Steel Orc- Player Reborn

by Deck Davis

  “You’re a part of the game, right? Surely you’ve seen everything already?”

  “They scrub my mind with a big digital sponge after each play through. Everything you see for the first time, so do I. That’s the fun, huh? The only difference is, I can guide you on certain things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Here’s the thing; digitized friends like me weren’t always around in early Soulboxe. When they started offering long-stay game pods, the balance of the game changed. Playing a game in full immersion is completely different to any other game.”

  “Because it feels real.”

  “And if it feels real, then to all intents and purposes, it is real. I think therefore I am. Playing Soulboxe in full immersion is different because you can’t have the television on in the background, you can’t have the radio playing or people talking on a podcast. That means it can feel lonely. Like when a quest takes a full-immersion player to the top of some mountain in the ass-end of nowhere. In other games you’d be watching your character climb that hill. Here, you’d feel it. The cold snap, the ghostly wind, the idea that there’s no-one around for miles. Full immersion is a completely different bag of balls.”

  “I can imagine. A lot of people buddy up when they play Soulboxe. I heard people do that on a bunch of streams.”

  “True, but some people prefer to play solo, or they can’t find anyone to buddy with. They stay away from guilds and towns and just travel on their lonesome. But, one of Soulboxe’s revenue streams was supposed be from the long-stay pods, and full immersion coupled with the long stretches of loneliness didn’t mix.”

  “So they created orbs like you as part of the long-stay package,” said Tripp. “You’re here to keep me company.”

  “Right! I might not be much of a guide really, but there are some things I can help with.”

  “You know a lot of meta stuff, Bee. I mean, you seem to have an idea about things outside Soulboxe.”

  “The way we interact with you depends on your preference for roleplaying, taken from your pre-entry questionnaire on how you act in the game. I can see you’re the kind of kind of guy who likes to roleplay when it suits you, but you like to figure stuff out about the game itself, too.”

  “This game knows me eerily well. Okay, if you’re my guide, let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Bee sucked in her gold cheeks. “Well, I guess you did solve my riddle. Was it good, or what?”

  “The best riddle I have ever seen.”

  “And it took you a while to get it, right?”

  “I’ve always been good with that stuff. I don’t know, it kinda clicks into place. When I thought about it logically…”

  “Logically? It just came to you, didn’t it?”

  “… Yeah.”

  “Well, you solved it, and here we are, ready to travel. Guess I could set up your character sheet and show you your race benefits as a thank you.”

  “As a thank you? Isn’t that… kinda… your job?”

  “Humph. It’s gonna be like that, is it, Tripp?”

  Tripp didn’t really want to get off on the wrong foot with the only friend he had so far. “Thank you, Bee, for your most gracious gift.”

  “Okay, here you go.”

  Name: Tripp Keaton

  Race: Orc

  Class: None

  Level: 1

  Skills:

  None

  Power: [1]

  Mind: [1]

  Technique: [1]

  He studied his character sheet, but there wasn’t much to look at. “I have no skills and no class, huh? Sounds like what my first girlfriend used to say. Is that everything?”

  “This is Soulboxe! You’ve gotta earn everything here.”

  “I guess I better go learn some skills. What about my race benefits?”

  “Oh! Yes, here you go.”

  Race: Orc

  A race of humanoids who were once enemies of civilized society, but have lately begun to merge with their fellow Soulboxe inhabitants. Still feared, but now mostly tolerated.

  Benefits:

  Night vision: You can see in dull light as if it were daytime, and you can see in pitch black as though it were dull light.

  Stamina: Your body processes manus in a way that increases stamina, allowing you to perform basic actions for longer. The flip side is that you will find more complex manus-using tasks difficult.

  Not bad, not great. There were dozens, if not more, of races in Soulboxe, and he knew they all carried advantages and disadvantages.

  All in all, it looked good. Night vision was definitely going to be useful in the game’s day-night cycle. There was something that bothered him, though.

  “I think I already know the answer to this,” he said, “But since you’re here and you’re an AI, I want to hear it from you. You know, just so I feel more reassured.”

  “Okay, but first, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “I know that I said I was an AI, and not an NPC. But instead of that, could you call me a digitized friend? A DF? Or better still, just use my name?”

  Wow, he hadn’t considered that Bee would have those kinds of feelings. He felt a little bad. “Of course. My mistake, Bee.”

  “What did you want to ask?”

  “When I snuff it here, I’ll respawn at the markers I set, right? Usually a town, or maybe a quest marker or my own house if I had one.”

  “See? You don’t need me!”

  “Here’s the thing. With death, there’s usually a lot of pain. So I’m told, anyway. I know that the Soulboxe devs wanted this to be about choice and realism, so how much agony should I expect to feel when I fight? Are we talking a tap on the arm, or more like hot coals under my ass?”

  “Users set their own parameters before they enter the game. We use a scale of 1 to 5; 1 being ouch, 5 being holy hell, am I on fire? That’s the reason Soulboxe is for adults only.”

  “I listened to a streamer who’d cast flame spells at a wall so that they rebounded on him. He got his kicks from the pain.”

