by Galen Wolf
“No, never.”
Aha! Something’s amiss. “Why did he beat you today?”
“He’s upset. I love my father. He’s inside.”
I guess I should go in. I ask Blodeuwedd. The kid and the owl are ignoring each other until the owl says, “Go inside. It's an RPG. You know what to do,” and the kid nods and points to the open door.
I step inside. It’s smoky in the hovel. A man in a dirty brown robe sits slumped at a roughly made wooden table. From the leather tankard clasped tightly in his hand, I’d say he’s been at the ale.
“Howdy,” I say.
“Good morrow, stranger,” he replies.
“I mean good morrow of course.” What's up?”
“I’ve been robbed.”
Of course he has. I know where this is going. “And you need my help? You don’t know me from Adam, but you need my help. Am I right?”
He nods and wipes his dirty face, smearing tears across the muck. I see Blodeuwedd has hopped into the gloomy hovel behind me.
“I’m a porter. I work for Landlord Iago at the Three Ducks Tavern here in Camelot…”
I sigh. I don’t need the background. Is there a skip button? I can’t find one on the HUD so I say, “Just tell me what you want me to do.”
He begins again. “Satanus, the Evil One, has minions even inside this city of Camelot…” I'm going to get five minutes about the minions whether I want it or not.
In the end he says, “… So can you retrieve the scroll for me?”
I’ve missed the bit about the scroll or what it’s for but I say, “Sure. Where do I go?”
“Follow my son, Dickon, through the streets of Camelot.”
“Easy now,” I say. “You are going to put your son, what age is he - six?”
“Five.”
“Okay, you’re going to put your five-year-old son in mortal danger by taking me to the hide out of some evil minions?”
He looks at me blankly. I don’t even know his name. Mr X, I’ll call him. I shake my head. “Whatever.”
“Do you accept my quest?”
I nod. “Yup.”
“Thank you kind stranger. Thank you.”
There will be some kind of way of switching off these notifications but it must be buried in a sub menu somewhere. I’ll keep them on for now. As for reputation as I recall 1000 is Divine and 0 is Infernal. I’m going in the right direction. Knowing the ways these games work, I’ll probably get the option of stealing the scroll for negative rep later on, in case I ever
want to deviate towards the Evil One and become a minion.
I step outside and Dickon looks up, a cheery smile on his
dirty little face. “Thank you for helping my daddy,” he says.
I check to see if I get more good rep for that, but it seems it’s only worth 10 total. I smile and follow the kid through the narrow streets. He runs pretty fast but I can keep up. After a minute, Blodeuwedd lands on my shoulder and says, “Mind if I ride on your shoulder? It’ll make it easier to advise you.”
I think of saying no just because her claws nipped last time, but why not? A new world, a new start. I nod and the bird grips tight.
We’re now in a run down part of town. I feel worried for the kid being here. Drunks and derelicts as well as sharp-eyed men on the make, haunt the alleys and street corners, ducking into the noon-day shadows as we pass. The kid Dickon stops by an old stone building. It looks much older than the surrounding houses and uninhabited.
“Who did your dad say had taken the scroll?” I wish I’d paid more attention.
“I don’t know,” says Dickon. Why would he? He’s only five.
Blodeuwedd says, “Check your Journal.”
Of course! I look up to my HUD and see a tab for my
Journal. I read there.
“Unlucky townsman, Geordie Rab — so that’s what he was called — works as a porter for Landlord Iago at the Three Ducks Tavern… blah blah blah. Iago entrusted him with a letter of credit to the brewer Old Tom worth 5 groats — I don’t know if that’s a lot. Level 1 starter quest, probably not too much —but Geordie was waylaid after drinking too much at rival tavern The Fletched Arrow and the letter of credit was stolen. Geordie believes it is being held by a gang of town thieves somewhere in Camelot.”
That’s wrong. He knows exactly where it is. Or Dickon does, and if Dickon knows why would he keep his father in the dark? In fact, Geordie knew that Dickon knew so the Journal entry was incorrect. I consider submitting a ticket, but then suddenly can’t be bothered.
I say to Dickon. “Don’t wait here. Run back to your dad
as fast as you can. I’ll come back there.”
I’ve got no idea how to get back, but there’ll be a map with dots. The kid looks up. “Will you be okay, stranger?”
The way he calls me stranger makes me feel like I was Clint Eastwood, just as mean, but not as stringy. I ruffled the kid’s virtual hair. I watch him as he runs off. “Going inside now?” The owl asks.
I take a breath. “Let’s go.”
I step inside the entrance to the tumble down stone building. It’s instantly cooler and smells damp. I hear water dripping somewhere. There’s an upper storey but the wooden stairs to it have collapsed. Stairs still lead down, but they look dodgy. I think of climbing up the stone wall to pull myself into the upper storey, because there might be some little loot knick-knacks up there, but everything questy is pointing down.
I step on the wooden board and it creaks underfoot. But it doesn’t give. That’s good. Cautiously I descend. After all, I don’t know what’s down here. the owl keeps quiet. She probably does know what’s down here but she isn’t saying.
