Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  “That’s helpful,” I muttered, pushing the thoughts of tweakers and what they might do to some kid they caught out all alone out of my head. “And fucking creepy.”

  I didn’t think something I found in a starter area would kill me, but stranger things had happened in games. Sure most asshole game design had gone out the door along with the first death of the adventure game genre in the early 1990s, but there were devs who grew up on those games, fondly remembered how they hurt players so good, and tossed in the occasional reminder for the kids these days.

  “What’s wrong?” Kris asked.

  I jumped and looked up. Kris was supposed to be in the forest, but instead she was right there staring down at me wiggling her eyebrows. She knew she’d startled me, and if her grin was anything to go by she was loving the fuck out of it.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be fighting wolves in the forest?” I asked.

  Though come to think of it I hadn’t heard her calling out to those wolves for the past couple of minutes. I probably should’ve been paying more attention to that considering her silence could’ve meant our buddies Kravos and Gregor had returned to dance with us again.

  “I don’t think they spawn this close to the edge of the forest,” she said. “That or they only come at you when you’re brand new to the game or something. I don’t know. I’m not a scenario designer for Lotus.”

  “Probably a good thing you aren’t,” I said.

  “Whatever,” she said. “I can’t find any wolf heads to bash, so that means I can come out here and bother you again! We both win!”

  “For certain definitions of winning,” I muttered.

  “Stop grousing,” she said. “So what’s the problem?”

  “If I want to find out what this flower does I have to eat it,” I said. “And I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  Kris laughed. Her shoulders shook and tears streamed down her face. I thought she was overdoing it, but she seemed to be enjoying herself so I figured I’d let her have her fun. She’d been such a good sport about keeping those wolves off me while I was picking the damn flowers in the first place, so I owed her this.

  “Fun little profession you picked there,” she said. “I'm not sure I'd go eating random stuff either. Those flowers are probably covered in wolf shit, and who knows who they ate before shitting them out.”

  I rolled my eyes. Something told me Kris wouldn’t be all that unhappy to see me die the game equivalent of a painful death, or at least deal with some painful side effects, as payback for all her precious time I’d just “wasted” picking these flowers.

  That also got my back up. If she was going to be an ass about this then I was going to show her, damn it.

  “I’ll show you,” I muttered.

  I focused my mind on one of the stacks. It brightened and then I held a petal in my hand as though by magic. Which it sort of was, in a virtual reality sort of way.

  I stared at the petals. Most games had a mechanic where you figured out whether or not something was useful, at least when it came to brewing potions, by tasting it. So it’s not like this was all that different. Not to mention the game had been pretty forward about telling me what the fuck I needed to do with that cheesy line about putting it in my mouth and seeing how it felt.

  I shivered as I thought of a few times when I’d heard something similar from some of the tweakers. The less I thought about that the better.

  I weighed my possible death from eating these flowers against Kris’s annoying but reasonable warning about eating random things I found in the game world.

  Sure there was a chance it could be a negative experience, but once again I was putting faith, perhaps a bit misguided, in the hope that the developers wouldn’t put something too dangerous in a starter zone, and certainly not in an item that was clearly designed for new players to find.

  Not to mention there was more than a little annoyance at Kris and her attitude that was pushing me at this point. Once that happened there was nothing that would stop me.

  I put the petal in my mouth and chewed. I figured the negative consequences, if there were any, shouldn’t be too bad if I just ate the one petal. I hoped.

  I swallowed. And for a wonder I felt invigorated. I felt like I could go through this entire forest with my starter sword and kill the fuck out of every wolf that dared to get in my way in a convenient one-at-a-time routine.

  Along with that feeling of invincibility came another popup.

  Nhewb’s Blessing: The goddess Nhewb, patron of those starting out on a journey or those who are too new to something to realize how little they know, has blessed you with a bonus to attack, health, and defense. The effect lasts for 0.5 hours. Try not to be in the middle of combat with something too dangerous when it wears off, noob.

  I couldn't help but smile at that tooltip. Someone in the dev team had obviously had fun writing that. Sure they were also insulting me, but for the bonus stats I was seeing I’d take some insults.

  “How ‘bout that,” I said.

  “What?” Kris asked.

  “This little flower petal gives a nice little bonus to everything when you chow down on it,” I said. I looked up at her with a smug smile. She might not be into crafting, but she certainly spoke the language of combat bonuses.

  “Seriously?” Kris asked, looking down the trail we’d just blazed like she was thinking about going back to get some flower petals of her own. “Fuck! Would’ve been nice to have that while I was fighting off those wolves.”

  “Yeah, but then you would’ve had to eat a flower covered in wolf shit,” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather risk becoming wolf shit than do that?”

  “Shut up and let me try one of those,” Kris said.

  “You sure?” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to lose your lunch smelling wolf shit or anything.”

  “Yes I’m sure,” she said, rolling her eyes.

