IN A POST GLOBAL CIVIL WAR WORLD...
LAW ENFORCEMENT, NERDS, GEEKS & GAMERS
TEAM UP TO SAVE WORLD PEACE.
To fallen, fading dreams
Flicker free
FOREWORD
It’s not every day the world blows up around you and the very earth is shaken to its core. It’s not every day myriad missile men, having been triggered by one middle finger too many, rain devastation upon the countless human settlements containing the civilian populations of their enemies. It is not every day people annihilate chunks of land as would a conniving grocery clerk selling overly aired-up cheese and making a profit by the bubble. It’s not every day violence solves, quite literally, everything; or even for wars to abruptly – almost inexplicably – end. And it’s even less common for a newly triumphant force to refrain from flaunting their hard-earned victory over the newly-defeated.
But… The Great Baptism had just not been the normal kind of war, and its ending did not bring about the usual flavour of outcome or victory. What’s more, while our blue planet had long been mapped in its entirety – disallowing the separation of enemy forces – and the stars remained, and remain still, far out of reach, another solution occurred.
As luck would have it, for a but brief window in time, hard work and its resulting advances in the sciences played a pivotal role in allowing for an issuing – fingers crossed – lasting peace.
But I get ahead of myself: before all that… Half the world had to go the way of a depressed, transgendered dodo; one that’s been egged on for far too long by a buck-thirsty, drug dealing, degenerate, sociopathic so-called friend. Innumerable millions of families had to be ripped from reality, torn, spliced and split; countless billions of lives had to be aborted at all ages, from all walks of life. Chaos had to reign, a solution had to be needed and the single logical pursuit for any-and-all survivors – seeking out ever-lasting peace – had to be found and resources had to be funnelled into it.
Had to, had to, had to… Did things really have to be this way? Well, for those who lived through the events leading up to global civil war… Survivors say, “back in the moment”, it all seemed inevitable.
Had to, had to, had to… Did things really have to be this way? Well, for those who lived through the events leading up to global civil war… Survivors say, “back in the moment”, it all seemed inevitable.
And once it had started? Well, there was now, for Australia (for instance), simply put: no putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. The once-island was cooked, crisped even. Its people broken… Sizzled, flipped over, and left in the care of a would-be toddler in a house-fire [Do not try this at home].
And other areas of the world – which had likewise been subject to the nerd-works – were similarly cautioned, red lines and all, then dealt with; cauterising them.
There are, to this day, no more life-sustaining lands in the areas blackened by past lights. There is no more building in the cities now mopped off the map. Diligently, I might add, with the commendable perseverance of a cleaner with five mouths to feed, and one more on the way.
Congratulations! There is no more joy to be had in all those have-been places. No more happiness to be felt, no more hope to be spread, no more dreams to be snapped out of.
No Sir! For those things, one would have to look elsewhere…
People, one day, will ask – they always do – “Who knows what the future holds?”. But none in the scorched earths will be alive to answer the most traditional of dark-humour, forum-memed replies: “Not Australia, the Great Baptism saw to that.”
And so, Dear Reader (or listener, if you haven’t learnt your letters), as you may have gathered, in the time when this coming tale is set, I regret to inform you, the great Australian ship has sailed, and sunk. And been salvaged! Spliced open. Shattered. Trampled. And, just for good measure, sunk again. Deeper this time, ever deeper! Its surrounding waters brewed, its hull busted, bled, baked and boiled. Australia was done. Kaput!
But what of the rest of the world you might ask?
Well, in spite of all that’s been said – by me – some survivors had made it out of the tumult, out of the chaos, out of the frying pan and into the safe, comforting clutches of captivity, out and into the pods, into exile: the simulation that is; and its world: Exile.
That’s where this story begins…
PROLOGUE - FLOOR SEVENTEEN - THIEVES CALLED HEALERS
In the depths of the mountain, in a game world near you, the twisted, despairing tunnels which had – so far – proven the party’s greatest challenge gave way to the gaping maw of a gigantic antechamber.
As they approached, the remains of a single, sombre staircase brought what was left of Mendal’s… acquaintances into yet another stone-paved, column-bearing dungeon room.
Team morale was low and, if not for the death-defying glow emanating from the cleric’s prize possession: his silver coloured Corona of Sovereign Enlightenment – all would be black, and the dry air still ripe with nervous tension.
And yet… in spite of the dark mood, the soft light flickered on, illuminating both the Cleric’s shining, newly-healed head-wound as well as the dusty remains of the towering, ancient murals of dust, cobweb and gold. The nine pairs of footsteps echoed over the walls and high up into the eery, crumbling keystones of the archways overhead: an era of long-abandonment had come to an end.
And, all too soon, the Cleric's light-giving rite would follow.
Already it was dimming and the Corona’s repellant effect, useful to avoid the smallest of critters, was also nearing its end.
