Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  “The Horizon GM job?” he asked. “Big deal. I’ve seen it a hundred times before. If you’re going to try and convince me that was you then we’re not working together. I don’t need someone lying to…”

  “Look again,” I said. “You’ve never seen the video like this.”

  Trelor watched, and his eyes grew wider and wider. His mouth fell open in astonishment. By the time the video was done he was staring at me, and then he did something unexpected. He stood and moved around his desk, then got down on the ground and started bowing over and over again.

  “I’m not worthy! I’m not worthy!”

  “Um…”

  He paused and cocked an eyebrow as he looked up at me. “Wayne’s World? A classic of late twentieth century cinema? Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it.”

  “Sorry?” I said. “I’m mostly into video games. Not movies.”

  “Kids these days,” he said with an eye roll to let me know just what he thought of my lack of sophistication when it came to classic cinema.

  “So what do you think?” I said. “Do we have a deal?”

  He sighed. “Bring them into a party with you.”

  “They already are,” I said.

  “Good. Makes this easier,” he said.

  He stroked a crystal ball filled with pink glowing mist, and a moment later a very surprised Keia and Kris appeared in the middle of the magic shop. Keia had her bow raised and was snarling at something, and Kris was covered in blood with her hammer held up in a defensive posture as she leaned back.

  Keia let loose with the arrow she’d been holding, and it slammed into a crystal ball that exploded in a puff of magic. Both of them looked around, then their eyes locked on me.

  “What the hell just happened?” Keia asked.

  “Whatever it is, thank goodness it did happen,” Kris said. “I wasn’t going to last much longer against those assholes.”

  “Having problems?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Keia said. “You weren’t where you were supposed to be luring those Horizon Dawn pricks, and we ended up having to fight off a bigger group than I was anticipating.”

  “Sorry,” I muttered. “But I was a little busy talking to Trelor the Magnificent here.”

  “Trelor the What?” Keia asked, turning and looking at the wizard.

  “Trelor the Magnificent, at your service my lady,” he said, finally standing from his desk and doing a little bow.

  “And who the fuck is Trelor the Magnificent?” Kris asked.

  “He works for Lotus,” I said, enjoying the delicious looks of disbelief that crossed their faces as I said it. “He wants our help kicking Horizon out of their game for good.”

  Naturally it took a bit of convincing after that. We ran over everything Trelor just covered with me, and by the end Keia and Kris both looked as stunned as I’d felt when first introduced to the wizard.

  “I just don’t understand,” Keia said.

  “Ask any questions you want,” Trelor said. “I’ll answer them as best I can, but as Conlan here has already learned there’s plenty of stuff outside my area that I’m not privy to.”

  “Why not shut them down?” Keia asked. “Surely what they’re doing invading the game world is violating a term of service or a clause or something?”

  Trelor shrugged. “Going into raid dungeons isn’t against the rules. PvP isn’t against the rules. Every player who got early access paid their money fair and square from their accounts. Horizon is doing something that goes against the spirit of the game, and it’s frustrating everyone in the company, but the moment we start banning players with legit accounts they’ll cry foul and Horizon will make hay out of the headlines. ‘Lotus bans users who prefer the products we allowed them to sell in our game!’ Yeah, the gaming press will have a field day with that, and you know how reasonable gamers as a population are when it comes to this sort of thing.”

  “So what the hell are we supposed to do to stop them if they’re using the system against us?” Kris asked.

  Trelor paused. A thin smile played across his face. “What they weren’t counting on was my loophole.”

  “A loophole?” Keia asked.

  “The in-game crafting system I created. A crafting system that includes things like the Spellcraft ability Conlan unlocked.”

  “And you’re going to help him use that to fuck over Horizon?” Kris asked.

  Trelor held up a hand. “I’m here to guide you, but I have to be careful how much involvement I have. If certain people in the company found out what I was doing… Well let’s just say there are certain other people in this company who want plausible deniability if I’m caught, so I’m going to do everything I can to avoid that. I hate Horizon, but I like my job, if you catch my drift.”

  That sounded very interesting. Certain people sounded like maybe there was someone higher up who wasn’t happy about Horizon messing with their game, but they were doing some underhanded stuff to get back at Horizon.

  “I don’t care what your motivations are,” I said. "You want revenge on Horizon, and I want to do anything I can to hurt them. So we're in this together."

  “Yeah,” Keia said with a sigh. “I guess we’re in this together.”

  “I go where you go,” Kris said. “Besides. What’s Horizon going to do? Sue us? Can’t get jack shit out of someone who has nothing to begin with.”

  I held a hand out. Trelor regarded that hand for a moment where I thought he might be having second thoughts about relying on a group of teenagers to enact his grand plan to bring the fight to Horizon by fighting unfair with unfair, then he reached out and took my offered hand.

  “I’m already one of the senior designers for one of the greatest videogames that’s ever been created,” he muttered as he shook my hand. “The worst that could happen is I get fired and go to another company where I’ll get a shitload more money for a quarter of the workload.”

