by Galen Wolf
“We have to get through to the king,” Mercurius yells above the din of battle. I nod and we move. There is a unit of werewolves between us and where the King looks to be making his last stand. With the Star Silver on my sword, it’s too easy. I charge through, guiding Spirit with my knees, side by side as we hack down at the werewolves and they vanish is silver flashes when touched by the toxic metal. I get 1000 xp from killing them and I’m only 2000 short of Level 12. All this slaughter is good for levelling.
Then as we get close to the hill where the King stands, I see Sir Lamorak go down, floored by one of the players from the Blood for Satanus guild who’s dual-wielding scimitars. A group of vampires rush the knights, sent in advance of the remaining Blood of Satanus guild players. The knights reel back under the assault and I see Sir Parsifal go to protect King Arthur.
The King looks heroic. His shining armour is dented and stained with the blood of infidels and demon worshippers. Excalibur shines with a white fire brighter than the sun and it flashes and sends the vampires screaming and falling back. Sir Parsifal is joined by Sir Lancelot and they go to the king. They’re saying something but he’s shaking his head. They are more insistent but he still won’t listen.
I get up and there find myself standing beside the king. The knights have pushed back the enemy for a while and I see them and hear their fight as they shove and hurl the minions of the evil one down the hill. Satanus himself flaps in the air above and back for his own safety, but he still belches red fireballs down into those of our troops who remain.
King Arthur turns to me. “You’re new are you? I don’t recognise you.”
I kneel when he addresses me.
“This is no place to kneel, squire. What’s your name?”
“Gorrow, sire.”
“I saw you fighting bravely.”
Mercurius and Adele arrive on horseback and Bernard is behind them. I see the alchemist looking at the battle warily. There are so many of them now and so few of us.
Mercurius clasps his mailed gauntlet to his armoured chest. “Sire. When we have time and space, Gorrow is now ready to be knighted. He’ll make a worthy addition to your knights.”
King Arthur smiles when he sees Mercurius. “Sir Mercurius! I’m glad you’re with us. We need your prowess.” Then he turns back to me. “I’ll knight him now.”
Parsifal and Lancelot are returning from the fight. This time I hear what Parsifal is saying. “Sire, we need to retreat within the city.”
King Arthur looks long and hard across the battlefield. Our NPC units are almost gone and the players far fewer than there were. Even those who have died and resurrected in the city and come back to the fight are less and less.
It looks like defeat to me, but then I’m no king.
“I won’t go.” He jabs his finger at the sky. “I won’t let that beast be victorious.”
Lancelot mutters, “We may have no choice.”
Parsifal says, “Lancelto’s right. We can’t let the enemy see you fall. We need to pull back.”
King Arthur appears exasperated. “What do you say, Mercurius?”
Mercurius gazes out at what is happening. “We’re hardly holding them, sire. If you die. The morale boost to the enemy will be tremendous. Just to see you die once will be enough to make them think they are unstoppable.”
“They are unstoppable,” Lancelot says but Parsifal signals for him to hush.
The enemy ranks were pushed back by the knights fighting further down the hill, but now the tide of black clad monsters is getting closer and our men are falling one by one.
“Now, sire. Please,” Parsifal says.
“Very well,” King Arthur says, “But first I will knight Squire Gorrow, here on the battlefield.”
Lancelot sighs. Parsifal looks impatient. Sir Galahad and Sir Bors return from the fight, their brows heavy.
“We don’t have time, sire,” Lancelot says.
But Mercurius says, “It would be fitting to knight him on the battlefield.”
“Aye, but let’s hurry,” Lancelot says.
“Kneel, Gorrow,” Mercurius says and I kneel in the bloody mud before my king.
King Arthur takes Excalibur who burns like white fire and gently lays the flat of the blade on my left shoulder then my right. I hear the singing of the blade as it goes close to my ears. King Arthur says, “I dub thee, Sir Gorrow of the Bloody Field. Arise Sir Gorrow.”
And it’s done. I’m a knight at last. I have a grin from ear to ear as I stand.
Even Lancelot smiles.