As the Corona’s s lustre dulled – its aura contracting every few footsteps around the nine – the night, once thrice-banished, blinked ever-closer into view.
This was, for Mendal and his handpicked party, a reminder of their urgent need to press forth, reach relative safety, and in all haste! Soon, fiery moths, the whole dungeon over – the miniature, leftover kin of the titanic versions the party had, floors ago now, slain – were, at this very moment, bloodthirstily honing in on their trail upon maniacal wings.
Grumbling, Mendal called up his status, dismally taking in the low health bar showcasing the red hue of his few remaining FIT-points the winged vampiric pests hadn’t already syphoned away from him. So far, all was going according to plan, his plan. Mendal Meddler was the brains behind this most ambitious of operations.
“It’s really, really not the time to check your pizzaz, you fool.” muttered his cleric companion, the one the party called Master Cleric on account of his apprentice who’d also made it, for good reason, onto the dream team’s limited roster.
“This is exactly the time for me to do that.” retorted Mendal without missing a beat. “I can’t feel how fit I am, hence my need to check my status.”
To the others in his party, Mendal was but a player in this world. The Great Baptism may have been years ago now, but his party was – and it was good for him to keep this in mind – stuck in pods, their minds a little on-edge from being confined inside Exile’s game-world. Now, the world waited with bated breath for the nerds at Dormant Entertainment to, with the supervision of the post-war council, arrange a much more permanent solution.
“Pizazz”, the only member with a bow said, “we call it pizazz you frivolous outworlder. You’re “checking your pizazz, not your “status”, life is not some game – and we’re real people bleeding and dying here, you know.”
“You’d better be.” Mendal answered honestly, “Now wouldn’t be a great time for me, for any of us really, to find you lied when you got poached you from your guild…”
The light dimmed some more around the nine, and they were minutes away from total darkness. As they finally neared the entrance to the next room, it was with profound relief that Mendal noticed the large stone door was not ajar. In his experience, ajar doors were never a good sign. Oftentimes they meant…
"We can take a ten minute breather here.” suggested the Cleric’s apprentice.
“Oh yeah?” asked Agent Skeptic, the team’s slimy rogue. He was a [physical description].
In the tumult of the battles of the previous floors, Agent Skeptic seized an opportunity to backstab his own teammate: their Soldier of Fortune. There were no signs of foul play though, and no one had seen the deed being done, but Mendal had planned the team composition around the fact this rogue, Agent Skeptic, who, given his track record and how pleased his guild leader was to be rid of him, would inevitably kill off one the party.
Unbeknownst to anyone else left alive, Mendal told the Soldier to make himself the juiciest of targets.
“Yes” answered the novice, opting not to notice the likely sarcasm in the Rogue’s remarks. “There are three minutes left on the rite. Then I figure five minutes until the first mobs catch up with us. Then they’ll likely wait until they’re numerous enough to overwhelm us – with the rounding error in our favour.”
“The rounding error, eh?” panted the team’s Porter who’d been quietly doing his best to keep up with the group since [event cause of injury]. “I thought that wasn’t actually a thing?”
“This whole world is zeros and ones.” responded Mendal. “The forums abuzz with…”
“Cut it Outworlder.” interjected the team’s Enchantress as she displayed an all-to-common, aggressive, knee-jerk reaction to any reminder – or semblance of a reminder – of the nature of her existence, the superficiality of her world, the Great Baptism that preceded it, its events, outcomes,. etc. etc… “I’ll have no more of your shoddy insults.”
Inwardly, Mendal rolled his eyes. Outwardly, however – and as he ever endeavoured to be a consummate professional… – he decided it was definitely time for a distraction.
“Clerics, I think you guys can begin figuring out how much it’ll cost to replenish the Corona’s aura.”
His instruction elicited sharp intakes of breath from the six other non-clerics. “Let’s do our very best to get ourselves healed up here and then head into the next room… I’ll be back in a sec.”
With that, Mendal went idle, his in-game self dancing a merry gig as the team’s designated healer, the Master Cleric (referred to as such by the long-established convention of referring to players by their titles when in a dungeon) and the Cleric’s Apprentice, went about the task of doing the innumerable calculations involved in figuring out the optimal allocation of the party’s meagre resources. The duo then informed each member of the party in turn how much their share of the healing would cost.
Exile being Exile, no class type was more despised, envied, or accursed on a day-to-day basis – especially to the collectivists that lost the war – than that of the thieves that deigned called themselves healers. Never mind that, when checked by a third party, the medic’s math proved most sound; the druid’s decisions revealed themselves to be both intricate and economical; and the clergy’s actions… Well, they always seem neatly aligned with the wishes of today’s Sovereign-of-choice.
But never mind all that: the average man knows a thief when he sees one! The intricacy at play is, quite obviously, in aim to obfuscate. The econumerology referred, outworldly, as mathematics is, in fact, just a conniving rebranding of Great Stinginess itself… And when one has sixteen deities to choose from… Of course the two-faced brigands called healers would have their pick-of-convenience.
