“I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be called Sissy Tantrum. Mommy!”
“I was joking around when I said that!”
Riccon began looting the dead pigs. “Uh-huh.”
“I was!”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“You are such a dick,” Darvin muttered as he began allocating his new points.
Name: Darvin Sepret
Race: Human
Level: 7
Experience: 11,150/16,200
Base Class: Warrior
Subclass: None
Fame: 120. Never heard of you.
Infamy: 0. You don’t scare me.
Attributes
Health: 112 (As a warrior, you gain 15 HP + base Body bonus per level.) Health regen: 1 HP + your Body bonus every minute out of combat. Current base health regeneration: +1.2 HP every minute.
Stamina: 144 (As a warrior, your stamina is 12 x body score.) Stamina regen: 2 SP + Body bonus every five seconds Out of combat, ½ rate in combat. Current stamina regeneration: 2.2 SP every five seconds.
Mana: 50 (As a warrior, your Base Mana amount is 5 x your Mind score.) Mana Regen: 1 MP + Mind bonus every five seconds. Current mana regeneration: 1 MP every five seconds.
Strength: 12 (+2% attack when using melee weapons or unarmed combat)
Agility: 7 (-3% attack when using ranged weapons. -3% to dodge, parry, and speed)
Body: 12 (+2% physical resistance. +1.2 health regen)
Mind: 10 (+0% magical resistance and attack. +0 mana regen.)
Charisma: 5 (-5% barter and relationship with NPCs)
Luck: 6 Helps nudge the probability of any outcome one direction or another. Higher luck increases the chances of receiving random boons.
Physical Attack: +7.1% long blades, +2% all other
Ranged Attack: -3%
Magic Attack: 0
Unallocated Attribute Points: 2
Basic Combat Skills:
Long Blades: Level 5 Grade 1. You gain a 5.1% bonus to Attack and damage while using long blades. Rank: Initiate.
Shields: Level 6 Grade 3. You gain a 6.3% bonus to your ability to block physical attacks. +6.3% bonus to armor and block rating.
Medium Armor: Level 2 Grade 8. You gain +2.8% bonus to armor rating, encumbrance penalty, and casting penalty. Rank: Initiate.
Advanced Combat Skills:
Power Attack: Increase physical damage of single strike by 50%. Cost: 40 stamina. Cooldown: 30 seconds.
Arcane Skills: None
Unalloted Skill Points: 2.
Abilities and Traits:
Basic perception, Tier 1: Can identify basic information about a target such as threat level and disposition. Other identifying features may be revealed with continuous study and raising the level of your ability.
Righteous Rage, Tier 1: When faced with overwhelming odds, you fly into a rage. Melee damage increased by 10%. Block and dodge decreased by 10%. Cost: 30 stamina. Cooldown: 1 minute.
Primary Equipment:
Iron Longsword: Common. Quality: Average. Damage: 10. Durability: 23/28. Base
Iron Chain Hauberk: Common. Quality: Average. Armor: 8. Durability: 21/25.
Iron Banded Round Shield: Common. Quality: Average. Can block some or all incoming damage depending on attack type and power. Improves base blocking by 20%. Armor Rating: 12. Durability: 32/40.
Darvin allocated his free primary and secondary attribute points to body because being hit sucked. He decided to hold onto his two skill points until he gained his Templar subclass and could use them to bolster his class skills. They would go a lot farther in making him stronger than a single point in weapons or shield. Those skills would also increase on their own fairly quickly, at least at low level. He looked at Riccon, saw his vacant expression, and knew he must be tweaking his character sheet as well.
Name: Riccon Greybow
Race: Human
Level: 7
Experience: 12,589/16,200
Base Class: Scout.
Subclass: Arcane Archer
Fame: 120. Never heard of you.
Infamy: 50. You don’t scare me.
Attributes: As an arcane archer, you gain +1 dexterity and one attribute point to use on the attribute of your choice every level. As a human, you may use your secondary attribute point you receive at every other level where you like.
Health: 78 (an arcane archer, you gain 12 HP + base Body bonus per level.)
