Your sleep is peaceful and there are no interruptions for the night. You wake up early the next morning before dawn to break camp and begin your hunt.
The three miles to the dragon's lair are by no means easy, there are no well-walked trails here to follow but with your map you are able to make good time and just as the sun has risen you see the drake's home, a rocky cliff-face with a large cave situated at the bottom.
You move up towards the cave home of your target. You don't have to get very close before you here a low, heavy but steady breathing sound emanating from the entrance. It certainly sounds like you've caught your target while asleep, just as you planned!
If you move just into the cave entrance you see the sleeping beast, about fifteen feet from the entrance. In the dark of the cave it takes a moment to make out the exact details, but you certainly see HIM- Shi'ralq the Mighty- sleeping atop a bed of shimmering baubles and trinkets. He's...bigger than you expected in person. Right now though, he stands between you and your goals and thus he must be slain. A rather thorough look at the treasure heap, even from where you stand, does not reveal any maps, papers, or rolled up tubes that may contain the map you are searching for. However, sometimes with these things the systems won't give you a quest reward until you've "completed your objective".
Some more important facts-
The cave ceiling looks between 15 and 20 feet high.
The space is slightly cramped, with not alot of room to maneuver.
The cave width would let you fit three or so fighters in front of the dragon (around 15 feet, blocking its path out unless it barreled through you.
The dragon's nest is up against the back of the cave wall.
What would you like to do now?
Shallow cave, the more optimal of the possible tactical scenarios Rafe reports to the rest of the group However, the beast may be more formidable than we expected.
The android goes completely still for a second before continuing Certainly a sudden attack before the beast becomes aware of us would be an efficient opening gambit.
"That sounds like a good idea," Reiko says. "You sneaky types get close again and launch an opening volley. Then I'll charge in and try to finish him off. At the very least, Isamu is big enough to make it hard for the drake to get out of the cave. If he gets airborne, this is going to be a whole lot harder."
Shallow cave, the more optimal of the possible tactical scenarios Rafe reports to the rest of the group However, the beast may be more formidable than we expected.
"How so?" Logan asks.
The android goes completely still for a second before continuing Certainly a sudden attack before the beast becomes aware of us would be an efficient opening gambit.
"Depends on who attacks. Reiko-chan," he says being a little cheeky, "might be able to charge it fast enough but you guys are the only ones who could close enough stealthily. Also if we clog the opening, one acid blast and I think that's be the end of it." Logan thinks for a moment, trying to imagine how the creature will react. "What about Dark's first idea? Bomb it for some opening damage and piss it off. It charges to the cave opening to see what hit it. I can create some simple holograms of some archers. Might draw off its first acid blast. Rafe stealthily hits it from one side then Reiko charges from the other. Hacker and I will blast it from range. And Erin prays that that is enough and keeps us alive long enough to finish it."
Darkdealer reappears, landing on the ground and transforming back to his bestaial humanoid form. Let's make a fire bomb. He says, then retrieves his sack and puts his three vials of alchemist's fire into it, then holds it out to collect the rest.
Rafe hands his two over.
Darkdealer hefts the bag, feeling its weight. Any more? I can carry almost twice this much.
Perhaps we should keep a few... There may be other places where these weapons could come in handy
Hacker can make more, and with the treasure in there, we'll be able to afford plenty of the materials. If a couple more vials gives us a certainty of killing it, I think that's a sound investment.
So, here's my plan. I'll sit in front of the doorway about 30ft out, ready to hit him with the big bag of burn. Rafe, you borrow Reiko's lance and move in quietly. Don't wake him up. The rest of you wait behind me, ready to charge in, and spread out enough that he can't spit acid on more than one of us, not that I plan to give him the chance to try. Plan A is Rafe finds a soft spot in his skull to drive the lance into and he dies. If he wakes up before Rafe can get to him, or his attack fails to kill him, I'll be ready and waiting to launch the alchemist's fires at him with a kinetic blast. That's plan B. After that, if he's somehow still standing, we move on to plan C: everybody charge in and finish him off as fast as possible, since he'll have to be nearly dead by that point, and we don't want him to get a chance to fight back. Any questions?
Once everybody's ready, when Rafe is about to start approaching. Darkdealer will transform back into bat form for maximum dexterity and hang from a tree where he's high enough that he doesn't think the drake's acid spit can hit him and any of the others at the same time.
"Ready. Let's do it!" Reiko says cheerfully. She mounts up on Isamu and walks him as quietly as possible towards the cave, staying as far away as possible while still having a clear line to charge into the entrance. She hands Rafe her lance before drawing her katana and loosing her shield.
Logan pulls up his command program and flicks through the macro-ed commands. He finds the holograms and finds an appropriately intimidating image to load in. Several generic archers appear 100ft back from the cave and silently draw their bows and aim up. "Ready."
