[Previous]
[Next]
Chapter 7 Fork: Dastardly Deceiver
Pannych says, “Phyr, real quick, let me see that tablet.” As he retrieves it from his belt, she pulls an Orb of Destiny from her bag of tricks and shows it to him. “Yep, just as I thought! ‘Orb of Destiny - contains the soul of Pannych.’ Hey, Vector? Did you guys ever loot the bodies of the destined heroes you killed?”
“Nah,” Vector says, “They just had random shit and those useless orbs.”
“Right,” Pannych says, “And did you ever dispose of the corpses?”
“No time,” he says, “We left them where they fell, and moved on to the next pair.”
“Makes sense,” Pannych says, “But did you ever run into the corpses of destined heroes who had already been killed?”
Vector thinks for a moment, and then says, “No, can’t say as we did.”
“OK, just follow my lead.” She hands the other orb to Phyr, then turns back to shout down from the parapet to the noobs. “You say you’re here for our souls?”
“Yes,” the noob chief roars. “Surrender, and we shall give you quick deaths!”
“Ha,” Pannych shouts, “We laugh in the face of death, for we have died many times! But if you have come for our souls, then you won’t get those by killing us.”
“How so not?” The noob chief gestures back toward her troop. “Our menders are skilled in soulbinding, and shall capture them when you die.”
“Is that your plan? And you’ll let our two friends leave in peace?”
“Yes, we have no quarrel with them if they stand down.”
“Well, I think that settles it,” Pannych shouts. “We surrender.” The other adventurers give her a worried look, but continue following her lead. She ushers Vector and Alice down the ropes, and watches them cross the drawbridge. The noobs then start to walk across the drawbridge - it bends and groans in protest, but holds their weight just fine. As the chief is about to enter the courtyard, Pannych says, “Pause! OK, Phyr: listen very carefully. On my signal, we’re gonna make a break for the opposite corners of the fort, round the towers, and sprint back to the rear to head down below.”
“Oh, thank God, you do have a plan!”
“Not finished! Look, when you get past that corner tower, I want you to ditch your orb somewhere - drop it in the stables, or on the barracks roof, whatever. But don’t let them see you do it. I need you to try your absolute hardest to sneakily dispose of the orb, but also keep up the pace.”
“Wait,” Phyr says, but pause wears off. He shuts up, as the noobs are now in earshot.
As the noobs proceed single file into the courtyard, the chief turns to look up at the pair of adventurers on the parapet, and says, “You have chosen wisely to surrender. You cannot stand against us, and there is no point in unnecessary bloodshed. Now come down and accept your fate.”
Pannych nods gravely and heads for the gatehouse stairwell, but just before entering, she makes eye contact with Phyr and winks. He nods, then she shouts, “Psych!” They sprint for the guard towers in the surprise round before combat starts.
There is a moment of confusion as the noob chief roars in fury - the rest of them are in the process of crossing, but a bit crowded on both ends, and all facing inward toward the gatehouse. It’s a traffic jam of epic proportions as they all try to figure out what to do and also do it fast.
It takes a couple turns for the noobs to get turned around so they can chase after the adventurers, but soon the menders are lobbing fireballs up at the parapet. They’re large and don’t track well, but nonetheless make for an intimidating spectacle.
As Phyr passes the barracks, he tries to drop the orb surreptitiously onto the roof, fumbles the Stealth roll, but keeps moving as fast as he can to avoid the fireballs.
Pannych succeeds at her Stealth roll easily, and drops hers on the armory roof undetected.
They reach the rear of the fort, rush down the stairs, and wait with weapons out right above the stairwell to the troop quarters. Phyr says, “This part of the plan?”
“Yeah,” Pannych says, as the noobs thunderously bash and claw at the stone walls between them. “They can’t fit in here, but if they’re able to tear the stonework apart, then just head deeper.” Phyr nods and swallows hard. Pannych nudges him and says, “Hey - brave face.” He nods again and sets his jaw.
The noobs have torn the iron doors from their hinges and are roaring and clawing through the widening hole when Pannych decides to head deeper. The noobs continue dismantling the fortress, but after a few turns, the noise level tapers down. A few turns later, it stops entirely, and the adventurers are alone in the dark and the quiet.
“Is this still the plan,” Phyr asks after a tense moment.
“Yeah,” Pannych says. “C’mon.” They head back upstairs into the wreckage, just in time to see the last of the noobs running away across the drawbridge on all fours.
“So,” Phyr says as they walk across the courtyard, “You gonna fill me in?”
“Yeah,” Pannych says. “See, I got to thinking: since the ‘destined heroes’ are decoys, they need to be numerous enough to occupy Rayla and Aqu, but not so numerous that they overrun the whole island. But how do they stay in the Goldilocks Zone?”
“The what now?”
“The sweet spot between too few and too many - Rayla and Aqu always have heroes to kill, but the heroes never get out of control. How would you manage that?”
“I don’t know,” Phyr says in bewilderment. “This is a really weird problem to have.”
Pannych thinks for a moment and then says, “OK, yeah it is. Nevermind the walkthrough, then: look, the orbs are the whole thing. Rayla and Aqu are after our souls, the souls of Pannych and Phyr - and I bet the destined heroes were useless to them because they’re soulless. Jim said they all act and talk alike, they’re basically all the same person, but they look different because they have random gear.
“So my hunch is, after the destined heroes die, when nobody’s around to see, the orbs despawn the corpses, respawn new heroes with random gear, and now ‘new’ heroes are carrying the same old orbs around. And if there are, say, twenty or thirty pairs of orbs in total - I mean, that’s enough to keep a couple assassins busily confused, but not so much that they’ll take over the island. And it explains why nobody ever finds their corpses.”
“Weird,” Phyr says, “But doable. So why didn’t Rayla and Aqu take the souls out of the orbs, then?”
“I bet they tried,” Pannych says. “But those orbs are very dense, I bet they’re indestructible and also undischant - unenchantdis - undisencha-”
“Can’t be disenchanted.”
“Right.”
“So,” Phyr says as they pass into the gatehouse, “You thinking Rayla and Aqu put the noobs up to this?” Pannych nods. “What do you think is gonna happen to them after they find out they got fake soul orbs?”
“No idea,” Pannych says with a shrug. “But that’s a chance I’m willing to ignore for the moment.”
Alice and Vector spot them in the gatehouse, and rush to meet them on the drawbridge.
“The Hell was that,” Vector asks. “They chased after you, then ran away laughing! I thought you guys were dead, but Alice told me she still sensed your life force.”
“Hey, Alice,” Pannych says, “How does a phylactery work in this world?”
“Uh, it respawns whoever’s soul it has, when nobody’s around to see,” she says, perplexed. “Why?”
“Because those noobs think they just tricked us out of our phylacteries,” Pannych says with satisfaction.
“OK, how,” Vector asks.
“Well, Phyr and I just tried to ditch ‘our phylacteries’ up top, and then lured the noobs toward the fort, where they were going to dig their way in and kill us. But we would have just respawned up here, and run off while they dug their way back out.”
“Ah,” Phyr says. “But wait - those things are tiny. How’d they find them?”
“Because there’s no way you were gonna pass a Stealth roll, while running at full speed in combat, with that many pairs of eyes on you.” Phyr glares at her for a moment, but then shrugs it off and accepts that the plan worked more or less flawlessly.
They each get 20 XP for the quest step. Phyr says, “Sweet, level two! Wait, how do I level?”
“Happens in your sleep,” Pannych says.
“Well, let’s not waste any time, then,” Phyr says happily.
The four then head back to Noob Town.
[Next]
No comments:
Post a Comment