In essence, and according to many, a wardrobe change into a healer’s uniform is as good as a mask when it comes to diseases of the wallet.
“All right” began the Master Cleric, “you know the drill. We’re nine. We were ten. Our Soldier of Fortune went down in battle. His fault, your fault, our fault – it doesn’t matter one bit. We’re alive, thank the Sovereigns, that’s what counts. And we’re all pitching in equally for the healing now.”
Grumbles accompanied the prepared statement and the Cleric’s apprentice stepped forth to cut them off.
“Should – and I’m not saying it will happen – but should the boss (meaning Mendal) not show up on time, we should also be prepared to pitch in for a few minutes more for the trail masking effect of the Corona of Sovereign Enlightenment…”
More curses accompanied that particular statement, a clean, expertly done, redirection-of-resentment. The Master Cleric nodded his approval.
“Earthers”, swore the party’s hammer-wielding Sound Smith, his outburst echoing thunderously in the near total darkness.
Realising his all-to-loud mistake from the mirrored expressions on his companions faces, the Smith whispered an apology. Then, seizing this opportunity for a little tension-relieving humor, began a near-perfect, mock imitation of one of Dormant’s notoriously unhelpful employees: “We at Dormant Entertainment thank you for reaching out and your concerns are duly noted. We also wish to extend our deepest, heartfelt condolences for…” he hesitated then, looking around.
Beside him, the lasso-man snickered.
“…that, whatever that is.” he finished in a normal tone, pointing at Mendal’s less-than-ideal display.
“Earthers” repeated the team’s Archer with a sigh.
Moments later however, as time was running out, Mendal logged back into the game: his avatar suddenly stopped its outrageous swirling and infuriatingly jovial spraying of confetti. Now, if cringeyness could grant superpowers…
But no.
Back in the midst of his disgruntled party, Mendal caught the tail end of the team’s T.D.S., Terra Derangement Syndrome: and opted, wisely (he thought), to disregard it all.
Any Exile player worth a damn was used to in-game hyperboles of rampant toxicity. Such complainers were all venom, but no bite. The truth was that the mere fact he’d been able to assemble this team was a remarkable improvement over the overt hostility the Losers – because that’s what they were: they’d lost – the Losers had displayed in the immediate post-war era. People could mumble and grumble all they liked, Mendal Meddler prided himself in being flame-retardant.
And, in all honesty, there wasn’t really much to whine about in the first place: the Great Agreement signed into effect by the post-war council ensured that the game remained balanced for both guest accounts – “Outworlders”, “Earthers”,… etc. (whatever one wanted to call them) – and the now-local… talent.
With only moments to spare on the team-wide deadline – Mendal’s fingers zapped through air and various menus of his HUD. Panning and scrolling expertly through the windows, dismissing most tabs after but a perfunctory glance, and calling forth other windows with a thought and all-to-soon waving those off as well.
Observers, had any been able to see his set-up, may have – albeit only briefly – mistakenly believed they saw Mendal hesitate before tapping confirm on his pre-planned allocation of stats. Such an observer, however, would quickly have dismissed such thoughts as merely due to a trick of the light going out at long last.
Mendal, a purist Outworlder if there ever was one, did not allocate his stats as would the rest of his party. After all, what Losers called Luck; Real Gamers called hard work and the willingness to get into it.
All-to-smug in the now total darkness, Mendal ushered his party further into the unknown.
PROLOGUE - FLOOR TWENTY ONE - MINDWIPE
A cozy sight greeted the party as, next thing they knew, they were on all-fours turning what felt like a final bend. The tunnel was narrow and lush with increasingly long (and in-your-face) greenery.
Rising up from brackens and ferns, nine-pairs of eyes took in the oval room, and nine-pairs of eyes blinked in befuddlement for, out of nowhere, the party had found itself heading not-to-the-next-room but… towards the – quite welcome mind you – sounds of a guzzling, white fountain: a surefire sign that they had unexpectedly happened upon a priorly-unadvertised safe-room.
In a daze, they approached the calm, sparkling waters from which thin trails of cobalt mist trailed off upwards towards moss-laden walls; and that’s when Skeptic, the first of the party to snap out of it, finally did a double-take.
“Mindwipe”, he noted nonchalantly. “Looks like we’re not missing anyone though…” He eyed Mendal out of the corner of his eye, then added “Shame, really.”.
His comment, albeit snarky, finally broke the last of his group out of their trance-like reverie.
“Enchanters?” Mendal asked, ignoring the Agent and immediately seeking to take charge.
“Definitely a safe room, boss.” the group’s wizard-clad Elementalist, said. “Neither fire magic works, nor water, nor… Yeah, no, can’t do nothin’… it’s clear. We’re clear.”
The others nodded their ascent.
“Safe room it is then” Mendal said pulling up a window and confirming his FITpoints were ticking up. “Gotta love me a fountain!”
