While eating lunch at the Horizon, I scrolled through my list of possible upgrades. I had a new Talent point to spend, so that was my first concern. Due to how I’d specialized my character though, a lot of Talents were unavailable to me at the moment. Most of the combat-oriented ones required a higher Strength or Endurance, while the magic and some of the crafting Talents required a higher Focus. While I did need to raise those, I wanted to hold off a little bit longer. I had picked up Novice Butcher in anticipation of picking up Novice Cooking, so I decided to go ahead and pick that up now.

Selecting the Cooking Talent and confirming it, my head was suddenly filled with flashes, images, and I knew how to cook several recipes in game: Bread, Roast Desert Boar, and Grilled Sand Wolf. New crafting Traits always came with a few basic recipes, and these were the simplest ones. Bread could be made from cheap ingredients sold in town, while the Desert Boar and Sand Wolf recipes required meat from those creatures. None of these recipes gave any kind of additional buff, but they would satisfy the Hunger meter if needed, so I didn’t need to buy food in town anymore.

The Cooking Trainer was named Rose, and she worked in the kitchen of the Golden Horizon, so I asked Geira Werth if I could speak with her. Rose was a tough, leathery older woman who looked right at home with a meat cleaver in her hand, and she was not someone I would want to have angry at me. But she was friendly enough, if curt and to the point. Once I explained I was a fledgling Chef, she was willing to teach me a few additional recipes for a bit of gold.

200 gold later and I had learned to craft the Desert Sandwich, a Sand Sandwich, and some Desert Stew. Desert Sandwiches required Desert Boar Meat and gave a +1 END buff for 8 hours, while the Sand Sandwich required Sand Wolf Shank and gave a +1 FOC buff. Desert Stew required a couple of each meat and provided a +1 to both STR and AGI. I thanked Rose, and headed back out to the dining area and sat back down. I needed to pick up a set of [Cooking Utensils, Tier 1] later as well as some of the basic ingredients I would need, but I still had some XP to spend, so decided to take care of that first.

I pulled open my menu again and looked over my options. I decided I really needed some more base Hit Points, so I went ahead and raised that from 2 to 3. It cost 100 times your current rank in XP, so it was only 200 XP and gave me a nice boost to my survivability. That left me with 550 XP, so I decided to pick up another Trait. Since I relied on Raider, I decided to purchase an Animal Companion Trait to give him a boost.

I ruffled his head and fed him a piece of leftover meat from my lunch as I pondered what to give him. Right now I had the option to boost any of his stats such as Hit Points or his Defense, but I really wanted to buy him a Taunt skill. But with his HP being pretty low, I worried that would just get him killed, so I went ahead and purchased Bestial Toughness which gave him an additional 300 Hit Point. As I accepted it, a white shimmering enveloped Raider and he let out a happy roar, startling several other diners in the Inn. As the light faded, he looked a little bigger and beefier, and I grinned.

“You like that boy, don’t you?” I smiled and rubbed his head, and he leaned into me, purring.

“Hey man, nice kitten you got there.” A low, melodic voice said. I looked up and saw it was the Bard that had been playing Don’t Fear the Reaper yesterday here in the Inn. “Mind if I join you?”

“Sure, pull up a seat. You were doing the bard thing here yesterday, right? You’re pretty good.”

“Thanks man, yeah. I’ve always dug music, you know? But I can’t play a lick in the real world.” He grinned as he sat down. “I love that I can rock out here. It’s a dream come true. Even cooler that I can play my favorite songs too. My names Zed, by the way. Zed Deathsong.”

“Nice to meet you.” I shook his head. “I’m Bull, this is my buddy Raider.”

“I haven’t seen more than a couple Animal Companions in the game yet, so this is pretty cool.” Zed reached forward to pet Raider. The tiger narrowed his eyes a bit, but didn’t object as Zed rubbed his head. “You leveled him up or something earlier, with the light show?”

“Yeah. The default Companions don’t really have that great of stats, so I’m invested a bit to make sure he can handle combat some. Hitting a dungeon later tonight, and want to make sure that he’ll be ok.”

“Awesome. Yeah, I got a quest to go do one as well, but I don’t really know too many folks in the game yet. The VirtualGear headsets are just too damn expensive still. Mind if I ask where you’re heading later?” Zed flagged down Geira and ordered an ale.

“Sure. It’s a quest from the Werth’s here in the Inn. [Expedition to Old Ravensport]. Have to explore the Ravensport Metro.” I replied. I guessed since he was hanging around here at the Inn, he has the same quest.

“Hey, yeah! That’s the same one I have!” Zed replied. I was correct. “I figure it’s probably a terrible idea to go do a dungeon quest solo though. Especially since I’m not exactly a combat build, ya know?”

“What is your character build, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Well, obviously the concept is a Bard, with kind of a rogue secondary. There’s not much in the way of Bardic abilities yet, just the basic Performance skill to buff your party with, so I went high Agility for defense and took Stealth. I have a bow, but I’m not very good with it.”

“Yeah. I noticed the talents and traits are pretty limited right now.” I replied. “I think they as we explore and find new cities and areas, we’ll get access to more.”

“Yeah, that’s what they say. I’m looking forward to that, and hoping that they actually have some decent Bard stuff for me to pick up.”

“Tell you what, Zed. I’m meeting with the rest of my party here at 5. I can’t guarantee we’ll have room, but I wouldn’t mind having some buff backup, and you’d fit in with the current party set up, I think. If you’re gonna be around, check back with me here then, and I’ll let you know?”

