PART THREE: The Grandmaster and the World of Azerim

The Beginning[1]:

The loading screen.

The player sees an image of a green dragon fighting three adventurers as the loading bar inches forwards. Helpful tips tick past on the bottom of the screen: Low on health? Eat some bread!
Finally the loading screen disappears and a small medieval town renders at the edge of a forest. In the center of the screen there's a group of three adventurers; a noble Centurion man, a swarthy swashbuckling woman, and a nondescript Rogue. A squirrel pops up from the bottom of the screen, telling us that this starting location is a town called Honeywood.

The game fully renders and the gaming can now begin. Immediately the Rogue goes off on his own while the Centurion and Swashbuckler head to the town proper to stock up on supplies. The rogue finds the hut of a topless Scotsman with rippling muscles and a body of a Greek Adonis; a body only to be achieved by years of mastering the hard craft that is blacksmithing. The Centurion approaches a forgettable faced garlic farmer, dressed humbly and standing in front of a thatched farmhouse. "Hello Adventurer!" The NPC begins in a peculiar accent, before being cut off by the sound of an arcane renting of the fabric of space. A portal opens and out steps a caped and mysterious man clad in dark hooded robes and gloves; equipped with a magic staff. The swashbuckler approaches this man. "Adventurer!" the Sorcerer begins, addressing the lady before he too is interrupted. This time by a loud "BONG" error noise ringing through the air.

The three adventurers glitch, twitch and freeze in place.

Looking up, the garlic farmer notices an enormous hovering error window floating above the lake opposite his home. It reads: AI9 corrupted file. Attempting restart. A moment later the screen flashes white and the error message is gone.

The game continues, only not quite as before. Greg finds himself standing in front of his house but facing inwards, towards the Centurion now standing in his place with his exclamation point above his head, his finger raised. "Hello Adventurer! Welcome to the town of Honeywood!" he says.

It is an inexplicable feeling; nothing physical has changed seemingly, but Greg feels different inside; like he could walk around freely. He could go anywhere and interact with anything. Hell, if he was in town, maybe Greg could even have a hot air balloon ride!

The thought occurs to the garlic farmer to walk over to Bodger's hut and rub it in his face that Greg's a free man now; but as he turned to look over the lake, he sees that Bodger is in the same position with his Rogue. Even Baradun is now looking back at the pirate lady standing inside of his portal, orating the importance of assisting her with finding her missing spell book.

The three of them catch each other's eyes. They are free men.

As they were processing the sudden events, they hear a bell start ringing, a hand bell. Looking down the way, they see a large rotund man dressed in red with a tri-corner hat on. The town crier is reading from a scroll, and he reads as follows: "Farmer Summer's sheep are running amok! Mendon Longbridge offers reward for the return of her booklet! Alchemist Jor requires flowers for a new potion…" and on he goes, reading off the things that need doing.

As he is reading, the trio suddenly hear a scuffling and a sort of scurrying sound under the ground. The dirt separates and large rats start appearing from all over the town. Chaos insues as the villagers run to the safety of their houses! A few of them run over to the town crier and start biting at his ankles. "Rats infest Honeywood! They-they kill the town crier! Reward offered for their slaughter…" The crier uses his last breath to encourage his revenge as he succumbs to his injuries and falls to the ground. He disappears, leaving behind a bell and a scroll of "quests".

Without a meal, the rats start approaching the farmer, sorcerer, and blacksmith. Bodger, however, is alone by his blacksmiths hut, while Greg was still by his own home with Baradun across the path from him, closer to the lake. A couple of the rats went after each of them; with a particular large rat running towards the Garlic Farmer.

Bodger didn't seem too concerned by the rats coming for him, so he simply raised a booted foot and stomped on its head. The rats head caves in and digs into the ground. Impulsively, Bodger went after the other rat with his hands; meeting together in the middle and getting a hold of the creature. With it squirming frantically in his hands, the blacksmith uses his teeth to chomp down on the rat's neck. The feel of blood at the back of his throat and the tearing of viscera invokes instant regret and Bodger throws the dead body to the ground.

