I then went back out of the city and headed to go see Stan.
I activated my Blacksuit long before I arrived at Stan’s place and made my way to his door. I walked through the front door, losing my Blacksuit as the one point of damage that came from the trap dropped my invisibility. I couldn’t wait to learn how to disarm those things.
“What brings ya back here lad? Are you heading to the Capitol already?” Stan asked.
“No, nothing like that. Still haven’t been told to head that way. I’m actually here to talk to you about the tree growing behind your house.”
“What do you know about that tree?” Stan asked, coming closer to me and looking a little worried.
I then went through the whole story, from Wayne meeting the Dwarves, to liberating the mine, to meeting the King Under the Mountain and finding out about the tree. Stan’s jaw dropped more and more as the story went on.
“Well look at ya lad! Making deals with Dwarves! And the King no less! You made a wise move by getting the King to name you a friend to the Dwarves. That will pay ya back time and again. Far more than any Gold could.”
“Thanks Stan. Those were my thoughts as well. But that is what brought me and my group here today, looking for the Elven Elder tree.”
“Did your friends see my place?” Stan asked, showing a bit of worry again.
“No. I realized quickly where we were heading and I took us around the back side of the hill. I rationalized that there wouldn’t be any trees in the middle of a clearing, and so we needed to head around. My friends agreed with my assessment.”
“Good. I can’t imagine what would have happened if they had seen me door and wanted to go inside.”
“Well I don’t see us coming back here anytime soon. Your guardians stepped out like they normally do once I got close to your home without my Blacksuit on. And my friends were in no mood to challenge four creatures who all looked like they could kill us with one hit.”
“My guardians? Is that what you think dem beasts are?” Stan asked while laughing. “Lad, those beasts are out there to guard dat tree!”
Due to my confused look, Stan explained in more detail.
“I can’t even tell you how many years ago it was that it happened, but that tree had been there for as long as I could remember. Loved it too, all shiny and bright. I knew what it were, but didn’t realize its significance until later when a traveling Elf passed through my glade.
“Said he could feel the tree from miles away. Walked right on up to it, he did. I had already snuck around behind him, in case he planned on doing it harm, and was ready to slice him open deep. But when I heard him speaking quietly to the tree, with admiration and love, I knew he wasn’t there to hurt it. So I walked some distance away and stepped from da shadows. When the Elf realized I was there he started to cast a spell, but I put my hands up to show him this weren’t an attack.
“I told him, ‘you be standing next to me home sir!’ and I pointed to me hill. He wanted to know if I had any idea what was growing so close to me, and I told him I did and came out here often to sit by her. I think because I called it a ‘her’ he went more at ease. He then made the offer that granted me some wonderful protection for me home. You see, them beasts out there is summoned to protect the tree. As long as the tree lives, so do they. You could stab away at just one of them for the next year and you wouldn’t kill it unless the tree died first.
“I never much minded since they don’t bother me none inside me home, and to leave I just have to step in the shadows before I walk out the house. Pretty much what I already do anyhow. And anyone approaching me hill had better be a rogue if they want to make it anywhere close to my front door!” Stan finished with laughter in his voice.
“Well I can assure you, we won’t be making any more runs this way. But I appreciate the explanation. Thanks for the time Stan and I hope to see you soon when I get word to head to the Capitol.”
“Aye lad, it’ll come sooner than you think. Just be careful around that other tree. Any elf sees you taking so much as a piece of wood from it, they won’t care that it ain’t in their forest, they will try to kill you dead on the spot.”
“Thanks again for the advice my friend.” And with that, I left Stan’s and headed back to town. I was going to follow Jason’s lead and log out early. I was ready for a nap after our crazy couple of days.
* * *
September 19th, 2043
“We aren’t going to find any mobs around here that will give us experience, so I guess we go looking for bad guys. We haven’t been out past the Bandit Camp too much, since we never wanted to aggro those guys on accident. We could try out that way,” Jason suggested the next morning when we were all logged on again.
