Farmer

by Tom Larcombe

  Dagger first, he thought. Buy proficiency short blades.

  Success:

  Weapon Proficiency Short Blades added (skill Dual Wield may be selected at skill level 5 or higher in Short Blades)

  Dual Wield? he thought. I bet you can use Short Swords for that also, that makes my other choice easier.

  Buy proficiency Short Swords, he thought.

  Success:

  Weapon Proficiency Short Swords added (specialization in Dual Wield may be selected at skill level 5 or higher in Short Swords)

  There, now all I need to do is get a sword and dagger and I'll be set. I've still got the staves skill so if I lose my weapons I can find a stick and still be half decent fighting with that.

  Let's see how it looks now, he thought. Character Sheet.

  Edward Hunter

  Human Male

  Level: 3

  Class:Warrior (Ranger)

  Strength:10

  Intelligence: 10

  Agility: 20

  Wisdom: 13

  Heartiness: 12

  Charisma: 10

  Willpower: 12

  Health: 51

  Endurance: 11

  Mana: 52

  Luck: 14 (15)

  Stamina:120

  Experience:

  5347/8000

  Base Attack: 10

  Base Armor: 10 (32)

  +1 attack melee (str)

  +18 armor (studded leather)

  +4 attack ranged (agi)

  +4 armor (agility)

  Skills:

  General:

  Animal Friendship: 1

  Animal Handling: 1

  Animal Husbandry: 1

  Bowyer/Fletcher: 2 (+2 to checks)

  Carpentry: 5

  Cooking: 8

  Evaluate: 3

  Farming: 2

  Fire Building: 1

  Herbalism: 2

  Hunting: 3

  Tracking: 3

  Weather Sense: 1

  Weaving: 3

  Improvisation: 1

  Combat:

  Bows: 1

  Staves: 1

  Small Blades: 1

  Short Swords: 1

  Magical:

  N/A

  Looking better, he thought. Now I just need to bump my stats some more. I hate leaving any of them at average, especially charisma with my current plans.

  By this point it was full dark out and he considered simply staying in his room at the new bunkhouse. He was sitting in it now. He'd been sitting on the edge of his bed while he worked out his character. Tiana was inside the bunkhouse though, waiting for him.

  The building was designed with sitting rooms in front and back, all the rooms off a hallway between the two. The back one had the fireplace she'd created and she was sitting in front of a roaring fire that Eddie had built, occasionally tossing a fresh log on to keep it burning.

  He'd love to stay here, but was pretty sure that Tiana would prefer to return to the farmhouse where she had her own room. He sighed heavily, thinking of how much he'd like to offer to share his room with her. He knew that he didn't have the guts for that though, not right now, and even if he did he was pretty sure that she'd turn him down.

  Maybe not in a few more days though, he thought. She's been getting more relaxed with me right along, so unless she's tossing me into the friend zone and that's why she's relaxed, there is hope. All I need to do is work up the courage to ask once I think she's ready. The worst thing that happens is she says no, right?

  He shook his head, then left his room and walked towards the fireplace. She'd done a fine job with it and it had a good draw to help keep the fire going. There were benches lining the walls and another one right in front of the fireplace that she was sitting on.

  “So, ready to head back to the farmhouse?” he asked.

  “Yeah, a while ago even. What took so long?”

  He grinned at her.

  “When I checked my notifications from today I found out that I'd leveled due to a quest. I was tweaking my character.”

  “Congratulations then. What are you, level three now?”

  He nodded.

  “Plus I finally filled out my weapon proficiencies. I never got to choose those at my start like most do.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “Remember, you aren't supposed to talk about that.”

  “I refuse to not talk about something that leaves me looking like a fool if I don't address it. So now I've got bows, staves, small blades, and short swords. Maybe not the best assortment, but I think it'll do well.”

  She smiled.

  “Yeah, let's head back to the farmhouse. I let Lucky out the back door a little while ago, she was whining and scratching, so...”

  Eddie stood and walked towards the door. As soon as he put his hand on it, he paused.

  “There's something out there,” he said. “I think I'm picking up something from Lucky. She wants to pounce on it, but is worried it might be too much for her.”

  “All that from her?”

  “It's new, and I might be imagining it, but...”

  He quickly grabbed his bow and nocked an arrow. Then he threw the door open and stepped outside.

  “Lucky, go get 'em,” he called out.

  He heard a snarl from around the side of the building and ran that way. When he turned the corner he saw a single humanoid holding a torch. It was short, between four and five feet, and if the torch light wasn't making him see things, it was a solid shade of green all over.

  The creature was doing almost the exact same thing Sombra had tried the other night, holding a torch to the wood of the building. Unfortunately for the goblin, it wasn't too bright since it was holding the torch to one of the shower stalls, which had seen extensive use once the players found out about them, and was now very wet.

