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Chapter Twenty-Two



Every day, I had in the neighborhood of twenty or thirty questions for Lisa.

Q: Hey, Lisa, can we have a pet wolf that follows you around and fights for you?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Pathfinding. The wolf has to follow you around all the time, but there are cases when that’s too hard to work out.

Q: Can we have Dark Lorac cast a spell to make himself a hundred feet tall?

A: No. Wait, does Lorac have to move around? We maybe do him as terrain.

Q: Never mind. Can the player dig a hole in the ground and wait for the monster to come by?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because what if they decided to keep digging and dig away the entire continent? Plus, changing terrain creates bad pathfinding cases. Next version we’ll do it differently.

Q: Can the player cut down a tree?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: What if they dedicated their life to cutting down all the trees in the whole game?

Q: Exactly what kind of an a*shole is this person?

SMALL HUMANOID CREATURES

goblin, warrior

goblin, chieftain

goblin, warrior, dead

goblin, chieftain, dead

orc, warrior

orc, chieftain

orc, warrior, dead

orc, chieftain, dead

human, farmer, male

human, farmer, female

human, town dweller, male

human, town dweller, female

human, merchant, male

human, merchant, female

human, nobleman

human, noblewoman

human, king

human, queen

human, warrior, male

human, warrior, female

human, magician, male

human, magician, female

human, rogue, male

human, rogue, female

human, farmer, male, dead

JESUS F*ckING CHRIST.


Friday was my first morning waking up underneath my own desk. My sleeping mind had decided that my sneakers were a good idea for a pillow. It was, let’s see, ten forty-eight. I’d been up until five doing terrain types. I sat up, but left my eyes closed for a moment and listened to somebody typing. Jared, I realized.

“Yo,” he said.

“Hey,” I said.

I took a moment to think about what I might look like, then had what seemed to my tired brain to be a profound epiphany: given that I had all my clothes on, and I knew where my shoes were, things were probably okay.

“Hey, Russell,” Jared said. “Are we doing mounts at all? Gabby says the art’s not hard.”

“Why not? Ask Lisa if we can.”

I levered to my feet and padded to the kitchen in my socks. I made coffee slowly, leaning against the counter. I’m already at work, I thought. Timewise, I am way ahead on my day.

I took the coffee to my desk. It didn’t actually feel that weird. Really okay, actually. F*ck parents, f*ck having a real job. Maybe this is what we do.


Magic Items

Some items in Endoria were enchanted. People knew how to do these things. I started the list. Magic swords I knew how to do. Rings could be magic, duh. Wands and potions. But then couldn’t other things be magic? Decks of cards, rocks with holes in them, masks?

What caught my attention was the artifacts category. Singular items, storied, created by gods, legendary craftsmen, or powerful historical forces. On the very, very rare occasion the game generated one of them, it was taken off the list and couldn’t be generated again.

Brass Head: A male head of noble appearance, fashioned of brass. When heated to body temperature, its eyes move in sockets and it gains the power of speech. If damaged or opened, it is revealed to contain a small amount of sand. Can recite a character’s name and details of his or her history; clairvoyant. Glaurus VI was so taken with the Head’s abilities that he gave it a dukedom and an infantry command. History does not mention a Glaurus VII.

Dragon-Turtle Armor: A suit of plate armor evidently made of bone or shell, densely inscribed. Any damage it sustains will be distributed equally among nearby allied characters. Share my glory, friends. Share my doom.

Hyperborean Crown: What the f*ck is the Hyperborean Crown? Why does anyone want it? Even Matt didn’t have an answer to this one. It was just the ur-quest Item. Finding it means the game’s over and you won, which makes sense in a little ASCII dungeon game that doesn’t have to explain itself. But we were gaming in a realistic world at this point, and everything needed a reason.

Idol of Arn: A small jade figurine of a grinning, Buddha-like man, quite ordinary except that it is always warm to the touch. There used to be two of them. The other one disappeared in the Second Age, around the same time the Inland Sea appeared…

Mirror of Becoming: User polymorphs into one of the following: 40% chance, dragon of random color and size; 25% chance, giant rat; 25% chance, minor daemon; 9% major daemon; 1% chance, minor demigod. Transformation lasts anywhere between one and twenty-four hours. “Who’s the fairest now, dearies?” she hissed.

The Soul Gem: A faceted black jewel two inches across, ageless and imperishable. It has appeared in a variety of settings over the ages—pendants, crowns, breastplates, skulls. At the end of the Third Age it returns to the beginning of that Age, along with whoever possesses it. “Take it,” the old man said. “Make a better world.”

Staff of the Sorcerous Gentleman: All spells cast by the wielder have quadruple effect and duration. Intelligence increases. Staff cannot be discarded. After 3–4 hours, wielder will involuntarily begin moving toward the nearest body of salt water and immerse him- or herself, there to die unless sustained by artificial means. “Do you know extended underwater breathing? How fast can you teach it?”

Unique Monsters: Liches, Daemons, Demigods

Arch-lich: mightiest of the undead; the animate corpses of mortals too proactive to die. Being a sixteenth-level spell caster with genius intelligence was merely the price of entry. You’d need a 120,000-gp soul repository, a dream quest to the Negative Material Plane, the sacrifice of a true innocent, and the iron will to die bodily but just keep on trucking. Whenever you saw an arch-lich walking around, you saw the remains of somebody who didn’t mind having a skull for a head, if that was what it took. You may as well use its name.

Daemon Prince. Did this mean the Devil? This is where my fantasy theology got muddled. Who were these guys, again? Did they live in hell? If so, why was there a hell in Endoria, if the Christian God wasn’t there?

I had to be one of only a few English majors to find Paradise Lost of practical, on-the-job utility. But how did “the unconquerable Will, / And study of revenge, immortal hate, / And courage never to submit or yield” translate into to-hit and damage values?