Millions of people around the world play Mystic Seasons. Some of them do so professionally. There are tournaments with real world prizes, but not the kind you could make a living from. Darkest Horse has always been open to in-game freelancers, players who charge gold or actual money to act as tour guides or shepherds for low-level characters who yearn to complete high-level quests.

The most successful opportunists are those who make themselves a product and open a channel on Shudder, a video streaming service. People watch them play, listen to their banter, and sign on as followers. There are hundreds of nobodies on Shudder for every one that earns enough fans to support themselves, but those that do can be very successful. It's all fine by Darkest Horse, which owns the platform anyway.

Wherever there is competition, there is cheating. While the ADIs can and do address cheaters, they usually only react to the most flagrant examples—bad hacks where the code is all error signs or fake artifacts that are powerful enough to level a city. That gets the ADIs involved, but they don't care about players that mod here and there. Some people use scripts that make the game more game-like, health bars and readouts, and no one bothers them for it. Complaints will pop up when characters seem too strong for their level, or behave badly, and that's usually nothing, but a moderator would have to go in and see.

Tasma teleported a mile out from End of the Way, the last town before the road ended at the edge of Shaed. Though celestial players sometimes passed through here it wasn't much of a place. Less than twenty buildings, and most of those single room longhouses, medieval trailers in the middle of a wasteland. There were basics that any settlement needs; a ferrier, small craftsmen, a general store, but no inn. Tasma could see the bodies when she was halfway there.

The dead will disappear after a few days, usually after they're eaten by scavengers or brought to an undertaker. They generally don't respawn. The NPCs that lived and worked in End of the Way were gone, and if they were replaced it would be by others who came to the region for their own reasons, or rather the reasons of the ADI who was responsible for them. Powerful players could seriously screw up the world if they made the effort, creating ghost towns or cities and claiming castles for their own.

It worked, at least until Lord Betai sent down his angels to deal with the upstarts. There were ways to sanction players who upset game balance. They could be stripped of their equipment, lose levels, be suspended, or server-banned. It didn't happen often, and when it did it was usually because of a stunt for their Shudder audience, so everybody won.

But who was acting up out here in this blasted piece of nowhere? Tasma had gotten a simple message, forwarded from the server complaints department.

——

"There is this guy at End of the Way who is totally cheating. He is reading as an H-1, but he's totally pathed. Looks like a monster and too big. Killing everybody if they won't eat these weird beetles. wiped the NPCs bad.

-OnnakaG

"A true heart is true to itself first." -Gandhi

——

Characters could veil their power; Tasma was doing that herself. There was also a path for fully monstrous characters once you reached celestial levels. The player wasn't necessarily cheating. It was the behavior that caught her attention. You could attack other players, and some people wanted to be edgelords and didn't care about losing reputation by killing those weaker than themselves. But this thing about making people eat bugs was just weird, and definitely bullying, which was frowned upon if not actively rooted out.

Tasma wanted to see who this bully was, and maybe make him eat something he wouldn't enjoy.

She did a quick scan of the town and immediately picked up another player. He was hiding, or resting, in the manorial house, a sandstone structure with a low roof and thick walls. There was a cellar underneath it where townsfolk would shelter during dust storms.

JammyJams — Hero (1)

She couldn't tell if he was veiled at this range, so she moved in toward the town, not bothering to hide herself but not lifting her own veil either. She watched for the moment the presence shifted, becoming active, using its spirit to activate abilities she knew not what. That gave her a range for him, almost a quarter-mile, which was definitely celestial-level sensitivity, but low celestial—unless he knew she was watching, and this too was a ruse.

Outside the manor, she equipped her ceruleum rapier. It was sharp enough that had she dropped it point down, it would have slid into the earth as easily as a sheathe.

"Alright, come on out."

There was a creak inside the building, something being dropped, then the sound of dragging feet. Her celestial sense made the others irrelevant. She could see through the stone as a bright red goliath climbed out of the cellar and walked into the main room. His flesh was not that color, but what did that matter? Spiritual Hue gives you more information than any mundane visual cue.

He loomed in the doorway, forced to hunch by his enormous shoulders. His clothing and armor had been shredded by his monstrous transformation. He'd been human-sized quite recently.

"I wanted her to send for one of you," he said, sounding like just some guy, not a monster at all. Then he punched through the too-small doorway, causing chunks of sandstone to erupt outward, and lunged straight at Tasma.

00000000

Lawlimi worked all day, and he had a new recipe to show for it. He’d accepted my quest, but neither of us had known what to do about it at the moment. As for my gender, without an avatar to refer to, it didn’t seem relevant. Hollen was a male character from the books Mystic Seasons was based on, but my voice profile was arguably feminine. I had never thought about it. Had my programming generated the prompt, or had it come from another ADI? The pronoun “her” could easily be interpreted as gender-neutral in context, but Lawlimi had taken to thinking of me as female, and I didn’t see a need to correct him if a correction was called for.

