by C A A Allen
NEW PRIMARY WEAPON: Feasting Knife
Damage: 1-2.
Range: N/A.
Frequency: Common.
Quality: Defective.
Melee Weapon Attack: Piercing damage.
Cutlery? My first weapon in the game may be a steak knife, but it sure feels good to have something that can inflict damage. I stretch out my back and stand up straight. Now, where did Bella run off to? I scan the packed crowd but can’t see over the raised tankards of a group of men that sing and sway from side to side. Did she ditch me?
A short man in a green suit with buckled shoes hops on a nearby table. “I have a savage trick,” he says in a thick Irish accent. “Take a gander.”
He tosses a shiny apple, a slatternly turkey leg, and a dagger up in the air one after another and juggles them. This man consists of pure sinew and skill. He could be a good quester. “Throw in one more item. Anything. Just one silver penny for the show.”
This is truly the Stag and Hen Tavern, just like the one in the game. “I’m not here for tricks, friend,” I say. “But if you’re a quester for hire, I may consider you.”
A sharp yank on my shoulder interrupts my fascination with the juggler.
I whip around, grab a man by his throat, and back him against the tavern wall. I am not about to let someone pick my pocket. He is hefty with plate mail armor and a curved dagger at his waist. “Who the hell are you?” I demand, forcing myself to come off tougher than I feel.
“Calm down outsider,” he rasps. “I’m The Master of Chittor.”
I recognize this guy’s voice. “Hey, you kicked me in the ribs!” I snatch my feasting knife from my belt and press it against his throat.
“Riff.” Bella appears behind me and rests a calming hand on my shoulder. “He’s not a threat. Castilian is just trying to register you as a questing captain.”
Two men-at-arms wearing black tunics with red bucks on them draw their swords and approach me from the side.
I let Castilian go and sheath my weapon. “Kick me in the ribs again and see what happens.”
Castilian waves off the men. “You Compass-Keepers are reckless, and I don’t like it. Next time you enter my stronghold, check in with me at the gate well before my first bread and beer. Madmartigan didn’t check in when she arrived either. Don’t let her get you an axe blade upside the cranium.” He adjusts his armor and looks around. “Do you plan to form a party, or are you just here to take in all this good ambiance?”
“My name is Jareth Goblinmasher,” I say. “And I sure enough came here to form a party.” My teeth buzz.
NEW TASK: Assemble a party at Chittor.
Assemble a party of six adventurers in order to enter the Valley of Fear.
Okay, I’m starting to get the hang of this shock and message thing. I will the message box away and it disappears. But I’m thankful for the update. The Grimoire is awesome.
Castilian looks me up and down. “Okay, Goblinmasher, consider yourself registered. If you live long enough to get a party together, I’ll see you at the gate.” He shoves several patrons aside and pushes out the front door.
“So, Riff,” Bella scratches her nose and forces a smile. “My funds have dropped below the amount that allows a person to be captain.” She rises up on her toes. “Don’t you have something to ask me?”
“I do. What is a Compass-Keeper?”
“That’s what the NPCs call anyone with a Grimoire. Don’t you have something else to ask me? You are now an official questing captain in need of a party.”
“Oh, right, yes, I do have something to ask.” Okay, I get it. You need at least ten gold coins to captain a party. Bella must be super broke. Let me make this good. “Ms. Madmartigan, I am looking to assemble a balanced party of compatibly aligned questers to enter the Valley of Fear. Would you do me the honor of joining my party?”
She bows her head slightly and straightens. “I thought you’d never ask. Your offer is accepted.”
I get a shock and a small icon of Bella’s face appears in the upper right corner of my vision. I focus in on it and the small transparent square once again pops up to the left.
ADD: Madmartigan Galladoorn, Mage.
Mage: Trained in fighting and casting spells. May use only light weaponry and armor. Primary abilities: Intelligence.
AGE: 21
LEVEL: 3
ABILITIES: 35
ALIGNMENT: Neutral
Spellcasting: 4/3/2
WEAPONS: Flail: Melee Weapon Attack: Bludgeoning damage.
