Rich looked over at the pointy thing in the snow. That was definitely a spear.

He shifted to put himself between the player and Geebo. “You just tried to kill me, didn't you?”

“Well yeah,” she shrugged. “We've been having griefer troubles recently. Figured I'd check to see if your PK was switched on.”

“Uh huh,” Rich said, staring at her.

Her name read “LivingDeadGrrl – Berserker 16”

And her grin had really, really sharp teeth. They were all pointy. “So what race are you?” he asked.

“Darkspawn,” she said, circling left, clearly trying to get a look at Geebo.

He shifted to keep himself between them. “Darkspawn? What's that all about?”

“Oh, just the usual lovecraft stuff. Y'know, his racist fear of miscegnation only with fantasy races. We're humans whose ancestors screwed with unspeakable monsters and stuff.”

Rich had no idea what miss seg nation was, but he knew what racist meant. That was the word that foreigners used to insult Ministry Americans. That meant she was an alien, and he tensed up. “I don't want to fight you,” he said, and then he cursed himself for saying it. That was the sort of thing that made bullies bolder, let them know they could be assholes without you doing anything about it.

“Mmhm,” she agreed, looking past him. “How about that little guy behind you? Is he going to be trouble?”

“No. He... we got jumped by some hounds or something.”

“Hounds of tinderloss?” She kept circling, and he didn't like that look on her face.

“Yeah, those were the things.” Rich was tired. He was so tired. He wasn't sure if his meat body's exhaustion was bleeding into his character's sensations. “Can we please not do this?” And maybe he was whining a bit, but he didn't care. “I just want to find a safe place to rest and a dark power to pledge to.”

And she stopped at that. “Wait... you're a Cultist?”

“Yeah. And I didn't get a tutorial so I don't have any skills or stuff. It sucks!”

“Wow yeah, you're playing on hard mode,” she said. But she stopped circling, and looked at him for the first time. “This is your starting area, huh? Nice! I was starting to wonder if anyone else was going to end up here!”

“This is where you started?” he relaxed a bit. “So that's like a newbie village zone?”

“Not... really,” she said, and one gloved hand twisted. “Activate Recall Weapon.”

THWACK!

Rich jumped as the spear hurled out of the snow, and slammed back into her hand. “Whoa!”

She laughed. “You're all right. Come on down. There isn't much left of the village, but I think we can get you a place to rest tonight. Uh... you were the guy who said he didn't get a tutorial, right?”

“Right.”

“Don't accept quests until you've had a chance to get settled. Some of them are time sensitive. I had to learn that the hard way.”

“Thanks.” Moving carefully, he nipped Geebo's harness and dragged him onto his back. It took a few tries, and LivingDeadGrrl watched with amusement. She didn't offer to help and he didn't ask, and at the end of it he got Geebo into place, barely.

DEX+1

“Wow, you're pretty clumsy,” she said as she led the way down the incline, picking easily among the rocks and snow and slush. Fat flakes fell from overhead as the storm picked up.

“Yeah. Dragons don't do much with dexterity or agility,” he said, slipping on every third step, fighting like mad to keep Geebo from falling, and generally spraying snow left and right with wild abandon.

“Oh hey! That's something I want from you,” she said. “I want details on your race.”

“Why?”

“Do you know how many there are on the readit? There's literally hundreds. And there's more found like every week! Three years this game has been going, and we're still finding new races. No clue whether or not they're being patched in or they were put in and hidden from the start.”

“Three years?” Rich stopped and stared at her. “I just learned about this game last week!”

“Yeah? Where are you from?”

“Um.” Rich eyed her, wary again... but she was smiling, and she was kind of cute in a round cheeked, evil smiling kind of way. “The Ministry.”

“What? Oh ho ho ho! You poor kid!”

Rich dropped Geebo in surprise and slid four steps before he caught himself. “What? How'd you know I was a kid?”

“You talk like a kid. I wasn't sure but you just admitted it, so thanks for the charisma.”

“I gave you charisma?”

