Keeper

by Tom Larcombe

  Liv unwrapped the cloth and her eyes brightened.

  “Aye, I haven't had a steak like this in years. Thank ye Eddie Hunter, thank ye. Be sure to come back if you need anything else. Otherwise, I'll be seeing you.”

  “No, thank you Liv, you've been a life saver for me. Now, I have to go.”

  ~ ~ ~

  As Eddie made his way back towards the inn he saw Paul working on a house, one of Karl's places if Eddie wasn't mistaken.

  “Paul,” he called out.

  The craftsman finished putting in the piece he was working on, then turned and came out to Eddie.

  “Yes, it's Aaron, no he doesn't want anyone to know. As a matter of fact, that's his worst fear. He's working on ideas for the game from the inside for a month. As a matter of fact, you should talk with him. He's trying to flesh out the craftsman classes more.”

  Paul's mouth had dropped open at the confirmation of his suspicions.

  “But I'm going to need to steal my cart and ox for a little bit,” Eddie said.

  Paul had been using the ox and cart to haul materials for his building projects.

  “For that smithy?” he asked.

  “Yes, which is for Opron, who's going to take an apprentice and teach him so the smithy stays running after he has to leave.”

  “Oh,” Paul said. “Wait, he's going to teach an NPC?”

  “The traditional way, or at least traditional in game anyhow,” Eddie said. “Nothing fancy. This is a plain old character he made to research craftsman classes. Feed him any complaints or ideas about the craftsman classes though. This is probably the only time you'll get direct input like that into the game. So take advantage of it.”

  “I'll chat with him a bit tonight at the inn. Is that what he was doing last night? Listening to adventurers for ideas?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “He isn't only working on fleshing the craftsman classes out. I don't think that man is ever only doing one thing at a time.”

  Paul was still shaking his head.

  “It's a lot to take in. I mean, my ideas might not be great, but if they're solid, they could go into the game?”

  “One way or another, but this is your best shot. I'm guessing there's some shortfalls and other problems with the class that you've noticed by now. He's the one to tell them to, but do it on the down low since he's trying very hard to not be discovered. Now, I've got to go. I'm going to start his smithy today, if I have the time.”

  Eddie continued on his way to the inn, appropriating his ox and cart along the way. He had the time still, so he filled the cart with a load of rough timber once he got to the wood pile. Then he went in and set up lunch the same way he had breakfast.

  Tiana was up now and when he came in, she asked where he'd been. When he told her that he'd gone to get some more employees, one to apprentice with Opron and another to take over the kitchen for part of the day, she scowled at him.

  “She didn't try anything, did she? I saw the way she looked at you before.”

  He held up his hands, palms out.

  “The only time she came close to me was when she gave me the chickens I'd asked her for before. They're out in the coop now. I need to get some grains to feed them, I think. Don't worry, I've no intention of doing anything that would upset you.”

  He leaned in for a quick kiss and could feel the possessiveness in her avid response.

  “Trust me, when you kiss me like that there's no way any other woman has a chance,” he said. “Even if you didn't kiss me like that, I still wouldn't leave you. I promise,” he said.

  She settled down then, although he could tell she still wasn't happy with him.

  “Can I ask you a favor?” he said.

  “Sure, what do you need?”

  “The blueprint I got for the smithy is as much stonework as it is woodwork. I was hoping you, or you and Jern, might help me with it?”

  “Only if you help me with the woodwork on my own current project. Which is something I wanted to talk to you about. How set are you on a general store as the second building?”

  Eddie was confused as to how they got to this topic, but he rolled with it.

  “I was looking forward to driving Old Jeffries out of business, but we don't have to do that. Why?”

  “Because I broke ground for a temple yesterday. That's where I was, claiming the land and designing the layout. And a temple is a valid second building to finish your quest, right?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “Sure, we can do that. Any particular reason why?”

  “Well, at ninth level I'll need to pick a god or goddess if I want access to the next tier of spells. The lower ones are given out straight from the game, but if you want the higher power ones, you need to have a god or goddess to grant them to you. I figured if I have to go that far, I might as well go all the way, right? Besides, I had a dream. You'd recognize the star of it, a certain glowing blonde?”

  “Freyja appeared to you in a dream?” Eddie asked, slightly disappointed that she hadn't appeared to him again.

  Tiana nodded.

  “She said that the Meadowlands would benefit greatly from a temple to her built here, so I guess I've chosen my goddess. Not a bad thing really, she's the only deity I've heard of that actually interacts with any players other than their own priests. I was leaning that way already. Plus, something about the idea of the temple appealed to me even more, so there you are.”

  “I'd be happy to help you build that temple,” Eddie said. “Plus, we'll get to go adventuring again soon. Liv promised me that she'd have a cook here tomorrow morning.”

  Tiana scowled at the mention of Liv's name, but only slightly this time.

  “Means I'll have to work on the temple as I can,” she said. “If we're adventuring more that'll cut into the time I have for it.”

  “I suggest we finish the smithy first, since Opron has limited time here, then the temple?”

  “We can do that. Where's the smithy going?” she asked.

