Ascend Online

by Luke Chmilenko

  Less than an hour had passed since the battle outside of Aldford, with the last rays of the evening sun vanishing below the horizon. Once it was evident that there would be no more fighting, we had begun the process of pulling out a trio of lucky Adventurers that had somehow managed to survive their fall into the Tribuli pits. They were quickly stripped of their gear and placed under the Militia’s close supervision.

  In addition to the other Adventurers taken prisoner, I found out that between both Sierra and Constantine they had each managed to take a scout prisoner before the battle had begun. Deciding to keep these scouts separate from the other prisoners for the time being, we locked them in separate rooms in the Town Hall, planning on interrogating them separately from the prisoners rescued from the ditches.

  After a quick assessment of Aldford’s defenses after the battle, we found that they had held up rather admirably. Granted, Graves’s Adventurers practically ran headlong into the strongest part of our defenses with little thought for strategy, but they still came closer to succeeding than I was comfortable with. Had Graves’s forces been a level or two higher and if he had joined the fight himself they may have been able to break through into the heart of Aldford.

  He lived in fear that the slaves would rebel if he split his forces and they did. I had a feeling that Graves had focused too much on getting everything done at once, never realizing that he had hamstrung himself in case something went wrong. I wonder what happened, someone clearly disobeyed orders while Graves was incapacitated after my attack and decided to press against Aldford.

  It’s not over yet, though. As far as I knew, Graves was still alive, along with a fairly large group of the other Outlaw Adventurers, which meant whatever quest he had was likely still active. He’ll try to rebuild and come back stronger.

  I sighed as I thought of the other group of Adventurers now encamped outside of Aldford. They had taken little action after rebelling against the few guards that stayed behind during the battle. Content to settle themselves along the river peacefully as they came to terms with their newfound freedom.

  “Are you ready to go, Lyr?” Constantine’s words snapped me back to the present as he motioned towards the Adventurers, Aldwin following close behind him.

  “Yeah.” I nodded. So far we’d had no contact with the ‘Rebel Adventurers’ as I called them in my head. The few that we had seen walking about had stayed close to their main group, respectfully keeping their distance from Aldford. It was time to change that and hopefully get a better idea of who exactly was squatting on our front door. “Let’s go and hope this works out better than meeting Graves.”

  “Anything would be an improvement over that,” Constantine muttered.

  With those words, Aldwin, Constantine and I strode out of the village, walking towards the bulk of the Rebel Adventurers. We stopped a short distance away, hoping to communicate our peaceful intentions as we waited for someone to come out and greet us. Casting Light on myself as we walked, I made sure our presence was brightly evident in the growing darkness, even if I didn’t need the light right now, thanks to my True Sight illuminating my vision.

  After a few minutes of waiting, I saw a group of three Adventurers start making their way towards us. I recognized one as the blond woman I had seen earlier. She must be the leader.

  She was dressed in tattered rags, clenching a rusty sword in her hand. As the distance closed between us, I could make out wild streaks of blood still coating her face and hair suggesting she had just recently made use of her blade. Her pale skin was coated in days’ worth of dirt and grime, obviously not being afforded the same opportunity Graves and his men had to wash themselves. Coming to a halt, she brushed her hair away from her face, tucking it behind human ears. She stared at us with a mix of appreciation and hesitation from behind deep green eyes.

  On her left followed a dark-skinned Dwarf, with an ebony beard covering his face. The faint gleam of my Light spell reflecting off his completely bald head, making him appear like a solid brick of obsidian. His completely black eyes made me feel unsettled as he looked at us, if only because I couldn’t tell where exactly he was staring. Dressed in similar dirty rags as the woman, I noted that he carried a single rusty mace, hanging from a rope tied around his waist, which also doubled as a belt.

  Lastly, on the woman’s right was a massive saurian, a Lizardman, which towered over all of us. Completely bare chested with only a rag to hide its shame, I noted thick muscles shifting and twitching under emerald scales as the green beast approached. The saurian was easily tall enough to rival Drace in height and nearly just as broad. Cool blue eyes met mine, its raptor-like head bobbing in greeting as it came to a halt.

  “Thank you,” the woman said plainly, breaking the awkward silence that had formed as we appraised one another. “I don’t know what happened between you and Graves, but we wouldn’t be free without your standing up to him.”

  “I’m Freya and these are my friends.” Freya introduced herself, then indicated the Dwarf, followed by the Lizardman. “Thorne and Helix. I wouldn’t have made it this far without them.”

  “Pleasssure,” the massive saurian hissed in greeting first, his sibilant voice surprisingly easy to understand.

  “Hello,” Thorne spoke softly, giving us a nod.

  “My name is Lyrian,” I replied, everyone else taking the cue to introduce themselves.

  “So, Freya, can you explain to me, what the hell that was all about?” I asked the woman softly, stress still evident on my voice. “We have a hell of a lot of Adventures, bandits, loose in the area now, all whom have a clear reason to hate us. Not to mention I’m sure Graves is going to be holding a hell of a grudge because we’ve fucked up his plans to become King and get rich in the process.”

