Restoration: The Rise of Resurgence: Book II

by Joshua W. Nelson

  *

  We had been out in the swamps, so we rushed back to the city as fast as our summoned mounts would take us. Jenny and her group had already hit their Level 27 and were grinding away at the Goblins in the forest north of the Keep. As we traveled, Wayne sent a message to Jenny letting them know the last group had leveled and were ready to start the quest.

  As our group traveled, I received a message to my character. Unlike with normal messages, which I could choose to ignore entirely, this one was from AltCon and addressed to Alexander Stanton.

  “Did everyone just get a notification about a message from the company?”

  “I swear, if they decided to give us some of those stupid ass AltCon quests right now, I am going to be so pissed.”

  “Don’t let your blood pressure out of control until you’ve read the message, Dan. But yeah, Alex, I got one too.”

  I opened the missive and saw the following note:

  Dear Alexander,

  It has now been three months since our Resurgence Beta began, and those of us here in AltCon are overjoyed with the progress you and your teammates have been making. Because of your efforts, our team is certain that Resurgence will launch on schedule and with as few flaws as possible. You’ve shared this experience with us, and we couldn’t have asked for a better partner in the ride.

  However, many of the players in Resurgence have another partner outside of the game—spouses and significant others who are likely curious about Resurgence and what has all of these players so excited. Those of us in AltCon think it’s time for those partners to have a small taste of what they could expect if they joined in the future.

  In order to share this unique venue, AltCon is enacting a down day for all players. On November 15th, 2043, each player in a relationship may bring their partner to a prearranged AltCon location and let them feel the same exhilaration you do. Naturally, all individuals must sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement before being briefed and allowed access into the game.

  Don’t worry; for this day, Resurgence will be ratcheted down so as not to overwhelm the newbies! They will be able to shadow you as you move around in your normal gear, although they will only be able to don a starting uniform. They will be able to interact with the NPCs and see you perform crafting-type exercises and quests. There will be no killing for experience, completing of quests, and Player Vs. Player will be deactivated.

  AltCon has picked a Sunday to have this opportunity benefit the greatest number of people, but don’t be alarmed if your partner cannot attend. Another day like this will likely occur in three to six months.

  For those of you who choose not to attend or who do not have partners, you may take the day off (no deduction from your stipend will be recorded) or join your teammates with their spouses. The choice is yours.

  Once again, thank you for all of the hard work you have been putting into making Resurgence a success!

  The AltCon Management Team

  “This is excellent!” Jason said to the group.

  “Do you think James will want to see what it’s all about?”

  “For sure, Naugha. He asks me all the time, but I am never sure what I can and can’t say because of the NDA. Getting him inside the game, even for a few hours, will definitely show him how awesome it all is. I can’t wait to tell him about it tonight.”

  “I bet Tim and Gary do it, too. If they can get someone to watch their kids for the day. Maybe Jenny and I will volunteer to babysit for them.”

  “Just to be clear, we all got the same letter?” I asked and then read mine out loud.

  “Yup, with the exception of the person it was sent to. Just a mass mailer.”

  “Looks like a bunch of us get a day off then! Unless you want us to be online to really sell it for James, Alliferous.”

  “Nah, you guys definitely take the day off. I’ll be able to highlight the things I already know he will find interesting and then totally win him to my side.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Now let’s go meet up with the other groups and get this quest started.”

  *

  Tyke and his group were already waiting for us when we arrived. Jenny and our teammates were also present. All we needed now was to form the raid and activate the quest.

  “If we have any chance of passing this raid, it’s going to be with you guys. We really do appreciate you waiting for us to reach 27 before starting.”

  “It’s not a worry, Tyke. I prefer to play with people I know. And as far as this game goes, I’ve gotten to know you and your group well enough to want to play with you guys. Besides, I think we’ll have a decent setup with our different Classes.

  “For everyone’s information, Tyke is a Shaman, Lug is a Warrior, Tammer is their Enchanter, and Syphon is their Death Caster. Let’s give a quick run-down of what other Classes are here.”

  For clarity, my group all repeated their Classes, and our teammates did the same. With two Enchanters, we now had lots of crowd control, and as I reviewed the make-up, I didn’t see any reason to move people around into different groups.

  Besides, getting to know another person’s playing style on an ad hoc raid like this was not to anyone’s advantage. If we were a proper guild, and played together on larger raids all the time, we would possibly put DPS like Dan, Gary, and myself all together in one group with a healer like Tyke or Kaitlin. Then the Cleric would go with the Tanks, and the last Healer would be there to support the Casters. For now, we would stick with what we knew and rely on the Raid Leader for instructions.

  Knowing how this would play out, I was going to get pushed into the Raid Leader position, whether I liked it or not, and Jenny was right on time to start the process.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but we like to have Alex as our Raid Leader. He’s proven himself on multiple occasions with us.”

  Tyke and his group started discussing it, and I imagined part of the dialogue was about loot. I figured I should address that before it had a chance to rear its ugly head.

