{Excerpt from History 101 by Bjorn,

Dragons, The dragon race is not native to our plane. After the great war of the gods, the two greater dragons lumarch and Diarana crossed the barriers between planes and came to live in our realm. Lumarch resides somewhere within the Forces of Lights land while Diarana took up residence in the Mountain overlooking the dark lords keep. In your travels you may come across several varieties of smaller dragons. Be wary as Dragons are greedy and almost unkillable. When dealing with dragons your chances of survival increase when you give them gifts of gold, then promise more at some later date. Don’t ever come back after that first deposit.}

The black dragon Bile stretched his wings as he flew out of his mountain lair. Spanning one kilometer in length from his head to the end of his tail Bile looked typical for his kind. All powerful.

He quickly headed to the nearest forest to his mountain (the goblin did not necessarily say which forest to destroy). He was a young dragon, having just turned 600 years old Bile was currently grounded by his parents. They had sent him to live on his aunt Diarana’s home plane of existence and his aunt had quickly ordered him to stay in his lair until he had her permission to leave it. He had thought she would just order him to spend the 400 year grounding sleeping but apparently his aunt was more fun. Reaching the forest Bile took a deep breath and spat out black fire. Normally he would use the poison breath that all black dragons had, but the goblins words had been “burn” so burnt to the ground the trees would be. As he came around for a second pass a large floating island suddenly appeared and forced the young dragon to swerve out of the way. His tail clipped a tower, sending it hurling to the ground below. The entire floating city seemed to glow with an inner light. As Bile watched a large swarm of flying being left the city and flew towards him. They looked like humans but had wings. Most had 2 while a few had 4 wings.

Archangel Krys frowned as he looked at the large flying fel-beast before his city. The Angelic race had come to aid the Beasts in their time of need. Krys had been a friend of their leader before she passed. He had hoped the display of might would help speed up the beast races accepting his aid, however seeing their forest burning and such a huge monster attacking it, Krys gave thanks he had been contacted in time. “Send forth the first and second legions, have the third and forth legions support wings go help save the forest below us.” He commanded. At his words Angels and Seraph took to the air in tightly knit formations, charging at the monster that threatened their would be allies. Krys watched as Primarch Godric invoked the cities magical defences and started up charging the Light of Truth.

Turning back to the battle Krys observed the beast’s thrashing, as it fought the two angelic legions. It’s size and power were obvious, however it was having trouble with how many angels were swarming it. Minutes into the fight the monster was bleeding from several wounds on its legs and sides, there were small holes punched through it’s wings. ‘This will be an easy fight’ Krys thought as he directed the rest of third and fourth legion to attack it. Making a lie of his words the beast suddenly flapped it’s wings once, pulling back from the city and its defenders while simultaneously taking a deep breath. With a roar it spewed out a huge black cloud. The cloud moved forward quickly and Krys watched in despair as all the angelic soldiers who came into contact with it plummeted to the ground dead. “Shield yourselves, it is a magical corruption.” He ordered quickly as he signaled the Seraph to order the legions back. “We will let the Light of Truth finish the beast.”

As Krys spoke the shields around the the angelic city cut out as the Light of Truth entered it’s final firing phase. Primarch Godric fired the Light of Truth, the ultimate siege weapon in the Angel’s army. With a loud whine a beam of light crossed the distance between the city and the monster. It struck it in the chest, and with some resistance, started carving it’s way through the beast. After a few seconds the weapon stopped as it’s charge was spent and the shields around the city sprang back up. The gigantic beast Roared loudly and released a large set of curses upon the legions that had turned around after the Siege weapons firing. Krys watched as it then turned tail and flew off quickly, back towards the Dark empire. A large swath of blood continually poured out from it’s injuries. Krys thought to order a pursuit when Primarc Godric’s orders came through for all the surviving legions to fall back. Some of the curses had struck the city and punched through it’s shields. Grimly Krys returned to the city. The only weapon they had that could truly injure the flying monster was the Light of Truth, a siege weapon that took over 200 Seraph to power. While the city could move, there was no way they would be able to chase the beast down, and if it came back while the city was away, it could finish wiping out the beast race. Empyrean, the city of the angels, was likely going to become a permanent fortress over the beast races hometown, protecting them from the forces of darkness.

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Later, elsewhere

Kif logged in and smiled. It was his last day before the end of the weekend and he had come up with a plan as he ate breakfast. He quickly summoned the few companions he had not respawned the day ahead and handed out some cheap leather armor to them all. He had spent all his hard earned cooking silver on armor and slings for his companions and hopefully they would live long enough to keep it this time. As they left Dredmonte, Kif explained his plan. “We need to learn how to defeat slimes, so we are going back to Volcan, Matron Rue’s lair. There we will clear out the poison slime pools. I want us to acquire some weapons before that though, so we will spend the day traveling there, and hunting so we have more than slings.”