  “Yeah…” Freya crossed her arms defensively as she shifted her weight to lean in closer to Helix. “It’s been a rough few days and a rather long story on how we got here.”

  She let out a loud sigh before continuing. “But I, we, have nothing to hide from you.”

  “Rough sounds like an understatement.” I paused, looking at Freya silently for a moment before nodding. “…what happened?”

  “Well…” Freya sighed again as she began to speak. “Where should I start? I…”

  Freya paused and took a deep breath. “I spawned in Eberia, way back on Launch Day. First suffering through that stupid Call to Arms ceremony King Swain pulled out of his ass and like the thousands of other Adventurers, left in search of riches and glory.”

  “I started Ascend Online by myself and didn’t meet Thorne or Helix until a few days later.” Freya’s eyes had glazed over as she started to recite her story. “I joined up with a handful of Adventurers looking to explore the east and see if we could find anything interesting. You know, typical Adventurer stuff.”

  “Unfortunately though, there were close to ten thousand Adventurers doing the same thing.” Freya shook her head. “Have you ever seen those old photos of the wagon trains settling the American West? With people stretching from horizon to horizon? It practically looked like that, a massive horde of Adventurers, all heading east from the capital.”

  “In hindsight… those days weren’t too bad,” Freya mused. “Enough creatures for us to kill for food and the players hadn’t turned violent, yet.”

  “After travelling for a couple days, we made it to Coldscar, a new Eberian city being founded at the top of the ridge, near a series of natural chokepoints. I think the King plans to make it his new line of defense, should the Orcs decide to return.” Freya made a face as she spoke. “Or if the Dark Elves decide to press their claims too far.”

  “Hang on, Dark Elves?” Constantine interrupted. “Their Empire you mean?”

  Freya’s eyes flicked over to Constantine before nodding. “Yes. There have already been a few incidents near Coldscar by the time we had arrived.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked with a frown. “What sort of incidents?”

  “The kind that prel
ude war,” Thorne replied with a bitter voice. “Settlers have gone missing, a handful of villages burnt to the ground and a few dozen skirmishes against other Dark Elf players.”

  Damn. This sounds like what Graves was referring to when he said other events were keeping the Adventurer’s attention focused elsewhere.

  “They’re testing Eberia’s response,” I stated, to which Thorne simply nodded. “Would Eberia pick a new war so soon after ending the one with the Orcs?”

  “If it meant keeping Eberia unified, most definitely.” Aldwin’s voice was bitter as he spoke. “We’ve been at peace for a year and the Kingdom has practically torn itself apart. Eberia does not know how to be at peace.”

  We all paused at that uncomfortable thought. I guess a war would be great entertainment for players, and those watching us play.

  “Alright…” I said, steering the conversation back on track. “You arrived at Coldscar?”

  “I did, or should I say, my group and I did,” Freya said, picking up her story from where she had left off. “Coldscar was a very different city than Eberia, if only for the reason that they are trying to build a settlement straight from scratch, right into a major city.”

  “There were a ton of opportunities there… if you were lucky enough to get there first.” Freya said with a bitter tone to her voice. “The city needed everything, from resources to crafters, guards, and everything in between. Problem was, by the time we got there all the major resource areas had been claimed by emerging guilds and the amount of players around meant any non-guild labor was dirt cheap.”

  “So our choices boiled down to joining up with a guild and sitting on top of a mine or quarry, competing with the hundreds of Adventurers milling about the city for odd jobs, or pushing onwards towards the northwest, north or eastern frontiers.” Freya paused for a moment to lick her lips. “The overwhelming majority of players that decided to leave Coldscar chose to go east. That’s how I lost my group.”

  “They were more interested in fighting dark elves and ‘avenging’ the lost settlers and raided villages than anything else,” the blond woman stated with a shrug. “I, on the other hand, just wanted to level, work towards a Base Class and maybe find a decent set of gear. I doubted I’d find any of that heading eastwards.”

  “So I found a new group, Graves’s group, as they were getting ready to head out to the northwest.” Freya said with a sigh. “At first it seemed like he knew what he was doing. He had apparently just come through with a huge score, finding an abandoned tomb of some sort, and had earned enough money to outfit all of his friends in leather armor, not to mention looting the gear you all saw him in. He was considered a lucky leader.”

  “There were over a hundred people looking to get out of Coldscar, in addition to the thirty or so already following Graves. That was when I first met Thorne.” Freya paused to look at the ebony slab of muscle at her side. “Though we didn’t become friends until later.”

  “Once we were a day away from Coldscar, Graves put whatever plan he had in motion. We noticed anyone who was over level six had an ‘interview’ with one of his followers. What they were promised I have no idea.” Freya shook her head at a memory that we couldn’t see. “Then on the morning of our second day away from Coldscar, he told us all about the quest that he had and what our role would be in it.”

  “More than half the group was in on it, even the ones that weren’t originally part of Graves’s group. They just turned on us, almost instantly.” Freya winced as she spoke. “They beat us, terrified us. We barely had enough time to understand what was happening before it was too late.”