“I’m in agreement with Allister, I want to get as far away from Port Town as we can. And we will probably need a couple of days to get our levels up to 18,” Wayne said.
Dan had kept his word, and for hours Wayne had received private messages from players he had never met or spoken to, who were asking about Dan’s exploits. It appeared that Dan may have exaggerated his role in keeping Wayne alive, among other things. The pink tutu that Wayne was allegedly wearing during the attack on the Orckin was one such example, and was the subject of much ribbing. One quarter of the messages Wayne received were from players making fun of him for wearing such a thing. Another quarter were female players that wanted to know where they could get the item. The other half consisted mostly of laughter.
To his credit, Dan didn’t mention anything about the specifics that led to the encounter, leaving out the location of the mine and the mobs the group faced. But Dan sure could weave a story and even without full details, everyone in the Tavern believed him. More so, all of the people in the Tavern had friends, who also heard the story. And the ridiculousness grew exponentially as each person told the story again and again. Wayne was bombarded by hundreds of messages.
Since AltCon had not introduced any Player vs. Player combat in the game, Wayne couldn’t just kill Dan outright. But if that system were in place, I had no doubt that Wayne would have stood over Dan’s spawn point and just slaughtered him repeatedly, yelling out over and over “How you like my pink tutu now Dan?!?” In a sign of self-preservation, Dan stayed far away from Wayne for the rest of the day, only commenting that he really shouldn’t have drunk so much the day before.
As a group, we rode out to the areas north of the Bandit camp and started looking for mobs. This route took us ostensibly in the direction of the Capitol, where the mobs were higher level. As one got farther away from Port Town, the Level of the mobs increased, as one would expect. No one knew what level the mobs around the Capitol would be, since to our knowledge no one had traveled there yet.
And when I say as a group we traveled, I really mean that Jason, Wayne, and I rode together, while Dan was off “scouting” ahead. Thankfully our Ranger could distance himself from Wayne for the time being by utilizing his innate Class skills. I really didn’t want to spend the next couple of hours watching Wayne stare daggers at Dan as we rode. Not that it wasn’t deserved, but because every time I thought of Wayne in a pink tutu I had to stop myself from giggling. Having the constant reminder would have only made the task more difficult, and would have put me right up there on Wayne’s shit list.
Dan signaled us after some time that he had found some mobs for us, and we met up with him and fell into our normal routine of pulling and killing mobs. The infamous Pink Tutu Affair, as it would be known for years to come, was forgotten for the moment.
* * *
“Come on man. Just admit it. You did that crap on purpose!” Wayne said to Dan while we took a breather after an hour of killing mobs.
“Seriously bro, I was so drunk last night I have no idea what I said. People just kept handing me drinks and asking for another story. It wasn’t until after I went back through my logs that I even saw what I said. And you know it’s just jealousy, brosef! All of those guys would love to be able to wreck shit li
ke you, pink tutu or not!”
“I don’t have a bloody pink tutu!”
“Semantics bro.”
“That’s not what that word means!”
We couldn’t hold it in any longer and Jason and I were both laughing our asses off while we heard Dan and Wayne go at it. Wayne would try to get Dan to admit he had purposefully marred Wayne’s image while Dan went back to his “I was so drunk” defense. Jason and I had Wayne’s back though, adding our thoughts and comments about how upset we were with Dan, although that didn’t stop our laughter.
And if we thought Wayne was pissed, imagine the ire of Jenny when she found out about all the women who were sending Wayne private messages. Jenny and Wayne had become an official item, even meeting outside of the game on multiple occasions. And when she heard about Dan’s antics she vowed to repay him in kind. Wayne was one thing, but never underestimate the capacity for violence of a woman scorned. Dan just wanted to know if that ruined his chances with Kaitlin.
“Brother, you don’t have a pink tutu, I know. And so does everyone else. That’s yesterday’s news. But what about me and Kaitlin? What we have is real man, I need to know if I still have a chance!”
“If by ‘real’ you mean the exact opposite, and an absence of anything, then yes, it’s still there.”