“Well,” Mu said, “To get back to the lair we will need to travel through the edge of the shadow wood. I think we fought some wolves and small raptors there. We should be able to get large claws for making knives out of the area.”

Kif agreed and led his companions into the shadowwood, a small forest that bordered the shadow elves haven. Kif had two goals in this hunt, the first was arming all his companions properly, the second was getting the four regular goblins trained in magic. After a few minutes travel the goblins entered the forest. They immediately started making a large racket to attract some monsters attention. Subtlety was not their forte. The first monsters that attacked them were a group of 5 wolves.

[Shadow wolf level 14]*4 appeared

[Shadow wolf alpha level 18] appeared.

The wolves came at the goblin group from all sides. The alpha stepped out in front of them while the others moved in quickly. Kif loaded his sling and launched the first rock at one of the smaller wolves yelling, “Get the regular ones first.” and with that the fight started. The goblins were only slightly outnumbered and so they made use of their greater numbers, all out swarming the 2 wolves farthest from the alpha.

-3 -4 -3

small amounts of damage showed up continually as the goblins slings and fists chipped the 2 wolves health points down. Borg and Barg, Kif’s brute companions, helped hold the two targets down while they took their beating and died. A cry of pain as Ebne died told of the two remaining wolves and the alpha reaching the fight. Kif and the survivors turned and attacked the remaining three wolves. During the fight Kif spent some of his mana to respawn Ebne and Ibne when he also died. All told, all the goblin party suffered from were two deaths and a bunch of scratches. Upon achieving victory Kif was awarded with 1 level up finally, “Yes level 11” along with 5 bruised and battered wolf corpses. He and Mu went to work cleaning and disassembling them and gained several pelts, teeth, and claws. Kif pulled out a small cooking knife from his one utility equip slot and proceeded to use it to cut a small sapling tree down. He then carved two clubs out of the downed tree, ruining the knife in the process. The cooking knife had been a reward for teaching 4 new cooking recipes to the chef at castle Dredemonte’s inn. Kif broke up one of the pelts into several strips of leather. then poked the wolf teeth through the strips before wrapping the two clubs.

[You have created green wood spiked clubs]

Arming his two brutes, it was almost time to move on and look for the raptors. Their claws would make decent knives and spear heads, but first, Kif sat down and started a fire. He needed to recover his mana and wanted everyone to be at full health and stamina before their next fight. Plus there was all this wolf meat.

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[Elsewhere]

Mr. Velmont sat down for a board meeting with his company's top investors. The topic of the meeting was Global Conflict’s upcomming release to the public. In front of him sat the only 5 people whose opinions mattered as far as he was concerned. Without their backing, his company would just be another phone app developer. To his immediate left was Chase Whitman, you would be hard pressed to find a more racist billionaire. Next to Chase was Cassandra Bell, a beautiful daughter to some old english nobleman. Directly across from Mr. Velmonte sat Rinako Momotani, another daughter, this one of a rich japanese congressman. Rinako and Cassandra joining Velmont’s board of directors had been necessary to getting the game system released worldwide instead of only in America. On His right sat Mark Brigam, and to Mark’s right sat Chauncy Brigam. The two Brigam brothers had been the original investors in the company and had grown from lucky lottery winners to multi millionaires over the course of Velmont’s companies rise to number 2 in the gaming world. “I would like to thank everyone for agreeing to having our annual board meeting a little earlier than normal, now lets get started,” Jason Velmont said.

“To summarize our goals and why things have come to where they are, We developed one of the first non-military AI’s in the industry that did not immediately kill itself or commit suicide. Due to the extreme expense that it takes to make an AI currently, we used our current one to create the world of Global conflict. It has managed to create the base story line and now our beta testers are fleshing out the world for the millions of new players we expect to join us in three weeks time.”

Cassandra: We have already heard this before, can we just skip to why you wanted to call this early?

Jason: Of course. As you know we instructed our AI to create several world changing quests to allow us to properly shape the conflict for release date. These quests would become far harder to trigger after the game goes into full release to make it harder for things like racial deaths to happen. Unfortunately it created these quests equally and the players on the evil races side have been able to hold their own. I need more time before release if i am to undo what has happened and fix the game to how we originally agreed it should be.

Mark B: I’ve seen some of the clips for the commercials we are putting out. The demon race looks fun.

Chauncy B: And the shadow elf women are gorgeous.

Chase: Those ugly wenches should all burn. I am in agreement to postpone the game release until you get everything under control.

