Star Divers- Dungeons of Bane

by Stephen Landry

Battleship

  200

  500

  Carrier

  300

  1000

  Dreadnaught

  Monarch

  Spartan

  500

  600

  600 - 700

  2000

  3000

  3500

  Supercarrier

  1000

  5000

  Titan

  10,000

  50,000

  Orbital Carrier

  Orbital Research

  100,000

  10,000

  500,000

  500,000

  Cass let me go. I told her I needed to be alone.

  We took the frigate because it was faster than the shuttle. Normally a frigate had to be manned by at least two people but Nel, besides being an AI that could carry a ton of gear, was also a great co-pilot. The carrier had several hangars and ships were always coming and going as different teams came and went. I took one of the older models, a PY-775, built to haul rovers and cargo. It was brown and square and looked like it had been designed in the 1970s. It wasn’t my first choice but it would get the two of us where we needed to be with more than enough time to spare.

  ‘Maybe you should tell the others?’ Nel said it like a question.

  ‘Tell them what? I’m going to some secret meeting with someone that I met in the real world at a funeral for my best friend,’ I was holding back my anger, my tears.

  ‘Yes...’ Nel was silent.

  ‘If whatever I learn turns out to be useful I’ll let them in, but I don’t want to drag them into whatever this is.’

  ‘You are worried it is a trap?’

  ‘Yes, we have our fair share of enemies and it could be another company looking to gather information from us.’

  ‘Another reason we should not be traveling alone.’

  ‘Okay, your sister, Tel, the Ibanez AI. Can you ask her to monitor us, that way if it is a trap they can jump to our location and provide support.’

  ‘We are not allowed to fight inside the Spire.’

  ‘Correction, we can fight all we want inside the Spire as long as the guardians don’t find out or catch us. They can’t catch stealth kills or people being taken prisoner.’

  ‘You give cause for great concern.’

  ‘I know,’ I said smiling. Damien would be proud.

  A minute later auto-pilot was on and we were approaching the Spire.

  Location Discovered: The Spire

  Environment: Hospitable

  Resources: Everything

  The Spire was everything the city of the future should be. There in the centre was a large citadel where the Chel resided and talked to the elders that were in charge of humanity as a whole. Mostly these leaders were NPCs, though there were a few actual players that had joined the Chel’s elite as members of a group called the FTC. The citadel was surrounded by several temples and places for mediation and training along with several buildings that were residences for player characters. While Bane wasn’t necessarily play-to-win, having money meant having real estate. Besides player homes there were also offices, holo hotels, and of course merchants. Every merchant guild had a shop somewhere in the Spire. Even several pirate organizations had offices that would enlist new recruits.

  The Spire was always night. They called it the night-eternal. There were clubs filled with music and even drugs that made players feel ‘different’. The only thing that wasn’t allowed inside the Spire was murder, unless it was inside an arena or outside the Spire’s safe zone. If two players went into combat AI enforcers called ‘guardians’ would appear and stop the fighting by killing the players involved. I had never seen a guardian myself, but I had heard stories. They were supposed to be large, mech-like machines with giant rifles and blades. It was rumoured their hit points numbered in the hundred thousand. To this day no one had actually taken out a guardian and there had only been one raid attempted that ended badly for everyone involved.

  We landed at the Pier. A hangar set up over a toxic river.

  Landing inside the Pier was like floating inside an enormous cavern. The catacombs they called it. Besides a few blue lights it was pitch-black and so large our own lights barely made a dent. We landed on a platform meant for supply freighters. We could see shipping containers on our left-hand side that had just been unloaded and strapped to the back of a giant wall.

  ‘Ready for pressure release.’ Nel said as my ears popped. There was a loud bang as clamps closed over our frigate’s engine and the door to exit the bridge began to open. The air outside was cold so I grabbed a small black jacket with fur around the collar and placed it over my mesh armour. The vents were still hissing when we walked outside and were greeted by another floating robot. Nel paid for our parking, taking it out of the allowance I was given by Keen Industries. It was four times the amount it should have been.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, with any luck, I would make a small fortune from the rifle.

  ‘Thanking you,’ the floating robot said before freezing. I licked my upper lip waiting for it to move or respond expecting it to say more. Another few seconds passed, and it turned around heading towards another ship. A destroyer had been following behind us in the dark the entire time. The destroyer was barely visible with its all black stealth paint job. It belonged to a guild known as the Crimson Kings.

  Outside the safe zone was a wasteland inhabited by mutated creatures that adapted to live in the radiation poisoned deadlands. A normal player could technically survive in the wasteland if they had the right gear…first and foremost being a rebreather and radiation meds. The wasteland itself had its own fair share of dungeons that could be looted. Merchants in the city sold many of the found items as souvenirs. Outside the Pier I, I paused and bought a necklace from one of the street venders. I’d spotted the item, which looked like a shark’s tooth. Found in one of the dungeons southwest of the Spire it was said to bring luck and I felt I’d exhausted what little luck I had in the battle with the spider.

