by Deck Davis
Tripp had been there before. Once or twice a year, he’d have what he called his Black Days, where he’d wake up in a mood so foul that a demon must have pissed in his mouth while he was asleep. He guessed those days were hang-ups from what happened with his parents, but he’d never been to see a psychologist or anything.
Instead, he just accepted those days for what they were, and he spent the whole day drinking cans of Big Cat, and he paid for it the next day with a throbbing head and churning gut.
Black Days were the only times he ever drank himself to oblivion. It wasn’t the kind of therapy that a psychologist would prescribe, but it got Tripp through the year.
The man watching him had the kind of red glow a person only got if they did this kind of thing all the time.
“Ignore Winthrop,” he said. “He was expecting to win the vote to become chairman of the guild, but he only got enough for the vice chairman position. If you hurt a guy’s pride, he’ll lash out.”
“Thanks,” said Tripp.
“Can I be frank with ya?”
“Only if I can be Bob.”
“Huh?”
“One of his stupid jokes,” said Bee. “He’s telling dad jokes before his time.”
“Sure, you can be honest with me,” said Tripp, feeling a flush of embarrassment from how badly his joke had missed, and how bad it was in the first place. There was a reason his stand-up comedy act had come last in the junior high talent show.
The man leaned in. His aroma was a blend of tobacco, beer, and wood oil, three complementary but off-putting smells. “You’re the first orc to be allowed in here, you know. Thanks to the robed fellas out east, you being one of our green-skinned brothers ain’t goin’ to beholden you to people. Not even to fellow crafters.”
“The orc monks?” said Tripp.
“Monks? They ain’t monks. Those are the bastards who make the plains so goddamn dangerous at night.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s something under their village. Something that helps their shamans create monsters. Sure, nobody can prove it because anyone who enters their village, they disarm ‘em and then kill ‘em.” The man tapped his nose now. “But I know. I know.”
Tripp thought back to the orcs and how they’d tried to get him to remove his weapon and armor. He’d gotten bad vibes from them, but nothing as sinister as this. Still, it didn’t surprise him to hear this.
“Thanks for the advice,” said Tripp. He turned to Bee. “Any truth to that?”
“It would fit in with Lucas’s way of doing things. Rather than have monster mobs just spawn out of thin air, there is an in-game reason for them doing so.”
“But orcs weaving weird spells underground? It all seems a bit tinfoil-hat.”
“Crackpot conspiracy or not, it might make your life difficult around here, since you’re an orc. Sometimes it’s not what’s true that matters, but what people believe. I think you need to keep wearing your steel armor; it at least differentiates you from the robed orcs. Of course, if there are people here with prejudices, no amount of steel will change their mind.”
“A morning star down their throat might.”
“Whose apprentice are you, anyway?” said the man.
Tripp turned back to him. “Konrad. He has a shop just outside the oval plaza.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“Uh oh.”
“Huh? Something I should know?”
“Konrad is the only master craftsman who has never been elected to serve on the guild board. Not as vice chairman, not as chief beer procurer, nothing. Of course, he never puts himself up for the vote, and he calls us all a bunch of whiny infants, but then there’s a reason we haven’t asked him, either.”
“He seems like a nice guy to me.”
“He is. It’s his methods that worry me.”
“What kind of methods?”
“Konrad’s got a temper and a hammer, and I’m no alchemist, but I don’t think those things mix. So, I won’t say no more other than if things get too tough for you, too dangerous, just surrender your apprenticeship. Besides, he won’t be allowed to take students soon, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Listen,” he said, leaning close enough that Tripp smelled the beer on his breath. “You ain’t heard this from me, right, but they’re fixin’ to kick Konrad out of the guild. They just need enough support so they know they’ll win the vote. When you’re voting to kick someone out, you can only make that motion once every five years. If Konrad wins, they can’t get rid of him. So…they’re being careful about when they play their hand.”
“Why?”
