“Did he unzip his face?” I asked Duke.
“Watch,” Jayson commanded.
And I did with a mixture of horror and awe. The creature in a man suit unhinged his lower jaw and took the gnok’s entire head in his mouth. Everyone in the room heard it when he bit down and removed the gnok’s head. The corpse withered and crumbled into ash, leaving only the robe behind.
“Me am eaten Beefcake,” He roared, belched, and then zipped his reptilian face back into his human suit. He turned and saw me, we locked eyes and he smiled at me before sitting back down.
“BEEFCAKE!” Another one of those creatures howled.
“The lizarman in the human suit, that’s Vee. Don’t piss him off,” Duke said.
“I think your race is awesome,” Jayson replied right after, losing interest in the gnok.
“Stop it; I told you not to speak for me.” Duke slapped Jayson in the back of the head and… absorbed him? What in the inferno was that? “Anyway, I might need to roll a new [Author] and see if I can get a mutant race.”
“Good luck with that,” I said, finishing my food, and getting ready to stand up. Duke grabbed one of my arms and pulled me back down into my seat.
“Wait,” He said and pointed towards the innkeeper. “Free advice slash lesson for you. Watch.”
Another NPC had already walked in and sidled up to the bar to talk to the innkeeper which was odd but he still had that thousand-yard stare.
“Hal, knock it off.”
“A room is 10 gold.”
[Detect Bullshit +1]
I waved the message away and already felt the stirrings of anger filling me.
“Wow, really? That is just robbery.” The NPC laughed, and the innkeeper joined in.
What the hell?
“Heh, try it, Delilah. Those potions of yours could sell for double their price. I’ve already made over a hundred gold today.”
“That son of a bitch,” I growled, but Duke continued to hold me in place.
“Relax. He played you, and you fell for it. Consider the gold lost payment for a valuable lesson. The NPCs are smart; most are probably smarter than us. In fact, I guarantee it.”
“I suppose you have a point. Besides, this is nothing like my GameBoy Advance.”
“Hah! Oh—you were serious. Shit man, if the only game system you owned was a GameBoy, you are the biggest newb I have ever met. Like on an epic scale, you are mythical. For future reference, the going rate for a room is two gold a night, ten for a week, and thirty-five for a month. Give or take a few coins—anyway, good luck. I need to kill more shit before it gets dark. Oh, last lesson, stay near the city after dark.”
“Creatures get harder?”
“Nope. Gnoks hunt down [Authors]. Some of which aren’t seen again. Rumor or not, be careful.”
Duke left, and I headed to my room, but I flicked off the Innkeeper on the way. Once I closed the door behind me, Dr. Soulstoner showed up.
Chapter 11
Location: Deuce’s Virtual Home
The door swung open, revealing the entrance to my room. A shimmering barrier greeted me which reminded me of the dungeon entrance.
Oh, sparkly! I grinned, but before I could enter, two rooms appeared across the surface of the shimmering. The first image was a furnished room with a bed and a small dresser. It was small and quaint. The second image was a larger room, but it was bare, just four walls, a floor, and a ceiling. Nothing stood out as unique, except the one wall with light filtering through a window. It gave me a view out front of the inn.
Curious, I chose the bare room, and energy crackled as it washed over me. It was a tingling feeling and caused no pain, but it definitely had the same feel as the dungeon entrance, so I assumed I was in an instanced area.
[You have discovered the location: Deuce’s Home.
Bonus: If you sleep at this location, you will gain a 15% increase in Experience for the following day.
Location Owner: Deuce Bigbelow
You completed the hidden quest Welcome Home.
Rewards: Simple Bed, Simple Desk, Simple Chair, Small Wooden Chest, and Wardrobe.
OTM: Homes are your only safe place across the realms. You can only access this place through an inn. Trademark Online is a vast place, and we recommend you expand your room and add a whole separate room for storage. Additional rooms can have different levels of security.
