I pulled my shorts on as I thought about what Donny had done to me. I was fuming when he opened the changing rooms door and found me putting my socks on. “Oh come on, are you really so upset that you're not going to keep playing?”
“Dude, you turned on me right at the last second! Yeah, I'm pissed off! Do you know how long it took for me to get enough power-ups, enough gear, and enough troops trained to a high enough level to be able to take on the Dark Fortress?”
“Weeks?” Donny asked still smirking slightly.
“Try about three months!” I nearly yelled as I stood to my feet. I was slightly taller than Donny, brouder shouldered, though I was a bit pudgier them him. He was a bit of an athlete with a real skateboarder surfer dude vibe, I just had size but right now I was angry. “Three months! All of the time since I graduated dude, I have spent either working out trying to lose a few pounds now that I'm out of school, applying for my master's program, or in those pods trying to get ready for that attack!” I took a deep breath trying to calm down.
“Look, I'm really grateful that you helped me earlier with my admissions paperwork. But dude, I wanted to be the first person ever to actually get to the heart of the thing and kill the demon lord there. And you took that from me!” I accused, poking him in the chest lightly. Donny just smirked.
“No, I didn’t dude.” I stopped and looked at him.
“What does that mean exactly?” I asked, annoyance and anger at my older brothers antics finally getting to me.
“No, I didn’t stop you from becoming the first person to defeat the fortress. Do you remember the last time I played with you? When we took on that ancient worm black dragon?”
“Yeah, the thing was the size of a football stadium. It was kind of cool.” I said, my temper finally ebbing. Though my hands were still shaking from the adrenaline both from the fight and the anger that was finally subsiding.
“Do you remember how I told you that I got a new field-wide special ability? And that I only needed to do one thing before I could actually use it?”
“Yeah,” I said skepticism growing.
“Do you remember what that ability was?”
“No, you never bothered to read it to me before your wife called and you had to go.”
“Oh, right. Well, the ability is a ninja commander ability called ‘regretful repose.’ It's the penultimate ability in the purifier subclass that I chose. It allows me to return everything to as it was just before one of my decisions within the last twenty-four in-game hours for one other player. Essentially, it allows me to repair the damage caused to one player from my mistakes or betrayals.” My eyes went wide with understanding, and Donny nodded, his smirk turning into a full-on grin.
“Holy crap. Kingdoms of Ashe is amazing!” I said excitement growing.
“Well, it is now that we can actually get character levels.” Donny said rolling his eyes slightly at me. “Do you remember in the early game when it was all settlement building, and magic was super hard to come by? Took for freaking ever!”
“Well yeah, it's a large scale game. Armies, settlements, kingdoms that kind of thing. It is called Kingdoms after all. But you have to start out somewhere.”
“Okay sure, anyway. In order to gain access to that skill though, I had to betray someone at exactly the right moment to have the greatest negative impact. The description says that the greater the betrayal, the more powerful my ability will be when it's unlocked.”
“So?” I asked expectantly.
“So, your army is fine dude, all shiny, blue and yellow. Brought them all back to life. Though mine is still in tatters, you know you could have held back a bit. Would have left me with something at least.” I thought about it for a minute, while I took my socks back off and started getting back into my workout clothes. You didn’t want to wear normal clothes like jeans or hiking shoes into the pods, it could damage them or leave them dirty. So the family has a rule requiring work out clothes while in the pods.
“You know,” I said as I pulled my under armor shirt back on. “Why don’t we get in-game, and send the armies back home to recuperate? We can try attacking another day. That way we can take full advantage of your new ability. We can put you in charge, have you order my men into the meat grinder, and then resurrect them for another charge.” Donny nodded.
“I like the sound of that. Though, we don’t actually need to get in-game to order them home. Just do it on the app.”
“Oh right!” I pulled out my phone, opened the game app for Kingdoms of Ash, and sent my army marching home. The ability to control army movements live via the app was a new feature implemented just a few weeks ago. It was already proving useful.