“Be his apprentice for a while. Play his games. Then you’ll see why. Ask him about Birch Hailey.”
“Birch Hailey? Who’s that?”
The man pointed across the guildhall at an older gentleman drinking by himself. His hair was patchy, his face flushed like he’d spent half his life on a mission to rid the world of whiskey supplies. He looked like he was trying to drink away all of his sorrows, only there wasn’t enough beer in the whole of Mountmend.
“That’s Birch Hailey’s father. He’s one of the guys helping Winthrop whip up votes against Konrad. That’s what the effect of Konrad’s method of teaching looks like.”
The man drank the rest of his beer and then left the guild, stepping into the oval plaza while humming a tune.
With the man gone, Tripp’s thoughts swirled in his head. Konrad had already alluded to the fact his way of teaching was weird, but this made it seem downright sinister. He wondered what he’d let himself in for…but he liked it. It was strange, but the idea of a little danger excited him.
Still, he wished he could make sense of it all.
“What the hell was that about?” he asked.
“Think back,” said Bee. “Konrad warned you he doesn’t teach crafts like most masters.”
“Is it wrong that this makes me even more excited?”
“Nope! If crafting is what it takes for you to seek out danger, then let’s get to it.”
“We need to get some steel and then we can get out of here.”
The trading section of the craftsman’s guild was beyond the main room and out back, in an open-air courtyard that smelled of basil and tarragon from an herb patch growing in planters along the edges. There was a fountain where the water glistened yellow from the sun that shone down on it. The open-roof gave a perfect view of the mountain looming beyond Mountmend, a giant ready to smash the guild.
The traders had set up shop near the fountain. Some had wooden stalls with their wares displayed neatly, others had just spread a blanket on the floor and tossed their items on there. The traders themselves were of all races; humans, a goblin, a rock-like thing that Tripp couldn’t tell the gender of.
He checked out the traders to find what he wanted, glancing past swords, axes, potions. “Let’s see; there’s an artificer, blacksmith, carpenter, and ah – general items.”
The carpentry tools had caught his eye, and he wanted to go over and see what kind of things were on offer. He wasn’t here for carpentry, though. That would hit a little too close to home. He fought his urges, and he found the trader he needed.
The metal trader was a half-giant whose one massive eye next to a coin-sized eye reminded Tripp of a cyclops. His hands were like bricks, and there was no way he could be a craftsman with such a lack of dexterity. He looked imposing, and if Tripp had seen him out on the plains, he’d have sprinted away so fast his feet would have set on fire.
“What do you sell?” said Tripp.
“I mine metal,” said the half-giant, showing off his calloused hands.
“With your bare hands?”
He grunted. “Do I look like I need tools?”
“I’d like to trade. I get the craftsman’s guild discount, right?”
“No.”
Tripp showed the half-giant his belt. “I’m an armorer.”
“No. No discount until you’re above Nickel.”
“He means your armorer level,” said Bee. “You’re a Nickel level three. Get past level four and your armorer rank will increase from Nickel to Tin. Looks like the people at the bottom of the ladder don’t get full guild benefits.”
“I am an apprentice though; I’m Konrad’s apprentice.”
“That’s just a title, it doesn’t mean much. They judge you on your crafting level here.”
Tripp sighed. It seemed like the whole game, from its leveling system to its monsters, was set up for the powerful to step all over the little guy.
“Fine. Let me see your metals…”
After a quick trade, he left the guildhouse with four sheets of steel, which was twice the amount he’d need for the gauntlets. One thing he’d learned during his real-life apprenticeship was to always leave room for error.
He’d planned to craft the gauntlets out in the open, since in Soulboxe you’d often find people using their skills in the middle of the street. Only now, the rain was pelting down. Thick droplets as heavy as stones bounced off roofs. They dinked on his armor so loudly that the longer he stayed out in the shower, the more it sounded like a bad drummer was playing songs on his steel. It was annoying.
