Star Divers- Dungeons of Bane

by Stephen Landry

  ‘My sister! They took her inside, five of them, they said if we didn’t lead them to the ruins they would slay our colony.’ Translation quality: approximate.

  ‘I am here to help, can you understand me?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered in common.

  ‘Your sister will be safe, first we have to wait for my friend. Can you fire a weapon?’ I held out the energy pistol removing it from my inventory as she took it. A simple yes would have done but she began to move forward towards the side entrance of Decrepit.

  ‘We have to wait!’ I shouted.

  ‘I can’t. My sister is in danger,’ she answered back.

  I had another decision to make. Damien was right, choices were going to be a huge part of Bane. As she moved ahead, I was forced to decide. Follow the woman into Decrepit or wait for Damien to deal with the raider mech and guard?

  It wasn’t hard. I followed Riley inside a small airlock where she pressed several keys and the door opened. Right off the back, we were ambushed by two guards.

  Raider x 2

  Level 3

  Hostile

  Two shots each from each of us and they were down. Another +20 EXP gained. Both raiders were wearing weak body armour that looked like it had been scrapped together from a junkyard. They had focused their attack on Riley giving me the advantage. Since the woman was an NPC she seemed to have a decent amount of health. I wondered if she could be killed at all. Probably, Definitely. The two of us continued to sneak our way through the Decrepit, with Riley leading the way.

  The other three raiders went down just as easily. I really started to feel a sense of accomplishment playing Bane. The rush of living in this world, the gunfights, helping strangers in need. I felt an overwhelming sense of discovery in turning every corner and exploring what came next. Damien was right, this was what had been missing in my life. My chance at something more. I was starting to feel like less of a corporate tool and more like a player.

  Riley’s sister was named Kess. She was younger than Riley by almost five years. As I followed the two of them out the quest became more of an escort mission. Gun turrets dropped from above as the defence system activated against us. By the time we made it through the ship, I had lost almost half my health. Yet when I was in the airlock and able to look outside, there were half a dozen raiders waiting for me and no sign of Damien anywhere.

  ‘I’m going to fail this mission,’ I said.

  ‘It seems I will not be receiving future upgrades,’ Nel responded.

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’

  I told Kess and Riley to stay behind me near the back of the airlock as the hull door opened. The raiders turned their attention on us as I fired, knocking one down. I hid in the small space between the airlock door and the wall as Damien began firing from somewhere above us. Three, then four of the raiders fell and I turned my attention towards the last one, laying down cover fire. I couldn’t get a read on him but the last raider was strong. Most likely a level 10 equipped with heavy armour. Damien took him out by first injuring him in the knee and finishing him with a shot to the spine.

  I smiled looking over at Damien. I felt like a new person. Brand new and both of us knew it. He smirked and gave me a thumbs up. We won.

  ‘Who are your friends?’ Damien asked as the smoke cleared.

  ‘Riley and Kess, from the settlement,’ I answered.

  As the two of them walked out of the Decrepit they thanked both of us for saving them. Riley gave me back my energy pistol and as they moved away, she encouraged me to find her again in the future, promising she would have a reward for us. A prompt appeared in my field of vision.

  Quest Complete!

  +500 EXP

  I almost immediately levelled up and began distributing points into my focus and attacks. I wasn’t going to be a weak player. If I was going to hunt artefacts and save NPCs from raiders I was going to have to be strong. Stronger than them, as strong, no, stronger than Damien.

  Three days later I returned to the Decrepit with Damien. The raiders had returned and we completed the mission again earning me +100 EXP. After that run through the ship, Damien and I visited the settlement and found Riley and Kess who rewarded both of us with upgraded armour. It was there in the settlements I saw Damien sneak away and talk to someone, another player by the name of Scrawl. Little did I know at the time Scrawl was Kira’s brother and the two were planning the biggest dive in history.

  7.

  Ambush

  ‘Access’

  Checking for necessary update files...

  Update 1.11.7 found.

  Initializing...

  Player environment meets necessary requirements.

  Retina scan / Identity confirmed.

  Dive 100%

  Loading player data...

  ‘Loneliness is an infection that will attack you at your core. It will twist your veins and distort your heart until you don’t know up from down. It will lie to you and blur what is right and wrong and at that moment it will try all it can to strangle you. Please remember if you can only take one thing from this. No matter how lost, how alone you can still be found. All you have to do is look around you and know we are here.’

  - Damien, days before his death.