“So, what game do you want to play now?” Donny asked.
“Well, I know you hate Mars Syndicate,” I said as we both walked up to our respective pods and began fiddling with the families game library.
“Well no duh, I’m still surprised mom and dad even let that trash in the house.”
“Look, I know you hate it, and I get your reasons why. But it's not trash.”
“You play as gangsters running around the Mars colony stealing from people, breaking kneecaps, and eventually starting riots and a rebellion. How is that even fun? You know its not productive dude. The Mars mission is way more important than a stupid video game.” I rolled my eyes.
“I had been trying to avoid the lecture, but okay. Fine. I understand the historic and moral significance of the Mars colonial mission alright? Its saving lives by giving everyone hope and a purpose. I get that. Mars Syndicate is just a stupid game, it's not like real gangsters could ever get through the vetting process the UN puts everyone through anyway.” Donny rolled his eyes at me. It was an old argument. In a family full of opinionated people, me and Donny where probably the most alike in terms of our political and social views, except when it came to tolerance for types of media.
Growing up in a Latter-Day Saint or Mormon household, my brother and I were taught very young to have high standards for media. Movies, hallo-vids, immersive video games, music, and even the books that we read, we were taught to be skeptical of it all. Our parents taught us that what we choose to fill our minds with was what we would become. Thoughts become actions, actions create character, and character is the measure of a person. Or so my father always said.
In this way, I was kind of the black sheep in the family. For instance, I didn’t mind a bit of nudity in movies, as long as it served a purpose and wasn’t blatant pornography. My family? Even a butt in a shower scene and the movie was turned off and deleted from the family library unless the distributors allowed for sensor programs like vid-angel to work their magic.
“Okay, whatever. Let's just drop it?” I asked. Donny sighed and nodded. “Alright, again, what do you want to play?” We went through a list of about seven or eight games. All of them were fun, but none of them seemed to catch either of our eyes as we went through.
“How about we just keep playing in Kingdoms of Ashe, just on the family account?” I asked. “It could use a little love.”
“Hmmm. Which kingdom?” He asked. Our family currently had two kingdoms, Alara a very powerful and fully grown settlement, and Hilgara our ‘smurf’ account that we used when our family wanted to play with friends.
“How about Hilgara? A couple of days ago I found a little set of ruins on the far end of the settlement, it looks like it could be an actual dungeon.”
“Oh cool, maybe I can find some gear like your Sparks,” Donny suggested. I grinned, Sparks was my sword in our Hilgarian Kingdom. At that low level, magic items are extremely hard to come by Sparks was a magic sword I found while spelunking some ruins that the game had generated in an overgrown area of our settlement. The ruin was uncovered when we had set our peasants to turning it into farming land.
“Sounds good to me!” Donny selected the game and loaded the save. I opened my pod and climbed in after attaching the sensors to my shoulders, and the sides of my head. The pod closed and
locked in place with a hiss and a pop of air pressure, and everything went black.
---
“Initiating neural connection… please wait.” Floated above me in bright neon blue letters that were a stark contrast to the black empty background.
A second later new letters appeared as the old dissolved into the void. “Delve neural connection established. Spawn point?” A drop-down menu appeared beside the prompt, and extending my hand I selected Hilgara. My vision blurred into a multicolored swirl of unintelligible images, and less then a second later I was standing in my chambers in the second tallest tower in the keep we had named the Dreadfort.
Despite its name the Dreadfort wasn’t really all that impressive, Hilgara was the smaller of our kingdoms, and we had only been working on it at that point for about three or four months. The Alaran kingdom was by far more impressive.
I walked out of my room, which was sparsely upholstered with little more than a chair beside the fireplace, and a small bed and desk off to the other side of the room. I had spent a few dollars of real-world cash to get a nice rug, red and gold, to go on the floor so as to prevent my voice from echoing off the stone walls, making it more difficult for eavesdroppers to drop eaves, so to speak. The stats on it were something like 50% eavesdrop failure chance to anyone attempting to listen in on conversations happening at a regular volume. It had, so far, proven very useful when players from other guilds or nearby communities had visited.
