by Jakob Tanner
I opened up a new window titled, Upgrades. I was given multiple options:
+Ship Upgrades
+Ship Tools
+Hire Crew Members
I clicked ship upgrades to see if anything new was available. Certain upgrades came in and out of availability depending on the state of the aerodrome you were in; whether it was busy or out of stock of a certain item. A long list of available upgrades to the ship appeared in front of me.
Additional Cannon (5,000 gold coins)
Additional Laser Turret (5,000 gold coins)
Bronze Cannon: Upgrade cannons to a more accurate firing cannon (15,000 gold coins)
Chain Shot: ammunition designed to cripple a ship’s masts and sails. Perfect for pillaging rather than sinking ships. (10,000 gold coins)
Copper Plating: Increased maneuverability. Makes it easier to avoid cannon shots and get around enemy ships (25,000 gold coins)
Cotton Sails: Increase ship’s speed (10,000 gold coins)
Fine-Grain Powder: Increases range for all cannon types. (15,000 gold coins)
Grape Shot: Hurts crew members more than ship. Good for boarding ships without destroying it (13,000 gold coins)
Iron Scantlings: Reinforce hull of your ship (30,000 gold coins)
Triple Hammocks: Increase your ship’s maximum crew capacity. (5,000 gold coins)
Skyfish Trap: Passively catch fish by attaching these to the side of your ship. (3,000 gold coins)
My eyes glowed across the available upgrade list. I was like a kid in a candy shop with a pocketful of birthday money. I only had one or two available purchases before the crew morale dropped to defiant though. If I pissed off my band of sailors to such an extent, I risked the crew walking out on me, taking their final set of earnings with them. I had to make my limited purchases worth it, so with that in mind, I checked to see what specialists were available to join our ship. I clicked back on the window in my HUD and accessed the specialist for hire tab. A long list of specialized crew members appeared with additional tabs to see who specifically was currently looking for a job.
Specialists For Hire (See additional sub tabs for available specialists and pay requirements)
Carpenter: Can repair hull damage
Cook: Slows down the speed by which the crew’s morale decreases
Cooper: Reduces the amount of food consumed per crewman, allowing your ship to travel longer with less food
Gunner: The gunner increases your ship’s canon reload rate
Navigator: Increases ship speed
Quartermaster: Decreases the number of crew deserters
Sailmaker: Mends sail damage while soaring through the sky. Also helps improves reefing ability and saves on crystal mana fuel
Surgeon: Dedicated lower deck healer. Reduce losses of crew
All of these positions were worth hiring somebody for, but even still I closed the tab. I was going to hold off on hiring new people until I was sure about whether we were flying to Ariellum; I didn’t want to hire anyone on false pretenses.
I opened the other tab and reviewed the available upgrades again. Additional cannons and laser turrets weren’t worth it to me, though the chain shot and grapeshot ammunition did strike me as handy given so much of our sky battles involved us boarding enemy ships. I also liked the cotton sails for the increase to our ship’s speed and the iron scantlings to boost our defense.
There was also the less practical skyfish traps. They weren’t too expensive and they opened a potentially new revenue source for the ship, which was important; not every voyage ended with a giant cash cow prize like a supply vessel. The only other way to make gold outside of skyfishing, stealing enemy airships, and doing missions was discoveries. The skyfarer’s guild in all the major cities across Illyria offered big payouts to anyone who discovered lost artifacts, locations, and rare items in their travels throughout the treacherous skies. The cloud oceans remained a dangerous and mysterious place and the skyfarer’s guild would pay a pretty penny to those who offered any illuminating information on the vast aerial world.
I went with the skyfish trap as my first purchase and given it was the cheapest upgrade, I doubted it would rock the crew morale. I selected the skyfish trap option and clicked purchase. A new screen appeared.
Congratulations on your newest purchase: [Skyfish Trap]!
Please note it will take up to a few hours for your upgrades to appear on your ship
The crew morale remained at unhappy. Good, because they were definitely not going to be pleased after my next purchase. I chose the upgrade iron scantlings to increase the defense of the ship. “More work!?” groaned the workers already doing the repair job.
Congratulations on your newest purchase: [Iron Scantlings]!
Please note it will take up to a few hours for your upgrades to appear on your ship
I checked the ship’s status again and as expected, the crew was pissed.
Warning! Crew morale has fallen to defiant. Any more actions that work to lower morale could cause unruly consequences
Fair enough. I had spent 35,000 gold coins of their profit. I’d be pissed too, especially considering how much of a beating we took today. I opened up the tab I’d closed earlier and reviewed it, clicking, “pay-out crew.”
Please confirm earnings division: 157,000 gold coins to be split evenly across 24 crew members, equally 6,541 gold coins per member.
Accept/decline?
I accepted the earnings division and the gold disappeared from the ship’s status screen while a big chunk of gold entered my own inventory.
I closed the screen and rubbed my head.
