July 5th, 2144, 12AM GMT, Underworld-Gold went live. And the servers promptly crashed under the load of hundreds of millions of people trying to log in at the same time. Of course, the netizens found this failure immensely amusing and roundly roasted EAB (Electronic Arts/Bioware-Bethesda) as one of the worst companies in the world. Meanwhile due catastrophic failure of the launch EAB went back to the drawing board delaying the launch longer than expected. The relaunch was delayed almost a week, and on July 12th at 12AM GMT the game was launched again and this time survived the initial influx of players for almost 5 minutes before crashing. It was another 2 weeks before EAB gave it a proper launch on July 26th at 12AM GMT. This time despite even the most cynical critics Underworld-Gold launched to rave reviews.

Mark found the whole thing rather hilarious and enjoyed the extra few weeks trying to get used to “Fever” gaming with some free sport games that came with the capsule. To his shame he found the whole thing to be rather difficult to figure out. He wasn’t an uncoordinated person, he but after his 10th straight loss to some 14yo trash talking him with language that would make a sailor blush Mark had to admit to himself, that these new Fever gaming systems were a bit outside his experience, and whatever gaming reflexes he used to have had long ago rusted away. This did make him a bit nervous about his pending return to Underworld. On the bright side, he recalled the build he wanted to play did not require a lot of motion on the part of the player, or at least it didn’t back in 2119.

On July 25th at 5am local time in Phoenix, Mark logged into Underworld for the first time in 25 years. The character creation tools were just as varied as he recalled 30 years ago. First, he chose his start location as Tenochtitlan, which of course changed the base character model to a dark-skinned Aztec warrior. He then set his gender to male. For no other reason then his level of discomfort in moving his limbs in these Fever games, he set the physical height to his own and left the limb size to his own. He left the general fitness to be similar to himself, of course this being a game the body of his avatar looked quite a bit more defined then his 44-year-old self, sporting a 6 pack and cut muscles of the like he never had a day in his life. For a long moment he thought about modifying it but in the end decided to leave it as it was for fear he’d struggle getting used to a body too different from himself. He set the hair to black, his first real cosmetic change to the looks, then paid EAB 15GC for the right to set the name and set any physical tattooing. Of course, he remembered this feature from 30 years ago, this was one of the few pay to win aspects to the game. Tattoos in Underworld were separated into magic and cosmetic, magic tattoos were hard to come across in the game, and even harder to earn, yet in character creation you could gain a magic tattoo if you bought the cosmetic DLC. It wasn’t much but when you’re aiming to compete at the upper limits of the game every percentage of advantage mattered.

He then chose out a magic tattoo for forearm, last time he did this he chose the Eagle because he wanted to long vision of one, he had been planning on a ranged arrow warrior, this time around he was going to pick one that supported his planned build, and took a stylized feathered snake, the god Kukulkan to the Maya or Quetzalcoatl to the Aztec who was the god of the wind and wisdom. From what he recalled of the original game the “hidden” feature of this tattoo was to grant a percentage bonus to your wisdom stat, which was vital for all shamanic spell casters. He paused a moment at the adult section in character creation, this had to do with modifying genitalia and allowing erotic play in the game, in the end since it had been over 10 years old since his last contact with a woman and seeing little chance to come into contact with a real woman anytime soon, he decided to enable the “adult features” granting his avatar male genitalia, then set the parts to roughly his dimensions, and closed that part of the character generation. Finally, he set the character name to Eztli and the class to “NONE”, and told the system to submit the character.

To his immense surprise Eztli was “not” taken, banned or not permitted, he remembered paying almost 10,000 USNA Dollars for the character that had the name Eztli in Underworld almost 28 years ago (as well as $50 for the character name change token), just to delete that character and rename his main character to Eztli. Eztli of course means blood in Aztec’s old language and strangely enough was an actual name Aztec children were given. Since his character mostly was focused upon blood magic, he felt it was a much better name then xXx_BLOODWAR_69_xXx the name his 14 yo self-had chosen once upon a time.

Then he entered into the game.

His sight cut off then he found himself waking up in a village on the edge of Tenochtitlan, the ancient Aztec capital rose high in the western sky, with the huge ancient 60-meter-tall pyramid dominating the capital with the twin shrines to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc at its peak. The colors of blue, red and yellow dominated the buildings. The house he woke up in was a small adobe square structure, with painted walls. He was 10 years old. He remembered this was the default start for the unclassed character. He was to do some simple tasks to determine his starting stats and basic skills at various ages in a simulated start. This was his first challenge as you had to know what you WANTED your character to be or else, you’d run a serious risk in this stage of screwing up your character forever. Of course, you could always toss the character and remake, but that would be time consuming, and right now LM_STARS was aiming to get the first 8-man team to level 1000 so that it could dominate the first PVP tournament.