As I walked down the tower steps, I pulled open my inventory screen and re-equip my armor, a set of basic gambeson armor and a heavy leather jerkin, and my sword and board melee setup. My sword was by far the most impressive piece on me, and even sported a low-level magical enchantment that dealt an additional 1d6+1 electricity damage. I had wanted to name the sword Sparky, but Aaron, my younger brother, had insisted I name it something more dignified. So, I went with Sparks, much better I know, but even that had elicited a roll of the eyes from him. There is simply no pleasing some people.
As I entered the main hall, I saw a few of the NPC’s that my family had tasked as servants cleaning things and setting up a meal. I pulled up the internal game clock and realized that it was morning time in-game. “Oh good, breakfast!” I said as I walked into the room and took a chair in the center of the long table that could fit about fifteen people, right where one of the servants had laid out the meal.
I sat and ate my ‘meal’ while I waited for Donny to come down, the food in the game tasted like real food, but you never got the feeling of being full. The pods were all designed that way, to promote the social experience of eating food together, while preventing people from getting hurt by spending too much time in-game thinking they were full, when in reality their body was wasting away.
“Oh that's right,” Donny said, appearing on the far side of the hall from me. He lived in a basement room, as he was technically the head of the house guard which consisted of five other men-at-arms. “Living in the basement is a pain sometimes. It takes forever to get through all of the locked gates to the central hall you know.”
“Yeah,” I said after swallowing a mouthful of some kind of potato. “But the stat boosts in morale to the men-at-arms are worth it. Or so you've said before. The game has to make it at least mildly annoying, or else it would just be a free buff.” Grunting Donny sat down next to me and ate his eggs and potatoes much faster than I did, but I was still finished first.
While waiting for Donny, who was wolfing down his food like a madman, I glanced at my character sheet. Character sheets in Kingdoms were very sparse things, with the majority of the game mechanics focusing on town management early on. Things got much more complex once you had a full-scale kingdom and you gained access to personal character leveling and skills.
Player : Daniel Tear
Character Name: Shiz of House Tear, the Conqueror
Health Points: 10 + 11 (due to physicality) = 21
Armor/Dodge: 11 (Dodge from Physicality) + 2 (Armor) +1 (Shield) = 15
Characteristics
Physicality: 10 + 1 (due to training) = 11
Intelligence: 10 = 10
Wisdom: 10 - 1 (due to age) = 9
Attack Score: 1d4 + 11 (from physicality) + 1 (from weapon) = 13-16
Weapon (Sparks): Short Sword. 1d6 (+ 11 physicality) damage, 1d6 electricity damage.
+1 to hit.
Shield: Round Wooden Shield +1 Armor
Armor: Leather Armor +2
And that was it. Nothing too spectacular, or strange. Most individual characters were barely better than the average NPC, at least until your community reached the point where it attracted mages, and players could start getting magical skills, gear, and abilities. Alara, my families most powerful kingdom, was well beyond that point and had a burgeoning core of powerful wizards. My personal kingdom was an even higher level than that. Hilgara, on the other hand, had a long time until we attracted even a hedge witch.
You can tell by the math that the makers of Kingdoms of Ashe were bent on realism, with the average NPC characteristic scores being around 9. In reality, a single hit or stab with a sword could kill a person, and so at these lower levels being one-shot by a bandit in the woods or a goblin in a dungeon was entirely possible, even for a supposedly noble brat as well kitted out as I was.
“You done yet, Donny? I want to get out to that dungeon.” I said, annoyed at how long he was taking. I looked over, and the man had a second plate in front of him and was wolfing down that food as well. “Donny? Why the second plate?” I asked confused.