  “Right near that spur of the mountains we found, lots of rock available right there so we don't have to carry it as far. As soon as I finish getting lunch set up for the servers to just grab what people want, we'll head up there and I'll show you.”

  ~ ~ ~

  They decided to head up to the farm first. Tiana would ask Jern if he wanted to do some more stonework and Eddie was going to talk to Osmond and Brandr. See if either one of them had the lumberjack skill. Ingolf was quite busy working for Paul at the moment, so Eddie needed to find someone else to clear the land for the smithy.

  “So, Osmond and Brandr. Do either of you actually have the lumberjack skill?” Eddie asked, once he'd found them.

  “We both do, just not very high,” Osmond answered, glancing at Brandr, who just nodded.

  “I need some land cleared, and I need at least some of the trees turned into rough hewn boards. Would you be able to do that?”

  “I don't know about the boards, we'd be liable to ruin as many trees as we managed to make into boards,” Brandr said.

  “But you could do it with some of them?”

  The two nodded.

  “Then, and this is optional, you're welcome to just run the farm, but I'm going to offer you some extra coin. For each tree you fell, I'll give you a copper. For each one you manage to turn into boards I'll give you another copper. I'll show you where the area is and mark the trees to come down by tying a bit of rope around them, okay?”

  The two men had shown an extreme amount of interest once he'd started talking about additional payment in hard coin.

  “I'd want one of you here at the farm at any given time, but the other can fell trees. I'll be working up in that area for the next few days so there'll be someone nearby if there's a problem. Okay?”

  They both nodded.

  “Well in that case, as soon as Tiana is back, with or without Jern, I'll show you where it is. It's less than a half hour walk from here if you go directly there.”

  On the way to
the site Eddie blazed a trail that the two farmers would be able to easily follow when they came out to cut trees. Since they were moving slowly enough to get the cart through the trees, it wasn't a problem. Once there, he sent the farmers back, telling them that they could start felling extra trees the following day. He pulled out the blueprint and Evaluated it:

  Basic Smithy - Standard

  Capacity: 3 smiths

  Level: common

  Found

  This structure is designed as a basic smithy. It will allow up to three smiths to work simultaneously.

  Huh, Eddie thought. You can find blueprints as treasure? At least that's what I think that means.

  Once he'd looked over the blueprint, he activated it:

  Build Smithy-Standard?

  (yes/no)

  He thought 'yes' and the blueprint shimmered and disappeared, falling into dust and creating a glowing lattice of lines where the planks and stones were going to have to be placed in the area he'd selected. He immediately shared the blueprint with Jern and Tiana, who went to look at the stonework sections.

  “Looks like we need stone for the floor as the first thing,” Eddie said. “I'll start hauling.”

  Eddie was interested to note that Jern simply started hauling stones as well while Tiana placed them. He thought for a moment and realized that the same problem probably existed with masonry as it did with carpentry. Multiple people working on the same project could cause some odd things to occur. When he asked Jern about it, he got a positive reply, although Jern also clarified that once the floor was done, Tiana could take over the next section of stonework and not cause problems. As long as each section was done entirely by the same individual it didn't cause problems if someone else did the other sections. Eddie wondered if Carpentry was the same way or not, Paul hadn't said, but it hadn't sounded like he'd tried that.

  They worked for several hours, getting the floor in place first. After that Tiana hauled for a bit while Eddie started with some of the wooden parts of the structure and Jern worked on a chimney for the forge. When Eddie gauged he had about an hour until he had to start working on dinner, he called it for the day.

  “Hopefully I can spend more time working on this tomorrow,” he said. “I'll stop by the farm before we start if you want to keep helping, Jern.”

  “Aye, masonry is a useful skill to be building. I'll take the chance to do so right gladly.”

  “Okay, then I'll see you tomorrow morning?”

  “Nah, you'll see me tonight. Coming down to your inn for some of that ale again.”

  Eddie smiled. After hearing about the mushroom brews that the dwarfs made, he'd wondered if Jern would like the more normal ales and beers, but the dwarf had taken to them like a fish to water.

  “I'll see you there then,” Eddie said.

  Tiana rode as he drove the cart and ox back to the inn, dropping them off at the barn for the stable boy to take care of. He washed up at the spring, then headed into the kitchen to start cooking.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Three

  Privates Campbell and Ferring were the first to try the new experiment. They laid down and Specialist Harmon ran the script he'd created. He'd been the one to write the code that could give him a command line interface inside the game itself, but Greenshaw had been the one to authorize the insertion of the code into the game so it could be accessed by a player, or more accurately by a certain military specialist that was in the game for research purposes.

  Campbell and Ferring failed their first two attempts.

  “It's like there's something in those monsters that's pushing back against our attempts,” Campbell said. “Some sort of awareness or sentience.”

  Harmon nodded and returned to his command line interface. A moment later versions of the two monsters the Privates were trying to possess appeared in the center of their camp.

  “Try it on those two, like right now,” Harmon said.