Across the lake, Baradun watches in disgust and horror as the tall muscular man chomps down on the rat. "Yee-uuuk! Eww! Ew!" he yells, unable to help himself.

The blacksmith looks as though he is just, if not more, disgusted at his actions. He didn't know why he did that… it seemed to work fine the first time when he stomped it; he should have just stuck with that. Why did he do that? He wipes the sinew that's dripping from his mouth off and shudders.

Meanwhile, the rats going for Greg try their luck in latching onto the Farmer, but fortunately, as they run at him, the farmer manages to dive out of the way of the big teeth coming for him. Another tried for Baradun, but has even less luck getting to the Sorcerer. A big nasty looking rat tries for Baradun as well and just misses as he misjudged the speed and distance to the dark haired man. As he came at him, the Sorcerer is able to bring his staff down and block the rat.

Greg, overwhelmed by events, turns around and tries to get passed the Centurion and back into his hut, where he should be safe from these rats. The Centurion has other ideas and began blocking Greg's way; moving in front of him from side to side. Thwarted, Greg quickly came up with a different plan. He thought maybe he could distract the rats by throwing something. So he digs through his bag, which seemed to hold a fair store full of things. He's able to pull out some rotten meat. Greg struggled with where he would through said meat for a moment, before deciding to throw the meat towards Bodger, figuring the blacksmith handled his own rats well, he could handle these too.

The High Sorcerer of Azerim had his own worries, but he had a simple solution to how to deal with the three rats. With a wave of his staff, Baradun opens up a horizontal portal underneath the rats between him and Greg, and while hoping to get all three, he was only able to get the two closest to him. The Rat King was able to scuttle away from the portal. The Sorcerer was also hoping to get the rats all the way to Bodger's hut, but because he had to do the spell in a hurry, he was only able to get them thirty feet away. It was enough. The rats arrive from the cracking blue portal which opens up closer to Bodger, confused for only a moment before refocusing on the new target.

Seeing these rats appear by magic portal, Bodger looks over at Baradun real quick; at this character that he's actually never met before. "Fuck you, lad!" He gets out before he needs to focus his attention on the rats once more. He sees the rats coming for him, and making the definite decision not to bite any of them, he decides to use his trusty hammers instead of stomping them. He moves towards the creatures and swings one hammer after another; caving in one of the rats skulls like the first and with his offhand knocks the other rat, now also dead, towards the lake edge. Bodger doesn't know who the ostentatiously dressed magic user is, but he doesn't like him.

The one rat who Greg successfully distracted with the meat, after going for it, sees a much larger hunk of meat walking around and decides to try to take a bite out of it instead. While the blacksmith is distracted, the rat grabs onto his shin and its large incisors sinks into Bodger's flesh.

"Ah! Fuck you, Greg!" Bodger shouts as the pain shoot up his body.

The King Rat takes this opportunity to try to attack the Garlic Farmer. While the King is able to get a hold of Greg, the farmer's baggy pants make it difficult to judge where skin starts, so he is only able to get a weak bite of the farmer's leg.

Without thinking, Greg turned to the one person he thought he would never ask for help from. Screaming desperately, he looks to Baradun, "I'm in a real bad, tight spot!"

Baradun sighs, thinking he was about to be free and clear, but he knew he couldn't leave the farmer to the munchies of the Rat King of Dara'shirv'arvana. "Fuck. Okay. You want me to help, fine. Just stand there, stand there. Okay. Now I'm gonna take over, I'm gonna take charge of the situation." The farmer nodded frantically, eyes wide. A plan evolves in the sorcerers mind. "Now… we got to work together. We're gonna work together. What I need is the Ring of Dormor. I need that."

Frustrated, Greg was greatly disappointed that Baradun was asking for a price for his help. "What?! Right now?" he asks incredulously.

"I need the ring!"

"Why can't you just help me and I'll get you the ring afterwards?" Greg insisted.

The High Sorcerer had a plan, or at least the starting of one. "Just give me the ring and I'll show you what I'm gonna do-."

"You're not prioritizing things properly…"

"I'm not explaining my plan to you, give me the ring," Baradun stressed, knowing they were quickly running out of time to act.