“Dude, that would rock!” Zed said, excited. “I’m almost level 2, so I’m gonna go see about picking up a couple more quests in town and see if I can pop over before then. Thanks dude, I appreciate it.”

I smiled as Zed ran off. He was an interesting guy, and I liked the music he was playing last time, so he’d make a good soundtrack to dungeon to. I got up myself, dropped a couple gold on the table as a tip for the waitress, and headed off into town to pick up some cooking gear and ingredients and make myself some food for tonight.

Cooking was pretty easy. I decided what I was going to cook, and as long as I had some cooking utensils, a fire, and the ingredients needed I instinctively knew what I needed to do to create the food item and would automatically go through the motions. It didn’t take long either, about 30 seconds per item created. It still took a little while to make all the [Sand Sandwiches] I was cooking up, because they each required several [Bread] to make, so I had a couple of steps to take. Still, less than an hour later I had 23 sandwiches all made up and ready to go, and I still had a couple hours to kill before I was meeting up with Torrie. So I dropped off some of the extra ingredients and my cooking tools in my storage chest at the Golden Horizon and decided to head out and do a little more hunting.

I headed out and explored to the southwest of Ravensport a bit, filling in my map a little bit more and hunting Sand Wolves and Desert Boars as I went. With the increased Hit Points that both myself and Raider had, plus a more powerful bow with longer range, I was easily able to take down groups of three mobs. I probably could have taken four but I decided not to push my luck and avoided the larger packs. I also avoided other players as much as possible, since player killing was a possibility out here.

I never really understood the PK mindset, honestly. Dueling, or even arena fights or a battleground type scenario like [Capture the Flag] or [Take and Holds], sure, I got that. I played football and baseball up through high school and college, so the idea of competition and team sports and the like appealed to me. But Player Killing was usually somewhat lopsided, picking on weaker, unsuspecting players just for shits and giggles. And usually, those being killed were unwilling. When I played MMO’s I preferred games where PvP was optional. But I’d wanted Apoch’s Twilight to have a sense of danger for the players, to know they couldn’t always trust other “players” in the game. Now I’m regretting the decision a bit.

However, things were calm and after a couple hours I’d managed to hunt a couple dozen boar and wolves and collected a nice pile of meat as well as a couple loot drops. Most was trash, but I did get pair of [Mighty Light Leather Boots] that would have been a minor upgrade and provided a +1 STR, but they required a minimum base STR of 5 to equip, so I just put them in my pack. Maybe I could use them down the line, or I could sell them off.

I got back, sold off the trash, bought a few more cooking ingredients, and whipped up a dozen [Desert Sandwiches] since those provided +1 END, then stored away all my extra gear to make sure I had maximum inventory space. After that, I headed down to the dining room to meet up with Torrie, Zed, and the others.

Zed was already there, set up and playing some music by the fireplace again. I could see the hulking form of Dagg sitting at one of the tables, so I made my way over it. Lorelei was sitting next to him as usual, and she looked up and shyly waved as I approached.

“Bull.” Dagg said, taciturn as always.

“Hey guys.” I nodded to them as I sat down. “All set for tonight?”

“Yes. Level three.” The big man pointed to himself and Lorelei as he said that.

“Awesome. I’m not quite there yet myself. That’s impressive though. You guys find some more quests, or did you do some grinding?”

“We… we actually… umm… We ended up running with… errr… some others late last night and ended up doing the Metro dungeon with them. Sorry. I couldn’t sleep so I… talked Dagg into hopping back on for a while with me and, well…” Lorelei turned red as she spoke up quietly. The little blond priestess looked downcast and embarrassed. “But we’ll still go with you and Torrie! We can run it again today.”

“Oh, cool. You sure? I mean, that would be a big help. We don’t have a healer or tank without you guys, but I’d understand if, you know, you want to do some other stuff.”

“No. We go.” Dagg grunted.

“Yeah, we said we’d go with you. Be… besides, you’re our friends.” Lorelei nodded.

“Cool. Ahh, hey, there’s Torrie.” I waved the little pseudo-kender over to our table. “Greetings Torellisin.”

“Greetings, Sir Bull.” She said with a laugh and sat down. “How’s everyone doing tonight?”

“Good. Though Dagg and Lori here have already done the quest.” I said with a grin.

“Ooo, does that mean they don’t want to go?”

“No, we go.” Dagg said again in his flat, monosyllabic way.

“Yeah, we said we’d go, so we’ll go.” Lorelei agreed. “Besides, even without the… the quest reward, the dungeons got some decent loot and XP. And… I think… didn’t Bull say he had something else to do after that?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if it’ll pan out, or if we’ll have the time though, but I heard a rumor about something I want to check out past the Metro a ways, if everyone’s up for it.” Everyone agreed, so I continued. “Cool. I took Cooking, so I’ve been able to make up some sandwiches. I have two types, one that gives +1 Focus, and one that gives +1 Endurance. I have a bunch, so we should be covered for food for the trip.”

“Oh, awesome Bull. I can’t wait to try them.” Torrie replied with a smile. “I love trying new food out, and the idea of being able to eat crazy fantasy foods in a VR game is really exciting. Especially since I don’t have to watch my figure in virtual reality!”

“I did have one thing I wanted to ask you all. Do you mind if we bring another person along?”

“Maybe. Who’d you have in mind, Bull?”

