Chapter Three: Welcome to Newbie Town
"As any experienced gamer will tell you, once your player has become significantly advanced in skill, beginner towns are to be avoided at all costs. You simply don't have time to waste while newbies try to convince you to train them, and all the administrators know that as an advanced player, you have extra money to throw around, and they make sure to factor this in when calculating prices."
-Gaming Tips for Players from Players, Chapter Seven
Irinilia ended up being the one to accompany Tsalina to the training camp. Tylus was still bitter from his last run-in with what he called "noobs" and refused to go to the beginning town at all. Ravyn joined them to the city border, but then separated to visit the shops.
"I'll get you some pineapple and tiramisu," she named two of Irinilia's favorite foods, laughing, and then disappeared into the crowd, most of whom were dressed in drab gray cloaks like Tsalina's.
"I think the training camp is over there," Tsalina said, and Irinilia was left to follow her over to the brightly covered tent, complete with a large "BEGINNERS COME HERE" sign flashing from its top.
A large crowd of newcomers to the game were already clustered around the tent. Irinilia glanced around. "Let's see if we can squeeze through the side," she suggested, and Tsalina followed her as they ducked around elbows and sidestepped several dwarves, finally pushing their way into the tent.
A bored looking man was lounging on a pile of pillows behind a low wooden desk. "Are you helping her train?" he asked, his black eyes focusing on Irinilia.
"Uh, yeah, I guess. I brought Tsalina here to do a speed training course so she can come with me and my friends on our quest without getting killed straight off," Irinilia said. Tsalina stepped up to the desk, and the man turned his gaze to her.
"You're a newbie if I ever saw one," he grumbled. "Have you ever even held a weapon before?"
"Nope," Tsalina maintained her cheerful expression. "That's why I'm here, isn't it?"
"We were hoping she could get some short course," Irinilia said. "We'd like to start our quest within a few days, so is there any way she can be ready by then?"
"Five day minimum," the man said. "And that'll cost you a pretty penny, if you want her to be trained enough even to survive a few days with you. You level six?"
"About," Irinilia said. "We can afford to pay."
"I'm not included in the we, am I? Because I'm broke," Tsalina whispered.
"Ravyn is trying to get Tylus to chip in, but even between the two of us we have enough," Irinilia muttered back.
"Write your full name on this sheet of paper," the man ignored their side conversation, pushing a wrinkled and dirty piece of paper towards Tsalina, his quill pen leaving a trail of ink across the names already on the paper.
"Clan name too?" Tsalina asked, and the man nodded.
Irinilia glanced around the tent while Tsalina practiced her calligraphy signature. The place was lavishly decorated, with purple scented candles mounted in golden lamps hanging from the ceiling. The ground was covered by a thick red rug, marred only by the mud tracked in near the entrance by a succession of newbies. The man himself was dressed richly, covered in silk, velvet, and jewels. He was plump and his hands were soft— clearly he did not lack any of the comforts available to staff members.
"Now what?" Tsalina set the quill pen back down on the table.
The man took the paper back and pointed to a long line of stones on a shelf across the side of the tent. "Touch the third one from the left, the one glowing green. It'll take you to your trainer. Her name is," he glanced down at the floor, apparently consulting something, "her name's Selaya."
Tsalina walked over to the rock. "It's pretty," she commented, and reached out to touch it.
Just before her fingers met the rock, a young woman burst into the tent from the back side, opposite from where Irinilia and Tsalina had entered. "Wait!" she called out. "You can't send the newbies to Selaya right now, she's in the middle of a battle!"
But by then Tsalina had already grasped the rock. Her image shimmered in the air for a moment, and then she vanished.
"What was that?" Irinilia demanded. "Get her out of there! She's still a newbie; she's not ready for a battle yet— she hasn't trained at all."
"It's too late now," the man said lazily. "Selaya can take care of her. Your friend will be fine. You can meet her here tonight or you can leave a message with her." He nodded to the young woman who'd just entered.
"I'm not a mail lady," the woman snapped. "Deliver your own messages, and as for you," she kicked at the man, "double check with the trainers before you start randomly sending them newbies!" She stormed back out of the tent, muttering something rude under her breath about incompetent, lazy administrators.