Greg shakes his head while trying to suppress a visceral scream, but gives in and starts rummaging through his bag of things. Which does seem to have a wide assortment of items, even though it's a relatively small bag. He looks and looks, knowing the Rat King is only still because of its own morbid curiosity at the moment, but he cannot, for the life of him, find that damn ring! He looks at Baradun, partly with frustration and partly with despair, "Can't find it… don't know if I've even got the ring in here."

Baradun grunts in annoyance. "You've literally got hundreds of them."

"It's one of a kind." Greg gives Baradun a startled and hurt look.

"Okay, you've made it significantly more difficult for me, as it was going to help me do an epic fire spell and damage." Baradun admitted haughtily.

Between them, the Rat King sort of sits back on his haunches, waiting for them to finish; amused at the bickering.

Greg glares at Baradun from the far distance of two meters, making it clear he's angry at the Sorcerer.

The High Sorcerer is equally flustered about not getting the ring. Still, he is determined to do the fire spell, even without the ring to make it big and mighty. Baradun focuses on the large rat who would call himself a King, and conjured a ball of fire in the palm of his hand. Focusing his sudden anger at the farmer, he threw it at the arrogant bastard just sitting there! When the rat virtually explodes, the rest of Baradun's angst went into a wind spell for good measure. Just to make sure, what blood and guts did not make it naturally all over Greg, still would hit him.

Stunned, shocked, and with blood dripping from his brow, Greg continued to shoot daggers at Baradun. After a moment, Greg registers what just happened and shudders. "Ew yuck!" He exclaims as he looks himself over.

That leaves only one rat left for Bodger to deal with. The blacksmith goes to hammer the rat like the others previous, but the rat moves just so and avoids having his head crushed. Instead Bodger is only able to break the rat's hind legs. Even crippled, the rat seemed determined to take a piece of the blacksmith. The last thing the rat does, is get a bite out of Bodger, though perhaps not as big as it wanted; before Bodger lines up another swing and ends its life.

The battle over, the trio takes stalk of their situation. Greg tries to wipe off the blood from himself. In usual game fashion, each rat seems to leave something behind which include odd items such as a dark phoenix fur coat, some rope, and even some sausages. One rat left behind some a parchment with a recipe and ingredients a blacksmith like Bodger would enjoy trying; as well as some old armor he could possibly smelt down or even repair. The Rat King, of course, left behind Baradun's spell book, much to the Sorcerer's surprise and delight. Though Greg glanced at the book at his feet with much speculation.

It's not long until they hear the sound of the mayor of Honeywood, Mayor Ruby, coming down the lane over to them. "Oh thank you adventurers!" She starts talking even though she is nowhere near them yet, "I really, really, do appreciate it, the rats were everywhere, but you've finished off the majority of them. With the death of the Rat King, it seems that the rest of them are burrowing underground. What-whatever can I do to repay-." Even as she is speaking, the others become distracted by unexpected movement from the carcasses around them. They start to shake and the broken bones of the ones they killed crack loudly back into position.

"No!" Greg mutters in horror as there are yet more grotesque noises all around, and mists and masses of rat bits congeal together again. The ones with only caved skulls are the first to mend and to stand back up again, now reanimated. Even the blood and gore Greg was wiping off starts to melt off him and surges through the air to where the King used to be; rebuilding him piece by gruesome piece. Even the atoms of blood the farmer accidentally ingested nearly choke him as they run back up his throat and out his mouth. Not a mote of blood was left on the farmer, leaving him clean of the muck.

Though there was no doubt that these rats have become undead, they did not look that different from when they were alive. Their hearts may no longer beat, but they looked healthy and filled with renewed vitality.

The mayor, seeing the rats regenerate from death itself, stops in her tracks and pales. She gives a low scream before dashing back the way she'd just come.

Facing off with several rats once more, Bodger takes note of their positioning and wonders how many he could get with one hammer swipe. He sweeps his hammer into the first rat he sees and sends it into the next one; the impact is so great that when their heads crash together, there is an audible crunch and they both become lifeless once more. Even the items on the ground are swept up in the flurry and the blacksmith acquires them into his inventory. He spins around and to hit the next one and his second hammer impacts the third rat's skull once again.

