Team Newb

by M Helbig

  “Obviously I’m a bit biased, but it’s worth asking.” She winked at Olaf. “Also, if you could record her reaction while she tries to squirm out a response, it’d be appreciated.”

  Olaf nodded slowly. “I do not think that is a good idea, but honor dictates that I return the favor for your information. I shall be sure to record it. Thank you.”

  Nanny caught some movement out of the corner of her eye. “My friends are giving me the ‘wrap it up’ stink-eye. I’ll see you fellows around. And don’t be a stranger, Olaf.”

  Olaf reached down and shook her hairy hand. “Likewise.” Nanny and her group faded into the crowd shortly after.

  Olaf eyed my new equipment. “Very nice. Do you still need to stop at any shops?”

  I proudly held out my new bow. “Nope.”

  “Excellent. My guild had all I needed as well.” He pointed at his new leather cap and gloves. “Let’s go eat and see how our friends’ day went.”

  We traded stories about our guilds and new class abilities as we made our way back to the inn. Olaf was jealous when I told him about Dav. His trainer had maintained Sneak the whole time, and he never did figure out what the trainer looked like or even what his or her name was. I gained another point in Nature Magic while showing off my new spells. Olaf gained a point to his new Steal when he stole a copper from me. He apologized profusely as he returned the money, not having realized he could take real coins from groupmates with the skill.

  As we entered the inn, we found Alizia already there, staring glumly at a full glass of beer. The lack of foam or condensation meant it must have been sitting there awhile. Across from her sat a dwarf with a dirty black beard. The way he was swaying, he looked to be several drinks in.

  “Is this guy bothering you, Alizia?” Olaf asked.

  Alizia continued staring at the table.

  “I was just tellin’ her about my brother’s friend’s cousin’s sister’s adopted nephew,” the dwarf slobbered out. “One of the lasses in his group got poisoned. No one could cure it, and she died. They ran back to the bind point to get her right after that, but she never showed up. Another group said they saw some thing in a black cloak hovering over her corpse after they left too. She was never seen again.”

  Alizia finally looked up. “Oh. Hi, guys. Black Larry here was just cheering me up.”

  “I don’t think that’s what he’s doing,” I said.

  “Agreed. Could you leave us alone with our friend, good sir?” Olaf asked. “We have personal things to speak about.”

  Black Larry reached for Alizia’s drink, but I intercepted him. “What?” Black Larry asked. “After that tragic story, I think I deserve a sip or two.”

  Olaf and I gave him a dirty look. Seeing that his stubby arms had no chance of getting to the drink, he finally threw up his hands in exasperation and hopped away. He muttered several curses—most of which I was sure were made up— as he made his way to the bar. Alizia’s eyes remained glued to the table throughout.

  Olaf eyed me questioningly for a while before finally opening his mouth. “Did you not pick your class yet, Alizia?”

  “Yeah. I did,” Alizia said with no emotion.

  “Did you try out your new skills?”

  “Class trainer showed them to me. I get to Shout at things so they attack me. And Block gives me a chance to completely absorb a hit with my shield. Oh, yeah. I can finally equip that shield we got from the quest.” She held up her shield and mumbled out, “Yay.”

  “That’s fantastic,” I said. “You love to shout at things. Now you can do it professionally. Alizia the Professional Shouter, we’ll call you. That’s pretty awesome.”

  A small smile emerged, but she quickly dropped her eyes back down and it disappeared. “Shouting is fun, but I didn’t want to be a Warrior. I wanted to be a Bard, but all the class trainers told me they’ve never heard of a Bard class. The Warrior trainer did at least have a mandolin that he let me buy off him, but then he said that if there was a skill associated with it, he couldn’t teach it. All the other trainers said the same thing.”

  Olaf patted her on the back. “You will always be a bard in my eyes. You know, I’ve heard the term ‘warrior poet’. We could call you that. It is like a bard and a warrior rolled together.”

  I nodded enthusiastically.

  Alizia’s eyes brightened and she looked up. “How about ‘Alizia the Warrior Poet and Professional Shouter?’”

