by Oliver Mayes
Scorepeeus63: The first words of the prophet! Bow before his Dark majesty! Praise Be.
TheWhater: Praise Be!
TheWherer: Praiiiise Be!
TheWhener: Praise Be.
TheWitcher: I hate you guys. Praise Be.
Okay. So this was definitely a cult. A very silly cult, but a cult nevertheless. He was pinged with a private message which popped up on his screen.
Vargus: Hi, thought I’d help you out a bit. I’m the page developer. Thank you for coming, we’re all really excited! Praise Be.
Daemien: Uh, thanks. What is this, exactly?
Vargus: This is a private group for Occultists. It started with the original Scorpius fans, as you can see from some of the names, but a few of us are new. We made this community for support in game and conversation – it’s quite lonely in game as an Occultist, so we got together to form a big family. Didn’t think you’d be joining us! Praise Be.
Daemien: Thanks. Why does everyone say ‘Praise Be’ after everything?
Vargus: It’s a rule. We make up new rules all the time, but that’s one of the core precepts. You’re the prophet though, so none of it applies to you. Pretty sure you can do whatever you want. If you want to talk about things normally there’s a discussion board on the side, along with a members list, ranking system and a rules list for newcomers. None of that applies to you either, but you can have a look to see how it works. Please check it all out and let me know if you need any help. Praise Be.
Daemien: Thank you, I’ll have a look around. Nice job with the page, it’s very unique.
Vargus: Ty! PB.
Not only was his hardcore fanbase alive and kicking, they’d all become occultists and were working together. After what Bartholomew had told him regarding occultists being cannibalistic, he didn’t think such a thing was possible. If anyone was going to manage it, though, it was always going to be this lot. Damien smiled. Now this was a welcome surprise. He eyed up the tabs on the side and clicked the ‘Members’ tab first.
Scorpius clones were the most numerous by far, making up almost 60% of membership. It also showed their levels. They were doing quite well! There were a few lowbies, maybe 10% of the group total, who had yet to reach level 10. Then there was a huge jump, with the next largest group of 30% of the membership occupying the 20s. After that, the vast majority of the group were absurdly high level, given the time since Damien had announced how to become an occultist. More than thirty members out of sixty-six were pushing level 30 and a select few had reached level 30 already. The highest-level player was Scorepeeus63 himself, the Aetherius killer, at level 38.
Wow! The kid who’d been afraid of the dark had grown up real fast. What a turnaround. The rest of them weren’t far behind. How were they so successful? Maybe the rules list would provide answers. He clicked it and the sidebar got pushed down to make way for a set of clearly explained rules, some more predictable than others.
Praise Be.
All comments on the main page must show proper respect for the hierarchy, which is available on the rankings page. See rule 1. This rule is not applied to discussion groups, but civility remains a high priority.
The highest rank in this community is Low Priest. The Low Priest guides group activities for the day, following approval from the Council of 9 (year olds).
The sole aim of the community is to raise the level of our Low Priest as fast as possible. To qualify, a prospective Low Priest must log on every day for no less than two hours each day for seven days, and must integrate with the hub. The lowest level eligible player will be selected. If application for Low Priestage is approved, the new Low Priest will be leveled as much as possible over the course of a day and all affairs will revolve around them.
Tuesday through Sunday are days of sacrifice. At the end of a ‘successful boost’ (minimum 5 levels total), the current Low Priest acquires at least 1.5 x EXP levels of the next nominated Low Priest. Boost time is 24 hours, or however long it takes to complete the Low Priest boost (not including sacrificial EXP gain), whichever is shorter. The new Low Priest then kills the old Low Priest and the cycle begins anew.
Monday is poker night. All participants welcome.
Failure to follow the rules will result in a day ban, then a week ban, then a permanent ban. For the duration of your ban, you will be removed from the channel and shunned by the group in game. Shuuuuuuuun! All Council decisions are final. Please follow the rules and ask questions if you’re not sure what you should be doing.