Irinilia stared at the man for a long minute, a thousand rude names she would have liked to call him running through her mind, but she decided it was probably a bad idea to say any of them to his face. "We expect to get a discounted rate for this," was her only comment.
"Whatever you like," the man said. "You pay by the level. Five thousand gold for every level up."
"Five thousand?" Irinilia said. "That's ridiculous."
"You asked for the speed course, and I told you that it's expensive," the man was undisturbed.
"You can't even manage to do your job properly and you have the nerve to demand five thousand gold per level up?" Irinilia snapped. "Not paying a cent over two thousand."
"Five thousand, take it or leave it," the man said.
"Considering you already sent Tsalina to her training, I can't really leave it, can I?" Irinilia said pointedly. "Although I don't mind getting it free."
The man scowled. "Smart mouth. I'll compromise for you at three thousand five hundred, and let me tell you, that's one incredible deal you're getting."
"Three thousand," Irinilia said. "That's the standard rate and you know it."
The man rolled his eyes. "With tax that comes to three thousand five hundred."
"Tax is only three hundred."
"You've got yourself a deal."
Irinilia smiled to herself, turned on her heel, and left the tent. She was pretty sure she had a spell somewhere in her notebook for turning stone into fake gold…
Tsalina had only just heard the woman say "she's in the middle of a battle!" before the rock's spell took effect and she was magically transported from the tent. She didn't even fully comprehend the meaning of the words until an arrow whistled by, inches from her nose.
"What's that moron thinking, sending me newbies now!" a woman was suddenly practically on top of her. She reached out with the hand that wasn't holding her bow and forced Tsalina to the ground. "Get down, out of the way!"
Tsalina glanced up from her position on her knees as the woman shot off several arrows in a row. "Are you Selaya?"
"Yes," the woman answered, "although names are slightly irrelevant at the moment." She loaded her bow again and aimed. Tsalina followed the line of the arrow with her eyes to a group of goblins storming towards them. An arrow suddenly shot over her head and buried itself into the body of the leading goblin. He fell forward and the others trampled over him.
"What are you doing?" Tsalina asked. "Is this some kind of training exercise?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Selaya snapped from behind her. "This is a battle, and I'm trying to be the winner." Several more arrows flew past Tsalina; each found their target and each goblin fell.
"Why? Why are you doing this?" Tsalina was feeling slightly nauseated.
Selaya let out a bitter laugh. "You've obviously never been to war, kid." She drew her mahogany longbow and released the thin string sharply. The arrow sliced through the air and soared into the remaining goblin's throat. He quivered for a minute, his dusty silver eyes turning towards the pair before he crumbled to the ground, his hands still clutching his long silver sword.
The life swept from him like a candle in water, extinguished. A gold glow stretched from his body, driving up and up, pulling and tugging, and with a quick slice, it severed, and he was dead. Tsalina sucked in gasp as Selaya let out a cold chuckle. The goblin was lying still now.
Was he really dead? Gone from the world, never to talk to others? His molecules just drifting about in pain? Or maybe the game had taken him to…that nothing land, the terrible place of loneliness Stephanie and Cornelius had described as being the land of the dead. Was he cursed to drifting about for five days? Then was he a real person too? A real person playing a virtual goblin and feeling the pain of that terrible arrow in his neck?
Tsalina felt tears welling up in her eyes at the thought of the goblin's life force drifting steadily away like silver smoke. She turned to Selaya who sighed quietly and shouldered her longbow, "We're done here. We're going back to my tent, and I'll do what I was supposed to do when you arrived. Sort you."
The walk was short and silent, and soon Tsalina found herself sitting hunched over Selaya's ankle high table. Her tent was nice, not elegant or fancy, but very simple, and considering she only had one horse to carry it, the perfect size. The small table was the only real furniture apart from several blankets, and it was positioned so that a beautiful ray of sunlight drifted right on the surface, heating the wood and making it almost glow.