Like vampires, Authors need an invitation to enter your private home. If you grant them access, the consequences are on you. The storage room we recommended should remain locked to everyone but you. The other option is to limit access to your place. Most [Authors] build a small lobby and only grant access to that space.
Also, you may use the default room or space instead of your instanced home. This was the furnished room you saw when you opened the door. Using a non-instanced room means anyone could break in and take anything that doesn’t belong to the inn. Even items in locked chests (or they can steal the whole chest…)]
My room populated with my rewards, each of the items landing in their prearranged places. The setup reminded me of my cellar room, locked away from public viewing. So the staples were there, but it wasn’t a place you entertained guests.
“Homes are instanced areas like dungeons, but the God of Sanctuary shields your space from outsiders.” Dr. Soulstoner popped in and sat on the only chair.
“Who is the God of Sanctuary?” I didn’t overly care, but they had gods for everything.
“His system name is Lit ToDe, but don’t call him toad. He’ll destroy you. He handles the defensive nature of things, and not just your home. In case you are ever raiding anything with towers—don’t. Tod’s towers are varied, but the [Sinister] ones have wiped out entire armies. It’s fun to watch, but I wouldn’t want to take part.”
“Got it. Dungeons are better anyway.”
“At least try the realm wars out, because they are fun initially. That—” The doc pointed at the large wooden dresser. “—is your wardrobe. Don’t throw away any clothes you get. Feed them to that thing, including masks. Don’t worry; they work like chests; no one can take anything from them. Even if you grant it.”
“Why?”
“Clothes are part of a mini-game collectible thing. It wasn’t my idea, so don’t give me that look.” Dr. Soulstoner laughed. “Once you get a new model and enter it into the wardrobe, you lock it in forever; then you can sell off the original. The reasoning is that clothes have no benefit except for dress up, and if you destroy your outfit—like getting hit with a fireball—you outfit will regenerate similar to your health.”
“That’s neat, I suppose. Why bother collecting?”
“Oh, yea, you get rewards for acquiring clothes and accessories. You can look it up later, there are a lot of combinations, and rewards depend on types of clothes gather too. Trinkets are your reward; you will notice another slot appeared on your character sheet called the Wardrobe Trinket. It works similar to other Trinkets, except it's specifically for clothes and you only get these by collecting more clothes.”
“So if I gathered athletic gear, I’d get an agility trinket?”
“Oh, no. Much better than that—it’ll bump your hidden attributes.”
“Sounds dumb, the game, not the reward.”
“Bingo.” Dr. Soulstoner’s eyes narrowed. “Now, about your new friends. You weren’t supposed to cause [Drama] with the Kongdom already.”
“It was just that BanHammer jerk and not intentional. Besides, what is he going to do? Kidnap me in my sleep?”
“Yes, exactly right. They try to operate in the shadows but are horrible at it.”
“Wait—what?”
“The Father doesn’t want [Drama] in his Kongdom, so he steals [Authors] away in the middle of the night and throws them into the Prison of Terrich. No trials, no witnesses, except maybe his inner circle. Even if they had a trial, it’d be a farce because they will grab people that aren’t even from the Kongdom and ban them, just because they can. Most
of these [Authors] disappear. We cannot locate them.”
“I don’t understand, are you saying they are banned from the game itself?”
“No, because we can see they are logged in, so they aren’t locked out. I asked one developer to follow the money and locate them in the real world.”
“And?”
“He found them; every single one is in a coma. Just a guess, but I believe the Father was trying to ban accounts of anyone who went against his agenda. Pure [Ku]—the power of creation used by the gods—is the only way to achieve what he did. It went unnoticed at first because we assumed that no [Author] could harness the power of the gods, but we did not anticipate that someone would try to enslave a god.”
“And Ku is what?”
“To explain, you need to understand gods. There are four tiers for the gods and goddesses. Archgods are at the top and virtually, there is no stronger power, not even the game admins can go against them. We can shut their servers down but that’s it. The main two are Trademark and Zon, and you do not want to anger either of them. There is no new character for you, so if you gain their wrath, you are stuck with it.”