  “Seriously?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Lotus people can write their own ticket in the industry right now. Lots of companies are scrambling to nab people with experience developing for the earbuds, but I’m not going down without a fight here.”

  "So," I said, regarding him as we shook hands. "What exactly can you tell me about Spellcrafting? Is it going to be as easy to break the game with this system as I think it is?"

  “You’re a gamer after my own heart,” Trelor said. “I can already tell I’m going to enjoy this even if I don’t get fired and get to go off to another cushy job where I can coast for the rest of my career.”

  I grinned right back at him. “Opportunities to fuck over Horizon are something money can’t buy.”

  47

  One Word: Potions

  I watched with no small sense of satisfaction as the last bit of Horizon armor disappeared in a puff of magic. I glanced over to Trelor who was leaning against his desk and staring with the same childish glee he’d been showing since I started disenchanting this stuff.

  “Sorry,” he said. “For me this is like seeing my baby take their first steps. I haven’t ever seen players do this for realsies.”

  “Glad to oblige,” I said.

  “Got any more?” Kris asked, also staring at the disenchanting magical light show with rapt attention.

  "I think that’s it,” I said, glancing at my inventory to be sure. "That’s the last of the gear that has a spell infusion I can learn. Lots of duplicates left over though.”

  “So what do we do with this giant pile of weapons?” Kris asked, looking at a pile of discards sitting against one of the walls in Trelor’s Oddments gathering dust.

  “We could destroy them," Keia said. "That's all they’re good for."

  "Can I melt them down if I take them to a forge?" I asked. “Melting down a bunch of their weapons while they watch sounds like a good time.”

  “Also a good way to get killed,” Keia muttered.

  “It’s a good idea, but I’m afraid not," Trelor said with a shake of his h
ead. “Something that's been spell infused can't be melted down. Not without explosive results."

  I frowned. I was quite familiar with the explosive results I could get from misusing this new crafting ability, but I filed away this new form of magical combustion on the off chance I might be able to make use of it later.

  "Can I sell them to you?" I asked Trelor.

  "I'm not really a fan of taking Horizon stuff," Trelor said. "But I suppose if I had to and you couldn’t think of another thing to do with them…”

  He trailed off. I got the feeling there was more to Trelor’s trailing off than a simple distaste for gear that’d been created by Horizon. Like there was an alternative we weren’t thinking of. Something like…

  "What about the Auction House?" Keia asked.

  "I… Yeah,” I said. “What about the Auction House? That was my next stop after I tried doing some armor and weapon crafting.”

  "Now you're thinking," Trelor said, putting a finger to his temple and grinning.

  “It’s perfect. They'll be so pissed off if they see you selling their gear," Keia said. "No one in Horizon Dawn is allowed to sell their gear, and they get really pissy and threaten to cut off anyone they catch reselling their stuff."

  “That sounds like a plan that’s going to have us running from more of their player killer squad,” Kris said.

  “Maybe, but they have no way of knowing we’re selling their stuff until it’s listed. We’d get the first listing for free,” Keia said.

  “They aren’t big fans of the secondhand market,” Trelor muttered. “The pricks. They tried to get us to put in some code that prevented people from reselling Horizon Syndicate items, but certain people refused.”

  “So they’ve resorted to threatening to kill anyone they do find reselling the stuff,” Keia said. “I’ve also heard stories about people getting roughed up for selling regularly crafted weapons and armor on the Auction House, as though any of that stuff is a threat to them without bonuses.”

  "Which totally doesn't matter for me since I don't want to buy their shit anyway and I'm already numero uno on their shit list," I said.

  “Exactly,” Keia said.

  “Assuming they don’t bar us from the AH the same as they barred us from the forge just because they don’t like us,” Kris helpfully pointed out.

  “You’ve got a point,” Keia said, her shoulders slumping.

  “Still. It’d be a good way to get them to pitch a fit," Trelor said. "I wish I could see the looks on their middle managers’ faces when they realize someone is reselling their stuff. The means to do it is there in the game if someone wanted to do it, but…”

  "But no one's been ballsy enough to do it so far," I said. "Well now's the time."

  The thought that no one else had the guts to try this strengthened my resolve more than anything else. Besides, I figured if I was going to get serious about leveling crafting then I was going to need some cash. Crafting wasn’t cheap in these games, and even undercutting their AH prices I figured I could clean up nicely on this stuff.

  It helped that I’d gotten all the gear I was going to be reselling for free. Well, almost free. I suppose I was out the cost of two gems, but that didn’t seem like much of a price to pay for all the loot I’d gotten in return.

  “What about all those flowers you were picking out in the forest?” Kris asked. “You said you were going to do something with those.”

  “Duh,” I said, smacking my virtual head.

  “Flowers you were picking?” Keia asked.

  “Come on,” Kris said. “You can’t tell me he wasn’t picking flowers while you were out hunting those Horizon assholes.”

  “He did a few, but not many,” she said.

  “That’s a miracle,” Kris muttered. “I had to fight off hordes of nasty starter wolves to protect his ass while he was picking some pretty yellow flowers in the starter area.”