  Lucky darted in and bit at its leg. She missed her bite, but as she continued by she whipped one of her claws along the back of its leg. The goblin dropped the torch and pulled out a sword similar to the ones Karl had bought. He swung at Lucky, but she was out of range before he completed his swing.

  Eddie released the arrow he'd drawn back as soon as he saw the goblin. It struck the goblin in the arm and while the creature winced, it didn't seem very badly wounded by the arrow.

  “I'll buff you,” Tiana said from behind him.

  A few moments later a golden glow surrounded his body, penetrating through his armor and making him feel faster.

  The goblin stepped towards him, Lucky having disappeared into the darkness. Eddie quickly shot another arrow at it, hitting it a glancing blow. He tossed his bow to the side and pulled the melee staff out of his inventory.

  The goblin swung its sword, striking Eddie hard in the leg, hard enough that he knew he'd be limping if he tried to move. His return swing struck the goblin in the head, dazing it slightly.

  While he had the chance Eddie did a quick Evaluate, wondering how tough his opponent was.

  Goblin Scout:

  Type: Monster

  Level: 5

  Armor: 25

  Health 55 (+/-)

  Attack: ?

  The goblin's attention was focused on Eddie when Lucky darted out of the darkness and struck. She launched herself and drove both her front claws into the creature's shoulders. Then she raked her lower claws along its back.

  The Goblin squealed and drove its sword over its shoulders trying to strike the bobcat. Lucky dropped away after raking her claws across him, the goblin spinning and trying to strike her.

  “That's it,” Eddie yelled, swinging his staff at the back of its head. “First you try to burn down my building, now you're trying to kill my cat? Hell no!”

  He put everything he had into the swing he made at the goblin's skull and it impacted with a resounding “Thwack!” The goblin crumpled to the ground, lying still.

  Enemy slain: Goblin Scout (level 5)

  You have earned 69 (+17 blessing) exp.

  Lucky was whimpering a few feet away
and he sank to his knees next to her.

  “You said you were the healer of your group?” he asked, looking up at Tiana. “Help Lucky, please?”

  She looked at him, specifically at the wound that was bleeding around his hand where he held his leg.

  “Heal her first,” Eddie said.

  He settled into a sitting position, putting pressure on the wound in his leg as Tiana knelt and briefly chanted over Lucky. The cat's whimpering stopped as she stood and came over to Eddie. She licked at his hand where he held it over the wound.

  “Smart cat, she wants to clean the wound out. Shouldn't be necessary with a spell though and that's a bad enough wound that it'll need a spell. Take your hand off of it,” Tiana said.

  Eddie revealed the wound. It had already stopped bleeding, but there was still blood everywhere from before it had. She touched his leg, directly on the wound, and he was prepared to wince. But as she touched it she started chanting and a warmth raced out of her hand, repairing the skin and meat of his leg where the sword had struck. When she finished, there was still a mark there, almost like a bad cut that had already had weeks to heal.

  “Not quite full, but your own healing ought to take care of that in a few minutes,” she said. “Now we have to figure out what the hell is going on. There shouldn't be any goblins this deep in the Meadowlands.”

  She stepped over to the goblin and bent down, looting it.

  “That's strange,” she said. “The goblins in the forest normally only have silver and copper. This one has a gold piece as well.”

  “Payment, you think?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “I think so.”

  “Well shit!” Eddie cursed. “I think we know who the friends Terrod and Sombra were referring to are now.”

  “They wouldn't,” Tiana said.

  Eddie shrugged.

  “Who else then? Maybe a single goblin would try to raid the Meadowlands, but aren't they more of a pack type of monster? Weren't there groups that raided around here before, not singletons? But it being by itself and having gold when they don't normally? That's got to mean something and he was trying to do the same thing your old groupmates failed to do. Pretty damning evidence, wouldn't you say?”

  She nodded.

  “I'm not going to defend them, you're probably right. But how could they do it? I don't mean motivation, I mean the process of actually hiring a goblin and getting him here.”

  “I have no idea, but I think I'm going to have to do something about it.”

  “You mean we have to do something about this. Sorry Eddie, but you're not high enough level to do anything about it on your own.”

  “We then, I didn't want to speak for you. I'll ask Allie and Karl to help as well once they return.”

  “Dominic wasn't with these two the other night, right? Maybe we should ask him to help flesh out the group?”

  Eddie thought about that for a moment.

  “Didn't you say that he wasn't like Terrod and Sombra? But that he kind of knuckled under to them?”

  “Yes, he did. But he wasn't doing it himself.”

  “Do you think we can trust him?”

  “Probably, even with them egging him on he refused to harass Allie and I. That's probably why they left him behind when they left.”