“Mmm, this mindwipe.” the team’s Enchantress said, bringing the others back to events at hand.“It seems we’re on floor 21 now. Last I remember, we were on floor 17, right?”
“Huh! That’s quite the distance we’ve traveled!” whistled one of the team’s front-liners, “Viking-helmet” thought of him, appreciatively. There always seemed to be one in every party… This one happened to be a Viking though, albeit an undead one who was also doubling as the party’s Porter.
While he was quite a chill dude at present, Viking-helmet specialised in “low-health frontline combat”. With “Low-health" meaning he was always, in combat, finding increasingly reckless and brazen ways to deplete his FITpoints and was thus constantly on the verge of dying.
Viking was even trying the clerics’ patience, which was saying something.
If he weren’t such a monster-of-a-man, Agent Skeptic would definitely be complaining more about how much this mad-man’s antics were costing the whole party in terms of healing-allocated-funds. In fact, Mendal had fully filled one of the party’s available slots with an extra healer just to include this axe-wielding bad-boy in the team’s final composition,
As it happened, the Cleric’s Apprentice specialised in targeted healing while his mentor, the Master Cleric, specialised in area-of-effect magic (also known as AOE or ambient healing).
“ATTENTION TRAVELLERS” a disembodied female announcer’s voice said, “YOU HAVE ENTERED THE FOUNTAIN OF LAST RESPIT. AS A REWARD FOR YOUR EFFORTS, AND DUE TO YOUR CLERICS CONSENSUAL DONATION OF YOUR MOST RECENT MEMORIES, A BOON HAS BEEN BEEN GRANTED TO YOU BY THE SOVEREIGN OF ENLIGHTENMENT. YOUR PARTY HAS OPTED TO KEEP SAID BOON A SECRET.
CONGRATULATIONS! A TEMPORARY SAFE ZONE HAS BEEN UNCOVERED!
AS THE FIRST TO DISCOVER THIS SAFE-ZONE, YOUR PARTY HAS BEEN GRANTED AN ADDITIONAL 20 MINUTE STAY-EXTENSION IN SAID SAFE ZONE, TIME REMAINING IN SAFE_ZONE: 80 MINUTES.”
CONGRATULATIONS! A TEMPORARY SAFE ZONE HAS BEEN UNCOVERED!
AS THE FIRST TO DISCOVER THIS SAFE-ZONE, YOUR PARTY HAS BEEN GRANTED AN ADDITIONAL 20 MINUTE STAY-EXTENSION IN SAID SAFE ZONE, TIME REMAINING IN SAFE_ZONE: 80 MINUTES.”
“Guess you’ll be out again and checking those notes again, aye?” Viking-helmet asked Mendal, giving the latter a hefty – but to unfriendly – clap on the back.
Mendal nodded “Yeap”, he thought, logging out of the game “four floor’s worth of notes to go through is a lot of work. Better to get started.”
Before his eyes… the welcoming moss… The damp lush light on the floor and walls… That almost palpable restorative feeling the others experienced as their health went up in an invigorating, soothing stream… The exhilaration of it all… For a moment, he could almost feel it all as the other members of the group did... but then they blurred out of view.
He’d spent ages fine-tuning the roster and covering all contingencies, and as they were the last thing he’d thought about before logout, the roster which he really, really knew by heart, raced once more through his mind.
First of all there were the two Clerics, himself, and the now-diseased Soldier of Fortune. This last was great addition to increase loot drops, passively generating gold from damage, and providing the team with discounts. The Soldier was still a great addition when dead though: he provided everyone with a stat buff the longer he was dead although healing also cost more and more. Best to keep all that between himself, the healers and the Soldier though.
Next there was Agent Skeptic, the team’s rogue, a class great for taking out bosses by targeting their weak spots and striking one massive blow from stealth, thus ending some fights before they ever really began in earnest. He was also the ideal person to open a lock, like that one Mendal knew was in the Final Boss’ room. Agent Skeptic also had a track record, and some resulting power increase, related to backstabbing a teammate and getting away with it for the duration of a dungeon dive.
Enchantress, a midrange spell-slinger with some skill in air magic, specialised in being a Conduit, an unorthodox choice for an air practitioner that pretty much relegated her to a support class: while Enchantress had access to the entire party’s mana, she couldn’t use it herself. Instead, through her maxed out mana manipulation, she siphoned the immense pool at her disposal and redirected the flows upon invisible currents towards those of the team that she deemed were in most dire need. For this dungeon dive, per Mendal’s explicit instructions, that was mostly the team’s…
…Porter, the undead, a viking-helmeted, brutish man of middling years. While out-of-dungeon death, in Exile, was severely punished by a loss of half one’s levels and all of one’s items and equipment – some genius, before the Great Baptism, had posted on the forums of some crazy workaround: by becoming an undead (no small feat in those days), he’d found a complete workaround to the loss of equipment upon death (one can’t die if one is already dead!). People opted into taking undead races to, essentially, glitch themselves into allowed themselves unlimited storage. This was early on in Exile’s history and was deemed... a bit… broken. As one can imagine, not long after the exploit was found, some do-gooder at Dormant Entertainment patched things up, removing it. This again, caused a minor uproar. (can’t please everyone!) Three months later, Dormant introduced some new races (mummies, zombies, vampires, and so on…) that did allow for partial immunity to loss of equipment upon death.
