by S. R. Witt
Bastion sketched a lazy bow. “It’s good to finally be recognized for what we are.”
The guards fidgeted as if embarrassed by their earlier arrogance. “You know how it is, right? Town’s full of braggarts with swords who think they’re going to be the next big thing. But you two beat back an invasion of goblins. That’s something to be respected, yeah?”
I guess Indira wasn’t pulling our leg about the invasion. If the news of our victory had gotten back to Frosthold so quickly, it must have been some scenario built into a quest line.
Maybe there was a follow-up if we talked to these two jackasses. “I should say so. Perhaps a reward is in order?”
The guards appeared even more uncomfortable at that suggestion.
“I don’t know about all that,” the guard on the right said through his violently twitching mustaches.
When he spoke again, he addressed Bastion and pointedly did not look at me. “Saving the town was kind of in your best interest, isn’t that right?”
Well, screw you too, pal. This was a perfect place to put a quest, and the designers had dropped the ball. Maybe it had something to do with my being a thief.
I nudged Bastion to get him talking. Maybe the guards would open to a goody two-shoes paladin in the making.
Bastion coughed and cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should speak to your captain about any further tasks he might have related to the goblins?”
The guard on the left scratched behind his ear and nibbled on whatever he’d found. This guy wouldn’t make eye contact with me, either. Instead, he addressed Bastion like I wasn’t even there. “Maybe he would like to see you. But, he’s awful busy these days. And I hear the town coffers are mighty empty. He’s probably so busy fretting over the books he won’t have the time to congratulate you men for your brave work.”
We tried to get more information from the guards, but they kept pushing us off. After another few minutes of them pointedly ignoring me and treating Bastion like he was their long lost king, we moved along.
A couple of blocks from the gate, Bastion elbowed me in the ribs. “Well, they don’t have anything to say to you that’s for sure.”
The words stung, but they were true. If the guards knew I was a thief, they’d have thrown me in irons straightaway. It was great that I wasn’t in prison, but they had treated me like dirt. Maybe they sensed my wicked ways, but couldn’t act on their suspicions without proof. “Yeah, yeah. Everyone loves the mighty Bastion.”
He grinned. “Of course. Especially the ladies. There’s probably a follow-up quest to the invasion. But…”
When I didn’t respond to his raised, wiggling eyebrows, he blew out an exasperated sigh.
Two could play that game. There’s no one more frustrating than family. “What is your problem?”
“Fine, I’ll spell it out for you. You heard those guards talking about the town’s money woes. The captain is going to want a bribe.”
“But you’re a heeeeero.” I exaggerated the words and batted my eyes at Bastion like a lovestruck teenage girl. “Why wouldn’t he just fall over himself to give you whatever quest he has in his pocket?”
Bastion considered what I had to say for a moment before continuing. “Nah, the captain will definitely want a bribe. Those guys back there made it pretty obvious.”
I did not like where this was headed. “We don’t have any cash to spare for a bribe. If we’d saved the merchant from the goblins, the reward might have been enough to give us some breathing room. But that didn’t happen, so pretty much every dime we’ve got is spoken for. There’s enough in the bank to get us through the month. But that’s only if we don’t spend a cent on anything we don’t absolutely have to. No bribes.”
Bastion adjusted the bundle of loot slung across his shoulders. “I can sell this crap. Use whatever I can scrape up to pay the bribe and get the next quest in the chain. There has to be a reward at the end of the quest line, right?”
Stabbing my brother in the neck and selling his armor seemed like a better idea. He didn’t know much about the Shadows, and he especially didn’t know I was now 500 silver in debt with them. Appealing to Bastion’s generosity was never a sure thing, but it was the only chance I had. “I need that money.”
“For what?”
I hedged, even though I knew it was going to irritate my brother. “Training…stuff.”
Bastion hated the fact I was in with the Shadows at all. Being a thief put a stain on me that made it impossible for me to move openly through polite society. If anyone ever found out my real profession, they could turn me in for a handsome reward. That complicated Bastion’s life and put his paladinhood at risk. We didn’t know the priesthood of Hoald would frown on holy warrior applicants fraternizing with shadowy underworld types, but it was a safe bet it would make his interview process tougher than it needed to be.
My big brother frowned down at me. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“It’s like union dues. I owe some money to these guys.”
Bastion frowned and had himself a few moments of internal deliberation. Then he shrugged and said, “Sucks to be you, I guess.”
“Are you kidding me?” I protested. “I told you I need that money.”
“And I told you I need it to bribe the captain of the guard. It’ll lead to some new quest line, I’m sure of it. That’ll get us some kind of reward, and you can take however much you need from that.” Bastion patted me on the shoulder in a way that told me the conversation was over unless I wanted to get my ass kicked. “That’s what we’re doing.”
“Can we at least see how much we get for this garbage? Maybe there’ll be enough for both of us.” It was my only chance at getting any of the cash from tonight’s misadventure. I needed to stick with Bastion as long as possible and whine and cry until he gave in or knocked me unconscious.