“I was going to level up today, but I don’t fancy going out in this weather. When I become an artificer, I’m going to learn how to weave a spell into the steel. Something that repels rain,” said Tripp.
“Literally the most mundane kind of magic you could put into armor,” said Bee.
“I need to get somewhere dry so I can craft. One thing you can say about the old 2D isometric RPG game days; at least when it rained, you didn’t feel it soak into your skin.”
They headed into the Slaughterman’s inn that Konrad had recommended to him as a craftsman hangout. Despite the name, and although the sign out front showed a grisly image of a blood-covered butcher holding a cleaver, the inside was pleasant.
A log fire did its best to tease warmth through the pub, while the chatter of the drinkers was a relaxing background noise. It was almost lulling, and if Tripp was wearing something comfier than steel armor, he could settle into a snug and let the background babble send him to sleep. All the place was missing was a buxom barmaid who’d flirt with Tripp, and the innkeeper would warn Tripp to “keep your hands off my daughter.”
Instead of a barmaid, the only people working the bar were the innkeeper, a brute of a man with a face that would curdle milk, and a tired-looking ogre who answered everyone’s drink requests with a huff.
“Bee, grab the table over there. The one in the corner; I don’t want the other craftsman watching me screw up the gauntlet. I’m getting a beer.”
“Can I have one?”
“You don’t have a mouth. Or hands.”
“I can still take the sensory input,” she said. “In a way, at least. It isn’t the same as eating or drinking, but it’s the closest I can get.”
“Do you mean that you’ll read the code of the beer and get kicks from that?”
“I suppose a layman might put it like that.”
“Then I’ll do my best to phrase it like the layman that I am. Barman, could I please have two beers that offer maximum sensory output?”
While he waited at the bar for his drinks, he saw four players sitting around a table nearby. He recognized two of them; there was Ossie, the red-skinned demon, and his friend, Stefan the reptile.
Sitting with them was a bard with a lute slung across his back and a fancy sword in a sheath on his belt, and a girl with a falcon resting on her shoulder. She was maybe a tamer or a druid, something like that. The falcon eyed Tripp suspiciously. He almost entered into a staring contest with it but decided he didn’t want a bird of prey ripping off one of his ears.
The group looked like a group of pals in the middle of a D&D session, and part of him wanted to pull up a chair and join in. There was something free and easy when you had a friendship group like that.
He might have been an orc, but he was socially aware enough to know that his intrusion wouldn’t be wanted. Instead, he listened to them chatter.
Ossie, the demon, had been aloof when Tripp had met him and Stefan in the adventurer’s guild. He was the opposite here; taking big gulps of his beer, laughing, slapping his friends’ backs.
Ossie leaned in toward his group, his horns almost touching the beer glass in front of him. “I’m telling you,” he said, “Something’s changing in Godden’s Reach. Boxe is up to something.”
“He’s always up to something. That’s his job.”
“No, I mean they’re changing stuff up around here. They made Reach as part of the Frostwinter expansion, right? That thing has a metascore of 40%. A few devs lost their jobs over it.”
“So?”
“So it’s not prime content. Rathway forest and Lucastown might be cheesy as hell, but they were the part of Soulboxe’s first iteration. Most of us were teenagers when we started playing there, and those places feel as nostalgic to us as our childhood homes. They won’t mess with them. So, if they want to experiment, they’ll do it in places like this.”
“I told you not to let Ossie get drunk,” said Stefan. “He starts with the theories when he’s had too much. He can’t handle Soulboxe beer.”
“Just hear me out. The places people love in Soulboxe don’t get touched. If an expansion pack bombs and people don’t really take to whatever new place they created, they designate those kinds of places as ones where Boxe can have full reign.”
“You mean he’ll change the actual landscape?”
Ossie nodded. “Kinda like how he alters a person’s quest path, except when they give him dev access to places like Godden’s Reach, it’s like buying a kid a giant Lego set.”
