Jerry, God of Morn'a Doon

by Alexei Tripmiov

  Jerry, God of Morn’a Doon:

  A LitRPG Adventure

  by Alexei Tripmiov

  Copyright 2018 by the author. All rights reserved.

  All characters in this story are entirely fictitious, with no relationship to any person, living or dead. Except for Jerry, who bears a passing resemblance to the young Macaulay Culkin.

  Also by Alexei Tripmiov:

  Bounty Harlot: A World of Brutalia LitRPG

  Death had changed.

  Dying used to be simple and straightforward, with your avatar crumpling to the ground, trembling a few times, then expiring, often with an arm across the forehead. It was clean and basic, and you spawned back at your binding point immediately and did a corpse run to pick up your gear.

  This, though –

  This was pretty sick.

  “HELP MEEEE…!” Ken wailed again. He played a gnome enchanter. The bearded little creature writhed on the ground, blood pouring out of multiple wounds to his neck and upper body.

  They had been fighting a band of kobolds and Ken had tried a new spell on them, one he had been looking forward to using, Enchant Group. “I can enslave them all for like, two minutes,” he said, “if it works. We can have them all fight each other. Or whatever.”

  “Can we put them to work on my quilts?” Craig had asked. Craig played some quirky composite character, some enchanter/crafter hybrid. He spent as much time working on quilts and serapes as he did going on raids with the rest of them.

  “You want to start a quilting club with a bunch of kobolds?”

  Craig had shrugged. “They have high dexterity. I’m just saying. It should be possible.”

  It was a moot point, though, because the spell failed, and seven or eight kobolds descended on Ken, hacking and stabbing at him with their daggers. He went down fast, his AC was so low. The rest of the group spent a minute taking out the kobolds, Jake the warrior laying them out with his twin swords, Austin the ranger planting arrows in one after another of them, Wayne the rogue doing his backstab thing, and Craig throwing a few desultory, low-impact fireballs.

  Now Ken was dying, a drag, certainly, Austin reflected, but as soon as he died they would wait for him while he spawned and did his corpse run. Wait for him while resting up, binding wounds, replenishing mana.

  But Ken hadn’t died yet. He was busy dying right now, right in front of them, and in painful, dramatic fashion, in the middle of a field of green below a cloudy sky. It was springtime in Morn’a Doon, with flowers bursting all over the fields, and the sky alternating from moment to moment between rain and sunshine. A cool breeze carried the smell of sweet pollen to Austin. Somehow everything was more real, more intense. The scent of the fields, the light sprinkle of spring rain on his face, even the iron smell of Ken’s blood.

  He looked over at Jake again. The warrior shrugged his shoulders inside his form-fitting plate armor. “I have no idea what’s going on.”

  “Maybe it’s a new patch,” Wayne said. He played a dark elf with a platinum afro, a rogue in dark clothing, leather armor almost as dark as his jet black skin. “For more realism or something.”

  “It hurts! It really freaking hurts!”

  “Maybe it’s not really Ken. Maybe it’s some kind of NPC that takes over when you’re dying, for the sake of, veris, uh, whatever that word is.”

  “Verisimilitude,” Austin said.

  “Yeah, whatever. Realism.”

  “It’s me!” Ken shrieked.

  Wayne bent down next to the tortured gnome and shouted into his ear. “Is that really you, Kenny?”

  “Yes it’s me! OWWWWWW!!!”

  “I don’t think it’s him,” Wayne concluded, standing. “Let’s loot these fuckers and wait for Ken to – oww! Christ! Oww!”

  “What is it?” Jake asked, drawing his twin swords, the long bastard sword in one hand, the short scimitar in the other.

  “It feels like I just got stabbed in the fucking ass – oww! – with a needle or rapier or some goddam – oww!”

  Abruptly the clouds parted and a spotlight of sunshine burst through. In the blue sky appeared a shimmering form, a twisted tadpole of a thing resembling, remarkably, a human fetus. Quite remarkably. Actually, it was a human fetus. But one with a booming voice; it opened its minuscule mouth: “GRATUITOUS CURSING WILL NO LONGER BE TOLERATED IN THE WORLD OF MORN’A DOON.”