Stamina: 100 (As an arcane archer, your stamina is 10 x body score
Mana: 76 (As an arcane archer your Base Mana amount is 8 x your Mind score
Strength: 8 (-2% attack when using melee weapons or unarmed combat)
Agility: 14 (+4% attack when using ranged weapons. +4% to dodge, parry, and speed)
Body: 10 (+0% physical resistance. +0 stamina regen)
Mind: 14 (+4% magical resistance and attack. +1.4 mana regen)
Charisma: 5 (-5% barter and relationship with NPCs)
Luck: 8 Helps nudge the probability of any outcome one direction or another. Higher luck increases the chances of receiving random boons.
Physical Attack: +0.1% small blades, -1.9% unarmed, -2% all other
Ranged Attack: +10.9%
Magic Attack: +9.6%
Skills: You gain 1 primary skill point every level. As a human with no racial abilities, you also receive an additional skill point every 3 levels instead of a racial ability point.
Basic Combat Skills:
Small Blades: Level 2 Grade 1: You gain a 2.1% bonus to Attack and damage while using small blades. Rank: Initiate.
Bows: Level 6 Grade 9: You gain a 6.9% bonus to attack and damage when using bows. Total bonus: 6.9% Rank: Initiate.
Unarmed Combat: Level 0 Grade 1. +0.1% increase to aim and damage when attacking without a weapon. Rank: Initiate.
Light Armor: Level 3 Grade 2. Reduces armor penalties for wearing light armor by skill level. Increases armor rating for light armor by your skill level. Rank: Initiate.
Advanced Combat Skills:
None
Arcane Abilities:
Arcane Channeling: Level 5 Grade 6. Imbue arrows with magical effects. Spell effect added to weapon damage. Rank: Initiate.
Spells known:
Eldritch arrow: Infuse a normal arrow with raw magic. Adds 10 magical damage in addition to the arrow's physical damage. Cost: 9 mana.
Flame Arrow: Infuse a normal arrow with magic fire. Adds 5 magical fire damage in addition to the arrow's physical damage. Has a chance to cause burn. Burn causes an additional 5 points of damage over 10 seconds. Can ignite combustibles.
Frost Arrow: Infuse a normal arrow with magical frost. Adds 5 cold damage in addition to the arrow's physical damage. Has a chance to numb a limb or target. Numbed target are slowed for 10 seconds. Amount slowed is based on caster's Arcane Channeling skill and Mind bonus. Mana cost: 9.
Special Abilities and Traits:
Advanced Perception, Tier 1
Noncombat Skills:
Stealth: Level 2 Grade 8. You gain a 2.8% bonus to your ability to avoid detection. Rank: Initiate.
Bluff: Level 0, Grade 5. +0.5 percent chance to bluff an opponent. Bluff is modified by either your strength or charisma attribute, whichever is highest. It is also improved by your fame or infamy score as well as the threat level perceived by your opponent. Current base bonus to bluff: -4.5%. Increase the skill or its corresponding attribute modifiers to improve chance of bluffing. Rank: Initiate.
Primary Equipment:
Steel Hunting Knife: Common. Quality: Good (+10% attack and durability.) Base damage: 7. Durability: 19/25.
Ash Self-bow: Common. Quality: Average. Base damage: 8. Durability 23/25.
Studded Leather Brigandine: Common. Quality: Average. Armor Rating: 7. Durability: 18/20.
Riccon saved his skill points to purchase the new abilities and spells that would become available at level 10. He was glad to see his luck naturally increase one point as well as his dexterity. Even though he had imb
ued every arrow he launched, his Mind had not gone up. Probably because it was a secondary attribute so it took longer.
“So what about this bonus reward?” Darvin asked when Riccon’s focus returned to the outside world.
Riccon motioned him toward the ground the feral pigs had churned up. He searched the area for several minutes before kneeling down and digging at the dirt with his iron dagger.
He held aloft a dark brown, roughly spherical blob. “Aha! Here it is.”
Darvin gave him a flat stare. “Pig shit?”
“If we hadn’t gotten here quick enough, yes. But since we did, this is a truffle and the key to collecting our bonus reward.”
“How much is it worth?”
