He made them all wait another realtime hour to make sure they were safe. No point in getting his new clan killed right away. Not when they could be useful first. He spent some time searching through his menus for a hint of anything like a tutorial, instructions, even some damn tool tips, but there was nothing.

Question is, if whatever new equipment they’ve given me can read my thoughts well enough to name my ghouls, then what else in the game is going to be determined just by what I think?

Mobs? Building options? Attitudes from other groups?

It was an important question from a game standpoint, but he was a lot more worried about it from an IRL standpoint. But he didn’t want make that thought foremost in his mind. Was Weller watching right now? Could he see what Peter was thinking?

It’s going to make it very difficult to hide anything. At least not until I have some idea of how well they can read me.

But they got the ghoul names. That was worrying.

There was one obvious way to do an end run around Axiom, but he was worried about thinking it too clearly. A picture of his old home workshop in New Auroraville popped into his mind unbidden, and he tried to wipe it away quickly.

But how do you NOT think about an elephant?

It was a problem. He already had the shape of an emergency plan in his head, but he was going to have to get levelled up some more - a lot more, really - before it would be realistic. At least the game gave him something to focus on while he let the back of his mind ruminate. Job one was try not to get eaten. He could throw himself into the game and wait for his subconscious to pop out the shape of a strategy.

NEXT LOGOUT ALLOWANCE: 3 HOURS 17 MINUTES (2 HOURS BANKED)

Three hours to go until he could see what Weller had to say for himself. For now, he had points to allocate. Which was also a decent way of distracting himself from dangerous thoughts. He’d managed to level up three times in the short while he’d been here, but he had no illusions that speed of progress was going to continue. Lower levels were always ridiculously easy to climb. He looked at his main stats again.

Horde Clan Leader; Raider Ghoul

Level 4 (20/800) Clan Name _ ; Tier 1 (35/50) Primary Stats Strength 2 Vitality 2 Constitution 1 Dexterity 1 Perception 1 Intelligence 1 Willpower 1 Social 1 Luck 1

Only four points to allocate. He wished he had more.

Here and now I think I need to be twice as strong and twice as smart.

He was willing to bet ghouls would value strength as well as smarts, and he didn’t want Dumbo Ghoul getting any ideas.

He scrolled through to the System Interface to make a DMAI query. The Dungeon Master AI wasn’t famously helpful and usually just gave you a few terse and obvious pointers about strategy, but he needed all the help he could get.

DMAI Advice Unavailable

I guess I should have expected that. Are they still working on it, or is ghoul intended to be just a no-help class?

There was no way to tell right now. He mentally shrugged, and put one point in Strength and one point in Intelligence. Which left two points.

He was sorely tempted to start building up his luck. It was hard to forget the wonderfully unbalanced nature of a fight when an opponent was nowhere near as lucky as you. But on the other hand, that wasn’t going to be much use if some level 17 beast decided to try to make him into dinner.

He sighed.

I’m their leader. But I still don’t really know how ghoul society functions.

Social was kind of another form of luck. As a player it would increase his good interactions with NPCs, make them more likely to give him the benefit of the doubt, provide better success rate at bargaining, and so on. It had to do something similar with ghouls, who were still just NPCs after all. Building up a clan, he thought he was going to need all the social skills he could get.

He wanted to bump up everything, but he only had two points left. Social it had to be. Both points. Hopefully that would turn him into some very persuasive and charming low level cannon fodder.

Then there was the matter of the clan name.

He okayed his stat changes and turned to the group.

“Listen up,” he said to them. They all looked at him expectantly. “I’ve decided on our Clan name. We will be Carnage Clan.”

Knife Ghoul blinked.

“What is carnage?” said Barbie Ghoul.

“Carnage is, well, it’s when you tear your enemies up and there’s blood everywhere. Their blood. And arms and legs too. Their arms and legs. All over the place. That’s carnage.”

They stared at him for a moment. Then Dumbo Ghoul clapped his hands together again and started laughing.

“Good name!” he bellowed. “Strong name! Maybe if nobody know what name means, then we show them!”