The forth rat, unfortunately, is too quick for the blacksmith as it darts into his personal space and takes a swipe at his exposed ankles.

Bodger shifts away with an angry yell, but even as he is gearing up for his next attack, he and the other two notice that, already, the others are starting to twitch. They need to find a way to incapacitate these creatures instead of killing them, or they would be here for a long time. Long enough for the rats to perhaps even kill them.

Even Greg is wondering what to do, as he wonders if a net would work; they could throw them in a deep hole or in the lake…

Though it might be time for another tactic all together.

Greg is barely thinking straight as it is in this situation; while Baradun thinks of Greg as a "woke NPC", the farmer was still new to this whole having to think freely and actively attack creatures and save his own life. In the maelstrom of his overwhelming panic, Greg grabs the spell book as he turns to the nearest escape, passed Baradun, and runs as fast as his legs can carry him. The adrenaline giving him a burst of speed that surprises the Rat King and allows Greg to escape the danger.

With Greg gone, Baradun has to make a quick decision; as the farmer was an adequate distraction the last time he defeated the Rat King with a single shot of his awesome, epic, fire bolt spell. Now that distraction was gone, he might actually have to get his hands dirty. The High Sorcerer quickly looked over at the blacksmith, who was about to be surrounded once more. That big muscly chap over there had made himself reasonably useful in this encounter, even if he might look like a potato. Baradun liked useful people who could do shit. Thus, making a decision, he hurried to Bodger's side, grabbed hold of the bulging muscles and portalled them both away, focusing on Greg to get them to the fleeing farmer.

Once in the relative safety in the Honeywood Forest, they all found a little bit of time to catch their breaths and reflect on what the hell just happened.

Before the High Sorcerer could let his brain move to its own conclusions, there was one thing needing doing first. "I need my spell book back, Greg."

Greg seems to barely hear him as he is still trembling and trying to shake off the fear.

Then Bodger steps up. "Who da hell are you?"

Baradun straightens and looks straight at the NPC. "I'm literally the main character of the game, who the hell are you, little low level NPC from the starting village?" No need to dissemble now, he figured. He was tired, stressed, and the only thing he really wanted right now was his damn spell book so he could try to find a way to figure out what the hell was going on!

"What do you mean, game? What are you talking abo't?"

"Ahh…" Baradun realized his mistake; while the blacksmith seemed quite aware of certain game mechanics, it appeared that he thought they were normal for this world.

The farmer spared the sorcerer a warning glance. "Yeah, what are you talking about?" This was no time to get into that discussion right now. No one was in the proper frame of mind for that.

"Some sort of game." Bodger shifted his wait as he gave the magic user a once over. "This is not a game, this is real life. This is… and who… and wha…" he trailed off, unable to really express what he wanted to say and started to feel overwhelmed himself. He thought his fighting days were over. He shook himself and faced off with the sorcerer again. "By the way, fuck you, for whatever ye did with yer portal, getting those rats o'er to me."

While those two high maintenance personalities faced off, Greg set about making a small fire and a cooking stand. He always believed that a meal helped give perspective. That food could give comfort and understanding. He felt like they'd all get along a little bit better with full stomachs. It was nearly dinner hour at any rate. They'd spent more calories than they were used to. Food may be the answer. His instincts also told him that Bodger was hurt and probably needed food the most, though Greg himself suffered a scratch or two himself.

It was while the garlic farmer was rummaging through his bag for food to give Bodger that the blacksmith got his attention. "Before you do that, I just wanna get out, fuck you Greg for throwing that meat in my direction… but I hope you're okay." He admitted hesitantly. If he didn't get this angst out now, it would just fester. He knew it would. That, and he really was concerned for the gentle minded farmer.

"Umm, yeah, thanks man. I do apologize… I feel bad." Greg admitted. "I do feel bad for it, and I really hope this meal can help lay a first step towards us… maybe, rebuilding our relationship." A relationship that seemed to sully after the blacksmith returned from a long ago war. He gave a soft sigh in relief when the other two finally sat down and allowed themselves to rest.

[1] Following is (mostly) the original work of Robert Hartley, VLDL's DM. See their videos for this session in its original, glorious form!