We are blessed by the arrival of Daemien, our Dark Lord! You stand in the presence of greatness. Conduct yourselves accordingly.
Alrighty then. Damien checked the rankings system and found it extremely simple. The current Low Priest was one of the level 20s, a non-Scorpius clone called ‘Nightman’. Directly below him were the Council of Nine, which included Scorepeeus63, Vargus and a few of the other people who’d posted upon Damien’s arrival. Members below them were simply designated as ‘Normies’. Damien’s name was in a separate box from the rest of the group. He was designated as ‘Dark Lord’. He probably had Vargus to thank for that.
He was receiving a lot of messages from other members as well. They were mostly brief and quite a lot less disturbing than what they’d greeted him with on the main page, but they were all followed by some variation of ‘PB’. Damien thanked each of them in turn as he clicked his way through the discussion pages.
There were a variety of silly posts, where members were honing their skills in adulterating song lyrics and language in general. But tucked away at the bottom, as if as an afterthought, were a collection of occultist class FAQs: discussions of stat distribution (Int–Wis ratios were most popular, but a fair few factored in other stats as well); level and stat requirements to unlock different spells/buildings; spell order in combat; survival strategies; what role you fit with your specific skills in occultist raid parties; minion deployment and compositions…it went on and on. Damien was speechless. This was a huge trove of information!
From the various discussion boards, an obvious trend emerged: the majority of players had pumped intelligence as their primary stat. That suited Damien fine. He could use their input to get a glimpse of Archimonde’s skills. The next most common group were people emulating him, with higher wisdom and an emphasis on minions. A very small number of them were emulating him too much by putting most of their stat points in agility. Oops. So this was what being a bad role model felt like. It was more their fault than his, as far as he was concerned, but still.
There was one discussion board with more traffic than any other. Every single member of the group had visited it at least once: ‘How do you make Noigel stop acting like a gee golly?’ It was by far the question Damien was most interested in for his own purposes at that exact moment. He clicked it in a hurry.
The answers were not very useful. Damien wasn’t sure whether to be pleased none of them had been as successful as him, or annoyed they had nothing to offer regarding his most recent problem. Many were derivative of his own work in the earliest stages, which was readily available online. Beyond that, most of the answers tended toward one focus. Suppression. It seemed none of them had brought Noigel to his full potential. The highest-voted recommendation in the group was to account for an extra half soul when summoning and dismiss Noigel after summoning the last imp.
While Damien completely understood the sentiment, it was a far cry from the best way. He tentatively typed out a message, barely believing that what appeared on the screen had originated from his own fingertips.
Daemien: I cannot overstate how annoying it was to get Noigel onside. I also can’t overstate how crucial Noigel’s input was to my success. He requires a lot of attention and very, very careful instruction. Even then, sometimes he still goes his own way. Despite all that, he’s worth it. He’s a superior UI for minions in combat scenarios and massively increases construction speed in base when ‘Forbidden Knowledge’ is active. I’m having trouble with him, even now. H
e’s still the most valuable minion in my lineup, every time, by far. Try to endure him.
Damien hit ‘Send’ and immediately wondered what he’d been thinking. It would’ve been easier and more acceptable to just agree with everyone, but he’d gone against their opinion on this issue on his very first day. Well, hopefully what he’d said would help those in the early stages. If this group got a little more invested in Noigel’s mechanics, maybe they’d progress things and Damien could reap the rewards. They’d probably quite enjoy watching Noigel fornicate his way through their demon rosters, judging from their collective sense of humor.
Perhaps they’d create an event to see which Noigel was the least tolerable. They could run it consecutively with their poker night. Perhaps a table of Noigels playing poker, and the Noigel who won could have “special time” with all the other players’ succubi. Although a whole cult’s worth of Noigels with Forbidden Knowledge right next to each other was a very dangerous prospect.