  “Agreed,” Olaf said. “Oh, and we met Nanny. She asked about you. I told her you are doing great and still giving Decrona all sorts of trouble. Nanny has still not forgiven her for the last loot split or the three deaths she suffered when we tried hunting bogles.”

  “Deccy . . . Oh, I can’t wait to tell her she has to call me that from now on. This’ll really wind her up.” Alizia picked up her glass and downed the contents in one long gulp.

  “Nanny also mentioned she saw Decrona meeting with one of the top guild’s officers. You think that is one of her contacts?”

  Alizia held up one finger and the waitress scampered off to the bar. “Doubt it. Ol’ Deccy doesn’t do so good with people, and I don’t think guilds can be led by books. Say, you don’t suppose there’s a super-secret, high-level spell where you can animate pieces of paper, do you?”

  “Should we ask Decrona about her meeting with that guild officer?” I asked.

  Olaf bit his lip and stared at the table. “No . . . She has always been rather touchy about her contacts, and I do not want to upset her.”

  “Because that’s my job,” Alizia said.

  “No, because she is helping Horus and me with our problems, and normal people are grateful when friends help them.”

  The waitress set another drink in front of Alizia. “Oh, you mean like how I’m going to be grateful when Madge here brings me a bigger glass so I can mix this with a healing potion?”

  The waitress rolled her eyes and went back to the bar.

  Olaf shook his head in exasperation. “Close enough.”

  Alizia focused on the doorway and her face spread into a devilish grin. I followed her eyes to find an exhausted Decrona coming our way. She was wearing a brand-new white robe with a pointy, wide-brimmed hat.

  “Rough day getting thrown out of the library for indecent exposure, Deccy?” Alizia said.

  Olaf stuck his hand over her mouth. “What she means is you look like you could use a hot meal and a fresh drink.” The waitress set down Alizia’s new glass and took our orders.

  “So, how did things go? Find anything out—about Kasper or Oskar?” I probably should’ve waited for her to get settled in, but I couldn’t wait to hear what she’d found out.

  “Hmm . . . Oskar. Oh, right. Yes, let’s see . . . With so little to go on, it’s going to be difficult, but there is one thing that might be interesting. The player named Oskar was in a group that went deep into the lair of the Lich Queen a few months ago. My contact said no one has seen him or his group since. Remember though, we still don’t even know if this Oskar is the same Oskar that was friends with your son.”

  “Thank you, Decrona,” Olaf said. “That’s a lot more than I’ve been able to find. Anything else?”

  “One of my other contacts knows some people who work for Pyrite, and they had no record of any players with names that were any variations on the name Kasper.”

  “That is a big help,” Olaf said. “I got another message from my wife Marte, and that confirms what she found in Kagsgrude.”

  “Where’s Kagsgrude?” I asked.

  Decrona cleared her throat. “The Duchy of Kagsgrude is to the southwest. Its capital, also called Kagsgrude, is one of the three starting areas for the Sun Alliance. Its army is known for its spearmen and their intense discipline. Its chief exports are wool and beer. Its climate—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Alizia said. “We get it. You stared too intently into one of your book lovers and accidentally absorbed everything you saw.”

  Decrona looked like she was about
to reach across the table for Alizia, but I put my hand on her shoulder and she stopped.

  “Marte even managed to get an audience with all four major guilds in the city, but none of them knew a thing,” Olaf said. “They could not do much without his character name. My stepdaughter Therese started a character in Isliu du Guiron, the third-starting Sun Alliance city, and she is having no luck either.” Olaf buried his face into his arm. “This is all my fault. If I’d only paid more attention to him, we would have more to go on.”

  Decrona patted Olaf on the shoulder awkwardly. “I’ll press my contacts harder.”

  Everyone eyed Alizia for the inevitable book/sex joke.

  Alizia threw us all a dirty look. “Oh, don’t give me that. I do know how to read a room. Olaf’s dilemma has affected me deeply. There’s no way I’d joke at a time like this. As a matter of fact, I’ll even go right over to that bar over there and see if those cute elves who just walked in know anything about this. And I won't leave until I either find everything they know about Kasper, or they stop buying me drinks. That’s how dedicated of a friend I am.”