Donny stopped, gulped the eggs down and then said “This food tastes waaaay better than my own cooking! And with the wife and kids gone, all I got is my own food. Sure, I ate breakfast, and lunch with you man, but all that was bland by comparison. This food is amazing!” He said, grinning. I got a small ding and looked at the prompt that was flashing in front of my eyes.
“Congratulations! Your house servants feel appreciated by the compliments about their cooking. As such, your kitchen has gained 1 upgrade point, and all of the household servants involved in cooking the meal have gained a point in their cooking score!”
Oh, so that was why Donny was doing this. He must have realized that the kitchen was close to upgrading, and he wanted to push it over the edge, I thought. “You jerk, you could have at least told me what you were doing. I’ve just been sitting here doing nothing waiting for you.” With that, I stood up, walked over to the head chef who was coming out of the kitchen just then and put my hand on her shoulder saying “Your cooking has been fantastic today. My brother and I are going to go study some old ruins along the outskirts of town, and without a good breakfast, it would have made today much more difficult. Thank you. Also, could you pack us a small lunch and have it brought out to us? You can have the men-at-arms deliver it.”
I bowed slightly lifting the older woman's hands to my lips gently kissing her knuckles. “My house is honored to have such a dedicated and skilled staff working for us, know you are greatly valued by my family.” I said this last as my eyes moved across the small gathered crowd of servants who had congregated as I spoke to the leader of the machine that was the kitchens.
They all beamed with joy at my words, well my words and Donny's proclamations of how good the food tasted. Most of them were women, but a few of the men in the group grinned back just as widely. “We should go now, thank you all again for your dedicated service.” As I turned to go I got another ding, and I allowed the prompt to fill my vision.
“Congratulations! Your kind words have sparked even deeper feelings of loyalty in your servants, and not just in the kitchens. All of your household servants will get a +1 loyalty and morale bonus to all activities they undertake today.”
That worked out pretty well , I thought to myself as I thanked them all again, turned and saw Donny had just finished eating and was standing. I motioned for him to join me and continued out of the door, Donny falling in behind me, ax in hand, as he swallowed the last of the muffins one o
f the servant girls had brought him.
-----
Donny and I pushed the boulder as hard as we could, the stupid thing was in the way of what we were sure was the last room in the small ruined outpost. We had already cleared out the six or seven goblins that had taken up residence and in hopes of finding something like Sparks, we had painstakingly searched through everything, and I mean everything.
Have you ever smelled a goblin dung pile? Nasty, and even worse tasting if the stuff ever accidentally gets in your mouth. Anyway, we had found the boulder blocking a small cave in the basement of the ruin, directly behind where the goblins had been squatting, and so naturally we assumed that the goblins had taken anything of interest and hid them away behind the giant rock.
“Put your back into it, Donny,” I said, as I threw my shoulder harder into the boulder. It moved another few inches. “At this rate, it's going to take us another hour just to be able to squeeze in here.” Donny braced himself again. “3. 2. 1.” As I said the last number we both pushed, and the boulder moved another foot.
“I think I can get it,” Donny said. “I’d have to take off my armor, but I could do it.
“Nah, just wait until we can go in together. Never split the party, right?” I said.
“Never split the party” Donny echoed, reciting the mantra of every role-playing gamer that had ever experienced a party wipe by making such a poor tactical move. My brothers and I had taken so long to learn that lesson that once we did learn it, it basically became our family’s unofficial motto.
It took another few minutes of effort to move the rock enough that one of us could squeeze through in full armor. I went first as with my short sword, I was better equipped to fight in close quarters. Donny's ax, while powerful, was often limited by the low ceiling of the ruin. Sparks crackled with energy, illuminating some of the darkness as I walked through, Donny close behind me, a more traditional lantern in hand.
As I moved deeper into the darkness, I discovered that what we had thought was a room, was actually a hallway, about ten steps into the darkness stairs appeared. “They head down. What do you think? Should we go ourselves, or wait for Aaron and the rest of the family to explore it together ?” I asked.
Ethria- the Pioneer Page 3