Selaya was apparently the one who was supposed to 'choose the path' depending on several 'soul qualities' that Tsalina was supposed to have. And though she said she would choose if Tsalina was meant to be a mage, warrior, thief, or ranger, the most important change in Tsalina's game life, Tsalina found that she didn't want to think about it. The death of that goblin just wouldn't leave her.
Selaya shifted slightly next to Tsalina, tiredly polishing her mahogany longbow. Tsalina sighed and turned to face towards her. "Selaya? Don't you regret killing those goblins today?"
Selaya looked at her curiously. "It's not my decision. They chose to break the law, and I was ordered to kill them." She paused stiffly then stood up gracefully and began to pace. For the first time, her long black hair shifted and Tsalina saw her ears were elegantly pointed, just like her own. Selaya was obviously an elf.
Tsalina sat up a little as Selaya began to speak again, her voice almost a whisper. "This is terrible, after your first encounter here nothing can affect your decision for a job, nothing at all." Selaya ran her hands nervously through her glistening hair, "I suppose I'll just have to start like you were any other child."
It amazed Tsalina how quickly Selaya had forgotten about the goblins she had killed, but she would not forget. "But what about those goblins?"
Her voice sounded weak and shaky, and Selaya stopped and stared at her in annoyance, "Look, those goblins died, big deal. They stole and I killed 'em for it. Will you please stop thinking about them? You're making my job three times as hard as it has to be!"
In response, Tsalina threw her a disgusted look. "Don't you care at all?"
Selaya sucked in a deep breath and let it out. Maybe she was trying to restrain the urge to kill her 'apprentice', but at the moment, Tsalina couldn't care less. "Fine. I'll give you some advice, kid. My professor once told me, 'Kill or be killed'—that's all you can do."
Tsalina sighed again, "But, they couldn't have ki—"
Selaya turned flashing eyes on her, "Stop questioning it! I'm going to kill, not be killed, and if you can't accept that, you should learn to keep your mouth shut, you insolent girl." Tsalina frowned, thinking, I could not kill others. I could not. But apparently you have no problem with it. Selaya continued, "You don't understand anything. If you don't want to hurt anyone and just be plain useless to others, fine. You can be a mage!" Tsalina shrugged her shoulders. Using magic sounded a whole ton better than having to use heavy weapons anyway.
Selaya threw her arms in the air at Tsalina's vague happiness and exclaimed, "Fine! Congratulations, you're a mage. Tomorrow I'm bringing you to Master Glenn. He'll teach you either the art of the bow or throwing knives. Good riddance!" And with that Selaya lay down and threw a blanket over herself.
Tsalina smiled to herself, thinking I either wanted to be a mage or a ranger anyway, so this works fine. She stood up, still smiling, and stretched out her legs. It's a shame I'm not allowed to skip the weapon stage of this ridiculous training. I can't believe Cornelius forgot to program me into a sixth level!
Ravyn thought the beginner town itself was rather dull. It was small and full of newbies who couldn't tell the difference between an arrow and a dagger even as it them in the gut. She saw several new thieves eyeing the pockets of her cloak, but apparently none of them dared to approach the sixth level striding confidently though the streets.
She stopped at the first food shop she found, eager to finish her trip and meet back up with Irinilia. She would have liked to have gone to the training ground, but she had been worried that another member of the Pallanén family would be working there, as she knew many of them did. All the women of her line were legendary warriors, and she had a feeling they would want to know why she was traveling around with a mage and a newbie instead of saving the world on a valiant quest. Altogether too awkward and uncomfortable, not to mention she had no desire to justify herself to them anyway. She knew she was a bit unconventional to her family—both in the game and in real life, she reflected.
"Hi, I'd like to get some pineapple and some tiramisu," she said to the flour-covered lady standing at the counter of the shop.
"Pineapple?" the woman sounded completely bewildered. "Why are you looking for pineapple?"
"It's a present for my friend," Ravyn explained.
"I should think the tiramisu would be enough," the woman said.
"Should you?" Ravyn said absently as she counted out coins into her hand. "I think a hundred gold pieces will be more than enough to cover the cost of both, don't you? Actually, give me three each, and I'll triple the gold." She pressed the coins into the woman's hand.
