April 10, 2039

Mack walked up the stairs and into the living room. Ann was sitting on the couch drinking from a bottle of water. “Ready?” Mack asked her. “Nope, I need to see what house they choose.” Glancing at the tv, Mack recognized the host of Ann’s favorite real estate show. This was one of the lunar editions.

With a sigh, Mack sat down on Aaron’s recliner. “Why are we watching this?” He pointed to the tv as they extolled the virtues of the third location at the Capella Colony. Ann took another drink. “I’m doing research for work. You never know if one of my clients suddenly wants to sell and go lunar. I need to know the going rates and styles.” Defeated, Mack slumped in the recliner and propped up his feet.

Five minutes later, Mack and Ann walked out of the house and into their car. As soon as the door closed, Ann turned to Mack. “How’d it go?” Mack opened up the navigation system and clicked on the home icon. He settled back and grinned. “It went a lot better than I thought it was going to. I knew it was going to be easy to get Aaron on board. As soon as he gets a day or two in, he’ll be hooked. By this time next week, he’ll be researching how to make different weapons and armor. What I was worried about was Marie. She could have kabashed the entire thing. We lucked out bringing Val there. She is the one that made the difference today.”

Ann gave him a look. “Luck huh? Interesting that I picked her favorite fast food joint to go to for lunch and invited her. Let’s get home so you can make sure he has a good time tonight. I’ll call the boss. Mission complete.”

* * *

Val’s voice could be heard over the background music. “Alright Dad. It looks like you want to head to the barracks on the north end of town like he said. Inside, there is a Red Dragonkin named Commander Harvin. He’ll have all of the armor quests for you. Next to him, Sub-commander Avel will have a quest for a cloak and sword.

Using the directional pad on the control sticks, Aaron backed up from the Silver Dragonkin and went about figuring out how to control the character. Different buttons had him jump, duck, draw and swing his sword, sheath his sword, kick, breath fire at the wall, and open up his character sheet. Twisting a dial let him control his Dragonkin’s arms by moving his own. “Ok, I think I’ve got the basics. How’d it look to you when I breathed fire?” he asked his audience.

Val spoke up. “It did look pretty cool. The monitor is set for first person, so we see you duck down a bit and then the bottom part of the screen is on fire. My friend said she is playing and is going to swing by and buff you.”

Marie asked Val to set the monitor from first to third person point of view. “There we go. I like the idea of seeing your Dragonkin run around rather than what you are looking at. Are you done down here?”

“Yeah. I’ll play with the fire breath later. Tell Becky thanks for me Val. Let’s head out and see about getting some gear.” He opened the door to the room and ran up the stairs and out of the hatchery. Once he got onto the street, he looked around a bit confused. “Umm, can you bring up the options page and see if there is anything for a heads up display?”

Val keyed a few things on tablet and Aaron saw the traditional three colored bars appear in the upper left of his view representing his health, stamina, and mana. After another few moments, a small compass appeared in the upper right pointing to the east. “There you go.”

“Thank you Val.” He turned left and ran towards the north. After a few minutes of running through the streets, he saw a large building with a crowd of Dragonkin and few Orcs entering and exiting. The building looked like an airplane hanger. The front gate was guarded by a Bronze and a Black Dragonkin. After walking in, there was an ornate wooden desk with iron clawed feet in a room to the left. Behind the desk sat a muscular Red Dragonkin. As Aaron entered the room, he saw the name Commander Harvin hovering over the Red Dragonkin’s head. Commander Harvin raised his head from the stack of paperwork and looked at him.

“Well well, what do we have here. It looks like another hatchling has come trailing eggshell into my office. Avel, why do they keep sending these hatchlings to me? It’s like I don’t have enough to do. Well, let’s take a look at you.” He stood up and motioned to his left. Rising up from a similar desk, a Silver Dragonkin got up carrying a small book and both of the officers walked around Aaron.

The Silver Dragonkin opened the book and checked things off as he walked around scrutinizing Aaron. “He seems fit enough. I say we put him to work. The cook is complaining about not having enough meats.” Sub-commander Avel said and handed the book to the Commander.

“Alright. You heard Sub-commander Avel. The only person that you don’t want to upset in this city aside from Avel and myself is the cook. An army marches on it’s stomach after all. Go and get some meat for us. Outside of the gate into the city, there is a valley full of small prey. Go there and gather 10 beetle meat and 10 dragonfly meats. Do this and I’ll give you piece of armor that will protect you while I send you out for more substantial meat.”

The Silver Dragonkin tapped his chin for a few moments. “I could use some assistance as well. I owe my mate some more spider silk. Fetch me 20 batches of spider silk and I’ll give you one of the cloaks that she makes with them.”

