“You know you’re not keeping that,” Austin said.
“Just till Ken gets back.”
The rest of them looted Ken’s body in silence. He had coins worth seven or eight platinum, total, some decent jewelry buffs, and a wicked orchid that wrapped around the forearm and was excellent for slashing an opponent’s throat in close combat. Austin had rolled Wayne for that and won. “Like you even do close combat,” Wayne complained. “Mr. Archery Guy. Mr. Robin F –” He paused. “Mr. Robin Effing Hood.”
“Maybe I’d do more close combat if I had the right weapons for it.”
“Hey guys,” Jake said, “we’re just holding this stuff for Ken until he gets back.”
“Right,” said Austin.
Wayne nodded. “Right.” Austin thought he detected an eyeroll.
……….
“So we have to get to Freetown,” Austin said.
Wayne muttered something. It sounded to Austin like the word “whipped.”
“Come on. Angie texted again, said something about an important announcement coming up. Everybody’s gathering in the town square for it.”
Freetown wasn’t far, maybe a twenty minute hike, if they didn’t use speed buffs. Jake glanced back at Ken’s moldering corpse. “Maybe we should have buried him.”
“You don’t do that here,” Wayne said. “You don’t bury corpses in MMORPGs.”
“Nobody ever has, at least. But something’s different now.”
“Yes,” Craig nodded. “The old order has been swept away..” His voice became a bit lower, almost stentorian. Austin recalled that Craig had mentioned once that he used to do community theater, but now LARPing got all his thespian desires out of his system now. “…and new gods will have their day,” he concluded.
“Do you know something we don’t?” Austin asked him.
Craig shrugged. “No…but I suspect things.”
“You suspect things,” Wayne said. “Great.”
“Look at the arc of development in these games,” Craig said, “from Pong until the present day.”
“Pong?” Wayne asked.
“It’s credited with being the first video game,” Austin told him.
“I know that already. Sheesh. I’m a pot dealer, not a moron.”
“You’re a pot dealer?” Jake asked him.
“Oh fuck – oww. Did I say that out loud?”
The others, in semi-unison, said, “Yes.”
“Whatever. It’s not like you know where I live.”
“We do, actually,” Austin said.
Wayne stopped. “Say what?”
“You were drunk-playing a couple weeks ago and invited us to some party at your place.”
“No way.”
“Yes way.”
Wayne looked to Jake. Jake nodded. “Yeah, I was all like, Dude, there’s no way I can drive all the way to Florida for a party in a trailer park, it’s over eight hours away.”
“So you know I live in Florida, so what.” He took a piece of hardtack out of his backpack and started chewing as they walked the game-trail to Freetown. “And what you have against mobile home parks I don’t know. Elitist.”
“The eight-hour drive was the prohibitive factor,” Jake told him, “not the trailer park.”
“Tallahassee,” Austin said.
“So you know the city, too. So what.”
Craig cleared his throat. “3622 Cypress –”
“Fine! Whatever!” Wayne shook his head. “I invited Craig, too? I must have been drunk.”
“Actually, you didn’t,” Craig said softly.
“Really?”
Jake shook his head. “You were all like, ‘Everybody but Craig,’ and then you’d cackle. ‘Everybody’s invited except Craig,’ cackle cackle.”
They had been walking through the Forest of Arden, not far from the village of Freetown. It was mostly a newbie forest, with low-level mobs supplied in great numbers for the new players spawning at Freetown to farm. They would be safe there, no doubt.
“I probably figured Craig would have some LARPing to do that weekend.” Wayne laughed his unique, dark elf cackle. “Or some quilting.”
Wayne could be obnoxious sometimes, Austin decided for about the hundredth time. But they had been a group for several months, the five of them…four of them now, if Ken didn’t make it back. Of course he’ll make it back, Austin thought. “What were you saying?” he asked Craig.
“Oh, somebody’s actually interested?”
“C’mon,” Jake said. “Don’t sulk. What were you saying about Pong and video games?”