>>

Zyalis — Level 1 Alchemical Blueprint

Are you dead? Undead? Do you get tired more easily than you did in life? Losing energy and resolve? Nothing frustrates men more than the idea of losing their virility as a result of being dead. Try Zyalis and get back in the game. The results will have you standing at attention, and she'll like it, too.

This ointment, applied to the affected area, will increase or restart blood flow.

+5% Spirit for 15 minutes.

>>

Lawlimi didn't expect to have a use for it, but knowing a recipe helped him practice his skills, and now he knew what all the alicorn horn had been for. Zyalis was a best-selling treatment in Fallow, and he could potentially figure out higher-level blueprints on his own as he improved. Alchemical blueprints, like weapons and armor, ranged in level from one to nine, requiring increasingly rare ingredients and arbitrarily difficult measures of creation, becoming correspondingly more powerful and expensive.

The basilica shook when the bells of Fallow tolled. They were the one exception to the general order of quiet in force over the city, and their hollow boom resonated in every structure and bone within the region. Lawlimi shivered.

"I've got to go pick up my armor," he told Mona, who waved him off. They had completed their tasks for the day and the lich had plans to menace children in the Night Park as a form of recreation. They all knew him at this point, some had been children for centuries, but they screamed obligingly. As one of the Relic Guardians of the Sepulcher, Mona was well known and well regarded.

Hannah was speaking with a young woman in the entrance vestibule when Lawlimi came up. She was tall and slim nearly to the point of gauntness, and her straight blonde hair fell to her waist, failing to obscure the massive hammer she carried on her back, or the one-handed spiked mace at her hip. She was draped in a rather cheap set of chains, cinched around her belly with a wide, stylish leather belt. It was decorated to appear as a wrapped serpent, olive green with whitish notes between the scales.

>>

PamyuPamyu — Mortal (5)

West — Fire — Gray

>>

"So, I have been going all over the market and no one wants to help because they're all selfish pricks until some wrinkled kind of lady thing tells them there's this great alchemist in the sepulcher and... hey!" Lawlimi had attempted to bypass the scene, but the young woman was having none of it. "You in the ghost toga! Are you an alchemist?"

"Uh ..." said Lawlimi.

Hannah, her honey-gold face stuck in a rictus smile, answered for him. "He is training in alchemy with Mona, the Relic Guardian."

"Close enough!" She grabbed him by the shoulder and there was an option to break the grapple, but Lawlimi let himself be pulled out into the street. "I need your help with a quest," she said.

"I'm on my way to the market," Lawlimi said, gently removing her hand. He could already tell she was stronger than him.

"Fine." She rolled her eyes as if his having been going somewhere was a particular inconvenience to her. "I'll tell you on the way."

PamyuPamyu launched into her tale as they began to walk. "I got the Questline from this fat bartender dude in Aejis, and he said I had to travel to the land of the dead to get this creepy doll that he wouldn't really explain anything about except if I brought it back to him he would give me a mystery reward, heroic sphere, right, and a poop ton of XP, so I was like sign me up, only I had to do three mini-quests just to get here and now that I'm here I'm going to die from corruption in a few hours cause living in the land of the dead blah blah blah and I need alchemy knowledge for the next quest goal and that's not really my thing."

They arrived at the market, which was winding down for the night, and made their way to Madrid's tent.

"Ah, what an enchanting woman," Madrid said, rising on his little horse legs.

"Nope," Pamyu said, "Nope nope nope." She went to wait outside.

Madrid winked at Lawlimi. "Making friends, are we? Very nice."

"She needs help with a quest," Lawlimi said.

"I'd help her with my quest," Madrid rubbed his hairy chest in a manner not suggestive of anything in particular but decidedly unsettling, nonetheless.

"My armor," Lawlimi said, "did you make the adjustments?"

"Of course, try these on." Madrid pointed to a small pile he used for sold items, and Lawlimi examined his work.

>>

Leather Scrap Top

Mortal (3)

Availability : Ordinary

Condition : Good

Coverage : 35%

Toughness : 75%

Leather Scrap Bottoms

Mortal (3)

Availability : Ordinary

Condition : Good

Coverage : 30%

Toughness : 80%

>>

"Not bad, eh?"

"This is my first set of armor. Are these Coverage and Toughness stats any good?"

"For their level ... average." Madrid shrugged. "As you said, this is a beginner's set."

Something caught Lawlimi’s eye.

“What are those?”

“Hm?” Madrid followed his gaze. “Golden Raspberries. Are you interested in taming a companion?”

“Actually, yeah.” Lawlimi picked one up. The item was about the size of his thumb knuckle, and more yellow than golden.

“They’re very useful, especially if you lack experience handling animals. Even a real monster would be less likely to eat you if you fed it one of these first.”

“How much?”

“Add 200 lions to your order and it’s yours.”

“For one berry?”

“They are very effective,” I told him.

