Gordo was the first to break the silence that had encompassed their table since he had messaged the admins. He cleared his throat to pull the other two away from their introspective thoughts, and once their attention had switched back to him, he spoke. “Look, I came here to hopefully talk to you two about the game, so if you have a few minutes free, could you answer a few things for me ? ”

Shan quirked an eyebrow at him. “Sure, I don’t mind, and I don’t think Garal will either.” He glanced at the dwarf who just shrugged his shoulders, indicating he couldn’t see a problem with it. “We don’t have a lot of time left online today, and will be logging out soon, so start asking, and we will answer as much as we can in the time we have remaining.”

“Pardon ?” queried Gordo. “If you are logging off together that means you two know probably know each other outside the game.” He didn’t know why he asked this, for it was fairly normal for friends to play together in games, and leave together. “You two friends in real life ?”

Shan laughed at this, but Garal answered his question. “No, we are not friends outside the game, we are brothers, twins, in fact. I, of course, am the older one, the smart one.”

Gordo held up one hand, cutting off the expected retort from Shan, laughing as he did so. “Let’s not waste our time left, with you two obviously rehashing old disagreements.” Brothers, he thought, so much fun to listen to when they bicker, but there isn’t time for that right now. “What I need is to find the opportunity to join in on a few quests to get my levels up, and hopefully manage to make my character a little more competitive. I can’t do that alone, so what do you say about me joining in on one of your quests to gain a little experience, like the one you are already doing. ” He waited for their answer, hoping that they would accept his offer, for he knew the question could come across as pushy, and demanding.

Garal answered his question in a thoughtful manner. “Sorry, we completed that quest before coming here, it didn’t take us that long once we realized what we had to do. Other than that, we don’t have any other quests, they are damn hard to obtain.” He paused for a moment, thinking about something. “About you joining us, we can’t give you an answer on that, we will have to have a talk about it after we log off. Tomorrow, when we come back we will give you our answer then. You going to be here tomorrow ?”

Inwardly Gordo laughed at himself, knowing he definitely will be online, just like he will be for every day for the next twelve months. “Definitely.” He stated. “Meet you in here at… let’s say ten ?”

Shan smiled. “It’s a date. Now, before we disappear on you, anything else you want to know ?” he asked, looking questioningly at Gordo.

“I’ve got lots of questions, but they can wait until tomorrow, but the one thing I need to know is this place, why the hell is it bigger inside than out. That’s not normal, is it ?” Gordo asked, his gaze wandering around the tavern again, still amazed at it’s interior. As he looked around one of the barmaids approached the table to clear away the empty mugs. He glanced at her as she reached across him, then his head whipped around to take a second look as her appearance registered in his brain. He hadn’t taken much notice before of the waitresses that wandered the room, being occupied in his talks with Garal and Shan, but now he had time to make full use of his attention for these rather buxom ladies.

His eyes roamed up and down her voluptuous figure, barely hidden beneath the tightly corseted top and short billowing skirt of the dress that covered her, the ample proportions of her chest straining the stretched linen that supported them. Her blond hair was drawn up into a long ponytail, allowing her unblemished features to be fully appreciated in their beauty, her dimples small, but suddenly noticeable as she smiled at the attention Gordo was giving her. To say he was stunned by her beauty would be an understatement, as it took Garal shaking his shoulder roughly to bring him out of the trance he had fallen into. Blinking, he looked around, wondering where the barmaid had gone.

“If you are looking for the barmaid, Gordo, you’re too late, she left a couple of minutes ago, so you can close your mouth now.” Shan said laughingly. “Now you know why we come to this tavern, it’s the reason everyone comes here, so much so the owner got a special spell cast to make it large enough inside to fit us all in.” He looked over at the bar, where a couple of the barmaids were picking up mugs. “Beautiful, aren’t they.” He sighed at this. “What a pity they won’t get involved with us players, and we have tried, let me tell you, we have all definitely tried.” Shaking his head, he lifted his hardened leather tankard up and took a long drink from its contents. Placing it back down again in front of him, he advised “Ah, also, don’t try anything unwanted with any of them, that will only earn you a three day ban from this place. You force your attention on them and the owner will come down on you like a ton of bricks. They are known as the Untouchables around here.” He spoke all this in such a melancholic tone that even Gordo started to feel sadness.

This feeling of sadness made Gordo unexpectedly maudlin. “This game is so different to the original Dawnlands, so many changes and different rules. Sometimes I wish I was back playing that game. There, I had no character problems.”

Shan perked up at the mention of the original game, and his whole appearance changed, losing that indefinable repressed demeanor that it had developed while talking about the barmaids. “You played the original Dawnlands ? So did we. We got all the way to level two hundred before we switched our characters over to here, just made the top fifty thousand.”He proudly declared, then, hesitated slightly at this point, before blurting out “You must have been a fairly new player In Dawnlands then, if the character you have now is so pathetic.”

In surprise, Gordo didn’t think about the response he should give and spoke honestly “ No, I was level three fifty before joining this game, ranked number one.” The expressions on the two opposite were a sight to behold once he had stated this, and he realized his mistake. They both just looked at him in suspicious disbelief.

