it as an insult.”
“Ah. So you saw the whole getting-killed-over-and-over thing.”
“Some of it. The Truth filled me in on the rest. Nice trick getting the guards to do the dirty work.”
“Thanks. Orc.”
“I see him.” Stab. “Anyway, you coming back like that, dumb as it was—”
“I thought I’d gotten you stuck in Hell.”
“Aw, that’s so cute! Anyway—” More orcs charged. Her blade whirled. “That was sweet of you.”
Three orc heads landed at Noob’s feet. “Thanks.”
“Ha. You’re a good guy, and that’s not just the wine talking. Hope your girl appreciates that. So thanks and all.”
Noob didn’t know what to say. He looked around at the mass of dead orcs arrayed in a near perfect circle around him. “You’re welcome. Thanks for adding me to the guild.”
“No prob. But you should seriously consider paying the fee to change your name.”
“I’m starting to think that. So…” Focus, Reid. Back on track. He started down the path back towards the monastery. “The Godsword. When do we go get it?”
Yanker impaled a charging orc and flipped it over her shoulder. “That’s an epic quest you’re talking about. Not a ‘Kill X of Y’ or ‘Bring me X many troll balls.’ That’s Level 100 territory.”
“But I’ve got that map,” said Noob.
“A piece of a map,” said Yanker. “The last piece we needed.”
“Does it show you where the sword is?”
“No,” she said, “it shows you where the door to the sword is. And the door changes places. It’s always at the back of some epic dungeon or another, and it only opens one day a month. For seven seconds. And when it closes, it’s gone—poof!—and appears somewhere completely new one month later. And the only way to find where that door is? Is to put together another Moonchart.”
Yowza. “But the door goes to the Godsword.”
“No, the door goes to the Godsword dungeon, which no guild has ever gotten through alive. So unless you’ve got the map and are leveled and geared to the teeth and you’ve got an elite guild to plow your way through the Godsword dungeon, it’s not even worth trying.”
Noob examined his map fragment. “I’m not finding this encouraging.”
“Hey, you’re not alone. The Godsword is the single most sought after artifact in the history of, like, ever. They dropped it in the game three years ago and still no one’s found it, which is freaking insane when you think of how much time people put into this game—I mean, you have people quitting their jobs to play. Kids have died from neglect because their parents couldn’t pull themselves away, if you can believe that sick shit. People form international guilds to tackle the heavy stuff and quest in shifts so there’s always someone looking, 24-7. And that’s for stuff that respawns! The Godsword doesn’t.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It’s an ‘it,’” she said, “Singular—as in, there’s one. It doesn’t respawn. You can’t come back and kill the same boss for it over and over until you get lucky and the right loot drops. There’s only one Godsword, across all servers, and once it’s found, that’s it. Done, finito, thanks for playing. So as you can imagine, there’s a bit of competition for it.”
Noob nodded slowly. “Okay, so just to confirm: to get my girlfriend’s phone number, I have to find the Grail.”
She grinned. “That’s the long and short of it.”
“Could I hire you to find it? You seem really good at stuff.”
“I am. But I’ve got my own plans for it, nooblet. And for you—you’re part of the team now, you and your delicious bit of Moonchart. Your training begins tomorrow.”
Reid was glad his toon couldn’t display his nausea. “This is way beyond me.”
“Everyone sucks when they start out. But you have to start somewhere. You can start by turning in that head. Quests are how you advance. And you’re Level 2 now, so you can stealth. I’d like to take a break from orc slicing.” She walked towards the road, past orc miners who ignored her.
Noob stood confused for a moment before Reid discovered a new button called “Stealth” on his action bar. He clicked it.
Noob crouched forward slightly and became translucent. He took a step. None of the orcs noticed him. Well, this certainly would have been useful before. Noob stealthed his way past the orcs to the road.
When they returned to the chapel, the quest giver had a small treasure box icon floating over his head in place of the scroll.
“Uh…” Noob looked to Yanker for help. “The treasure chest is—?”
“You’ve got a completed quest you can turn in to him.” Someone screamed in the distance.
“Right. That’s what I thought.”
“You can explore some of this stuff on your own, you know.”
“Right-click?”
“Of course.” Another scream. Someone was having a bad time outside.
Click.
The quest giver animated. “Well, Noob? Have you brought me the head of Dromar?” When Noob held up the head, the quest giver cheered. “Huzzah! You have proven your worth! Now choose your rewar—”
He screamed and died with a blade sticking out of his face.
Noob blinked. “Did I just…? Was that part of the process?”
A sword tapped Noob on the shoulder. He turned, saw Greef holding it. The dark elf flicked the blood from his blade and sheathed it with a salute.
“You,” Noob told him, “are a straight up jerk.”
Yanker took a step back. “Back away, Noob.”
“I’m tired of this asshole. I’ve got shit to get done, and not enough time to do it.” He stepped up to Greef. “You want to kill me? Fine, go ahead. Hit me, stab me, whack me with your mop. You won’t make it past the guards alive.” An unpleasant thought occurred to him. “Yanker? Where are the guards?”
Yanker slid her bow off her shoulder. “Back away, Noob.”
They should be in the narthex. That’s where the guard patrols started. Noob looked that way and saw the floor there covered with their dismembered bodies. A small knot of ogres and orcs and lizardmen—
h a whimper.
Greef put two fingers to his mouth and whistled. The Wickeds in the narthex looked up.
“I’m gonna back away now,” said Noob.
The Wickeds surged towards the sanctuary.
Yanker fired a glue arrow into the double doors. It stuck them shut. “Stealth!” she yelled at Noob. “Back window!”
The Wickeds smashed through the windows to either side of the doors.
Greef whipped out his net and whirled it over his head. He hesitated a blink when Noob dropped into stealth and vanished—a beat long enough for Yanker to fire a bomb arrow under the altar.
The explosion kicked the big stone slab into the oncoming Wickeds and smashed three of them into hummus.
“Window!” she yelled again.
“I’m sorry,” Noob said from nowhere. With his toon translucent, Reid could barely see where he was on screen.
She shot a gray horn-headed Wicked with an arrow that encased him in a block of ice. “Break the damn window!”
Noob looked up. The stained glass window stretched from floor to ceiling and depicted the dragon constellation twinkling. “That’s not vandalism or anything?”
“Oh, my God, how are you so bad at this?”
The quest giver respawned and turned to Noob. “Well, Noob? Have you brought me the head of Dromor?” Greef beheaded him again.
“Window!”
Noob scooped up the quest giver’s head and suddenly found himself visible again. Mental note, he told himself, picking up heads turns off stealth. He chucked the head at the window.
The window exploded in a million rainbow shards. Yanker grabbed him by the collar and leapt out with him before the top panes of the window smashed down behind them, guillotining a pair of Wickeds.
It was chaos outside the monastery. Wickeds were everywhere, ransacking the Human Starting Zone, slaying any questgivers and lowbies they could catch. The chat channel was flooded with realm-wide calls for help. The guards were useless; every time one respawned, a circle of Wickeds smashed it back down.
Yanker read the situation faster than Noob. “This is too well coordinated.” She nocked an arrow with a smoking tip to her string. “It’s gotta be a full guild raid. Fifty of them at least.”
“Fifty?” A dark elf from the nearest squad of Wickeds pointed Noob’s way and started casting some sort of fire spell.