  Location: The Ibanez

  Alpha-1 Star System above the ruins of Orithyia

  The inside of the stasis pod was just like it had always been before but I felt different. I could hear the sound of the dark grey metal hatch grind as it opened and I began to access my arms and legs. Usually there was a small lag joining the game but this time there was almost nothing. My new pod must have been state of the art, maybe I was even the first person to use it. I felt my chest move up and down as my senses sharpened. The game enhanced your senses three times greater than in reality. In the real world I would need to wear glasses or contacts but in the game I had perfect twenty/twenty vision. Even more so with the right implants. I could, if I wanted, have vision like a hawk or cat eyes that could see in the dark. Every implant had their own share of problems though. Trade your human vision for cat eyes and you see less colour. Moving back and forth from one to another could also cause severe nausea and headaches for those that accessed the game too long. It would be like staring at a coloured light bulb all day and all night. Your eyes wouldn’t always be permanently damaged but there would be side effects. Everyone that played knew that. The first virtual reality sets were nothing more than headgear. After that came finger sensors and foot pads. Treadmills for running. Over the years VR evolved until finally someone developed the pods. Originally they were created as medical care units. Able to treat patients with severe trauma or bodily injuries. The military used them to train soldiers in real life combat situations. A week in a pod with the right software could be just as real as three weeks in the field.

  The pods use light and sound to trick the mind into a kind of transcendent static state that allow several sensors worn on the body to provide reflex movement while a visor stimulates brain activity, essentially upending you inside the game. The pods were designed so that too much pain caused a decrease in health while dampening the actual pain response to the body. The pods were also set up to mediate potentially disturbing experiences, such as torture or death, so that they felt like dreams. If a user died during their time in the game, that moment would be adjusted. Rather than experience events that might cause someone to become unhinged in the real world, players were left with a feeling of having lived but not felt certain events. Examples include traumatic death, torture, etc. this feature could of course be modified based on how the user played the game.

  Another built in feature for pods is the ability to speak to an admin. This allows players who became stranded to get help or rescue. Most of the time this feature involves a player-controlled organization, who send help for a small fee. As a Corpse Diver I was required to have my settings adjusted to being as realistic as possible since the game would automatically read over my character
and generate loot and EXP based on my personal stats.

  Bane was a living system. The game engine was designed from the ground up for military use. Rumour has it that the code was originally designed to run and test an experiment combining time dilation and virtual reality, however none of the time dilation effects worked as intended and so the project was scrapped. Time dilation of course is a difference in time between two observers. Example: if the project had worked as intended someone that played Bane would feel like years of their life had gone by only to log out and find that those years were the equivalent to hours in the real world.

  The engine itself was seamless. Unlike other VR worlds it was able to support millions of players in true to real life environments and utilize all five senses. Players could live out their fantasies without worry. Bane became popular after an overload of fantasy worlds began to drown out the market. Everyone began looking for something new and with a procedurally generated resource system and various degrees of built-in artificial intelligence Bane was born. If you wanted to fly you could journey to sector 17 and live on a planet with vast red forests and low gravity. If you wanted to hunt wild animals you could venture into the wilds of Decima-12 and trade with others that settled in your sector. Bane allowed players to slightly mod and dress their characters how they saw fit. It was science fiction in genre only. With so many worlds to explore and discover everything was left to the players’ imagination and determination.

  After Bane became popular, credits in game meant real world dollars and that was when companies like Keen Industries and Moonrain Media became involved. Now, there are four million players in a hundred and seventy-seven servers, give or take. That means twenty-two thousand, five hundred and ninety-eight people spread out in seventy-six quadrants: two nine seven players per quadrant equally. Not everyone played at the same time or daily however, so take away maybe a thousand here and there. Dungeons and settlements also shared several of the same servers allowing players the ability to interact. The Spire alone had four thousand five hundred people in it when I arrived. There were probably a hundred bystanders who lost their game when I went face to face with the guardian and out of the five k people in Alpha-1 three thousand two hundred were taken out by my boss. The servers themselves were spread out all across the world.

  In real life I had pain that shot through my arms and legs several times throughout the day. Nerve damage that would cause me to feel like I was being stuck with pins and needles. It made lifting anything heavy nearly unbearable and without the money for surgery I would have to live with the attacks for the rest of my life. In the real it was a reminder of the wreck that took away my parents’ lives. In the game there was no pain. Replaced by a healthy body, one that could take damage and dish it out.

  Bane was limited when it came to character creation. When you first played, it would scan your own body and allow you to build features on top of that. Sure, you could like Lady Gray and change your appearance and height but your avatar had to be ‘proportionate’ to your body in the real world for your mind to accept the environment around you. The game, like most virtual worlds, allowed you to feel one hundred percent healthy. This was a great feature that made living in a virtual world a reality for many. Some people would spend more time in VR than real life. Leaving only to eat, drink, sleep. Most pods had a system in place that allowed the body to well…you get it.

  While most players were between levels 1 and 40, that was because many players found themselves holding down positions around level 35. Some were guards, bounty hunters, raiders, smugglers, merchants. Dungeon divers like myself usually died around level 45 as they explored harder levels in the game, so getting as high as Lady Gray or Damien made you look like a badass. There were also lost colonies. These were player groups that lived on the fringe worlds and explored new areas of space, looking to advance their bank account far more than their EXP. And they had a tendency to get lost. Some would set up on new worlds and invited players to come trade and explore, while others would have no choice but to restart their accounts.

  The level of difficulty in Bane was a part of what made it so interesting to play. It made the loot worth more and EXP a necessity for reaching worlds that were farther out from the Spire. Other guilds similar to the Corpse Divers existed, we were only #1200 as far as leaderboards were concerned, however we were the only group with a Lady Gray and a Titan.

