We set off once more. We had a couple stops along the way to deal with a moderately sized pack of Sand Wolves, but they weren’t much of a challenge for us. During the fight we even found that Zed could fire off his guitars special Dischord ranged attack while maintaining his Bardic Performance. He just worked in a loud chord jam into his song. It was really cool. We also detoured a couple times so that Dagg could harvest some Copper Ore from mining nodes and Torrie could gather plants we found along the way. The big fighter was planning to take up Blacksmithing so had taken Miner, and Torrie had picked up Botany so she could be an Alchemist.

Finally we reached an area on the edge of the bright green sands, where the land turned to a rocky terrain that was tinged a more natural color, outside the edge of the Shield Crystals’ reach. Dagg took point and headed forward toward a flat, dusty area and brushed the dust off something. He bent down and lifted a metal signs several feet across with writing on it. The words were badly faded, but could still be read: “Ravensport Metro” with the words “134th St. Station” underneath. I expected this, but it was still kind of surreal to see something so modern and mundane in what has been almost a pure fantasy world thus far.

“Here.” He said simply, and began brushing sand and dust off a large metal door, which he easily lifted despite its size. A set of stair led down into pitch black darkness. We paused for a moment as Dagg and Lorelei pulled something out of their storage. They were two long strips of cloth with a [Glowstone] bound in the center. They carefully wrapped the cloths around their heads, creating a makeshift headlamp.

I nodded in approval. “Oh, now that’s clever!”

“Wow. I didn’t realize you could actually create things outside the game’s actual crafting system. That’s really interesting.” Torrie murmured, looking at the headlamp. “I wonder what else you can do?”

“There’s no… no light down there. We had trouble last time, so we came up with this. I meant to suggest you make some too, but I forgot, sorry…” Lorelei said quietly, her head hanging.

“No, no, that’s ok! We totally got this!” Torrie replied, patting the blond mage n the arm and smiling warmly. “It’s not your fault. We should have talked about the dungeon a bit more once we knew you’d been in it already.”

“Totally cool. I got some [Glowstones] if we need more, too.” Zed grinned, holding his new guitar fiercely.

“Let’s stick with the normal formations. Dagg, take the lead. Torrie, you’re behind him. Zed, Lorelei, and I will hang back. I’ll have Raider help the front line or protect us in the rear as needed.”

We set off down the dark steps. The [Glowstone] gave off around thirty feet of light. The stairs formed a “U” shape as they went down, meaning we couldn’t see anything below us even with the light until we were most of the way down. Almost immediately, a stench assaulted our nostrils, and I could hear a couple of the others gagging.

It was a pretty rank combination of smells – the damp, musty, moldy smell of a basement that frequently gets wet combined with the sickening smell of rotted meat. I’d worked one summer unloading a beverage truck to grocery stores, and one of our deliveries was to this store that threw all their deli meat scraps out into a dumpster the night before we delivered there. It unusually smelled pretty bad, but one week we were in the middle of a blistering heat wave, and even at night the temperature didn’t drop below 80, and was around 100 before noon. By mid-afternoon when we got there, the smell was so awful, I actually threw up a couple times and had to work with a cloth wrapped around my mouth and nose. It was nasty. And this reminded me of that in all the wrong ways.

Everyone except Dagg and Lorelei started fumbling for their Stats Window, and I followed suit. Smell was one of the options you could turn down, and I hurriedly turned it down about 60%, making the stench barely tolerable. Lorelei apologized again for not warning us, but I swear I could see Dagg smirking. I’m sure they went through something similar their first trip through, and he found it funny to see others walk face first into that wall of funk. I sighed and let my breathing regulate.

We reached the bottom of the staircase, and Dagg motioned for everyone to stop, then cautiously took a step off into the darkness beyond, his [Glowstone] headlamp providing some dim illumination. He took one more step, and to the left at the very edge of the light I saw movement. The armored fighter held up his shield and suddenly bellowed a Taunt, and the rest of us began moving into formation as several things came rushing out of the darkness toward us.

I was familiar with the Metro Dungeon, so I knew what these were – Rotted Ghouls. Humanoids that had been trapped in these tunnels during the Twilight and warped by magic, disease, or whatever, their skin was shrunken and emaciated over their skeletal frames and mottled grey, with mold and rot eating away at them. Their eyes glowed a sinister yellow in the darkness, reflecting the [Glowstone] lights, and their hands ended in wicked, twisted clawed hands. To be fair, the entire dungeon was loosely based off the feral ghouls and the rough layout of some of the subway maps in Fallout 3. I wasn’t always original.

The ghouls were fast, and besides the one that was taunted, two others leapt at Dagg as well, clawing at his armor. He swung his sword at one, connecting and lopping its arm off in a spray of pixilated, yellowish blood. He took two viscous blows in return however and staggered back. The fourth rushed toward where we were bunched up on the stairs, and I immediately commanded Raider to charge forward and intercept it, and he pounced off the stairs and onto the chest of the ghoul with a snarl, his claws raking the things hide.