“Well, Torrie, I was thinking that we could use a little music for the trip.” I said with a laugh and pointed over to the fireplace. “I was talking with Zed over there earlier, and he has the quest but doesn’t have a group to go with. He seems like a decent enough guy, and he’s taking the bard type skills, so he’s got a party-wide buff that could be useful.”

The other looked at each other for a moment, then Dagg shrugged while Lorelei nodded. Torrie smiled and said “Ok, let’s do it.” So I called over Zed and introduced him to the rest of the group, and after a bit of small talk we headed out.

The Metro wasn’t that far, about two miles or so from town. I had noticed when I was exploring earlier that I never really got tired, no matter how much walking I did. I even tried running for a while and it didn’t seem to fatigue me at all, but I did end up running into a couple of monster spawns accidentally, so it was somewhat dangerous to just sprint across the wilderness. We decided to take it at a normal pace.

Zed fiddled with his guitar and played some music off and on while we walked, sometimes singing along. His voice was quiet and soulful, a surprising counterpoint to the more hard rock and metal songs he played. Though I did notice a lot of his renditions were slower tempo than the versions I was used to. They were nice though, and it lent a good atmosphere to our trip.

“So Dagg, Lorelei. Do you remember exactly where the dungeon is?”

“North.” Dagg grunted.

“It’s marked on our maps since we’ve been there, Bull.” Lorelei added.

“Excellent, that makes it a little easier then. We should—“ As I was talking, Aibee suddenly flew up off of Raiders back where she’d been nestled in his fur. As everyone else suddenly started at the sight of the tiny AI, I realized that Aibee had been staying hidden this entire time and they hadn’t seen her.

“Bull!” Aibee flew up and sat on my shoulder. She leaned in to my ear and whispered “I looked into it and apparently I’m unique. Other players do not have a Helper Bot like Aibee.”

“Umm, Bull, what’s that?” Torrie said, peering at Aibee. “She’s adorable, but is she dangerous?”

“Err…” I had to think fast, and I decided to play it off like Aibee was a minipet. I had planned to have those in Apoch’s Twilight for my players, so I hoped that this version of the game had them as well. When all else fails, steal from your favorite media, I guess. “This is Aibee. She’s a… err… Navigation Pixie.”

“Ooo, neat. Where’d you get her?” Torrie asked. Everyone crowded in to look at Aibee, who buried herself into my neck a bit to hide.

“Random drop? I guess I was lucky?”

“Dude, she’s like a pet, right? Is she purely cosmetic, or does she provide any buffs or anything? Either way, she’s awesome. And she talks, that is so cool.”

“Umm, she’s kind of a compass?” I replied. Zed implied that there were both purely cosmetic minipets and some with in-game functionality, so I decided to lean into that. “She can track nearby quest objectives and keep track of mob info, I think? I don’t really know what all she’s capable of yet.”

Aibee flew up and bowed. “Nice to meet you all. Now, Bull. I came out to tell you there’s a possible quest objective to the west, over the next ridge.”

I looked out where Aibee was pointing, but didn’t see anything but green sand dunes. I was surprised again that Aibee would be so proactive, but I wasn’t about to look a gift A.I. in the mouth. She was proving surprisingly useful.

“Another quest? Sounds good to me, lets go check it out everyone!” Torrie said with a smile and headed toward the direction Aibee had been pointing. I looked at the others and shrugged, and we started following after, Aibee fluttering down to sit down on my shoulder.

“I think we need to have a little chat later. You know more than you’re letting on, don’t you.” I whispered to Aibee, who looked sheepish but didn’t say anything.

I whistled to Raider and we followed the others to the west. We marched up over a small dune to find the blasted remains of a building. It was hard to say how large it had once been or even what the design had been as most of the walls were gone, and those that remained were scoured by wind and sand and tinged the same emerald green as everything else around us. It looked to have been made of solid, thick stone at least a couple stories tall, and enough of the front of the building remain that it looked to have semi-protected the interior. Aibee hovered in front of me looking intently at the ruin, so I assumed that was our target.

There was a large arched entrance and beyond that what was likely once an enormous entrance chamber. The rest of the building was destroyed or buried in sand, but in the center of the chamber was the ruins of a large statue about 10 feet tall, standing on a pedestal that was about four feet tall. The statue was worn and battered from exposure to the elements, with the features scoured clean by the sand. It was robed and hooded, impossible to tell if it was supposed to be male or female, and it had a broken stump where one of its arms was supposed to be, the stump raised as if holding something aloft. The pedestal had a large stone placard with some writing on it, though it too was badly worn and the symbols were one I’d never seen. The entire thing gave me a shiver, as this was obviously a temple to one of the old gods, long since forgotten.

Part of Apoch’s backstory was that there were once 36 gods that ruled the world, a typical D&D style pantheon. 12 were good-aligned, 12 evil, and 12 neutral that held them all in balance. I fully admit I cribbed the concept off the old Dragonlance series, as I found the idea fascinating. The Twilight, the war that destroyed the war, happened because the good and evil gods joined the mortal races in their worldwide war, and the neutral gods began to choose a side as well rather than keeping the peace. At the last minute, before all life was snuffed out, the gods simply vanished and the war ended. The mortal races turned from the gods, and soon almost all details about them had been lost and forgotten by all.