  “Whoa,” Wayne said, “is that a talking fetus? What the fuck? Ah! Ai! Ouch!”

  “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!” The fetus dissolved back into the patch of blue sky, the light faded, and the cloudy day returned.

  Wayne shook his head, rubbing his rear end. “That was really fu – ah, really darned weird.”

  “It actually hurt? What the little zygote did to you?”

  “Yes, it really hurt.” Wayne glowered at him. “Pretty weird. A little monster like the thing from that movie, 2001, comes out of nowhere and –”

  “Have you ever been hurt here before?” Austin asked Jake.

  Jake shrugged again. “I’ve never really experienced real pain here.”

  “Yeah.” Austin pondered that. The new immersion technology the game had developed in the past year increased the texture of the experience, the, well, verisimilitude of it. You could feel the wind on your face, for instance, though in a predictable way, as though there were only one setting for wind on face, and the heft of your weapon in your hand was as real as could be. But Austin, like Jake, had definitely not experienced pain before, not here in the world of Morn’a Doon. He went over to Ken, bent over the little gnome’s twisted, bloody body. “That’s really you, Ken?”

  Ken groaned and nodded. “Just…put me out of my misery…”

  “What’s the name of your avatar in Second Life?”

  The little gnome’s eyes were fading, but he forced himself to consciousness and met Austin’s gaze. “It’s…it’s Jim…”

  Wayne snorted. “That’s the name Ken goes by in Second Life? Jim?”

  “The point is, it’s something only Ken would know.”

  “Well you knew it,” Craig said.

  “Because I briefly had a Second Life character. Ken showed me around there…while I played. If ‘played’ is the right word.”

  “I’d rather watch paint dry,” Wayne said.

  “That is a pretty boring game,” Jake agreed.

  “It’s great,” Craig said. “You can make lots of items in it.”

  “The point is,” Austin said, “This really is Ken, not some new death graphic.”

  Ken’s little gnome’s eyes fluttered open. Austin saw the tears in them. “It’s me…Austin, I’m begging you…” Ken choked and a bit of bloody phlegm trickled out of his thin lips into his scraggly beard. “Put me out of my misery, man. This is too much.”

  “I wish we had a healer,” Jake said. “Why wouldn’t any of you guys create a healer character?”

  Wayne grunted. “Well why the f—I mean, why the heck didn’t you?”

  Austin stared down at the bloody little body. “I’m not sure a healer would help.” Still, though, it would have been good to have one around just to find out. None of the guys wanted to play a healer. He had been trying to talk his live-in girlfriend, Angie, into creating a character and joining him in the world of Morn’a Doon, but so far she had done little more than roll her eyes and let him know the statistical likelihood of that happening.

  The little gnomish body convulsed as the trickle of blood became a sudden splurt, little bits of vomit, or something, internal body bits, it looked like, came out with it. Austin drew his sword, a short, simple thing, suitable for a ranger who did most of his work in thick woodlands. “That’s it. Something’s wrong. I’m going to finish him off.”

>   “That could really hurt your faction rating,” Jake said.

  Wayne grunted derisively. “With who? Gnomes?”

  Austin held the sword poised over Ken’s body, ready to bring it down. “Can’t you just log off?” he asked him.

  “I’ve…tried…please…”

  “I guess you better do it,” Jake said.

  “We shall lament our fallen comrade,” Craig intoned. He tried to stay in character, usually. The roleplaying thing was big with him. Except for when you got him talking about Battlestar Galactica.

  “Okay,” Austin said. “Fuck it – oww! Jesus Christ!

  Owww!”

  The clouds parted again. The gigantic, floating fetus appeared and its voice again boomed: “GRATUITOUS CURSING WILL NO LONGER BE TOLERATED IN THE WORLD OF MORN’A DOON.”

