A masked presenter with a black and white suit stood in a talk show room. He raised his mic and addressed the invisible crowd.

“Ladies and jellybeans, boys and gorillas, welcome to the very first episode of ‘Interviews with Az! Today I’ll be hacking your story to bring you more for less. This broadcast is sponsored by the author and brought to you by yours truly, all for the small price of $0.00. That’s right, $0.00. What a bargain!”

The presenter grinned, before extending a hand towards an empty chair.

“Today we will have a range of guests on our show, answering questions from…”

A drumroll began to play.

“…From you! That’s right. We’re here to answer questions from you! Not to worry though, all guests have been completely brainwashed tonight, so they won’t remember a thing. Don’t worry. Nobody was harmed in the making of this show. Now, lets begin by bringing in our very first guest, who is none other than the man behind Azrael himself. Ladies and gents, a round of applause.”

The lights shift to the side of the stage, and Kade stumbled in, confused. The presenter turns to greet him and leads him to a seat.

“Welcome Kade, or do you want me to call you Azrael, can I call you Az, or Rael, or maybe Real As? Sounds a bit like ‘Real Abs’. Haha, do you Real’As what I did there? Sorry. Anyways, we have our first question of the show. You keep naming your characters from the bible, are you religious?

“Uh… Well… not actually. I mean, I like the values that religion has, like love your neighbour and be kind and helpful and good karma and stuff like, but I don’t believe in some guys up in the sky looking down and lording over people.”

“So, what about Cain and Azrael and Seraphim?”

“Well, sure Cain appears in the bible, but it means ‘trouble’ in old English. It was the name that my best friend gave me when we played together. He would always say ‘You’re trouble’. Or when I came running he’d always say “Oh, here comes trouble”. I took the name as a joke and it sort of stuck after that.”

“Interesting, so what about Azrael and Seraphim?”

“Well, I chose Azrael because I kinda liked the symbolism of the name and all that. Phoenix would have been another choice, but it doesn’t have that coolness that Azrael has. It’s edgy. As to Sera’s name… well… I was under a bit of pressure and I didn’t want to call her Angel or Cherub.”

“Fascinating, fascinating. So, it was all just a big coincidence. What about before you had Cain as your name? You said your friend Samson gave it to you while you played. Obviously, you would have had to have a name before then, right. What was it?”

“Yeah, I had one. I never actually played a VR game before Samson brought me in, so I used Cain for every game after my first.”

“I see, but you avoided the question. What was your first username in a game?”

“It was ‘The_Dar…”

“Pardon? We had a little difficulty hearing that.”

“I said it was ‘The_Dar…”

“Sorry, one more time”

“I SAID THE_DARKLORD69.”

“Ok, ok, no need to get you undies in a twist. We all have dark pasts, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Nobody’s judging you. Just don’t look in my closet. Ha ha he... Anyhow, we do have to be mindful of time, so it’ll be on to the next question. Many readers were wondering why you play so unprofessionally? Afterall, you were in Holy Empire for, what, nearly five years?

“Four and a half, but yeah, close enough.”

“So, what do you have to say on that topic?”

“Firstly, I was never technically a part of ‘the team’. Yes, for all intents and purposes I had a contract and was on the team, but was never properly a part of the team. At the time when they scouted me they had lost their [Mage], so they needed a fill in. Ignore the fact that I had never played a caster or long-range class before that. At the time, in the game that they were in, they were losing a lot of publicity. The PR and Advertising teams were pushing for something fresh and new in the team, that would keep people interested. I fit the bill. At that time I was a rookie with no formal training, but well enough known on the internet. This meant they could basically sell the fact that they were hiring talent regardless of station. This kept fans and aspiring gamers interested. Some of my in-game stunts and exploits had made it pretty big of the internet, so they hired me to keep the advertising and marketing companies interested as well. I was never actually hired for my skills. The fact that I had at the time, passable, combat skills was a bonus. Not that that helped much. They stuck me in a [Mage] roll, which meant that quite often I couldn’t use my combat skills. Even then I was kept on the shelf, except for large scale battles, or other planned stages”

“So, you were basically there for marketing?”