“Yeah, for tricking you into revealing some details. Oh don't get mad. I don't care. I care more that you're from the Ministry. You guys are supposed to thump bibles and flip out and get pissed about women having rights and stuff.”

“We're not all like that,” he protested. “A lot of people just lie about us.”

“Yeah, and you guys don't run concentration camps for women who get caught sleeping around?”

“Well if they weren't sluts they wouldn't get punished!” he blurted out. That was what he'd been taught since he was old enough to know what sluts were. Sluts were women who didn't follow the rules.

Then he remembered his mother was in a camp. And that there were people who would call her a slut. And he lost his indignation as shame burned inside him.

Her smile was definitely down now. “And what do they do to men who sleep around?”

“They uh... well... they have to do hard penance, and need to get forgiven by the Ministers, or they go to jail! And the ones for women, they're not concentration camps. They're reformation camps!”

“Mmhm. You ever seen the inside of one?”

“Yeah, there's documentaries and we saw a video in class—”

“But you've never seen one yourself?”

“...no.”

“And men can bribe church people to get their sins forgiven?”

He paused. “Yes. Yes they can and it sucks. It's not right.” Sadness filled him, and to his surprise, shame. “It's not supposed to be like that at all, but people do it and nobody stops them. Nobody says anything because then we'll have to pay, or go to jail, or have people we love... have people we love get... taken...”

Rich shut up. He was sure he was crying back in meatspace, and he pushed that away.

Now she was studying him, and she wasn't smiling, but her voice was a lot softer. “Is that why you chose Cultist in here? Because you had enough of the hypocrisy in real life?”

“No,” he said, once he was sure his voice was steady again. “It's because I wanted power. And the dragon told me this was how I could get it.”

LivingDeadGrrl nodded. “I wanted to kick that dragon in the dick when he sent me here. But after a few months it's kind of working out.” She rolled her eyes. “At least it was until this place started getting griefed.”

“Griefed? How?”

And then, as they hit the bottom of the slope the snowstorm paused, and he saw the village for the first time.

It was perhaps a dozen huts, with a loose stone wall around it. And stacked in front of the wall were what Rich first took to be firewood.

But they weren't.

They had faces.

Faces and legs and arms, all naked and shriveled and dead, and Rich stared in horror. This. This was what he had been expecting from a darknet game.

Some of the corpses were women, and Rich realized that he'd finally run across a naked female form that he couldn't masturbate to. This was some horrible shit.

“They're naked?” he asked LivingDeadGrrl.

“Clothes are precious around here,” she shrugged. “Darkspawn don't care about corpses. The important part is the soul, and once that's gone the bodies don't matter. If they're useful, use them. Fair warning, some of them are gonna be dinner tonight so if you're not cool with that then go hungry.”

“Are you gonna go hungry?” he asked her.

She grinned back. “I haven't, lately.”

Shouting from the wall. Heads rose up from behind it, whirring things in their hands making black circles in the air.

“Hey! Knock it off!” she shouted.

“Dragons are the enemies of the Yellow Lord!” one shrieked back.

“Enemies may not enter this settlement!” another called.

“Snow tonight. Best watch yourself on the roads!” a third one said, loading a rock into a long leather band and whirling it around until it was another spinning circle.

Rich blinked. “Snow tonight?”

“Yeah, the dialogue scripting is pretty shitty,” LivingDeadGrrl told him. “Okay, look, I know how to fix this. Invite Rutger.”

LivingDeadGrrl has invited you to join her party! Do you wish to accept? y/n?

“Yes,” Rich said.

“Okay, that ought to fix it—” she straightened up and looked at the guards on the wall. They were still whirling their slings, and now more heads were popping up. None of them looked friendly. “Oh sunovabitch! Now what?”

Rich took a few steps forward, watching the hostile mobs carefully. They didn't react.

He backed up, and gently gave Geebo a nudge. The little draggit's body flopped in the snow, and the hostiles shouted in alarm.

“It's Geebo,” he told her. “We're stuck. He can't go in, and I can't leave him here.”

She looked the little guy over, then smirked. “Oh, is that all? Invite Geebo.”

