by Brian Simons
“Cheer up,” Sal said, “you’ll figure out how to finish the Regent’s quest. I have faith in you.”
“Thanks, Sal.”
“Ready to head to Havenstock?” he asked. Coral nodded. She activated her teleport and she and Sal soon materialized just south of Havenstock.
She looked out over the nearby farms. Not a farmer in sight. As she and Sal walked into the city, she didn’t hear any voices talking or feet hitting the cobblestone roads. She didn’t see any carts or wagons on the move. Every house was dark and every shop was locked up tight. She remembered one day last winter when the news had warned that a massive blizzard was on its way, with fierce winds and dozens of inches of snow. Havenstock felt like that. Like it had battened down the hatches in anticipation of a devastating storm.
Sal led the way through the streets, peering cautiously down each side road for signs of movement. They left the fountain behind them and kept walking toward the castle. Coral felt vulnerable, traveling as only a pair. Together, she doubted the four of them stood a chance against Otto, but if he showed up now she and Sal were goners for sure. Still, it would be easier to tread quietly in a smaller group. She hoped Daniel and Sybil would find the city as deserted as she and Sal had.
They crept quietly until they got to the castle and then they rang the bell. That tiny little chime sounded like a gong ringing out over the perfect stillness of the city. A large metal door creaked slightly open. Coral turned sideways to squeeze through. Sal had to work harder to move his massive frame through the small aperture. When they were through, the door closed behind them. For now, they had avoided another run-in with Otto.
The courtyard between the outer wall and the castle was beautiful as usual, but empty. Coral and Sal walked to the front door to the castle and pulled it open. Inside, the castle was alive with activity. It looked like every living person in Havenstock had taken shelter in the castle. They sat on the stone floor in groups or leaned against the castle walls conversing with other players and NPCs that had sought refuge here.
The Regent was at the other end of the long hallway that led to the throne, but he was already on his feet, rushing to meet Coral and Sal with his coterie.
“Coral_Darning,” the Regent said, “and the green one. Where are the other two?”
“They’ll be on their way soon, I hope,” Coral said. She realized that she had no way of knowing whether the others had been successful.
“Good, good,” said the Regent. “Do you have the new armor prepared?”
“We’re working on it. There’s a salve we think will be important. We have the ingredients, but not the herblore skill level we’d need to make it.”
“Alua?” the Regent beckoned. The court psychic had been standing behind the Regent, mostly obscured from view by his imposing figure and his large red cape, which flew out in all directions as he gestured.
“I can assist with that,” Alua said. “What ingredients do you have?”
“Juvensprig,” Sal said, handing Alua several tufts of the thistly plant. “You just need to steep it in shallow boiling river water overnight and then mix it in with some paste.”
Alua’s eyes went wide. “Where did you find this?”
“In the marsh,” Sal replied. “Why?”
“We thought this plant was extinct,” Alua said, turning her gaze toward the Regent. Her tattoos began glowing faintly green. “The elf queen made it clear that this herb was a powerful threat to Travail’s order. She required that every kingdom dispatch their forces to find and destroy juvensprig wherever it grew.”
“Well,” said the Regent, “what a happy mistake we have made, underestimating this plant. Alua, kindly prepare whatever unction our friends deem necessary.”
“Of course,” she said. “It will be ready in the morning.” She took the plant and walked away.
“I hope you have more in mind than juvensprig war paint,” the Regent said.
“We will,” Coral said, stalling. “In the morning. We’re tired from a long journey to the Ogrelands.”
“Which explains that horrid smell,” the Regent said. “You really should be more discerning with the company you keep.” He gave Sal a hard stare.
“You don’t say,” she muttered, staring the Regent in the eyes. When this quest was over, she’d be happy not to come back to the castle again.
“More refugees?” the Regent called out toward the front of the castle as the metal gate swung open again. “Oh, it’s your friend Daniel_the_Maniel and his impling. Well, I’ll leave you all to your task. I look forward to seeing your handiwork in the morning.” The Regent and his entourage turned and walked back toward the throne.
Daniel and Sybil ran over to Coral and Sal. “How’d it go?” Coral asked.
“We narrowly escaped death at the hands of the dark elves,” Daniel said. “Sybil was banished from her ancestral homeland and is somehow supposed to liberate an entire kingdom of minotaurs trapped beneath The Ersatz. What about you?”
“I won a cooking competition,” Sal said, “and Coral sewed clothes for a bunch of ogres.”
“Oh,” Sybil said, “you poor things.”
“We also,” Coral said, “got chased out of the Ogrelands after an elf showed up with this.” She held out the letter. “Sal read it to me. Basically, the elf queen wants the races to remain separate.”
“Of course she does,” Sybil said. “She wants to make sure we don’t trade with each other or ally against her. She’s a paranoid control freak. Unfortunately, she also controls a forest full of powerful magic and a highly adept army.”