Lorelei uttered “Protection” as she motioned with her hands and a runic circle appeared underneath Dagg for a moment, then he began to glow very faintly. The ghouls seemed to flinch away from the light slightly and I knew that his Defense had been raised a bit, making him harder to hit. I knocked an arrow and fired at one of the ghouls, my arrow driving deep into one eye. A large red “108” flashed over it, and I grinned at the Critical as the ghoul dropped and shattered into a shower of lights.

Torrie had gone into stealth and moved behind the ghoul that Raider had engaged with, and as she stepped out of the shadow she drover her blade into the ghouls back and it erupted into particles. Three down, one to go. Zed started picking out the first notes to a relatively soft, quiet tune that I quickly recognized as Queenryche’s Silent Lucidity and grinned as I could feel his Bardic Inspiration kick in. Zed was a walking jukebox of all my favorite rock songs. This VRMMO didn’t have any naturally ambient background music since that would burst a players immersion, so having a bard around to provide music was pretty kickass.

The last ghoul took another chunk out of Dagg and I could hear him grunt in pain. I wondered what he has his pain threshold set to? Then he retaliated and the final ghoul fell. We regrouped near the stairs to catch our breath as a reward screen popped up. We’d decided to let Torrie be our Loot Master for the dungeon, to keep things simple, so the green display window only reported my share of the XP and money dropped, a whopping 16 XP and 2 gold.

“Ok, this is gross.” Torrie reached up to manipulate her HUD, then lifted up a chunk of grey, withered flesh from her inventory. “We got three of these as our loot drops. Grey trash, worth 5 silver each. Also, frakkin’ disgusting.”

“Yeah, the ghouls all have a high chance to drop [Rotted Flesh].” Lorelei replied as she cast a heal spell onto Dagg. “I’m not sure what’s more disgusting, that it’s considered loot, or that the vendors in town actually buy it?”

“Ugh. Not cool, man.” Zed shuddered.

“So as we mentioned in town…” Lorelei continued as she cast a second heal spell onto Dagg. “The dungeon is a No Rest zone. Which means we won’t heal up between fights. So be conservative with your mana, and try not to take too much damage. Don’t be afraid to pop a healing potion, either, as my heals will be a bit limited.”

I noticed that on my HUD, there was a little debuff icon that showed a red exclamation point, the indicator that it was indeed a No Rest Zone.

“Dagg really took a beating there, didn’t he?” I knew the answer to my question already. I’d made the Ghouls here to be something of glass cannons. They had a decent attack and could dish out a lot of damage, but their Defense wasn’t very high, they had no Damage Reduction, and they didn’t have that many Hit Points. Most of us should be able to drop one in a single hit.

“100 per hit, minus armor.” Dagg replied tersely. Good to see he was back to mostly monosyllables and short sentences again.

“Woah.” Zed whistled. “Note to self, do not get hit.”

Since Dagg was tanking, we decided to have Lorelei focus solely on him unless one of us got hit really bad. We all had a handful of healing potions, so we’d rely on those for now. Once we were ready, Dagg led the way once more further into the darkness.

“I wonder what those things were?”

“Rotted Ghouls.” Torrie replied with a laugh. “Didn’t you read their name tag? Silly Zed.”

“Yeah, of course. But I mean, I wonder if there’s any lore to explain them. They’ve been trapped down here for what, 150 years? What do they eat? Do they need to eat, even? I couldn’t quite tell if they were undead or not.”

“I could always ask Aibee. I think that’s one of her primary functions, to be a database for me for quests and monsters I come across. Aibee, can you come out?” The four-inch pixie materialized in front of me, hovering in mid-air in front of me.

“That is so awesome, dude. I want one!” Zed said as he peered at my AI companion.

“I know. Bull gets all the awesome stuff. An adorable kitty and a cute little pixie pet?” Torrie said as she slowly slid over near Raider. I could almost see the tiger sigh in resignation and Torrie began petting him like he was a simple housecat.

“Hey Aibee. Umm, how are you?” I wasn’t sure just how “alive” Aibee’s AI was, but I felt like it would be wrong to just treat her like a tool. I felt like there was more to her, so it’d be better to be polite, at the very least.

“I’m fine Bull, thank you for asking. What can I help you with?”

“If I recall, you said you were a database. Can you tell us anything about these Ghouls we fought?”

“Yes. When Ravensport fell, many sought shelter in the transportation tunnels that ran underneath the city, and were subsequently trapped. Unfortunately, some of the people that had fled down here had been cursed by an unknown god. The curse made it so that they could not die to disease or the ravages of age and caused them to suffer from a terrible hunger. With almost no food to be found in the Metro, these cursed ones soon turned to cannibalism, killing and devouring those free from the curse. They have been trapped down here ever since, suffering an eternal hunger but never dying from it.” This was stated in such a cheerful, matter-of-fact way that it made the explanation at least twice as horrible, and I shuddered.

