An even louder noise overhead drew my attention. A massive airship floated above us, though I couldn’t tell how the thing was floating up there. I couldn’t even get a good look from down on the street level since houses blocked most of the view, though it looked like a wood ship with poles sticking out of it at intervals holding up glowing gems. It had to be magic of some sort, obviously, since there were no steampunk elements like massive propellers or a balloon holding it in the air.
I wanted to get on that thing and figure out how it worked. It looked massive flying low over the city. The thing looked to be made entirely of wood, and I imagined standing on the prow of one of those beauties watching the game world laid out before me as I thrust my hands out and declared that I was the king of the world.
Now that would be living the life in this game! Even if I would be far from the king of this world considering that was probably just a convenient method of transport taking people between various towns across the world and not something that could be created, owned, and weaponized by players.
Still, a guy could dream.
“Damn,” Kris said.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore?” I asked.
“Kansas isn’t in Kansas anymore after the supercell outbreak of…”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said.
“I’m just saying,” Kris said. “But this place is amazing. Like I thought they did up the starting area to impress us, but it’s all like this!”
“Yup,” I said, taking in the sights and listening to the sounds and trying my best to ignore some of the interesting smells that were breaking through even though I’d turned that slider down.
I didn’t want to think about how bad it’d be if I hadn’t discovered that sensory slider.
NPCs moved all around us, and a good chunk of those NPCs weren’t human. No, they looked an awful lot like the goblin we’d saved in the forest, though technically it’d been that disembodied girl who’d done the saving. There was a wide variety of the half-sized green creatures walking around. Old. Young. Women. Men.
“This place is full of goblins,” Kris said.
“Yup,” I said. “How ‘bout that? Goblins in a goblin town. I bet you’d be surprised to find Japanese people when you visited Japan, too.”
“I would be surprised to find Japanese people in Japan considering how overrun it’s been by thirsty white dudes going on spirit quests to find their Japanese waifus while teaching ESL,” Kris said.
I snorted at that. Which drew the attention of an old goblin woman carrying a basket of withered apples. She glared at us like she didn’t care for me randomly laughing. Weird.
“What’s your problem lady?” Kris asked.
“Be nice to the lady,” I said.
Kris looked at me like I was an alien who’d come down from another world to announce they came in peace or something.
“Why should I be nice to the lady?” she asked. “She’s just an NPC.”
“Yeah, but that’s how those Horizon Dawn assholes are treating these goblins,” I said. “Do you want to be no better than some assfuck with the Horizon name plastered all over them?”
Kris was still looking at me like I was just a touch crazy, but she shook her head.
“Whatever,” she said, turning back to the goblin and smiling the sort of strained smile that was usually the domain of fathers who realized their daughter had just brought a tweaker home for dinner.
“Is there something wrong ma’am?” she asked.
“Terrible crop this year with the frost, and now all these newcomers making their way through town causing trouble,” she muttered loud enough to be heard.
“Better get used to the newcomers,” I said. “There’s gonna be a lot more coming here soon enough.”
If the old goblin had a problem with the newcomers who’d entered her world during early access then she was really going to have issues now that the game was open to anyone who could afford it.
Sure the game world was gigantic. Literally several times the size of earth which they could get away with since this was a video game with arbitrary physical constants and not a large rocky planet in the real world that would start to become a gas giant that couldn’t sustain life as we knew it if it was this size.
Yeah, the floodgates were open now, and I would’ve bet good money I didn’t have that there was going to be an influx of players that stretched the limits of this world’s capacity, even if this area wasn’t going to get hit with everyone at once like with older MMO launches. Even the region based nature of how people were dumped into the game wasn’t going to affect things too much since the whole world was dotted with arcologies that each held more people than some of the largest metro areas had held back when humanity had still been building urban sprawl horizontally rather than vertically.
The goblin puckered her lips and glared at us, then walked off muttering about newcomers and how the last thing they needed was more strangers coming into the world.
“She’s going to have a bad time if she doesn’t like strangers,” Kris said. “Weird that she would be so against player characters though.”
“Seems like the early access people were assholes,” I said. “They’ve had a month to run around and cause trouble.”
“I guess you have a point there,” Kris said. “If they treat all the goblins like they did that poor little bastard running through the forest I can see why they’re pissy at the thought of more players.”
I thought about Rezzik running through the forest terrified for his life. “That also means they’ve had a month to get themselves established. Sounds like it’s not established in a good way if the locals are complaining.”
“Yup,” Kris said. “Here’s hoping we don’t get the stinkeye from every NPC we run into because all the early access people were assholes.”
I decided to try something. I was so used to games where the NPCs walked past saying the same thing over and over again that I wanted to test Lotus. See if the AI in this simulation really was everything they’d been promising. Sure everything looked impressive so far, but the game world would still get pretty boring if all the NPCs had the same old canned responses.