“At our level? Enough to make you shout, ‘cha-ching!’” Riccon replied with a smile. “Start digging where the pigs have been rooting. There’s also some puffball mushrooms for the base reward around here.”
“Sweet! Good thing we got here before the other players.”
Riccon shook his head. “Very unlikely.”
“Why’s that? I saw quite a few in town, and there’s sure to be even more wandering around.”
“Game mechanics. Other than making just a huge freaking world with only a few hundred thousand player at the moment, the game is constantly creating what they call micro-instances. It’s like the infinite worlds theory.”
Darvin scratched his head. “You mean there are infinite parallel universes within the game?”
“Kind of. You know how dungeon instances work so you don’t have a thousand people trying to kill the same boss. Micro-instances are like that but it’s happening all around us. Certain quests will trigger a micro-instance so the quest requirement is always there and not farmed out. The bandit quest we have is like that, as is this one was. We’ll get the quest and leave with the blacksmith, but so will everyone else who picks it up. We’ll all go to the same cave with the same NPC and kill the same bandits but never cross paths. When it’s over, the game kind of stitches it all back together so everyone is on the same page.”
“That sounds…complicated.”
“It is. I think pretty highly of my coding skills and have done a lot of reading on quantum programming, and I still don’t fully understand how they pull it off. The game does the same thing when you log out. Don’t even bother asking me how that one works. It’s even more complex than the relatively simple quest micro-instances.”
Darvin chuckled. “So it’s like Basil explaining time travel in that old spy comedy. Don’t worry on how it’s done. Just sit back and enjoy it.”
“Now you’re getting it!” Riccon checked his ingame clock. “Better get back to town. We have enough loot to satisfy our quests and a little left over. In case you missed it, keep food and water in your inventory at all times. If you get too hungry or thirsty, your health regen slows down. If you start starving or dehydrating it will drop into negative numbers.”
“Good to know. I’ll get someone to cook up some of this pork for me.”
The two adventurers made their way back into town, dropped the meat off at the butchers, and collected their reward. They then went to the inn to give the cantankerous cook her mushrooms. She took the puffball mushrooms with a grunt and handed over the silver she had promised. Her eyes nearly bulged out of her head when Riccon showed her the truffles.
“Oh my!” Imelda exclaimed. “These will make many a fine dish.”
She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out more money than any simple cook had a right to possess.
You have completed the bonus portion of the quest A Fungus Among Us. You receive 500 additional XP and 3 gold.
“Cha-ching!” Darvin whooped.
“Told you.”
“Now I can buy a crossbow.”
“Yep. Just remember, I’m the archer and you’re the meat shield.”
Darvin took on a haughty expression. “That, sir, is a classist slur. We prefer the term tank.”
“I’ll be sure to let your mommy know.”
“Dick.”
“You still have your pain settings maxed?”
Darvin scowled. “Hell no! That shit hurt. I dropped it down to 70%.”
“Pussy.”
“Says the guy tucked safely up in a tree out of danger.”
Riccon smirked at him. “Hey, you picked your class. Seriously though, remember to push it back up when you’re doing quests where you won’t likely get hurt too badly. The bonus XP is really worth it if you want to get ahead in the game.”
“Did you play with it maxed all the time during beta?” Darvin asked.
“Hell no. But I was able to run it higher once I started getting my Templar buffs. Heals also remove a lot of the pain. If you have a good healer around, you often won’t even realize you’ve been hit until you have a second to think about it. The pain isn’t really 100% even on the max setting.”
“It’s not?”
“No. Remember, you’re actually in a dream. Ever get stabbed or shot in a dream? It doesn’t hurt that much. Of course, it’s a lot worse ingame than in a real dream. If you set your pain level to maximum you’re still only feeling about 70% of what the real pain would feel like.”
“Yeah, I don’t ever want to feel what it’s like to be gored by a feral pig in real life then. The fake pain hurt more than I ever care to experience.”
Riccon shrugged. “Like I said—pussy. Come on. The bandit quest is about to start.”
The two hustled across the small town. The smithy was near the edge of town, as most were, due to the high risk of fire they presented, but it took only a couple of minutes to reach it. In less than five minutes, a man on horseback galloped into Whitbell, both man and beast sporting arrow wounds.
