As Cabrera opened his eyes, he was almost blinded by the sunlight flooding into The Cathedral. Moaning as he dragged himself off of the alter, he tried to get his bearings; he swore that he had only been on the moon for a few minutes, but a couple hours must have passed if it was already light out. His clothes were in tatters and his entire inventory- aside from his longbow- had been looted. But that was to be expected. The apocalypse had changed a lot, but leaving equipped items on dead enemies was a longstanding tradition in PvP events. Who said chivalry was dead?
Standing up, Cabrera practiced hopping from leg to leg for second. Elves naturally had longer legs than humans, and he wasn't 6'1" in real life, so the extra height took some getting used to. Besides, it was only the first- well, second now- day that he was stuck in this game.
"Hell of a time to pull this stunt…" Cabrera grumbled to himself as the made his way to the exit. The devs knew that The Toledo Border War was a hugely popular PvP event each May. Why they chose today of all days to release this monster of an expansion was beyond him. Hell, they almost had to call off the raid before people realized that respawns were still active… Not that respawning was exactly a pleasant process, but hey, taking Toledo back from the Buckeyes was three-years coming. They weren't going to let a little 'apocalypse' stop them.
Crossing his fingers, Cabrera pulled open a menu to check the codex entry on the City of Toledo- sorry- 'Maumee' as it was called in-game. "A Lander city located on the shores of Lake…" Cabrera skipped to the bottom of the text box "Exclusive trading rights in the city are granted to adventures hailing from Pontiac (!) following the dethroning of The Emperor of Maumee on 05/18/18 and the subsequent restoration of The Maumee Shogunate."
"YES!" Cabrera dropped to his knees just short of the Cathedral's exit with a fist held high in the air. It took him a few moments to regain his composure.
His entire party had died during the raid, trying to hold off the Ohio- ugh, 'Columbus' players. In order to win the event (and the associated trading rights), all you had to do was defeat a raid boss (The Emperor) in the Royal Palace… Which would be easy, except that the would-be usurpers are only allowed to bring 24 players into the dungeon while the defenders (which ever since the event began had been Columbus Adventurers) could bring the whole damn state.
The end result was always a massive bloodbath between small armies of players at the entrance to the dungeon as a raid team tries to blitz through to the level boss. For the past three years, that bloodbath had gone in favour of Ohio's higher player count. But, with a lot of pre-planning, the element of surprise, and the massive confusion of The Apocalypse, they were -barely- able to scratch out their first win.
In all honesty, the city wasn't worth that much. Sure, it sold crafting supplies a bit below market value, but more than anything the players just wanted the prestige of calling it theirs. Although, if the game still set event dates based off of real-world time, it was going to be uncontestable for the next twelve years of in-game time. Not half bad for an operation that had almost failed before it begun.
Satisfied with his celebration, and eerily aware of the looks he was getting from some recently respawned Columbus Adventurers whom he may or may not have kited to death, the level-90 assassin stood up and, with a bit more swagger in his step, threw open the doors to leave The Cathedral.
Greeting him was the Adventurer City of Roebuck, built atop the crumbling, overgrown ruins of post-apocalyptic Chicago. The Cathedral itself was built on the real-life site of Adler Planetarium- so that once players respawned, they did so looking across the water at the city's disturbingly beautiful skyline. Which, he had to admit, looked damn impressive in first-person.
As Cabrera took his first steps down towards the city, he spun around to the sound of a familiar voice. "Hey Miggy, I wondered how long you were gonna be out of it."
Before he could come up with a response, Cabrera started cackling. "K," he forced out between laughs, "you look nothing like that."
Facing him was a bleach-blond, blue-eyed, six-foot cleric wearing bright-white priest's robes with a few light pieces of steel armour thrown on for good measure- a far cry from the dwarf he had been playing with a few hours before, and a lot better looking than the lanky college-sophomore he knew in real life.
"Yeah, well…" Klauswitz chuckled. "Shockingly, both 'dirty blond' and 'human twig' aren't available as character options."
Cabrera smirked. All things considered, Klauswitz had made a pretty valid effort towards capturing his likeness; there were limits to what you could pull off in a character-select screen.