  “Okay, fine.” Austin brought the sword down in a fluid motion, severing Ken’s little gnomish head from his body. A voice flickered in Austin’s head: “Faction standing with the gnomish race has been damaged.”

  “Well, gnomes will be out to get me now,” he said, sheathing his sword.

  “Like you’ll even notice,” Wayne said.

  They fell silent, sitting in a circle on the ground, binding wounds, eating, drinking. Craig pulled a piece of knitting out of his bag and began to work on it. Wayne rolled his eyes. “What is that, anyway?”

  “An enchanted beer cozy.”

  They fill silent, save for the snick of knitting needles.

  “Ken should be here pretty soon,” Jake said.

  “Yeah.” Austin checked the time on his inventory screen. “He’s been dead over ten minutes.”

  Over the clack of his needles Craig asked, “Has he changed his bind point recently?”

  “Not to my knowledge. It should be back in Freetown. Where we’re all bound.” Austin checked his messages. Nothing from Ken. Come on, Ken, he thought. He wondered if he should tell the guys his news, if now was a good time, or wait until Ken joined them. Austin was quitting the game after today, quitting all gaming, basically. He wondered how they would take it. Jake would be sad but cool, he guessed. Wayne would be a dick, telling him he was whipped. Craig would do some roleplaying thing where he bid him a heroic farewell or something like that. It would be fine. They’d promise to keep in touch outside the game, text or whatever, and never would.

  Austin’s girlfriend, Angie, had moved in with him about two months earlier. They got along seamlessly. Almost seamlessly. They were at similar places in their lives, both of them finishing up their undergraduate degrees and about to make the leap into the professional work force, in her case, or advanced degrees, in his. They were the same age, had the same taste in music and movies, and, for the most part, similar interests.

  For the most part.

  Angie was totally, absolutely, not into the gaming thing. She used terms like “waste of time” and “kill me now.” He recalled the word “infantile” had come up once. That was when he had been trying to get her to create a character and join him in the world of Morn’a Doon. “We could go on adventures together,” he said. “Well, me, you and the guys. They’d really like to have a healer around.”

  “So because I’m female you expect me to play a nurse?”

  He had dropped it then. They got along too well otherwise to let something as silly as online gaming get in the way of their relationship. And now that he was finished with his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and about to begin a master’s program, teaching part-time and keeping his job in the campus library, he doubted if he’d have much time to play anyway. No, it was time to say good-bye to the world of Morn’a Doon, good-bye to the guys. Good-bye to his sleek, clever ranger.

  “Guys,” he said, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Hang on,” Wayne said, sniffing the air. “You smell that?”

  “I, uh…” Austin took in a deep breath. It smelled like rotting meat. Badly rotting.

  Craig made a face and pointed at Ken’s corpse. “I think it’s that.”

  “That’s weird.” Austin stood and moved closer to the gnome’s body. The smell definitely got stronger as he approached. “It hasn’t been dead long enough to start smelling.”

  “Dude,” Wayne said. “That’s not really the point. The point is that we can smell it at all.”

  He had to admit that Wayne was right. The immersion technology of the game was off-the-hook impressive, but they had never bothered with incorporating much of the way of smells into the gameplay. Rudimentary physical sensation like the heft of a sword hilt in the hand, of the feel of a horse between your legs, that was all incredibly cool. But just in the past couple hours… Everything was changing.

  “And Ken should be back by now, too,” Jake said. “What’s up with that?”

  Austin sat back down. “I tell you what. I’m going to log out and text him. Maybe even call him.”

  “You know Kenny in real life?” Wayne asked

  Austin shrugged. “Not really. We texted a couple times when I started a Second Life account. I’ll see if he’s having trouble logging back on. This new patch is doing some weird stuff.”

  Jake nodded and gave him a wave of his gauntleted hand. He looked like the Green Knight from the Arthurian fables, tricked out in emerald viridian plate armor.

  “Until your return, good ranger,” Craig said, always in character. He was an older, portly enchanter, bearded, bespectacled and oft-bewildered, but sometimes pulling a killer spell out of book of tricks when they needed it.

