by K D Brand
“You don’t think they’ll see all this?” she asked, waving an arm to encompass the field.
“Probably,” Ty replied, “but it’s really not going to matter.”
“Why’s that?” Deven wondered, sidling over, his face a shade of brown from all the dirt caked on it.
The easy answer was game mechanics, but he couldn’t tell them that. With no PCs from the town allowed outside of town, no one had ever prepped the battlefield ahead of the horde’s onslaught.
Simply put, the orcs and goblins wouldn’t think twice about charging across the field, right into the spikes because they, like the rest of the NPCs, defaulted to their programming. And since the spikes and trenches weren’t a part of the actual game scenario, they would completely ignore them.
“Just gotta trust me on this one,” he told them. “This will work, but there’s more to be done.”
“More?” Sully groaned. “You’re really squeezing my turnip, boy.”
Ty raised an eyebrow at the old man, then glanced at his friends. “And you say I cuss funny?”
Char shrugged. “Will this stop them?”
“Stop them? No,” Ty told her. “But it will slow them down and whittle away some of their numbers.”
“Then what’s the point of it?” Deven pressed. “We could chop down half the horde and there’d still be more than enough to tear the entire town down around our ears.”
“This is only part of the plan,” Ty assured.
And to reinforce that, he eased up onto his tiptoes and glanced over the shoulders of the gathered throng until he spied the person he was looking for.
“Hey, Master Elor!” he called out.
The alchemist trainer glanced up and came over when Ty waved to him.
“Yes?”
“You see these empty trenches here?” Ty pointed to several rows of ditches they’d dug and not added spikes into. “Do you have anything we can pour into them, something flammable? Something easy to ignite but hard to put out?”
Master Elor stroked his stubbled chin, his thick jowls jiggling as he did. He thought for a moment, then nodded. “I believe I’ve some fire salamander spittle back at my hut. A little goes a long way, so we could mix it with tar and you’d have quite the bonfire when you ignited the trenches.”
Ty grinned, his excitement stretching his cheeks almost to the point they hurt.
“I might even be able to add in some explosive compounds,” Elor suggested. “Those would create a fiery maelstrom here before the gates.”
“No, that’s not really a good idea,” he argued immediately, shaking his head. “The flammable mix of salamander spit and tar is perfect, thank you.”
He glanced over to where his rope ladder hung. While a good distance from where they stood, and out of the line of the horde’s advance, he could be sure it would be safe there even if the entire field was set ablaze. But adding in explosives put it at risk, and he needed that to remain in place for part of his plan to work.
Ty couldn’t be sure that the damage would be contained to Altunn’s gates and the area adjacent. Given enough explosives, the whole wall could be at risk from collapsing, either form direct exposure to the explosions or due to secondary damage rippling along the wall.
All that said, Ty smiled as his mind seized on an idea.
“You have a lot of explosives?” he asked.
Master Elor grinned like a kid with a favorite toy. “I do. I have black powder, and dragon glands, and—”
Ty held up a hand to cut him off. “Okay, okay, no need to list them all,” he said, patting Elor on the shoulder to ease the sting of cutting him off. “You and I will have to sit down and discuss all this before tomorrow’s invasion.”
Elor nodded. “Anytime.”
“I’ll swing by your hut later,” he promised, letting the master return to what he was doing as Ty turned to Char. “Do you carry bows in your shop?”
She shook her head. “No, but Oswald does.”
“How many does he have?”
“I would presume one hundred,” she answered.
Of course, Ty thought, chuckling. The game system limited everything all the stores to an even one hundred.
Realistically, though, that was way more than enough.
“Can you convince him to part with them?” Ty asked.
“Well, he does sell them…”
“I was thinking more about him letting us borrow them for the day,” Ty explained. He didn’t have the kind of coin on hand to finance a hundred bows, or even half that, he figured. “We’ll only need them during the invasion. We will, of course, need a bunch of arrows, too.”
“I’ll see what I can do she,” she offered.