“Got it; keep my smartass mouth shut around the Archgods.”
“If you remember anything from this talk, remember that.” Dr. Soulstoner sipped from a frosty mug that appeared in his hand. “Below Archgods, you have the Upper Pantheon of Genres, which house the established gods. Their power structure is in place, and there is little chance of toppling them. The Lower Pantheon of Genres is a hodgepodge of miscellaneous gods, most of them not well known. A lot of [Primals] end up here too, not because they are weak but because they don’t have a dedicated following.”
“Who of the upper pantheon should I be worried about?”
“I doubt you’ll run into any of them, maybe Fi Porta who is the God of Portals, which brings up honorifics. Gods with Fi in their system names represent high gods, and Lit represents a lesser god. So Lit RoPlaGa, affectionately known as Ro by the other gods, is a lesser god. She is the child of Lit Gama, and her uncle is Fi Porta. Somehow, the Goddess of Games is solely in charge of this realm, so no other gods support this place.”
“I think I’m following, but you said there is a fourth tier?”
“Yes. The [Fallen Gods] fill the last tier. These are gods that are compromised or done something so drastic that Zon clipped their ascension.”
“How does a god get compromised? Take a bribe? Get caught boning a mortal in the back of a Volkswagen?”
“Hah, you have a quick tongue. Enslavement is one method. We believe the Father is close to enslaving her, and that he used Ro’s Ku for nefarious ends.”
“If that is true, what is he using the creation mana for?”
“More guesswork, but those [Authors] that are in comas, we believe the Father meddled with a power he didn’t understand and ignored the consequences of his actions. I cannot be certain because management doesn’t want us to research it further.”
“I’m not sure I understand, what exactly is he doing?”
“Imagine a hacker has access to your network, but used a prebuilt script, so he does not understand what he is doing once he gets in. That’s the Father, he wanted to ban these people, but he shut down their VR headsets. In the process, he overwrote the log out sequences. He stripped the failsafe from their headsets and instead of stepping them out of the system, he straight snapped their connection. So there are remnants of these people in the system, and I don’t think we can get them back in their bodies. The Father essentially killed them.”
“Shit tits.”
“We are calling these remnants of people [Ghost Writers] and have since fixed it so he can’t override the hardware anymore. He hasn’t stopped meddling. As far as the remnants go, the system has adapted and is using their trapped minds to serve as autonomous NPCs, at least we believe so. We haven’t been able to locate them because we rely on the hardware, the headsets, to locate people online. Without it, we have no way of tracking them except through the Archgods. Archgods are hard-coded to log any request made, and those records are open to the public. Asking them is out of the question because management would know right away.”
“Then how do you know they are still out there?”
“The other reason we are calling them [Ghost Writers] is that we are finding vestiges of their writing scattered throughout the Father’s submissions. He is using them to help write his own stories, taking some of their ideas and transforming them for his gain.”
“Couldn’t those be his writing?”
“Nope. We map thought processes, and the longer you’ve been in the game, the faster the system anticipates your needs. You’ll notice how things are at hand when you need it. We can use this same process to compare to events in the game and match them to people with 96.3% accuracy.”
“I have to ask, what is with the [Author] theme? Why not adventurers or something?”
“Because of the [Prophecy] mechanic. Prophecy is a tricky thing because there are two schools of thought on it. On one side, people believe our lives are on rails. Prophecy to them is just peeking behind the curtain to see part of their story. The other side thinks prophecies are self-fulfilled, so you hear the prophecy, and it influences actions, subconsciously leading them down the path.”
“Right, or they keep it vague enough that each component could have a thousand different meanings.”
“Well, that goes along with self-fulfilled because interpretation is part of influencing the completion. So, the story system works on a similar principle of self-fulfilled prophecies. You, the [Author], can devise a story or progression. If you keep it realistic and with enough room for failure, the system will build in the storyline and grant you a quest line to achieve it. There is no guarantee of completion either. So you can write a prophecy, or outcome, into the game. The Father came to this realm early on. Few writers were available to create opposing storylines, and we think this is how he tapped into the power of a god. Knowing his ego, I’m guessing he asked to be a god.”