Damien turned back to the discussion boards and had been absorbing information for almost another hour when he received a voice call from Lillian. He squinted a little bit, half expecting to get shouted at, and answered the call.
“Yeah?”
“I’m in the middle of a big meeting. I need you here with me.”
“Can you give me more information?”
The moment he relaxed was when the shouting started.
“Just get in! It’s a very important chat group, we’re talking about dealing with Magnitude and the wall! What part of ‘I need you’ don’t you understand? Does that seem like a request I’d casually throw out? You think I—”
“Fine! Send me an invite if it’s so important. If you’re making that big a fuss it better be a big deal, I don’t need you—”
You have been invited to join Round Table Council Meeting.
“—shouting every...time...oh, shit.”
“Click ‘accept’! They’re grilling me Damien, I need you here!”
Damien accepted and a chat box with exactly twenty-six names in it popped up immediately afterwards. Twenty-four names belonged to the guild leaders of the twenty-four guilds who held the highest reputation with the Empire. One of them belonged to King Bedivere, the NPC Ruler of the Empire. And then there was ‘Daemien’. He was slightly out of his element.
The first comment came almost immediately, and the source was King Bedivere himself.
King Bedivere: We bid you faint welcome to this meeting, Daemien the Low. I would not ordinarily consort with your kind, but Lillian the Immortal beseeches me you know much of our enemy and insists we would be remiss to neglect your council. Speak.
Daemien the Low? He knew that was his Empire-sanctioned nickname, but it hit differently when someone was calling him it directly. It was just as well he was outside of Empire influence and their designated nicknames weren’t applied to him, because if they were he’d have to abandon his plan to go to the Inner Circle and start a murder campaign until they gave him a more fitting moniker. Lillian interrupted his teen-rated murder fantasy.
“Make sure you start or end every message with ‘O Mighty King’, capital M and K, and tell him what happened with Magnitude and his guild. You’ve got two minutes before he gets impatient and starts rushing the conversation.”
Oh good, a timed challenge. We wouldn’t want to accidentally offend old kingy-wingy by typing too slowly, would we? Damien wrote the first three words and then tried to match the way he was being addressed, so he could prove the hostility unwarranted by being polite. Which was tricky when he was doing it through anger and didn’t have any time to edit.
Daemien: O Mighty King, I and my previous enemies turned sudden allies from Rising Tide assaulted the tyrant Magnitude’s fortress yesterday and were met with staunch resistance. There is a large wall barring entry, manned by at least two hundred men, all of whom are trained in spear, javelin and bow. I assailed the ramparts while Lillian led her forces in breaching the wall, but we were met with former heroes of the Empire who betrayed their cause and were slain. I fought with Magnitu—
“Thirty seconds left, finish the sentence and send quickly!”
Most of his time had been wasted on thinking rather than typing. Writing in old-timey language was difficult, but he wanted to make a good first impression.
—de personally, and he is a very dangerous adversary, as are all who have fallen under his power.
Send. Damien hadn’t even finished sighing in relief before King Bedivere had sent a fully composed response. Perks of being an AI, Damien supposed. Although however this one was tooled up, it clearly wasn’t designed to cut Damien any slack.
King Bedivere: You mock me, at my own council? Lillian is a new leader of Rising Tide and as yet has not regained any physical holdings in our lands. The reputation of her guild has plummeted in recent times, along with the number of men at her disposal following her ill-advised offensive yesterday. I found her claim that your presence here was warranted dubious, yet I entertained it to honor her guild’s past. Despite having arrived at her behest, your first action is to mock my speech. You provide no information besides that which she has already offered, and given your standing I find your word wanting. I invite the rest of the war conference to pass judgment.
Damien stared at the screen openmouthed as Lillian laid into him.
“What were you thinking? You think we all talk like that when we communicate with him? It would take hours! Now he – oh come on!”