A guttering torch burns in the wall. It could be one that’s on all the time, or it could be a clue that someone’s down here. I take it to be the latter and slow right down.
When I come to another twist, I stick my nose round the corner. There is an earth floored basement. More torches burn down here. Out of sight, I hear the murmur of conversation. There are bad guys round the corner.
I whisper, “Weapon?”
The owl hops off my shoulder and lands on a broken floorboard. She pecks at it. The floorboard is a weapon? I lean down and the board comes away in my hand, almost as if it was intended to. It weighs about two pounds. It’s pretty unwieldy though.
“Stealth?” I whisper.
“You didn’t put any points into stealth,” the owl says.
So no stealth. I decide to rush them. “Yaaaaa!” I scream and run round the corner into the room, brandishing my floorboard. There are three brigands, shifty, wiry little men with black hair and dirty leather armour. They are surprised to see me, though I don’t know why, this must happen to them fifty times a day.
I hit the closest one with my floorboard.
(10-5=5) You hit brigand>
I hit him again.
(10-5=5) You hit brigand>
And he dies. He only had 10 hp! Just as I’m cheering over this the second brigand runs over and stabs me.
I need to switch these notices off. They’re distracting when I’m fighting.
I slam my floorboard into the brigand’s face twice in rapid succession and he goes down. In the meantime the third brigand has stabbed me in the back but I turn and beat up on him until he too is dead.
The letter is on their table. I drop my floorboard
and pick up the letter.
Just four more of these and I’ll have my level. I wonder how quickly I can repeat them. “Are there other difficulty settings?” I ask the owl.
“Yes. This is normal, below that is easy, above is hard, epic, elite, reaper. I don’t advise you to try epic or above at this level.”
“Well that’s what you’re here for. By the way, the floorboard is a sword?”
She looks puzzled, if owls can look puzzled. “No. Why?”
“Because it used my swordplay skill to hit.”
She flaps her wings non-committally. “Swordplay is just weapon play really. All hand held weapons use it to hit.”
“Then they should have called it weapon-play.”
“Whatever. Write them a letter.”
I don’t like her tone, but I say nothing. Instead I loot the bodies. I pick up three sets of leather armour. Armour value 5 but better than nothing so I put a set on. It smells of brigand and has blood on it. Some of it mine, some of it his. I also get a dagger, weapon value 10.
“Can I dual wield?”
“No.”
I shrug. I put the remaining two daggers and two sets of leather armour in my inventory to sell to a vendor. In addition from the corpses, I get 4 groats.
I’m down twenty health, and when I put my hand on the wounds, they’re wet and sticky with blood, but the blood’s congealing and I’m not losing any health over time. “So I pray to get health back?”
“Yeppers.”
“To who?”
She gives me an old-fashioned look. “God or the Devil. You pick.”
“But that’ll skew my rep, right?”
“You pick. What I think has no bearing.”
“But you do have an opinion.”
She goes quiet.
I kneel and begin to pray then I have a thought. “What denomination is this game?”
“Come again?”
“I get it’s Christian, but what denomination — Baptists, Episcopalian, Catholic, Orthodox, Syriac, Ethiopian rite?”
“Don’t be smart. Just pray.”
So I kneel and pray to the Trinity and all its angels to send me healing. And they do. I kneel for a minute and recover five health. Twenty takes four minutes of praying in all, but it’s not too bad. I can see how potions will be quicker though.
I stand, fully healed and dust myself down in my nasty new leather armour. “What now?”
“Go see Geordie Rabb, give him his letter and onto the next quest.”
“Okay,” I say.
The owl looks at me funny. “Or you could steal it…”
I wag my finger at her. “I see what your game is. No, I’ve decided to be good.”
Halfway up the stairs I stop and ask her what her alignment is — divine or infernal.
“Not telling,” she says.
3
The Quest of the Copper Ore
I follow Blodeuwedd as she flies until we come to the main city square. Here there are vendors selling things I can’t afford. There are also crafting stations, I spot a tailor, an alchemist, and a carpenter as I enter the square. Crowds bustle around. They have an authentic medieval smell of not washing. I suppose I’ll get used to it, though I’m not certain Miskatonic needed to build in this level of detail.
I spot an armour vendor. “Where are you going?” pipes up Blodeuwedd. I point. “Going to vend the trash I got from the last quest.”
“We need to move onto the next quest.”
“I’ll do this first. All right?”
She looks sulky and stands preening bad-temperedly while I approach the armour vendor who has bad dental hygiene. I stare at his teeth. This guy needs a soup only diet. Maybe he can suck things though the gaps.
“Can I help you?” he says, but he doesn’t mean that, he means quit staring at my teeth. So I do. I have no reason to upset people.
“I found some armour and things.”
“Found?” He scratches his cheek. “Or did you take it from a corpse?”
I study the man. “Is that a problem?” I don’t want to get a hit on my Rep.
He shrugs. “I don’t care.” It turns out that looting corpses isn’t considered such a bad thing in Camelot.