I was okay with either outcome, really, because I was terrified of what would happen if I couldn't pay off the shadows.
Bastion was terrible at negotiating because he grew too impatient with the whole process to get the best deal. He would never admit it, but bringing me along would help him put more money in his pocket. “Fine. You haggle, and we’ll see what you can get for us.”
As we headed to the market, Bastion smacked me on the shoulder hard enough to make me skip a step. “And don’t get any ideas about taking off with the cash, bro. I’ll decide what you get.”
CHAPTER SIX
As more and more players dropped into the game, DWO had to put them somewhere. The message boards were filled with people complaining about how crowded the main cities had become and begging the always-silent developers to please, please add more instances of the starting metropolises.
Those cries for more space fell on deaf ears. As far as anyone knew, DWO only had a single server, and there seemed to be no chance that was going to change.
Maybe the devs liked things crowded. They certainly made a lot more money with a single overcrowded server than they would if they had to keep buying hardware and hiring maintenance staff to keep other instances running.
And it wasn’t like there was anywhere else to go—DWO was the only game of its kind, and it would be years before it had any real competition.
As a result of the population boom, Frosthold had outgrown the ‘one pawn shop and a smith’ economic model not long after I’d robbed its lone store. In the days since my an ever-growing bazaar of merchants had taken root in the center of town. There were a dozen or so stalls there, not counting the various player-run auctions that filled the air with the monotonous barking of wares and competing prices.
The free-for-all mercantile system had driven players to the forums to beg for some way to filter out the auction spam, but the developers didn’t respond to that hot topic, either.
Unlike most other online games, DWO didn’t have separate channels for different kinds of communication. You could hear just like back in the World, and characters didn’t have the abili
ty to filter out unwanted blabber. There was a price for verisimilitude, and it kind of sucked.
There also weren’t any convenient ways to filter through the bazaar’s changing inventory of goods and services. Items went in and out of stock at an alarming pace, and the only way to see what was being offered was to go to each stall and paw through their inventory. This aggravated a lot of the powergamers who wanted the ability to quickly and easily see what was being sold in an effort to corner the market on hot ticket items, but the game’s developers were sticking with the realism over convenience aesthetic.
If they were going for accurate simulation, they were almost there, but I had to believe a time was coming when they’d have to cave in and offer some playability shortcuts to the masses.
Or maybe they’d let the irritation fester for a while, then offer premium add-on packages to give players a way around the game’s more offensive problems.
Want a shopping filter? Twenty bucks a month.
How about a faster way to travel between cities? Let’s make that a cool fifty.
Just outside the bazaar, I put a hand on Bastion’s chest to stop him. “Stick close to me in here, all right? It’s going to get confusing, and I don’t want to lose you and find out later you sold all of our shit for a bag of magic beans.”
“As if,” Bastion said, and pushed past me and into the bazaar.
I braced myself for the chaos and followed him inside.
It was worse than I remembered. Adventurers packed the narrow aisles between stalls, shouting at one another and jostling their way toward the merchants.
“Fine rabbit fur, one silver piece, three for two silver pieces!”
“Copper nuggets, five silver! Two for eight silver!”
“Polished steel short sword, three silver!”
Dozens of adventurers stood on the edges of the merchants’ stalls, shouting out their goods and the going rates. The merchants glanced at them with obvious discomfort, but no one was breaking any laws. They were, however, driving me freaking nuts.
I pulled Bastion toward the back of the bazaar. There were armor and weapon merchants near the front, but they were so busy it was impossible to get a word in edgewise. Plus, the junk we were carrying was total garbage. It would be better to sell it to a scrap dealer who could break it down and sell off the individual components. Crafting was turning into another hot topic amongst the denizens of Invernoth, and there was a constant demand for raw materials.
In fact…
The salvage merchant was tucked away in the far corner of the bazaar. Rusted anvils, cracked wagon wheels, and mounds of scrap leather surrounded the rickety stall. A few adventurers browsed through her goods looking for the materials they needed to boost their craft skills. They roamed from pile to pile like locusts, sifting through worthless junk in search of useful garbage.
“There’s never anything here,” a gnome grumbled. He had so many rings punched through the cartilage of his left ear the weight of the jewelry had folded it over until it almost reached his collar.
The dwarf next to him rumbled in agreement. “Damned farmers are taking it all.”
That tossed gasoline onto the fires of resentment.
The crowd broke into two arguing halves. One half, near as I could tell, consisted of folks like the dwarf who were just trying to level up a craft skill so they could make their own equipment. Professional crafters, who wanted to monopolize the trade goods and set up shop to earn some cash, made up the other half of the fight.
On the one hand, I sympathized with the adventurers trying to make cheap swords so they could go bash monsters. On the other, I understood the appeal of setting up a business in-Game and using that to generate healthy profits.
If I had more spare time, that’s probably the side I would have ended up on. But with the Hoaldites and Shadows competing to see who could give me more missions, I didn’t have enough hours left in my day to become a crafting baron.
The arguing gave me an idea, though.
A few of the goblins’ dead coins had found their way into my pockets. Not many, but enough for what I needed. I pulled Bastion in close and yelled in his ear. “Wait here!”