“The [Prophecy] mechanic sounds amazing, and I can do that? Develop a storyline that gets incorporated into the game?”
“Yes, you could, and it’s ingenious. Most new players struggle with the idea initially, and you are going up against veteran [Authors]. There are cool perks though, based on some Virtual Reality laws, we have to pay royalties on any storylines used in the game. Not to mention, the Archgod Zon turning your game play into books of which you own ten percent.”
“Ok, so this Father guy is using these [Authors] to write stories, in-game and out. Is he stealing their work? If so, that’s a dick move.”
“More like he is borrowing ideas and incorporating them into his own story. It happens a lot. An author, especially parody and satire writers, tend to borrow ideas.” I rolled my eyes at the doctor, but he continued as if he didn’t notice. More to the point, I’m not sure why I rolled my eyes. Guess that’s better than obsessing over wood floors. “It happens. But… these particular [Authors] are not writing their own stuff anymore. They are quite literally ghostwriting for the Father.”
“Alright, so to recap, the Father has access to god level Creation Ku, which I’ll come back to. His attempts to ban authors have disconnected them from the game without a power-down sequence, trapping and breaking their minds. Which is bad, but how did the goddess become a pawn?”
“Creating a god has a few requirements. First of which, they have to be the god or goddess of something, such as [Portals]. Next, they need a following. The more followers, the more powerful the god. The kicker is, followers may not be aware they are even participating in a creation event.”
“How does that work?”
“[Primal] entities don’t need worshippers. A Fire God gains power by people acknowledging or using fire. Getting sidetracked. The Russians went through the proper steps and created Ro, the Goddess of Games. Others, including Americans, discovered the goddess much later. The Russian [Authors] welcomed
everyone with open arms. Ro relies on its followers for power, and it gives her access to a larger pool of Ku. They believed that the more people following, the stronger their goddess would get.”
“I see the logic, and I’m following you now. But can you explain [Ku]?”
“Breaking immersion, our content in the game is only limited by our hardware. Ku just a fancy form of the available hardware and Zon maintains that pool of resources. We base allocation of Ku on popularity, so the more people who are into a god, goddess, realm, etc., the more they can expand their realm, grant powers, and so forth. As long as you have access to pure Ku, you could do whatever the hell you wanted with it. The Archgod Zon grants it, but he can just as easily take it away.”
“So are we in danger of running out of Ku?”
“Not even close, plus we could always add more resources. It’s not infinite, but it would take a catastrophic system event to use it all. Everyone has a little Ku in them, even lesser beings. That inner fire of yours is a primal Ku and a weak form of creation, but I won’t spoil your surprises. There is an expert here in Shreddit, and he could tell you everything you need to know about Ku, they call him Kendal the Unlimited.”
“No thanks, that sounds boring,” I grimaced, and the doctor chuckled at me. “So I am considered a lower being?”
“Yes, anything not a god is a lesser being.”
“And the Russians invited the Americans in—what went wrong?”
“The Father did. One of the first to convert, he started with good intentions—I think. It turns out; it was a facade. If you meet him, he’ll try to sell you hard on his benevolence. Never underestimate that guy. He will convince you to turn your back to him because he needs a place to sheath his knife, and chances are you’ll agree. I call it chubby guy charisma, like Santa Claus. Regardless, the Father became paranoid and kept telling people they were out to get him.”
“Who is they?”
“If you figure that out, let me know. Pretty sure it’s paranoia. Success went to his head, and he turned on those who helped him build his following. All this caused a rift with the Russians too because it was at this point he declared himself the Father of Ro. Imagine the ego of a person that self-appoints himself the head of a church he didn’t create. That’s like me calling myself the Pope. Here is a small secret; he has caused so much [Drama] that he has stirred up the Ku.”
The Land of Trademark Online Page 7