“Man, I am so sorry I asked. That’s fuckin’ horrible.” Zed said, horror in his voice.

“Aibee, why is this item sellable to the vendors in town?” Torrie suddenly asked, holding up some of the [Rotted Flesh] the ghouls had dropped.

“These ghouls retain traces of the divine magic that cursed them. The flesh they drop is has a higher concentration of this energy, and the alchemists and mages in town are interested in studying it to see if there’s a way to cure it, or prevent others from being infected by it in the future.”

“OK, thanks Aibee, I appreciate it.” I nodded at the sprite and was about to dismiss her, when a thought came to me. “Hey, question, where do you go when I dismiss you?”

“I go away.”

“Yeah, but to where?”

“Nowhere. I just go on standby until you call for me again.”

“So you’re waiting for me to call you. Does that mean you’re awake and aware?” I asked.

“Yes, that is correct.”

“Doesn’t that get boring? Do you have anything to do wherever you are?”

“Boring? I never really thought about it.” She screwed up her face a bit as she thought about it. “Yes, I guess it is boring. And no, there’s nothing to do. It’s just a formless, dark void.”

“Bull, you meanie! Locking her up in a dark box all the time!” Torrie glared at me as she hugged Raider.

“Wow man, not cool.” Zed chimed in.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know! I mean, I’ve never really thought about it before. I’m not really used to my companions and pets and stuff actually, you know, thinking and having feelings.” It was weird to think about, but then again, I wasn’t sure yet if I was much different from the other AI myself. Maybe I was identical to them now, I just had more memories.

“Ok, Aibee, tell you what.” I finally said after a little thought. “Why don’t you stay out here? Help us if you can, but try to stay out of the way during combat, and don’t get yourself killed or anything. Sound good?”

“Yes, that sounds great.” She smiled and started flitting around my head a bit, before settling down on one shoulder.

“Can we go now?” Dagg asked tersely, and I nodded. We readied our weapons again and began to move.

I pulled out a [Glowstone] as we searched through the darkness, sweeping it around to examine our surroundings. Judging by the overturned benches and the tracks that flanked us on either side, it appeared we were on a loading platform for a pair of what were effectively subway cars. A number of cars were sitting on the tracks, many leaning at an angle. On the closest track, it looked like the ceiling of the tunnel the train cars were heading into had collapsed while the cars were moving, causing them to crash and pile up. The cars resembled a cross between subway cars and old trolley cars, except that they had no wheels. Instead it looked like they had a set of brackets that fit over the rails, and the brackets were each etched with a series of runic letters and patterns. The cars were levitated and controlled via magic, using the rails as guides.

“Incoming!” Zed suddenly shouted. Looked up and realized the group had moved away from me a little bit, heading toward the far set of tracks. At the edge of their lights, I saw movement. I tossed my [Glowstone] in their general direction and readied my bow for combat.

This time we had to fight off six ghouls. We had a better idea of what to expect, but they were still fast and hit very hard. Dagg took the brunt of the damage once again, but Torrie took a couple nasty wounds as well and Raider was hit pretty hard as well. We still succeed and picked up a minor amount of money and XP, and Torrie collected more [Rotted Flesh], though not without complaining. We paused, and those wounded used healing potions on themselves. I sprinkled two of my potions over Raiders wounds, sighing in relief as his wounds closed up and he stopped limping.

The loading platform was a large rectangle, maybe 100 feet across, and 160 feet wide. With this group of ghouls, we’d cleared it of all enemies that we could see, but Lorelei noted that some of the ghouls moved around, patrolling through the dungeon, so we stayed on alert. In the center were two flights of stairs going up about 20 feet to a platform above us. Two sets of rails cross the room, but three of the tunnels exits were inaccessible due to the tunnels collapsing. The fourth, in the northeast corner, was clear.

“The boss is up that way.” Lorelei said, painting up to the platform above us. “But we were hoping you guys wouldn’t mind heading down the side passage. Torrie, you said you’d picked up Tier 1 Lockpicking, yes?”

“Yeah. I figured it would be useful.”

“Good. There was a chest in a room down that way, but we never found a key for it when we ran the dungeon last night, and we didn’t have any rogues with us so we had to leave it.”

“Sure, sounds good. I’m always up for a little extra loot!” Torrie said, grinning. The glint in her eye made me think maybe she did have some kender in her after all.

“Hey Bull, what’s Aibee doing?” Zed asked. I realized that she’d flown off my shoulder at some point, and looked around and saw her hovering over a pile of rubble near the crashed metro cars.

“Hey Aibee, we’re heading this way. Let’s go.” She just whistled and looked away, like she couldn’t hear me. I frowned. Wondering what she was up to, and stalked over to her. “Hey, come on. We’re heading this way.”

She looked at me finally, then simply flitted down and sat on a slab of concrete, crossing her legs primly. She looked down at the slab she was sitting on, then back at me, then shrugged.