  “Graves told us it was a temporary thing.” Thorne spat on the ground in disgust. “Just something that we would have to suffer through until he completed his quest and then we would be free to go. First time those damned red eyes of his appeared too.”

  Freya looked a bit ashamed as she spoke. “There were so many of them, all stronger than the rest of us. What else could we do but stay in line and just wait until it was over? We couldn’t even provoke them to kill us and after a few beatings everyone just… stopped trying.”

  “Then they found us,” Helix spoke, waving his clawed hand towards a handful of distant Lizardman Adventurers. “Our race, the Arakssi, doesn’t spawn in Eberia or in any city really, but within the fens of Swyn.”

  “Unfortunately for us, Swyn was not popular for new players, as well as being too poor in resources to be worth staying,” Helix explained with a hint of frustration. “Ssso a handful of us left the fens, in search of civilization and other players. We had been traveling for many days before we crossed paths with the others…”

  “The guards nearly killed them. Stopping once Graves realized that they were players.” Freya took over for the giant Saurian, who nodded as she started to speak. “Graves and his men just… dragged them into the main body of players and kept walking.”

  “You guys didn’t fight back?” Constantine asked Helix.

  “We did!” Helix hissed angrily as he motioned to his lack of equipment. “Arakssi ssstart off poor! No weapons or armor, only our natural claws and scales.”

  “We did the best we could, but there were too many.”

  “I sought out Helix as soon as he joined the group,” Freya said, looking over to the giant lizardman. “I wanted to let him know what he had gotten himself into. Thorne found him first.”

  “Freya and I had the same idea…” The dwarf spoke nodding his head at Freya. “We wanted to make sure that Helix and the other Arakssi hoarded whatever food they still had. So that if an opportunity provided itself to be rid of Graves we could take advantage of it in the future.”

  “Food?” I asked with a confused look. “What do you mean?”

  “Graves didn’t bother to feed us and without food, our regeneration stopped.” Freya winced as she traced a line down her arm, eyes briefly lost in memory. “We wanted to be sure that Helix and his friends hoarded their food and didn’t just waste it until we could put it to use.”

  “Unfortunately, with the lack of food,” Thorne explained, “It was starting to become impossible to keep up the twelve to fourteen-hour marches Graves insisted on. We just couldn’t regenerate stamina fast enough to keep up with his pace.”

  “Graves wasn’t happy about that, he thought we were purposefully slowing him down. So he ordered his men to beat any stragglers that fell behind the rearguard. When that caused us to slow down even more, he was livid.” Freya’s expression took on a dark look. “By that point, I was so exhausted I didn’t care if I lived or died, truthfully I was hoping to die. A respawn in Eberia would have been a gift. I marched right up to Graves and told him we needed more time to rest or that he needed to start giving us food.”

  “I thought he was going to kill me with how angry he looked, those goddamn red eyes of his nearly burning a hole in my head while he stared at me.” Freya exhaled deeply, shaking the memory off. “He just looked off into the distance for a while, then told me was that he was going to ‘take care of it’ and that I shouldn’t concern myself with problems ‘beyond my station’. Then he had his guards run me off.”

  “That night, his scouts…” I saw muscles clenching in Freya’s jaw as she spoke. “Dragged a large pack of Level 7 wolves’ right into the heart of the camp. The majority of us at the time were still level 5.”

  “Shit,” Constantine swore.

  Freya nodded. “I woke up to one of them gnawing on my arm, thankfully Helix was nearby to help. But others… weren’t so lucky.”

  “Hardly anyone had the energy to fight back. Dozens were maimed, a handful were even killed by the time we rallied a large enough group to kill all the wolves. Graves really wasn’t happy about that.”

  “Hang on,” I interrupted. “Why didn’t you just log off and log back in once the group passed you? Or even reroll your character.”

  The three of them looked at me like I was an idiot.

  “I take you haven’t logged off if you’r
e asking that question…” Freya answered shaking her head. “First of all, logging off just removes your consciousness from your Avatar, you don’t just, vanish, like in other games. Your character is forever a part of this world, even when you stop playing.”

  “Shit, really?!” Constantine exclaimed, taking the words right out of my mouth. “What happens to our… Avatars when we’re gone then?”

  “The game takes over.” Thorne pointed up towards the sky. “Apparently it learns our personality as we play and creates a temporary NPC while we’re gone.”

  “That’s…” I was at a complete loss for words. All the NPCs in this world are so alive, they could be people in their own right!

  “A little terrifying?” Constantine supplied, sounding a little spooked.

  “Yeah…” My voice trailed off.

  “Persistent characters controlled by the system isn’t a new idea for online games, just not a popular one. This game just happens to be better than any before it.” Thorne shrugged as if it was an inevitable progression for games. “Either way, it’s fairly limited, and won’t involve you in any major decisions, and will do the best it can to keep you safe. You can even queue certain kinds of tasks behind that it will focus its time on while you’re away, such as crafting or building, not that we could do anything of the sort.”