The sun, which shone freely into the courtyard, highlighted the detail and intricacies of the Lynx. If I hadn’t known it was ice, I would have thought it was ready to attack the first person to come by.
And yes, since this was Resurgence, I figured there was a pretty good chance that would happen, ice or not.
I only took a moment to admire the ice Lynx, however, because in front of me was a sight to behold. A massive wall of ice, with a building carved directly into the facade, stood on the far side of the courtyard. Gigantic columns, windows, doors, words in an unknown language, and more sculptures like the ones in the courtyard were carved directly from the ice. I would have gauged the wall, and therefore the building, to be around four stories tall.
I had seen pictures of something similar in the real world: a city, Petra, carved directly out of the walls of a canyon in Jordan. Sand and wind, part of Mother Nature’s unstoppable tools of erosion, had worn down those mysterious buildings, but the courtyard and the building were set in such a way that little to no wind was present, resulting in very little erosion.
Despite this, the age of the structure was evident. This was an old, old established building. Architecture wasn’t something I majored in at school, but I didn’t need any formal education to tell you what I saw in front of me was ancient. It was the same as when I entered Notre Dame in Paris years before. The building itself let me know that it had been there for a long time. But not by speaking. Jesus, I sound weird.
I relayed to the team that it would take me a few extra minutes to scout, but I kept the layout a surprise. I wanted them to have that same initial reaction that I did. I ran around the perimeter of the courtyard and through the middle but did not see any mobs. I also inspected the area next to the front of the ice building but again found nothing of interest. Finally, I ventured through the three-meter tall doorway that led deeper into the ice. I didn’t venture far, maybe twenty meters. Again, there was nothing to discover, but the hallway continued on for quite a distance.
“Alright, guys. Move on up through the crack in the ice. I’ll meet you at a good stopping point. So far I haven’t seen any signs of mobs or the body of Tristan Lancaster.”
After receiving acknowledgement from the guys, I went back to the ice tunnel near the entrance of the courtyard. We still didn’t know if entering that courtyard would set off a trap, so I met the guys at the last turn before the courtyard began. And yeah, I wanted to see the looks on their faces.
“Go slowly around this corner. There is the potential for a trap to go off not too far ahead. I want us to take this slowly.”
As soon as all three made the turn, they had the same open-mouthed expression that I did. It was like looking at a kid who was seeing snow for the first time as it comes down in flurries—all wide-eyed and trying to see it all at the same time. Just like mine did, all of their eyes eventually landed on the building carved into the ice, and they were mesmerized by its beauty.
“I keep waiting for the statues to start moving,” Dan said as he looked on.
“I know. I kept waiting for them to move forward and attack while I scouted the place.”
“Attack? Nah, man. I’m waiting for them to start twirling and jumping like when I saw Disney on Ice! That show was awesome.”
“Dude! I totally did that when I was a kid, too! Good memories, man. How old were you?” Wayne said as he put his fist out for a bump from Dan.
Dan held his hand out, meeting Wayne’s knuckles with his own and said, “Tuesday.”
“Of course you did.”
“Don’t knock it, bubba. If you thought it was awesome as a kid, it’s even better as an adult. You know. Leotards.”
“And Dan just ruined my childhood. Again. Thanks for that.”
“Any time, Alligastor,” Dan said as he performed a bow in Jason’s direction. “Now let’s go see what this place has in store for us.”
We crossed the threshold as a group. It would have looked humorous to anyone seeing us from the outside. It was like Dorothy walking down the yellow-brick road with the four of us in a line and walking in step. I started giggling as I pictured Dan as the Scarecrow and Jason as the Tin-Man.
And then I stopped. That would have made Wayne the Lion and left me as the chick in ruby red heels. I’m pretty sure I look horrible in heels. At least, that’s what I was told the one Halloween I went as a woman. A story for another time.
After about ten meters into the courtyard, the first mobs made themselves known. It wasn’t the ice sculptures, as we had first thought, but apparitions that rose from the ground and started making their way toward us. We stopped in our tracks as soon as we saw the mobs. Dan, Jason, and I took a few steps back, letting Wayne grab aggro on the two mobs per our usual style of playing.