You bet I accept.
“Let’s go,” Lancelot says. The king mounts his mare Llamrei and the group of knights turns. Lancelot says, “You and Mercurius join Gawain in covering the retreat.”
Brass trumpets sound high clear notes and mounted drummers beat the retreat. There is a roar from the enemy as they realise we’re turning.
Mercurius says, “Come brother knight,” and I grin again. “Let’s cover the withdrawal.”
Adele has caught us up. “I’m coming.” Bernard stands there looking like he really wants to go back to the city, but can’t bring himself to abandon us.
“No,” Mercurius says. “You don’t need to die. Go back with the king.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t die all the time.”
I think she does die quite a lot but I don’t say that, obviously.
“I’ll come too,” Bernard says, looking like it’s the last thing he wants to do.
“No,” I say. “You don’t have a horse. You go back now.”
He begins to smile when Adele says, “Bernard, climb up behind me. You’re light.”
He pauses then says, “Okay then. Great. It’s what I wanted.” She reaches down a hand, and the alchemist climbs up on her grey mare.
Lancelot looks serious. The rest of the knights are surrounding the king, taking him back to the gates of Camelot which stand around a half mile behind us. The holy banner retreats and the enemy surge forward.
Lancelot waits for a minute and says, “Just buy us as long as you can. Then follow.”
Mercurius salutes. “You’ve got it.”
They leave and I turn to see what remains of our spearmen in front of us. They’ve formed a circle and look like an angry porcupine, their spears bristling out and keeping the enemy back. Sir Gawain stands with them, rallying them by taking the attack to a group of dire wolves. There are members of several evil guilds down there, but precious few of our players.
“Good luck,” Lancelot says, then turns and spurs his horse to catch up with the king.
“Nice for him to say,” mutters Bernard.
“Lancelot’s done plenty. He doesn’t need to prove himself,” Mercurius says and Bernard blushes. Mercurius says, “So have you too, Bernard.” He flips down his visor. I see Adele gripping her mace tight.
Mercurius hands me a lance. “It’s a spare. You can have it. It’s a gift for being a good squire. You’ll have to think what your coat of arms will be and get a pennant.”
I take the lance and am amazed at its bonuses.
He says, “You can pray to transfer the bonuses of your main weapon to all your weapons, so you’ll get all your saintly bonuses on it.”
“When? Now?”
“Not now, Sir Gorrow. I don’t think we have time.”
The enemy don’t seem to have noticed us yet. They’re too busy decimating the spearmen. Gawain cuts down the direwolves then members of Blood for Satanus and the Fangs of Koth attack him.
It’s now or never. Mercurius yells, “Death or glory!” and spurs his stallion to the charge.
“Or both,” Bernard says.
I couch my lance. It feels odd to have a lance r
ather than a sword. I urge Spirit into a gallop with my knees. Spirit’s hooves thunder over the tussocky ground. Adele and Bernard are behind me and I see an alchemist’s grenade fly over my head and impact onto one of the dire wolves.
The evil beast kills one of the spearmen and goes onto another when I impact on it.
The lance scores an autocrit of 1320, killing it outright.
Then I’m among the enemy and I put the lance away and draw my sword. I’m in the middle of the battle and can’t keep track of the damage I’m doing or I’m taking. Adele keeps healing me. I see Bernard pull out an alchemical sword, blazing fire but then he dies to one of the Fangs of Koth. I go to avenge him and I take down the Fang from the back of my horse. Adele heals me again.
I turn to see Mercurius fighting with a huge half orc on the back of a monstrous demonic pig. My attention is distracted by one of the Blood of Satanus coming at me with a spear. I push Spirit forward and get behind him, killing him with a back slash.
When I next turn, I see Mercurius has been unhorsed and is trying to fend off the blows of the massive half-orc player. I get hit again and Adele heals me then I finish my adversary.
I hardly notice the level. My health is down to 200/600 but Adele heals me up. When I glance over, I see Mercurius die at the hand of the half-orc.
If he can kill Mercurius, I’ve got no chance. Still, I grit my teeth and turn Spirit. I take out my lance, couch it.