Anyway, Viking’s inclusion in the team fully halved the weight of all their equipment. His undead passive would also, given time fighting in the dungeon, provide each of them each the ability to bond a piece of equipment while in the dungeon. This did not come at no cost however: fully half of Enchantress’ mana conduit was going towards charging his ability. Which meant half the party’s mana was going towards the late-game, defeatist investment.
The party also contained a long distance power-mage: a wizard-clad Elementalist specialising in Fire and Water magics. Over the course of the last few floors, Enchantress had increasingly found-herself funnelling more and more mana into the Elementalist’s displays of power just to see the mesmerising, awe-inspiring might of his steamy explosions.
Then, there was Craven, a member of a newly discovered sub-variant of the Archer class. Craven was a single target, bow-wielding sniper. One that could teleport to a recently-cast arrow and, because he was no specialist in hand-to-hand (or anything close range for that matter), the Craven Archer most often ran away from most fights – hence the name: Craven.
And, last of all, there was the team’s Sound Smith. A peculiar addition: this man had started off his in-game life, as an Earth Elementalist but quickly discovered he didn’t like fighting and would wall-off (or trip) enemies instead. The Sound Smith was doubling as the team’s Tomb Raider and, while he still liked dungeon raiding despite the accompanying fighting. Exile’s AI and the game dev team, in tandem, brainstormed and introduced a non-combat, dungeon-delving class just for pacifists such as he: with a sixth sense for clues leading to secret passageways, the Sound Smith was likely, in no small part, responsible for the team having found this unexpected safe room. In later levels, the Earth Elementalist picked up a second magical affinity for sound magic which he’d combined with his out-of-dungeon hammer-wielding profession. Now a Sound Smith, the burly man used his innate gift to buff allies, not through the use of coin like the Clerics, or mana like the Enchanters – but through the casual repurposing of sounds themselves. The louder, the better.
Before his eyes, Exile made way to a series of ugly, dull prompts.
“DO YOU WANT TO LOG OUT?”
“ARE YOU SURE?”
“LOGGING OUT, PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE–“
An instant later, a slightly Australian-accented, feminine voice kicked in, narrating the second phase of the logout procedure:
“CNS interface shutting down, PNS suppression shutting down, Hatch releasing, hatch released, peripheral safety straps releasing… released… main security harness unlocked! Dormant Entertainment thanks you for playing Exile. We know you’ll be back!”
When, at long last, Mendal did make it back to his room, it was to be greeted by a sight he’d never, not in a million years, expected to see.
“Look, think about it, the more involuntary, or wasteful taxes one is subject to, the more of a slave – percentage-wise – one is.” a voice said. “No, no, I’ll have none of that Loserville talk from you, you’re too smart for that. And don’t even begin to suggest I’m being controversial.”
PROLOGUE - FLOOR TWENTY ONE - SIGHTS PREVIOUSLY UNIMAGINED
“CNS interface shutting down, PNS suppression shutting down, Hatch releasing, hatch released, peripheral safety straps releasing… released… main security harness unlocked! Dormant Entertainment thanks you for playing Exile. We know you’ll be back!”
When I was finally logged out of the game – the logging out process does take some time – sunlight blinded my real-world vision.
It was Grandfather’s voice that pulled me out of my routine musings regarding how Dormant could improve its rig. He was on the phone and, of all places, rummaging perfunctorily through the contents of my overly-cluttered desk (whoops!).
“Look, I’ve got to go, my lazy, good-for-nothing grandson is waking up.” Ha! Even though I was his last remaining grandson, Grandfather very seldom spared more than a momentary interest in me. He was weirdly rude that way...
Anyway, he hung up on whoever he was talking to – if he had actually been talking to someone. It was hard to ever be sure Grandfather was indeed on the phone with people nowadays. Over the years since mum and dad died... well, I’d come to believe that he had me overhear what he considered to be valuable life-advice over likely phoney phone calls. Paranoid of me to think so? Perhaps. But my grandfather claiming to have access to high level politicians? Yeah, right, please.
“Conniving” grandfather commented, an unfamiliar, bitter tone edging into his voice. “It always amazes me the lengths people will go to to avoid hard work. This–“ he pointed at my pile of notes, battle plans, team compositions, maps of known dungeons, self-made monster book of monster weaknesses, the compiled – complete – printout of forum notes of known Exile workers with accompanied list of people they’d deigned respond to,… “This” he gesticulated, “–is industrious and sheer, bloody… genius.”