That was the story, anyway. The truth was that as a game designer, while I loved the idea of a pantheon in general, I found it stifling for actual game play, especially once you started dealing with priests and clerics and such. So the backstory was a way for me to include the idea, but then handwave it all away and give the players, and the world, a blank slate to work from. No gods, just what the mortals and players were capable of doing.

So I recognized that this was a temple to an old god, but I’d never named or really even defined any of the gods outside of some general concepts, such as the gods of magic. I’d also never written this temple into the game, or this quest, so this was new to me. I was actually excited by that. I really only had the initial starting area and surroundings defined, so I knew eventually I’d start encountering new stuff, assuming that this game and world were actually fleshed out beyond my original concepts and notes, but I hadn’t really expected to see anything so soon.

That said, I was stumped. We looked around, but beyond some bare, broken stone walls, this battered statue, and emerald sand, there wasn’t much to find.

“Maybe we dig?” Dagg said, after we looked around a bit.

“That doesn’t feel right, and I suspect all well find is sand.” Torrie replied looking down at the ground. “Besides, I don’t have a shovel or anything to dig with.”

“There’s something…” Zed muttered. He was bent down on one knee in front of the statue, staring at the inscription. “I can almost feel it, there’s something here.”

As he looked over it, his hands unconsciously plucked at his guitar. He plucked a couple of notes quietly, but then strummed a chord a little more confidently. The notes rang out, and then echoed back from the statue, and the first character on the placard began glowing softly. Zed grinned and strummed a few more notes, and more characters lit up one after the other. Then he hit a discordant note, and the entire thing faded.

“Hah, it’s not a message! It’s a line of musical notes.”

“Can you read it, Zed?”

“I think so, Bull. I can’t read music in the real world, but I think my Performance skill is letting me translate the notes here. It’s hard though, because it’s so faded and worn. Give me a few.”

“Did you get a quest pop up or anything?” Torrie asked.

“No. I think this might be special. Maybe it’s only something you can do if you have the Performance skill.”

Zed looked over the musical notes for a few minutes more, plucking at the guitar occasionally. Then he finally stepped back a few feet, took a deep breath, and began playing. The notes were deep and resonating, and while it was only a few seconds of music the impression it left was dark and sad, soulful, like a dirge for the dead. As each note and chord was struck, the symbols lit up one after another until they were finally all lit up. They flashed, shining brightly, then faded along with the final note. I looked around as silence reigned, nothing happening.

“So, what now—“ I began to say, but was interrupted by a rumble, a vibration in the air around us that shook my teeth. The statue shimmered and began to move, the green stain deepening as the stone began to take color. The robe darkened to black, and the features filled in, though with the hood the face still couldn’t be seen clearly and it was impossible to tell if the figure was male or female. The missing arm reformed, and was holding a large guitar, of all things. I blinked at that, but made some sense if it was a bard quest. I focused on the statue and took a few steps back as it stepped forward off the pedestal. [Echo of a Lost God] was the name of the thing.

“Ok, I have a quest now. I gotta defeat this thing. Did you guys get that as well?” Zed asked as he retreated away from the statue as well, moving back behind Dagg as the warrior strode forward.

“Nope. Nothing here. Guess this one’s only for you, man.” I replied as the others also replied with a negative.

Combat had started, so further conversation wasn’t really possible. As Dagg moved forward to engage, Torrie crouched and went into stealth, and the rest of us moved back a bit further. I whistled to Raider and told him to attack once Dagg had engaged. The [Echo of a Lost God] paused, then with a motion brought his free hand down on the guitar. A discordant note rang out, and ripples of visible power exploded out in all directions. The force of the blast knocked me back a step, and I saw a red -56 flash up over my head and -50 flash up over Raider. I shook my head, my ears ringing from the sound.

Zed began playing, and I recognized the first few notes of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song and grinned. That was good fighting music, and I felt confidence flow into me. A buff icon shaped like a musical note in my HUD indicated that Zed’s song was granting a +2 bonus to hit, which would be helpful. Meanwhile Dagg charged forward, letting out a taunting roar as he swung his sword down, slicing into the robed figure.

I readied my bow and let fly Rapid Shot, one arrow finding its mark while the other just missed. I dealt 65 damage so the thing didn’t have too much Damage Reduction, but my damage only moved its health bar a sliver. Unfortunately, it was enough that Raider wouldn’t be able to deal any damage without a critical hit, so I called him back and put him on standby in case we were ambushed by something else during the battle.

The fight continued from there. Besides the Area of Effect blast, the Echo could also fire focused attack blasts from its guitar. These blasts seemed to be its base attack, and the AoE attack seemed to be on a 12 second cooldown. Dagg was taking considerable damage as he kept the Echo focused on him, but Lorelei was able to keep p with heals on him. The rest of us used a healing potion after a couple more AoE blasts to prevent her from needing to heal us.

After a couple minutes, we had dropped the Echo’s health down to around 10% when it suddenly reared back and strummed a different chord, this one louder than before. Dark purple energy exploded out from it, knocking us all back several yards and stunning us. I grumbled and should have seen this coming, it was a phase transition. Some bosses would, after they’d taken a certain percentage of damage, change up their attack patterns and even their types of attacks. The stun was an unavoidable effect to allow for the boss mob to perform some animations and set up for the next phase of the battle.

The [Echo of a Lost God] played a series of chords, a terrifying metal riff that sent chills down my spine, and one after another skeletal hands began to push their way up from the emerald sand around us. A dozen skeletons climbed up from the ground each armed with a wicked looking curved sword and a shield. The stun wore off as the Skeletons charged us.

