by Brian Simons
“Ever the General, assessing his troops. Allow me to explain. I am a Chancer, equipped with battle dice. A d20 lets me check my abilities against their maximum and minimum potentials. Sometimes I get quite lucky, though other times I fail miserably. It all balances out in the end.”
“That seems like a terribly unreliable way to fight,” Daniel said.
“You’d be surprised,” Onik replied. “Most of the time I roll toward the middle of my range, and strike a decent blow with my knife here. I do have another set of dice though. Five d6s. Each is responsible for how 20% of my attack affects its target. It makes every attack wonderfully different.
“If I roll this face, a fist, it takes 20% of my attack and makes it physical damage. If I roll two of them, it’s 40%, and so on. This face, a wizard’s hat, causes one fifth of my attack to inflict magic damage instead. This face with the seven-pointed star is special. It takes away 20% of my attack, and instead, I heal myself for some value related to my own intelligence. If I roll all five of the same face, it doubles the effectiveness. A little reward for the improbable.
“So, now that you know how I fight, will you let me come along?”
“Fine by me,” Daniel said, “but if we’re up against Sivona I need you to follow our lead. And no coups.”
“I promise,” he said.
“And don’t forget you owe me a favor for winning out little bet,” Sybil said.
“But of course,” Onik replied.
>> Sage Tawn’s army clashes with Sivona in: 3 hours.
“No time to lose,” Sybil said.
“Wait,” Daniel said. “Coral sent us a PM.”
A wry smile crossed Sybil’s face. “Someone’s happy to hear from her.”
“We both are and you know it,” Daniel said, bringing the message up in front of him. “Oh. The forest is a little more… crowded than usual. Great.”
The three stepped into the forest. “Not to mention,” Daniel said, “we need to stay on the lookout for Quinnick. I can’t go two seconds in this forest without feeling like someone’s watching me.”
That feeling persisted as the small group trudged through the wilting underbrush. Every so often they froze in place and listened as the sound of voices or footfalls rose and fell in the depths of the forest. It sounded like the elves were on the march again. Daniel’s mind wandered up the mountain and rested on the mayor, Lieutenant Kronnar, and their terrible loss that morning.
Had it really been just that same morning? Daniel pulled up his in-game clock. It was 9 p.m. He had been playing for the better part of 13 hours. He considered asking Sybil whether they should call it quits for the night, but knew they couldn’t. Not with Tawn approaching the forest and war on the horizon.
Daniel stopped short when a woman clothed in ivy vines and flowers dropped down from a low tree branch. She clung to it upside down and locked eyes with Daniel.
“You’re the one,” she said. “Good. There is not a moment to spare.”
“The one what?” he asked.
“The one my sister sent. You must purge the forest of evil.”
Daniel thought back on the mangled dryant that had attacked him and two NPCs outside of Diardenna over a week ago. Inside a rotten, evil tree, had been a beautiful woman trapped by dark magic. He accepted a quest to save her fellow dryads from similar fates, though he wasn’t sure exactly how to do that.
Other dryads looked out from adjacent trees with emerald green eyes. The male and female forest sprites had light brown skin and long, dark brown hair. They were wreathed in leaves and blooming flowers. None left their trees; they simply watched.
“Dryads bond to their host tree for life,” the dryad said. “We keep each other strong. Black ghosts have invaded the forest though, and they have mutated the trees, melting my siblings into the plants and corrupting them with evil.”
“Yes,” Daniel said, “ruined souls. We’ve seen them before. What can we do?”
“I don’t know,” the dryad said. “When my siblings tread that way, not all return. Of those that do, some come back possessed. Please do what you can. If you are successful, any of my siblings can provide your reward.”
Quest Update: Purge the Forest of Evil (I)
All the dryads know is that the evil ruining their forest emanates from a single direction. Head that way to extinguish the malevolent force possessing these peaceful creatures.
Reward: 24,000 XP.