  “Before we even get into who will lead what, I want to have a discussion about looting. My teammates know how we do it. Need before Greed. If something drops and it is Warrior Only but tradeable, we defer to the Warrior’s first to see if they want to roll on it, and then if neither wants it, everyone can roll. I’d like to do it this way for our raid here. What do you guys think?”

  I saw Lug let out an exaggerated sigh and then looked over at Tyke.

  “Man, that is exactly what we were talking about. You never know what the loot might be, so how do you even prepare for something like divvying up the goods. At least in a guild you have a system in place. We are perfectly good with that, Alex.”

  “Excellent. And how do you feel about me being the Raid Leader?”

  “Now that we know need will overcome greed for loot, I don’t see any difference on who is the Raid Leader. You’ve got it if you want it.”

  That statement made it obvious to me that Tyke and his group didn’t understand the importance of the Chance Stat. I would decide later whether to tell him or not. If his group proved to be worth raiding with again, I probably would.

  We made our way over to Sir Arthur, and I selected the quest “Deliver the Traitor to King Kameron,” accepting the Raid Leader position. I then invited Tyke and Tim, the leaders of their groups. Lastly, I informed Arthur that we were ready to begin the quest.

  “Excellent! Meet the caravans traveling to the front at Captain Treeswain’s camp. From there you will begin the journey. Once you have captured the traitor, activate these teleportation stones, and they will take you back to Yerkich.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  I turned from summoning my mount and saw Tyke kicking at the ground.

  “What’s wrong, man?”

  “We don’t have horses.”

  “Oh. Shit.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Alright, then,” I said, getting ready to unsummon my mount. “We will go together and walk the way. But when we get back, w
e gotta see about getting you guys some mounts.”

  “Never have the money to spare.”

  As I was about to address the rest of the team, Wayne spoke up. “Easy fix, Alex.”

  We were out of the range for any of Tyke’s group to hear us, and I knew what Wayne meant. “That’s 4 Platinum, Wayne! Sure, we have the cash now, but that’s not going to always be the case.”

  “They’ll pay us back. You know they will. And come next month we will be swimming in money from the mines. I really don’t feel like taking the entire day to walk from here to the river.”

  Dan and Jason were close enough to hear the conversation I was having with Wayne, so I looked over to them for a comment. Jason simply shrugged his shoulders. “Way to go all introvert on me now, Allister. Dan?”

  “Do we have anything we need to buy?”

  “We might. At some point.”

  “This is the seller in you, isn’t it? You really don’t like giving things away.”

  “Maybe,” I admitted.

  “Then tell them you will charge them 10 percent interest on the loan. And just know that when the time comes for them to pay us back, Wayne won’t accept the interest. Everyone wins.”

  I laughed at Dan’s logic, but he was right. Even if they agreed to pay the loan back with interest, Wayne wouldn’t let us accept it. Beyond conceding to Wayne’s general altruism, my desire to avoid walking for an entire day ended up outweighing my reticence at letting go of coin, and I approached Tyke with the idea.

  *

  I had totally forgotten how funny it can be to watch someone who had never been on a horse try to maneuver around. It was even more hilarious when you saw a 350-pound, almost eight-foot Ogre try to do it. Lug had a great sense of humor, though, and he laughed right along with all of us.

  We certainly didn’t get there as fast as we could have if it was just my teammates, but we definitely got there a lot faster than we would have walking. In the end, everyone was happy about that.

  Except for me. But I’d get over it at some point.

  Tyke agreed to take the loan for four Platinum, with the understanding that they would pay it back in full plus an additional 10 percent within a reasonable timeframe. That would have made me happy if I hadn’t already been told point blank that I would never actually see that 40 Gold.

  Arriving at Captain Treeswain’s camp, I approached the Elf and asked him for directions to the caravan. He was more than ready to ramble on, but he erred by first telling me where the carts were located. I walked out of the tent as he was just getting his wind. While some people love that kind of stuff, spending hours on details like long speeches or obscure books that ultimately don’t affect the game, I prefer to get to the point, especially when the entire raid is waiting on me.

  The caravan leader, Pike, was your average looking human. His face was tanned from leading carts down the road time and again, and he seemed a bit pensive when he saw my raid party approach.

  “I don’t have funds to hire out any guards. These are the King’s goods. He’ll have his own people watching them.”

  “Pardon us, Mr. Pike. We aren’t here to act as guards. We’re here for the ‘other thing’ that is happening today.”

  Pike put his finger against his nose and winked at all of us. “Understood. You lot are going to want to be in the middle of the pack then. We’ve got seven wagons heading out to the front. I would suggest three, four, and five for our journey.”

  “How long into the ride do things normally become bad?” Wayne asked.

  “It’s been known to vary. Some days, it doesn’t happen at all. Others, they hit us as soon as the camp is out of sight. That’s why we’ve had so many troubles. We’re usually caught by surprise, even with guards.”

  “And the trip to the front, how long does that take?”

  “We get there and back in about two days.”

  When I looked back at my raid team, they all had the same expression that I was feeling internally. No way any of us wanted to burn two days sitting in the back of these stupid wagons.