Knife Ghoul smiled and nodded.

“Good name,” he said.

Another update scrolled past.

CLAN MORALE MORALE +10

Now 50; Neutral

I was hoping for a bit more, but that will do.

“Okay, listen, now we need to get started!” he said. They all looked up eagerly.

“We make nest now?” said Dumbo Ghoul.

Peter nodded.

“First we see if this is a good place for a nest.”

“That smart,” Knife Ghoul said.

“So here’s the thing," Peter said, "I want the three of you to creep around the building. Find out how many floors it has, what kinds of rooms, and most importantly of all whether there are any other big holes that we would need to plug up.”

Knife Ghoul nodded.

“That good,” he said. “You make me your Captain, I make these guys do it right.”

“Captain?”

“Leader has Captains. All good clans have Captains to make Horde do things right.”

Was that a bit of tutorial? Or even advice? Interesting.

“Okay, KG,” Peter said. “You are Captain of the clan.”

Knife Ghoul sat up straighter and looked determined.

“Good,” he said. “We find out about building.”

Immediately his ID status changed and and update scrolled past.

Knife Ghoul

Horde Clan Captain; Lvl 3; 100% Clan Level +5 (35/50)

“We go, you guys,” Knife Ghoul said. He pointed to Barbie Ghoul.

“You sneak upstairs, look for big holes in building.”

He motioned to Dumbo Ghoul, and the two of them crept out of the room on all fours, heading down the stairs to the ground floor again.

So ghouls protect the females. Who knew?

The model for commanding his clan was starting to make sense at least. He would have Captains whom he could order to carry out the options available to him. It seemed like they would take care of the actual dirty work of making things happen.

Peter waited tensely, expecting to hear a roar, or the crashing of glass from down below, but there was nothing.

We can really move very quietly. It’s an important skill.

Before very long, Barbie Ghoul crept back into the room.

“Hallway upstairs,” she whispered. “Three rooms, but no big holes. Lots of junk. No more stairs.”

That was good. He’d been worried the roof would have collapsed. Then they would have had to make a wall in the stairwell. With several rooms available up above, this might actually be a good spot to start collecting a bigger clan.

Eventually KG and DG appeared at the door as well.

“Look like just big hole in front, but we find door to basement. Can’t get in.”

“It’s locked?”

“Weird lock, look like fancy tech kind.”

“And noise,” Dumbo Ghoul said to Knife Ghoul. “You tell him about noise too.”

Knife Ghoul frowned.

“We hear something moving in there. Don’t know what. Make thump thump sound.”

That’s not good.

“Do you think whatever it is can get out?” he said to Knife Ghoul.

KG shrugged.

“Leader smart, he tell me.”

Great. This needs a look.

“You two stay here,” he said to Barbie Ghoul and Knife Ghoul.

He wanted the big guy with him. The two of them crept down the stairs, watching the big gap in the wall carefully. Peter was still imagining something leaping in at him from outside, all claws and teeth.

Dumbo Ghoul led him on a twisting path through the wreckage, carefully maneuvering over anything that might make a sound.

They’re strangely graceful, in their own way.

At the back of the building there was a locked door going out back. That wasn’t a problem at least.

A little further along they found an alcove that had another door, which could only have led down towards the basement.

“This it,” Dumbo Ghoul said.

Peter put his ear against the door.

Whump. Whump.

Then the sound of something dragging across the floor down below.

Whump.

Something was moving around, that was for sure. He wiggled the doorknob but it didn’t move.

“Knife Ghoul think of that,” whispered DG. “He find other thing.”

He pointed to a recessed spot in the wall by the door frame. Peter stood up and peered inside.

There was a shimmering set of blue lights, and something that looked like a keypad, but with strangely moving keys. They almost seemed liquid, and traveled around in a complex pattern.

Transcendent Tech!

There was no doubt about it. Whatever was down there was going to be something incredibly valuable. Or incredibly dangerous.

If it was the latter then they needed to get away from here. The last thing he needed was some ultra high-level mob popping out at them and ripping his new clan to shreds.

He flicked the keypad to see if there was any more information, and not expecting anything.