Wow! I did a double-take: something was badly wrong here – and it was alarming. Grandfather never complimented anybody. Ever. What’s more Grandfather had never shown any interest in Exile, had the old man’s age finally led him off the deep end?
“Grandfather…” I began carefully, “Why exactly are you rummaging through my stuff…?”.
I scrutinised his face… his expression… there was something off there as well. The usual almost-masked twinkle in his eyes… That inexplicable sparkle of intelligence that betrayed a sense of cunning adventure. The sparkle seemed to be gone, dead; or at least greatly diminished. I don’t know how to describe it. When you’ve known someone for so long, you notice when something’s going on, like a game-imbued sixth sense allowing the otherwise impossible.
I caught a whiff of it then: Grandfather seemed to have given up, or be giving in, to something… What exactly I couldn’t say. Maybe it was my imagination running wild, my brain having been exposed to one too many a long session in the gaming rig.
Maybe.
The fact of the matter was, I was immediately concerned and tipped off when the old man didn’t go off on yet another passion-filled rant, another rampage of myriad soul-destroying words, a tall take of my generations squandered potential (he hated Dormant Entertainment's accomplishments for one thing...).
Something was off; and he appeared cool as a cucumber.
“I hope you will start putting as much zeal into putting your best foot forwards tomorrow in your real world endeavours.”
He emphasised the word “real” – he always did. That last reassured me that Grandfather was still my grandfather: strong, formidable, stuck-in-his-ways, immutable-to-change,… Small consolation really.
“Wait, what do you mean “best foot forwards?”
“Mmm?” he responded, still pretending to be engrossed in a brief diary of odds and ends I’d jotted down a few days ago. “I pulled a lot of strings to get you that job downtown.”
Now, my desk was a massive dusty affair. A great big mish-mash of everything Exile. It was a great big wooden thing occupying fully a fifth of my bedroom’s available floorspace. The fact that he’d ferreted out something so recent as that particular notebook amongst the clutter was, to me, nothing short of stupefying.
“What job?” I asked, dumfounded.
He slowly turned around then. His expression somehow both scolding, sorrowful and giving me the chills. But Grandfather doesn’t make a habit of letting his disappointment travel anywhere near his posture, or remain for more than a flicker on his aged face; unless he’s going off on the failings of the young, of course.
Today, Grandfather’s mouth maintained its shriveled line as thin as his pencil-gray eyebrows and combover. That’s when it finally hit me: Grandfather hadn’t even even begun to shout yet.
And yet, he didn't begin now: adjusting his goofy tie (carnation red and spotted with stars), Grandfather stared stone-hard into my eyes. Then, he turned away and gestured at the closet door where – plain for all to see – hung my job interview clothes.
“You promised not two hours ago that you would go.” he grumbled.
“Two hours?” I asked dumfounded. My mind racing. I hadn’t…
“That’s right. And you’d better make a good first impression tomorrow."
"Here" he added, "just in-case... I’m idiot-proofing this all for you: this is the exact time, the address, the…”
I tuned him out, not intentionally mind you, but I was too puzzled over his odd words and, in that moment, nothing seemed to make sense to me.
“Two hours…” I thought, my mind racing. Two hours ago was…
Holy Mana! Everything suddenly clicked into place and I could see it clear as day. I eyed my gaming rig: the mindwipe! Four floors worth of memories…This was crazy, mind wipes shouldn’t wipe out memories external to Exile! But here I was, an entire encounter with my Grandfather forgotten. I must have logged out and spoken to him – at length...
Unbelievable, really. What’s more, soon enough, I would learn that this was going to be one of my last… well, never mind.
When at last my grandfather left the room, he left a note and an attached business card in my hand. The card read simply: [insert business card’s contents].
I strained to piece together my last few hours of Outworld life: I’d somehow promised my grandfather to take a job with one of his old acquaintances. [A few details]
I cobbled together a story of what must have happened. Since my parents, siblings and, yeah, the rest of my family died… well… Had I really been so desperate for familial attention that, earlier on today, I’d traded my vocational aspirations for a little bit of grandfatherly interest? It seemed farfetched, but not wholly impossible. While Exile was, and is, my favourite past-time (which I’m sure sounds pathetic to some), in my heart-of-hearts I knew a series of events that included making Grandfather somewhat proud of me was most likely to closely lined up with the now-forgotten truth.
As it happened, I had an hour to go through my notes myself: I had an unconquered dungeon to beat, and still the ironclad will to beat it. Right, better get to it.. As for Grandfather, he’d be flying away on business tomorrow. Already, in a sense, he as turning his back on me. I glanced down at the business card one last time and sighed in resignation, placing it in one of tomorrow’s pockets.
I should have known better than to ask a working man to be my friend.
PROLOGUE - FLOOR TWENTY ONE - IMPOSSIBLE
Impossible Quest Chain: Kill the Old God.