  Nel and I left the Pier after marking our ship’s location as a waypoint on our shared map and went straight towards the centre of the city on a hover cycle we had brought along. Nel flew beside me while I drove into town towards a shop called the Upsilon.

  The Upsilon was run by a player who went by the name Gorge. His avatar was half cybernetic human and half ‘Orc’. He was bulky and looked like a grey Terminator with sharp pointed teeth and a dark grey beard but all in all he was a fairly nice guy so long as you didn’t get on his bad side. I still had half an hour before I was supposed to meet the woman from Damien’s funeral, not that I knew how or even if she would contact me. The only thing I had to go on was that she said to meet in the Spire and I wasn’t about to waste the trip. Among his many skills Gorge was also a weapons dealer in the black market. The Upsilon itself sold weapons from all over the system, including artefacts such as the one I had brought with me.

  At first glance Gorge wasn’t sure what to think.

  ‘Looks old, like an antique. Does it actually fire or is it an ornament?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know, I haven’t tried using it in combat,’ I answered.

  He held it in his hands examining the M1 Garand, aiming down the sights at the wall. A red line of sight appeared, and he fired.

  The rifle blew a small chunk of the wall apart. I ducked down and screamed, ‘WHAT ABOUT THE GUARDIANS!’

  Gorge laughed, ‘didn’t aim it at anyone, not worried; it fires just fine.’

  ‘How much do you think it’s worth?’

  ‘I could give you two point five million credits for it now,’ he smiled.

  When Gorge smiled I knew he was low balling me.

  ‘Three million,’ I smiled in return. I wasn’t the greatest at negotiating and probably could have made five or six. I could have even said I had another offer, but I wasn’t thinking about credits. I was looking at the time in the lower left hand corner of my heads up…a digital clock only I co
uld see as I waited to see what would happen next.

  Gorge swiped his finger left and circled the air.

  ‘Deal, transferring credits to your account now,’ he was smiling again.

  ‘Make sure not to get yourself killed and don’t let anyone know you bought that from me,’ I said.

  ‘Bought what?’ Gorge was aiming down the sight of the M1 again. ‘They don’t make games with these anymore,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything is space opera, fantasy, puzzles, everything is big and bold. Nobody remembers the past, the horrors, the humble beginnings.’

  I knew what Gorge was talking about, but I was all ready to leave. He was a great guy but could be a little difficult sometimes. I imagined whoever he was behind the avatar was actually someone pretty old, someone that yearned for the past.

  ‘Hey, listen kid, I have one more thing,’ Gorge stopped me as Nel and I were beginning to leave. He hurried towards me. He had slung the rifle over his back and was carrying something in his hand. A small data cube.

  ‘Someone knew you were coming by and asked me to give this to you,’ he said placing the small cube in my hand. I looked it over. I wasn’t quite sure what he wanted me to do with it but I had no doubt the cube and the woman from the funeral were somehow linked together.

  ‘You can use my office, just be quick about it,’ he said.

  I walked towards the back of the shop and sat down beside Gorge’s home-brew computer network. It looked like he had taken ten monitors and wired them together with one holo-projector in the centre. Some of the monitor computers were cracked while others just played static. There was a slight humming in the room and it felt like the temperature was about five maybe ten degrees hotter than the air outside. Some of the wires didn’t seem to go anywhere while others were endless, wrapped around small pieces of metal that didn’t seem to serve any purpose. I searched for a place to put the cube and found one hidden underneath a plate of food that must have been a few days old. While the rest of the Upsilon was nice and clean Gorge’s office looked like it had seen better days.

  Play Data?

  Yes / No

  I clicked ‘yes’ with my finger and watched. Two figures appeared, both clad in black heavy armour. The figures were armed with energy rifles which they were firing at creatures that looked like mutated Wraiths. Some data appeared: Dargons, Level: 55, Hostile. I couldn’t make out the rest. It was all happening fast but I soon recognized one of the players. It was Damien. Damien was twenty and had been playing Bane for four years. He had managed to level his character up to 52 and had been exploring some of the quadrants blocked to players like me for about a year. The data cube I was watching now was recording from the perspective of another player. A third player in what I assumed must have been a four person squad.

  I couldn’t tell exactly where they were, it could have been one of a large number of regions but I knew it was someplace neither I nor any of my teammates would be able to go without breaking a few rules. I didn’t recognize any of the players he was with either, but Damien knew a lot of people. His funeral alone had over forty guests. The figures in front of me continued to fire. The player beside Damien got knocked out as another alien creature - this time with humanoid features - appeared holding a firearm I had never seen before. I could see a skull mask across the lower part of the humanoid figure’s face. Was it another player? Damien’s teammate fired from the ground as Damien ran out of view and the camera fell backwards. The feed cut to black.

  ‘You’re late. Four paladins. Your friend and my brother among them passed through the world gate At Eternity and went into the Cold Zone, level 77, inside a dungeon. They believed it was a way to progress the main story of the game...’ the voice was that of a young woman, ‘four players, three dead in the real world that day, one survivor who died the following day. Real death.’