The mustachioed helmsman was still standing in front of the ship. “Thank you for my payment. Please consider this my formal resignation.”
He strode off in a huff.
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. Footsteps echoed across the aerodrome. Serena strolled across the ship repair bay towards me.
“Good afternoon captain.”
“Don’t call me that,” I said.
She smirked. “You don’t like being captain? I thought you loved being heroic and doing the right thing. I never thanked you for valiantly saving me earlier.”
“I know you think I overdid it,” I said. “But it’s hard to know what’s right and wrong in a split-second. I didn’t have time to think, only time to act.”
Serena’s nose twitched. “It’s fine—the guy was literally about to stab me in the neck with two daggers. I think you had the moral high ground. Or, you know, the less immoral low ground.”
I sighed and shook my head. I wanted to change the subject. I started walking out of the aerodrome, passing engineers and newly built ships, shadowing over us in their brilliant fresh glory. “What are we going to do about this quest?”
“Something about it doesn’t feel right,” said Serena, walking beside me. “I know Theobold and Fergus mean well, but seeking a weapon powerful enough to destroy an entire continent? A weapon so destructive stays buried for a reason.”
“But what if unearthing the weapon saves us?” I said, stepping out of the aerodrome and back into the engineering district. “What if it saves Land’s Shield? Saves everyone we’ve come to know and love. What if it can save those poor Chosen enslaved by Arethkar?”
The player’s cries from earlier today shot through my mind. “Please kill me,” she begged. I shook my head. What if it had been Serena? Or Kari? Or Shade?
“I don’t know what to think,” said Serena. She looked down to her feet as we walked in the direction of the royal keep.
“It’s common sense, though, isn’t it? If you know someone is going to kill you and the only way to stop them is to kill them first. What do you do? Do you let them kill you because killing is bad?”
“What if there’s another way and you can’t see it?”
“What if there isn’t?”
Serena shook her head. “Now we’re in a chicken and egg scenario. Listen Clay. We elected you captain of the Horizon’s
Dream. Not me, not Kari, and—thank heavens—not Shade. You’ve proven yourself in battles and everywhere else. If you think we should go, I won’t fight you on it. Remember: the hardest part about being a leader is making the decisions no one else wants to make.”
We stopped walking. Serena waited for my response. Was seeking the Ultriga Weapon really such a bad thing? No one really knew exactly what its power was, just that it was, well, powerful. Was it possible simply by acquiring it, Laergard would gain a diplomatic advantage over Arethkar? So much so we wouldn’t even have to use it? Maybe, maybe not. But we’ll never know unless we seek it out. Simply hanging around here, hijacking Arethkarian supply vessels wasn’t going to save us.
I took a deep breath. Everyone had their doubts about this quest, but for the sake of all the citizens in Laergard and the rest of Illyria, we had to do it. We had to set sail for Ariellum.
“We’re doing it,” I said and opened a panel on my HUD.
I accepted the quest.
There was no turning back now.
6
A lot needed to get done before we set sail. We had given ourselves the rest of the day and night to prepare. We needed to restock the ship for fuel and food. We needed to decide on any other upgrades we’d add to the ship. We needed to recruit more crew members, including a new dedicated airship pilot and navigator. We still needed to convince Shade to come along. And…
“You need to level up,” said Theobold, stroking his beard amidst his new chambers in the keep’s tower. “Tier-one and level 15. You’re far too low.”
“Don’t scold me—you’re the one who made this game.”
The old wizard shook his head and sighed, “Oh how I wish I’d never been apart of this damned project, but here I am.” He shook his head. “I’ve spent too many years in here wallowing and I won’t do anymore of it. At least, not for the rest of the days. Follow me Clay. It’s time you got some formal training.”
The old wizard picked up his staff, lying between two stacks of old worn books, overtop a carpet of scrolls and loose paper full of arcane scribbles and grocery lists. He swung the staff onto his back and looked around. He patted his pants to see if he was forgetting anything.
“It’s the great thing about living in a castle Clay,” said Theobold. “You don’t need to worry about keys and locking the door because you live behind a giant stone wall and pay people to stop any trespassers. It’s brilliant.”
The Rorn stroked his beard even faster and nodded his head, his eyes bulging with excitement. I was concerned this man was about to give me, in his own words, “formal training.”
He led the way down the tower. We were soon walking through the city, enjoying the midday sun. We walked through the noble district with their beautiful gated houses and pretty canals, through the night court and the Grand Casino Palace. We were taking a route I’d taken before, a few weeks ago when solving the mystery of vanishing citizens in Land’s Shield. We eventually arrived at the broken docks, the poorest area in all the city. It was an abandoned extension to the aerodrome, where wayward orphans and the perennially homeless slept at night.
Moving south we arrived at the city’s walls and approached a door. Theobold swung it open, revealing a damp stone stairwell. I followed behind the wizard as we descended deeper until we reached the bottom and found ourselves in the city’s sewers.