Sybil pulled Daniel aside. “We don’t have time for this. I’m sure if we kill Sivona and save Ze this problem will work itself out.”
Her words were quick, her voice harsh. Daniel was sure she was still upset about Farah joining Travail and he didn’t want to try her patience, but he did want to finish this quest. “It’s worth enough XP to bump me to the next level,” he said, “which means getting closer to unlocking Nuclear Option. Besides, it could be a good way to practice killing ruined souls before we face Sivona. She’s bound to have a whole lot of them at her command.”
Sybil shook her head. “Fine. We do this as quickly and easily as possible. Maybe we can ask the dryads for some kind of blessing that will get you through the magic wall and into the forest when this is done.”
Turning to the dryad, Daniel said, “We accept. We will help you.”
The dryad seemed pleased, but didn’t offer any additional guidance. Daniel, Sybil, and Onik pressed through the trees until they heard voices. Not the sharp, high voices of elves barking out commands. These voices were smooth and hummed like a plucked guitar string, just like the dryad that gave them the quest update.
As the voices got closer, Daniel noticed a delicate murky rill too small and thin to be a stream. The gray water carried clumps of dirt and dead bugs, moving them inch by inch as a narrow trickle pushed its way through the forest.
“Just a sip, Telea,” said a man’s voice from further ahead.
“No, Balan,” a second voice pleaded.
Daniel pushed a few branches aside and saw who Balan was. He was a half-naked dryad wrapped in green leaves. He was on his knees, his face inches from the surface of a fouled spring. A wide, shallow pool sat before him with water burbling beneath it, struggling to get to the surface. It swirled with blackness, like a vial of ink had just been dumped into it. The other dryad, Telea, perched on a low branch of a tree, similarly clothed in an assortment of leaves and petals.
“It has not rained in ages,” Balan pleaded.
Balan startled when Daniel approached, locking wide green eyes with the cloaked adventurer. Then he shoved his hand into the blackened water and scooped it into his mouth, as if he were afraid that Daniel would stop him.
Which, of course, is exactly what Daniel would have done.
“That water looks blighted!” Sybil yelled.
Balan ignored her and continued splashing water into his mouth. His skin began fading to gray. Sybil marched over to him and grabbed him by a vine that coiled up his back and over his neck. It looked like she was in no mood to be ignored. “Stop it!” she said.
“My host tree is dry,” he said. “If I don’t drink something we’ll both die.”
“This water is poison, Balan,” Telea pleaded.
“Listen to your friend,” Sybil said. “There must be ruined souls coming from the water. How do you destroy a natural spring?”
Telea screamed as the air cracked open with the sound of a large branch being split from a tree. At the base of the dryad’s host tree stood a muscled dwarf Barbarian with short cropped hair, holding a thick branch in both hands.
“Well I’ll be,” he said, stepping out of the underbrush and locking eyes with Sybil. “Here I thought we heard the imperious harping of an elf queen ordering people around. I was almost right.”
“You,” she said, whipping her war scythe around and pointing the curved blade at the man. He was twenty feet away, and Daniel stared at him long enough to see his handle, TheBanished. They couldn’t hurt each other here. The forest wasn’t a PvP zone.
“Of all the faces you could have chosen,” Sybil said, “you have some nerve choosing your own. What sorry lot are you here with?”
“It’s okay,” the man yelled to the people behind him. “Come on out.”
Lieutenant Kronnar was the next to push through the bushes. “You don’t tell me what to do, Barbarian,” he grumbled.
“No,” Daniel said, “but I do. You should be on the mountain protecting the mayor! I never authorized you to come into the forest.”
“You didn’t have to,” Kronnar said. “I know what’s best for—”
Daniel stopped listening and froze. His eyes drifted from Sybil to the next dwarf to emerge from the bushes, then back to Sybil.
“Farah!” Sybil yelled. “You log out now.” She growled this last word while Telea whimpered from the branches above.
The Barbarian put his hand on Farah’s shoulder. “No.”
“No?” Sybil asked. “What right do you have?”