“Whew! I was really worried for a second there!”
As fun as all this was, our focus needed to be on getting our level so we could hit the Dire Wolves at the Elven tree. “Rest break over. Dan, scout ahead and find us some high concentration of mobs if you can. I don’t want to be stuck out in this forest any longer than we need. I want us to get you and Allister your Level 18 today and Wayne and I tomorrow.”
Dan and Jason would need to get their Level 18 spells once they reached their level and I wanted to do that at the end of our day, so as not to break up the routine of fighting. Dan nodded his head, summoned his horse, and rode out to find us some more mobs.
Wayne just shook his head as Dan rode off. “He totally did it on purpose. I know he did.”
Jason approached Wayne and put his hand on Wayne’s shoulder. “Have no fear my friend. The Pink Tutu Affair will never die.”
* * *
September 22nd, 2043
Dan had found a large grouping of Bears and Wolves that were Blue to our group and over the next two days we focused on killing the mobs, collecting the loot, and leveling our characters. At this level, the animals were dropping Fine skins that we could sell to either players that were leveling their Tanning skills, or to the merchants. I would see what we could get from both the merchants and the players before I decided how much time I wanted to waste on trying to sell them through auctions. There was always a cost/benefit analysis that one had to do when deciding to auction off items. Here the cost was mostly my sleep, in relation to how much we could get through a lengthy auction.
More importantly, we had found enough mobs that Dan and Jason were able to get their Level 18 at the end of that first day. Jason went back to Port Town with enough money to buy the spells. I also gave him one of the Fine skins to take to our merchant friend. He would be able to tell us how much they sold for, and likely give Jason the location of someone in town who would also sell the same wares.
We didn’t have a huge amount of Gold since we decided to assist our Dwarven kinsmen with holding their mine and celebrating the victory over the Orckin. However, we did have enough to purchase the level 18 spells, which cost 20 Gold each. Jason got an improved heal, an improved group buff that added constitution and armor, and the spell See Invisible. This was quite handy since Dan received two spells, one of which was Blend. This spell allowed Dan to essentially camouflage himself and ‘blend’ into his environment. It was, in other words, an invisible spell for Dan, but one that only worked in the Forest. Trying to cast it on himself in an urban environment would do no good. Dan also received the spell Breathe that would allow someone to breath under water. An interesting spell, but one we hadn’t needed to this point.
With our Level 18 in hand, we decided to go back to the Elder Elven tree we first saw and engage with the Dire Wolves there. No one was keen on challenging the four beasts that surrounded the tree near Stan’s home, and thankfully so. I had not told the others that the guardians of that tree would likely always out level us, or the secret to their power. It was better for the rest of the group to just believe that they were regular high level Red mobs that we couldn’t fight.
Before arriving at our destination we buffed the party as much as we could. No one was looking forward to taking on four mobs at the same time, especially when three of those had been Yellow the last time we ventured in. I played my role and scouted out the location before the rest of the team engaged and was happy to see that the dynamic had changed a bit. There were now only two Yellows and two Blues. Gaining a level had been helpful indeed. Now there was a Blue and a Yellow Dire Wolf lounging a few meters from the base of the tree, and another Blue and Yellow Dire nestled under the tree root.
I informed the team of my new findings and we decided to have Dan Snare one Yellow and Wayne would try to tank the two Blue and other Yellow. Jason’s new buff, that added an extra 1000 hit points and extra 100 armor, was really going to come in handy now. The only down side was that the spell cost was 40 percent of Jason’s mana and we were forced to wait ten minutes before we could engage, while Jason built back up his reserves. The buff lasted for thirty minutes however, so we wouldn’t have to worry about it expiring before the end of the battle. We hoped.