"Yes- yes, of course," the woman hurried into the back of the shop. Ravyn supposed she didn't make a lot of big sales in a newbie town like this—it took quite a few levels to build up the kind of money Cornelius had hacked for them.
The woman passed her the tiramisu, wrapped up in a pretty white box with a ribbon tied around it. "I made it all nice for your friend's present," she explained. "And here's the pineapple." She offered Ravyn a second small box.
"Thank you," Ravyn smiled and left the shop, her packages both tucked neatly under one arm.
She hadn't made it ten steps out of the shop when she felts something brush against her hip. In one quick movement her hand snapped to her side, her fingers wrapping around the small wrist of the hand grasping for her pocket.
A young blond girl wearing the gray newbie cloak—of course, practically everyone here did—gaped up at her. "Wow, that was amazing!"
Ravyn dropped the girl's hand. "If you're going to pickpocket someone, do it properly. Otherwise, they're probably going to break your wrist." She increased her pace as she headed out of town. Now she realized why Tylus had been so displeased about running into a group of newbies when he'd first arrived.
"Really? I didn't know that. This is my first character, so I'm totally new to this game," the girl trotted to keep up with Ravyn's longer and more practiced strides. "I guess you can already tell I'm a beginner, right? I have the cloak and I'm here in beginner town, so it's not like I'm trying to hide my newbie status. But you don't seem like me at all. You're much higher than that, aren't you?"
"Level six," Ravyn said. "Which is why you should not have tried to steal anything from me."
"Oh, I know that now, but I didn't know that before, which is why I tried it. You're not a mage, see, I can tell that much, so I know you're not going to fry me with a lightning bolt, and you looked nice so I felt bad about stealing from you but at least you didn't break my wrist, like you said other people would! See, you are very nice!"
Ravyn felt the girl brush against her side again and twisted away. "Put those fingers anywhere near my pocket again and I will stick them in a block of cement," she said slowly, enunciating each word. "I'm not that nice, and I know all the pickpocket tricks, as I've tried most of them in my time. Go back to your beginner friends."
"You're a thief? You don't look like a thief."
"I'm not," Ravyn said. "Go away."
"My name's Lorena Elizabeth," the girl called after her as they separated at the city wall. "Put in a good word for me with the big official leader people, will you please? I need all the help I can get."
"You most definitely do," Ravyn muttered to herself, breaking into a run. It was one of the few things she would have to agree with Tylus on—newbies were really and truly irritating.
Irinilia was waiting for her outside the training camp. "We can stay in the cabins outside the school facility," she called as Ravyn approached. "I reserved one for you and me with a separate room for Tylus. Tsalina may be staying with us or she may end up spending the nights with her trainers, depending on what programs she decides to do." She waved a roll of crumpled paper in the air vaguely. "There's plenty we can do around here while we wait. It's going to be five days."
"That's not so bad, then," Ravyn said. "I've got the pineapple and tiramisu. We can have a party."
"They totally ripped us off with the training fee, though," Irinilia said as she and Ravyn started walking down the path towards the cabins. "Three thousand three hundred gold pieces per level up."
"That's stupid," Ravyn shifted her packages in her arms. "No beginner can pay that much."
"But we're not beginners and they know it," Irinilia said. "They know we can afford more so they're charging more."
"But we're not beginners," Ravyn repeated slowly, an idea slowly forming in her head as she remembered her encounter with Lorena Elizabeth the Newbie. "So… is there any reason why we couldn't use our free time and great level six skills to, um, reacquire what we give them for Tsalina's training?"
Irinilia stared at her for a moment, then a smile slowly crossed her features as she realized what Ravyn was suggesting. "I'd say it's a definite possibility."
Tylus really hated newbies, but when Ravyn and Irinilia did not return after two hours of waiting, he decided he was better off braving out the crowds of inept players rather than attempting to complete the quest by himself.
An admininstrator stopped him as he tried to enter the training grounds. "Can I help you, uh, sir?" he asked.
"Yeah, you can, actually," Tylus said. "I'm looking for two level sixes, one an elven warrior and the other a mage."
"Ah, yes. Irinilia and Ravyn are their names, correct? They've reserved a cabin for the next five days. I can direct you there if you'd like."