  Tyke held up a canteen and said, “Here’s to an early ambush!”

  With nods all around, we headed toward the wagons assigned to us. Each group would lie in wait in the back of a separate cart and wait until the attack began before exposing themselves.

  One thing we had to keep in mind was that this quest was different from any others we had completed. We weren’t supposed to kill the final boss but capture him alive. I wanted to go over ideas with the groups and make sure we had something that resembled a plan.

  My group and I were at the front end of the wagon train, and Jenny’s group took up the rear. Since Tyke’s group was still the wild card, having only seen them in PvP, we decided to put them between us and make it easier to control the raid.

  We walked back to see Jenny and our team and to have some kind of conversation about how we wanted to implement strategy.

  “Seems pretty simple, Alex. Kill everything but that guy. Even I can figure this one out,” Gary said.

  “This from the guy that routinely has to Play Dead because he doesn’t think things through.”

  “Shut up, Tim.”

  “Love you, too.”

  I interrupted the love-fest between the two and reminded them that nothing is ever easy in Resurgence.

  While Wayne was grabbing Tyke and his group, I was watching out the side of my eye at the interaction between Dan and Kaitlin. They had started about as far away from each other as two people could be, but Dan had slowly been creeping around toward her position. When he was close enough to speak to her in a quiet voice, he finally did.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am.”

  Kaitlin looked at Dan and gave him a small, sad smile. “I know you are. I really do. And later we will talk more about this. But not now. Ok?”

  Dan nodded his head and Kaitlin walked off. Dan was just about to walk after her when Jason stopped him. I was heading toward him to do the same, but Jason got there first. And when it comes to relationship issues, probably better that advice come from someone who is in one.

  “Slow down there, Dan.”

  “Dude, I just need her to understand how bad I feel.”

  “That right there,” Jason said, twirling his finger around the spot where the conversation had just happened, “that was a win brother.”

  “You think so?”

  “Absolutely. She could have yelled at you. She could have ignored you. But she didn’t. She acknowledged your apology, said you would talk more later, and she didn’t throw a single thing at you. Win.”

  “But if I tell her…”

  “Right now she thinks you’re a bit of an immature child. You wait for her to come to you when she is ready to talk, and she will see you have the ability to be a bit of an adult as well.”

  “Shit, Allister. She told you she thought I was an immature child?”

  “No, she didn’t. That’s what I think. Just like all the other rational and intelligent people in the world. I just put her in that category.”

  “Damn. I totally walked into that one.”

  Jason smiled at Dan and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yes you did, and I wasn’t about to pass it up. But trust me on this one. Wait until she comes to you.”

  Over the last three months, the four of us had spent almost every day together. During that time, we had become as tight as a group could be. Despite the constant antics between Dan and Jason, I knew Jason would do right by our Ranger. And the same with Dan. He would bend over backwards to help Jason in any situation. I had no fear that Jason would give Dan poor advice.

  I nodded my appreciation at Jason after he finished talking to Dan and then turned to address Wayne and Tyke’s group who were now approaching from their wagon. It was time to talk strategy.

  *

  “Wait. That’s it? We just wait for you to make the call? Seems like a kinda crap plan. No offense.”

  “None taken,
Tim. And yeah, I’ve been going over this in my head over and over again, and I just can’t lay out tactics when we don’t know what the battlefield is going to look like. Are we going to get five mobs or ten? More? No one I’ve talked to here, including Pike, can give me an accurate count. When I ask how many people they’ve faced in the past, I always get the same response—too many.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  “So at this point, the most we can do is identify individual roles. We’ve got three Tanks here, so I’m open to suggestions on who should be our primary Tank and why.”

  “Naugha.”

  “Wayne. Sorry, that’s Naugha.”

  I looked at Lug and Jenny who had both identified Wayne as our primary. “No arguments from me, but you guys are sure you are ok with that.”

  “Naugha’s got better gear and more hit points than I have,” Lug said.

  “And we work better when I’m an Off-Tank,” Jenny added. “It’s something we’ve gotten very good at while Wayne was our pseudo ‘Tank for Hire’ and supporting our group.”

  “Alright. Second, our primary healer will be Allister. No arguments there. He’s our only pure healer.”

  I received nods all around at that.

  “Tammer and Slovak will be Crowd Control, and TC will act as Damage for now. If I need him to kite, I’ll call it.”

  Tammer and Tim nodded toward each other. “Let’s work out which mobs we will take. I think we should go with a simple right side or left side at this point.”

  “Works for me, Slovak. I’ll go right if you want to take left.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Perfect,” I said. “Now let’s talk about the variables here. For starters, Broham and Rocky. I want them out of the fight at the beginning. There will be too many moving pieces.”

  Dan and Kaitlin acknowledged my comment.

  “Second, we’ve got a Death Caster here. His spells are almost all Damage over Time or straight hit point stealers like my dagger’s proc. I’m fine with you going to town on everyone but the main boss, Syphon. I would hate if the mob died because a DoT kept running. Once they’re cast, you can’t cancel them, right?”