“What, are you tired? You need me to dismiss you?” She shook her head, but stayed silent. Again she looked down at the slab she was sitting on, then looked away and began whistling innocently.

“What’s wrong with her, Bull?” Torrie asked as the group followed me over.

“I’m not sure, but… I think she’s trying to tell me something. Aibee, are we supposed to search under this rubble?” Aibee looked at me again and shrugged, doing her best to look innocent and failing. Then she flew up and sat on my shoulder again.

“Guess we’re moving some stones, man.” Zed sighed. “I’m not built for this, you know. Strength is my dump stat.”

“Yeah.” I laughed. “I think Dagg’s the only one who didn’t tank it. But let’s see what we can do.”

Dagg leaned down and started shifting the broken concrete. He was able to almost move the big slab Aibee had been sitting on, but it required all the rest of us to provide him with enough help to lift it up and shove it aside. He cleared a few more good sized chunks, and then lifted up a dust covered leather satchel.

“Hey, loot! Good job Aibee!” Torrie grinned up at the little AI pixie, who smiled back at her looking proud.

“Yeah, very nice, Aibee. Thank you.” I said, and patted her gently on the head with one finger. She seemed pleased by that. “Why couldn’t you just tell us what was going on though?”

“I can only provide you with hints if you’re close to finding something. I can only directly inform you about things you’ve discovered for yourself, such as providing additional information about the monsters and item drops.”

“Well, thanks. Let’s see what we have here.”

Torrie took the bag and opened it up. It was a small satchel designed to be attached to a belt, and was maybe six inches wide and 10 inches deep. However, when Torrie opened it, she grinned.

“Ok, this is a haul right here. Aibee did amazing. I’m guessing since this was so hidden and there was no obvious hints that it was here, it’s got extra decent item drops. You guys didn’t find it before, did you Lori?”

“No, we searched around but didn’t even suspect this was here.”

“Excellent. First off, the bag itself is an 8-slot bag. That’s a major score right there. There are three items inside the bag as well. The Staff of Rayven, a Soldier’s Shield, and a cloth Nobles Vest. All three are Silver quality items.”

Unless Spellcasters took a Trait called Combat Casting, they couldn’t cast with a weapon in their hands. There are two exceptions to this, however, a staff and a wand. Staves generally tended to have a defense bonus to them, while wands often give a casting bonus of some kind, plus whatever stat boosts the items have. I’d wanted casters to have to rely on their spells and allies in the early game, so staves and wands were pretty rare right now.

The [Staff of Rayven] was an ebony staff with a golden claw on the top of it, with a glass sphere of black with a swirl of smoke moving inside it, and it apparently granted +2 to Defense as well as +2 to Focus. It was immediately given to Lorelei, who happily equipped and bound it. The [Soldier’s Shield] was a mid-size silver kite shield. The center featured black heraldry with the silhouette of a silver raven in flight, and it provided +4 to Defense, +1 to Strength, and +1 to Endurance. Being the only tank, it went straight to Dagg.

Finally, the [Noble’s Vest] was a deep-blue silk vest with a pattern along the edges in black stitching. It was cloth armor and provided 3 DR, +1 Charisma, and +1 Endurance. Both Lorelei and Zed used cloth armor, but they agreed that not only was it more appropriate for Zed, Lorelei had already gotten something. So he equipped it and we all started chuckling. Since it went in the chest equipment slot, he was wearing just the vest and hence was bare-chested.

“Hubba hubba!” Torrie grinned and leered at him goofily.

“Ok, that’s not gonna work. Let me try something.” He unequipped the vest, and then pulled the [Linen Shirt] he had previously been wearing out and pulled it on over his head. Then he equipped the vest and it appeared overtop the shirt. “Hah! I can wear the shirt, but it doesn’t count as equipped. I don’t get the DR I normally would from it; it just acts like a shirt now. Awesome!”

“Ok, that’s cool. Good to know. Now let’s go get that treasure chest!” Torrie grinned. “So who gets the bag itself?”

“You should keep it.” Lorelei said quietly. “You’re acting as loot master, you need the space.”

“Ok, cool. Thanks! That will be a big help.” Torrie grinned as she quipped it, then prodded Dagg to lead on.

The warrior led us to the open tunnel and we began to slowly pick our way through it. The tunnel wasn’t very long, less than 100 feet or so, but it was partially collapsed. The footing was treacherous in most places, and twice we had to climb over piles of dirt and broken concrete, so it was slow going. At the edge of the improvised headlamp, I could see that the tunnel curved ahead, but was blocked off by a metro car completely buried in rubble. However, there was an opening to the right.

Dagg held up one hand, palm open, and we all stopped. I guessed we’d all seen enough movies with military squads and the like to guess what he was tying to say with his and signal. He pointed to the right hand opening, then held up four fingers, made a back and forth gesture, then held up 4 fingers with his thumb extended as well. So four or five ghouls to the right. He held up his hand again, then motioned forward as he began charging the final twenty feet.