  Decrona’s eyes met mine and then widened in surprise. “Horus—unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find anything about your problem. He seems to have just up and vanished. Though with his class, I suppose that’s to be expected. In the meantime, I do have a suggestion about what you can do to prepare yourself for when you encounter him next.”

  Olaf nodded. “I would assume you are going to incapacitate him and then take him to the Exit Area. Correct?”

  “I guess I haven’t really thought this through,” I said. “I was planning on killing Nyytro, until he lost all his money and was forced to leave the game—which I now know should be outside of the city, and not in the arena where you don’t lose anything—but throwing him in the Exit Area would be much faster. By the way, why do they even need a physical place like that? Couldn’t they have just put the option in the interface to leave?”

  Alizia sighed and motioned to Decrona. “You’re on, Encyclopedia Brown Spots.”

  Decrona cleared her throat dramatically. “Officially, the Exit Area in each major city was put in as a place so that a player who wished to conclude their time in Sun & Shadow Online could have a ceremony where all their friends and allies watched them take their final steps in the game. However, the real reason for it is that if players were allowed to leave through the interface, they could choose to exit right as they were about to be killed and avoid losing money.”

  “That makes sense,” I said. “But why do they allow players to force other players through the exit against their will? I’d think they’d have put something into place to prevent that.”

  Decrona cleared her throat again. “Officially, it’s a bug—a bug that’s been in since the game began decades ago. The likely reason it still exists is that if a player was forced out against their will, they’d likely want to come back in for revenge.”

  “. . . And if they come back in, they lose a ton of money in the conversion process, not to mention their equipment and levels.”

  “Fascinating,” Alizia said while rolling her eyes. “We toss this fella out and then what? You said he’s some Pyrite bigwig, so they’ll probably just give him his money back, if he’s even playing with his own money. He’ll just jump back in, and we do this whole dance over and over.”

  “He murdered me and my dad, remember? Dad’s house has security cameras everywhere. He’s got to be wanted. The laws protect Pyrite and the other VRMMO companies from forcibly pulling players out of the games, since they ‘proved’ the act could kill them and doing so was deemed barbaric, but once a player exits on their own, they’re fair game.”

  Olaf cursed. “Do not get me started on the game companies and their lobbyists in North America. We do not have those laws in Norway.”

  “So, grab the fella, tie him up and throw him out,” Alizia said. “Bonus points if we can make him and Deccy cry in the process. Sounds simple enough. Welp, all that planning has made me thirsty for some company that does not include a blonde elf.” She pointed to a group made entirely of blonde elves at the bar. “See you all tomorrow morning when we’ll go do some exciting adventuring, and I’ll have a fresh batch of on-the-nose commentary about Deccy’s sparkling personality and general life choices. The theme will be ‘dairy products.’”

  “Alizia! Now that we have classes, we’ll need to work on completely new strategies!” Olaf barely managed to prevent Decrona from tumbling out of her chair as she reached to pull Alizia but missed.

  Olaf patted Decrona on the shoulder. “It is not like she would have listened anyway.”

  “But she needs to learn how to Shout.”

  Alizia opened her mouth and the entire bar area erupted in laughter.

  “I think she’s got that one down,” I said.

  Decrona Explains It All

  Olaf excused himself so that he could go through his daily routine of asking around town about Kasper, while I did the same at our tavern. Decrona followed me around telling me exactly the same things I’d learned at my trainer earlier that day. Annoyed both by my lack of success and Decrona’s droning voice, I excused myself early and went to bed. I immediately fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  I woke up exactly eight hours later and went down to the tavern. As Alizia had stayed later to flirt with a nice beaverkin mage, only Olaf and Decrona were there to greet me. We slowly munched on our breakfast while we waited for Alizia. Olaf’s excursion the previous night had produced the same lack of results as my own. “Fortunately,” Decrona was there to fill the silence by explaining all of Olaf’s new class abilities. While Olaf’s dead-eyed nods indicated that Decrona was once again repeating what he already knew, it was helpful to me.

