After a long day of napping, shopping, lazing around and relaxing, mixed in with a comfortable leisure-flight in my Hallow, the dwarves served up a feast. Sadly, there was no way the other would be able to be comfortable in the dwarven feast-hall, their architecture simply wasn’t built to house people above a hundred and seventy centimeters but that was no reason to despair. Instead of trying to shoehorn the others into a hall not built for them, they decided to simply use the gorgeous weather and have their feast outside, making it almost a barbeque-like atmosphere.

There, I learned that the dwarves had a subtle, yet very hearty cuisine, filled with rich meat, mushrooms and strong ale. They didn’t have much in the way of spices but what they had was used to great effect, enhancing the fresh flavour of the meat or mushrooms without trying to distract from it. It wouldn’t work if the meat wasn’t very well preserved, I remembered that one of the reasons Europeans on Earth had imported spice was to hide the flavour of slightly spoiled meat, but the dwarven refrigeration was obviously up to the task. I made sure to hold back on the ale, remembering my unfortunate experience with mead, instead I simply enjoyed the celebration.

They had set up in a buffet-style, with cooks bringing more food out as the evening progressed, and almost every dwarf of the Hold was present, mingling, talking and having a good time. In addition to the feast, there was music and I even managed to dance with Sigmir, making the steps up as we went. It was wonderful, relaxed and thoroughly enjoyable.

In the middle of the feast, shortly after Sigmir and I had made a first attempt at dancing together, an experiment slightly hindered by the height-difference between us, Dargira approached.

“Morgana. I like the new look.” she said, a happy smile on her face. Judging by the large, half-empty stain of ale in her hand she was very well on the way to get hammered, maybe causing the smile and her approach.

“Thank you. The crafters of the Ashenforge-Clan have made me something truly great.” I admitted, looking down my body. I had forgone the cloak, just wearing the new clothes crafted by the dwarves and I liked the new look. Certainly, part of it was that I didn’t look as sinister as I had before, less like an evil witch, a role I played but didn’t want to become a cliche of, and more ambiguous, a character that might be good or might be evil. It was more fun that way, making people guess and wonder, even if I doubted I would be able to fully shed the type I had established over the last few months. But it was fun to try, especially if I could mess with people’s heads by doing it.

“It’s certainly different.” she admitted, looking around as if trying to capture everything around us, making me think that she might be recording, for a video. Far from me to stop her from doing so, but I felt a warning would be a good idea.

“Just so you know, if you plan to make another video, other Travellers will see it. And who knows, one or more of them might use the knowledge they gain from your videos to harm the Ashenforge Dwarves, maybe even attack the Hold itself.” I warned her, speaking softly, so no other dwarves could hear us.

“Remember the video you made of me, and the discussion it caused about dungeons, outdoor or not, and how some groups claim them for their own use? The Thane himself asked me to keep the information on the swamp-dungeon to myself, and I promised to do so, little did he know that you had already shared it with every Traveller caring to look for it.” I explained, not sure if I would actually be able to make her understand that she had to consider what she shared in video, something I had tried to do from the start, keeping some of my abilities hidden as much as possible, even if the highlight-reels had spoiled it from time to time. Luckily, Pantheon had promised to mostly keep me out of them, if I produced good content on my own, something I had tried to do as much as possible, for me and for them. Soon, I would have to make a flight-video, just to make sure I had something good to share. A few of the fights in the dungeon might have worked, especially the boss-fight against Tzar Bolotnik, but that was information I wanted to keep for myself as much as possible, especially now that I had promised to keep information about the dungeon to myself.

My words seemed to have penetrated Dargira’s mind, pushing past the haze of drink she had shrouded herself with and I could see her go a little pale.

“You mean, I might have harmed the dwarves here?” she asked, sounding contrite, maybe even a little morose.

“Have you ever heard the adage that loose lips sink ships? Or that knowing the enemy is half the battle? You put important information out there and yes, it might harm the dwarves here in the long run. Part of their best defense is that nobody had a good reason to try attacking them, their remote and very defensible position making it prohibitively expensive. But if it is known that a new dungeon is up for grabs? Then it depends how the swamp stacks up to other dungeons, with its rate of spawn, material-generation and danger. Those are the criteria I would measure a dungeon with, but I have no idea how the locals do it.” I explained, catching myself before I could drift into a sequietuer about possible dungeon-ecology and rating. Their connection with the Astral River was rather peculiar after all.

“I…” Dargira begann, before stopping. “No, you are right. I think I’m too used to games light Craft of War, where boss and dungeon-guides have often been written before the official release of the content, by beta-testers.” she admitted, looking a little sheepish and a lot more sober.

“Written, yes. But if you think that the testers put everything they learned into them, every trick and tactic, you are naive.” I told her, grinning at the memory. I had mostly left the player-versus-environment part of Craft of War years ago, only glimpsing at it from time to time, out of curiosity, but I remembered that the true tactics, learned in many tries and with great effort, had been jealously guarded, until the content had been fully conquered. Sure, there had been some tidbits leaked, to provide content and income for the guild’s streamers, but never the truly important parts. I was reasonably sure that hadn’t changed, even after i had focused on the player-versus-player aspect of the game and the team-arena, where I had been active with Team Amarantine.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I can see that.” she admitted, before taking another look at her stein and draining it with a long gulp.

“I’ll leave you to the feast.” she told me, before ambling off, maybe looking for more ale.

“Let’s dance some more.” Sigmir, who had been standing nearby, decided, dragging my mind and body in an entirely new direction.

The rest of the evening passed in a pleasant while, at times it was Sigmir whirling my body around as we experimented with ways to dance together at times it was my mind, wandering and whirling. It was curious how much better I got along with people on Mundus, almost like an actual, functioning member of a society, something I had never quite managed on Earth. My mind simply wouldn’t let me relax as I could here, constantly seeking patterns and trying to figure out what a person was trying to say without saying, what their body-language was trying to tell me. When I had been younger, I simply had ignored it but I had been told that I needed to learn to read social cues, something I had tried but never mastered. On Mundus, in a society based on myths, legends and the fantasy of a game-designer, I was able to read those cues.

Part of me wondered why that was. Wondered if there might be a way to transfer that skill to the real world, or maybe simply for me to learn the skills on Mundus and apply them in the real world.

But a bigger part simply didn’t want to know, afraid that too much knowledge might wake me from my pleasant dream, shatter the illusion, so to speak. Pull back the curtain..Shatter the dream and leave me as I always had been, on the outside, looking in. Back to trying to understand the mood of others, trying to read subtle, non-verbal cues.

Back to being Samantha.