“Dagg, Torrie, focus on the boss. Me and Raider will handle the Skeletons!” I shouted. I tried to sound confident, but I was more than a little worried. This could go bad real fast, and I still didn’t know what would happen to me if I died and I was determined not to find out.

Raider pounced on one of the Skeletons, and Dagg taunted one as he pushed his way past, charging once again at the Echo. Torrie slipped in the shadows again and began circling around the robed boss. I fired a rapid shot at a pair of skeletons near Lorelei to try and pull aggro on them, then ran another direction, deliberately bumping into three more skeletons as I did so to get them to focus on me as well.

The [Lost Gods Warriors], as the skeletons were named, didn’t seem to have any Damage Resistance so our attacks were doing full damage. However, I estimated they each had about 300 HP, as my attacks did maybe one-third of their damage. My only hope was that I could kite them away from Lorelei and stay alive long enough for Dagg and Torrie to finish off the last of the bosses health. Two of the Skeletons managed to hit me as I ran past, dealing 61 damage each. I winced, as my current health dropped under 250, half of my current total. If it wasn’t for the END boost from my bow and the food buff, I’d be just a hair away from dead, so I thanked my lucky stars for that.

I turned and fired again at one of the Skeletons that was moving toward Lorelei, who was trying to stay ahead of them as well while staying in range of Dagg, and it turned to start marching toward me as well. I popped another healing potion and kept moving. There was a short cooldown on using potions to prevent them from being spammed, but it was short enough I could se one every few rounds of combat. I was now very, very thankful for that design decision, as I almost limited them to one per combat the way World of Warcraft did.

Raider took a nasty hit as one of the skeletons got a critical strike on him, and his health was down under half as well. I grimaced, but sent him to attack one of the skeletons we hadn’t pulled yet as well, hoping he could hold out. I now had seven of the skeletons chasing after me, while Raider was engaged with two and one had followed Dagg to the boss. Lorelei still had two remaining on her, but she was dodging around a chunk of broken wall, keeping it between them and herself.

“Wow! Yes! Take that!” I heard Torrie yell as she materialized behind the Echo and drove her blade into it. She had taken the Backstab Trait, which let her do extra damage on an attack when she was in stealth, and her happy shout just now indicated she must have gotten a good, solid critical strike in. I fired off another shot, targeting another of Lorelei’s Skeletons, grimaced as three of the skeletons chasing me caught up and swung at me. One missed, but the other two connected and I watched my health plummet. I turned and began running. I couldn’t take another hit like that, as my health was now down to just over 100.

Fortunately for me, movement speed was based on AGI, and mine was pretty high. So I was just a bit faster than the Skeletons. I spent the next couple rounds of combat running and dodging, and managed not to take anymore damage. Zed seemed to be safe where he was and just kept playing since the attack bonus he gave us was better than any physical attack he could manage. Lorelei still had one skeleton attacking her, but after a heal spell on herself, she went back to casting on Dagg and dodging. Raider took some more damage and was hurt pretty bad, so I had him start running as well and hoped his speed was enough to stay ahead of the skeletons as well.

Dagg was getting hammered by the Echo’s guitar blasts, but fortunately it didn’t seem to use it’s AoE during this phase. If it had, that would have been the end of us. Torrie used Vanish, and then did another Backstab and Dagg followed up with another big slash. As he did so, the robed [Echo of a Lost God] staggered and dropped to its knees. The Skeletons that had been chasing me suddenly crumbled into dust, and I let out a sigh of relief. The Echo didn’t say anything, but held the guitar u, holding it by the side and neck so we knew it wasn’t going to play anymore notes. It stood and walked toward Zed. I held my bow at he ready, but I was pretty certain we were done with combat.

The robed figure presented the guitar to Zed without a word, and the bard smiled. “Quest complete, man. Awesome!” He took the guitar, and the Echo simply faded away.

A loot window opened up for each of us, showing a bit of gold and a decent chunk of XP, but no other loot. Zed, on the other hand, was ecstatic. The guitar he was holding was chilling to look it. It looked roughly like a Fender Flying V, with the body in a deep, evil looking purple color. The neck looked to have been carved from bone, and the head was the skull of an animal. It looked powerful, but kind of evil. Despite that Zed seemed to love it.

“Dude, this is awesome. [Instrument of the Damned] gives me a couple stat bonuses, +1 Endurance and Charisma. But it also can fire those ranged blasts that the boss was using, and even better it uses Performance for the attack skill rather than Ranged Combat! This is perfect!” Zed was grinning like a maniac. “Plus, I unlocked a skill I can buy when I get enough XP, [Dirge of the Damned]. It lets me summon a skeleton. Fucking awesome.”

“This was a Temple to one of the old god. A god of Death and Music maybe?” Lorelei said quietly, looking around.

“Hard to say. There’s no lore on the old gods as far as I know.” Torrie replied. “That said, we should rest up and get going. We still got another dungeon to delve.”

We were resting up from our fight with the Echo, waiting on our mana and health to refresh and our wounds to go away. Even with my pain threshold down to 30%, it still hurt a good deal to take that much damage. Each hit felt like a good, solid punch that would have left me covered in bruises in my old life. Here though the wounds closed up and vanished in no time, the pain faded to nothingness in a matter of minutes. It was amazing.

“Oh wow, this is awesome. I just noticed, that boss tripped off a Storyline Quest for me.” Zed said while we were resting up, scanning through his menu.