  “So, in conclusion, the Sneak ability you now possess will allow you to pass by enemies undetected, as long as your skill level is high enough, and they don’t possess any special abilities that allow them to see through it,” Decrona said. “Though at our level, we won’t encounter any of the latter. Just remember to keep your skill level maxed out, and we should be fine. As for your second new ability, Steal, you should only—”

  Olaf parroted Decrona’s stiff delivery. “Use it outside of town on non-friendly NPCs and mobs. I should never attempt to use it inside, because the guards will attack me and I’ll lose Highwall faction, which would eventually mean I get banished from town. I know, Decrona!”

  Decrona crossed her arms. “I’m only trying to look out for you.”

  Alizia pulled out the chair across from Decrona and sat. “Ahh, good. You’ve already got Deccy warmed up for me. What’s on the agenda for today? And keep it short this time. I don’t want to miss out on yet another day of adventuring while you go over the plan.”

  The waitress set a bowl of oatmeal in front of Alizia and she hungrily tore into it.

  “I only did that once,” Decrona said, “and that was only because you wiped the group twice the day before.”

  Olaf turned to me. “She didn’t know about Hit Points, how regeneration works, or even about healing potions. Decrona had to go over basically everything with her.”

  Alizia stopped shoveling food into her mouth and whispered in my ear, “I knew. I just went with it because Deccy was handing out potions during the demonstration.”

  “So, where are we going today?” Olaf asked.

  “We’re going—”

  Alizia slammed down her empty bowl. “To fight termites and bookworms, so that Deccy can build up her ‘Books with Loose Morals’ faction.”

  “No,” Decrona deadpanned. “We’re—”

  “Going to watch a presentation on the optimum stat distribution for every race/class/gender/language/height/eye color/personality type/IQ combination?”

  Decrona threw up her hands in exasperation. “You know what? I’m not going to tell you now.”

  Alizia stared at her deeply until Decrona rolled her eyes and got up. She headed to the door and Olaf
and I followed. Alizia stomped after us when we neared the door.

  We barely managed to all fit outside the exit as the street was clogged with people in both directions. All attempts to find out the reason for the crowd were ignored, though it was very difficult to be heard over the noise. I quickly lost sight of my group as the flow of the traffic pushed us apart, but Alizia’s superior height allowed her to find everyone and wrangle us into a nearby alley after about fifteen minutes.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Decrona bit her lip. “My apologies, but in my anger I forgot to leave through the back door. It’s the fifteenth of the month.”

  Olaf answered my questioning look. “On the first and fifteenth of every month, The Scion—who is the king of Highwall and the personal avatar of one of the founders of the game—gives a speech in the center of town at eight am. He usually reveals some very useful information but—”

  Alizia mimed a person talking non-stop with her hand. “Better to read the summary the next day.”

  “And most of his speech will probably go over how we lost one of our outposts to the Shadow Consortium.” Decrona stared at the crowd going by, mainly at the individuals in expensive-looking armor, nearly all of which were either blue, green, or red. “There go the guilds.”

  “Do they really think sucking up to him will get them special favors?” Alizia asked.

  “Sometimes it does,” Decrona said. “I know it worked on one of The Scion’s counterparts, The Great Shadow, but never for lowly players like us. Only for the guilded.”

  “Aren’t there guilds for new players?” I asked as we reached the other end of the alley. “Or could we form one?”

  Decrona nearly tripped over a crate as we made our way to the market area. “The Guild Charters that allow players to form a guild are mythical class items—also known as world drops—and go for several billion dollars in gold. Back in the early days of the game, they cost almost nothing, but a few months after the change that allowed people to cash their gold out for real world money, Pyrite realized how efficient the guilds were at farming money, as well as how much of an edge a guild’s buffs gave, so they made Guild Charters incredibly rare. They also offered existing guilds the opportunity to disband in exchange for ten million gold.”