Rinako: But i am not. We have over 2 million pre sales in Japan, and 4 times that in China. If we delay the release then it will cost us Billions in the stock market. I am against.

Jason: So we have two for postponing, and three against postponing. Cassandra, you have the deciding vote. As you know in tied votes my decision goes.

Cassandra: I choose.

__________________________________________________________________________

(Author's rant. [And back to Kif. Mua ha ha])

Kif smiled as he worked. They had successfully hunted several more wolf packs, and enough raptors to outfit the the bne siblings, himself and Goblin Mu with knifes. The greenwood clubs had been great, giving Borg and Barg about a %10 chance to cause daze for 10 seconds upon hitting their target. Daze halted spellcasting and doubled all stamina and mana costs while afflicted with it. It was a spellcaster answer and Kif was glad to add the condition to his parties repertoire. In other good news, Obne and Ylbne had both learned the fire spell after create embers, [Throw fire]. While not a high damage dealing spell, it cost them next to no mana and had a %100 chance of applying the burn stat doing 7 health per second in damage for 3 seconds. With 0 cast time and a 1 second cooldown the two goblins could dish out the pain so long as their mana kept up. They also ruined any chances of looting any corps they cooked but it was a trade off Kif was willing to accept. “Alright everyone, i think thats enough. Let's head back to the lair and tomorrow we will clear out those poison slime pools” Kif said.

[The forest guardians have noticed your presence.]

Reading this ominous message Kif picked up the pace. As the goblins were reaching the edge of the forest, the sunlight, which had been getting brighter, vanished. The surroundings went pitch black. “Ylbne, Obne light up some fire for us, i can’t see anything.” he ordered.

The scene that the fire revealed was no longer the edge of the shadow forest. The small goblin party was now deep within the trees in a small circle surrounded by 16 evenly placed large pines. Their leaves blocked out all light from above.

[The forest guardian has appeared. Impress it to survive.]

Scrolled across Kif’s vision. Looking around the barely lit clearing he still saw nothing.

-15 [Minor bleed applied, -2 hp per second for 10 seconds]

Kif staggered as something struck his back. A second later Barg grunted and staggered sideways as something cut into his arm deeply. Frowning Kif looked to the only place he had not searched yet. down.

the floor of the clearing was covered in vines with no dirt in sight. In the center of the clearing, in the spot where all the vines originated was a single 6 inch tall brown flower.

[Forest guardian Onatah level 24 Elite ???]

As he watched it, a petal shot from the flower and struck Goblin Mu, injuring him and causing a slight bleed.

“Burn the flower!” Kif exclaimed and pointed at it. Ylbne and Obne turned and threw the small flames they were holding at the guardian.

-2

-2

-2

[You have defeated the forest guardian Onatah +2 Exp]

Dieing the flower launched out 16 different petals, they each struck one of the trees surrounding the clearings.

[Onatah’s elder siblings are angry.]

Kif watched as all 16 great pine trees gained faces and stood up. He was in a clearing of '.

[Elder Ent level 52]*16

Kif despaired as he looked at the Ents. “Focus one of them, we need to cut our way out.” He called as he rushed one of them. Large vines shot out of the air while roots rose up from the ground to strike at him. Kif and his companions fought hard but eventually Kif was the only one left. Injured and out of stamina he watched with dread as one of the Ent’s reached for him with it’s branches. He closed his eyes to wait for the inevitable, “I really am not looking forward to visiting Maina’s realm again.” he murmured. His Lair’s safe respawns would not reset for 2 more days. Kif waited, and nothing happened. Opening his eyes he was greeted with the notice.

[The guardian has become impressed that you have maintained your sanity after meeting the Goddess of death. +1 luck, +1 orb of calling. Orb of calling calls for the nearest ally of the forest guardian to aid you once]

Around Kif the light vanished then the area grew brighter. He was once again at the edge of the forest. However his companions had all died and their drops were all somewhere in the middle of the forest. With a sad heart Kif put the Orb of Calling into his Utility Equip slot and trudged towards the lair. Tomorrow he would have to spend a good bit of time getting his Companions more new leather armor and weapons before they could head out. Behind him, a single brown flower regrew itself in the center of the forest.

[Forest guardian Onatah level 24 Elite (Avatar of the goddess Tywen) watched the sad goblin leave with a troubled heart. Tywen had wished to reward the goblin for its acts of maintaining the balance between the two kingdoms. Kif had both respawned the dwarves and saved the Empire of darkness from being over run.]

_________________________________________________________________________

Cassandra: Do not postpone. All of our commercials have been showing off the two sides equally. We already have players forming guilds on our forums before they even have the game to play. The original plan would have caused us a large amount of animosity from our playerbase as it is.

