Claire swung her legs off the bed and moved gingerly bathroom-wards, tablet on hand and SR diadem still perched on her head.

“Right, things to look up… wargs, the Wildfather, where the fulminating Friday the Greenwood is, why there’s nobody else around...”

It turned out the Greenwood was the dwarf ranger starter area, and it definitely wasn’t instanced, so she must just be unlucky. Presumably there would be a vector quest soon to send her to the Mountain, or to a local hub on her way there, and she’d get to meet others and share some quests. Wargs were exactly what Helgrim had said, and the Wildfather was one of the dwarven gods, who came along after the Shaper and made all the green things and the furry things and the things that went “squawk”. Nobody had added in Helgrim Farhammer’s name, or the Longshot quest for dwarves (elf rangers apparently got a quest to shoot a particular leaf from an elm tree on a distant hill… pretentious poncy knife-ears that they are) so Claire made the edit over coffee and lunch. A set of squats and stretches later (got to prepare for adventuring, after all) and she lay back down with the Diadem of Adventure.

The “loading screen” room this time was a stereotypically dwarven tavern, with infectiously bouncy folk music and a strong smell of mead, dark beer, and fried onions. Someone thrust a tankard into her hands, and she took a reflexive sip before wondering belatedly whether eating and drinking here would actually work… it did, and the beer was delicious. Claire shut her eyes for a moment to concentrate on the flavour, and when she opened them she was back at the Greenwood rangers’ lodge. Another swig, and she handed the tankard to Helgrim in passing before striding off into the forest to the north – hang on, how do I know that’s north? It’s overcast, daytime… must be a UI thing, less intrusive than a minimap.

She was enjoying the feel of her stompy dwarf-make boots on the hard-packed earth of the forest path, but it wasn’t going to attract any wargs, let alone rabbits, so she tried to move more quietly. Fluid controlled steps, roll the foot down…

New skill gained! Stealth (passive, toggle): Normal animals and intelligent beings won’t sense you coming. Monsters with Keen Senses might depending on level. Can be toggled between off/normal/high; high will reduce movement speed and chance of detection.

It turned out jubilant cheers weren’t very helpful for stealth, either, but the sounds of the forest returned after another minute or so’s stealth.

A prickling sensation on her left forearm accompanied an image of a slavering black wolf. Aha, more intuitive UI, excellent! I can’t see it, so let’s be cautious around this bend… and if wargs don’t have Keen Senses I’m a goblin’s granddaughter. Reaching into her inventory grid to pull out her bow & quiver still felt a bit unnatural, but it was still worth it not to be carrying around a five-foot stick all the time.

Creeping around the bend with an arrow nocked, she found herself fifty feet away from a warg – downwind, thankfully. In theory. It smelt strongly of wet dog, if it was wet with EVIL. To complete the image, a dead rabbit dangled from its jaws. Oh, well, two for the price of one…

The targeting reticule settled behind its foreleg, and turned gold. She released immediately, and pulled another arrow from the quiver, settling it into place on her string as the first slammed home. No blood, but a pulse of red light showed a wound (a gore setting on by default, maybe?) and the warg faltered. The second arrow hit, and the red light nearly covered the warg’s fur as it charged.

Claire’s pulse drummed in her ears, and she nearly fumbled the third arrow, but the golden reticule filled the wide jaws as the warg lunged for her face, and she loosed by reflex as she stumbled backwards. Sharp white fangs closed on the feathered nock, and the impact shoved the warg – the corpse, now, thank goodness (thank the Wildfather?) back onto its haunches and down to the path.

You have slain your first monster! You have gained 50 xp. Achievement unlocked: Warg’s Bane (1/100 wargs slain). Quest progress (Wargs in the Greenwood) 1/10 wargs slain. Rabbits collected 1/4.

The corpse deliquesced into sparkles, leaving behind a folded warg fur, a couple of wicked-looking teeth, and a small pile of coins.

“Ooh, loot, my favourite part… pre-tanned fur, thank the Shaper, I hate mucking around with dog poo. And money, lovely money, I don’t need to take spleens and skulls and silly things to the vendors!” As she touched the faintly shimmering pile, it dissolved into sparkles and her inventory popped up, open to a new tab, Crafting materials. Warg fangs (2), warg fur (6) – oh, that must be in square feet, that’s useful. And it keeps them separate from normal inventory.

“Right, so it takes somewhere between two and three arrows to bring a warg down. Let’s see if I can longshot one...”

It turns out that yes, she could, after finding a suitable clearing and setting up in an ambush spot. One Longshot took off about 75% of a warg’s health, and the followup arrow dealt with the rest handily. Sniping wargs was easy, but Claire had a low tolerance for grinding at the best of times, and “sitting in the middle of an unexplored forest” was definitely not the best of times. Half an hour, and three more wargs (and a bunny rabbit, and a wild boar which died to a single Longshot and dropped a pork kebab) later she lost patience and set off, kebab in hand, north into what she cheerfully assumed were the uncharted depths of the Greenwood.

After another half hour’s wandering (her friends had often commented that getting Claire to stick to anything for more than half an hour was impossible) she concluded that the uncharted depths of the Greenwood were green. And woody. And did not contain enough wargs. What they did contain was a lot of tiny white flowers, which were apparently called your herbalism skill is insufficient to identify this plant. And a lovely burbling rocky river, with reeds and freshwater crabs – of course Claire took off her sturdy dwarf boots and dipped her sturdy dwarf feet in the river, because who wouldn’t? It felt lovely, right up till the moment where a crab attacked her toes.