  ‘Took your time meeting with the boss,’ Cass and several others were standing over me as I woke up into the game.

  ‘Mighty hero, Breq, the city-runner,’ said Brand, he was another Corpse Diver, one of my squad. Together we had gone on several raids and missions together. It was nice to see his bald head and gnarly face smiling down at me. Brand always looked like he was angry, but he was probably one of the nicest among our ranks.

  ‘Ensign idiot,’ the voice was that of Aiden. Aiden was more or less the leader of our group. He was a level 37 and had already made a name for himself with sponsorships from Anomaly Games and Media, Sunblossom Studios, and Hungry Sidekick. Aiden was clearly upset. The deal made with Moonrain Media gave them and only them a hundred percent access to my feed. They had paid a ton of money for exclusivity rights and that meant that players like Aiden had to put their sponsors on hold. I felt bad. I knew Aiden needed those sponsors to make ends meet. He was eighteen and had managed to move out of the housing into a small apartment because of the progress he made. Now, because of me it was possible he could lose it all.

  The Ibanez is a cruiser that holds roughly ten squads aboard. Each squad consisted of seven players.

  Seven was the minimum requirement for some of the more advanced dungeons and raids.

  Echo - 1, my squad, consisted of:

  Name: Aiden

  Level: 37

  Class: Gunner / Tank

  Loadout: M7-7 Ki Rifle (lvl. 7), mini-gun (lvl.2), combat knife, explosive grenades

  Name: Brand

  Level: 32

  Class: Medic

  Loadout: Automatic Shotgun (lvl. 4), Pistol (lvl. 10), combat knife, med-kit x 4

  Name: Shiru

  Level: 30

  Class: Sniper / weapons specialist

  Loadout: M44 Long Range Sniper Rifle (lvl. 20) w/ modifiers, short barrel pump action shotgun (lvl. 13), throwing knives, and extra food supplies.

  Name: Pierce

  Level: 25

  Class: Tech Specialist

  Loadout: M7-7 Ki Rifle (lvl. 15) x 2 with duel modifiers, short grip energy takedown glove, smoke grenades

  Name: Eli

  Level: 34 Class:

  Tech Specialist

  Loadout: M7-7 Ki Rifle (lvl. 15), EMP Blaster, Microwave Emitter (lvl. 5), EMP Grenades

  And of course Cass...

  Name: Cass

  Level: 34

  Class: Scout

  Loadout: M7-7 Ki Rifle, M44 SMG variant x 2 with duel modifiers, explosive grenades, and a long sword called Eta Tau.

  As for my ship.

  The Ibanez

  Main Weapons: Front-mounted Neo-Poloron torpedoes

  Defence: Expensive Anti-magnetic anti-attack fighters, Variable-Tetryon Electrifier, Mk II Quantum deflector shield and Disrupter torpedoes.

  Current Condition: A minor gravity system failure has been detected in the crew decks.

  Along with weapons and tech the Ibanez was equipped with several mechs which could be controlled by Nel, Tel, and of course any crew personnel so long as they were level 20 or higher and had a pilot skill 5. Pierce and Eli were our mech techs though Cass was learning. Gorge had told me a few things about them here and there from our trades but for the most part they were a newer addition to the game. Rated on a scale of 1 to 10 in speed and agility, mechs could be loaded with one weapons on each arm. Mechs came in three categories: light, medium, heavy. The three categories consisting of various forms. Most mechs took the shape of bi-pedal machines resembling humans in function while others could resemble robotic animals such as gorillas, the
re were even four-legged mechs that functioned more as tanks. The mechs were controlled via cockpits much like fighters however once a user interfaced with the controls the mech acted as an extension of the user’s body, mimicking their body movements.

  The three mechs in our hangar:

  Light

  A compact frame with repulsors that allow it to skid across any terrain, with an open centre torso, our light mech was code-named Pilgrim. The light mech can fly 20 feet above the ground for 20 seconds at a time with a recharge rate starting at 120 seconds (skilled mechanics and techs could upgrade flight time to last minutes and even mod light mechs with wings so they could glide for short distances at various heights).

  Weight: 2 Tons (Carbon Fiber alloy / thin ballistic shell)

  Health: 500

  Speed: 8

  Agility: 9

  Weapons: Primary - Heavy Laser Rifle (100 Damage at 300 RPM)

  Secondary - Shotgun (single shell) (300 Damage 10 RPM)

  Melee - Extendable Combat Blade (150 Damage)

  Medium

  Medium mechs were, unfortunately, not the best of both worlds. Made similar to a heavy mech with few of the advantages of the light. The one in our hangar was named Radagast. Medium mechs have a robust frame with a closed cockpit and can function in zero gravity with four repulsors: two on the back of the legs and two on the shoulders. While the medium mech was too heavy to fly without heavy modification, it could hover for three to five seconds with the help of two fusion jets attached to the back of the torso.