Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.1      Finding her Feet

1.1.4    An Intriguing City

1.1.4.3  Total splattage

Olympus, (the private forum of The Immortals guild).

Tlaloc: “Yo, what’s up?

Eistla: “Still setting up things on the new world. We’ve picked a local faction in three of the starter cities and are bringing stuff over to auction, via mule, to raise funds”

Jinzha: “I hope you get a good price. It isn’t easy to persuade hikikomori with level 60+ characters to dedicate all their soul bound slots to items we think will be rare in the new world and then kill themselves, wasting 5 years of daily playing, just to carry stuff over between worlds for you.”

Tlaloc: “How do you do it?”

Jinzha: “We’ve been offering arlife jobs with a good salary. We set up a gaming company which claims it is looking for dedicated game players to be an in-house ‘user experience’ testing team. We’ll shut it down next month due to ‘unexpected financial considerations’, but it still works out at a week’s wage per item transferred.”

Tlaloc: “Harsh.”

Eistla: “If you’re not dedicated to the mission, this is the wrong guild for you, Tlaloc. We’re putting a lot of resources into giving our guild a fast start in the new world, because we want to get a group of our players up to level 100 before anyone else has a level 90 character. At level 100 your name and level are displayed on a global ‘leading players’ board, and everyone targets you because if a player can reach level 110 they gain the ‘lesser deity’ status, can’t be killed, and can found their own in-game religion. If we get there first we’ll frigging own this game, the biggest most popular game in the world. Have you any idea how much money we can make from live streaming and corporate sponsorship, alone?”

Nirrti: “Talking of live streaming, have you seen the latest clip spreading? #BeepBeepBandit”

Tlaloc: “Yeah, I saw that one this morning. BouncyGirl drops an anvil on some bandit guy’s head. Total splattage. And she’s all like ‘I’m so road runner, wat u gonna do bout it?’ And you can feel her emotions. All she cares about is whether her poor anvil is ok. She loves that damn anvil.”

Nirrti: “You should have looked more closely. In the background you can see that blue haired chick from #CookingDance looking on. Check out the full download. Same place as the last one.

; link to Linnie’s blog

Jinzha: “Our strategy guys did an analysis of the last one and worked out what happened. They got a variable reward quest that scored based on the emotions of a specific NPC. Then they created a massive jump in her emotions by feeding her food spelled to make her feel artificially happy, immediately after singing a spell to make her feel artificially sad. A spell whose lyrics were about a poet dying, which they immediately followed by staging the near death of the singer. They probably got a couple of medium power legendary items out of it. They’re a smooth group, but not a threat to us. It will be interesting to see what they came up with this time. I’ll go watch it.”

...

Eistla: “I see what you mean. Their tank acts the buffoon to grab the aggro, so their DPS can attack with total surprise from behind getting criticals. He takes down 12 mobs that were higher level than him, in less than 6 seconds. Then their scout one shot kills the boss. The boots must be one of the legendaries. I’d guess those flaming meteor hammers were the other.”

Nirrti: “I think I recognise the armour style some of them are wearing. That’s Etruscan. They must be heading for Torello.”

Eistla: “I’ll order Mazarin to have his members there keep an eye out for them and report back anything they see. And I’ll ask Malzeth if he wants us to recruit them, leave them or destroy them.”

The next day, Kafana woke up with a smile on her face, anticipating meeting up with her friends and finding out what Bulgaria had been up to all these years. She’d told minion to send all game recordings she made to Alderney, on an ongoing basis, and she’d loved the 5 minute edited version of their Flash Gordon scene promoting Bungo that Alderney had sent her back a few hours later.

Before going to bed, she’d put the crown on in orglife mode and viewed the bits she missed at high speed, slowing down for scenes Wellington had helpfully highlighted as ‘need to know’. They'd reached the Sanctum and met with its guardian, Suor Isabella. She’d instantly recognised the freed captive as Vittoria, who was working with Isabella to help make the church orphanage she’d been raised in self-funding, before opposing forces could have it closed down. Vittoria said she thought she’d been kidnapped with the aid of someone inside the church in order to sabotage her efforts and so embarrass Isabella, who was visibly identified with the effort to save it. She hadn’t wanted to reveal her name, in order to cut down the number who knew she was back again.

The awkward bit was when Isabella referred to Captain Lelio as her "fiancé" when thanking him for escorting Vittoria. They both seemed very stiff and formal with each other.

Suor Isabella had then turned to the ex-bandits, who had been arranged in a row and were gazing around the Sanctum with love and awe, some with tears in their eyes, as though they’d returned to a home they thought they’d never see again. She, and 3 other high clerics stood in a circle around them and performed a ritual. After a while, they seemed to receive an answer and pronounced that the bandits had indeed been redeemed, which provoked quite a bit of discussion among them.

Isabella asked the ex-bandits what they thought should happen to them. Dino replied on their behalf saying “Whatever Cov wishes of us. Our only desire is to serve his will as best we can, to make amends for our past deeds.” She asked their skills, and then sent them off to work under supervision, before turning to the party.

She thanked them and was disappointed to learn that Spirit Kafana was not present. There was further discussion that resulted in them being provided lodgings for a week, and help finding appropriate trainers for their skills. Bulgaria offered their help with the orphanage, and arranged for the party to visit it to talk with Vittoria after they’d trained.

Alderney had also sent her a short message, saying that she’d talked with Vessel Kafana and a letter had been left for her in the inventory box.

If she logged in a little early, she could read the letter before they all got started. *flip*