“Good. If he’s willing to cough them up, bring them all here and line them up along the front wall, with a supply of arrows for each.”
“And just who are you expecting to put behind those bows?” Amon wondered.
“Anyone and everyone,” Ty shot back.
“It’s not like anyone in town’s actually used a bow before, let alone proficient at one,” the crafter argued.
Ty shrugged. “Given how many orcs and goblins will be piled up outside the wall, we don’t need a skill brigade of archers. Anything sharp and pointy raining down on the heads of the horde will take its toll.”
Amon thought about it for a second before conceding the point with a nod. “I guess that’s true.”
“What’s left to do?” Char asked.
“I think that’s it for today,” Ty answered. “We need to convince more people to join us for all this work, though. Maybe you guys can hit up the Orchid and any other place where people congregate and try to get more of them invested.”
“And what will you be doing?” Deven asked.
“I’ve a few people of my own to talk to,” Ty replied. “All of this…” he waved his arms around, gesturing to the field and the wall, “is a stopgap measure designed to harry and slow the horde before they get into Altunn. And they will get into Altunn,” he warned. “now, we need to prepare to a surprise for Halgor himself, because only when he falls does the invasion end.”
“You have something in mind for that?” Char asked, hope brightening her face.
“Uh…I’m kinda still working on that part,” he admitted, pulling a sour expression. “Anyway, do what you can to find more people and convince Oswald to let us borrow the bows,” he told them. “Me, I’m off to see a thief.”
Ty waved and started toward the ladder. Behind him, he heard Amon mutter.
“I thought he was a thief?” the crafter asked.
Ty could practically hear Deven shrug. “I’ve stopped trying to figure out half of what all the boy says. Don’t none of it make any sense anyhow.”
NIGHT HAD JUST started to fall when Ty arrived at the Shadow Walk.
He slipped into the labyrinthine corridors, hunting his prey: Theolin. He knew he was online thanks to the chat window Nikky had left open. It had given Ty access to the menu, which he’d used to check Theolin’s online status.
It was pretty much a given after that as to where he’d be found. And sure enough, not more than a few minutes after Ty had entered the Walk then he came across the thief, crouched in the shadows, his Mask Identity skill running, blurring his gamer tag, the brightness dimmed by the ability.
“Looks like you’re stirring things up nicely in Altunn,” Theolin said by way of greeting. “Defiler and his goons are all hot and bothered to get their hands on you. Even offered a bounty.”
Ty froze at hearing that. While he’d expected to have to duke it out with Defiler and his buddies at some point before the invasion, or during, but he hadn’t even imagined the idea that the jacktard would put up a bounty for him.
“Uh…” Ty started, struggling to get the words out. Theolin could well be looking to collect. “How much is it?”
“Fifty gold…for now,” he replied, then chuckled, throwing back his hood and canceling his Mask Identity ability. “But I know what you’re
thinking. I can see it written across your face. Am I gonna kill you? Well, am I, punk?”
Ty sniggered. “I don’t know, Dirty Harry, are you?”
Theolin grinned at Ty getting the reference. “Nah,” he answered, shrugging the tension off. “Fifty gold ain’t worth pissing off a Beta who has access to all the new mod upgrades.”
“Good to know you’ve got your priorities straight,” Ty told him, laughing. “And speaking of all that, we’re running some open-test Beta stuff tomorrow…” he started to explain.
The coming lie sat sour on his tongue, but he just couldn’t bring himself to try to explain the reality of the situation to someone in-game He had to be subtle or, at the very least, not blatant about what was really going on.
“So, uh, yeah…there’s a bunch of stuff being worked out to provide the PCs with stronger defenses against the horde so that it doesn’t take quite so many people to joining to defeat Halgor.”
“Yeah?” Theolin asked. “Like what?”