“Storyline Quest? What’s that?” I asked. I had my suspicions, but that boss and quest were new, not something I’d written into my game, and I’d never labeled any quests like that.

“You don’t know, Bull? Didn’t read up on the game much before you started playing, did you?” Torrie grinned at me.

“Err, yeah. Let’s just say I jumped in head first.” I couldn’t very well tell her that I died and was somehow reborn into a video game based on something I once wrote. She’d think I was nuts. Hell, I barely believe it.

“Throughout the game besides the normal quests that everyone can pick up, there are hidden quests called Storyline Quests. Not too much is known about these as the devs were keeping details under tight wraps, but some details and rumors have slipped out in the last week or two. There are apparently a couple types of Storyline Quests – Personal and Plot. Personal Storyline Quests are like what Zed found, a quest chain that only he will get to follow up on, and will probably take him a long time to finish. It will likely have a big impact on his character, and can offer him some really cool, unique rewards and skills.”

“Bitchin’.” Zed said with a grin, lightly strumming his new guitar.

“Harsh. Reminds me a bit of Star Wars Galaxies and the way they originally handled Jedi.”

“I never played that game. Before my time, I think.” Zed said. “Still, this is awesome. I haven’t heard that anyone else had unlocked one of these yet, so I might be the first. Although the quest itself is pretty vague. It just says I need to continue searching for more information about the Lost God of Death and Music.”

“Plot Storyline Quests, on the other hand, are something that move the entire games storyline forward.” Torrie said, continuing her explanation. “They will trigger events, open up new areas of the game, unlock new classes and classes, and generally have an effect on the game as a whole. From the official descriptions, it sounds like some of the actual quests will only be for a single group, or maybe a single raid’s worth of players, while others will open up quests that anyone in the game can take and participate in. In either case though, the success or failure of the quest will impact the game permanently.”

“So wait, some of these quests are one time only?” I asked. “Like, only one player or group can ever get them, and they will be the only ones in the game with the quest rewards or the skill or whatever? That seems a bit... unfair. Especially to players who come along later in the game. I know every game I’ve ever played in the past that had any sort of limited rewards tended to have a lot of negative pushback. Hell, even limited-time cosmetic rewards, like holiday pets or clothing and costumes would have their share of people complaining if they weren’t widely available or weren’t recycled on a regular basis, like a holiday item being available again during the next years holiday.”

Everyone looked at me in silence for a few seconds, then looked at each other. I could see confusion on their faces, which means I just hit a landmind. This was something I probably should have known, I guess.

“Bull? Have you ever played a VRMMO before?” Torrie asked, quietly.

“Umm, no? To be honest, this is my first jumping into a VR game at all.” I replied. I decided to be honest about that, at least, since it seemed they expected me to know certain basic facets of the game that, well, I obviously did not.

“Dude, really? Wow.” Zed replied, surprise evident on his face. “What was the last online game you played then? I know you’ve talked about playing MMO’s before, I just assumed…”

“Probably World of Warcraft, I guess?” I said tentatively.

“Woah. Yeah, old school. Huh.” Zed shook his head.

“How come?” Torrie asked. “You seem like you’re a big ol’ geek of a gamer. Seems like VR would be right up your alley.”

“I guess I’m more of a tabletop and board gamer?” I answered cautiously. “And I just never got around to picking up the VR hardware?”

Dagg suddenly shifted forward. He’d been still and silent since we’d settled down for the break, so this surprised us all. He lifted his waterskin up and took a big drink, then slowly began to speak. That was a surprise to all of us, since he rarely said more than one or two words or simply grunted. His voice was a deep baritone, and he sounded a little older, almost familiar It reminded me a little of my grandfather’s voice, actually.

“To understand why modern VRMMO’s are designed like they are, you need to understand previous generations of virtual reality and how people reacted to them.” We all just stared at Dagg as he spoke. To be honest, I had assumed he wasn’t all that bright. Playing to the “big dumb” stereotype, I guess. And it was clear that no one else expected this either, including Lorelei, though she just looked more embarrassed than she did surprised.

“1st and 2nd generation VR was pretty crude. The Oculus back in the mid-teens was generally just a headset, while 2nd gen added some feedback and control peripherals, but was still just a set of strap-on goggles at the end of the day. They were neat toys, but were very limited and VR would have remained just that, a toy, had it not been the big step forward with 3G VR, the neural override. You’re familiar with this, of course, since it’s what allows you to dive in and experience virtual reality as a fully immersive experience by putting your body and mind into a state of lucid dreaming.”

I just nodded as if I knew this already, as I was no longer in Kansas. This also told me that whatever happened to me, I was not necessarily in an alternate reality, but was at the very least some years in the future.

“The 3rd gen systems still had a lot of problems. Computer systems weren’t really able to keep up with the massive storage and processing needed to render and deal with thousands of players and hundreds of thousands of objects and NPCs that went into a virtual world, so the graphics and detail tended to be pretty shoddy. Plus interactive AI was still pretty limited. It was during this period though that the first big multiplayer VR game was released, Pit of Volrune, a Diablo-like game.”

“At the time, PoV was the most expensive game ever created. It was in development for nearly a decade, and on release was the best selling game of all time and was credited with a 500% spike in sales of 3rd gen VR systems, launching with 100 servers capable handling up to 2000 players each, and expanding 500 servers within a couple months. Its initial success blew everyone away. And its rapid demise nearly destroyed the VR market as well. Within a year of release PoV had shuttered and consolidated all of the extra servers it had opened, and six months after that it was down to just 10 servers. Heathen Queen Games, the developer, shut down not only the game 2 years after launch but also closed down the entire company as they were deep in debt.”