Then I see Sir Gawain. He’s on his horse coming my way.
“Come on, come on. Let’s go. The king’s safe. Time to get safe ourselves.”
Adele turns to follow him. I pause. I want to avenge Mercurius or die trying.
Gawain stops, endangering himself. Adele waits for me, putting her own life at risk.
“Come on, Gorrow,” Gawain shouts. “No time for heroics.”
How come he knows my name?
He’s shaking his head. “Come on Gorrow. No point dying here.”
And I remember I’m bound at Croglin still. I won’t get back to Camelot in time, if I die here. And I want to help with the defence of the city.
I put away the lance and turn Spirit back towards the city gates. We have over half a mile to go.
Gawain sees me turn and then spurs his horse into a gallop. Adele follows and I’m the last of King Arthur’s army and it seems all his enemies are fixed on me.
I turn and Spirit starts to gallop. “Let’s go, boy. Counting on you.”
The stallion’s feet fly like fire over the dirty, smashed ground. The enemy howl after me, pig riders, the undead horses and the pterosaurs diving after me.
We go fast.
I see the great doors of Camelot swing open before me. I’m about three hundred yards away now.
The enemy are close at my heels. They’ve almost caught me. If they catch me with my back to them, I’m going down, no question about it.
Spirit’s hooves pound the earth.
I see Adele go through the gate, then Gawain.
I’m still short. They can’t wait for me. If they let the enemy get too close they’ll pour into the city and it’ll be lost.
I see the great doors begin to close. I don’t blame them. I don’t think I’m going to make it.
“If you can go any faster, Spirit...”
As if the stallion understands me, he redoubles his efforts. I look over my shoulder and see the huge half-orc player that killed Mercurius is almost close enough to grab me. But we’re gaining. Spirit is putting everything into this. The doors swing closed ahead. We might not make it despite everything.
I bend low to cut down air resistance as if that might even help and then when the mighty wooden gates are about four feet apart and about to grind closed, we burst through that gap and find ourselves gasping behind the mighty gates of Camelot.
I looke behind at the closed gates. The King is safe. I’m safe. But for how long?
25
Retreat, Regroup, Resist
I stand on the walls of Camelot as a huge flaming projectile slams into the masonry twenty feet to my right killing two NPC guards. The enemy have brought up more artillery dragged by undead elephants. Trolls and ogres load and fire and boulders and fiery rocks curve through the air before landing, some short of the wall, some impacting the wall and others landing within the city itself. Behind me many turreted Camelot rises like a fortified hill, its flags fluttering in the hot breeze.
The sky is dark, but my mood is darker.
I descend the stone steps of the wall and go about my business. I have some housekeeping to do. First of all I go to a blacksmith and borrow his forge. I have plenty of minerals now at Silver Drift Forge from what I see on the tabs on my HUD, but I don’t have any here so I have to buy cobalt, sulphur, tourmaline and titanium. I double fold them on each piece of armour giving me 50% resistance to cold, fire, acid and electricity, when all are stacked.
The next thing I do is consider where I want to place my skills. I have 300 points to play with. I know I’ve relied a lot on potions, so I can’t make potions and if Camelot falls, I’m not sure where I can resupply from so I need to look to self-healing. I decide to put more points into the Prayer skill. Currently I have 15 skill points in it, giving me 5 health points regeneration per minute. That’s too slow. I go large and put 100 points into Prayer. That gives me a regeneration rate of 200 health points per minute spent in prayer. So it’ll take me only three minutes to regenerate up to full, out of combat of course.
I look at the Divinity Skill set. This enhances the holy blessings to my weapons given by the saints. The first rung is 5 skill points which gives me an extra 2% damage from weapons. I’m pretty skill point rich currently, so I put 100 points into it. This gives me 30% damage bonus to all the blessings on my weapons. That means I’m carrying 1608 base damage on my sword and 2128 on my lance. Lance crits for 4x damage rather than 3x so my crit with the lance is going to be 8512. Not too shabby at all.