Standing up he ran to a woman with a generic NPC name “Mom” in gold meaning she’d give out a required story quest, or she was a key story NPC. He thought a moment about how to interact with her, in the old game you had controls in your hands for the old VR, and you’d basically select the NPC and click a button to interact with them. In this fever game there were no buttons, so he tugged her dress and asked “Mom, is there something you need?”

The woman turned to look at him, interestingly her features moderately resembled his own which he thought was a nice touch. The woman smiled and said “Eztli, are you up? Can you go find your father? Let him know breakfast is ready”

QUEST: Find your father

Quest succeed: Locate father and bring him home for breakfast, +2 honesty, +2 affinity with mother

Quest fail: Don’t locate father or don’t bring him home, -2 affinity with mother

Accept? Y/N

Eztli flinched at the worthless fetch quest, and replied “Mom, do I have to look for dad? Isn’t there something else I can do for you?”

Mom frowned then smiled again, “Of course Eztli, you can go to old man Guatemoc, and see if you can get a sacrifice to bless our new year’s dinner”

QUEST: Find old man Guatemoc

Quest succeed: Locate Guatemoc and get a sacrifice for new years dinner, +1 affinity with blood magic, +1 affinity with Guatemoc, +2 affinity with mother

Quest fail: Don’t locate Guatemoc, -2 affinity with mother, locate Guatemoc and fail to return with a sacrifice -1 affinity with blood magic.

Accept? Y/N

Eztli paused, blood magic affinity basically shifted the level of your spells for “resistance” purposes, +1 affinity meant when he cast a blood magic spell or one containing blood magic, he’d be treated as 1 level higher then he was, and the same when attempting to resist blood magic. Basic affinity of +1 was needed to learn blood magic, and since that was the first thing, he needed to learn this was the quest he needed to do.

“Of course, mother, I’ll go find Guatemoc!”

QUEST ACCEPTED: Time Limit, 4 hours

He didn’t really remember anything about this quest but he knew that quests didn’t all have to be completed the same way. So, as he walked down the curving street asking around for Guatemoc he kept his eyes and ears open. He knew there may be options to completing this quest and getting better rewards somewhere around. He peaked under tables, spoke to every person along the way, and after 2 hours made his way little more than a quarter mile, during which time he got a loaf of bread, a cotton cloak worth a thousand cocoa beans, and a handful of cocoa beans. He knew the cotton cloak was a minor windfall, and was curious what it could be used for in this quest.

Eventually he made it to Guatemoc’s home. He was an old priest of Huitzilopochtli. The man was sleeping in the small hut. Eztli knocked on the door several times and noted the old man wasn’t waking up. He noted the fire going and water boiling. Taking the beans, he crushed them and mixed them into the boiling water. Then he poured out the brown liquid into a cup, the system identified the cup as “cocoa water, a tasty luxury”, and wafted it under Guatemoc’s nose.

Guatemoc woke up immediately and looked at the young boy with a frown then saw what he was holding and his eyes widened. “Eztli? Why did your mother send you to me?”

“Sir, Guatemoc, mother wants to procure a great sacrifice for new year’s, and thought you could help her” He bowed and handed Guatemoc the cup of hot cocoa.

Guatemoc seemed to be eyeing the young boy curiously, then he took the cup and sipped it, sighing. “The best sacrifice would be human. However, a human sacrifice would cost thousands of beans of cocoa, for the best sacrifice you’d need a warrior or virgin. And those will run probably similar in price to a cotton cloak. I can get you a small child for sacrifice, it won’t cost you anything, you already paid with this drink.”

Eztli pulled out the cotton cloak, from where it was bundled behind his belt. “Do you think you could get a virgin or warrior for this? Can you teach me how to perform a blood sacrifice as well?”

Guatemoc looked surprised. Then he nodded slightly. “I can instruct you on the path for blood sacrifice, and get you a better sacrifice. I’ll meet you at your parents place this evening with the sacrifice for new years and with your mother’s permission I’ll let you perform the sacrifice.”

Eztli smiled and thanked Guatemoc before returning home. He had to tug on his mother’s skirt to get her attention and report the progress of the quest.