“Yeah. Pretty much. I was brought out for aired raids and boss fights, but in general I was either ignored, or sent on endless fetch quests. I was never allowed to do presentations outside of game either. It was part of the contrac… ”

“You mentioned pointless quests earlier in the story, when you met Sophie, could you elaborate a bit more on that?”

“Sure, well… uh. Melissa got jealous very easily. The entire guild is basically ego fuel. During raids she was the star, keeping everyone alive. However, occasionally I would get praise from the advertising guys, because I occasionally mixed magic with close combat or self-crafted items. Without the spotlight on her she would then send me on quests and guarantee herself the lime light . This meant that I occasionally missed raids or other battles. Sophie was probably in a similar position to the me at the time.”

The presenter looked down at the cartoon figure watch on his watch and gave a low whistle.

“Oh! how time flies and we still have two more interviewees. Thank you Kade, lovely to have you on the show. I hope we get another chance to chat, but on to the next person – Sera. Sera, there have been a few people speculating about you, why you changed from a secretary to a little girl. We all know that you claim that it was to help Kade settle in, but we would like to ask you what you think about that.”

“Yes, hello, well actually, I can’t say very much as I’m bound by a privacy agreement. However, I can say that our task is to take the form that our player feels they are most comfortable with. While Kade was still in need of some, and dare I say it serious, guidance I took the form of a secretary, now I’m a little sister type, … well, I’ll let you guys speculate the rest.”

“I see, thank you. Now we have a few more questions for you actually, but we’re running out of time, so I’ll ask the most important one. We might have missed it, but how does respawning work?”

“Oh, that’s an easy one. It’s even in the game manual. So, once you die you use up a life token. Generally, each player only has three. You can get bonus ones through other challenging methods. When you die you use up one of the tokens, if you don’t have anymore, then you’ll have to start a new character from scratch.”

“Ooh, that’s harsh.”

“Very, but the designers wanted to put an emphasis on valuing life and rewarding people who overcame great challenges. Then, when one of your tokens are used up you respawn in the last place that you slept, which you designated as ‘safe’. This doesn’t always mean the last place you slept, but the last place you felt safe in which you slept. That can mean that you travelled a month, but you only felt safe in that one inn in the city two weeks back. Or, if that place were under siege the game would designate it as ‘unsafe’ and either respawn you at the closest possible ‘safe’ location, or the last other place you felt safe. This was done to avoid spawn camping.”

“Interesting. Thank you. We still have a few questions for you, however, unfortunately, we have to move on to our last guest speaker for the show. Nord’s come on out. Welcome, Nords. It’s good to have you.”

“It’s good to be here.”

“So, Nords. We had a question we were curious about that we were hoping you could answer. Why Free Sheep as your guild name? Why not the Roaming Tigers or Wild Wolves?”

Nord’s scratched the back of his neck sheepishly.

“Uh, Actually…” Nords looked up suspiciously “You won’t tell anyone will you? It’s kinda embarrassing.”

“Not a soul.”

“Thanks. The name came about by accident actually, while I was on my way to some friends for a drink. I was driving by some fields, after a day at work and I saw this group of sheep in the field. They were just sitting there, carefree and going about their day and there I was, trapped in my everyday life. That evening, while I was drinking with my friends they were talking about this new game coming out and I mentioned how nice it would be to live like those sheep, carefree, without a worry. We were all so drunk at that time, but somehow, we all agreed to make a guild together. None of us remembered who suggested the name, but somehow the name stuck. So, we became the Free Sheep.”

“A fantastic story! Unfortunately, that’s the end of our time today, however I wish you two both the very best in the game and we’ll see you all next time!”