“Oh, is that so.” Garal finally said. “You were the number one ranked player in Dawnlands, were you. Sorry, but I find that hard to believe, seeing the character you have now. If you had transferred your character over, you would have started off at least at level twenty, probably even higher.” He looked at his brother. “Come on, we have to go, I don’t think I want to spend any more time talking to someone who is obviously lying to us.” He stood up, pushing the chair away from him as he did so, and Shan followed suit.

“Come on, I’m not lying. Why the hell should I lie.” He could see they just shook their heads at this in annoyance and started to prepare to log out. As they faded from view he blurted out the only thing he could to prove the truth of his claim. “My name is Gordon Rammidge, and my log in for Dawnlands is antares angel. My character has not been transferred, so log in to my account and see if I’m telling you the truth.” They faded totally away at this point, but he could see that they had heard him, for they had turned and watched him as he had tried to pass on his information. He only hoped that they hadn’t faded away enough to have missed the end of it, and he also hoped that his old character was still available if they did try. A ping announcing an incoming message distracted him from his concerns and he opened his mailbox to see the admins had finally answered his query.

Gordon

Thank you for pointing out the Character Class absence to us. This was an oversight by our coders working on the Tank project. You will now find this issue has now been resolved.

Your character has now been issued with the Omniclast class.

As information on this experimental class has not been included in any game documentation, I will give you a brief explanation here so you have the opportunity to use it to its fullest. This class is planned for inclusion in the game at a later date, and you will be one of ten players testing this class for us, each one of you with a different objective.

The Omniclast class permits players to choose up to four standard game classes (not including multi class) from the available classes, and access all features and skills associated with the chosen classes.

To add a specific class to your character, you must visit any guild house of the class desired, and request admission to their guild, paying all costs and fees as deemed necessary by the guild. Membership with a guild attached to a chosen class must be maintained, or said class will become disabled until membership has been regained. An accepted class can not be removed, only temporarily disabled.

A disabled class will also disable all skills and benefits the player has gained from that class until the class has been re-enabled.

If two skills duplicate across the chosen classes, then the highest level of that skill will be determined to be the active version of that skill and all benefits and penalties attributed to the parent class will apply.

Experience gained will be divided among the classes you have currently accepted. This division of experience can be set to your preference in your character settings page by using the sliders attributed to each chosen class. These settings can be changed at any time. The minimum experience any class can be set to is five percent, no skill can be disabled by using the experience division sliders

Skills and benefits from the classes do not stack, only the highest ranked skill or benefit will apply if the benefit or skill is duplicated across the chosen classes.

Up to four classes can be chosen, but a player can choose to play with only one if they wish, or three, the choice is up to the player, as long as it does not pass the maximum of four. Class choice must be made carefully, for once chosen no class can be changed or deleted.

That’s the basics of your class. Gordon. It all sounds nice, and you may think this will give you a massive advantage, but in reality it is not so, for with multiple classes you will find your class specific level growth dramatically decreased. Another negative will be the cross class penalties, for example, any manna based activities, such as spells, will be of decreased potency if a player is wearing any metallic armor or using a metallic weapon. Manna is negatively affected by the presence of metals.

No one will see the skills you have chosen and any inspection of your character will only display your name, your overall level and your class as being Omniclast.

Well, that’s it, but be aware, there are many other bonuses and penalties attached to the Omniclast class player that I have not mentioned here, but you will become aware of these as you progress in the game.

Good luck

Liam Ainsworth

Tank Project

Energetic Entertainment

The information provided about this new character class made his eyebrows rise slightly in surprise, for it now added a whole new dimension to the possibilities open to him, while also providing unwanted pitfalls. He could definitely see the benefits, but could also see it made his objectives much harder to accomplish, especially considering he would still only receive the one attribute point per general class level attained to allocate towards supporting all the classes he would decide to follow. He could foresee a very slow grind up ahead of him.

Deciding he had had enough for this day, he made his way over to the bar and waited until the barkeep noticed him. The man looked like a retired blacksmith, with wide shoulders and hairy muscular arms crossed over his chest, or to be more accurate, they were resting on the top of the fat of his chubby belly. His short, dark hair was greasy looking and framed a scowling face as he looked out over the taverns patrons, keen eyes keeping a watch over his barmaids. Wearing an old and cracked leather apron, displaying stains from many years of beer spills, He grunted and scratched under one sweaty armpit for a moment before lifting the sweat stained fingers to his nose, as if to smell them, but saw Gordo looking at him, and wiped them down his apron instead.

Wandering down the bar towards Gordo, his scowl deepened, eyebrows protruding so far that his eyes almost disappeared beneath them. Slapping a damp dishrag on the bars surface, and leaning forwards enough for Gordo to smell the rank odor of his breath, he spoke. “What ?” he growled.

Leaning back a bit to try to get away from the foul breath blowing into his face, Gordo asked as pleasantly as he could “Do you have a room I can rent for the night ?” and slapped a silver coin down onto the wood in front of him.

The barkeep gave Gordo a smile, a rather unpleasant sight as it displayed his yellowing teeth, all crooked and rotten, then reached beneath the bar and withdrew a small key. “Here,” he said, holding it out, “second floor, room twelve.” and swiped the coin away as Gordo accepted it. Holding the key tightly in one fist Gordo made his way over to the wooden staircase next to the bar and started to climb it, in search of his lodgings for the night.