“What? No, that won't work, he's an NPC—”

Geebo has joined the party!

Instantly the slingers on the wall let their weapons slow and stop, before ducking back down again. A few remained, smiling widely.

“This is the only place around here I can build faction rep,” LivingDeadGrrl told him. “They pretty much worship the ground I walk on, so as long as you don't kill anybody or piss on the Icon, you're probably good while you're in my party.”

“Piss on the what now?”

“He's more of a who than a what mostly. Ah, long story. You'll probably hear it tonight, it's the same script every time.”

“Okay. Um... are we going to be good if you log off? Will they suddenly turn hostile and attack us since you're not there to counter our bad rep?”

INT+1

“Huh. I didn't think of that. I don't know,” she said. “Tell you what, let's get some food in you and you can do a few quests. I've got a couple of hours before I have to log and get some sleep, so we can knock the basics out. Unless you're mortal enemies with these guys for some reason, you should be fine.”

“I don't see how I could be,” Rich said.

“Neither do I but shit gets weird here.” She grinned and beckoned, heading towards one of the bigger holes in the wall. Rich stowed Geebo again, and followed.

The largest hut had a cookpot in it. It had a semi-covered hole in the top to let smoke out without letting snow in, and it mostly succeeded.

He thought that it was made of wood, up until he sidled off to deposit Geebo by one wall. The layered rods, stuck together with tarry dried mud and half-covered with hide, were not wood. They were bones.

Looking up the struts built into the side, those were more bones too. They were lashed together over and over again, stretching up to the roof. “Do they not have any wood here?”

“A little,” LivingDeadGrrl said. “There's a forest a few miles away, but it's a dangerous journey. Easier to use the bones of the things they kill, or of the villagers who die. They treat them with this coating that keeps them from rotting so quickly, or use spells... well not that so much anymore. We used to have a Bonesinger, but he got killed in the raids.”

A villager pushed open the curtain in the hut doorway and headed toward the pot. He was dressed like LivingDeadGrrl, in layers of furs and leather. This one didn't have antlers. He carried an arm, a human arm in one hand, and threw it in the cookpot before turning to survey Rich.

“Uh... hi?” Rich said.

“The snows are heavy today,” the villager intoned. “Maitok fears the yellow horde.”

His eyes were overlarge, and entirely black. It was like they were one big giant pupil. But after looking him over carefully, Rich did see that he had a few splotches of yellow on his leathers. He glanced between the villager and LivingDeadGrrl, and sure enough she had a splotch of yellow in the same spot as one of the guy's leathers. It was all squiggly lines and dots, but it was definitely the same pattern.

The villager continued. “The raiders hunt us for pleasure, and we cannot survive. Will you go forth and—”

“Shoo, Wodger,” LivingDeadGrrl told the NPC, and the villager obligingly trundled off out the door.

Then she shucked a few of her layers of hides, revealing dirty-blonde ragged hair, a pair of slightly pointy ears, and a figure that Rich really didn't mind seeing more of.

She paused midway through, and gave him a hard look. “My eyes are up here, kid.”

“What? Um... sorry.”

“I'm out of your league. Remember that and we'll get along fine.” She grinned again. “Besides, I wouldn't want to get you in trouble and have to do penance or pay bribes.”

“I'm kind of there already,” Rich admitted. “That's why I'm playing this, I don't have much more to lose.”

“I'm sure that's a really epic and sad story but to be honest I'm more interested in this character you rolled up.”

“Rolled up?”

“Old-school gaming term. How did you get dragon?”

“I cut a deal with Caunal. But...” he remembered the dragon's words. “...but I really can't talk about the exact bits of the deal. I think I fail a secret quest if I do.”

WIS+1

Her smile faded. “Damn. Hm... Can you at least give me details of your skills and starting stats? If I add them to the readit, then I'll gain some serious followers.”

“Followers?”

“It's a thing where I come from—”

“You're from Cascadia!” he blurted out.

“Yup.”

“No wonder you think the Ministry's racist!”

“Honey, we don't think you're racist or misogynist. We know it. And so does the rest of the world. Well, maybe not Dixie, but they've got their own hangups.”