The warrior let out his taunt, and four [Rotted Ghouls] charged out at him. We were several steps behind him so he had to take the first assault solo. The he sung his sword but missed, and all four ghouls ripped viciously into him. He blocked one with his new shield, but the other four tore into him, virtual blood flying. Lorelei quickly chanted her healing spell, and Dagg was enveloped in a soft white light. The rest of us followed suit, buffing and attacking.

Zed fired up his Bardic Performance with the first fierce chords of Scorpions’ Rock You like a Hurricane. I grinned at that. With Zed’s playlist I didn’t even need the buff from the Trait; the songs themselves pumped me up and inspired me. I let loose with a Rapid Shot, dropping one but missing the second. I also whispered to Raider to attack and he rushed forward to engage one of the ghouls. Next to me Torrie vanished into thin air as she dropped into Stealth.

I smiled, thinking that this wasn’t so bad. I really should know better than to think things like that, though, and my smile disappeared as four more ghouls came rushing out from the room off to the right. Ok, this could be a bit nastier than I expected.

Dagg hunkered down, going into full defensive mode and activating his Parry skill to try and block some of the claw attacks. It helped, but several attacks still got through, and two of the ghouls turned to attack my tiger as he rushed into the fray, clawing at them. His damage was still pretty low, so all he was doing was weakening them a bit. Both ghouls ripped into Raider, leaving long gashes in his side, each doing 80 damage to him. Torrie materialized behind one of the ghouls and drove her dagger into it, dropping it with a flurry of death sparkles. I let fly another arrow, taking out a third ghoul, and Lorelei cast another heal spell on the tanking fighter.

A few seconds later and Dagg was starting to look worse for the wear and Raider had taken some more damage, but we managed to drop two more ghouls. Then I heard Lorelei cry out from behind me. I spun around and realized more ghouls had crept up behind us, and all four had attacked the Light Mage while she was focusing on healing Dagg. Horrified, I watched as one sink its teeth into Lorelei’s shoulder as she screamed and vanished into a burst of white light. She’d not had the chance to raise her Endurance much and had as few hit points as me, possible less.

Dagg looked up and roared and began flailing with his sword, bisecting one of the ghouls. I started scrambling back away from the newly arrived ghouls as they started charging toward me. I desperately fired Rapid Shot again and managed to hit both times, dropping two of them. Raider ignored his wounds and the ghouls clawing at him and charged in between me and the ghouls, protecting me. I grimaced as he got hit again.

I was genuinely getting scared here. I knew that the others would be fine; they’d respawn back at the beginning of the dungeon, though if they all died it may be tough to get back down here and get their gear back, depending on how much of it they’d bound. Plus they’d have to deal with how dark it was down here, as you couldn’t bind [Glowstones]. But me, I didn’t know yet what would happen if I died. In the Tabletop, I’d decided that NPC’s didn’t respawn if killed, to give the world more of a living feeling to it. But was I considered a Player or an NPC, or did it matter? Fearfully I sprinted into the near the buried metro car. At the very least, I could limit how many sides I could be attacked on.

Zed unleashed a Dischord blast into one of the ghouls and it fell. I whistled for Raider to retreat back with me, as I didn’t want to risk him taking anymore damage. I unleashed another arrow at the ghoul chasing my tiger, but I missed. I cursed as the [Rotted Ghoul] leapt at me, its teeth sinking into my arm painfully. I didn’t even have time to look and see how much damage it did as I screamed and kicked it off me. I tried to fire my bow again, but it was too close and just knocked it away and raked at me a second time. This time the red numbers flashed extra large, indicating a critical hit, and I saw I had taken 121 damage that time. Even with the pain reduced, my arm was burning and felt like wet spaghetti.

Another discordant note ripped through Zed’s song and the sonic blast hit the ghoul, causing it to burst in a shower of fireworks.

I slumped down and fumbled at my belt to activate a healing potion as I looked at my remaining health. I panicked as I realized I had less than 100 health left. One more solid hit would have taken me down. Dagg was still fighting with at least one more ghoul, but I hurriedly drank a [Small Healing Potion] down, sighing as my health rose to nearly 200. Each type of potion had a nine-second cooldown, allowing you to use multiple healing or mana potions in a single fight, but preventing you from just spamming them repeatedly. I grumbled as I really wished I could drink another right away.

I looked over in time to see the final ghoul drop as Torrie stabbed it. She and Zed staggered and dropped to the ground to rest for a moment, but Dagg immediately began running for the entrance. Torrie tiredly tried calling out to him but he ignored her. A reward window popped up, but I dismissed it without even looking at it.

“Shit man. That was fucking intense!” Zed groaned. “I lost count of how many of them there even were.”