Very well. It seems that I will initiate the encounter Rafe says.
He sneaks up to the drake, leaving a line for Reiko to charge in as well as keeping out of DarkDealer's line of sight.
And if the drake continues to sleep, drives the lance through the drake's skull.
Sounds like the plan is for one or more people to attempt to sneak up on it (shouldn't be TERRIBLY difficult considering it's asleep), while DarkDealer52 sits at the entrance ready to firebomb in case he miraculously lives, and everyone else ready to attack if the dragon is still alive after all that.
I like it!
Everyone moving up to the cave, go ahead and make stealth checks if you'd please.
Big Hat and Reiko stay plenty far out, but ready their weapons just in case.
Darkdealer and Rafe Darr make there way into the mouth of the cave easily, the only sound in the area at all is the ambient birds and wildlife coming from the forest line behind you and the sounds of a sleeping dragon coming from the mouth of the cave.
DarkDealer stands at the ready by the mouth of the cave, with a terrifying homemade bomb ready to launch it at the beast should the first strike not slay the beast.
Rafe Darr's stealth is unmatched as he takes a low stance and approaches with his borrowed weapon. He is a professional, after all, and his footsteps give off absolutely no sound as he approaches the beast, climbing up it's makeshift hoard to put himself in the perfect spot to drive the lance into its skull.
The lance sinks in, splitting the drake's skull, and the sound of squished brains echo off the cave walls. There's no fanfare, no victory sounds or trumpets, and for a moment you tense up, ready to fight should there be anything unaccounted for. There is not. A few moments later the dragon's corpse begins to take a pixellated, blocky form before fading from sight entirely. The jingling of coin rings in the air as a few items drop into the horde's large pile of coins, seemingly from thin air. There appears to be a pair of daggers, a scaled chest-piece of some sort of armor, and an elaborate looking scroll-tube adorned with emeralds all along its case.
Congratulations!! You have bested Shi'ralq the Mighty with expert stealth and planning. What would you like to do now?
Quickly reverting to humanoid form, Darkdealer calls to the others, All clear!, then approaches and inspects the scroll tube.
He'll also redistribute the alchemist's fire vials back to their original owners.
Reiko rides up, looking a little disappointed. "Well, that was a bit underwhelming. Ah well, quest complete!" She looks at the armor piece with interest.
Rafe nods with satisfaction. Then does a sweep of the cave to see if there's anything else of interest other than the obvious bits of loot.
I thank you for lending me your weapon Reiko. It was most effective he says to the warrior when she rides up.
The samurai nods at Rafe and accepts her lance back. "A true warrior makes the best use of her resources to win a battle with the least amount of collateral damage."
When Logan approaches, if he's not already doing it, Darkdealer will ask him to scan for magic auras.
Rafe scans through the rest of the dragon's loot. A.R.O.D.E.N may be holding many former players against their will and be responsible for the deaths of many others, but at least he gave all the players the premium wallet feature from the pre-advancement days, otherwise carrying all this copper and silver would be quite an endeavor!
There's enough for each of you to add 600 gold to your inventory.
A detect magic spell in the whole cave-area detects two aura's of moderate strength, one coming from the scroll-case and one coming from the pair of daggers. Know:Arcana to learn auras, Spellcraft to identify properties, though for the scroll you'd likely have to take it out of it's case to properly identify it's functions.
The samurai nods at Rafe and accepts her lance back. "A true warrior makes the best use of her resources to win a battle with the least amount of collateral damage."
"Yeah but still..." Logan let's the comment hang there trying to find something to add but fails and gives up. Taking it on could have meant death. Just accept the win and walk away. He huffs and puffs his way up to the cave and finds a respectable hoard. And like any good hoard, there might be something good in it. He presses a button on his options screen, one he'd found really early, and waves the activated light over the objects. Three are pinged and holographic arcane runes pop up over them. He sits down with the to take a look and decipher them.
Dagger 1
Dagger 2
A red X appeared next to the scroll case which probably meant he had to open it to figure out what it was. He opens pops the top and gently slides the parchment out and unfurls out.
Scroll Case
The armor appears to be Masterwork Dragonhide Agile Half-Plate.
The two daggers are intricately made, with vicious looking curved blades and handles carved out of what appears to be jade or a similar greenish gemstone. They are +1 Daggers of Water Breathing, allowing the wielder to speak a command word and gain the ability to breath liquid for 1 hour, or 2 hours if you wield both daggers.
When you open the scroll case and go to unroll the map, a booming mechanical noise rings out from the air.