“How the hell can a company tank so badly?” I interrupted. I couldn’t help myself, I was shocked. “The game must have been pretty cool to sell so well, so what did they do to fuck it up so much?”

“Honestly? HQ Games did everything right, as far as I can tell. The game launched on time, had surprisingly few bugs and little downtime following launch, was adding new, free content on a regular basis, and even had some pretty well-received costumer support. They may have expanded their hardware a bit too quickly, but considering how fast copies of the game were flying off the shelves, I think any company would have made the same call. No, they did everything right, but they failed to realize one simple thing. Hardcore gamers are a very, very small minority of the player base.”

I blinked. “Yeah, I get that. Kinda like with WoW, less than 1% of the payers were hardcore, top-end raiders. Most people just logged in and played casually with friends. Not sure how that translates though.”

“Heathen Queen didn’t get it either. VR is… different. It’s immersive in a way that gaming never could achieve before, especially with 3G. There is no separation between player and screen, no controller, no mental safety net that other games and earlier VR had. And despite fifty years of fear-mongering about video games making us violent or desensitizing us to violence, PoV proved that none of that was true. People are not wired to be killers, even when what you’re killing are monsters. We avoid conflict and violence. It’s easy to disconnect and know it’s just a game when you’re on your couch, holding a controller, and playing on a 60-inch plasma screen. But most people find that much harder to do when all of your senses are telling you that everything around you is real. Even dialing back the sensations like pain or toning down the gore didn’t help. Even though we know we’re in a game, our minds still want to treat it as real.”

“When the numbers first started falling off, Heathen Queen started looking at the numbers and found that nearly 80% of players quit playing after barely a month of play time, with over 25% of players never logging back in after a few hours of game play. No one wanted to admit that the game was too intense, too realistic, too violent, and just too damned scary for them, so it was several months before anyone really understood why the drop-offs were happening. And once everyone started to realize the cause, the entire VR business nearly crashed and burned overnight.”

“Wow.” I thought back to my first couple encounters, how terrifying the rats had been, and how much it hurt when I nearly died to that first Sand Wolf encounter. “Ok, yeah, I can see that. I know the first few fights here shook me up a bit. I wasn’t expecting them to be so… visceral.”

“Yeah. And it never really goes away.” Dagg nodded. “After that, VR stepped away from the violent games for a while. With the ’29 floods, and everything that’s happened since, people needed a place to escape to, and virtual reality filled that need. A lot more entertainment began to get broadcast through VR, with virtual museums and parks for people to walk around and explore, sporting events and the Olympics so you could virtually attend and even watch the games up close from the sidelines, and even thousands of virtual clubs and cafes opening up. On the gaming front, multiplayer sports games were wildly popular, and EA even trotted The Sims franchise out of retirement for Virtual Sims with people creating entire virtual neighborhoods.”

“The Pit of Volrune incident continued to get studied, in part because gamers were clamoring for an MMO, but no studio was willing to jump in without finding a way to make it financially work and find a way to keep gamers around long-term. So they created test ‘games’ and brought in a wide variety of types of players, hardcore, casual, and even people with no gaming experience. And in a strange show of solidarity, the majority of the gaming companies big and small were willing to share their findings with each other.”

“Eventually they found that less than 10% of the overall playerbase could handle games that were primarily combat-oriented, whether they were dungeon crawlers like most MMOs and Diablo-likes, arena-style shooters and MOBA’s, or even single player shooters or open world games. However, a much larger portion of gamers didn’t mind those elements, as long as there were other things to do most of the time.”

“Something else that was discovered as an unexpected result of these studies was that the less a game conformed to the laws of physics, the harder it was for a player to accept and enjoy. I’m sure you’ve wondered why it took so long to travel out here to what is essentially the very first dungeon of Apoch’s Twilight? After all, it’s a couple miles and a straight walk takes 15-20 minutes. Imagine what travel times will be like once we’re traveling cross country, from city to city, or country to country.”

“You’re right. I didn’t really think of that. I mean, in most games I played, you could walk across the entire game world in 30 to 60 minutes most of the time.” To be fair, I had thought of this, sort of, but I couldn’t explain it to Dagg. The Tabletop RPG had my players getting trapped by a rogue AI inside the VRMMO, and they had to find a way to beat it to escape. Since it was a TTRPG, I could easily fast forward past travel and such, so it wasn’t the big, boring time waster it would be in a real game. I’d actually also planned to have game events like the Plot Storyline Quests, but again those were centered around the enemy AI, and were simply a convenience to “gate” my content and keep the players on the plot train. This was something else, something very different.

“It was found that the more things you removed from inside the game, the more unrealistic it was and the more the human mind had trouble accepting it, and thus enjoying it. When distances were shortened to make travel times faster and more acceptable, players complained about how cramped and small the world felt. When the need to eat was removed, players found it unnerving. Most games do still remove the need to use the bathroom in game though, thank goodness. Probably because you can’t shut that off or ignore it in real life. Speaking of which, I should actually step away for that. We’ll take turns doing bio-breaks, so keep an eye on my body?”

Dagg suddenly froze in place as his player took off his VR gear, I’d assume. I sat back and looked at the rest of the group, processing what the big fighter had said thus far. Lorelei smiled and shook her head.

