by Galen Wolf
We stood within the entrance of the theatre. To our right was the ticket booth where my assistant Hilda, a grumpy half-orc, sat on performance nights. I had deliberately painted the place red and gold with a mirror ball that caught the light of candles set in sconces around the room. I thought it gave pizzazz to the place.
Quince gazed around silently. Flute said, “Looks like a brothel.”
I raised an eyebrow.
Quince turned on him. “Have you ever been to a brothel?”
The sheepish Flute studied his scuffed brown boots. “No,” he said quietly.
“And don’t you be unmannerly to Mr. El Mejor, what has given us succor.”
“Señor …” I corrected, but Flute looked up. “What’s sucker?”
“Succor! Succor means help,” Quince said.
“Why didn’t you just say help then?” Flute challenged.
I guessed Quince had been trying to impress me. But it is not the words that come from a man’s mouth (though I am intemperately fond of words) but the quality of his heart that impresses me.
Grey bearded Bottom returned. Entering the dark and cool of the theatre entrance from the hot street outside, he glanced around, noting the mirror ball and the abundance of red and gold and said, “It looks like a brothel.”
Flute took off his blue hat and bashed from inside it to knock off the dust. “I just said that.”
Quince stuck his thumbs in the pockets of his tartan waistcoat. He whispered, “We’ll lose the job, if you don’t shut up.”
I interrupted the dwarfs' bickering by ushering them through to the theatre proper. I was so very proud of what I’d achieved here. There was room for an audience of two hundred seated in eight rows of velvet seats set in a half moon shape. The theatre rose up in front. There was an orchestra pit, but I had not used that as musicians were so expensive, even NPC ones.
The three dwarfs looked around. Bottom pointed. “We act on that?”
I nodded. “Let me show you back stage.”
A door in the side of the auditorium led to the cast and crew only area. The steps and walls were unpainted. We mounted the short flight of stairs until we emerged in the wings. The dressing room was down a narrow corridor to the right. There was a trapdoor leading to the understage, but it could also be accessed via some steps at the back of the stage. Huge red velvet drapes hung on both sides of the stage. A sequence of other curtains could be drawn across the stage to give varying depths and allow scene changes while a performance went on at the front. The area was lit by permanent Light spells that I could dim as I chose, thanks to the kindness of the Wizard Lamron.
Bottom went to the front of the stage. He tested the boards with his heel.
I coughed. “I’d rather you didn’t do that.”
Quince, conciliatory and smiling asked, “How does it work then -the Theatre game?”
I pulled up a three-legged wooden chair from the wing and sat down. The three dwarfs stood. I shrugged. “I sometimes write my own plays, but I find the classics are the ones that draw them in. Hence me putting on A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. Last month I did Rhinoceros by Ionesco. You know it?”
Quince shook his head.
“Don’t know that Shakespeare either,” Bottom said.
“No matter. The importance is that Player Characters know them.”
Bottom muttered. Quince nudged him. Flute was playing with his jacket buttons.
Unperturbed, I continued. “A play counts as a mini quest. When they buy a ticket, they are awarded the quest, in this case, the message that pops up will be something like "You have begun the drama of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. If they stay to the final curtain, they are awarded XP. The base XP from Midsummer Night’s Dream is 1750.”
“Are they really interested in plays?” Flute asked.
I shrugged. “Some are. Others not so. There’s quite a lot of talking.”
“If they talk when I’m on, I’ll throw things at them,” Bottom said.
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
Flute innocently asked, “And what do you get out of it?”
“They pay me in gold pieces. I’m going to charge 25gp a head.”
Quince said, “So, 5000gp a performance? Not bad."
Bottom said, “What's our pay?”
The other two turned to stare at him. He explained right back at them. “If he’s making 5k gp, what’s our cut is all.”
Three of them pivoted back to stare at me. I flushed. “Well, your board and lodge? The accolades of the audience?”
“Don’t we get money?” Flute said.
Quince nudged him. “And what would we do with money? We’re NPCs. We should be grateful of the work.”
Bottom scratched his nose. “Don’t you have other actors?”
I nodded. “Player characters. Very unreliable. They log on when they log on. When they don’t they send some inadequate excuse.” I shook my head. “No, you are much better. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.”
“We’ve had some good jobs. Before this one we were sailors.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“We had a job on a trading ship from Salonika to the Isle of Kalaf.”
“Over the Sea of Bones?” I was impressed. I’d never been that far myself.
“Yeah, we used to sail to Asfar with coal. They don’t got coal in Kalaf.”
“What was it like?”
“Hot and sandy.”
“When did you start doing the mining run?” I asked.
“About two years ago. This guy, he was a warlock, called Johann the Cheeser.”
I remembered him. He’d been Guildmaster of the Warlocks Guild in Horrabia way back. I hadn’t seen him on for ages, possibly years.