  I looked into my inventory again and stared at one of the flower petals until it came into my hand. I held it up and Kris tried to snatch it out of my hands, but I was faster than her and pulled it back before she could get the goods.

  “What the fuck Conlan?”

  “What do you say?”

  She muttered something under her breath too low for me to catch.

  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t quite hear that,” I said. “Could you maybe say it a little louder?”

  I got an idea. I thought about recording something happening in the game the same as I would if we were in a Horizon module and sure enough a little icon came up that told me everything was now being added to my personal recording folder.

  “I said you were right and I was wrong,” Kris growled. “Happy?”

  I thought about the recording stopping and it dutifully did so. Then I thought about it playing and it appeared over my shoulder, which had been how it worked in Horizon modules. I guess those controls weren’t a Horizon thing so much as they were built in Lotus controls that Horizon had adapted.

  I should’ve known considering how well they worked compared to everything else I’d seen in the Horizon modules.

  “Maybe,” I said, handing her the petal as her face darkened while she watched the recording of her apology. “Chew it and tell me what happens.”

  “I’m going to get you for this,” she growled.

  “You’re talking like someone who doesn’t want any more of my magical bonus flowers,” I said.

  Kris eyed the petal suspiciously, then stuffed it in her mouth. She chewed slowly at first, but her jaw picked up speed as the effect hit. Her eyes went wide, and her glare disappeared.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed. “Are they really giving us that kind of bonus?”

  “And you said it was a waste of time for me to go picking flowers,” I said.

  “I still think it’s a waste of time, usually, but it paid off this time,” Kris said. “You got lucky.”

  I shook my head and sighed. That was about what I’d expected, but at least she could appreciate w
hat we’d found.

  “Yeah, well we’ll see what tune you’re singing when you want one of these from me before we go leveling,” I said.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” she said. “I could always go out into the forest and collect them myself.”

  I hit her with a look that said we both knew there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell she was going to do that. Even for a bonus like this.

  The bonus was pretty amazing. I could still remember a time when I was playing on a classic World of Warcraft pirate server that ran on a Lich King build. That was one of the more popular options for pirate builds since it was considered by most of the ancients still playing to be the pinnacle of the game.

  I’d started a new priest, which wasn’t exactly a class known for its combat prowess. Especially at lower levels. Some joker had gone and killed Onyxia because there were still some geezers on those pirate servers reliving their college days in the early ‘00s.

  Those types never ceased to be amazed and amused that they could kill vanilla raid bosses all by their lonesome. Especially considering they used to have to walk uphill in the snow both ways to even collect the reagents to allow them to successfully enter the raid instance with thirty-nine of their best buddies to hear them tell the story.

  The point is I happened to be in the capital city when the dragon’s blessing hit. Sure it was an old buff, but it still checked out. And for the short time I had the dragon’s blessing on my new priest character I could one shot anything with my puny hammer, which was impressive considering priests didn’t have any physical attacks.

  It lasted until I got to about level ten. Which I did in record time thanks to that blessing. I wasn't going to sneeze at any bonus that gave us a leg up in this new world. Especially not a bonus that seemed that good.

  Admittedly I didn’t know enough about how the game’s mechanics worked, practically speaking, to know whether or not this was as good as it seemed. Still, it was an exciting discovery. I wondered if anyone else knew about this.

  And not knowing how well this worked practically wasn’t going to stop me from lording my discovery over Kris.

  “Admit it,” I said. “I found something pretty fucking impressive. This is going to make leveling a breeze.”

  Kris rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Can we finally go into town now?”

  I tapped my finger against my chin as though I was thinking about it, then grinned when Kris looked like she was about to pull out that two handed hammer and see whether or not PvP was enabled in this area.

  Given the way those two assholes had been threatening us earlier I figured the answer to that was a definite yes, and I wasn’t in the mood to feel that hammer slamming into my skull. Not when I’d seen what the thing did to any wolf skulls it came in contact with.

  “Yeah, I think it’s time to get a move on,” I said. “We’ve been spending way too much fucking time killing wolves and picking flowers anyway.”

  Not that I really thought we’d been wasting our time. I had a familiar tingling running along my scalp that told me I was onto something here. That these flowers were the first step towards figuring out how to break the game.

  “Great,” Kris said, turning towards Nilbog. It’d still be a walk to get there.

  “Come on,” I said. “At least we won’t have to worry about any more rabid wolves coming at us while we’re walking through cultivated fields.”

  “Yeah, but we might have to worry about those assholes finding us,” Kris said.

  I sighed. Kris had a point. What we were about to find in this town might be way worse than anything we’d faced in the woods, but this was the nearest town so I figured we didn’t have much choice.

  “Come on,” I said. “There’s only one way to find out. Besides, something tells me trying to find the next nearest town is only going to get our asses killed as we stumble through some really scary shit out there in wilds filled with scary monsters.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Kris said.