Rising Tide’s name was dropping down the list as the various verdicts of the arrayed guild leaders rolled in. They were a bunch of yes men, all of them hopping on board their king’s comments and giving their AI leader a verbal tonguing. Their comments conjured up a powerful image in Damien’s mind of the leaders of the strongest guilds in the Empire, all lined up with their Mighty King bent over in front so they could take it in turns to stick their faces between his cheeks and give him an enthusiastic cleaning. The first responder’s name gave Damien a pretty clear indication of how this would go down.
HighZen: O Mighty King, well said. Daemien has no place here and we don’t need his input. Kick him out, and cut Lillian’s reputation for the waste of time and the insult.
TheRickestRick: Wow, that’s embarrassing. Talk about someone trying too hard. Kick this guy so the grown-ups can get back to talking about our next step, O Mighty King.
Hammertime: I’d like to hear more. This is his first statement in an unfamiliar setting, I don’t believe he meant to cause offense. Quite the opposite, he was obviously trying to be polite. He may possess valuable information and we are letting our prejudices get in the way of acquiring that information. We should give him the benefit of the doubt. I withhold judgment, O Mighty King.
BlackNwah: O Mighty King. You’re right. Kick him.
And so it continued for another twenty comments. Each of them was also getting upvoted or downvoted by everyone else as they rolled in. Hammertime’s comment was largely left alone, but the rest of them were upvoted almost immediately as they were posted, before any human could’ve had enough time to read them all the way through.
Damien couldn’t help but draw a parallel with his own recently discovered hole in the internet, but where those guys were just having fun and supporting each other this lot were vindictively toeing the monarchical line. Damien was not allowed to judge his own piece, which was no surprise, nor was he allowed to ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ any of the comments judging it. Although he’d been invited into their conference, he was still ‘less than them’.
Lillian posted toward the end.
Lillian: O Mighty King. I wouldn’t have invited Daemien here unless it was important. He’s confirmed everything I said. If you’re patient and willing to work with an open mind, he might even be convinced to show you some parts of the video so you can see it for yourselves. Your dislike for Daemien is less important than the future of your guilds, the players under your care and the Empire itself. King Bedivere, it seems
your court has already decided, so I put this to you. Please do what’s best for your people.
Damien was barely halfway through the first sentence when Lillian switched from typing to babbling at him through the speaker.
“Damien, if you share the video, even just the part where Magnitude talks about his plans, they’d have to eat their words. Our reputation with the Empire is all Rising Tide has going for it at the moment. We have no headquarters and nobody in the Empire likes us, even though Andrew is no longer the leader. I’m trying to get these morons together so we can attack the wall with a proper force, before the Carlisle-Elite get any stronger. Can you do me a solid and share it with them? Even just a small piece? Please?”
“I’m thinking.”
He didn’t have long. Thirty seconds after the last comment had rolled in, King Bedivere sent his next message. It completely undercut Lillian’s claim that sending the footage would endear him to them, because he was demanding it by force.
King Bedivere: Judgment: 23 votes negative, 1 vote abstaining, 1 vote positive. You have made a poor first impression, Daemien, and it shall cost Rising Tide dearly. I shall allow you one chance to redeem yourself and your ally. Share the vision of your failed incursion that Lillian claims you have in your possession, in its entirety.
They really wanted that footage, didn’t they? But they were trying to strong-arm him into giving it when it was obviously a valuable asset. Bad move. Even if Bedivere had demanded just a segment as opposed to the whole thing, he wouldn’t have sent it on these terms. Damien got to typing. It was a lot easier now he wasn’t unnecessarily standing on ceremony. It was much easier to convey how he actually felt in two minutes than when he’d been unnecessarily filtering himself.
Daemien: As Hammertime stated, I was trying to be polite. The knowledge I have is valuable and you’ll need it to prepare a successful attack. I came here to share that knowledge with people who hunt me down on a daily basis, but you decided to bully me, holding my friend’s reputation hostage when you could’ve just asked nicely.