Bottom said, “He was a pig. He killed his last NPCs.”
Quince said, “We originally were digging out ore, but then he put us on the convoy to Vinab. We would drive down from the Midland Hills on the Dwarf Road, through Woodheart, where the rangers live, then south to Vinab.”
Bottom spat on the floor. “Back and forward, back and forward, did my nut in.”
I said, “I’d rather you didn’t spit. Don’t you have a handkerchief?”
He shook his head. I reached into my inventory and pulled out a red and yellow silk one. He reached down and cleaned up the sputum from the stage. He was about to give me the handkerchief back when I put up my hand. “No, keep it.”
Flute said, “It wasn’t so bad when there was ore. Then Johann The Cheeser didn’t come back no more. The ore was dug out and that was that.”
“But we still trundle up and down, up and down on auto. Day in, day out.” Quince smiled. “Until this kind offer of a job from you.”
“I think I have to buy you via the auction system. There’s a way of buying assets that belonged to players who’ve quit. I’ll have to look it up.”
I glanced up at my HUD. I could bid for the assets of players who’d been gone out of the game more than two years. The gold would be deposited in their accounts. I saw that I could pay the NPCs in beer. I would do that.
“Do we sleep upstairs?” Flute asked. I nodded. The dwarfs wanted to see their rooms, though why NPCs needed rooms, I’m not sure. I think it was a status thing among them.
Later we sat on the stage and blocked out the Mechanicals scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream.
“Who’s playing Titania?” Bottom said with interest. "I fall in love with her.”
“The Queen of Summer.” I blushed as I said her name. I hadn’t asked her, but if I got her the mirror, then I felt sure she’d do me a favor and be in my play. She liked showing off, so acting was a natural extension of that for her.
The three dwarves whistled. “She’s a goddess,” Flute said. “Do you know her?”
I nodded. “I’m running a little errand for her.”
“Like what?” Bottom said, tugging his grey beard. Flute put his blue hat back on his head and blinked like an owl as he gazed
at me.
I pondered whether I should tell them the nature of my errand. Then I thought: they’re only NPCs. What harm could it do?
“Guarded by Undead, eh?” Quince said.
I nodded. “Except I don’t know where.”
Flute said, “Plenty of undeads up by where we come from today.”
My ears pricked up. “Where’s that?”
“The Midland Hills,” Bottom snapped. “We already told you.”
Quince helpfully explained. “When we dug out all the iron ore from the Midland Hills, it left these caverns. They were taken over by this necromancer from Horrabia after Johann the Cheeser quit the game.”
“A player,” Bottom muttered.
Flute scratched his head. “He had a good name though. Amon Duul.”
I jumped up in excitement. That must be a lead! I bent down and kissed each of the dwarfs on the cheek. Bottom scowled, Flute looked bemused and Quince attempted a smile.
I needed to go back to see Bob and find out what he knew about this Amon Duul. “You wait here,” I said. As I jumped over the orchestra pit and stood before the first row of seats, I turned and said, “You dwarfs have been a great help.”
Quince beamed. “I’m really pleased Mr.. Señor El Mejor.”
I shook my head. “I’m just so amazed how intelligent you are. I’ve never really spoken to NPCs before. I just took them for granted — that they would do chores and errands for me.”
Bottom said, “That’s about right.”
Unfazed, I continued, “But it’s almost like you’re people.”
“We are people,” Flute said.
I paused, it was an odd question, but I was going to ask it. “Do you know who you are?”
Quince scratched his head. Flute’s mouth twisted in puzzlement. Bottom rolled his eyes.
I continued, “Inside your heads. Who are you?” I laughed nervously. “Who plays you, really?”
Without hesitation, Quince said, “Oh yeah - the Algorithm plays us." He narrowed his eyes. "Why? Who plays you?”
6. The Mirror Found
The door opened to the Astrologer’s Tower before I even knocked once again. Again, I was glad to step inside out of the day’s infernal heat. Bob met me on the dark stairs and led me up to his office.
“Sup Romeo, mate? Back so soon,” he said as he beckoned me to sit. “Lemonade?”
I shook my head. “Gin and tonic, if you’ve got it.”
Bob went over to a globe that showed the continents of The Greenwood. It was mounted on a wooden stand but it opened to reveal a mini-bar. He fetched two cut glass tumblers from the shelf by the books on astrology and poured me a gin and tonic, and one for himself. “Lovely drink, a G&T,” he said as he sat on the leather chair behind his desk.
“Any ice?”
Bob raised an eyebrow. “This is a quasi-medieval RPG. We have no fridges, as you well know.”
I shrugged. “Thought I’d ask. You’re magic after all.”
“As are you. Anyway, what do you want? Still mirrors, is it?” He steepled his fingers. “Do you know how many mirrors I located with that Key Word skill. And the places they were.” He frowned. “And the things people do with them. I’d never have guessed some of the uses of a mirror.”
