Isaiah decided to check the who-list to try to get an idea who Nightfall was.

Players and High mortals

Aigir the minor rogue

Alindha the trapper

Baldwin goes to Jihad

Brand the war-monger

Cimber the deceiving fiend

Conrad the great gladiator

Cyclone the high destroyer

Dawn the minor priest

Gaelen the minor believer in natural unity

Isaac the Faithblade of Torm

Keldoran the diviner

Koil the lurking criminal

A ghost

Mahray the page

Mosutha, the mage

Syrian the petty thief

Tremmor the employed fighter

That is odd, don’t see Nightfall on that list. Wonder why he doesn’t show up. Suppose it is something to ask over the lines or Light later.

Time to face reality, Isaiah was sitting in a church naked and afraid. He had been oneshot by a character who he hadn’t even spoken to before. It reminded him of his very brief time playing diablo. He got a demo and logged on to battle.net. For some reason there were level 99 characters going around joining people’s games and murdering them instantly in dungeons. It was so toxic people were justifying that it was okay to hack their characters to a level not possible in just the demo version. Terms like “they needed to be taught a lesson.” were thrown around in chat. The only thing Isaiah’s player thought when it happened to him by some rando was that it was time to uninstall. Well, he was playing this game on a mud client so the game ran on a server somewhere in Boise so technically he couldn’t uninstall the game. He could uninstall the mud client but that would just be petty. Open world PK was a harsh reality but he met a couple interesting characters. Isaiah’s player had to weigh his options. Perhaps if he got his character a little more powerful he wouldn’t just just get stabbed down but whatever class Nightfall was.

Anyway, now it was time to go back to get his corpse. Isaiah’s corpse was gone, his killer was nowhere to be seen. His items sans his money were laying on the floor. He got his spellbook with it’s solitary spell. He got his leather armor. He got his longsword. He got his goblin scepter. Now just to equip it all.

He went and wore the armor and wielded the longsword. He was about to wield the goblin scepter when his gamer-sense tingled. If he equipped a cursed item he wouldn’t be able to remove it without paying for it. Apparently, a poor man’s break curse was death. Either pay the church’s fee in gold or the grim reaper’s fee in 10% experience to remove the cursed item. He went to the weapon’s shop and sold the goblin scepter for 50 gold. At least cursed items were not worthless to vendors. And 50 gold was better than 0 gold. Getting PKed had left him completely broke.

While the thing with Nightfall was unexpected, unwelcome, and unsettling there was a goblin stronghold that had some unexplored rooms. Isaiah made his way out of the west gate of shadow and headed back to the gate. He promptly slaughtered the gate guards, buried the corpses and collected the few coppers and silvers they dropped. Next he carefully killed the goblins on the way back to the king so as not to get yet another unexpected death. Next he slowly and painstakingly killed the king and the royals with his pew pew magic missile. It took a while but he got it cleared. The goblin scepter dropped again as well as a few pieces of goblin armor. Sadly, goblins were small creatures. Nothing they dropped was usable by an elf. Elves were medium sized creatures after all.

On a side note, there were three sizes of living creatures. The sizes are unsurprisingly small, medium and large. Considering most of the equipment in the game was medium sized, playing a small or large sized character was harder. However, there was something to be said about that voadkyn ranger who could dual wield two handed swords. Dual wielding large weapons had great damage and also a really cool mental picture. Imagining a giant chopping machine is really cool.

While Isaiah’s player had zoned out for a bit spamming ‘heal’ to get his character’s health topped out he remembered what he had come here to do. The place north of the goblin king’s room was the last bit of the goblin stronghold yet to be explored.

Dryzil laughs and offers everything in the room as lighting crashes down!

Dryzil Cackles.

What was that? There is a mob here. A closer look says it is a hobbit assassin! Well not sure why there is an assassin in a newbie area but it doesn’t seem aggressive to him. He’s got some kind of assassin’s dagger equipped. Maybe it is better to just not mess with this monster.

There were two more rooms left. To the east was a goblin witch. To the west was a goblin mage.

He decided to go for the mage first.

Goblin Mage attacks you!

Goblin mage misses you.

Goblin mage starts casting a spell.

You strike goblin mage.

Goblin mage shoots a stream of fire out from his hands burning you.

HP: 20:25

Goblin mage misses you.

You slash goblin mage.

Goblin Mage tickles you innocently in the left arm.

HP: 19:25

You slash goblin mage strongly in the left leg.

Goblin mage misses you.

Goblin Mage starts casting a spell!

You strike goblin mage.

Goblin mage drops dead before you.

Well that wasn’t terrible. Isaiah buries the corpse and checks to see what loot remains. And there it was--the legendary long awaited spell scroll! Isaiah gets the spell scroll and transcribes it instantly. He didn’t even check to see what spell it was. Now, no one could call him a one hit wonder mage. He was now the proud owner of a spell book with two spells. Not one spell, nope two spells. Two spells was twice as many spells as he had before. This was cause for some minor internal celebration.

Reading his spellbook revealed what new spell he got. It was a sleep spell! He tried to cast it and got an error message.

You do not have the required components to cast sleep.

Isaiah’s player grumbled. Great this game also has spell components.