The mobs, Ghostly Wraiths, were Blue to us, meaning decent experience. This was the first time we had seen any mobs that appeared in a ghost-like form, so we had no idea what types of attacks would work best on them. Trial and error was in store.
Wayne started by throwing an attack and Taunt at one mob while hitting the second with his Bash and Kick. No one worried about Wayne’s ability to manage aggro at this point.
“Not doing much damage here, Alex,” Wayne said.
Dan and I joined in the fight against Wayne’s primary mob, and I realized what he meant after only a few swings of my daggers. We were doing a significantly lower amount of damage than what was normal for us.
“How hard are they hitting?”
“It’s not much, although they do have a wicked little proc. My Vitality is going down way faster than it normally would. I almost don’t bother monitoring these days, not with my Stats as high as they are.”
“How bad is it?”
“Normally I would be down one or maybe two percent on Vitality at this point. After their procs, I am down ten percent.”
I didn’t have to remind anyone in the group just how bad it would be if Wayne lost his Vitality. All of his Stats would drop and he would do a whole lot less damage in the fight. That could really screw with our aggro management.
We kept going at the two mobs, and Wayne kept shouting out his Vitality percentage. We would probably win the fight between the two mobs, but this was going to take a long time if we had to rest after every two mobs for Wayne to regain what he had lost. Jason’s heals did nothing for replacing Wayne’s Vitality.
The first mob was almost finished, with Wayne’s vitality sitting at 65 percent. Once the first mob died, there would be a reduction in the amount of procs hitting Wayne, with only one mob remaining, so I knew we weren’t in danger. I had Jason throw a Banish Undead at the mob, but the game told Jason that the spell had no effect on this type of mob. Dan also tried using his direct damage spell, but the damage was reduced the same as with our physical attacks.
My debuff proc that dropped the mob’s armor 40 percent was working fine, but Wayne’s War Hammer proc was doing reduced damage just like Dan’s spell.
“Wayne! What did you just do?” Dan exclaimed.
“Nothing. Why? What just happened?”
“On the second mob, what did you do about two seconds ago?”
“I gotta look. One sec,” Wayne said. After a couple of seconds, Wayne said, “I hit it with my Kick and Bash to keep it aggro’ed. Same as I’ve been doing.”
“That’s it?”
Wayne was quiet again as I imagined he was looking at something in his battle log. After another short pause, Wayne said “The Bash landed a Stun.”
“Boom! We would have seen this earlier if Wayne was using Bash on our target. Allipop, hit our target with your Stun.”
Jason looked over at me, but I wasn’t concerned about Jason stealing aggro at this point. Wayne had not received much in the way of healing during the fight, and the mob had been constantly Taunted. It wasn’t going to switch targets. I hoped.
I nodded at Jason, and he launched his Stun on the Wraith. Immediately I saw what had Dan so excited. When the Stun lande
d, the Wraith turned almost solid. I can’t tell you the mechanics of why it worked, but it did. As soon as it received the Stun, our attacks not only increased but were slightly higher than normal. The first mob lasted only a few more seconds with the change in damage output.
I can’t imagine that any group would go through this whole place without realizing what we discovered. Almost all Tanks have the Bash skill, which in turn has a chance to Stun the target. They may not learn it on the first set of mobs, but in time all would learn it. I was just happy that Dan figured it out so quickly and that we wouldn’t have to spend as much time waiting on Wayne to regenerate his Vitality.
After the second mob went down—and far quicker than the first, since we knew to use Stun—we discussed the change to our strategy. Wayne would change his order for Tanking two mobs at a time, swapping Bash with Taunt. Now, the non-targeted mob would get a Kick and a Taunt, while the primary target was attacked and Bashed. This meant that Dan and I would have to wait longer before we could attack. Taunt added a lot of “hate” on the aggro chart, and Bash didn’t have the same modifier. We would have to play with this a bit to see just how early Dan and I could get into the mix.