  A woman clad in purple armour with a Ki rifle slung over her back stood in front of me. I wasn’t sure if she had come inside while I was watching the data cube or if she had been in the room the whole time. She had dark, dirty blonde hair that seemed to flow down just an inch past the bottom of her neck. It was almost completely shaved on the sides and along her right eye was a tribalistic tattoo almost too small to notice. It was the woman from the funeral. Her avatar only slightly different to how she appeared in real life. Most players either made themselves look like they did in the real world like myself or they went polar opposite like Gorge so her appearance wasn’t too surprising.

  ‘They died in the game and died in real life? How is that possible?’ I said not wanting to believe it.

  ‘I’m not sure but I need to find out,’ the woman said.

  ‘Just who are you?’

  ‘My name is Kira, I am the co-owner of Moonrain Media.’

  Moonrain Media were famous for collecting in-game footage. Some of their most famous recordings were Battle of the Eternal Day, Assault on Cthonia, and Operation Siege Engine. They had hundreds of thousands of people that followed them both in and outside the game and were treated as one of the top guilds. Kira was basically their queen.

  ‘That video was my brother’s feed, the last thing he saw before he died, it is not fake, I already checked…each and every one of them died either in battle with the man in the skull mask or just after logging out. My brother died of cardiac arrest while still playing the game.’ She paused and took a deep breath sending me a quick file to look over.

  Name: Scrawl

  Age: 22

  Level: 75

  Status: Deceased

  Class: Scout

  Health: 100

  Stamina: 100

  Mana: 100

  Load out: M7-7 Artefact Rifle, Short grip energy pistol, Pulse Shotgun, Sharpened Combat, Dagger, Grenades

  ‘What does this have to do with me?’ I asked interrupting.

  ‘They were chasing an echo, a very rare one, something in the Cold Zone had called out to them, a whisper in the void, that was what they called it,’ she paused, ‘Damien spoke highly of you. He talked about you like the two of you were brothers. I lost my family and if anyone understands it has to be you,’ she paused again. Even in the virtual world you could cry. The game was capable of total immersion. Every small detail from an eye twitch to the way your chest moved up and down. The tears running down Kira’s eyes were just as real as they would be anywhere else.

  ‘You are a Corpse Diver and I’m here to hire you.’

  — Quest —

  A Whisper in the Void

  Created by: Moonrain Media / Kira

  Expected Difficulty: Veteran

  Rewards: Unknown

  Accept / Decline.

  3.

  The Chase

  Location: The Spire

  Gorge’s shop ‘The Upsilon’.

  As I accepted the quest I felt something strange. A chill ran down the side of my arm. It was like the air in the room had changed. I felt a rush I hadn’t felt since the first time I logged in. This was going to be the adventure of a lifetime. Damien, I knew would want this. If I could find his echo I wouldn’t just be making a name for myself or buying my way out, I would be honouring my best friend. A moment later the rush was gone replaced by fear and Gorge bursting into the back of the room holding the artefact M1 Garand in his hands ready to fire.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell you just did but a guardian is coming our way!’ he shouted.

  ‘What do you mean a guardian?’ I was angry he had interrupted my meeting with Kira.

  ‘You know the overlords that tank players who commit crimes inside the Spire, the ones that are pretty much immortal objects with big guns,’ he answered. I knew exactly what the guardians were but why were they coming towards us?

  ‘I told you not to fire that rifle,’ I was shouting now. Nervous. If a guardian really was after us there was little we could do.

  ‘NOT MY FAULT,’ Gorge yelled, ‘I fire weapons all the time in my own shop,
got a small dampening field around it so it’s a little arena; can’t be too careful some of the customers I deal with.’

  ‘Was it the quest you gave me?’ I said, staring towards Kira who was watching us in silence.

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry, I should have warned you,’ she answered.

  ‘Damnit, now what are we going to do?’ before I got all my words out Kira was already arming herself. She held her Ki rifle high into her arms.

  ‘We need an open area,’ she said.

  I looked at Kira again and scanned both her and Gorge, pulling up as much information as I could about their player characters as the three of us joined together as a party.

  Name: Kira

  Age: 16

  Level: 60

  Status: Alive

  Mana: 100

  Class: Tech-Mage

  Health: 100

  Stamina: 100

  Load out: Ki Rifle, Energy Pistol

  Name: Gorge

  Age: Unknown

  Level: 60

  Status: Alive

  Mana: 100

  Class: Tank

  Health: 100

  Stamina: 100

  Load out: Artefact Rifle, White Lilly, Tree Root

  I couldn’t see any of their other stats just as they couldn’t see my own. That was one advantage players had over each other. It would have been nice to know everything there was to know about both Kira and Gorge, since the three of us were about to work together in battle.

  Skills and Abilities were secret unless shared as a part of a guild. Attack power, Affinity, Sharpness, Elemental powers, and Modifiers were all hidden.

  Quick Lore

  Attack power = raw damage done without elemental powers or modifiers. Attack power is universal and can be multiplied only by additional strength.