The two looked ridiculous standing next to each other. K was shining in the sun like some kind of pale-skinned white knight with a brand-new magic staff slung over his shoulder, whereas Cabrera was almost literally dragged out of a gutter. His brown-and-olive Ranger's Cloak was torn to shreds in the fight, showing off his tanned day-elf skin, and his prized longbow was barely in one piece.
Deciding it was time to start moving, Cabrera started down the steps. "So, I see you managed to scrape up a race-reset potion."
"Yeah, I kicked open The Company stores and stole a few character-reset potions." Their Guild- The East Roebuck Company- was somewhat notorious for buying, crafting, or otherwise collecting huge stockpiles of rare items and selling them at ridiculously inflated prices; business was probably booming in the appearance potion market. "Kat'll probably grill me for it, but I'll pay her back somehow."
"I'm less worried about Kat than I am about our frontline…" Changes to any member's build would change the way the whole party fought.
"Well, I don't think it's too much of a change, I'm just more of a dodge-tank than an armour-tank." Klauswitz tried to reassure his party's tactician. "Heals ain't any stronger, but my mana pool's a bit deeper now. Combine that with the extra agility, and I might actually last longer on the front."
"Not against AoE you won't." Cabrera quipped. Their party already had a big problem with negating large Area-of Effect attacks, and losing armour on their primary healer wasn't going to help.
Klauswitz shrugged.
Cabrera sighed. "Oh well…" It couldn't really be helped; K couldn't stand being a dwarf, and everyone was tired of hearing him bitch about it. Sure, it was going to bite them next time they had to fight a raid boss with undodgeable AoE attacks, but with the current state of the game world, they weren't going to go picking fights with those anytime soon.
"At least now you'll be able to walk at the same pace as the rest of the party." Cabrera joked as he reached the bottom of the steps and started down the causeway to the city. "Where is everyone anyways? I half-expected a welcoming committee."
"Well, they'd all have been here if you hadn't spent so long dicking around the moon." K shot back playfully. "Last I heard, Renee was shopping around to fix up her broken gear, and I think that Chaco is going around with her; no need to ruin girls' night for them." K traded a smirk with Cabrera.
"As for the other two…" He continued on, "Pav just kinda ran off once she respawned. I didn't really ask what she was up to, but if I had to guess, I'd say she's out shopping too. She seemed a bit… uncomfortable… in her armour yesterday."
"-Well," Cabrera scoffed. "I don't blame her. I don't care how good that stats are, you'd never catch me wearing a corset and miniskirt into a fight."
"Speak for yourself." Klauswitz said with a laugh.
"I'm holding you to that." Cabrera chuckled. "Anyways, what about Chaucer? He was the first dead after you."
"He was hanging around at first, but Kat wanted him for something. I think there's some sorta guild leader meeting going on?" Klauswitz shrugged. "Hell if I know."
As if on-queue, the familiar xylophone chime of a telepathy call came in. "Speak of the devil…" Cabrera grunted, reaching out to hit the accept button. "What's up, Kat?"
"Well," chimed Katrina, their guild leader. "I'm just checking in on you, sleeping beauty. You've been out of it a looong time, and I just want to know that my boys are doing alright."
"Right…" Miguel rolled his eyes for Klauswitz's benefit before turning his attention back to the call. Kat wouldn't waste her time on a social call; she wanted something from him, and the only reason she would be this coy about it was because someone else was in earshot. Around outsiders she threw on this childish demeanor, but everyone in The Company knew that the girl would make Machiavelli blush.
Kat paused for a few seconds and then giggled childishly as if he had said something funny. Definitely acting for an audience. She's probably still in that guild leader meeting- but why the hell are you calling me?
"Well Miggy-" she continued, apparently guessing his thoughts. "The other guild leaders and I wanted to know about what dying is like, and since you seemed to spend a looong time respawning, I thought you'd have the most to share…"
Bullshit, you wanted me so that you could censor what I said for the other guild leaders. "I'm with K now." He told Kat. "He'll fact-check everything I say… If Chaucer's with you, I'm sure he'll do the same."
Klauswitz gave a silent thumbs-up in acknowledgement, and Katrina game a quiet "Mm-Hmm" over the call.
"The dying itself isn't actually so bad…" Klauswitz raised a questioning eyebrow in response. "Oh, shut up you wuss." He intentionally said over the call.