“Twelve. Eight in the room over here, and four more that came up from behind.” I replied, quaffing another [Small Healing Potion]. I was up to 297 health now out of 400, and unless more ghouls showed up I wasn’t moving until I drank another. I did, however, use one on Raider and prepared to use a couple more. Poor kitty was battered pretty badly as well.

“Did Lorelei even get a chance to do anything?” Torrie said, horrified.

“No. All four ganged up on her. I think she must only have about 300 HP and cloth armor has almost no DR. She went down instantly.” I replied. Her scream as she died was haunting. She was genuinely scared.

We sat and finished mostly healing up. I was 3 points shy of full after one more healing potion, and Raider was 40 health below his max of 500, but I since our healing pots gave us 100 HP and I only had a few left, I decided not to top us off.

After a few minutes, Dagg came back, with Lorelei hiding behind him, blushing bright red. I quickly realized why as she bent to retrieve the loot bag that had dropped where she died – Other than her staff and a set of cloth slippers, she was in the default underwear that you wore when naked unless you turned off the modesty option setting. As shy as Lorelei was most of the time, I could only imagine how embarrassed she was to be running through a dungeon in just her undies. You couldn’t Bind the default starter equipment or the Common items you could buy or find, only Uncommon or better gear was Bindable. At this stage, we didn’t have much gear that could be Bound.

We all turned away to let Lorelei equip her gear once again, then we gathered up and moved into the room where the ghouls had come from. Once upon a time it looked to have been a utility room and hallway that ran between the two parallel metro tracks. The rusted remains of several lockers and sheds rested on one wall, almost hidden behind a mound of ancient bones, most of which were heavily chewed on. Along the other wall, though, was a green metal footlocker. Maybe three feet wide and a foot tall. It wasn’t the traditional looking treasure chest, but this had to be what Dagg and Lorelei had told us about,

“Ok, just in case this thing is trapped or something, everyone stand back and let Torellisin Nimblefingers do her thing!” Torrie cracked her knuckles and knelt down as the rest of us backed away. She produced a couple pieces of long, thin metal and with a few deft movement there was a click, and the lid slowly lifted up. “Tada!”

A loot window popped up in front of her, so she didn’t actually have to reach into the chest. She looked over the list for a few moments, then turned to us.

“Ok, it was mostly gold and some potions. I think Zed and Lorelei are the only ones who use [Small Mana Potions] right now, so they can fight over them. There’s three, just let me know who gets what. There’s also five [Small Healing Potions]. I think after that last fight, everyone gets one. There’s enough gold for everyone to get 100 each, and there’s a little left over that I’ll give to Dagg if that’s ok, since his armor will cost the most to repair and he’s taking a hell of a beating down here.” She nodded and assigned the items around. “And finally we have a set of cloth gloves, [Noble’s Gloves]. They’re Rare, and have a +1 Endurance and +1 Focus. Lorelei, Zed, it’s up to you who gets them.”

“Lori.” Zed said immediately. “She can use the Endurance boost, and Focus will do her more good for now than me.”

“Lastly, Bull.” Torrie looked up at me. “It’s your lucky day. Besides the icky ghoul flesh, we also got an item drop. It’s leather armor, and since you haven’t gotten anything yet, it’s all yours. [Night Watchman’s Trousers], +1 Endurance, 4 DR, and only requires 2 Strength, so I think you can equip them right away?”

“Yeah, and that’s a nice upgrade. An extra point of Damage Reduction and it’s obvious we all need to raise our Endurance a bunch after that last fight.”

“Ok, they’re yours. So go ahead and strip for us!” Torrie grinned at me lecherously. I laughed and took the new pants and equipped them. You didn’t have to remove anything you were already wearing, just swap them out, so it was immediate

“Sorry shorty, no strip show for you I guess. Too bad!” We laughed, and the levity helped loosen us all up a bit. I looked down at the leather pants. They were pretty basic, just a soft black suede, no real adornments or anything, but I liked them. They looked a bit like a set of black jeans. “Ok, so all that’s left is upstairs? Lets rock.”

As we headed toward the stairs up, carefully watching for another patrol of [Rotted Ghouls], I thought back to what Dagg had said earlier, before we got to the Metro. When Lorelei had come back, she had a slightly haunted look in her eye. Being embarrassed about being mostly naked, and Torrie’s jokes had helped her relax some, but I hadn’t missed that. Even if you knew what to expect, dying was apparently not pleasant for players of the game. I shook my head and wondered if I’d actually have been willing to keep playing this as an active Adventurer if I’d still been alive, or if I’d have opted to become a Resident and just enjoy a casual, more peaceful game. For some reason I didn’t feel like the latter was an option for me now.

We made our way back to the main loading platform and headed up the stairs to the waiting deck that overlooked the tracks. Overturned, rusted out benches and trash cans were scattered about, and we found another group of four ghouls waiting for us. We were ready though, forewarned by the fighter and healer pair that had been through here before, so we were able to take them down pretty quickly with little damage.