I pushed through the arguing crowd to the merchant. His crafting supplies and trade goods were wiped out, but he still had what I needed. We exchanged coins for goods, and I shouldered my way back to Bastion.
It only took a few minutes for him to understand what I was trying to do, and less time than that for him to get to work. It was amusing watching his big, gauntleted hands fumbling with the tools I’d purchased, but I bit my tongue. It was better for Bastion to do the grunt work because I had a job of my own to do very soon.
A few minutes later, Bastion shot me a thumbs up and raised his voice to be heard over the arguing craftspeople.
“Leather straps for sale!” Bastion’s shouts stopped the arguments cold. All eyes were on him. “Steel shards for sale!”
Rather than sell the junk we’d gathered off the battlefield to the salvage merchant for a pittance, I’d bought some essential tools and put Bastion to work. He’d reduced the gear to its core components, all of which were needed for crafting weapons, armor, and a variety of other goods. This crowd was so hungry for the salvage they didn’t even try to barter.
Within moments, they were bidding against each other, offering more and more to my brother as his supply of components dwindled.
Meanwhile, I went to work honing my particular skills.
The bazaar was lousy with guards, but their eyes were glued to the merchants who paid their salaries. Stealing from those stalls was next to impossible—even if I had the skills, the risk was enormous.
But no one was watching the pockets of the wanna-be crafters trying to snatch up some of my brother’s goodies. Not even themselves.
While the crowd shouted and jostled to get the best bits no matter the cost, I moved through them like a mosquito among a pack of wolves.
A burly human with a hammer strapped to his back and a bulging pouch on his belt shouted ever-increasing prices at Bastion. He was so engaged in trying to get his hands on scraps of leather he never noticed me slipping my hand into his belt pouch.
VERBOSE PICK POCKETS SKILL CHECK
Pick Pockets Skill (1) + Dexterity (16) + d100 (72) = 89
Vs
Spot (0) + Wisdom (10) + d100 (63) = 73
Skill Check Result = 16
Degree of Success = 1
Situational Modifiers: Noisy (+20), Crowded (+20), Distracted (+50)
Final Skill Check Result = 106
Degree of Success = 3
SUCCESS! You have stolen: 10 copper pieces, 10 silver pieces, and 1 gold piece stolen from target.
Activation Time: 5 seconds
You have increased your mastery of the Pick Pockets skill. (Rank 2)
Well, then. That wasn’t bad at all. Not great, but it was a start. With all the confusion and noise surrounding Bastion’s impromptu auction, the modifiers were stacked in my favor. Someone would have to be very perceptive to catch me at this game.
One after another, I fleeced the members of the crowd. I went after the loudest and angriest, guessing they had the most to lose and were the most distracted.
It was a sad moment when I realized Bastion was done selling to the crowd, and playtime was over. I wouldn’t make any more money, but at least I’d maxed out my skill ranks for Pick Pockets for this level.
Bastion motioned toward the exit, and I nodded. The crowd was too dense and still too agitated for us to try and force a path to each other. It was easier to meet outside.
Bastion threw an arm around my neck as we walked to the tavern. “That was an excellent idea you had back there, bro. Most excellent.”
A warm glow of pride swelled in my chest. Bastion wasn’t the best brother. He was kind of a dick to me, most of the time, but he was starting to show me some respect. He was still aggravated at me for screwing up his grand plan of the two of us teaming up as a paladin a
nd a cleric, but I could tell he no longer doubted every decision I made.
Too late, I realized I hadn’t tried to sell off the Lens. I’d have to come back to the market later, and see if there was either an NPC merchant or some well-heeled adventurer who’d take it off my hands for a fair price. I added it to my to-do list as Bastion pushed through the crowds and led the way to our home base.
The tavern was packed—it wouldn’t be long before this town needed another one—but we found a table near the back wall and plopped down in the rickety chairs. We leaned toward the center of the small, round table.
“How much?” I asked.
Bastion pulled the pouch from his belt and loosened the strings. I cupped my hands on the table to keep any stray coins from rolling away, and Bastion poured the money out. “That much,” he said with a grin.
There were a lot of coins there. But it didn’t seem like enough. It only took a few moments to arrange the coins into piles by type, and only a bit longer to count it all out. “300 copper, 237 silver, and 25 gold.”
Bastion nodded. “Yeah. That’s 517 silver pieces, after conversion.”
Our eyes met. “Where’s the rest of it?”
Bastion rubbed his chin. “Huh?”
“You should have close to a thousand silver pieces by my math. You were selling straps for five silver each, steel shards for 10 silver each, right?”
“About that.” Bastion snapped his fingers. “Exchange fees.”
Goddamnit.
It wasn’t bad enough the game charged play-for-pay subscribers a hefty monthly subscription price, they also took a slice out of every transaction between pfp parties. A much bigger slice than I’d anticipated. “That sucks. Like, a lot.”
But there was a bit of a silver lining hiding under this thundercloud. Bastion had lost almost half of his take to exchange fees.