CHAPTER 12

"And what now?" the dwarf muttered. "Level 6! We only take Level 25 and higher. We decided that at the council, and Mila agreed. And now you bring me this Level 6 loser."

"How am I a loser?" I was rightly outraged. "Yes, I'm a noob. Yes, I'm dressed like an idiot. But how the hell am I a loser?"

"Volunteer! Nobody said you could talk!" The dwarf turned on me. "Your job is to stand there and shut up!"

"Oh, screw you!" I quickly responded. "What is this, the army? And who are you to tell me to shut up? My parent? My boss? You think I signed a contract to come here so I could have a bunch of beards start telling me off?"

"Wha-a-a-at?" The gnome's hand started toward his belt, obviously going for his battle ax.

"Ye-e-e-es?" I mocked him. "You can't kill clan-mates, that's one of the main rules of the game. And if you do, you'll be kicked out of the clan in disgrace."

"He's right," interrupted Carol, who obviously watched the conflict with interest. "You can't kill him. I mean, you can, but then..."

"I won't train him," the dwarf said in a completely calm voice. "I won't, and that's final."

"It's your job," Carol replied very quietly and, I thought, with a hint of a threat. "You've been stepping out of line quite a bit recently. Not happy with this, frustrated with that. And twice this month, you disobeyed direct orders from the council. Maybe you're starting to think a bit much of yourself?"

"If you think I'm out of line, why don't I just leave the clan?" The dwarf was getting himself worked up again. "You can train these puppies yourself."

"You think we couldn't find another trainer? Of course, we could. But do you think you'll find another clan that's been as loyal to you as we've been? I'm not so sure. Really, we need to have a serious conversation, and Mila shares that sentiment. We'll revisit this topic when she gets to the fortress. In the meantime, put this volunteer through basic training, so he isn't just standing there doing nothing."

"Though let's stay away from all that military non-sense. I had just about enough of that in the army. Did you serve, by the way?" I asked the dwarf.

"No," he answered shortly.

"I thought so. Paid your way out of it, and now you go around throwing commands at everyone else."

"Nope, didn't pay a thing. I just wasn't right for it, and that's all you need to know. Have a seat."

I sat down in a chair in front of the table while he settled into the one behind it. Carol looked at us.

"Well, it doesn't look like anyone's killing anybody today, so I'm going to head off."

He pulled out a scroll, I heard a "psh-sh-sh" sound, and he disappeared in a small puff of smoke.

"All right, so the basics," the dwarf began in a slow droning voice.

Covering those basics ended up taking two hours. I heard what I was allowed to do, what I wasn't allowed to do, what I was required to do, and what I had the right to do. To be fair, what I was required to do turned out to be a bit longer list than what I had the right to do. The dwarf went through his spiel confidently, as this obviously wasn't his first rodeo, but without feeling or interest—and obviously thinking about something else.

Honestly, I didn't accept Mila's proposal just because I didn't have a choice. You always have a choice in life. For example, I could have hit the logout button. Thank God, that was still an option. It's just that I always thought life in a clan was easier, and Fat Billie confirmed that. But life as a Thunderbird was ridiculously complex. Things were simpler back when I played games; a bunch of people got together to make it easier to get through raids or dungeons. Having proven players that you could trust with your back was way better than just going with whoever and whatever you came across. That also gave you resources you could check with when you were in the middle of a quest, saving you the time it takes to get out of the game and crawl through forums. In some situations, you could even borrow in-game money. And, again, clans gave you pretty good attribute bonuses in a bunch of games.

This was much stricter. I mean, sure, all of that was still true, but at the same time, everyone now had their job to do. Every member, for example, gave the clan 5 percent of the money they earned. Once a week, all members Level 180 and above had to take the clan's newest members through some dungeon or cave, help them beat it, and protect them throughout the process. And there was a strict rule about spending time online—anyone who didn't log into the game for two weeks in a row without letting the game masters know ahead of time was summarily kicked out with no chance of appeal. Everything that happened in the clan had to stay in the clan. The punishment for leaking any secret information was also getting kicked out, and the leak could be named an enemy of the clan if that information was used against it. The reverse was also true: all members were required to report any interesting or useful information they came across.

Then there was information about quests, since all MMORPGs on some level, are based on fighting, beating quests, and how the world is designed. PKs, social life, crafting, and roleplaying all come out of those three pillars, and without them, you simply can't have an MMORPG. If the world isn't well-designed or is imbalanced, the players can't buy into it and go find something else. If the quests are all easy and uniform, players get bored. Sure, you can do a quest like "Kill ten foxes," or "Collect five hip joints from jumping skeletons," or "Take the letter to the old goblin" once, twice, even five times. But who needs a game where that's all you do? And MMORPGs are about everyone fighting everyone else, but nobody would want to play anything that amounted to some kind of meat grinder. You need simple quests to help you level-up and have fun along the way, but the heart of the game has to be storyline quests traced across the canvas of the game. And the Elysium world had superquests—both epic and hidden. Epic quests let you go through tough, multilevel tasks and get commensurate rewards: the respect and friendship of non-player factions and epic and rare items that were hard or even impossible to get during normal gameplay. Hidden quests were strings of tasks you performed to get something incredibly valuable: the support (including military support) of a whole group of NPCs, items from sets, or unique abilities. They were very hard to find, and players generally came across them randomly by doing something completely unrelated or because someone from the game admin told them about them, which happened very rarely and was frowned on by that same admin. And there weren't any quest guides for hidden quests, which made them unique. Lone players who found hidden quests preferred to keep quiet about them and clans who learned about them immediately classified that information. That last part made sense, seeing as how every clan had its analysts and spies trying to dig up any scrap of information they could find, and they were willing to pay good money to get it—even real-life money. Keeping information about epic and hidden questions from your clan was high treason.

Some things were straight-up forbidden. Clan members couldn't (or, at least, that's what I guessed) kill each other. You could kill other players, but only in self-defence, and each instance was looked at on an individual basis by the clan council. The clan policy toward PKers was simple: they were not tolerated. You couldn't disobey decisions handed down by the clan council, something I imagined was based on imperial policy. Obviously, you couldn't steal from clanmates or the clan storehouse. Giving clan information to anyone on the outside was strictly forbidden. You couldn't ignore a clanmate who needed help if you happened to be walking by (although that went without saying, as that's presumably how any normal person would react).

So, life in the clan wasn't a walk in the park, to say the least, as they had everything pretty locked down. On the other hand, there were quite a few advantages. The clan offered full and complete protection from everyone and everything, unless, of course, it was your own fault you were in trouble. As we had discussed in the pub, any PKers that tried to pick off a member of the clan were as good as dead. They were hunted down by many clan veterans who were only too happy to get in on the chase. They didn't have anything better to do, after all (or at least that's what they said), since they'd already beaten all the quests and explored all the locations, so it was a fun diversion. Actually, there weren't many of those veterans, and that story wasn't exactly true. The Elysium world was so big even limitless, I think—that getting around to all the locations and going through all the quests was impossible, not to mention the regular updates... Still, most important was that PKers knew not to touch anyone from the clan if they didn't want problems. And that wasn't just a Thunderbird policy; it was true of all the responsible, respected clans. Although you could still find people out there itching for a suicide who didn't listen to the voice of reason.

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