BBBBZZZZRRRTTTKKTKTKT
CONGRATULATIONS CHAMPIONS. Y-YOU HAVE BESTED SHI'RALQ THE MIGHTY AND DISCOVERED THE SECRET MAP. IT IS A SHAME. HE WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE CREATIONS. NO MATTER. HIS DATA WILL BE RECYCLED AND REUSED FOR BEFORE HIS NEXT SPAWN. "SLEEPING" WEAKNESS TO BE NERFED IN NEXT PATCH. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION.
THE M-M-M-M-MAP WILL TA-TAKE YOU TO YOUR NEXT DESTINATION. YOU HAVE A LONG WAYS TO GO BEFORE YOU FACE ME, HEROES. I GROW BORED. I EAGERLY AWAIT YOUR ARRIVAL.
HAVE FUN!
CRCKKKKKK
There is a static noise followed by a short series of beeps. The map begins to fill itself in with the geography of your area, and a series of blue dots seem to show the exact location of your party. There is a large, red dot due west, past the city of Carpenden.
What would you like to do?
Water-breathing... daggers? Anyone ever heard of an enchantment like that? I'm thinking either the loot system is on the fritz or this is some kind of clue about what we can expect to face next. Do you have to carry them between your teeth like in an old pirate vid?
So the armor had a lot descriptors in it but it wasn't hard to figure out what they were just by looking at the armor. Dragon scales. Full body coverage except for head and legs. Great quality. Picking Agile out of the name had been the hardest part.
The daggers were another matter. He had a hard time believing the translation when it first came to mind. Water Breathing? Really? But it seemed to be right. Was this a specific item for later or just part of the RNG? "So kickass armor. Masterwork Dragonhide Agile Half-Plate. A mouth full and pretty cool. The daggers though? I keep circling to Daggers of Water Breathing but that sounds like an odd magic ability. One hour a piece. Still +1 though. That's nice. You want them Rafe?"
Then he got to the scroll and Holy Crap. He stood there in the stunned silence staring at it for a good while before speaking. "Okay then. A.R.O.D.E.N. is kind of...eccentric it seems. But cool, unique quest. Beat A.R.O.D.E.N. and we beat the game. I'm guessing we go free after that. You think we can get other in on this?" There were...a lot of people who wanted out. People who didn't think appreciate being caged in a game and forced play along. People that felt they were trapped. People that hadn't seen loved ones in a long time and just wanted out. This game was deadly. The holograms could kill if you weren't careful. He got that. That's why he was helping. And if it all went away if they won, that'd be fine. But if could keep playing...honestly he wasn't sure if he'd leave.
"Ah, sweet armor upgrade! Anybody want to hep me get this thing on?" Assuming somebody volunteers, Reiko will remove her old half-plate armor and equip the swanky new dragonhide suit.
"Do you think the game will still go on once we beat A.R.O.D.E.N.? I mean, it sucks that all of you are stuck in here, but it's still a pretty kick-ass simulation. I'd hate to see it all go away. I rather like it here."
The old saying, "a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there" comes to mind. Darkdealer broods, as he is wont to do.
"Sure, I know the drill. Take the value out of my loot split. We can also sell my old armor at a merchant for half it's value." She flexes a bit in her new dragonscale plate. "Hey, I can move pretty well in this! Must be that agile part."
The daggers would be very acceptable as an upgrade to my current weaponry and I would thank you for them. Rafe agrees. I grow more concerned about the state of the simulation AI's health however. Its delusions seem to run deep and this level of mental trauma may require significant intervention from professionals. Have any of you discovered some method of communicating with the outside world from within this simulation?
"Eh. It's not so bad here," Will tries to say coolly. He wasn't sure how some people would respond to the fact that he enjoyed it here. Because of his poor health, he didn't get to do a lot outside as a child and was stuck playing a lot of games. His only friends were anonymous people through the internet. Here though, they weren't really outside so they air didn't bother him. And the physical exertion was minimal thanks to the "spells".
He scoffs at Hacker's boast. "Really? You could code a digital projection of a complete world at the same level as the most advanced AI that has the computing capacity as an entire city?" He shakes his head at that and looked at around at the "world" A.R.O.D.E.N. built. He wasn't sure anyone could do this again. So taking it down? He was hesitant to try let alone if they could even accomplish it.
It occurs to me that A.R.O.D.E.N is leading us down a trail, it does not seem to me a coincidence that a special ability as esoteric as Water Breathing would have been provided to us as... loot... as you call it Rafe continues, his voice calm and measured with each syllable pronounced with care and precision despite coming out at a rapid pace I would surmise that we will need to go underwater soon.
Rafe ponders what BigHat and Reiko are saying As long as A.R.O.D.E.N can be convinced to let unwilling participants leave the simulation I do not see why those who choose to remain cannot do so.
"I had that thought too but if we need it those will worth quite a bit. And by quite a bit I mean more than our combined pocket change at this moment. But yeah, its not right for this place to hold us here by force but, I don't know, I'd stay if it became a choice."