Dagger: Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: Piercing damage.
This is cool. Now that Bella is in my party, I can see a partial version of her character sheet. I raise an eyebrow and glance at her. “I would have thought you had a ‘good’ alignment.”
“I’m a good girl gone bad. If you don’t dead-for-real-die and play your cards right, you might find that out for yourself.” She scans the tavern’s interior. “We need to add the three best NPCs we can afford.”
“Just three NPCs? That only gives us a party of five. We need six to enter the valley.”
“And that brings me to the other gamer I told you about.” Bella blows out a long breath. “Let’s go see him.” She pushes through chairs, making a path between tables. “This guy dropped into the game shortly after I did. For being an all-powerful cleric, he’s been pretty worthless. I included him in the party I captained after arriving. We got ganked in our first encounter, and he left me for dead.”
“Oh, man.” A lot of players in the game have this attitude—every man for himself. It’s hard to imagine someone being like that in a real life, dead-for-real-die scenario. It’s no wonder she has a beef with this guy. “Why not just leave him and find a fourth NPC?” We don’t need some back-stabber in our party. I don’t care if he is in our elite fraternity of best of the best Grimoire holders.
“If we don’t get Hans to join us, our run is going to be a struggle. We need a cleric’s abilities to help us fight and, more importantly, to help us heal from potential injuries. Also, he’s real, like you and me. And the only way out of this game is through the portal in the goblin’s chamber. As much as I dislike him, we can’t just leave him here.”
Three hooded figures sit at the back of a dimly lit table. The one in the middle flips through pages of a thick book with worn leather binding. I lean into Bella as we approach. “Is that him in the middle? What’s that he’s reading?”
“It’s a spell book of sorts. They’re unique to the real version of the game. I don’t quite know what to make of them. They show up on random bookshelves around town and contain non-deadly spells that only sporadically work. The best spell I’ve learned from them enables me to create a flame on the tip of my thumb.”
“Really? Show me a little something.” I love magic.
“Not now.” Bella steps to the table and stops. “Riff, I’d like to introduce you to Johannes and his coterie of flunkies.” She slaps both hands onto the table, hard. “Hello, Griefer. This is Riff, the third gamer to enter Chittor. We need you to join our party for a run at the goblin’s chamber.”
“My name is Hans.” The figure in the middle pulls back his hood. He has pale skin, bloodshot eyes, and dry strands of blond hair running down his face. “I don’t mean to offend,” he says, “but that is not going to happen. Why would I risk death when I can hang out here with my good friends? My acolytes love me.”
“Because,” Bella growls, “If we don’t defeat the goblin by midnight tomorrow, we’ll all be dead anyway.”
Hans gives no indication that he’s heard her. He glances down at the book and raises his left hand. “Partum a malum magia dracone.” With a snap of his fingers, a white cloud of smoke puffs up on the left side of the table. A small, transparent purple dragon tiptoes out of the smoke and looks around with big dove-like eyes. It has a potbelly, an enormous grin, and stands on wobbly hind legs.
The two men flanking Hans simultaneously pull their hoods back. One points at the
dragon with a shaky finger. “M-m-magnificent.”
The other man’s jaw drops. “Look what he has conjured. We are in the presence of a magical genius.”
Bella rolls her eyes and whispers in my ear, “You would think these guys were looking at a Hungarian Horntail, or the Ender Dragon, or Smaug or something.” Then she waves her hand through the apparition. “Can you get Puff the Magic Dragon out of here? We have serious questing business to talk about.”
The dragon prances across the table where it trips and tumbles off the end but grabs onto the edge and hangs swinging by a single talon.
A little girl with high rainbow pigtails and a loaded weapons belt runs to the table. “Oh, what a cute baby dragon.”
“Get out of here, kid.” Hans snaps his fingers and the spectacle fades into a purple mist. “See that?” He turns his back on the girl and faces us once more. “My dragons are very impressive. I’m a star in here.”
The girl grips the table. “Ahhh.” Her bottom lip quivers. “Where did it go?”
“Get. Go on.” Hans shakes the table and stares the girl down. She runs off with tears in her eyes.