  The two monsters started moving, jerkily at first, while Campbell and Ferring's bodies lay motionless on their bedrolls. Then one of the monster's mouths opened.

  “We're in, what did you do?” it asked.

  Harmon stared at the goblins he'd created. One of them was far larger than any goblin had a right to be, standing nearly eight feet tall. The second one was smaller, closer to the size of a normal goblin. But it looked ancient, barely able to carry the swathes of necklaces, fetishes, and oddities that adorned it.

  “The actual monsters in game get a sliver of the AI's attention, but that's enough to alert them when something strange occurs, and draw more of their attention. I figure they just tried to push you back out since what we're doing can't be accounted for by any of the game rules,” Harmon said. “These fresh ones barely had a chance to register with the game before you were in them.”

  He paced back and forth for a moment, hands held together behind his back.

  “So I loaded fresh instances where the AIs wouldn't look for them and got you in before they connected up. Stay in there for a little bit. Let's make sure that you won't be spotted by the AIs in those bodies. If you aren't then I can just teleport you anywhere in the game you want to go, although for now we'd better stick close to the Meadowlands, like the boss recommended.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Eddie was more relaxed tonight, knowing that he'd have someone else to cook tomorrow.

  I'll see if my group wants to go out adventuring maybe. We haven't been out in almost a week. It's not like I don't enjoy the cooking, I do. It's just that I don't want that to be everything I'm doing. It's wearing on me after only a few days, so...

  His hands were going through the motions of cooking, it was almost automatic now and he rarely had to think about what he was doing unless he was making something new. Even so, he almost cut his finger when the cheer rang out from in the common room.

  “What the heck is that about?” he wondered aloud.

  Dropping his knife, he went out to see what was going on. He didn't need to have everything done right now, he was just trying to get as much of the work for the evening out of the way as he could so he could spend more time in the common room later.

  There were still some cheers echoing in the room when he got out there. To his surprise, there was a cluster of adventurers staring at one wall of the inn, a bare wall as far as he knew.

  He heard Karl's name mentioned several times as he tried to work his way through the crowd. When he got close, he realized what had happened. Karl had, evidently, come through on his promise to make a large, fancy map of the Meadowlands. Then he'd just gone and hung it on the wall without telling Eddie first.

  He must've wanted to surprise me. He certainly managed that, I thought I was going to have to break up a fight earlier than normal tonight, Eddie thought.

  The map was large, taking up a full deerskin. It was inked in with elegant lines and labels and when he got closer still he saw the line of writing across the bottom.

  'This Map of the Meadowlands courtesy of Karl's Cartography, located across the street from Eddie's Inn.'

  Eddie hadn't named his inn yet. He'd been unable to come up with anything he found satisfactory for the name. But now that he listened closer he realized that Karl's name for it was going to stick. The words Eddie's Inn were being mentioned almost as much as Karl's name, along with a lot of laughs.

  He heaved a sigh and resigned himself to the name. It wasn't horrible and at least it wasn't alliterative like Karl's Cartography. It was a good thing too, because a moment later the front door burst open.

  “Hey, can anybody give me a boost here?” Karl called through the door.

  Eddie raced out to see what was going on. By the time he got there, several adventurers had lifted Karl up and he was affixing a support from which hung a sign. The sign featured a large, wood-burned picture of a mug of ale with the word Eddie's arching over the froth on the mug and the word inn arching below the bottom of the mug.

  “Karl!” Eddie yelled.

  “E
ddie,” Karl replied, “I got that map done for you, just like I promised. You've been tearing yourself up over a name for your inn so much that Allie and I just figured we'd pick one for you. What do you think?”

  Eddie sighed, prepared to snap at Karl. Then he thought about it for a moment and realized that he had been griping to the group about an inn name for several days now. He broke into a smile, happy that he had friends who actually cared about his mood.

  “Bastard. I would've figured something out in another couple of days,” Eddie said.

  “But now you don't have to. Relax, enjoy yourself. That's why you play games, isn't it?” Karl replied.

  Damn it, there I go again, he thought. I need to make sure I remind myself at least once a day that it's just a game. Even if it is my income for the time being too, it's still a game.

  Flashing back to his ancient history classes in school, he chuckled as he paraphrased an old Roman tradition in his thoughts.

  Maybe I need to hire someone to walk around with me and keep muttering, just loud enough for me to hear: “Remember, thou art in a game!”, he thought.

  Karl hopped down from the supporting arms of the adventurers. The sign hung just over the door, low enough that an upstretched arm could reach it. The first of the adventurers that had supported Karl reached up and tapped the sign.

  “Knock on wood for luck, right?” he said.

  Amusingly enough, each of the other three that had helped support Karl reached up to tap the sign as they entered the inn too. Eddie shook his head, visions of every adventurer entering his inn reaching up to tap the sign.

  “See what you started?” he asked Karl.

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Karl replied.

  As he entered the inn himself Karl reached up, tapped the sign, then turned and gave Eddie a quick smirk. Eddie's face sank into his hands as he shook his head.

  “All I wanted was to stay under the radar and run an inn,” he said. “So much for that. At least I'm running my inn though.”