Reserved a cabin here in noob city for five whole days? That could not be a good sign. "Directions would be great."
He soon found himself in front of a small wood cabin tucked into a small semicircle of pine trees, a pile of chopped wood leaning against the front wall. Tylus pushed open the door to see Ravyn and Irinilia sitting on one of the three beds inside, pouring over a crumpled old piece of paper that looked like a map, trying to see by the light coming from the cabin's two windows. Irinilia had a piece of tiramisu on a plate on her lap and she was eating it neatly with a fork. Ravyn held a piece of pineapple in her free hand and occasionally took a small bite off the end. "We need to talk," Tylus said brusquely when they didn't react to his arrival.
Irinilia turned to face him. "Oh hey Tylus. Sorry, we meant to come find you, but we got a little distracted." She waved vaguely at the food and papers around her.
Ravyn didn't even look up. "Shut the door behind you."
Tylus ignored her. "What are we going to do about Tsalina?"
"What do you mean, do?" Irinilia asked, at the same time Ravyn said, "I asked you to shut the door."
Tylus took several steps into the room, not touching the door. It was too dark in the cabin without the sun from the open doorway anyway. "Well, she's going to be training here for five days, and that's supposed to be the advanced speed course for experienced gamers, isn't it?"
"They told us," Irinilia nodded.
Tylus let out an exasperated sigh. "So I think we should just go ahead without her."
Both Ravyn and Irinilia gaped at him. "No," Ravyn said finally. "Absolutely not."
"Why not?"
"What do you mean, why not?" Ravyn snapped. "We're friends, we're a team, we stick together!" She paused for a moment. "Not to mention she only has to train, thus forcing us to stay here, because you screwed up to begin with. And will you please shut the door!"
"But think about it!" Tylus leaned forward on the bed post. "We have to finish a quest in the fifteen days we're given to play. We've already lost one. If we have to spend five more days here waiting for Tsalina, we'll only have nine days left for the quest."
"We can do it in nine days," Irinilia said.
"But we should have had fifteen! We're left with sixty percent of the time they expect us to have and think we'll need to finish," Tylus was really aggravated now. Did he have to hammer his point into their heads? "Listen, it's not like we're abandoning her here. We can buy a teleportation stone for her, and she can catch up later."
"What do you not understand about no?" Ravyn demanded. "It's a simple word. Two letters. No."
Tylus glared at her. "My extensive intelligence understands the word, it's the reason behind it that isn't making any sense."
Ravyn stood up and brushed past him to yank the door shut. It crashed loudly, and Tylus had to blink several times to adjust his eyes to lack of light. "Do you want a piece of pineapple?" Ravyn asked abruptly.
"Huh?"
"Pineapple," she repeated, pointing to an open white box on a small table nearby. "I bought pineapple. Want some?"
"Uh, not right now, thanks," Tylus was thrown by the conversation change.
"Sit down," Ravyn put the box back on the table. "Irinilia and I have this idea, and we were hoping you'd want to do it with us."
Tylus raised his eyebrows but didn't sit down.
"These are the maps of the training facilities," Irinila indicated the papers spread out across the bedcovers. "Now, we're feeling that they might have ripped us off slightly with their extensively high training fees, and we're hoping to even the score a bit."
"Meaning…?" It already was starting to sound like a bad idea.
"We're going to break into their main offices and take all the money we can find," Ravyn answered immediately. Catching his criticizing look, she added, "Trust me, they probably won't even miss it. We can even pass it out to the poor people if it makes you feel better."
"It's not the moral issue that's concerning!" Tylus said. "What are you planning to do when they catch you in the office with money spilling out of your pockets?"
"They're not going to catch us," Ravyn corrected. "Unless you're planning to just sit around 'noob city' for five days and do nothing?"
Tylus stared at her for a moment, then let out a long and gusty sigh. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to complete the quest on his own anyway, and Ravyn's logic was perfect. He just didn't have to give her the pleasure of his acknowledging it. "What's your plan, then?"
Tsalina's training scene was written by Glowfish36 and Selaya and Tsalina are both entirely her property. If you liked that part, check out her stories.