“I’m her father,” the man said. “I have every right.”
Farah took a single step away from him, forcing his hand to drop from her platemail. She looked up at him, at the man that had been absent for most of her life. “Jack?” she asked.
“This man,” Sybil said, “is violent, and controlling, and soulless. Log out and let me handle him.”
“Like you handled me last time?” he asked. “I walked away with ten stitches and a concussion, but you’re calling me violent?”
“You’re lucky you could walk at all. You should never have come back,” Sybil said. “How did you find her?”
“I’ve kept an eye out for new players,” he said. “Farah made it easy by putting her name in her handle, and I’m glad she did. We’ve been getting along quite well. Haven’t we Farah?”
Farah just stood there, her eyes wide and her hands shaking.
A few other dwarves pushed through the bushes to stand behind Kronnar as Telea let out a long moan. “What have you done to my beautiful elm?”
“Shut up!” Jack said. “We’re in the middle of a family reunion.” He took the massive branch he had snapped off Telea’s tree and thwacked it into the elm’s trunk.
The vibrations that carried up the tree shook her off the branch she hung from. With a small splash, she landed in the bubbling spring. The water was only a few inches deep, but when her body fell into it the ground began to rumble. A handful of shadowy forms burst from the water, including one that shot through Telea’s chest and disappeared.
The dryad’s body wavered between opaque and translucent. She panicked and ran back to her host elm as ruined souls swirled in the air above.
“Kill that thing,” Jack said. “If it’s part of the forest it could be one of Sivona’s and we don’t need it helping her.”
“We’re here to save the dryads,” Daniel said. “Kronnar, tell them to stand down.”
“Save the minotaurs,” Kronnar said. “Save the dryads. What about us, General? Have you forgotten your duty to save the dwarves?” The Lieutenant looked up at Telea, then down at Balan, whose gray body lay next to the shallow murky waters. The male dryad was breathing, but otherwise motionless.
“Better safe than sorry,” Kronnar said. “Kill the female dryad first.”
“For a General,” Onik said, “you have no control over your people. Do we attack?” The minotaur ducked as a ruined soul swooped toward him.
“We can’t attack my troops,” Daniel said. “It looks like Farah is a Paladin. Can she keep Telea alive while we deal with the ruined souls?”
“Absolutely not,” Sybil said.
“She can’t log out during combat anyway,” Daniel said. “It would give her something useful to do.”
Sybil held her new polearm in both hands. She bent the wooden pole, almost to the point of breaking. “Farah!” she yelled. “We need you to heal the dryad so the dwarves don’t kill her.”
Farah had stood motionless this whole time, but at Sybil’s instruction she nodded scrambling to climb Telea’s elm. Kronnar, Jack, and a few dwarves swung their weapons, aiming for the dryad as she climbed further up the tree.
“Those shadows are the same things that emerged after the tunnels collapsed,” Onik said, gaping at the ghostly figures swirling overhead.
“Yep,” Sybil said. “If you have any magic, now’s the time to use it.” She pulled a wand out of her inventory, one of the many she had nabbed from Sage Tawn’s chamber. “I hate to use up the charges on these, but I’m not sure what else to do.”
Sybil aimed the wand as a ruined soul swept past and shot a burst of pink light from it. The ruined soul dodged out of the way, allowing the wand’s spell to splash onto a nearby tree trunk. The tree began to disintegrate as the magic turned the trunk to ash. “These things are hard to aim,” Sybil said.
“Let me roll,” Onik said. He reached into his pouch and pulled out his five six-sided dice. They rattled in his cupped hands.
“Roll fast,” Daniel said. A ruined soul whipped past him and ascended into the air. Then it took a dive directly toward Balan’s body. Daniel ran toward the dryad and scooped him into his arms. The shadowy mob plowed into the ground and vanished for a moment before popping up again from a different patch of dirt.
“Balan,” Daniel said. “Balan, wake up!”