I spend a further 50 points on Swordplay and that gets me unexpected delights: Doublestrike - a 10% chance to strike twice, each blow has normal chances to critically hit.
And: Enhanced critical damage: All weapon criticals add 1x damage to existing crit ranges.
My mouth waters when I think that is going to make my lance crit 10,640 and my sword crit 6,342 — all supposing the enemy has no armour to reduce those. Still those are sick numbers.
I have 50 points to spend so I go back to my old favourite, mining and put all of the points into that. That allows me to mine the mineral Uranium, which gives radiation guard to armour. I haven’t come across radiation damage yet, but I guess I might. And vanadium which gives unholy guard. I remember Gearhart shooting me with unholy arrows, so this is definitely going to be useful against the servants of Satanus. I’m still standing in the forge so I buy five pieces of vanadium and double fold it into each piece of armour giving me a stacking bonus of 50% protection from Unholy.
And that’s all my skill points done.
My next task is to go to the offices of Oliver Stone, architect. The door opens with a tinkle and he’s sitting at his wooden desk. He looks up like I’m the only good news he’s had all week.
“Why the long face?” I say as I step over the threshold.
He stands, gives a weak smile and says to the rumble of enemy artillery. “I don’t know if you haven’t noticed, but we’re besieged and we’re all going to die.”
I laugh. “Maybe.”
“I hear you were quite the hero of the hour. Knighted on the battlefield, in charge of the rear-guard.”
“I wasn’t in charge of the rear-guard. Sir Gawain was.”
“Things grow in the telling,” he says. “But you were there. And you got knighted.”
“I got knighted.”
“You must be very proud.”
“Of course. It’s a great honour.” I go to sit the other side of his desk and he sits down too. I tilt my head. “W
hat happens to NPCs when they die?”
He shrugs. “Well, when they are simply killed, they just respawn. But this won’t be like that. The Evil forces will come in...”
“May come in...”
“Will come in. And then they will change the zone of control and we will be swept away. All of the NPCs here associated with King Arthur’s rule will vanish and be replaced with evil NPCs related to theirs, orcs, Dwemmers, all that kind of thing.”
“So you will cease to exist?”
“I will.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
He smiles weakly. “I’m an NPC. I don’t have feelings.”
But something tells he does. They are complicated beings now with sophisticated artificial intelligence. The basis of any self replicating organism from a virus upwards it to strive to survive. And that striving is linked to a feeling of wanting to live. Oliver Stone wants to live. I can see it in his eyes.
I say, “Can you relocate?”
“From Camelot?”
He sighs. “I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it.”
“Wait a second,” I say. I go onto my HUD and submit a ticket to the Developers. I ask if it would be possible to relocate NPCs. The devs don’t reply straight away. I guess they’re busy. “In the meantime,” I say.
“Yes?” He perks up a little.
“I need new stone walls.”
“For your village? Don’t you think that’s a bit redundant?”
“No. Why?”
There’s another rumble from the impact of enemy artillery on the city walls. “Because, if they can take down the walls of Camelot, limestone walls around Silver Drift aren’t going to keep them out.”
I’ve thought of that. It’s not a great situation, but the main enemy army, if and when it takes Camelot, will head south either to Efrog or Caer. Those are the real prizes, not the skimpy badlands of Alston Moor. They’ll go there eventually, but eventually will be in some time and I might have thought of something else by then. I’m not in the mood to simply give up. “So how much for limestone walls?”
“40,000 marks.” I admire the way the NPCs do rapid mental arithmetic. I’m good for that amount. I’ve been checking my bank balance and Jason, my business manager at Silver Drift has been bringing down the cargoes of minerals, oats, barley, beer and the rest to Camelot and selling them with my new 15% Haggling bonus. He lost a mule from an attack coming into Camelot last time, I see, but it looks like he’s bought two more. My soldiers are Level 10 now and Armand is even Level 12. None of them are lost. Jason has rerouted the cargo caravans to Alston Moor. It’s much nearer so the profits aren’t as good as going to Camelot, but it’s regular and because it’s a shorter route much less dangerous.