“Well, we’re Beta’ing some cooperative interplay between PCs and NPCs, so they’ll be a number the shopkeepers and general NPCs out on the wall and nearby, working to help stop the horde along with the PCs,” he explained, not technically lying. “The problem is, since the invasion isn’t a necessity for leaving town, only a scenario designed to push for PC cooperation, we’re not likely going to have all that many players actually hanging out and trying to fight off the horde.”
Theolin nodded, letting Ty explain everything before jumping in.
“So, yeah, we need more PCs to take part,” Ty went on. “The problem is—”
“You’ve got a bounty on your head, and Defiler wants to mount it on his wall?” Theolin asked, grinning slyly.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much it,” Ty admitted, the bounty a convenient excuse. He expected to run into trouble in that aspect due to Defiler wanting him dead, but the price on his head just gave him more cause to avoid it. “I can’t go running around recruiting people because someone will take a shot at me. And if I’m forced to respawn, I’ll lose the whole day napping, you know?”
If that’s what even happened with him anymore. Now that he’d leveled to 7, there was no telling if the safe zones worked the same for him, and he wasn’t all that interested in figuring it out.
“So, you want me to do it?” the thief asked.
Ty nodded. “Yeah, you can put it out there on the public channels that something big is going down during the invasion and that everyone should show up to fight. I mean, be casual and don’t mention the beta-testing part of it all, but you can say there’ll be something new going on, something they’ve never seen before. And if the horde is defeated, they’ll all get that bonus XP instead of having to grind their way out of town.”
“I can do that,” Theolin said with a nod. “I gotta admit, I’m all sorts of curious to see what you guys have cooked up.” Then he paused for a second, eyes narrowing and meeting Ty’s. “I’m still gonna get to do the solo stuff, right? The day in advance shot at the new upgrades?”
“Absolutely,” Ty continued to lie, forcing a smile to hide his disgust with himself. “As soon as it’s ready to go, I’ll make sure you’re looped in.”
Theolin whooped, punching a fist into the air. “Then I’m in, man! I’ll go see who I can scrounge up for tonight. If no one else, my guild will be there.”
“And not that I have to say it, but…don’t tell folks you heard any of this from me, yeah?”
“I’m not that stupid,” Theolin laughed. Then he waved goodbye excitedly, darting into the darkness.
“Oh, and thanks for not killing me,” he called after Theolin as he vanished, sighing once the thief was gone.
Eventually, he was going to have to be honest with the guy, and he wasn’t looking forward to it, but Theolin deserved the truth. So does Nikky, he thought. They both did.
“Too many lies,” he muttered, making his way out of the Shadow Walk before he ran into any of its other denizens and they decided to stick sharp pointy things in him.
While Ty felt he deserved a butt-kicking right then, he couldn’t afford to lose the time it’d take to recover.
Sadly, all this was something he would have to learn to live with for now.
I guess all rogues are a little shady.
Speaking of…
He had one more person to visit before the night was over, but he’d have to be slick about it given that Defiler and his goons were gunning for him outright now.
My improved skills are going to come in handy already, he thought with a laugh. Now’s as good a time as any to test them out.
Then maybe—maybe—he’d figure out how to take down Halgor himself.
Twenty-Two
A Gathering of Whoas
ALL OF TY’S plans in place—what few he had, at least—morning rolled around, carrying with it an anxiousness he couldn’t entirely push aside.
Tonight, was the return of the horde, and way too much rested on the shoulders of NPCs who were running contrary to their programming. All it would take to ruin everything would be for the system to push through a general maintenance update, and Ty would be on his own against the horde, Defiler, and if he was being a bit dramatic, the world itself.
He didn’t like his odds.
Mind you, he had pretty much forever to defeat Halgor seeing how Ty didn’t have a way home, and the troll king would raid the city over and over and over until he was defeated. Even then, he’d come back and start the process over, but the attack was so ingrained in his friends’ psyches that Ty had to kill Halgor, had to show them his corpse, before they could ever move on from it.
Until he did, they would be trapped in the idea that Halgor held power over them and their world, and they would never evolve enough to have their own lives, to become their own best selves.