“So, if she wanted to mobilize against Otto—” Coral started.
“He’d be dead before dusk,” Sybil said. “But she’d never do that. Otto is a dream come true for her. He’s making us all weaker, which paves the way for her to expand her influence. The dark elves were banished because we — sorry, they — opposed her plan to enslave the dwarves.”
“Whoa,” Daniel said. “I had no idea.”
“It’s in the introductory material when you start in The Ersatz,” Sybil said. “I guess the game devs didn’t think humans would care.”
“But we can stop Otto,” Sal said, “right? Sybil, did you figure out how powerful your new Dark Faith song is?”
“I didn’t get it,” Sybil confessed. “I refused to kill for those hypocrites.”
“They wanted her to kill a minotaur calf unprovoked,” Daniel said, turning to Sybil. “You made the right choice.” Sybil nodded noncommittally.
“Meanwhile,” Daniel said, “I really didn’t know what would happen underground, so I snatched this off a shelf in Sage Tawn’s chamber.” Daniel held the vial out for Sybil to see. “I was hoping it was some kind of HP or MP potion.”
“Sage Tawn is no healer. Don’t drink that,” Sybil said, “whatever it is.”
“Did you figure out how to make armor for the Regent?” Daniel asked Coral.
“Not yet,” she said. “I’ve been wracking my brain, but all we came up with is some kind of salve made from juvensprig that cuts down respawn time. I do have an idea though. It’s going to be… icky. But I think I have the market cornered on disgusting wearables these days. It involves that giant centipede carcass.”
“Ah,” Daniel said. “Well, I assume you won’t need help with that?”
“No,” Coral said, “I’ll manage. It may take me a while though, so I’ll just aim to see you guys in the morning.”
Coral walked away, looking for someplace she could craft in peace. She went out to the courtyard and walked around to the side of the castle. There was a slight chill in the air, but other than that it was a beautiful day. Coral took the giant centipede out of her bag and placed it in front of her with her spool of spider silk. She took her fabric shears. Those poor fabric shears. They had spent more time cutting through zombie flesh and dead bugs than actual fabric.
>> Januar has descended from the sky near Havenstock. Visit him now for blessings and holy tidings! Appe
arance duration: 5 minutes. Countdown to Januar’s renewal: 18 hours.
I know, I know, she thought to herself. Time is ticking.
Taking what she learned from the cockroach vest she had created for Varta, she removed the centipede’s legs first, and then carved out as much of the internal bits as she could. Then she cut sections of the husk to roughly the length of a human torso. She had eighteen of these. Then she used the spider silk as glue to bind two sections of the centipede’s back together to form a cylinder. She used the legs as shoulder straps. She had created nine of the dead insect vests. Upon further inspection, these had exactly the property she had hoped for.
>> Carapace Armor. So that’s what a heebie jeebie looks like. Defense +6, Diplomacy -2. Durability: 2/2. Posthumous Twitch: Carapace Armor grants one additional attack after HP reaches zero.
She worked on this new armor late into the night. The gear didn’t provide much of a bonus to Defense, and the hideousness of the brown shiny chitin reduced the wearer’s Diplomacy, but none of that mattered. If Coral was right, and she desperately hoped that she was, adding some juvensprig salve to the armor would bring the Regent’s guards back to full life while they took their Posthumous Twitch. It wouldn’t work on player characters, only NPCs, but it would improve the strength of their little army in their last stand against Otto.
She was exhausted, but sitting here crafting reminded her that she still had that tract of Januar’s skin in her bag. She figured if he were a lizard, she could make something from it like shoes or a belt. She checked her crafting screen and found that she had enough lizard skin to make four belts, one for her and each of her friends, through her Skinweaving skill. It was quick work.
>> Belt of the Psychopomp. Waist not want not! Defense +2, Constitution +10. Durability: 1/1.
There was one more thing she wanted to do before calling it a night. She pulled out the four pieces of frogskin she held back after the marsh. She crafted one large pair of frogskin boots.
>> Frogskin Boots. Well-heeled and well-toad. Defense +1, +10% Cold Resistance, +10% Poison Resistance. Durability: 15/15.
Hours of crafting had netting Coral 500 well-earned XP.
>> Congratulations! You have reached Level 20. To apply your 3 skill points now, open your Skills and Attributes screen.
Satisfied with her hard work, Coral logged off and went immediately to sleep.
36
Travail Server 215 (corrupt) Automated Intelligence Log.
Problem: Unable to push content to additional servers.
Analysis of problem nearing completion…
37
After Coral left the group, Daniel had wandered through the castle in search of Alua. The court psychic seemed better attuned to Januar than the head priest at Januar’s own temple, and she had the herblore necessary to turn juvensprig into a Hail Mary jam. Daniel wondered what other skills she possessed, and if she could help him identify the vial he filched from Sage Tawn.