Quest: Gather forgotten knowledge on the final floor’s layout. You will die because you will fail. Quest Reward: influence points towards future character selection.
Side-quest: Keep the information to yourself. Side-quest failed.
Side-quest: Kill or otherwise destroy all knowledge of the final floor in the next 90 minutes, or be volunteered for sacrifice. Time until death:… Side-quest succeeded! Reward: a safe zone has been created somewhere on the path ahead! Warning: this is a dungeon of difficulty level impossible, and, as such, time in the safe zone will be limited.
You are reaching the end of a quest chain of difficulty level impossible: your next quest, should you survive long enough to receive it will be your final quest in this quest chain. A conniving presence smiles down on you, mockingly. As a reward for having made it this far into the dungeon of [insert dungeon's name], you may now preselect your final quest. Defeat Dolus the Traitor on the next floor for quest activation.
Legacy Quest I: Rob the Old God, and live to tell the tale! You will fail because you will die. Dormant Entertainment thanks you for playing… Exile! Reward: you’ve cleared the game! Influence points towards future character selection.
Legacy Quest II: Kill the Old God. You will die because you will fail. Dormant Entertainment thanks you for playing… Exile! Reward: you’ve cleared the game! Influence points towards future character selection.
This was the end-game to end all end-games. No one at Dormant had perceived of a way to get it done. But time had been on Mendal’s side: although he was only 23, he’d already spent longer playing and brainstorming the in-game world than most developers had spent coding the original pre-war game.
And he had a plan.
Having grabbed a bite to eat and spent a good half-hour analysing and strategising over the hastily scribbled notes from the previous floors, including that alarming tidbit concerning Agent Skeptic. When Mendal did log back in, barely twenty minutes remained on the safe-zone countdown timer.
“So what happened? Agent Skeptic asked acting worried for a change. “The Clerics say they’ve revived me. Last I remember we were going to revive our Soldier of Fortune. That spell has a long cooldown. We’ll be done or dead before we get another chance!”
Having backstabbed said Soldier, there was simply no way Skeptic was doing anything other than making sure his ass was covered.
Mendal gestured for the party to gather round him and stepped up onto the edge of the blue-misted fountain. As he spoke to all gathered beneath him, Mendal paid particular attention, out of the corner of his eye, to a certain rogue…
“Ok, first off, you should know we encountered a Quest Mage on the previous floor.”
Already the Mendal Meddler, Demonologist Extraordinaire, was getting answers to much with little: Agent Skeptic had reacted upon hearing the words “Quest Mage”.
“So that’s where you’re getting your additional buffs for backstabbing” he thought to himself. “A backstabbing Quest Chain spanning multiple dungeons… No matter, but this, this will make things more interesting.”
“Here’s what's coming up…” he began slowly, giving himself the time to make extra, extra sure each of the eight remaining party members was paying undivided attention to what he had to say.
PROLOGUE – DUNGEON’S END I – CURSE THE DEVS
Sometimes, it’s painful to be a leader. Often, however, setting an example – the standard of what is expected and normal – just needs to be done.
Doing his best to avoid wincing in any – all-to-visible – manner, Mendal stretched out two fingers and deposited the golden Sovereign into the Cleric’s proffered hand.
Looking to distract himself from this most recent ordeal, Mendal perused his pizzaz. One fun fact Mendal would not be bringing up during the Outworld job interview was what pizazz was short for stood for.
If memory served – which it did Power, Energy, Speed, Subtlety, Aptitude, Allure, and Sense Status System. Originally P.E.S.S.A.A.S.S.S.
The Exile developers had then taken some liberties during the pre-launch and cleaned up the spelling.
Name: Mendal Meddler
Race: Human
Class: Demonologist
Level: MAX
FITpoints: 155/890
Power: 62 (+16)
Energy: 45 (+12)
Speed: 57 (+23)
Subtlety: 68 (+9)
Aptitude: 91 (+4)
Allure: 47 (+8)
Sense Status System: 52 (+1)
He was in the endgame and his attributes reflected that.
In Exile, all an individual's or creature's stats were relative to every other being's, and each successive point in a given attribute was exponentially harder to acquire than the last. Some Sovereign or mythical beings possessed a God-like 100 – someone had to!
In Exile, all an individual's or creature's stats were relative to every other being's, and each successive point in a given attribute was exponentially harder to acquire than the last. Some Sovereign or mythical beings possessed a God-like 100 – someone had to!
Of all the stats, only those outside of his Pizaz (like his FITpoints) operated along a predetermined scale introduced long, long ago by the original Exile developers.
For the Losers and NPC’s, however, all these interesting tidbits of real-world lore were best left to the annals of forgotten-history – lest anyone's feelings got hurt.
And, speaking of getting hurt, both Remember the Fallen and No Man Left Behind, the Soldier of Fortune’s maxed out passive skills, were still ticking away in the background. They would definitely be coming in clutch in the near future.