I watch the little NPC quester girl go. Then I turn and stare at Hans. “Really?” Who does that?
He points at Bella. “The two of us were already on a run together. It didn’t go well. Why should I risk my life again?”
Bella reaches over the table and shuts the book. “Have you checked your character sheet lately? The DCQ servers are being shut down, and we will be shut down with them. Shut down dead.”
Hans leans back. “I’m not worried about the servers.” He shakes his head. “This place is its own realm, and it’s real. If the servers go down, we might not be able to get back home, but we will live on—in this place—in the cloud.”
Woah. If I didn’t have Mack to get back to, that would tempt me too. What if Hans was right?
“That’s not how it works, Hans.” Bella’s fists ball up. “You saw the hardware in The DCQ Den with your own two eyes. There is no magical realm-cloud that keeps games living. These things don’t go on indefinitely. They shut down and go dark. It’s Goodnight, Groddle. Do you even remember City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, or The Matrix Online? Probably not, because they are gone and nowhere to be found.”
Good point, Bella. My momentary awe vanishes. It looks like Bella needs some help convincing him. “Hans, we are in a deadly situation here. But I am uniquely qualified to help us get out of it. In real life, not only am I a game development major, but I’ve also spent every second of my spare time—and then some—playing this game. I may be at level two now, but at home I am a level ten DCQ guru. I know the route to the goblin’s chamber like the back of my hand. We can do this.”
“In real life.” A smirk crosses Hans’s face. “Not only am I on pace to graduate at the top of my class with a chemical engineering degree, but I’m also a top one-hundred ranked NGL gamer, a member of my university’s League of Legends varsity team, and a frequent contributor on Checkpoint radio’s eSports and gaming show. So, don’t tell me what we can do. What you don’t know is that the valley here is more difficult than the one you play at home.” He reopens his book. “Get with me when you have a party together. If it’s good enough, maybe I’ll join you. If you’re lucky.”
I look closely at Hans. With all that fame and prestige he’s claiming, why don’t I recognize him?
Bella slams the book shut again, from both ends, and dust shoots up into Hans’s face. “You’ve lost sight of reality, you over-immersed cleric of little dragons. You’ll join us or die in here.” She pivots on her heel and strides the opposite direction.
I follow a few steps behind. “So, Bella.” I catch up to her and she stops. “Other than Hans, what’s our recruitment strategy? You’ve been in the valley already. What type of adventurer are we looking for?”
“The good news is that I’m a mage and Hans is a cleric. We don’t have a lot of spell points between us, but if we’re careful, we should be able to supply all the magic we need.”
“That works for the budget. I have only eighteen gold and seventeen silver.” Magic users always command a lot of gold. Not having to hire one will help us stretch our funds.
“Well, the bad news is that we need to add three randoms to get Castilian to open the gate out of town, and one of them is required to be a thief. Thieves demand a lot of gold.”
“Wait, we can’t add just random NPCs,” I point out. “We’re questing into the goblin’s chamber. We gotta hire some major beef. No offense to you magic users, but I could use a few really good fighters to defend us.”
“Hmm.” Bella nods in the direction of the tavern’s kitchen. “I’ve never seen that guy in here before. He’s built like a tank. Let’s go meet him.”
A mountain of a man stands stone-faced and looking straight ahead. He has a bald head, a long, braided goatee with beads woven into it, chain mail armor, and a shield strapped on his back. He looks like the perfect meathead for the front of a marching line.
As we get closer, I notice a long wooden shaft with a bulky metal head hanging low from a hook on his belt. One could inflict some heavy damage with a mace like that.
Bella walks boldly up to him, even though he towers over her. “Are you available for hire?”
The man keeps a steady gaze forward, then says, “Not for a weak wench with no gold, I’m not.”
CHAPTER 6
34:57:02 hours until DCQ server shut down.
“Volitan’s guillotine,” Bella calls out, spinning a finger and creating a crackling blue circle of light. She flicks it forward, sending the ring around the huge man’s neck where it tightens. “Who’s the weak wench now?”