“Okay,” Craig continued, “the arc of complexity in recent years is going through the roof. From simple block graphics to awesome looking 3D, and now the total immersion experience, the depth of complexity is accelerating at an exponential rate. And you’ve noticed how much more intelligent the NPCs seem all the time.”
“But they’re still just games,” Jake said. “People made them, people can turn them off whenever they want.”
“I’ve written several papers on gaming and artificial intelligence,” Austin said. “Kind of part of my field in philosophy.”
“Yeah, you’re a philosophy major,” Wayne said, “and you’ve got a live-in girlfriend. We’ve only heard it all like a hundred times.”
“Ontology,” Austin said, “the study of the nature of being. Kind of what I’ll be specializing in in graduate school. The NPCs do seem to increasingly have characteristics that make them seem sentient…and autonomous.”
“Makes them seem that way,” Jake said. “That’s the thing. They’re not really intelligent, they just seem that way.”
“My point,” Craig continued, “is that this game has become so complex that I believe we’re at some threshold, at the brink of some new leap in consciousness at the digital level.”
“Whatever,” Wayne said. “Guys, that troll looks kind of upset about something.”
A troll had stepped into a clearing up ahead. It stood a bit over seven feet tall and probably weighed as much as Austin and Wayne combined. “Hey,” Austin said, “are you a player-character?”
The thing grinned and raised its axe, a huge two-headed thing covered with flecks of gore and dripping blood. “The graphics really are getting realistic,” Jake said to Craig. “I’ll grant you that.”
“Hee hee,” the troll chortled. “Players. Sick of you players.” Two more trolls stepped out onto the greensward beside the troll that chortled at them. They were big, too, though not quite as big as their leader. One of them bore a spear with the head of a high elf impaled on the end of it.
“This game is going to lose its PG-13 rating,” Jake said.
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Wayne sounded perturbed. “Killing, blood, and gore all over the place, that’s just fine, but if I say fuck – oww! dammit! oww! — if I say the freaking F word…”
“Guys,” Craig said, “I think we have a problem. I think the reason why Ken didn’t come back is that he’s actually dead.”
The lead troll giggled again, if a giggle could sound as deep as a bass kettle drum. “Hee hee. He right. You die now.”
“Avengers,” Wayne said, “assemble.”
For the first time in his gaming life Austin was truly afraid. He recalled Ken’s screams of agony as he lay on the ground and knew he didn’t want to go through that himself…even if he did re-spawn eventually. He had to survive this last battle, get to Freetown, and figure how to log-off with Angie. Angie! Why did she finally decide to create a character and join him?
As those dark thoughts rocketed through his brain his body was in motion, drawing his bow and firing at the troll who held the spear. The not-so-jolly green giant had kicked the elf head from its point and was preparing to hurl the spear at them. Always take out their distance fighters first – that was a maxim Austin lived by in-game. His arrow landed in the beast’s thick hide, just to the side of its breastbone. It didn’t do much damage, but it did impair the creature’s aim: The
launched spear flew harmlessly over their heads.
As he nocked another arrow Austin took a quick glance around at his companions’ battle formation. Pretty standard stuff. Jake had his swords drawn and was marching resolutely toward the trolls. Craig had his nose in his spell book. Wayne had disappeared. Wayne always disappeared, using his rogue’s skills to blend in with the surroundings, easy enough in this woodland setting. Usually he reappeared behind one of the baddies, his slender, poisoned blade at the ready for a stab in the back. Usually. Sometimes he just fled, if he thought that was in his best interest. “Hey,” he’d say later, “I’m just staying in character. Craig can appreciate that, right, LARPer?” Austin hoped he wouldn’t abandon them this time, not with so much on the line.
They really could die. Whatever that meant. Permanently kicked out of the game? That wouldn’t be so bad…he was planning on quitting Morn’a Doon anyway.
Again he saw Ken’s body in his mind’s eye, and he had to wonder if death here might not be something worse than banishment from the game…
As he pulled the string on his bow he saw a motion to his right – another troll had suddenly appeared…right where Craig had been standing.