  “You can pick those?” Keia asked.

  “You can,” I said. “And it didn’t happen quite like that. Kris was leveling her combat and I was leveling my crafting.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Kris muttered.

  “Okay, so maybe I got a little carried away with gathering when we first got into the game,” I said. “The things are still sitting in my inventory, but I was so focused on Spellcrafting that I ignored’em.”

  “Might be worth turning them into a potion,” Trelor said, his voice and face so carefully neutral that I knew he was all but screaming at me to do it.

  “I haven’t seen many player created potions on the Auction House since the game launched,” Keia said.

  “Seriously?” I asked. “Why wouldn’t someone craft potions?”

  She shrugged. “Horizon Syndicate potions were cheap, and Horizon Dawn put the screws on anyone who looked like they were getting too friendly with an potions table.”

  “Motherfuckers,” Kris muttered. “So they keep everything locked down and people aren’t able to craft stuff.”

  It was a damned shame, but at the same time I was thankful that Horizon seemed hellbent on keeping the crafting market down. It meant there was one hell of an opportunity for someone who didn’t give a shit about their power grab to try and use that market vacuum against them.

  Assuming I could figure out a way to turn that market vacuum against them without them killing me repeatedly to show me the error of my ways like they had everyone else.

  "Do you know anything about alchemy in this game?" I asked.

  “Alchemy?” he asked. “Not at all, I’m afraid.”

  I sighed and slumped. I’d figured he’d know something considering all the potions around the room, but I guess they were for decoration.

  “I decided to call it Potions instead of Alchemy. Not the most original, but I never thought Alchemy was the best description for making a bunch of potions in other games.”

  From the grin that split Trelor's face he enjoyed his little joke. I can’t say I cared for it.

  “Fine,” I said, trying not to grit my teeth. “Do you know anything about Potions?”

  "Do I?" he asked. "Look at all this glassware! I'm even willing to sell you your supplies at a discount. A slight discount, mind. I wouldn't want anyone to say I was playing favorites if any records of this conversation get subpoenaed by the wrong people, you know.”

  Which seemed to defeat the purpose of offering me a discount with a wink in the interest of avoiding awkward things showing up in any subpoenaed logs, but whatever.

  A moment later I was the proud new owner of the Crafting:Potions skill. Which included a nice little tooltip telling me I could bottle fame, brew glory and all that good stuff that came from a certain dark-haired potions master who’d gone on about that sort of thing once upon a time.

  I struck out trying to create something from the Nhewb’s Blessing petals at first, but it didn’t take long before I was creating potions left and right. Hardly surprising for some flower petals whose sole purpose seemed to be giving noob potion makers something to work on.

  I got into a groove, and it wasn’t long before all the flowers had been converted into potions that glowed a faint yellow as I held them up for an inspection.

  “That’s the last one,” I said, leaning against the potions table and taking a deep breath as I looked at my handiwork. I felt really tired, for all that I’d just been crafting. It’s not like I’d been in the middle of combat or something, but I guess crafting could really take it out of you in this game.

  “It’s about time,” Kris muttered.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The only thing more boring than watching you pick all those flower petals is watching you turning them into potions,” she said.

  “But I wasn’t even at it for that long,” I said. “Sure there were a few failures at the beginning, but…”

  “Look at your clock,” Keia said.

  I did. I was surprised to realize that I’d been standing over Trelor’s potions table for the past ho
ur creating these Nhewb’s Blessing potions. Damn.

  “I guess I got a little too into the zone making these,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” Keia said, leaning in to kiss me on the cheek. “It’s cute when you get all distracted with work.”

  “Yeah, well now it’s time to see what the potion does,” I said.

  “Wait, you can’t tell what the potion you just made did?” Kris asked.

  “Nope,” I replied. “Like I said, I was in the zone making them. Now it’s time to see what I’ve come up with!”

  I inspected the potion and a tooltip came up.

  Refined Nhewb’s Blessing.

  Bonuses:????

  Give it a sip and hope you don’t die!

  “Looks like the game wants me to test it out to figure out what the fuck it does,” I said. “There’s also a cryptic note about the thing maybe killing me.”

  The three of us turned to look at Trelor. He held his hands up.

  “I said I was gonna help you out with suggestions, but I’m not giving away what stuff does,” he said. “You have to learn this one on your own.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” I said as I pulled a stopper off the glowing yellow potion and downed it. It’s not like eating the flower petal had killed me, after all.

  “Conlan!” Keia shouted, sounding like she was seriously worried for me.

  It probably didn’t help that I immediately dropped the potion bottle which obligingly shattered on the floor. I put a hand to my neck as though I was choking and started making gurgling noises. I didn’t fall to my knees. It would’ve really sold what I was doing, but I didn’t want any of those glass shards I’d just created to get embedded in my knees.

  Even with the pain slider turned down that seemed like the kind of thing that’d hurt like a motherfucker.

  “Conlan!” Keia shouted again. “What did you do to him?”

  She hit Trelor with a glare, and then her bow and arrow materialized in her hands and she pointed it at him.

  “Save him,” she said.