“Ack.” The man wraps both hands around the ring and strains to widen it. “Okay.” He wheezes. “You’re a magic user. We can deal.”
Bella snaps her fingers and the ring puffs into mist. “Our destination will be the West Labyrinth. Your compensation will be five gold coins and a five percent share of any treasure found. Don’t even ask for artifact privileges.”
I like her negotiating tactics. Start low and take artifact privileges off the table from the get-go. It can be risky, though, Some NPCs’ lust for artifacts runs so deep they will refuse to join without them.
“Hmmmm.” The man wraps a hand around the top of his mace’s shaft and pounds the head into the floor. “Twenty gold coins and a ten percent share.”
“No way,” Bella says. “We will go ten gold and a twenty percent share.”
The man grips his goatee, tugging on it. “The name’s Salo, and your terms are accepted.”
Bella cracks a smile. “Meet us at the gate.”
In my vision feed, an icon with Salo’s face appears above Bella’s accompanied by a transparent square.
ADD: Salo Fatback, Fighter. (-10 Gold/-20% Share/No Artifact Privileges)
Fighter: A man-at-arms trained for battle. May use any armor and weapon. Primary abilities: Strength.
AGE: 24
LEVEL: 4
ABILITIES: 60
ALIGNMENT: Neutral
WEAPONS: Mace: Melee Weapon Attack: Bludgeoning damage.
Shield Bash: Melee Weapon Attack: Bludgeoning damage.
SUBTRACT: 10 gold coins to Salo Fatback. New gold coin balance: 8
“Hey,” I gripe. “I just got ripped for ten gold coins.”
“As party captain,” Bella reminds me, “the funds drain from you. Don’t worry though. That gold is well spent. I’ve hired questers before. Ten gold is a steal for a fighter of Salo’s stature, and that mace of his should provide good front of the line offense. What kind of stats does he have?”
“He is at level four, and at sixty for abilities.”
“Low abilities for a big man. But better than anything I had on my initial run. Consider him your beef.”
I dig in my bag and run my fingers through the contents. “That hire leaves me with just eight gold coins.”
Bella glances at my ba
g and weapons belt. “You’re going to need all of them to complete our party and purchase yourself a better weapon.” She points to my knife. “Although I’ve heard tough slabs of filet mignon in the north are quite susceptible to your current ginsu-esque saber.”
I cover my knife’s sheath with a hand. “Not funny.” But she’s right. I need a better weapon badly. “How much gold do you have, and what about Hans? We need to pool our resources to hire the best party. By the time we’re done, I’ll be down to pennies.”
“Hans and I spent all our gold on healing from that last run. I have nothing, and I’m sure Hans doesn’t have anything either. Whatever pennies you have will just have to do.”
“The quality of even an eight coin sword bothers me.” I am not going to fight with some knobbed stick. I have to find a way to acquire more gold. “Speaking of weapons, that magic strangle circle you put on Salo was nice. But do you think it was wise to waste a spell on such a situation? Most magic users I play with save their limited spell power for life and death encounters.”
“It was nothing more than a parlor trick I learned from a book.” Bella holds a fingernail to her lips and blows on it. “It may have looked deadly, but after a brief strangle that spell times out. A few more seconds and the circle would have disappeared on its own, and I would have lost our negotiating leverage. Non-deadly magic cost nothing off my spell power, it does always make one of my fingernails burn.”
It looked pretty deadly to me. “And what about Hans?” I ask. “What can he do?”
Bella pulls me toward a large gambling table surrounded by a dozen ale-guzzling NPCs, and four men-at-arms in black red buck tunics. “I hope that fool still has some spell power left. He’s always showing off to the locals.”
We squeeze our way in at the table between a man and dwarf. Gambling wasn’t my ideal way to earn coin, but what other options did we have? The man on my left has thick gray hair and a Fu Manchu-style mustache. He hunches over the table with eyes fixated on the dice, not even noticing us. The dwarf on my other side grumbles and moves as far away from us as the step stool he’s standing on will allow. He is short and stocky with a shaggy, untamed reddish-black beard. Both men smell like a week-old mix of garbage and spirits.