  “He must have slipped through the rating system. Only psychologically-evaluated customers can have their pain settings switched on. Besides, even a level five pain setting registers lower on the scale than in real life. Soulboxe Inc wouldn’t last long if they were getting sued because a user went into shock after getting stabbed by a goblin.”

  “How brave was I feeling before I logged in?”

  She frowned. “You set your pain settings at four.”

  “Four? What the hell was wrong with me? I hate pain! I don’t even like my underwear being too tight. I guess the prospect of pain aside, I feel better now. At least I know where I’m starting from, and how being an orc is going to help me. I’d shake your hand, if you had one. I don’t know why, but something tells me I needed to see a friendly face.”

  “Then you got lucky; some AIs can be real A-holes. You don’t mind that kind of language, do you?”

  He laughed. “Talk about assholes all you like.”

  “Brilliant! Where are we going first, Tripp?”

  Tripp pointed to the West. “We’re following the stream. I figure it’ll lead to a town. I don’t suppose you can fill in my map? The canvas is looking blank.”

  The gold face moved from side to side. “No can do. Everything you get out of this, you have to earn yourself. Whatever you do next, you better do it before it gets dark.”

  Before it gets dark. Remembering the videos he listened to before playing Soulboxe, he grimaced. He’d never heard grown men shriek before then.

  “How long have I got until nighttime?”

  “A few hours. I’ll warn you when it gets close.”

  “Thanks, Bee. Let’s shift our asses,” he said.

  It took him half an hour to cross the plains and get to the stream. The water looked clear enough to gulp, and shoals of two-tailed fish were swimming in it. Across the stream bank, a heron-like bird was sitting and watching, probably wondering if it was
quick enough to dip its beak in and catch one.

  You need to lose a little weight first, buddy, Tripp thought.

  Aware of the fading daylight, Tripp wanted to keep going but he couldn’t. Pain sprang into him with every step he took.

  It was his steel armor digging into his skin.

  As clothing went, it was hardly a set of silk pajamas. Cumbersome, hot as hell, and with parts of it bent out of place…there had to be easier ways to cover his modesty.

  It was clear it wasn’t new. If he was going to make an eBay listing for it, he’d write ‘Steel armor: used, beaten to hell, heavier than a dead rhino. It makes you sweat and itch.’

  As he studied the metal and its joints, he got the sense it had taken a few beatings. Parts were warped out of place, and that had been a pain when he was walking because if he moved in a certain way, the metal dug into him. Maybe another player had owned it before him, or maybe it belonged to an NPC who had met his end on the plains.

  “My body isn’t going to thank me unless I fix this now.”

  “Fix what?”

  “My fancy steel suit isn’t made for comfort.”

  “Are you a blacksmith now, Tripp?”

  “Maybe not a blacksmith, but I’m handy with a rock.”

  He hunted around the shallows of the stream and picked out a fist-sized rock. He banged sections of his steel armor, knocking joints into place, straightening out parts of the metal where he could.

  Before long it still looked like crap, but it was better. He stood up and did a few lunges, took a few steps, and hey, it was a hell of an improvement!

  You have completed a [mediocre] repair

  Skill Gained: Armorer

  Level: Nickel 1

  As an armorer, you can create new gear, as well as repair your own weapons and armor to a degree governed by your armorer level.

  Bonus: Items lose durability 25% slower

  Need: Most armorer tasks require a repair hammer

  Restrictions: As an orc, your advancement rate is 0.75 that of other races

  Related skill sets: Blacksmith, forger, artificer

  Stat added to character sheet: Manus [50/50]

  Manus is the lifeforce of Soulboxe crafting and magic, and is a measure of fatigue; an artist can only paint for so long every day, and a bard can only strum his lute for so long before his fingers hurt. Level up your character to increase your manus.

  Manus is present in Soulboxe air. Just as using a spell or skill depletes it, so you replenish it with every breath. Different races process manus in different ways; some races have a bond with it, while others find it more difficult.

  As well as the text, he saw a badge floating by his head now. It was a hammer made from nickel, with the number one imprinted on it. He remembered reading about skills and their various levels; they ranged from Nickel, the starting level, all the way to Gold.

  A player could earn dozens of skills, but only his most advanced three would float by his head as badges. He pictured Jacobus with his golden hammer, goggles, and cauldron.

  At least he knew what the hammer was, now. It depicted the armorer skill, and Tripp had taken his first step on the ladder. Did that mean he could work all the way up to gold, and then make swords like Jacobus’s burning blade?

  “Hey, Bee?”

  “Yep?”

  “What’s the deal with metals as a ranking system?”

  “According to Soulboxe lore, the first civilizations worshipped metal, because figuring out how to use it pushed society on in bounds. Rapid growth and advancement in technology. They made weapons, defenses, and eventually learned metallurgy. Then they figured out essence and artificery, and how to craft magic into metal. Since they held metals so highly, they started ranking their crafters and spellwrights skills using those labels.”

  “So the better a crafter, the more precious the metal. Got it.”