Ty wanted that for them, and more so, now that he’d gotten to know them, he wanted to see them happy. And, however selfishly, he also needed them free of Altunn. He needed their help to find the ingredients for the summoning spell, to help him gain the experience and knowledge that he needed in order to reverse-engineer the process if he ever hoped to get home. He still believed that was what he needed to do. So, that was the goal he would work toward, and the sooner he completed it, the better.
That in mind, today would be spent shoring things up, helping the alchemist fill the trenches with fire salamander spit and whatever else was needed, then building some last-ditch defenses just outside the gate, at the very back of the killing field.
Oh, and avoiding pretty much every PC in the game.
He sighed, thinking about the bounty. That was going to be a burr in his butt no matter how things worked out. The last thing he needed was to have PCs taking shots at him in the middle of the invasion while Halgor bore down on him.
And speaking of the troll king, Ty still didn’t have a solid plan for dealing with him. As much as he hoped the trenches and arrows would take him out before he hit the walls, Ty wasn’t that much of an optimist, not even on a good day.
He knew he’d have to engage Halgor directly at some point, hence the way he’d lined up his latest skill points and training to maximize his chances of survival but, as of now, his only real plan was to avoid direct confrontation and peck away at the troll king and not die, all while hoping the town’s PCs and NPCs would join in and help him finish the monster once he was separated from all his minions.
The problem was, that particular plan—if it could even be called a plan—relied way too much on the cooperation and kindness of others.
He didn’t have a whole lot of faith in either of those these days. Especially not now that Defiler had tagged him for assassination.
PCs were happy to dodge the horde quest because, while it paid out nice XP at the end, it took too much effort to complete successfully, everyone having to work together to complete it. Most of the PCs who would be useful in the fight were already 5th level—Defiler and his guys—and didn’t car
e if Halgor burned the city down or not. It’d come back the next morning, and the game would go on.
A quick fifty gold would make a lot of people happy given that none of them likely expected anyone to defeat the horde anyway. And fifty gold bought a lot of gear at the lower levels.
As Ty made his way toward the trainers’ huts to speak with the alchemist, he stuck to the shadows, practicing his stealth while stuffing a muffin—this one paid for—into his mouth to ward off the morning’s hunger notifications.
Finally, PCs skittering everywhere, likely motivated by the bounty to be online—or, Ty hoped, more because Theolin had encouraged them to join in Altunn’s defense—Ty made it to the Alchemist’s without incident, but it was close.
He knocked quietly and went inside in a rush. It was gloomy, which Ty was beginning to believe was a prerequisite for a trainer hut. Master Elor, off in the back, waved to him once he shut the door.
“Greetings, Traveler,” he called out, repeating the familiar mantra of the shopkeepers and trainers. “Care to learn the ways of alchemy?”
Ty glanced about the room, marveling at the array of glass containers that covered nearly every open space in the room. Liquids and powders of all sorts filled each one to varying degrees, some full to overflowing, some with barely enough in them to be bothered with.
The dim lantern light reflecting off the glassware made for a low-rent light show, crystalline stars of every color dancing throughout the hut.
“All this place needs is a disco ball and a thumping backbeat,” Ty mumbled.
“What’s that?” Elor asked, coming over.
“Oh,” Ty chuckled. “Nothing. I was admiring your collection of…well, of whatever all this stuff is,” he said, gesturing to the cove red shelves. “Is all this stuff…explosive?”
Master Elor chuckled. “Explosive, hazardous, poisonous, and flammable. Between what I have here and what’s stored in the basement, I could level the entire northern half of Altunn.”
“Whoa.” Ty shuddered thinking about it. “Is it safe to keep all this here then?”
“All the ingredients are stable in their inert forms,” he assured. “It’d take one hell of an effort to trigger them, but Gorod forbid someone actually did.” He grinned. “But fear not, young apprentice, the basement where all the real destructive compounds are kept has been magically reinforced. We’re quite safe up here.”