REMEMBER THE FALLEN (PASSIVE): Brave souls die in combat, but their sacrifice, regardless of distance traveled or the the passage of the centuries, shall never be forgotten.
Player’s party gains a minor boost to morale, a hefty discount to any healing costs, and a substantial boost to loot drops. Buff negated when player falls in combat.
Instead, when player is fallen in combat, allies gain a scaling 2% stat increase per hour but also a 3% increase in healing and mana costs for every hour that passes. Skill also negatively impacts FIT point and mana regeneration.
NO MAN LEFT BEHIND (PASSIVE): Bolsters party strength so that no man shall ever be willingly left behind. If player has recently been revived, removes weight and/or capacity restrictions from player and player’s party travel spells. Duration of buff: size-of-party plus two, minus one minute for every living party member.
The [name of dungeon] dungeon limited the party’s size to 10. So Mendal had assembled a team to take full advantage of this. Per the dungeon’s criteria for entry: if the party was successful, and if at least three members survived the whole ordeal, all party members would be revived with no items of equipment lost. The big secret, outlined briefly on a page in an other world’s splayed-open notebook was that Mendal had no intention of successfully completing the dungeon – on his first attempt, that is.
Anyway, back to matters at hand: so far as he could tell with his enchanter class, mid-tier Sense, the party had successfully gotten away from the mid-boss ambush engagement with Dolus the Traitor…for now, at least—albeit, not without casualty.
My poor, poor wallet. Half its levels lost would have been a better fate. Those pesky healers!
“Whatever asshat at Dormant designed that shitshow deserves his hat shoved right back his ass!” exclaimed the Sound Smith, the echos of his outburst preemptively drowning out most of the other's mumbles of ascent.
"Mine too" added Viking-helmet.
Mendal closed both eyes to get a clearer image on his remaining Sanity Points. The empty stat bar and single crowning digit read as harrowing as a graphic horror novel, and as he reaches elbow deep into his bottomless satchel, a matching sensation, like that of sinking in quicksand, enveloped his groping hand before settling throughout the rest of his body. He’d shared his last flask of sedating petalite tincture with the rest of the party back in the winding black passageway.
His regret ate away another point of SP, but Mendal did his best not to show it.
“Alright, team. I know you hate it, but it’s time to put in for the Corona before its timer hits zero. We didn’t come this far just to die stumbling blindly into a pitfall.”
The master cleric nodded and began filling a golden censer from a wineskin of ambrosia worth more than a month’s wages of guildsman’s work. Blessing the vessel with a crystalized red carnation, he started praying to the sixteen Sovereigns while the younger-looking cleric proffered the collective coffer. Not one of the nine remaining party members was happy about the exorbitant expense, but neither did anyone refuse to “donate” his fistful of silver Princes or single, golden Sovereign coin—not even the Rogue, though he made quite a bit of noise about it, more than he ought to after having been informed he'd been revived by the Apprentice Cleric’s single-use, max level Miracle. A lie, of course, but charity was always a good cause.
Instead of displaying gratitude, however, the Rogue grabbed for new ways to justify his resentment.
“Exploitative bastards. First you rob me for a Resurrection—which I didn’t even ask for—and now you’re charging me to keep up a spell after I already paid. It’s extortion! If you’re supposed to be part of our party, your healing should be free. ‘From each his abilities, to each his needs.’ Ain’t that what they preach in the Sovereigns’ Assembly?”
He bickered back and forth with the cleric's apprentice a while longer, yet that didn’t stop the metallic chime of his coin in the copper coffer causing the veteran’s Corona to shine all the more. With each “donation,” a bit of the clinging darkness got bitten back by the pale white light until the whole of the cavernous rotunda showed a scuffed, matte, obsidian dome—save for a ring of iron enshrining a slab of stone inscribed with indecipherable runes and circled by cast-iron busts the size of gibbets. Each of the patinaed heads gaped jaw-to-breast with a cage door for a grimace...
It was a puzzle room if they’d ever seen one ...and likely a trap as well.
The number of busts mirrored the number of their remaining party members: nine of them in all, though there was space for many more.
Strange… Mendal had thought it unlikely this chamber would be modular. According to the Outworld forum archives, this was supposed to be the infamous choke point, the real reason why the devs had restricted the party to a measly ten. There were exploits he could have used to sneak in a few more party members... Reassessing the rough condition of his crew, he almost lamented not recruiting an extra member or two.
Almost.
That said, an additional Enchanter would have been nice...
THERE'S A SAYING IN THE TOWER:
"SOMEONE WILL BE LEAVING SOON..."
(Placeholder cover)
After millennia upon fixed orbits amongst the stars, mankind reaches its planet destination.
The Vagabond's crew, proud to be of the generation of the Landers, disembarks – needless to say, a lot can go wrong after thousands of years apart.
(Placeholder cover)