“Yeah, those guys are crazy,” Rich said, nodding frantically. Everybody knew what went on down south. “So you're a streamer? Is it true that everyone in Cascadia has to keep a certain amount of followers or they get kicked out?”

“What? No, no, that's not how it works,” she said, laughing. “But the more followers you get, the more access you have to the internet. You have to prove that you can handle small scale stuff like getting along with people before they let you say shit that might ruin someone's life if you're not careful.” She stopped laughing, and rolled her eyes. “At least that's how it's supposed to work. Half the people in the goddamn country just buy their followers off of black market websites. I guess I can't blame them, if you're dead poor you might as well rent your online profile out for profit.”

“Do you buy followers?”

She waved her hand in a quick pattern. “No, and don't ask me that again. I'll have to edit that out now. Bee are bee.”

She stared off into the distance.

Rich took the opportunity to check on Geebo. The little draggit just lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling.

He'd accepted the party invite, though, so there had to be something left in there.

“Geebo?” Rich asked.

“I am a draggit! I am good draggit!” Geebo said.

“Yes, yes you are. You're the best draggit,” Rich told him. “Are you uh... are you okay?”

“The vault is dangerous, and you should not go there at your level,” Geebo said. Then he closed his eyes.

Rich watched him for a minute more, confused. Then again, the little guy had taken some serious sanity hits. Maybe this was a temporary madness.

Something nagged at him, though.

Geebo had never referred to himself as “I” before.

It had always been Geebo this, or Geebo that. This was the first time he'd heard the little guy use “I.”

“Okay, that's done,” said LivingDeadGrrl again. “Gonna start streaming again in three, so don't pick your nose. Or do, that'd be funny and might get some ratings.” She smiled. “Better ratings, anyway. You're boosting me, kid. Think I'll keep you around.”

“Thanks!” Then the words settled into his brain. “Wait, you're streaming right now? No, I'll get in trouble!”

“Didn't you just say you didn't have anything more to lose?” Her easy smile grew a few inches. “Just don't tell your real name or give out details that might get you shot and you should be good.”

Rich thought it over.

She was pretty much exploiting him. If he wanted to make sure he was safe, he needed to get out of here.

And go where, precisely? Back to the cave, where he'd get attacked by eldritch dogs that could literally punch him ugly? Or back to his dead dragon mom's lair, where there were still adventurers bumping around and looking for dragons to kill?

Except...waitaminute. “These guys who are griefing your village,” he said, deciding to take a small risk. “Is one of them called Tankitaway?”

LivingDeadGrrl jerked her head up, making the antlers sewn into her hood clatter together. “Yeah. You know them?”

“I know them. They griefed me too. They chased me out of my starting zone.”

“Well then,” said LivingDeadGrrl, as she reached into the cookpot, withdrew the well-cooked arm and waggled five dead fingers at him. “Perhaps we can give each other a hand...”

RUTGER'S CHARACTER SHEET

Spoiler: Spoiler

Name: Rutger Royal

Age: 14 Hours

Jobs:

Cultist 1, High Dragon Hatchling 2

Attributes Pools Defenses

Strength: 103 Constitution: 101 Hit Points: 204 Armor: 45

Intelligence: 36 Wisdom: 32 Sanity: 68 Mental Fortitude: 45

Dexterity: 13 Agility: 29 Stamina: 42 Endurance: 0

Charisma: 31 Willpower: 101 Moxie: 129 Cool: 45

Perception: 101 Luck: 32 Fortune: 133 Fate: 2

General Skills

Brawling – Level 10

Dodge – Level 3

Fly – Level 2

Ride – Level 1

Stealth – Level 2

Swim – Level 1

High Dragon Hatchling Skills

Burninate – Level 6

Chomp – Level 3

Draconic Tongue – Level N/A

Dragonseye – Level 12

Limited Equipment – Level N/A

No Thumbs – Level N/A

Scaly Wings – Level N/A

Slow to Age – Level N/A

Cultist Skills

Unlocked Jobs

Conjuror