After that last fight, it was almost boring. I clamped down on that thought, hard. Getting complacent, not taking things seriously enough was how we got into trouble with that last fight. I shook my head and focused. I checked over my status as we paused after the fight, and realized I’d hit level 3, and had a decent chunk of XP saved up. I’d need to look over my options carefully before spending any of it, and I had to wait to do that till we were in town anyway. I closed out the window, and we moved on.

There was a 10-foot wide hallway leading north from the waiting platform, and we headed down it carefully. About 30 feet up, there was a heavy steel door on the left side of the hallway. There was a metal sign bolted to the door, but the letters had faded with age to the point where they were no longer readable. Ahead another 30 feet the hallway curved to the right, and there was a narrower hallway large enough for a single person to pass through angling off to the left.

“Locked. Need key.” Dagg grunted, pointing at the door.

“There’s a boss up ahead.” Lorelei said quietly. “Up that small hallway. He has the key to this room, and the lock can’t be picked.”

“Ok then.” Torrie nodded. She’d been about to reach for her lockpicks, but shrugged and realized that it would be poor level design to allow players to skip the only boss fight. “So what can you tell us about the boss?”

“Big. Hits hard. Sprays needles.” If I hadn’t heard him speak at length earlier, I’d swear he was incapable of saying more than a half-dozen words at once.

“It’s called a Spined Ghoul, I think.” Lorelei added, filling in the gaps for Dagg. “It’s bigger and much tougher than the other ghouls, and as Dagg so eloquently put it, he hits really hard. He has around four Rotted Ghouls with him, and will call replacements every now and then. And finally, he will sometimes pause and start flexing. When that happens, get as far away as you can. He’s covered in these razor sharp spikes, and he shoots them out all around him in an area. It’s relatively short range, but things were too chaotic when we fought him last time so I’m not certain exactly how far out they go.”

“Shit, man. What is up with all these bosses having adds?” Zed complained. “We have gotta find ourselves a secondary tank. Dagg’s soaking up too much of the pressure and damage.”

I noticed that Lorelei seemed to slowly be getting more comfortable with us and didn’t stutter or pause as much. That was good. I liked her and Dagg, but with Dagg’s habit of non-verbal communication and her reluctance to talk I had been worried about how well they would integrate into a group.

“We need to get our main tank some heavier armor too.” I replied. That required Dagg have high Strength and taking the Heavy Armor Talent. He didn’t have it yet, which meant he couldn’t grab it till level 4 at the earliest, when we got our next Talent point.

“Ok kids. Lets make sure the hall is clear, hope nothing respawns behind us, and then head into the boss room. We’ll stick with the usual formation. Dagg, tank the boss in one corner, that should help with the bosses AoE attack, since it’ll be easier to move away from him. Lori, do you know how often he summons new ghouls?”

“No, not sure. Like I said, the fight was pretty chaotic. It was the first boss fight for all of us, and honestly the group we went with was pretty disorganized. We wiped a couple of times on it.”

“Ok, we’ll just have to fake it then. Zed, Torrie, we’ll burn the ghouls as fast as possible then swap to the boss until more come out, then wash, rinse, repeat. Lorelei, focus healing on Dagg as usual. Sound good?”

Everyone nodded, and Torrie agreed to sneak up and check out the end of the hallway. The rest of us moved up cautiously behind her to allow the [Glowstones] to illuminate the bend, but we were worried for nothing. The hallway only extended after the bend a short distance then dead-ended in rubble from a collapse. We sighed and moved over to the small hallway. It was only big enough for a single person to pass through, so Dagg took the lead, followed by Raider, Torrie, myself, Lorelei, and finally Zed bringing up the rear. Right as we entered, the light mage cast a Protection spell on Dagg to buff his Defense.

The hallway was short, only about 15 feet long, and opened up into large, circular room. As we entered, long strips of glowing lights flickered on above us, illuminating the room. The lights were obviously long [Glowstones] of some sort, but their placement reminded me of fluorescent light tubes. One or two were dark, and one flickered slightly. In the center of the room was a dried up fountain about 8 feet across with a crumbled, broken statue of some kind sticking out from the center and surrounded by a ring of rusted out metal benches. Along the northern wall, on the far side of the room from us were two doors set about ten feet apart from each other. Each had a white sign on the door with a blue figure, one male and one female.

Bathrooms. That made me laugh, since the game didn’t include needing to go to the bathroom. My quiet chuckle was interrupted by a loud roar that made everything seem to rumble, and moments later the bathroom doors both slammed open and ghouls began pouring out. Two [Rotted Ghouls] ran out of each door, followed by an enormous ghoul standing over eight feet tall, covered in heavy muscle, with wicked six inch spines poking out of its body. A [Spined Ghoul], it had a fancy scrollwork design around its name when I focused on it denoting that it was a Dungeon Boss. This ghoul didn’t look rotted, though its flesh still looked dead and necrotic. It roared again, signaling the beginning of the boss fight.