The last thing I needed was the Lotus equivalent of an NPC being a smug asshole about how often I visited the Cloud District.
Quite often Nazeem, thank you very much. I’m the thane and the Dragonborn and way richer than you could ever hope to be with an entourage of deadly followers, summoned demons, and armor literally made out of the terrifying flying lizard creatures that have you running in terror, and you want to get smug with me?
I took a deep breath. Emulating Skyrim was a rite of passage for gamers these days since it still held up with mods and it was free, and I still had some issues with some of the old dialogue that smartass modders left in out of a sense of “tradition.” Right now I needed to forget Nazeem and focus on this new NPC.
“Hey! Old woman!”
“Man,” Kris said.
I turned to her. “What?”
“Man. Her name is Dennis,” Kris said with a wiggle of her eyebrows.
I rolled my eyes. “Are you fucking serious?”
“I’m totally serious,” Kris said with another eyebrow wiggle. “And we can talk about the first part if you buy a girl a drink.”
I gave Kris a shove. We both knew that wasn’t happening for a variety of reasons, the least of which being I had the wrong equipment. The old goblin woman looked between us like we were crazy. I wanted to test her reactions, though, and this was a perfect opportunity.
So I stuck my tongue out at her. To my puerile delight her face screwed up in confusion. As though she was trying to decide whether or not I’d just insulted her. Maybe the raspberry wasn't a universal insult in this particular fantasy world.
“I don’t think she knows what you’re doing,” Kris said.
“I really hope this isn’t one of those settings where the creators came up with their own set of lame substitute swear words
and rude gestures,” I said.
“Fucking idiots,” the old woman grumbled.
I grinned. Those words seemed to mean the same thing in the game world as they did in the real world, at least.
“So your first action in this game is to pick a bunch of flowers, and your second action is to stick your tongue out at some poor old goblin woman who can’t defend herself?” Kris asked.
“Did you have a better idea?”
Kris rolled her eyes, but I didn’t care. Besides, what was the point of a video game if I didn’t screw around with the game world just a little? Wasn’t the whole point to have fun?
My idea of fun was figuring out what made a game tick by pushing at the edges, and then thoroughly breaking it. I figured I was just getting started, even if picking some flowers and insulting an old goblin woman was hardly an auspicious start.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s see what there is to see in some of the more well traveled parts of town. We might even visit the Cloud District equivalent.”
“Fucking Nazeem,” Kris muttered under her breath.
19
Trouble Brewing
We kept walking until we hit a main thoroughfare. It was a wider road, at least, though it looked like we were still in the medieval fantasy equivalent of housing.
“I wonder if this is player housing or NPC stuff,” I said.
“No clue,” Kris said. “We could break into a couple of places and see what the guards have to say about it.”
I found myself actually considering it even though it was a terrible idea. The sun was overhead, after all, and if my experience in other video games had taught me anything, it was that breaking into houses in broad daylight wasn’t a great idea.
Even if it would provide me with a lot of information about the game. I figured it was also a good way to gather a lot of information about just how pointy some of the guard’s weapons were, and how sensitive the pain tolerances were with that slider turned down.
“I have a feeling we’re playing with fire if we do something like that in the middle of the day,” I said.
“Maybe, but maybe not,” Kris said, her finger idly running up and down the length of her starter hammer. Like she was calculating how much force she’d have to apply to one of those flimsy doors to really fuck them up.
“You can’t seriously be considering this,” I said.
“I mean maybe?” she said. “This game is supposed to be a playground for us. So why not have some fun and push at the edges? I thought that’s the kind of shit you liked doing?”
“Yeah, but I also don’t like the idea of being turned into a pincushion,” I said. “If we’re gonna do something like that we should at least wait for night.”
Not that I thought it was a great idea even after dark. I wanted to get a feel for this town before we went breaking in-game laws. Not to mention there was still that nagging voice telling me that treating the very realistic NPCs like they were props in an amusement park was wrong considering how lifelike they were.
That nagging voice was going to push me into doing something very stupid if it kept up.
“Come on,” I said, eager to get a move on before Kris followed through on the high impact lock picking method she was thinking of pioneering. “You were never big on stealth characters to begin with. Even if you manage to get in you’re going to draw the attention of every guard between here and the other edge of town. Especially next to a main road like this.”
“You’re right,” Kris said. “So what are we going to do?”
“Check out the town,” I said. “See what there is to see. Not break anything or break into anything until we have a better idea of what the consequences are for doing something like that.”
“And hope we don’t run into those assholes again,” Kris muttered. “They’re out there somewhere.”
I worried about that, but it didn’t bother me too much as I stared at our impressive surroundings. I was still in that stage a lot of people went through when they're looking at an impressive new videogame on impressive new hardware for the first time. The stage where just about any shovelware would sell as long as it was a suitable showcase for the fancy new hardware’s capabilities.