  “Later, dude,” Wayne said. He sat sharpening his throwing knives, his black leather armor as dark as his skin.

  Austin went into log-off mode. He’d awaken back in the real world, where he was comfortably hooked up to the immersion machine. Back where he was a recently graduated philosophy major at Berkeley, soon to enter the master’s program. He waited to log off. And waited.

  ……….

  “I can’t log off.”

  For a long few seconds the faces of his buddies transformed into something like fear. Austin marveled again at how impressive the technology was in this game, allowing their avatars to seem as real as what was back in the real world, but better in a way, because here they got to swing swords and loot corpses. But at that moment, under the hot sun, Ken’s corpse decomposing and smelling, sweat running from his armpits down the skin against his undershirt, Austin wanted only to log off.

  The other guys wanted to as well. They had all flopped down in the cross-legged position you went into before leaving the game…Austin waited for them to wink out of existence.

  They didn’t.

  “We might have a problem,” Jake said.

  ……….

  They tried again a few minutes later. And then again. “This is really bad,” Craig said.

  “They’ll get it fixed, man,” Austin said.

  “I have to get ready for the weekend!” Craig looked distraught. “I’m LARPing this weekend!”

  “When are you not LARPing,” Wayne muttered.

  Craig glared at him. “I’m assistant dungeon master this time.”

  Wayne muttered to no one in particular, “He LARPs. Have you heard?”

  “Angie should be home from work soon,” Austin said. “She’ll check on me when she gets in. I guess if…something’s wrong…”

  “If something’s wrong, what?” Wayne asked. “And how will she know if something’s wrong?”

  Austin imagined what she would see – him, crashed out on his gaming bed, the electrodes and wires hooked up to him, his eyes closed.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe she won’t know anything’s off until dinner time.” He abruptly decided to spill the beans to them. “Guys, I might as well tell you know. I’m, uh, dropping out of the group.”

  Jake looked surprised. “Are you joining another guild?”

  “No. It’s just…you know, Angie –”

  “He has a live-in girlfriend, you know,” Wayne muttered to no one in particular.
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br />   “Angie and I are so busy…and we don’t spend enough time together anyway…”

  “I thought she was going to start her own character and play with us.” Jake said. “I thought you bought her her own immersion add-on to your unit.”

  He had. It hadn’t gone over well. “Well, she nixed that idea –”

  “But we need a healer,” Wayne said.

  Just then Austin got an in-game message. From… “Angie?” he said.

  The message was in the form of a text on his inventory screen. “Hey Aus-hole, I started a character. I’m the hot muthafukken healer chick in Freetown. Come find me.” A few seconds later another message scrolled in. “For some reason I got a major electric shock when I typed in the last message. It kind of hurt! Is that normal?”

  He looked out at his mates with what was doubtlessly disbelief plastered all over his avatar’s features. “She’s here,” he said. “I can’t believe it. She’s in-game.”

  “Whoa, dude,” Wayne said. “For the first time I’m convinced she digs you as much as you say.”

  Austin glared at him.

  “I mean, she created a game-character for you.” Wayne nodded appreciatively. “I take back everything I’ve been thinking about her, dude. She’s a keeper.”

  “Uh – thanks…?”

  “Now tell me her character’s a healer.”

  “Uh, yeah. That’s what she said. She’s in Freetown. We should go get her.”

  “Awesome.”

  “Wayne, I’m not too thrilled about her being in-game when we can’t even seem to get out.”

  Wayne had stood and was walking toward Ken’s corpse. “Temporary glitch,” he said. “They’ll get it straightened out.” Austin watched the dark elf rogue bend over the little gnome’s body.

  “You’re not looting Ken, are you?”

  Wayne glared back at him. “We need to protect his things for now. God he smells bad.”

  Austin and Jake looked at each other. Jake shrugged. “I guess he’s right.”

  “Whoa. Ken’s Necklace of Resolution just boosted my strength ten points.”