“He hasn’t said more than a dozen words since we started, and all of a sudden… this.” I laughed, motioning with a shrug.

“Sorry. He knows a lot about virtual reality in real life, and likes to talk about it.” She blushed and laughed. “Believe it or not he’s giving you the very condensed, non-technical version.”

“Wow. Remind me not to get him going then.” I grinned. “So I’m guessing we’re using what, 4th gen VR gear then?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Torrie responded. “It fixed some of the data synch issues 3G tended to have, has some better safety redundancies, and has better processing and translation software so that the games look much more realistic while not requiring much more backend processing power. Or something like that? I dunno. I may be a nerd girl, but I’m not much of a techy. I just play the games.”

Dagg came back, and Lorelei went AFK, though I supposed “Away From Keyboard” didn’t really apply anymore. “Away from Headset”? I’ wasn’t even sure what the VR gear they were using looked like.

“Torrie explained we were using 4th gen hardware, or so she thought.” I said to Dagg after a moment. “And you explained why distances are so far in the game, I can kinda grok that. So how does that tie into the original question of why the game can get away with limited and unique quests that most players won’t get access to?”

“Remember what I said about how many players would actually really get into the combat of the game? Well, there are still a lot of players that want to come and play a game like this. They just don’t want to be on the front lines of combat. Here’s another thing. You haven’t died in game yet, have you?”

“Umm, no?” I said, confused. “Come close a couple times, but not yet. Why?”

“Torrie, Zed? You died in here yet? Or maybe in another VRMMO?” They both nodded, their faces serious. “Simply put, dying sucks. It’s hard to really describe, but at the core there’s a primal fear of dying that we all have, and it’s something we can never shake no matter how hard we try or how much we tell ourselves that its just a game. The software cushions things as much as possible, makes it as brief and painless as possible, but there’s still, there’s always this moment when everything goes dark, before you respawn, where you think to yourself that maybe, just maybe, it was real this time. That you’re not going to wake up.”

“Since MOBA and Deathmatch eSports went VR, do you know what the most common reason for players to retire is? Fear of death. Teams limit how many matches per month players can play to reduce the mental trauma on their players, and still most of these eSports players retire or quit after an average of four years, many of whom end up in therapy for years after.”

“Remember how I said that 10% of players are able to handle combat regularly? That is true. But only a fraction of those players end up being hardcore players. Most are much more casual, or much more careful in how they play to minimize their deaths. After that we’ll have a bunch of players who are very casual, who will mess around, travel, sightsee, play with trade skills, occasionally quest, and while they may be semi-permanent players they are not really full adventurers, not the way we are. And beyond that, probably three quarters of the entire player base will be ‘residents’, people who mostly just ‘live’ in the game world. They’re take up trade skills or do safe, non-combat work to level up, eventually they’ll buy their own shop or home, and they’ll just live here in the game world part time, an escape from the crap that is the real world. Functionally, they’ll be little different than NPCs, really.”

Zed snorted. “Hell, from what I’ve seen of this games AI so far, I suspect the actual NPCs will be livelier and more interactive than a lot of the residents.”

“So, what you’re saying is that, say the game has 10 million players. Maybe 10,000 of them will be active Adventurers doing these sorts of quests?” That made sense to me, in a weird way.

“Yeah. And of those 10,000, there will be a lot of competition to be the first to explore new zones, fight new bosses, and such. Those are all accomplishments in and of themselves. But then throw in dozens or hundreds of unique Plot Quests to discover as well. Sure, it’s not necessarily fair, if you assume that everything should be fair for every single player. But it’s already not, since most players can’t or won’t go looking for that stuff anyway. And so long as there’s a decent amount of these secret quests to find, there’s enough to go around for most of us active Adventurers. It’s not really a big deal, ultimately. A few games have done it before, and it’s worked out. And Apoch’s Twilight is looking to be bigger and better in almost every way.”

“Ok, so a friend got me into this. It was a bit of a surprise, which is why I didn’t really have time to research it or follow up. I kinda got the game dropped on me suddenly.” That was close enough to the truth, in a way. “You’re talking millions of players, but so far I’ve not seen nearly that many and I’m mostly seeing the same faces. Where is everyone? I didn’t get an option to start in another city or anything.”

“That’s because this is just the first alpha stage of the game. I say alpha, but it’s not like a traditional alpha test. The game has apparently been stress tested and bug tested and all that already. Instead they’re letting players into that game in waves, based on applications. You must have had a really, really good friend to get you into the first wave. There were a couple hundred thousand applicants, and they only chose 1000. They’ll open it up to a larger group next weekend for the beta phase, and will be ramping up to an omega phase in two months time, in which the game is live for everyone. Most of the Alpha and Beta wave are more hardcore players, so we’re getting to push the early game content and open the game up for the more casual players, so that there’s a living economy and safe spaces for them to explore and find their way in.”

“On that note, we should get moving. Time’s wasting, and I got an early class in the morning, so I can’t stay up too late.” Torrie interrupted us as she stood up, stretched, and gathered her equipment. “I get the feeling if I let you boys talk, you’d be sitting on your asses all night.”

“Yeah, Dagg and I both work pretty early as well, so we need to be careful staying up too late or we’ll be zombies.” Lorelei said softly. Dagg chuckled and nodded at her worlds.

“Ok, let’s head off. We shouldn’t be too far from the Metro.”