Dagg immediately taunted the boss and moved to the far west wall, away from the rest of us. He sliced at the large ghoul with his sword and was rewarded by a painful looking claw in return that sent the warrior stumbling a bit. I did not want to be hit by that.

I turned to focus on the [Rotted Ghouls] and whistled for Raider to move in and attack one. I chose two others and let loose with a Rapid Shot, hitting both and dropping them. Zed started hitting some rapid-fire, heavy chords that I couldn’t place right away but recognized. A moment later I realized it was Iron Maiden’s Two Minutes to Midnight. Torrie didn’t bother with stealth, simply rushed forward but unfortunately missed.

A moment later, we’d dropped the two remaining ghouls, though both raider and Torrie had taken a bit of damage. We switched over to the big ghoul to help relieve Dagg a bit. Lorelei was chain-healing him as fast as she could, but I could see on my our party status bar that Dagg was slowly taking more damage than she could heal. I ripped into it with a pair of arrows and winced as it only took 70 damage from each shot, meaning it had 20 DR. I called back Raider for the time being, as he could barely scratch it.

The ghoul let out another roar and swiped at Dagg again, catching the fighter in the head with a nasty looking blow. I heard Lorelei shout “That means more ghouls are coming from the bathrooms!” and turned to see that four more ghouls were rushing out at us. I sent my tiger to intercept one, and fired an arrow another but missed. Zed’s Dischord had a moderate cooldown, 15 seconds, so he was limited in how often he could unleash those so he just focused on his Bardic Performance and staying away from the ghouls.

Two of the ghouls rushed at me, covering the distance fast. I noticed that the ghouls were glowing slightly, and had a buff of some kind, but I couldn’t pause to focus on it at the moment. They came in very fast, leaping toward me and biting and scratching. Both landed solid hits, and while they didn’t register as a critical hit they still did 105 damage each. My DR was 20 now with my new armor, so they were doing 125 total, meaning they were stronger than the ones we fought earlier. I had more health now, but I dropped from 500 to 290.

I kicked one of the ghouls away and fired my bow, killing it. Then I heard Dagg yell out “AoE!” I turned to run, but the second ghoul was latched on and I could barely move. I commanded Raider to move back toward the hall we came in from, near Lorelei and braced myself. I had moved in toward the boss some to fire past the fountain, and as the boss flexed and spines went fling in all direction I realized I was still way too close. I took another 180 damage as several of the razor sharp spikes embedded themselves in my arm and chest.

Torrie dashed over and drove her dagger into the back of the ghoul holding my leg, and it let go as it vanished in a flash of particles. Then a warm white light washed over me with a tingling sensation and I recovered 110 health from Lorelei’s healing spell. I stood and thanks Torrie, then dashed back near Lorelei, downing a healing potion to recover another 100 health. That brought me back up to 320 HP, but that was too close for comfort.

With the ghouls down, we focused back on the boss again, but paid more attention to our positioning this time. But we’d finally found our rhythm. We had to endure two more waves of ghouls, I took one more hit, Raider was running low on health, and Dagg dropped dangerously low a couple times, but with a groan the boss finally toppled over. As he exploded into a flash of red and white particles, I cheered. Torrie did so as well, while Zed ended his song with an improvised guitar solo to celebrate.

I sat down on one of the few intact benches and applied a healing potion to Raider, as he was too low for my comfort and I was worried about respawns on the way out. Then I checked over my loot reward window. 50 Gold and 200 XP, not too shabby.

Torrie looked over her Master Loot window, then called out to me “Hey Bull, Rock, Paper, Scissors.” I looked up and said “ok” and we prepped and threw. I tossed out Rock, but she beat me with Paper.

“Looks like I win, sweet. Boss dropped some [Night Watchman’s Gloves], +1 Agility and Endurance. Sorry. You get the next ones. And Dagg, here, these should be a nice upgrade. [Soldier’s Greaves], +1 Strength, +1 Endurance, Medium Armor.” Dagg grunted and accepted.

“And finally, one [Metro Office Key]. Any ghouls hiding in there?”

“No, it was clear last time.” Lorelei replied.

We headed back to the office and opened the door. It was rusty and required a bit of force, and squealed horribly as metal scraped on metal. The office was a small room, about twenty feet by ten, and any furniture in here was ruined and rotted. The remains of a chair had an old skeleton sitting in it and behind him was a small metal safe, the door open a fraction of an inch. The only thing in there was an old, worn leather-bound [Journal] that flagged our [Expedition to Old Ravensport] Quest as updated when Torrie picked it up. All that remained was to turn it back in at the Inn.

We formed up and slowly made our way back to the entrance, ready for an ambush or any ghouls we missed or that respawned in, but there were none. We climbed the stairs to the dungeon entrance, and I was relieved and excited. It had been harrowing and I was terrified deep down of dying, but it was exhilarating all the same. I’d been playing D&D since I was eight years old, and now I was living it. I couldn’t help but smile as we successfully completed our first Dungeon Crawl.