Once Wayne had recovered his Vitality, we returned to our reenactment of the Wizard of Oz and began moving down the center of the courtyard again. After 10 meters, two more Wraiths spawned like before. We quickly dispatched them using the new strategy. Wayne’s Vitality only went down 15 percentage points.
I hadn’t found anything on either set of mobs when I looted them. No items. No money. Nothing. Given this was a part of Lady Tessa’s quest, I was hoping for some good loot throughout the whole encounter. I didn’t want to base the possible results on just the first four mobs, but I wasn’t optimistic at this point.
We repeated the same process several more times, with almost every ten meters having two mobs spawn. The experience was easy at this point, but we still got no loot from the mobs.
After we finished the last set of mobs in the courtyard, we headed toward the entrance of the ice building. With only several steps to go before we entered the 3-meter-tall entrance, another apparition appeared before us.
This was not a Wraith. The apparition before us was of a man, dressed in flowing robes, and holding a gnarled staff in his hands. The robes were not those of a caster, but of a monk one would find at a shrine. It reminded me of all the Shaolin movies I watched as a youngster. He also didn’t have a name and was not showing any aggressive actions toward us. Like good gamers, we figured he would attack at any point and assumed our formation as usual.
However, the apparition never did attack and simply stood in front of the entrance as we came directly upon it.
“Should I take a swing, Alex?”
“Violence is not always the answer, Wayne.”
“Really? Funny then, because us Barbarians only learn that answer at school.”
“Must be why Barbarians finish school at the age of eight.”
“Exactly. Why keep going to school once you have all the answers?” Wayne finished with a grin on his face.
I approached the ghostly form and hailed the entity. As soon as I spoke, the ghost’s image shimmered briefly and his name became clear above his head—Apprentice Madwar.
I repeated myself, “Hail, Apprentice Madwar.”
Madwar looked out over the courtyard. There was no evidence of our previous activities. Once all the bodies of the Wraiths were looted, the corpse would disappear. However, Madwar seemed to know that the Ghost mobs had previously been in the area.
“It couldn’t have been easy for you to reach this far. No one has traversed this courtyard since Sir Lancaster crossed this threshold long ago. I didn’t believe it when he arrived, and I thought none would ever dare to try again.
“Sir Lancaster knew of our plight, and he agreed to cleanse this Monastery. Since I am still here, he must have failed.”
“I didn’t realize the Lancaster boys were knighted. I guess that makes sense with how close they were all supposed to be to the King,” Dan said.
“Doesn’t make much difference to us either way. Let’s find out what he was supposed to be doing, and that should help us find his body,” Jason added.
I nodded my head at Jason and asked Madwar what happened at the Monastery.
“Several years ago, we had a visitor to our Monastery that requested our assistance in learning our ways. We were a school for focused concentration. Through our teachings, one could become more in tune with the magic around us and harness their mana to greater degrees. The result of our training was seen in the power of the students’ castings and their ability to increase the duration of their mana pools.
“However, ours was a life of solitude. A student first had to show the fortitude of patience before we would bestow any gifts upon them. Many would travel here, if they could brave the rough environment to reach our domain. Few, however, passed the tests to attain the final gift of our school.
“This visitor was such a man. He wanted the gifts without the work. He offered gold, but our people have never had need of gold. He offered the rarest of items, but our students subsist on the most basic of goods. He offered us power, but our school is designed to remove the very desire for power through an understanding of the self. In the end, we denied all of his offers.
“Infuriated, the visitor left. He promised he would return, and behind him would be an army we would not be able to defeat. His plan was to take our knowledge from us. We had very little fear of this man. We were fools.
“When he returned, he revealed his true self. This man was a Great Priest of Loust. With his initial attack, he destroyed half of our Monastery with the very same types of Wraiths you defeated earlier. And in his need to boast, he informed the rest of us, or those that still lived, that Loust would rise again. His Great Priests were already dispatched to remove the secrets of all the schools of learning in Tholtos.