Balan’s eyes opened. His once-emerald irises held only a faint green glimmer. He lifted a wan arm and pointed to the sky. Daniel looked back just in time to see another ruined soul torpedo toward him. It smashed into his chest. Daniel dropped Balan onto the ground and howled in pain.
His blood went ice cold. He felt frostbitten from head to toe. When Daniel spun around he didn’t see the ruined soul anywhere. All the other times the souls crashed through something they came out the other side, unfazed. The only times Daniel had seen them completely disappear was when they…
“Argh!” he yelled. Something inside him twisted and writhed. His skin felt like it was hardening. His armor began to melt into his body, the carmine red metal fusing with his skin. He wrapped his cloak around himself tighter and shivered against the cold.
>> Debuff added: Steelskin. +60% physical damage resistance; -60% magic damage resistance.
His kobold steel skin lost its luster, dulling to the deep red of a pool of fresh blood.
Sybil had another wand out, shooting beams of white energy into the air. The wispy shapes of death’s veil wafted toward the ground, evidence that Sybil had knocked out two of the shades. Then a faint crackle filled the air as a magic spell erupted from the tip of Onik’s knife and fizzled like a failed firework, causing no damage.
“No good,” he said. “Zero percent magic damage on that roll.”
“Do you hear that?” Daniel asked. Behind the clamor of dwarven axes sinking into Telea’s elm tree, there was a faint sound almost like wind blowing through reeds.
“I do,” Sybil said. “It’s the arackids Coral warned us about. We need to get Farah and get out of here before this place is mob central.”
Another ruined soul emerged from the dark waters of the bubbling spring at Balan’s feet. “We have to seal the water off,” Daniel said. “Balan, is there something you can do?”
The dryad just lay on the ground. An orange bolt crackled and weaved through the air as Sybil shot at another ruined soul and missed.
“Farah, no!” Sybil yelled. Her sister was only a few inches from grasping the dryad and attempting to heal her, but Jack and the others had almost succeeded in chopping down the tree and bringing the dryad to them. It was moments from falling over. Farah looked down at Sybil for a split second, then gave up reaching for the dryad. As the trunk slammed against the earth below, Farah jumped from the tree and landed with a loud metal clang. Her white platemail was covered in mud and streaked with blood.
Daniel reached out to stop Sybil from running toward Farah. Inches away, Telea was melting into the fallen tree. The ruined soul that had dived into her body moments earlier worked its dark magic, melding her with her host
elm and producing a massive mangled dryant.
>> Level 54 Mangled Dryant (blighted).
The elm came to life as its trunk split up from the base and formed legs, and massive branches bent like arms. As Telea’s body faded into the bark, the tree split open and swallowed what was left of her, leaving no more than part of her cheek and one bare leg visible.
“Maybe I should roll again,” the minotaur said as more ruined souls leapt from the blackened water.
“That sound,” Daniel said. “The spiders are getting closer.”
The words Root of Evil appeared above the mangled dryant and root tendrils erupted from the ground. They battled with the dwarves while Sybil aimed magic wands at the stream that bubbled over with evil shadows.
One of the ruined souls circled overhead then dived toward a dwarf that had been knocked against a tree trunk. He screamed as it sank into its body. Then he climbed to his feet and stood, motionless. His eyes darted back and forth in a frenzy while his arms hung limp at his side.
Daniel stared at the man as the sound of spider chatter rose to an almost deafening pitch.
“Where are they all?” he asked. Then the dwarf’s information came into view.
>> Level 45 Tethered Pawn (blighted).
Daniel charged toward the battle, holding his sword at his hip and thrusting it into the mangled dryant when its back was turned. “Farah,” he yelled. “You have to get out of here!”
She gripped a dwarf’s forearm and pumped healing magic into him. “They need my help,” she said, gesturing to the dwarf soldiers that had been injured in the battle.
“Leave my daughter alone,” Jack said to Daniel, swinging his sword at the dryant.
“It’s not safe here,” Daniel said.
“Then leave,” Jack said.