The sound and smell of waves crashing onto the beach mingled with the cawing of seagulls lazily drifting on the ocean breeze, flying slow circles above. The grass, cut in two by a narrow gravel road, waved back and forth with the wind. A few trees stood along the path, old sentinels with rustling leaves and silent branches. Further down the path, a fence ran around a small cottage with smoke curling out of it to be picked up by the salty breeze. I stood on the beach before the gravel path, silently admiring the dormant and sleepy island.
"Where am I?"
I blacked out.
I awoke slowly, with a throbbing headache beating dully at my skull. My eyes blinked open and adjusted to the light streaming in from the window to my right. I was in a bed inside a small wood-floored room with an empty stone fireplace on the far wall. A man wearing a red beret and steel-plated armor trimmed with gold sat snoring in a rocking chair near the fireplace. As I rustled and got out of the bed, he woke up with a yawn and smiled at me.
"Glad to see you are awake. It must have been quite a traumatic spawning for you with you going unconscious." He said as he stood up from his chair. "You probably have plenty of questions, but may I ask you your name?"
Strangely, all I could remember besides waking up near the beach was my name. Nothing else existed in my curious and confused mind at that moment.
"M-Minerlad1." I stuttered, my headache making it difficult to think, let alone speak. The guide nodded, and beckoned me over. I walked to him, feeling quite shaky from not standing in a while.
"Well, Minerlad1, this fabulous realm you have just entered is Runescape. I would tell you how you entered, but I believe that would spoil it for you!" he laughed mysteriously. "Anyway, I am the Runescape Guide. I am simply here to get you oriented, then you will explore Tutorial Island and learn the skills you will need to survive and thrive here in Runescape."
He motioned towards the door, and I nodded my thanks then pulled open the door and walked outside. As I came out, a strange wave of nostalgia hit me. A beach similar to the one I originally was on stood below a small cliff. A path led to a small grove of trees and a pond where people dressed in simple clothes, similar to mine, chopped away at the trees and struggled to light fires. I followed the path and came to the patch where a woman wearing a brown, weather-beaten cloak greeted me.
"Hello there! I'm the Survival Tutor, nice to meet you. I'll teach you how to survive out here in Runescape." She promptly handed me a leather bag. I opened it and found a book, a hatchet and a tinderbox. "That pouch there can hold a lot more than it may look like. For now, though, cut some wood using that hatchet. I'll tell you more about the book and tinderbox later." I thanked her and moved over to a tree waving in the breeze. I took out the hatchet and began to swing at the wood, gathering it into neat bundles of three. After I gathered a couple, and sudden whoosh of excitement came upon me and miniature fireworks boomed and crackled over my head. I went over to the Survival Tutor.
"What was that?" I asked her, somewhat concerned by the explosion that had just occurred over my head. She pointed at my new bag and said, "Take out that book I gave you earlier, it'll be very useful explaining here."
I pulled it out of my sack and it suddenly began to flip forward pages. It stopped on a page that had a heading of 'Woodcutting' and a symbol of a tree. Next to the tree it had in bold face, '2/2'. She pointed at the two and said with a smile, "Your woodcutting skill just leveled up! In Runescape, skills are used to measure your aptitude at certain things. As you get better at them, you can do more and more things! You can't do very much else with Woodcutting at level 2, but as you get to higher levels more trees will become available for you to cut." I skimmed through the skills section of my book and saw many skills, from Cooking, to Thievery, to Range… too many to wrap my head around right now. Some were even blanked out pages with nothing about skills on them at all.
She then told me to take out my tinderbox and light the logs I had collected. I took my tinderbox and opened it to find plenty of flint to create the fire with. I pulled out two and struck them against each other near the logs until the fire caught and the logs lit up in blazing glory. I continued to do this with the rest of my logs and I felt myself level up twice more, raising my Firemaking skill to 3. She nodded in satisfaction and handed me a small, handheld fishing net.
"Now, go to that pond and fish some shrimps. They're pretty easy to catch, so it shouldn't take too long to catch a few." I obediently took the net and went over to the pond and tossed it in, holding onto one end of it. Next to me, another boy about my age came over and began to fish as well.