The apprentice smith rushed out of the smithy and helped the man from the horse’s back. Jandar lowered the man to the ground and looked around with furtive eyes as he began jogging toward Riccon and Darvin, shouting for help.
“We’re up,” Riccon said as he intercepted the agitated NPC. “Hey, friend, you need some help?”
Jandar stopped and appraised the two adventurers. “Bandits have taken my family! Please, you have to help me save them!”
Jandar the apprentice blacksmith has offered you a quest: Bandit Kidnapping. Difficulty: Challenging. Reward: 1500XP and 100 fame. Jandar will also fulfill any blacksmithing requests you ask of him at no charge to the best of his ability. Success requirements for full reward: Rescue Jandar’s son and wife. Partial Reward: Rescue either Jandar’s wife or son. Failure: Jandar’s son and wife both die. Do you accept this quest? Yes or No?
As party leader, Riccon chose yes for the both of them.
“We don’t have horses,” Riccon told the man. “Do you have any we can use to get to their hideout faster?”
Jandar fought through his panic and forced himself to think clearly. “I can get a wagon.”
“Faster than walking. Go get it. We’ll wait for you at the edge of town.”
Riccon and Darvin walked toward the outskirts of town while Jandar ran off to borrow the horse and wagon. He returned a few minutes later driving a pair of draft horses attached to a stout logging wagon used by some local woodcutters. The adventurers climbed into the bed, barely finding their seating before Jandar snapped the leads and the wagon lurched forward.
“Is this guy going to be any help in the fight?” Darvin asked in hushed tones as they rolled down the packed dirt road.
“He has decent stats for an NPC and around level 5. He’s also a member of their local militia. If we all went in at the same entrance, he would soak up a few arrows or crossbow bolts and hold off one of the bandits for a minute or two before getting himself killed. He’s a lot more useful if we split up and have him block the rear exit to keep the bandit leader from escaping.”
“I still feel shitty for deliberately letting his family die just to get a decent sword.”
Riccon rolled his eyes. “It’s a game, dude. He has literally never met eith
er of them outside the quest. His entire history is a constructed backstory.”
Darvin nodded as he stared out at the passing countryside. “So right now, there’s another group of player with a different Jandar doing this same quest?”
“Yep. They might even save his family, so our letting them die really doesn’t make any difference.”
The Templar initiate jerked his head toward the blacksmith. “Except maybe to this Jandar.”
Riccon threw his head back and groaned. “You still don’t get it. He won’t remember any of it. Not us letting his family die. Not some other group rescuing them. There’s no happily ever after for any of them no matter what we do.”
Darvin thought a moment before his eyes went wide. “Wait. What happens when we return to town? Where’s Jandar and his family then? What about if we leave and come back a week or a month or a year from now?”
“Today, they’ll all be dead, but tomorrow he’ll be back begging some other group for help.”
“But if we rescued them they’d go back to town with him.”
Riccon nodded. “For a day. Tomorrow he’ll wake up alone in his bed and do it all over again.”
“Groundhog Day!” Darvin exclaimed.
It took Riccon a moment to recall the old movie. “Exactly, except he’s one of the background characters and doesn’t remember anything from the day before.”
“That makes sense. Kind of.”
“Yeah, it’s a little immersion breaking, but it would be chaos if they didn’t do it that way.”
They continued talking about the game and character builds as the wagon rattled down the road as fast as Jandar could push the two horses without them collapsing before they reached the cave. They had left the main road about a half an hour ago and the sun was just beginning to set when they reached the bandit lair.
Jandar pulled on the leads and brought the wagon to a stop. “The cave is just ahead. We should walk from here so we don’t alert them to our arrival.”
“Good idea,” Riccon said as he and Darvin hopped out of the wagon and stretched their legs, yet another simple but amazing aspect of the game’s realism. “Is there another way in other than the main entrance?”
“There’s a narrow crevice that opens up into a side tunnel on the backside of that spur,” Jandar said, pointing toward a narrow stretch of rocky hillock jutting out into the valley.
Chaos Unchained- The Mad Smith Page 6