"Once you're dead and your body disappears from the environment, you end up reliving a chunk of your memories." K was giving him a thumbs-up to confirm he was on the right track. "I'm guessing that the reason I was dead so long was just because I had a pretty big segment to push through."
Kat repeated that part without any meaningful edits.
Miguel looked up and tried to find the words to explain what had been bothering him, "The memories didn't seem totally intact though." He looked over at K for confirmation. "Some parts of the memories were blurry. Names, faces, colors… There were parts of the story that I don't think I'd forget that seemed… A bit muddied."
"Can you be more specific?" Kat asked.
"… I can't remember what car I drive." He lied.
Kat went quiet for a few seconds. "Go on…"
Miguel took that to mean that she wanted to keep the whole memory information to herself for the time being. "I'm not really sure how the memories that you relive are chosen, but what I relived wasn't exactly my proudest moment." Klauswitz started nodding furiously in agreement. "K's backing me up on that one."
Katrina relayed that to the other guild leaders, seemingly thankful that she had some less controversial information to share.
"-And then I was on the moon."
"What?" Kat slipped out of her acting bubble for a moment.
"Chaucer didn't tell you that?"
"What? No…"
"K's nodding so I'm sure it wasn't just me." Miguel looked up as if seeing the moon would help him describe it. "The location came up as The Sea of Tranquility, and it was on a grey, cratered beach looking up at Earth. That's three reasons for it to be The Moon, right?" The silence over the call told him that Kat wasn't convinced. "Isn't the pre-release testing server on the moon? It's not totally unreasonable."
"I'll… uh…" From the tone of her voice, Miguel could tell that Kat was frustrated and trying to build her façade back up. "Okay,*ahem* well if that's all Miggy, I think we have enough info."
Cabrera sighed, she was back in the groove. "Nope, that's pretty much it… Sorry if you were expecting more."
"Okay, Miggy." She let out a somewhat forced giggle. "See you at the guild hall at dinner."
"That's an order isn't it?"
"Yep!" Kat was now in maximum-overdrive little girl mode. "Love you Miggy!"
Cabrera hung up and audibly winced.
"Haha, I know what that was about." K had a shiteating grin a mile wide.
"Fuck off, K."
"Dude, how many times do I have to tell you that she's over it?"
"I said fuck off."
Klauswitz shrugged. "Alright, alright. Just sayin' that you seem really guilty over what's probably gonna go down as the most painless, mutual breakup in the history of ever." K's grin somehow got wider as something dawned on him. "Say… You didn't spend the last few hours in a greatest-hits montage of that did you?"
Miguel desperately hoped that he wasn't capable of blushing in this game, otherwise his face would be beet-red. "Are you done?" He asked, picking up speed to discourage conversation.
Klauswitz licked his lips and picked up the pace. "Yeah, yeah, I'm done." Klauswitz knew twhen Miguel's patience was about to expire. "When are we due back at the Guild Hall?"
"Dinner."
"Think they know how to cook yet?"
"I'm going to assume no..."
K smirked. He was getting happier about his Chef subclass by the minute. "Alright, I'll stock us up on groceries while you get all prettied up." He shot Cabrera a wink as he took off into the city. "How do you feel about paella tonight?"
"I feel like you're going to burn it again!" He shouted at K's back as he disappeared into the city. Now alone, Cabrera turned to face the Guild Hall. It was about half a mile away- at the mouth of the Chicago River.
As he started the walk down what used to be Lake Shore Drive, he was faced with rows on rows of adventurers who were still in shock from yesterday. They were all huddled in small groups, picking at scraps of garbage menu-food and whispering about the real world. Some of them sobbed as they told stories about their families, some of them whispered about how they had been tricked into buying the expansion, and others sat in total silence staring off as if the real world lay on the other side of the Lake.
Miguel scoffed and started to pick up speed. He didn't know if it was even possible to get out of this game, but frankly he didn't care. This was still Elder Tale- still a game- and goddammit, this was a game he was going to win. If there was a way out, he was going to find it. If there was a prize to be had, he was going to take it. And if they were going to be stuck like this forever- well- he just wasn't willing to accept that option.
'I'll find a way or make one' had always been The Company's motto. Miguel decided that it was about time to start living by it.