I sat there for a while, catching shrimps dutifully and laying back and enjoying the now far-away sound of the waves and seagulls. While I was catching shrimps, I raised my Fishing skill to 3 as well. I now was level 3 in two skills! After I caught a bunch more shrimps, I felt that I had enough and was surprised by the capacity my bag could hold. I trotted over to the Tutor and she told me to now cook the shrimp on one of the log fires. My fires had already died down, so I relit one and began to cook the shrimp over the roaring fire. Towards the start I burnt a few on the flames, but I cooked many more and rose my Cooking to level 2. I munched on one of my cooked shrimps, and, satisfied with the taste, walked over to the Tutor to get my next task.
"You're all done learning Survival from me, you can go on to the next Tutor now." She said cheerfully. I waved goodbye and hiked along the hilly path the fences made, eating some shrimp as a snack while I went.
As I walked along, a new path became evident, this one leading to a large house with a windmill incorporated into its design. Flowers waved with the breeze below its mass, and the blades of the mill spun lazily with the gentle wind. I walked inside, and was greeted with the wonderful smell of freshly-baked bread. People who had recently come in from the Survival Tutor ran back and forth from the stove, making beautiful golden-brown bread or chatting with a man wearing checkered blue clothes, a pristine white apron and a poofy chef's hat. I walked over the the man with the chef's hat and he greeted me with gusto.
"Welcome, friend, to my kitchen! I am Lev, the Cooking Tutor, and I shall teach you to cook food fit for the kings and queens of Runescape!" he said with a booming voice.
"I already know how to cook, the Survival Tutor taught me." I said, not wishing to have to repeat a lesson on the island. Lev seemed indignant at my declaration.
"Food? You call cooking pond shrimp on a log fire food? No, friend, I will teach you the truly noble art of cooking bread!" he forcefully gave me flour and a bucket of water. "Wet that flour to make some dough, and then you'll cook it on the stove." I took the materials to the sink and wet the flour to make a dough of the perfect consistency, turning it around in my hands to get out any excess water. I took it to Lev and he scrutinized my dough.
"Hmm… a bit too wet for my tastes, but I guess it will do. Now go and cook it on the stove." I cooked the dough on the range in a corner and I had a scrumptious, mouth-watering piece of bread! I added some salt for flavor and ate a piece of it. It truly tasted as good as it looked. Lev clapped me on the back and congratulated me. "Good job! You're done here; you can go on to the next Tutor." I thanked him for teaching me to make such good bread and left through the door opposite to the one I had entered through. The path that came into the house continued along a pass with the sea directly to the left. I took my time walking down it and relaxed after learning so much, wondering a bit about where I had come from before Tutorial Island.
I was broken out of my thoughts to see someone sitting by a crackling campfire, munching on a piece of bread. I remembered him as the person I had fished next to, and said hello to him.
"Hi there!" I said. He looked up and waved. I came over to his campfire and asked, "Mind if I eat my lunch here too?" He shook his head and I sat down and pulled out another slice of the bread I had cooked.
He finished eating and asked, "What's your name?"
"Minerlad1, nice to meet you. What's yours?" I responded. He said, "I'm Hexbug64." We chatted about Tutorial Island so far for a while until we finished our lunches.
"Hey Minerlad, want to come with me?" He asked. I felt it would be better to go through Tutorial Island with a friend, so I nodded. He grinned and we set off down the path to the next Tutor, this time with someone to back us up.
The next Tutor's home figured to be a cottage built into the side of a steep hill. We came inside and a bald man with trimmed armor similar to that of the Runescape Tutor's greeted us. He held a book with a blue star insignia on its front cover.
"Welcome! May I ask your names?" he said courteously. I gave him my name and Hexbug64 introduced himself as well. The tutor gave a warm smile.
"Well, Minerlad1 and Hexbug64, I am the quest tutor. If you would open your books that the Survival Tutor gave you…" We both took out our books and they flipped to a section filled with titles in red. However, one was yellow and it said, 'Learning the Ropes.'
"That is your quest section. Whenever someone in Runescape gives you a task to accomplish for them, it will be stored here in this section. The quest currently in yellow is the one you are on right now: finishing Tutorial Island and learning the ropes of Runescape. Quests usually have rewards as well: they're a very good way to earn money! There are also lists of mini-quests called Tasks that can be done to earn money and eventually extremely useful rewards. You'll learn more about that once you're off Tutorial Island." He said. "That's all I really have to say, use that trapdoor in the back to get to the next Tutor." We thanked him then walked over to the wooden trapdoor. I pulled the hatch up, and we descended into the inky-black caverns that lay below.
Yay! 2nd Chapter will come soon.