“Brothers!” the creature cried out to the trolls, its voice like thunder. “Leave these humans be!” Maybe it was Craig. The enchanter might be using one of his illusion spells. “Leave the dark elf alone, too, wherever he might be, I should add, not just the humans —leave them all alone!” Yes, it was definitely Craig.
“Why you tell us what to do, troll?” The leader of the troll raiding party looked genuinely befuddled, but he had momentarily lowered his war axe.
“We travel to Freetown, where these humans have…uh…promised to buy supplies…cakes and ale, that is, for all the trolls in the surrounding wood.”
The three trolls looked at each other, nodding. We might actually get out of this alive, Austin thought.
That was when Wayne appeared.
………
The leather-clad black elf, platinum afro shining in the sun that shone down on the grassy greensward, appeared suddenly behind the troll Austin had shot. Wayne screamed like a kung fu expert, stabbed the troll in the back, then retreated, still caterwauling, and adopting a defensive en garde.
Well, Austin thought, the fight’s on.
He fired another arrow, this one at the lead troll, who was charging Jake. It buried itself in the creature’s hide with a loud thwock, but didn’t seem to slow down the big greenie even a bit. Austin went into autopilot, aiming and firing with smooth motions. Soon arrow shafts protruded from the troll like pins in a cushion. One of them was down, the one Wayne had backstabbed, probably because of the poison on Wayne’s rapier. Jake did battle with the lead troll while Wayne fenced with the other one. Craig got off the occasional spell, but Austin wasn’t sure what kind of effect they were having. Many of the enchanter spells didn’t seem worth much. Craig was best at illusion and misdirection, and in battle he couldn’t do much better than the occasional “slow” spell. Which he had apparently gotten off successfully, though. The troll Wayne now fenced with moved as though through thick mud, and the slender dark elf that was their pot-dealing buddy methodically cut him to ribbons.
Austin turned his attention to the remaining baddie, the one bashing away at Jake. Jake’s armor class was off-the-hook solid, but the troll was landing some pretty good hits and Jake had just fallen to below half health.
“By Curlew’s Guile,” he heard Craig say next to him, “turn this creature to my whim!” A lightning bolt crackled over the troll’s head and it suddenly paused in mid-swing. Jake pulled back from him, catching his breath.
“Huh? What? Why you fighting our friends?” The troll stumbled over to his companion, who still did desultory, slow motion combat with Wayne, and with a mighty swipe of his war axe decapitated his former ally.
Wayne warily faced the huge, axe-wielding troll. “Uh…thanks?”
“Goodness,” Craig said. “That usually doesn’t work.”
“Ha!” the troll laughed. “We beat them good, yes, buddies?”
“Buddies?” Wayne said.
“He’s on our side now,” Austin said. “Craig got off a…what do you call that spell, anyway?”
“Seduce Enemy.”
“Really?” Wayne said. “Seduce Enemy?”
Craig harrumphed. “It worked, I’ll have you note.”
“Do you have to sleep with him now?”
“Idiot,” Craig muttered.
“How long does it last?” Jake asked.
“I’m…not really sure.”
Austin and Jake looked at each other. Both of them shrugged simultaneously. “Thanks for your help,” Austin said to the troll, “but we’ll be on our way now.”
“Gorm go with you! Gorm go with new friends!”
“No, that’s okay.” Austin turned to Craig. “Tell him to stay here. Or go somewhere else.”
“Gorm,” Craig said, “wait for us here while we go into town.”
“Can’t you just tell him to get lost?”
“Uh…no. I’d have to break the spell to do that.” Craig leafed through his spell book. “And if I did that, which I don’t know how, then we’d have to fight him again.”
“Can’t we just kill him?” Wayne said, applying a new sheen of poison to his rapier.
“Aww, why you want to do that, buddy?” The troll looked genuinely saddened. Its huge green face, fierce as it was, sagged into a guise of sorrow. “We have such good battle together!”
Wayne shrugged. “I’ve seen better.”
“Remember when Gorm chop off head of your enemy?”