“After some of the weird stuff he’s come up with for my quests, I don’t wanna see what he’d do with a whole area of land to play around with. Probably turn it into a goblin production factory surrounded by a lava moat.”
Ossie shrugged. “I might be wrong. I’ve just noticed a few things. Areas of the plains going crazy; holes appearing and then disappearing, weird lights coming from the orc village at night. I dunno, maybe I’m wearing my tinfoil hat again.”
It was an interesting idea, that Boxe5 might be using Godden’s Reach as a giant sandpit. The appeal of Soulboxe was that their AI kept things fresh. As much as it intrigued him, the idea that a digital god could start screwing with the surrounding land was a little worrying.
Tripp heard the sound of glasses slamming on wood, and he turned to see the ogre bartender waiting for his coins. He had a beard that grew not just on his cheeks but around the side of his head and near to his temples so that his eyes were almost lost amidst the tufts of grey.
“Thanks,” said Tripp.
The ogre growled.
“Any customer satisfaction forms around here?” said Tripp. “People need to know about your upbeat personality.”
The ogre turned away and stalked out of the bar and into a back room. Carrying the beers, Tripp walked to the table Bee had taken.
He couldn’t help thinking about what Ossie had said; if the Soulboxe devs had written Godden’s Reach off as a bad expansion and basically handed it to their AI to experiment with stuff – which he assumed meant new storylines, monsters, that kind of thing – then there was an opportunity here.
It had always been in the back of his mind that he’d leave Godden’s Reach and go to the other continents in Soulboxe when he was ready. There would probably be a dock where he could get passage on a boat, or he could hire one of the giant eagles he’d seen on video streams to take him to the mainland. He could even pay for a fast-travel scroll, although those were said to cost a fortune.
It looked like that was going to have to wait. Not only did he want to max out his armorer skill and earn the artificery, too, but it was worthwhile sticking around to see if Ossie was right, or if he really was just talking conspiracies.
If Godden’s Re
ach was about to get some new, experimental storyline, then he wanted to ride the first wave of it.
He put the glass in front of Bee. “One glass of maximum sensory input for you,” he said, “and a delicious golden lager for me.”
While Tripp gulped his beer, Bee stared at hers. The level of liquid didn’t move, but her face changed a little. He guessed she was seeing the code behind it and in that weird way, almost experiencing its flavor.
More and more, he was becoming fascinated with the level of sophistication in her AI, but he was even more fascinated with the idea of making stuff. It was his chance to do that now.
He glanced around the inn, only to find a demon staring at him. It was Stefan, the reptile who was sitting over by the bar with his friends. He held Tripp’s gaze for a second, his eyes intense, before his bard friend slapped him on the back, and Stefan broke contact and returned to his conversation.
Even then, Tripp still felt like someone was watching him. His sudden self-consciousness was unnerving, and he found himself looking at the corner tables, as if he might see hostile eyes gazing at him.
Nope, nothing. He was being stupid.
“It’s time for some armorer work,” he said.
CHAPTER 25
Messing up was all part of a crafter’s education, and mistakes never hurt anyone as long as you didn’t get your finger caught in a bench saw. Tommy, Tripp’s old boss, once told him, “Learning from a mistake is like picking up after a shitting dog. Nobody likes it, but you’ve got to do it.”
“What does the dog represent in all of this?” asked Tripp.
“The dog is you. Learning your craft. The food is the stuff that I teach you, Tripp, and the crap is what comes out after that empty chasm between your ears has processed it. Now stop gawping and pass me that chisel.”
“If I’m the dog, then you’re the one picking up after me. A dog doesn’t pick up his own shit.”
Tommy gave Tripp a friendly tap on the arm and sent him to the local sandwich shop to buy sandwiches as penance for his joke. Along the way, Tripp had thought about what Tommy said, and he agreed. From then on, he always tried to push his perfectionism back. If he made a mistake, he tried to work out what he could learn from it.