He wandered the castle for a while before he noticed a sweet scent, like cupcake batter mixed with toffee. He followed the scent to the rear of the castle and found Alua there, steeping juvensprig stalks in a pot of boiling water by a window. She was staring out the window when he walked in.
“Excuse me, Alua?” he said. She jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Yes? Oh, hello Daniel_the_Maniel. Is it that time already?” she asked.
“What time?”
“The time for you to ask me what you stole from Sage Tawn,” she said.
“How did you…”
“Ze saw the whole thing. Don’t worry, she isn’t angry with you for stealing it, she’ll only be angry with you if you use it.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The goddess of life, Ze. Don’t look so surprised. I’m a Medium, they all speak to me. Oftentimes unbidden.”
“Do you speak to them too?”
“Sometimes. It is much more exhausting when I initiate communication, and they are not always receptive to it.”
“So, what is it? What’s in this vial?” Daniel reached into his bag and produced a vial, just four inches tall, filled with a cloudy liquid.
“I’ll need to look closely to find out,” Alua said, taking the small container. She looked at the liquid through the glass, uncorked it and smelled its contents, then recorked it quickly. “This,” she said, “is death in a bottle. It is a potent poison. That isn’t surprising, Sage Tawn is a powerful and ruthless mage.” She handed the bottle back to Daniel. “Still, I would not want something like this in my possession.”
Daniel thanked her for the information and left her to work on the salve. He wandered back through the castle oblivious to his surroundings, lost in thought. Here he was in the castle, with ready access to Regent Harold, and with a vial of poison in his possession. It’s like the universe was daring him to finish Devon’s quest. But poisoning the Regent would ruin their chances at stopping Otto. Wouldn’t it?
Enough. He wasn’t going to poison Havenstock’s ruler because some outlaw told him to. No matter how much stronger Devon promised to make him.
Daniel broke from his thoughts in a spiral stairwell and realized he had walked up several flights. He leaned out the window at the stairs’ landing and saw the sun setting on the horizon to the west. He turned his head to each side but saw no sign of Otto, or anyone else, in the city. Then he looked down and saw Coral a few stories below, surrounded by chopped up pieces of centipede. What was that girl up to?
***
When morning came, Daniel woke up in his bed in Manayunk. Today was the day he stood up to Travail’s most dire threat. It might also be the day he died, again. He was really hoping to avoid that.
He logged back into Travail after breakfast and appeared where he had last logged off, in a castle tower. He descended the stone steps to the castle’s main hall and found it alive with an energy he had never felt in-game before. All of Havenstock’s remaining NPCs were there. A ton of players were there too.
Evil Otto seemed to favor Havenstock. Higher level players that had explored Travail’s more dangerous lands might have been able to teleport out of here and leave Otto for others to deal with. Players that paid to play would just buy a teleport and pop off to safety. Daniel figured that the players that holed up in the castle were lower level players, unable to escape Havenstock without the fear of permadeath if they ran into Otto, and players that couldn’t afford to buy their way out of this. In other words, players like him.
“This won’t affect my reputation, will it?” someone asked Daniel from behind. He spun around and saw Otto, the Level 2 Shopkeeper. He, too, was among the many hiding from Evil Otto’s Soulkeeper Axe.
“Nah,” Daniel said. “Everyone knows it’s a different guy with your face. Once we get him out of the way, things will be back to normal for you.”
“Thank you, and your friends. I wish I had something to give you, but I wasn’t able to bring any of my wares to the castle with me.”
“Don’t worry about it, Otto,” Daniel said. Then his attention was caught by a hand waving in the air closer to the throne. It was Coral. She stood with Sybil and Sal, in front of the Regent and his guards. Daniel said goodbye to Otto and jogged over to them.
“We’re waiting for Alua,” Coral said. “In the meantime, equip this. We’ll need all the help we can get.” She handed him a belt from some kind of dry, cracked leather. “I nabbed some of Januar’s molted skin and made a belt out of it.”
Daniel equipped it, replacing his basic leather belt. The Constitution bonus of the new belt gave him 200 extra HP. It didn’t match the rest of his armor, but he didn’t care. There hadn’t been a set bonus anyway.
“Nice boots,” he said to Sal, noticing a new pair of black, green, and yellow boots on his massive feet.
“Thanks! Coral made these from the frogs we fought in the marsh.”
“Which means,” Sybil said, “she held out on me. But they look good on him, so I’m ok with
it.”
The Regent had been conversing with the court mage, and the guards had all been chatting together, until they saw Alua approaching. Everyone fell silent. Alua handed Coral a jar of green paste.
“This,” Alua said, “is all of the juvensprig salve.” She handed it to Coral, who immediately sat on the floor with it and took nine large, shiny black items out of her bag. Each was the size of a human torso. Coral dipped a finger in the paste and then applied it to each chitinous breastplate. She drew a horizontal line across each piece of armor, and then enclosed each end of that line in a triangle that pointed outward. It was the sign of Januar.