Aaron saw an icon pop up in the lower left corner of his screen that looked like an unrolled scroll. It was flashing with a golden light. He wondered if the golden color was the same for everyone, or if it was different for him since he was a Gold Dragonkin.

As soon as he clicked the icon, the scroll unfurled and opened up to cover the entire screen. The top of the scroll read “Quests” in a fancy medieval style of writing. The writing was fancy enough to look special, but not so out of place as to be illegible.

Under the title, was two different quests. The first one was marked as the active quest. The quest was the one for the Commander. It was called Feeding the Brood. The non-active quest was called Supplies for a Cloak.

Commander Harvin nodded. “Alright hatchling, be on your way. If you can keep this up, we may be able to make a soldier out of you. Head out into the valley beyond the gate. You will find plenty of the large insects that we can use to help shore up the food reserves. Be mindful of the caves though, hatchlings that go in there don’t come out.”

“Well Dad, it sounds like you’ve been dismissed. Head out of the building and make a left. Go straight until you hit the big wall. Make a right and you’ll find the gates. The notes on this page says that the guards will help you out if you get in over your head as long as you stay near them.” Val’s voice could be heard over the speakers.

After a few minutes of running around following her directions, Aaron found the gate. When he came around the corner and went out beyond the two large wooden doors studded with metal plates, he gasped. He could hear the girls mutter among themselves. Stretched out in front of him was a large valley. This valley was a beautiful lush green spotted with patches of trees. There was a large stream passing a few hundred feet away from the gate. There was a large stone bridge that arched up over the stream. There was one rather large thick tree that was growing up close to the wall of the city.

As he looked closer, he saw a lot of movement in the valley. Everywhere he looked, there has large insects moving around. There were beetles crawling around that were the size of manhole covers. There were dragonflies zipping about that here an easy two feet long and six inches around. He could see other things moving past the stream, but couldn’t quite make them out.

Aaron pulled out the rusty chunk of metal someone called a sword. “Well, let’s see how this game work.” He focused on the nearest beetle and took a step towards is. This beetle was about two feet wide and about three feet long. It was shaped roughly like a leaf. It was a bright green color with black legs. The beetle had two large mandibles that looked like a jagged kitchen knives.

Aaron ran over to the slammed the sword into the back of the beetle. When his sword hit the beetle, a small splash of green and a red 5 flew from the beetle and faded away after a second. It hissed and spun around to face him. As it turned, Aaron kicked the beetle in it’s head, knocking a red 3 into the air. It stumbled back for a moment and he slammed the sword back into it for 4 hit points this time. He looked up and saw that it had a red bar over it’s head that was just over a quarter full.

Then, it leapt at him and latched onto his leg. It curled it’s legs around his legs and sunk it’s mandibles into his leg. He saw a red number 7 flash across his eyes. Aaron flipped his sword around and drove it down point first into the beetle for a large splash of ichor and a red 5 hit points of damage. The beetle twitched once and then fell off of Aaron’s leg. As Aaron watched, a pool of green ichor was forming around it’s body.

“Ewww, Becky didn’t tell about that part. That’s pretty gross Dad.” Aaron looked at the green Ichor dripping off of his sword and nodded his head. “Yeah, let’s take a look a look at the options menu again.” Marie tapped a few keys on the tablet and the options menu came up. When Aaron flipped through the menus, he found the different options that he was looking for. There was a slider labeled gore. It started at -10. It had markers for every two number up to 0 and then up to 10. It was currently set at 4. He dropped the slider down to 0. Then thinking about it for a moment, pushed it down to -2. Below that, the saw another slider for language. With a grin, he pushed the slider down to -2 as well.

Looking back down, the pool of ichor was gone. Kneeling down next to the dead beetle, he tapped the beetle and a loot window opened up. Aaron breathed a sigh of relief. He was really hoping that he would not need to hack the thing open to get the meat out. The window showed beetle meat, a beetle leg, and a beetle shell. He clicked on all of them and they ended up in his inventory. The dead beetle faded away as soon as he looted the last piece of loot.

Aaron looked over himself and didn’t see a bag or anything, but the beetle parts was nowhere visible on his person. With a shrug, he pulled up his inventory and saw that the beetle parts were filling up three of his ten slots . Looking at the red bar, he saw that he had 33/40 hit points remaining. His experience bar had increased showing 25/1000. He walked over to the wall. Sitting down, he leaned against the wall. After a minute, he checked and his health had raised up 37/40. He leaned against the wall for another minute and watched as a Black Dragonkin ran out of the gates. This Dragonkin was wearing a mix of steel armor and leather armor with a light grey cloak. The Dragonkin glanced around and then charged after a large rat that was walking about 50 feet away over by the trees. He pulled a large double bladed battle ax from his back as he ran.