It was brighter than it had been on my previous excursion into the city’s necropolis. To the left, the cylindrical stone passageway ended, opening wide into the endless sky. A river of green sewage drifted downward at our feet and off the passageway into the cloud ocean. I guess the waste had to go somewhere and a bottomless sky wasn’t a bad place to put it.
“Yuck,” I said, stepping around the flowing sludge and onto the narrow walkway further down the sewer. “Why have you brought me here?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” said Theobold, walking deeper into the damp passageway, away from the light of day and into the darkness.
The stench got worse the further we went. The potent mix of shit, piss, dirt, rubbish and rain water was a pungent assault on the senses. Theobold pulled his staff from behind his back and created a glowing rod. We eventually entered a larger chamber. He conjured a fireball in his hand and whipped it across the room, lighting a torch. He did so four more times, illuminating the whole room.
I preferred it in the dark.
Across the stone chamber were rats the size of watermelons. They had fat hunched backs, sharp teeth, and glowing red eyes. Their thick tails were pink and fleshy. Their fur was wet and full of patches, exposing enflamed skin beneath. There were loads of them, walking back and forth, sniffing the cracks of the stone floor.
They ranged from levels 10 to 13.
“So these will be the mobs, you’ll be grinding today,” said Theobold. “They have a pretty quick respawn rate from what I remember and since you’ll be fighting them alone, you’ll gain all the experience points for yourself. Partying up is a good long-term survival strategy and can net you huge amounts of experience if you do enough quests together, but for sheer power leveling, you’re actually better off solo. Some people would argue with me, but hey, that’s how we’re going to do it today.”
“You’re going to make me take on all these rats by myself?”
“I’ll be here. Importantly—not as a party member—but I’ll back you up or heal you if need be.”
This was crazy. Theobold was a stronger version of my class, but he knew how little actual defense we had, how squishy the class was. Taking on these rats—especially if I accidentally aggroed more than one of them—would be an absolute death sentence.
“We’re going to do focus training today,” said Theobold. “I should’ve taught you this stuff earlier, but I thought you’d get the hang of it, but it appears you’re more apprentice than mage.”
“Screw you man.”
“Your trash talk needs improvement too,” smiled Theobold. “But never mind that now. Let’s call up your stats and ability sheet.”
I checked my stats in my HUD.
Clay Hopewell
Level 15
Race: Aeri (Eldra)
Class: Apprentice Mage
HP: 156
MP: 74
ATKP: 3
MTKP: 70
TGH: 5
SPIRIT: 55
LUCK: 3
I was slowly growing more powerful, but not as quickly as I would’ve liked. Next, I opened up my class skill sheet, looking over the skills and abilities available to me. I’d been hoarding my class skill points; not sure what exactly to do with them. I had seven at the moment. My class skill sheet shined out across my HUD.
Fire (Damage Based): Fireblast (Level 5) > Flame Breath (Level 10) > Volcanic Eruption (Level 15) > Supernova (Level 20)
Fire (Support/Utility Based): Flame Dodge (Level 5) > Flame Wall (Level 10) > Ring of Fire (Level 15) > Summon Phoenix (Level 20)
Water (Damage Based): Water Blast (Level 5) > Ice Wave (Level 10) > Frozen Ground (Level 15) > Conjure Ice Blade (Level 20)
Water (Support/Utility Based): Healing Mist (Level 5) > Status Cure (Level 10) > Tidal Protect (Level 15) > Restorative Storm (Level 20)
Air (Damage Based): Air Blast (Level 5) > Lightning Ball (Level 10) > Relentless Crackle (Level 15) > Plasma Beam (Level 20)
Air (Support/Utility Based): Lightning Cage (Level 5) > Shocking Speed (Level 10) > Electric Blink (Level 15) > Skull Shock (Level 20)
Earth (Damage Based): Earthquake (Level 5) > Sand Storm (Level 10) > Stone Shards (Level 15) > Gravity Tremor (Level 20)
Earth (Support/Utility Based): Ruptured Ground (Level 5) > Stone Skin (Level 10) > Spike Field (Level 15) > Summon Rock Golem (Level 20)
All the spells looked so cool and I didn’t want to screw up my build, so I’d been holding off on spending more of my class skill points until I knew better.
“How many class skill points do you have available?” grunted Theobold.
“Seven,” I
said.
“Okay, listen closely, I want you to add these spells. Are you listening? Okay, here we go. Teach yourself flame wall, frozen ground, air blast, and electric blink.”
“But—”
“Do it. These spells are all very important.”
I did as he told me and spent the class skill points, gaining the ability to cast four new spells. I took in their descriptions.
Flame Wall (Level 1)
Ability: Create a wall of flame between you and your opponent
MP Cost: 10
Frozen Ground (Level 1)
Ability: Create an area of pure frozen ice
MP Cost: 13
Air Blast (Level 1)