-5 hp!

“Ow! Dammit, you little shelly pinchy thing, come back here and just you wait till I find some butter and dill...”

New skill gained! Throwing weapons (active, combat): deal a small amount of damage to a target, depending on the weapon.

The rock missed, not that she was trying that hard, but the skill notification that popped up surprised her. Picking up another smooth grey river stone, she cocked her wrist and a targeting circle appeared – a large one, a metre or so across – where she was looking.

A bit of experimentation showed that the rock was guaranteed to land somewhere within the circle, but the circle got bigger the further away the target was, and the less effort and care she put in.

“Man, I feel like a hob-bit!” Claire sang, collecting a dozen or so stones and stuffing them into her inventory. “What has it got in its pocketses? Rockses, precious, lots and lots of rockses!”

It took three tries winging stones at rabbits before one finally connected,

Quest progress (Wargs in the Greenwood) 4/10 wargs slain. Rabbits collected 3/4.

“Dammit, Ironflight, focus! You’re here for wargs, not rocks and rivers and… oh, I am here for rabbits too, aren’t I. Right, yes. Wargs.”

She engaged stealth mode, toggling it to high to see what it felt like – it turned out that what it felt like was creeping around at half her normal pace. The sensation of having the system slow down all her movements was a bit disconcerting, like the lag she’d experienced when Kevin had built a 2003-style MMO and invited her to play that one time. It did let her sneak up on a warg, though, and kebabbing it with an arrow at literal point-blank range was ridiculously funny. What was less funny was the way it turned around, 99% covered in blood-red light, and closed its jaws on her thigh.

-50 hp! “Ow! Dammit, you half-arsed excuse for a fleabitten mange-ridden son of a mouldy chihuahua, that HURT!” It really did, much worse than the crab pinch had (well, as you’d expect really) and her leg buckled under her. She grabbed at the warg for support, and somehow managed to pull it down on top of her in a panicking, flailing mess of limbs, fur, and blonde plaits. In the struggle, its throat ended up in her face, and she couldn’t help herself – she bit down. Hard.

“Gcchk, urrrgh, euch! That was horrible! What kind of twisted – oh, that bit is cool though. Hm.”

You have gained 50 xp and a new epithet. You will now be known as Claire Wolfbiter. (+25% damage vs wolves and lupine monsters.)

Quest progress (Wargs in the Greenwood) 5/10 wargs slain. Rabbits collected 3/4.

“Bring it on, wargs! I am gonna BITE you!”

What she actually did was longshot them, and standing over the corpse of the tenth, sparkles outlined a scar on its flank and a popup appeared.

This wolf lost a battle for dominance against something far larger. This might explain why they moved to the Greenwood. Follow their tracks back through the forest and find out what happened.

Wise in the ways of the UI by now, Claire looked around for sparkling patches on the ground, and found some – a footprint here, a bent twig there, a clump of coarse black fur caught on a thorn. Tracking proved to be a really fun minigame, and after a few minutes she noticed she was managing it without the aid of any sparkles at all.

New skill gained! Tracking (active): follow a creature through wild terrain.

The trail ended at a disused quarry, and Claire reflexively checked for alien spaceships. Nothing doing, but there was a large, dark, ominous-looking cave, of exactly the kind that probably contained a warg boss. To complete the picture, piles of deer corpses (and a cow, and what looked like a dire badger) lay scattered and rent about the quarry.

“Engaging stealth mode...” She picked her way slowly and carefully down to the quarry floor, staying downwind of the cave entrance. Slipping inside, she pressed herself flat against one wall and waited for her eyes to adjust, scowling at the scent of EVIL WET DOG that drifted out of its depths.

Either dwarves had naturally good night vision, or the game used some sort of invisible bioluminescent fungus, because the cave was about as bright as twilight, and Claire could clearly see the passageway leading down. Her forearms prickled a little, but that was only the equivalent of a red dot right at the edge of the minimap, so not too much of a problem. She eased forwards carefully, coming to a sort of balcony over a large chamber. The wooden railings had mostly crumbled and fallen, but a switchbacking staircase remained, down to a mostly flat floor with a large pool of water at one end. At the other was what looked at first like a large heap of coal, but which was actually a huge pile of black fur which vibrated gently as it snored.

Right. Now, I could get off two or three longshots before it got up here, and the first should be an auto-crit since it’s asleep… but if it’s that much tougher than the other wargs, those won’t be enough to kill it, and I’m not tough enough to stand more than a couple of bites. Why didn’t I ask, er, Grimface for a close combat weapon as well as the bow? I wonder whether I can use some of this wood for a warg trap… I am NOT dying during the tutorial quest, dammit. Focus, Wolfbiter, you can do this.

Claire peered at the top of the staircase, still in high stealth, with an eye to anything she could pull off to make a hole, or pile up for a chevaux-de-frise. In the end, she resorted to leaning a couple of the old railings across the stairs and lashing them in place with a strip of warg hide, and wedging warg fangs into gaps in the planking for improvised caltrops. That should slow it down enough for an extra longshot… and if I can manage to roll this rock over here, I can kick it down the stairs as another obstacle…

She took a deep breath and stretched her spine, drawing back her bowstring and starting to channel some mana. Here goes...