But to his surprise his T-tech bonus seemed to do him a bit of good. The field was solid red of course, but overlayed was some text.

Level 50

That was a hell of a lot better than nothing at all. But did it mean he needed Level 50 T-tech ability to be able to even try to use the thing? Or was it the level of the lock itself? He’d had Level 45 ability as a regular player, but he’d never seen this display before. Transcendent tech either worked or it didn’t based on your level. There was no way to know how high you needed to be ahead of time.

Maybe we’ve actually got a bit of an edge over the players in some areas.

He got Dumbo Ghoul to creep upstairs and get the other two, then position them on the stairs near to the hole in the wall. When DG waved at him that they were ready, he took a deep breath and slammed his fist against the door, then stopped and listened carefully, getting ready to run as fast as he could.

Silence.

Whump.

Silence. Dragging noise.

Whump. Whump.

After a few moments, Peter slammed on the door twice more, as hard as he could. He saw Knife Ghoul look over at him with a what are you doing expression.

Whump.

Silence. Dragging noise.

Whump. Whump.

Nothing.

Whatever was in there, it didn’t seem like it was paying any attention to them.

Peter grinned.

He actually had the option of setting up his new clan right on top of a T-tech cache of some kind! The ruined building had just moved from a guarded yes, to “Hell yeah, just try to make me leave”.

I’m not going to try to mess with this for now. But eventually, oh yes. Eventually.

He crept quietly over to the other three.

“I think it’s safe,” he said. “That’s a Transcendent Tech lock. There’s probably other stuff protecting the basement too, stuff we can’t see. Nothing is getting through it.”

They all looked at him, just waiting. It was a little weird.

Peter was used to human players. Getting them to cooperate was always a combination of bribes and threats - big and small, subtle and obvious. Every player wanted to be the center of their own story, and it was usually a challenge just to get them to listen long enough that they didn’t get instakilled. It was exhausting sometimes.

The game AI was good, no doubt about it. Any one of the ghouls could pass a casual Turing test. But their priorities were different. They just wanted to be safe. And they were looking to him to make it happen.

Even though they weren’t real, he couldn’t help feeling like he had some kind of actual responsibility towards them.

He gave himself a mental slap.

Meatshields. That’s what they are. Our priority is to level up enough to be able to survive out there, and connect up with that player ghoul woman. Nothing else matters.

“We can make walls, yes?” he said. “I’m assigning you all to start making a strong pile of stuff up against the hole in the wall. Strong enough that things can’t get in to us. Then we will have a safe nest.”

Knife Ghoul looked over to the gap in the wall.

“Pretty big hole,” he said. “But we can do it. Dumbo Ghoul strong enough to carry big things.”

Dumbo Ghoul nodded in excitement.

“Raider Ghoul watch! We build strongest wall ever!”

“Great, I’ll leave you to it,” he said. He wanted to spend some time exploring the rest of the building. Who knew what else might be lying around?

But then he had a thought.

“Wait,” he said. “Barbie Ghoul, I want you to find things we can use as weapons.”

He looked at the build menu again.

“Sharp things, right? Like knives, which would be great if you could find some. Plus anything heavy that we can throw.”

No sense in not having an armory, such as it is anyway.

Knife Ghoul seemed to approve of this idea.

“That good. We build wall just as fast anyway.”

“I see some things upstairs!” Barbie Ghoul said. “Maybe good! I go look!”

She looked excited at having her own job to do and scuttled up the stairs on all fours.

“Good stuff,” Peter said. “You guys try to keep it quiet, okay? We don’t want to attract attention.”

“Okay we try,” said Knife Ghoul. “We build strong heavy wall and really quiet too.”

Was that sarcasm?

It couldn’t be.

The two of them moved away to start without another word.

He watched them for a bit. They were surprisingly quick, and cooperated to start moving boards, big jagged pieces of concrete, and wrecked furniture into place.

Then he had a thought, and looked up at the ceiling.

Around about here…

With a grin of triumph be picked up his piece of bent rebar.

Excellent. I wouldn’t want to be without it.