Velmont: Alright, In that case the next thing on the agenda is.

_________________________________________________________________________

Bile.

Pain, it hurts, The beam cleaved though the scales covering my chest and missed my heart, It roasted one of my four lungs. If not for my enormous constitution and the inherited magic i have as a dragon i would have died of bloodloss or from the shock far earlier. Those damned harpy wannabees will rue the day they challenged me, after i recover of course. With these injuries i should be fit to sink their precious city after a five century nap.

With those thoughts Bile burrowed his way back into his lair and fell asleep after caving the mountain in on top of himself.

___________________________________________________________________________

(Author's rant, Lets up the cast.)

[Log in]

Shasta stretched and climbed out of her bedroll. As one of the second wave of beta testers she had chosen to create a beast race and had chosen the cougar(her colleges mascot) as her racial family. The beast race specialized in physical combat over magic. The only spells their race could learn were druidic support and modification spells. As one of the Cat family Shasta had been blessed with double the standard beast growth in agility along with the perfect balance skill. Abilities that affected her balance had a 100% failure rate and she could fight fine no matter what weird position she was in. When she first logged in day one, She had participated in the battle with Genner, one of the best fighters of their Kation tribe at the head. The initial fights had been easy, with the elves cavalry breaking forces of darkness cohesion. Then had come the siege of the castle. Shasta had chosen to become an archer from Genner’s influence. She had been pelting the enemy defenders when Genner had gone over the wall to try for a break through. Genner survived the attack but was limping as he moved through the lines.. Their forces had continued pushing, trying to break the walls. She remembered getting word that their camp had been attacked, and then suddenly they were ordered to retreat. The zombie general lead his surviving dark forces in an attack. Shasta had shot arrows defending her fellow Katians until she ran out, then when she tried to retreat the popup, that would haunt her for a while appeared.

[You are out of stamina, you will now take double damage and spend health at three times the stamina rate for further activity]

Shasta almost died by running away. If not for Genner making a stand with the rest of the NPC’s Shasta would have ended up dead like the vast majority of the army of light.

The battle happened last week, and it took her until now to have the courage to log back in. She had scoured the forums to learn that her respawn was in her races home village instead of in the middle of that field. Stepping outside Shasta decided to familiarize herself with the village and pick up some easy quests for food money. She would never again let her stamina get that low.

Flames. The village was on fire. Everywhere she looked tree homes were burning, there were corpses of npc’s and players scattered all over the area.

Swoosh.

A huge form flew by overhead. Looking up Shasta saw her death coming for her in the shape of an enormous black dragon.

[Bile Dragon Scourge, Level 500 Dragon Boss]

Tearfully Shasta closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable.

[Boom]

Looking up, a City had appeared in the sky out of no where. The dragon had struck one of it’s towers and sent it hurling to the ground.

[Broooom]

the tower struck and the entire village shook with it’s landing. From the city Angels charged out to attack the dragon. Shasta watched their fight and the angels chasing the monster away. They were beautiful. After the battle large groups of the angels flew down and started helping with repairs. Shasta spent her first day logging back in after a week crying on the shoulder of one of the most beautiful people she had ever met. Even if this game was scary, she knew that everything would be fine.

____________________________________________________________________________

Last piece.

Krys tucked the sleeping Katian girl into a bed and brushed her hair. He understood how terrifying the monster must have been. Silently he vowed to stop the beast’s rampage no matter what the cost. He never wanted to have to see a village like this again. The terror, and loss of hope was troubling, even for an angel’s heart. Having come to terms with his desires he moved off to find Primarch Godric. The fight had not been without sacrifice and Godric was busy praying over lost Legionnaires who had spent their all to save this village.

“Well Godric, what do you think?” He asked.

“I wish we didn’t have to fight at all.”Godric replied,” This much power could do a lot of good, to see it misused in such a way tears at me. Thank Balfur that there is only one of those monsters on the side of evil. I have been speaking to these survivors. They call them Dragons.”

“Dragons.” Krys tried the unfamiliar word. As a race of servants for the God of Truth Balfur, The angels knew everything about the original races created by the Gods. Of the races from other planes though, they had less knowledge. “We will need to learn all we can about these Dragons, and any other weapons that the Dark Lord has managed to create beyond our sight.” Thinking deeply about the implications that the forces of evil had managed to hide such a powerful trump card Krys finally said, “ We need more information. I think we need to contact all the races of light. Without more complete information on the Dark Lords armies it is going to be impossible to defeat them, let alone force them to the diplomatic table.”

Godric nodded in agreement.

(Author's rant. Had a bit of writer's block. Took me longer than i expected to hit my minimum word count for posting one of these.)