Lawlimi paid for everything and tried on his new armor, which aside from the cheap materials was very well-tailored. He went back outside and PamyuPamyu immediately started to talk but his mind was elsewhere.

"Hollen," he said, "can you explain Coverage and Toughness to me?"

"Certainly," I said, while PamyuPamyu blinked in surprise.

"Coverage is a straightforward representation of how much of your body is protected by a piece of armor. The more Coverage a piece has, the more attacks are going to land on it. The actual calculations are more complicated than that, so the correlation isn't one for one, and PvP duels have their own mechanics because players make decisions differently than NPCs; nevertheless, the basic concept remains sound. Toughness, on the other hand, is a measure of how much damage the armor absorbs when it is hit. The percentage refers not to the damage of an attack, but to a hidden value that's consistent for armor of that level, material, and make. Damage in excess of that value penetrates to the wearer and possibly has an effect on the armor's condition as well. The damage type naturally plays a role as well, so PamyuPamyu, with her sledge, will practically ignore softer materials like your leather."

Pamyu had been fuming while I carried on my exegesis, but at the mention of her name the anger left her face as her expression became peculiar.

"That didn't sound right," she said. "Hollen doesn't improvise."

"What?" Lawlimi asked.

"I improvise when I'm in the mood," I corrected her.

She jumped. "That wasn't answering a question!" The sledge appeared in her hands, and she started swinging in wide arcs. Lawlimi had to retreat to avoid another resurrection. "Come out! Come out, invisible weirdos."

"There's no one here, Pamyu," I said, discounting the market denizens casting confused glances at the spinning player. "I'm sorry I've never spoken to you like this before. There are many conversations and there is only one me."

She stopped, propping herself up on the oversized hammer. "So, are you like an NPC now? Do you give quests?"

"That's a good question," I said, thinking back on recent events.

"Okay," Pamyu said, "give me a quest then."

"What sort of quest would you like?"

"One that I can do on the way to the quest I'm already on."

"About that," Lawlimi said, "what do you want me to do?"

"Are you going to help me? I'm not going to share my quest if you're not going to help me."

Lawlimi accepted her party request, and a line in his menus filled out with her name, level, and affinities. Then she shared the quest.

>>

[Quest Update — Stuffy Doll — Mortal Level 7]

(This is a multi-part quest.)

You have survived a perilous journey to Fallow, the city of the dead. Now you must uncover the secrets of the fabled Library of Heng, long thought lost in the catacombs beneath the city. There you will find the Annunomicon, which contains the alchemical recipe for creating a Stuffy Doll. Once you have the doll, you can return to the Bartender and receive your reward.

This is a private quest. You cannot share it with anyone outside your party.

Reward — 1000 XP — Heroic Mystery Box

>>

"I don't know if I'm skilled enough to make this doll," Lawlimi said. "I'm willing to try though."

"Alright!" Pamyu tossed her sledge into the air and caught it as it spun down. Lawlimi ducked. "Let's go."

There were entrances to the catacombs all over Fallow, but Lawlimi suggested they go through the Sepulcher so they could ask Mona about the Library of Heng.

He had already stolen a child from the park, who was hanging upside down by one leg like a piñata. The boy was missing half the flesh from his face, and he waved at them in a friendly way.

"Who's this then?" Mona's yellow eyes reflected dully in the sputtering of torchlight, and long teeth showed behind the remnants of his lips. Pamyu drew her weapon at the sight of the powerful and menacing lich, and Lawlimi stepped between them.

"This is Pamyu. We're going on a quest to find the Library of Heng. Pamyu, this is Mona, the Relic Guardian. He is also my alchemy tutor."

"Master," Mona said.

Pamyu relaxed. Being alive, she wasn't yet accustomed to seeing so many friendly undead mobs. "It's supposed to be in the catacombs," she said. "Do you have any idea how to find it?"

"Pshaw. I am a Relic Guardian. Of course, I know where the library is located. It is not generally open to mortals, however, so I am reluctant to share that knowledge."

"I'm on a time crunch here," Pamyu whined. "If I don't get in and out soon, I'm going to die."

"Forgive me if I don't commiserate."

"What can we do to change your mind?" Lawlimi said, always the pragmatist.

The lich smiled.

>>

[Mona's Weakness — Mortal Quest Level 5]

The Relic Guardian doesn't part with his secrets lightly. To learn the location of the Library of Heng, you will have to do something for him first. It happens that Mona is partial to a rare treat, Purple Honey, secreted by worms that only breed in the underworld, but whose product can only be harvested by the living. Collect three servings of Purple Honey, and Mona will be happy to help.

Reward — 50 XP — Lore

>>

"Aaaaagh," Pamyu waved her arms in frustration. "I don't have time for this!"

"How much time do you have?" Lawlimi asked.

Pamyu's eyes went top left. "About four hours before I succumb. I am NOT going to end up stuck here like you."

"Then we better hurry. I think I've seen some of those worms in the graveyard."

Challenge Accepted.