Basically what Horizon had been doing with their Lotus modules for the past year or so since the hardware launched without a first party AAA title to draw people in. Though to be fair Lotus Online was way more than a pretty hardware demonstration.
Looking around also saddened me just a little, because as I looked at the digital world around me I knew this would be the last time I ever looked at a new game being generated by a new piece of hardware with that sense of awe and astonishment.
They'd made this look so close to reality that there was no way I was ever going to find something that rivaled this experience. Humanity had finally peaked in terms of the game graphics arms race.
I stepped onto the main thoroughfare and followed the noise. I figured where there was noise there’d be players, and as we walked on more and more players appeared around us.
Yeah, there was definitely something interesting up ahead.
Occasionally an airship would buzz overhead and drown out the noise from the crowd, but it wasn’t all that difficult to follow my ears even with those things floating overhead making an odd hum that wasn’t quite the same as an old prop airplane, but similar enough that it was evocative of old images from the first couple of world wars.
Some sound design person probably took the sound of an old prop plane and warped it just enough that it sounded similar without being a straight copy and paste.
“Boy I’d like to have on of those babies,” Kris said, looking at the latest one flying overhead.
We passed by a small park with the remains of a statue in the center. I couldn’t make out what the statue had been, but clearly someone had been busy vandalizing the local monuments.
Not that I gave that much thought. No, the park and the break in the buildings it provided meant I could see a massive tower off in the distance that was surrounded by a couple of those airships. They seemed to be arriving and leaving on a pretty regular schedule, and I figured that meant they were exactly what they seemed: transport to other parts of the game world.
It was nice to know we could get the hell out of this place if it turned out those assholes were more than we could handle. Not that I was too worried.
“I wouldn’t mind having one of those either,” I said. “Can you imagine hunting someone down on one of thoe babies?”
“I can,” Kris said, in a tone that said she was imagining it right now. “But it’s not like we’re gonna be able to do anything like that.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“They’re not gonna give players flying ships like that.”
“I don’t know,” I said, staring longingly at the tower. This game seemed to give players a lot of leeway to play how they wanted. Sure I didn’t know much about the crafting system yet, but what I’d seen so far was encouraging.
Maybe I’d be able to tool around on my own badass airship someday, even if that day wasn’t today.
“Let’s go towards the noise,” I said, tearing my eyes away from the airship tower.
“Good idea,” Kris muttered. “Let’s get closer to a crowd that probably has some of those Horizon assholes in it. Maybe they even took screenshots or videos of us so everyone in their guild knows who they’re supposed to kill on sight.”
I frowned. I hadn’t thought of that, but considering how easy it was for me to take a video of Kris she had a point.
“Whatever,” I growled. “We can’t live our in-game lives in fear of those pricks.”
It didn’t take long to find the source of that noise, and it was enough to take my breath away all over again, for all that I’d been having a lot of breathtaking moments lately. Apparently Kris agreed judging by the way she stared with her mouth hanging open.
“You’re gonna catch flies with that thing,” I s
aid.
“Damn,” Kris breathed.
“Damn is right,” I said.
We stood on the edge of a wide circle. Like we’re talking most video games ran condensed worlds when it came to towns and housing and shops to save on processing power and on travel time for players who weren’t interested in traversing a real world in realtime, but that wasn’t the case here. This place was just as massive as it would’ve been if it were built up in the real world over years.
Shops ran around the outer edge of the circle leading around to closed gates that barred entrance to the massive keep, and a fountain sat in the middle spraying clear water into the sunlight and creating a small mist and a few rainbows. The statue on top of the fountain was epic. It depicted an armored human warrior holding a sword overhead that was about to bring the hurt down on a goblin.
Though this goblin looked very different from the goblin we’d seen in the forest earlier. It also looked very different from the goblins going about their business in the town circle. The one in the stone carving looked far more threatening than any goblin I’d seen. Its teeth were bared in a nasty snarl, and its clawed hands gripped a barbed sword that looked like it could do some damage.
Assuming it was in a fight against anything other than a human in plate armor that’d clearly gotten it down on the ground and was ready to bring the hurt, that is.
Also? There was something very off about the whole thing. Like the stone for the statue wasn’t the same color as the rest of the fountain.
Weird. Had someone been fucking with the stonework around here?
“Now that’s interesting,” I said.
“What? Looks like a big statue,” Kris said. “They have them all over the place in games like this. Art departments love that shit because they can do the old control c control v shuffle to sprinkle’em around the place.”
“Yeah, but that goblin doesn’t look anything like the live ones,” I said. “Unless these things have bigger scarier siblings that live out in the forest.”
Spellcraft Page 13