  “Well, you can ask him if you want. I'll want to talk to him first, if I don't think we can trust him, the answer will be no. If I think we can, we'll give it a shot. Now we have to decide what to do. We can't just kill those two because this isn't a PvP zone, but they found a way to work around that so maybe we can as well. First things first though.”

  Eddie just stood there and thought for a few moments, trying to pull up some sort of screen detailing his land.

  Land. Bunkhouse. Land claim.

  Nothing was working to get him the screen he wanted. Finally he focused on his land claim, trying to keep it in his mind while he thought the word stats.

  It didn't work, maybe Land Claim stats.

  A screen filled his panel.

  Land Claim: New Bunkhouse, Meadowlands

  Nine acre land claim in the Meadowlands.

  See resources available on claim?

  (Y/N)

  He quickly thought No and the screen scrolled.

  This land claim has a structure completed on it and is secured.

  This land claim has players bound to it as a spawn point.

  Terrod Parist

  Sombra Caminante

  Dominic Magum

  Adjust player spawn points?

  (Y/N)

  With a malicious grin, Eddie thought Yes.

  Terrod Parist

  Remove spawn point from your land?

  (Y/N)

  Eddie thought yes, then repeated the process for Sombra, allowing Dominic to stay bound for the time being.

  Tiana was staring at him when he finally finished.

  “What were you doing? You had that look people get when they're using their interface.”

  “I removed their spawn point binds from my land here. Left Dominic on for the time being though.”

  “You can do that?” she asked.

  “I thought I could. I figured if I could let people bind to my land, I could remove them also. It's just such a damned pain in the butt to do anything with land claims though, the help files are practically non-existent.”

  “Is that how you got this land, land claims?”

  Eddie cursed himself mentally. The secret was out now, if it had ever been a secret in the first place. After all Paul had willingly told him about it.

  “Yeah, you can do a 'help player land claims' for what little information is available on it. I don't know why it isn't more common knowledge though. A friend of mine told me about them. There's other player oriented stuff like that as well but it seems like the help files on them were written to be as opaque as possible.”

  Her eyes took on the far-off look that told him she was using the interface herself. A moment later they refocused on him.

  “It doesn't look that confusing,” she said.

  “Yeah, but did you see anything about binding spawn points, or removing them, or being able to get stats on your land?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “So, most help files have that little 'see also' line at the bottom. Not this one, or any of the associated ones I've discovered. That's why I said they're opaque. They're helpful in and of themselves, but don't give you any idea what other things might be associated with it.”

  “Oh, I see what you mean. It creates more questions than it answers?”

  “Exactly, but now, back to the business on hand. Should we stay down here tonight or head back to the farmhouse? I don't think Karl would mind if I let you use his room here.”

  “No-one other than Karl, Allie, and me knows that you own the farmhouse, right?”

  He shook his head.

  “No-one that I'm aware of. At least not around here.”

  “Then we should stay here, just in case that wasn't the only goblin they hired.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Karl and Allie didn't arrive until a couple of hours past dawn. When they did, Karl looked a little the worse for wear. He was healthy, but his armor had obviously taken a beating.

  “What happened?” Eddie asked.

  “We got a little too close to the border with the forest and found a few goblins, a small group of them. Looked like they were scouting or something,” Karl said.

  Then he broke into a grin.

  “I'm Level two now, at least.”

  Eddie returned his smile.

  “Level three here.”

  Karl spat in disgust.

  “I'm never going to catch up to you. I blame that blessing of yours, you still have it, right?”

  Eddie nodded. He checked once a day to make sure he still had Freyja's blessing and it had been listed when he checked first thing this morning.

  “Well, we're going to be leveling up a lot more, and soon if I
'm not mistaken,” Eddie said. “You'll never guess what happened last night.”

  He went on to explain the encounter of the previous evening.

  “Those sons of bitches,” Karl said. “I hate players like that. They're the ones that just kill and gank lower level players in other games just because they can.”

  “They're probably like that in real life too,” Allie said. “You'll find a lot of the long term immersion types are. You guys don't seem that way, but a lot the LTI players are rich people that are used to getting their own way in everything. You tell them no and it just makes them more determined.”

  Yeah, I think that fits, Eddie thought. It would explain exactly why they're acting this way. They had their sights set on Tiana and Allie and the women basically flipped them off and told them to take a hike. Now the assholes are blaming me because the women didn't want to stay with them and ended up hanging around with me after they left.

  “Well fuck them and the horse they rode in on,” Eddie said. “What can we do about it? If Tiana and I are right, they're cooperating with the goblins somehow instead of killing them now. Can we use that to our advantage?”

  “First,” Karl said, “we work on public opinion. Allie told me that the goblins won't normally cross into the Meadowlands, but you found one here deep in the zone and we found some that had come across the border farther to the west.”