“But the plan backfired. The Great Priest brought with him a Wendigo, a most foul creature that feeds off the very soul of any living beings. The Priest thought to control the demon, but the Wendigo had its own plan. After rampaging through our school, the Wendigo dealt a blow to the Priest, striking him dead in these very halls. Before his death, I witnessed the Priest take control of a Wraith and, in essence, become a Wraith himself.
“I was the last of our number to survive. In a desperate attempt to flee, I ran toward this courtyard. But before I could leave the sanctuary of our Monastery’s walls, the Wendigo caught up to me. Having witnessed how the Priest accomplished his feat, I bound myself to a Wraith just as I was taking my last breath. And for all these years, here is where I have remained. Only with the death of the Wendigo, the master of these Wraiths, can I fly free of my self-imposed purgatory.”
“Did you hear that, guys? All of the Monasteries. I bet you each of Lady Tessa’s brothers were sent to a different one. Oh, this is going to be awesome!” Wayne exclaimed.
I was as excited as Wayne and the others. I also took note how the quest, even though it wasn’t meant to go live in the game, still incorporated the larger arc of the King battling the Children of Loust. I hoped this meant that the story arc and Lady Tessa’s quest would overlap more as we progressed and that we could take less time traveling between areas.
Having heard the tale from Madwar, I figured I knew what Tristan came to do, but I asked him anyway what it was he was supposed to have accomplished.
“I doubt that you could succeed where Sir Lancaster failed. However, I will make the same bargain with you that I made with him: defeat the Wendigo that has taken residence in this Monastery, and I will show you the location of our ancient tome that explains how to acquire the feats of our school.”
“Oh, we going to make you eat Wayne’s steel!”
Laughing at Dan, and how he convinced Wayne to mutter that same phrase not more than a month ago, I agreed to the task. Our quest was updated from Restoration of House Lancaster I to read:
Restoration of House Lancaster II: Remove the Wraiths and Wendigo from the Monastery of Calm.
Chapter 9
Once the quest was updated, and once we checked that there were not any new variables, we crossed the threshold of the entrance and prepared to make our way into the Monastery. As soon as the party crossed an Invisible line, our maps disappeared.
“Looks like we are officially in a dungeon, guys. Dan, time for you to earn your paycheck.”
“I haven’t already?”
“Consider this overtime.”
“Does that mean I get two rolls on loot?”
“It means I’ll make sure Kaitlin comes to our party,” Wayne said.
“Consider the crosswords forgotten.”
I nodded my head in thanks toward Wayne and started my scouting run. I made my way through the very first hallway until I came to an intersection. It was relatively close to the entrance, so I continued down the same hallway. Soon after, I came to another intersection. The layout seemed to be on a mostly cardinal grid. Of note, I didn’t see any mobs during my scouting.
“Well, guys, the place seems to be pretty straight forward. I’ve only gone a bit ahead, but I’m not seeing any mobs. I’m betting the interior will follow the same mechanics as out in the courtyard. We aren’t going to see any mobs until we are close to being on top of them. I’m heading back to you now. We’ll start with Wayne in the lead so he can grab aggro.”
Once I returned, Wayne led the way. Sure enough, as soon as we approached the first intersection, two Wraiths popped up and aggro’ed on him. He led them farther back toward the entrance, and we proceeded to mop them up.
“They’re hitting a little harder, Alex.”
“Means they are probably two levels above us since they’re still Blue. More experience for us!”
With the two mobs down, and still no loot, the party asked me to scout the east and west corridors. I did as they asked and relayed what I found as I traveled.
“Still not seeing any mobs, but we have a number of rooms. Some of them have doors, and some of them don’t. It’s a carbon copy on each side. Two rooms to the north of the corridor and one to the south. After that, I hit a ninety-degree corner heading north. I went into one of the rooms, and it looks like this is where the students lived. Each room had two beds and a night stand of sorts between them. Looks like a college dorm room, only less comfortable, and no drug paraphernalia. I suggest we go into the open rooms first and then open the doors one at a time.”
Restoration: The Rise of Resurgence: Book II Page 18