He agrees to give me a groat each for the two suits of leather armour. “How much is a groat again?” I ask.
“Fourpence.”
“Ah okay. How much is fourpence?”
He glares at me like I’m stupid. “Four pennies.”
“Yes, but what can I get with that?”
“Not much. Bread. Water. Some stew maybe. Though you don’t need to eat in the game”
I accept the four groats. I offer him the two daggers but he doesn’t want them. “I’m an armour vendor, not a weapon vendor.”
“Don’t you do both? I mean it would make sense.”
Emphasising each word he repeats, “I’m an armour vendor, not a weapon vendor.”
That’s clear then. I turn and wave. There’s an armour vendor ten paces away. Blodeuwedd is really impatient now. The weapon vendor is a sandy haired youth with one white eye where he has been blinded. “How do?” he says.
“Good thanks. You buy weapons?”
He points up at the sign that says Weapon Vendor.
I grin. Of course.
“Looted?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“I don’t care.”
I nod and show him the daggers. “They’re very poor weapons, these.”
I shrug. “How much?”
“A penny each.”
“Not, a groat each?”
He laughs long and loud, casting his head back and braying like a donkey.
I sigh and give him the daggers.
“How much have you got?” Blodeuwedd asks, hopping closer. I eye the owl. They’re known for liking shiny things, not that the coins I got were very shiny.
I say, “I now have 6 groats and two pence, or ‘tuppence’ in local parlance.”
“Don’t pretend to be a local. They’ll see through it and you’ll just offend them,” the owl says.
“Okay. I was just trying to fit in.”
She ignores that and says, “You might as well buy a mould.”
“Right. Good. Why?”
“The next quest is about smithing.”
“You know all the quests?”
“I’ve done this several times before. You’re not my first noob.”
It’s good to be in the hands, or claws, of someone with experience. “So where do I get a mould?”
“There’s a smithing vendor over there.” Blodeuwedd hops up and flaps in the direction of a muscled man with his top off. He is covered in Celtic looking tattoos. When I approach him, I find he speaks in a strong North Wales accent.
“S’mae ‘ngwashi?” I don't know what he was saying but he smiled so that was good.
“You sell moulds?”
He nods. “The best. Armour moulds, weapon moulds. All kinds of moulds, as long as they’re armour or weapons.”
I turn to Blodeuwedd. “What kind of mould do I want?”
“Your choice.”
“Not helpful. What’s your advice. You’re an advisor owl after all.”
“Sword then.”
I nod to the smith. “Sword then.”
“What kind of sword — shortsword, longsword, bastard sword, greatsword…”
I don’t look at Blodeuwedd. I’ll make this decision on my own. I think hard for five minutes. The smith raises his eyebrows. I feel pressured so I blurt, “Greatsword…”
He reaches for a mould but as he’s stretching up to the shelf at the back of his stall, I say, “No, longsword.”
The smith turns, sighs and says, “Greatsword or Longsword?”
I’m uncertain but I’m not going to be made to look a fool so I say firmly, “Longsword.”
Blodeuwedd makes a noise th
at I take to be owl laughter. If she was closer, I’d kick her. The smith gives me a wooden mould. “That’ll be six groats.”
“Six groats?” I swallow. That’ll only leave me two pence, I mean tuppence. “That’s a bit steep.”
He hasn’t let go of the mould. We both have a hand, one on each end. “Four?” I say trying to control my blinking.
“Six.”
“Okay, six.” I give him the six and he releases the mould.
“You know how to use it?” he asks as I turn to go.
“Sure.” I wave confidently and move away from the stall.
“You don’t.” Blodeuwedd says, hopping onto my shoulder without an invitation.
“How hard can it be?”
She’s about to say something when change the subject. We’re walking through the crowds in the middle of Camelot square. I say, “What’s the point of this game?”
“To play it? To enjoy it?”
“No, how do I get success?”
The owl looks amused. “You want success?”
That’s not a shameful thing, but I add. “And to do good.”
Blodeuwedd says, “Well your first step is to get made a squire. Then a knight. Then a baron, then maybe an earl until you’re a duke. You build a tower, raise an army and reconquer land from the foul blight of the Evil One.”
Actually that sounds quite cool. “So is there PVP?”
“Player versus Player? Sure. And Player Versus Environment, Real-time Strategy, Town Building, Stronghold Management, Army management, the works.”
“Just what I wanted when I bought the game,” I say.
“Convenient then,” the owl says.
“But what now?”
“A smithing quest. To teach the basics of crafting.”
“Any other options?”
“A rat quest.”
“Rat quest?”
“Collect nine rat’s tails.”
I blow out air. “I don’t want to do rat quests. I’ve done too many of those in other games.”
“Smithing then.”
“Okay. Where do we start?”
“We go see that man over there.”
The man in question is a mining vendor. He sells shovels and pickaxes and all sorts of things to run a mine. He also has a golden goblet over his head, which indicates he has a quest. He’s called Donnie Darko.