  Dopey smiles came naturally to Tripp because he made a point every day of finding something to smile dopily about. You know; the little things; seeing a puppy having a bout of zoomies, enjoying the sugary goodness of a doughnut.

  Some people measured their happiness in their achievements, but he’d always tried to measure his in how much he smiled. Now he could feel the dopiest of grins spreading across his face.

  “What are you so happy about, anyway?” said Bee.

  “I just got my first skill - armorer. Cool, huh?”

  “Well, I saw that. Any notifications you get, I get them too. Armorer isn’t exactly a scary skill, is it?”

  “Scary?”

  “You know, one that makes people cower.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “I like my enemies to shiver in fear, that’s all. Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

  “I know that quote from somewhere.”

  “My dev loaded quotes from Sun Tzu’s the Art of War into my database. I don’t know why. For kicks, I guess.”

  “Good to know. Strength and weakness aside, armorer is pretty cool, right?”

  “True, and maybe I’m being pessimistic. Nobody needs a grump of an orb floating around with them. Let me try again… woo hoo! Your first skill!”

  “Smacking my armor with a rock won’t take me much further; I need a repair hammer. Better add that to the to-do list. There’s something bothering me, though.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It says that as an orc, I’ll advance in crafting slower than most races.”

  “Makes sense, no?” said Bee. “Orcs aren’t renowned for their craftsmanship. You’re playing your character wrong, if you ask me. Everything you can do depends on manus, remember. So for an orc, swinging a sword might cost just 1 manus, while crafting a sword could use up 10. You aren’t playing to your advantages.”

  “I get that. The thing is, I knew I was going to focus on crafting before I got here, and I researched starting configurations. It makes no sense that I’d chose to be a race that advances slower in crafting skills.”

  “Maybe you overlooked it.”

  “I used to overlook things. Miss the details, the specifics. Messing up a customer’s table and making it too big to fit through their front door and then seeing him rant and rave to your boss soon makes you start thinking about the details. I’d have chosen a race that is suited to crafting.”

  “I don’t know what to say. Maybe you could change tack? Build up your orc the way he should be?”

  “For fighting, you mean? The guy who gives up on his plans at the first obstacle gets exactly what he’s earned. Absolutely nothing. If orcs get a crafting disadvantage, I’ll figure out a way to even it out.”

  “If you’re so confident, then let’s do it. Shall we get moving?” said Bee.

  “I need a drink first, my throat’s dryer than Tutankhamun’s ass. Then I need to learn some skills.”

  “Good, I like having a plan,” said Bee. “It’s much easier to be a guide when the player knows what he wants to do. Let your plans be as dark and as impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

  “Sun Tzu?”

  “The one and only.”

  “You said it’s easier to be a guide when a player is driven. I thought they wiped your memory after each play through?”

  “Memory of places, quests, and that kind of thing, but given the amount of sentience I’m programmed with, they have to leave me something. Lucas always says that he wants to see us DF’s grow.”

  It amazed Tripp that Bee seemed to be aware of her existence as lines of code, yet believed herself to be a free-thinking entity at the same time. These were fundamentally conflicting thoughts, and he thought his own brain would burst if he tried to believe two opposing about himself.

  He liked that about her. Listening to her, watching the way she behaved, it was easy to slip into the line of thinking that she really was a conscious being and not just the product of a programmer’s Monday morning.

  “Which way do you want to go
?” asked Bee.

  Tripp put his hand to his forehead to block out the glare of the sun. It still felt strange to touch his own face; the toughness of his new skin, the way his forehead protruded a little. He hoped he’d get used to it.

  He stared into the distance to where the stream disappeared. “I can’t see any towns around here, and I don’t wanna be caught out when it gets dark. What if I follow the stream and I still don’t get to a town when the sun sets?”

  “Things will get interesting,” said Bee.

  “I’m not sure interesting is the right word, but I don’t want to get caught by surprise.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I get off my ass and do something.”

  Tripp needed something that would help him when nighttime descended on Godden’s Reach, and he thought he knew what that was.

  The way he saw it, as much as they wanted Soulboxe to be realistic, there were limits. It’d be a crude kind of realism at best. Game logic realism, he supposed he’d call it, because as much as any gamer expected to grind, it could get ridiculous if you took it to the extreme. Like a first-person shooter game where before the level, you had to walk to Walmart, show your ID, buy bullets, clean your gun…

  There was a truth about Soulboxe that he knew would help him here; if you wanted your players to do everything for themselves, then you had to make that possible. You had to leave the resources on the map.

  “Bee, swoop around over there, will you? We need to find flint.”

  “Got it.”

  When Bee went east, Tripp headed north. This time he paid more attention to the plains than he had earlier, and he started to notice bunches of herbs dotted here and there.

  “That’ll be for the herbalist class. Not what I need.”

  He was looking for darkened lumps, which he hoped would be flint. He walked around with his gaze peeled on the ground, but he found nothing.

  “Tripp!” shouted Bee.

  He turned around. “Found some flint?”

  “Behind you!”

  He turned around expecting to find some flint, but there was something else there.