I put my hand up for him to stop. I had a delicate stomach, but I nodded and said, “Yes, mirrors. But I think I’ve had a break.”
“I’m listening.”
“Amon Duul. Do you know him?”
He shook his head.
“Apparently, he’s a necromancer. Hails from Horrabia.”
Bob stood. “I’ll look him up.” He stood and went to his bookcase. It was all cosmetic because player details were kept on a database, but the game allowed it to look like it came from a medieval tome. He thumbed through the yellow parchment pages of a volume called, “Heroes of the Greenwood: Autobiographical Sketches.”
“Autobiographical sketches?”
Bob sat with the book, still leafing through it. He nodded. “For a fee, you can write a biography of yourself and get it put into the database. Makes my life easier as spymaster, but only vain turds do it.” Then he stopped. His face hardened. He mouthed, “Johann the Cheeser.”
That was odd. I said, “He’s something to do with this.”
Bob’s lips curled inelegantly. “I knew him. Fucking warlock.”
“He apparently had an iron ore mine in the Midland Hills.”
“He doesn’t play now. Good riddance. You know they had me locked in the warlock’s guild for three days?”
“Ah, the old anchor rune and resurrection scroll combo.”
Bob put his thumb a millimeter from his index finger. “I was that close to quitting the game.” Then he frowned. “Trouble is it’s just so addictive. I fucking hate warlocks.”
“But back to Amon Duul.”
“Sure.” Bob peered at the pages of the apparently ancient book. “I am the greatest… blah blah. Founding citizen of Horrabia — as if that’s anything to boast about.” He smiled. “We’ve got it sieged now, the fuckers.”
I politely waited for him to read on.
“So, Amon Duul, was a warlock.” He did a mock spit. “But then became a Necromancer.” He shook his head. “I think they’re even worse than the warlocks. There’s got to be something wrong with people who play around with corpses. Am I right?”
I nodded. “You’re right. Go on.”
“Says he set up his own estate outside Horrabia. A year or so ago?”
“Sounds possible. Where though?”
Bob snapped the book shut. “Doesn’t say. Another G&T?”
Alcohol works on the BZ receptors, decreasing the effect of the main inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA. This in turn produces an increase in the amount of dopamine in the brain, leading to the pleasure associated with drinking alcohol. The Greenwood developers were coming on in leaps and bounds in their ability to mimic the effects of neurotransmitters through the use of transcranial stimulation, such as provided by our VR helmets. It was all voodoo to me but if you drank a G&T, the Greenwood made it feel pleasurable. Even so, I knew my limits and I shouldn’t be drinking so much before lunch if I wanted to get things done.
I stood. “Grand, Bob. That’s really helpful.”
“So you think Amon Duul's got the mirror?”
“I’m coming to that conclusion.”
“Let me look through the log. There were hundreds of mirrors and I just let it collate the data. Before you mentioned Amon Duul’s name, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular so I didn’t look at all of them. I can now though.”
“Please do, Bob.”
We went over to his scrying bowl by the window. It was still very bright outside and the seabirds flew by, mewing and calling on the wind. I smelled the salt tang of the ocean.
We both stared into the moon-charged water in the bowl. Green symbols dropped like rain on the water screen. He jabbed a finger almost to the water. “There!”
“I can’t read it.”
“It says: I sense a Mirror held by Amon Duul in his caverns.”
“So, he does have a mirror.”
Bob tugged his wispy beard. He leaned over and took a roll up cigarette from a gold lacquered box on his desk. He lit it up and puffed a plume of grey blue smoke out of the window where it was caught by the sea breeze and rushed away. “But, you don’t know if it’s this mirror.”
“No, but I’ll take a chance.”
“Want me to come with?”
I shook my head. I was moved at his offer, but I also didn’t want to share the glory with anyone. I wanted the Queen of Summer’s favor to be all mine. It was mean spirited I know, but I loved her so much. I touched him on the arm. “I appreciate it Bob, but no. I’ll be okay. I’ve got some NPCs to take with me.”
He frowned. “Slaves? I don’t approve of owning NPCs.”
“No. They’re my friends.”
He nodded. “Good. You won’t need anyone’s help. As I recall you’re p
retty handy with a flute.”
7. The Narrow Road to the Deep East
The three dwarfs took little persuading to come along. The next morning, after I logged on, I stood in front of their empty wagon outside the Theatre Royal, ready to roll. Bottom said, “You can sit at the back where the cargo would be.” He was driving. Flute fiddled with his blue hat getting it just right. He was too preoccupied to speak. Quince, however, did. “You can’t be speaking like that to Señor El Mejor; he’s our employer.” He patted the seat on the front between him and Bottom. “You come up here, Señor El Mejor, don’t worry about Bottom. He’s always grouchy.”