Dan started by casting Snare on the Yellow that was lying next to the tree and began to shoot arrows at it. The Dire Wolf immediately started moving toward Dan but at a slow pace thanks to his successful Snare. The two Blues started moving toward Dan, but Wayne was able to Taunt one and Bash the other and get aggro on them. To our surprise, the Yellow under the tree root did not move from its location and Wayne was faced with only the two Blues. Instead of changing mobs in the middle of a fight, we let Dan continue to kite the Yellow and went to work on the two Blues. I gave Wayne enough time to fully establish aggro before jumping into the mix, and landing my Backstab on the first Dire Wolf. Since these mobs were Blue, Wayne and I were able to take it down in a fairly quick time. The second Blue fell quickly as well. With those two down, we chased after Dan’s Yellow Dire Wolf and chipped away at it until Wayne could establish aggro. With aggro fully under Wayne’s control, we similarly made quick work of the Yellow. This fight had so far gone way easier than we had planned.
Jason informed the group that he had sufficient mana to take on one Yellow. Wayne approached the tree, targeting the Yellow Dire Wolf, and got within its aggro range. The Dire Wolf slowly emerged from under the tree and we saw why it had not engaged that first time we attacked its pack mates. Laying under the tree root were two Dire Wolf pups.
“Woah! Wayne, stop moving forward,” Dan said.
“What? It’s one Yellow man, we can take it easy.”
“Don’t you see, there are pups under the tree. I don’t kill women and children bro. Not my thing.”
“Are you insane? That isn’t a woman, it’s a Dire Wolf. And we aren’t going to kill puppies doofus. Those things are level 1 or 2 at best, they won’t even aggro us if we don’t attack.”
“Dude! You can’t leave a bunch of puppies without their mother. That shit ain’t right man!”
“Dan! For once, please, be reasonable! We need the wood from the tree. We kill the Dire Wolf and then we collect what we need. It’s just an NPC mob!” Jason added.
“Not doing it man, bad mojo. They won’t be as high of quality, but I can just find birch wood to make the shafts for my arrows.”
And that was the end of that. We were doing this for Dan, to be able to make his arrows better. But if he didn’t want any part of this, then there was no point.
“Fine. Whatever. Just Snare it then and we will outrun the aggro and not come back,” Wayne said, sounding upset.
Dan cast S
nare on the Yellow Dire Wolf and we all started to run away. However, the Dire Wolf broke the Snare immediately and started attacking Dan. Wayne jumped in to get aggro off the mob and Dan cast another Snare. “Snare landed! Shit! Broke Snare again.”
At this point, Dan now had massive aggro with the Dire Wolf and nothing Wayne or I did could get it off of Dan.
“Stop attacking it! Don’t kill the momma!”
Jason was healing Dan, but he was running low on mana. He planned on healing a Tank, not a Ranger. And Dan was losing hit points fast. Dan tried Snare one more time, but again the Dire Wolf broke the Snare almost immediately after it landed. It was as if the Dire Wolf had some innate ability that allowed it to circumvent spells when protecting its children.
“Dan, we aren’t all going to die here and lose our Levels! I’m sorry man, we have to kill it,” I told him.
“Fine. This is horrible of us though.”
And with that we all engaged the Dire Wolf. Jason started by casting a Stun so Dan could establish some distance while Wayne Taunted and Bashed the mob. Despite Dan’s insistence, we never stopped attacking the wolf. As long as Wayne could get aggro, we had a chance to succeed. But as soon as the Stun wore off, the Wolf ran at Dan again.
Jason continued to Stun, and we continued to hit. Having your Cleric chain cast Stun is one of the dumbest things you can do in the game, since it should build aggro to a point where your Cleric becomes the one and only target. But with Dan’s multiple Snares landing and breaking, the wolf seemed to have only one target.
After a short while, the Yellow was dead. I had never seen Dan so upset before. He really felt horrible for making these puppies orphans. I tried to focus him back on the game and told him we wouldn’t be attacking the little guys and that he should start collecting the Elven wood, but reminding him to do so in a respectful manner, whatever that meant.
“It’s good bro, I am a Wood Elf, I am one with the tree,” Dan said while he made his way toward the Elven Elder tree. He stopped for a bit when he got close to the tiny Dire Wolf Pups and I thought I was going to have to poke him again to start collecting the wood.
Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 Page 34