“Well, yeah. It was just a minute ago.”
“Good times,” the troll said, looking at Wayne with sad eyes the size of coffee saucers.
“Yeah, whatever.” Wayne looked annoyed. “What do you think, guys, we have to wait until the spell runs out, then we kill him?”
Jake looked from Wayne to Austin, then shrugged. Austin didn’t really know what to do either. Everything in this world had become so much more lifelike that killing the troll now didn’t seem so much more a matter of gameplay as cold-blooded murder. “What’s the spell’s duration?”
“I really can’t say.” Craig’s nose was stuck in his spell book. “I think it might be a random amount of time. Or it might last forever. Even if we attack him, it might not break. He might just stand there…looking sad.”
“Oh for fu – for gosh sake,” Wayne muttered, ramming his rapier back into its sheath.
Gorm’s face brightened. What might have been a smile split the gash of his mouth, the tusks working up and down. “Thanks, buddy! You a good guy!”
“Don’t get too close to me, troll.”
“Loot a corpse,” Gorm told him. “Make you feel better.”
“Well that’s true enough,” Wayne muttered, bending over the huge body of one of the dead trolls. Jake went to the other one. Austin doubted if they would get anything good. Troll weapons were usually too heavy and unwieldy for anybody but trolls, ogres and orcs. Also, they rarely adorned themselves with jewelry and didn’t pack much money. “Oh my sweet lord,” Jake gasped. “Would you look at this.” He held a shimmering red orb up for them to see. It glistened in the sun, brilliant as mercury, but frozen into the form of a precious gemstone.
“What is it?” Austin asked him.
“This summons the great war god Kray-Kun.”
“He-he,” Wayne tittered. “Release the Kray-Kun. He-he.”
“Laugh all you want, but this thing is seriously scarce.” He turned to the troll. “Where did he get this”
The troll shrugged. It looked like a green wall partially collapsing. “Eh. You know. Spoils of war.”
“This is a pretty scarce quest item. I’m surprised it can be transferred. With this…” Jake looked deep in thought. Austin rarely knew him to get so excited about in-game items. He enjoyed playing and all, but he was usually too cool to take the game seriou
sly. From what he knew of Jake, he was kind of a hipster, a college drop-out who tended bar and got along well with the ladies. “This thing…”
“What,” Austin asked him. “What’s so great about it?”
“I can get about two hundred bucks for it on eBay.” Jake popped it into his backpack. “Well…I mean.” He looked around at the rest of his group. “We can get that, I mean. We can split the profit, I suppose.”
“Come on, man,” Austin said. “I’m more worried about logging out of here than I am about making a few bucks selling lore items on auction sites.”
“I’ll take his share.” Wayne ignored the dirty look Austin gave him. “I mean, if he doesn’t want it.”
“I’m sure we’ll be able to log off soon. Probably just a glitch.”
“From a new patch or something.”
“Gorm have no idea what new friends are saying, but still enjoying their company!” The troll scratched himself in a disgusting place and smelled his fingers. Austin tried to ignore him.
“So what does the orb do?” he asked.
“It summons the war god, Kray-Kun. He doesn’t really do your bidding so much as ally himself with you if your guild goes to war against another guild. It renders you virtually invincible.”
“But not invincible against another god,” Craig said.
“No, not invincible, but able to fight on an even footing with another god. I suppose. I’ve only heard of gods being summoned in guild wars.” Jake finished binding a wound and stood. “Do you really think we’re going to have a hard time logging out?”
“Until we’re able to, I’m worried. Something’s not right.” And, he thought, I really wish Angie hadn’t picked this time to enter the game.
……….
They made their way uneventfully into Freetown. The guards gave the troll a hard look. Players who chose trolls for their character were allowed in Freetown, but any troll NPCs in the area were hostile to the denizens of Freetown. “He’s with us,” Austin told him.
The guard gave the huge green giant another once-over. “If he causes any problems, you’ll be held responsible. Everybody in your group.”
“For eff’s sake,” Wayne said. “Just order the thing to stay outside,” he told Craig.
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