QUEST UPDATE: Time limit extended to end of day

With nothing to do for several game hours (an hour in game was about 20 minutes in real life), he wandered about the slums looking for any other quests, stumbling upon his father by accident and bringing him home for new year’s (his father was shacked up with another woman). Disappointingly he didn’t receive a reward for bringing his father home.

The sun was setting when Guatemoc arrived with a young woman slave in toe. She looked like some native from one of the local tribes, she looked terrified as she saw the small stone alter in the home, and she started to beg in some language the system decided he didn’t understand

SYSTEM PROMPT: +1 to Mayan Language, +1 Wisdom, +1 Intelligence

The woman’s pleadings became a bit more understandable to Eztli’s ear, they mostly sounded like begging to not be sacrificed, and her willingness to be a slave for the family. Mark thought “jackpot!” when the prompt popped up about the Mayan language, learning new languages were simple in the “child mode” part of why he was wandering about was in hopes to hear another tongue and learn it. Learning other languages were very hard after character creation was done, and required hours upon hours of effort. The more languages you’re exposed to early the better your character became at learning new languages.

The ceremony was fairly simple, though it had been 30 years since Mark first learned a proper Aztec blood sacrifice he still remembered the actions, furthermore Guatemoc’s instructions refreshed anything he might have forgotten, the woman was held down on the stone alter, a small prayer was said, in this case it was to Huitzilopochtli, then Eztli plunged the obsidian dagger into her abdomen, cutting her diaphragm, then jammed his hand up into her chest cavity, and ripped her heart out of her chest. The whole action was far more disturbing then he remembered it in Underworld. The sensations were real, the smells, screams and cries sent shivers down his spine, the smell of blood gagged him as memories of the war suddenly crashed through his head. Tears came to his eyes unbidden as he ripped the heart out of the girl’s chest and he watched her eyes lose focus. It was so real his body was on autopilot as he took a step not talked about in the sacrifice ritual and his mouth came into contact with the still beating heart, the taste of blood exploded into his mouth as his teeth clamped down on the writhing muscle. This was not part of the sacrifice, but a behavior his old character learned from the Iroquois Indians 30 years ago. He twisted his head, completely without thinking about it and ripped part of the heart off and chewed the tough meat before swallowing it. Waking up from the horror of human sacrifice he handed the mutilated and still twitching heart to Guatemoc, who had a stunned look on his face.

Guatemoc finished the ceremony, burning the heart and using the blood from the girl’s body to paint symbols on the family and home, then he clasped Eztli on the shoulder and nodded his approval.

QUEST COMPLETE: Find old man Guatemoc

Completion percentage: 300%

Standard Reward: +1 affinity with blood magic, +1 affinity with Guatemoc, +2 affinity with mother

200% Bonus: +10 affinity with blood magic, +10 affinity with Guatemoc, +20 affinity with mother

300% Bonus: +20 affinity with blood magic, +20 affinity with Guatemoc, +40 affinity with mother

Quest Bonus:

Gained Bonus Skill: Cannibalism

+10 to Wisdom, attributes gained 10% of highest stats of victim of Cannibalism (if stat is higher than Eztli)

Accolade: Perfect Clear, +5% to all attributes

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Character Sheet: Eztli

Age: 10

Strength: 10 (+5%) = 10.5

Agility: 10 (+5%) = 10.5

Constitution: 10 (+5%) = 10.5

Wisdom: 21 (+5%) = 22.1

Intelligence: 11 = (+5%) = 11.6

Charisma: 10 (+5%) = 10.5

Skill Trees: 0/8

Skills: 0/10

Bonus Skills: Cannibalism

Language: Aztec (10/10), Mayan (1/10)

Items: Sacrificial Knife (Obsidian)

Relations:

Mother: +62

Guatemoc: +31

Accolades:

Perfect Clear: +5% to all attributes

Titles:

(none)

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Mark hurriedly logged out of the game after receiving the quest cleared prompt, the idea of eating that dinner next to the dead body of that young woman simply made him nauseous. His nerves were far too raw to continue playing at this time. As he vomited up his dinner in his toilet, he realized this FEVER style version of Underworld would probably not be anywhere near as enjoyable as the VRMMO used to be. The horrible things you had to do for some magic and skills will probably be a huge hurdle for most of the players. Unlike 30 years ago, the graphics weren’t cartoony and surreal, this game felt like real life, and the added sensation was far too real.

It took him almost 4 hours to get to sleep that night as he was haunted by the NPC woman he sacrificed, which of course opened the door to some of the horrors he had long buried from the war.