  So we stepped out into the fields surrounding the town that I hoped would be our base of operations as we took our first steps into this brave new gaming world. Assuming it wasn’t already overrun with so many Horizon Dawn assholes that we could make it our home away from home in this digital world.

  18

  NPCs

  I stopped and stared at the entrance. The thing was fucking impressive.

  I mean the wall itself around Nilbog wasn’t all that impressive. In fact it was downright sad. We’re talking it wouldn’t be difficult for an army of level one bunnies to invade the place, let alone defending from some of the monsters that were no doubt lurking in the wilds around the town.

  Not that it was likely any of those monsters would leave their pathing out in the wilds to come in here and start some trouble, but you never knew.

  There was a massive keep that dominated the town from the center where presumably players and NPCs could retreat to if any monsters did come calling, but even that wasn’t the most impressive thing. Even if I found myself wondering what it would feel like to live in a place like that.

  No, the amazing thing was how realistic everything looked and felt. I was getting an overwhelming feeling of awe all over again. Seeing the forest had been amazing, but seeing a living and breathing town with players and NPCs moving around and interacting and not being able to tell the difference?

  That was something else.

  “Keep it moving,” a goblin guard said, waving her hand in a half-assed gesture and a bored tone that made it clear she could’ve used a more mentally stimulating job.

  Huh. That was interesting. Those assholes in the forest had been talking like they owned this town, but the guards were goblins? There was something to that, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what that something was.

  “I think he’s talking to us,” Kris said.

  I started. I’d been busy looking around at the “small town” that really felt more like a small city now that we were getting a look up close. I took a deep breath.

  “What are you doing?” Kris asked. “Didn’t you see the guard telling us to move it?”

  “We’re players and that guard is an NPC,” I said. “What she wants doesn’t matter. Now take a deep breath and tell me what you smell.”

  Though I felt a little bad for saying that what the goblin NPC wanted didn’t matter. After that experience with the goblin in the forest I was having second thoughts about just how expendable the goblins were. Especially if those Horizon Dawn assholes were treating those goblins like expendable assets.

  Kris obliged, but she took a deep breath with her mouth rather than her nose. Her eyes started watering and she stuck her tongue out and tried to paw at it with her hands.

  “Oh fuck!” she shouted. “I can fucking taste it! What the fuck is that?”

  “That’s the smell of a town in a fantasy world that doesn’t have modern sanitation,” I said. “At least it’s what the developers think a fantasy town that doesn’t have modern sanitation is supposed to smell like.”

  Smell. It was so simple, but it was literally a game changer. It hit me with all the force of slamming into a brick wall of stench.

  “It smells like a barn on one of the agro levels we visited for a field trip back in elementary school,” Kris said. “Talk about a memory that’s never going to leave me.”

  I nodded and took another deep breath, for all that it was a breath that had my eyes watering too.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, clapping her on the back. “You’ll get used to the smell soon enough.”

  “Says you,” Kris said. “What if this doesn’t work the same in the game as it does in the real world? What if whatever it is that makes us forget a smell isn’t the same here? Maybe they got that wrong and we’re going to be stuck smelling shit for all of eternity.”

  “You’re crazy,” I said.

  “Crazy because I have to smell this literal shitstorm in my nose,” Kris said.

 
; I laughed as we walked on under the irritated watchful gaze of the guard we’d ignored. Not that I gave two fucks about the opinions of an NPC whose sole reason for existing was directing being a glorified in-game traffic cop.

  And it wasn’t that I didn’t give a shit about what he thought because she was an NPC. I didn’t give a shit because of the whole glorified traffic cop thing. There was a subtle but important distinction there.

  Kris was right. The smell was going to be a problem if it didn’t fade over time. Heck, even if it did fade over time it was still a stink I could’ve done without. I wondered if there was a way to take care of that, and a window popped up that had all sorts of options for how sensitive I wanted my various senses to be.

  Interestingly there was an option to turn down pain that seemed ominous, but for the moment I settled on turning down the scent just a touch. I had a sinking feeling that pain toggle was going to come in handy soon enough though.

  I figured telling Kris about that feature could wait, though. Letting her suffer for a little while seemed like a good joke.

  Though the smell would’ve been quickly forgotten regardless. I was busy feeling like I’d just stepped out of my sepia-toned home in Kansas into the technicolor virtual reality wonderland surrounding us. Sure there were also legs sticking out from under my house which, in this tortured metaphor that’s about to be put out of its misery, was the stench of manure or whatever the fuck kind of shit that was.

  Everything was so real. I’d expected some cue, some pixelation, some glitching here and there, that would tip off my brain that I was in a video game, but there was none of that.

  A cart pulled by a giant lizard creature that owed a little of its design to ancient lizardy dinosaur art back before paleontologists started discovering feather imprints in fossil beds rolled bye. The thing trumpeted as it shook its head and snorted. Mud splatted as the cart kicked it up under the wagon spokes, and I could even hear wood creaking as it rolled along.