Discovering Elder Tale [Solo/Closed]

[Trill]

It was a day like any other in the University of East London dorms. It was after Toma’s classes and he had a bit of downtime before he was going to study for the next day, and his other homework wasn’t due until later in the week so he believed that he had little to worry about as far as his classes went. So, he decided to log into the Elder Tale for the first time in a long time and create a character, as Dale from another room in the dorms had asked him to join in. It wasn’t that expensive of a game and he had never done anything of this sort before, so he thought that he would give it a shot. If nothing else, he could turn it off and delete it if he didn’t enjoy the game, just like anything else on his computer that he wasn’t all that fond of.

He decided that his first character would be of the Enchanter class, though it did rely on a group, the stacked bonuses of the Race of Rituals would give him more than enough power to be able to support groups for a long amount of time. This seemed like a good idea. The design of his character was actually based off of a picture that he saw some time back, and he absolutely loved that you could change the tattoos in color and design. After browsing a forum for a little bit, he chose the Alchemist as his crafting class and, so he could keep an eye on the enemies around him, Pathfinder as his subclass.

All looked good and well, so after reviewing the information of his character, he clicked ‘Create Character’ at the bottom of the screen and then the game intro cinematic started. It was pretty impressive, as there was recently an expansion to the game and the technology of the eight year old game got a huge boost and the server that he was on had a relatively high population. All this running through his mind as he watched the CGI animated introduction to the game, which he noted, mentioned his class and subclasses as well as the town he was starting in. It must have been a multi-part intro with customizations for each possible character design. That meant, at least, that they had put a good deal of work into the game.

As the cinematic finished, he noted how realistic everything looked and marveled a bit as the world seemed to change around him. His focus was entirely on the screen and that was all that he could see. He thought that it was just realistic because some clever designer had brought the game to a whole new level, but then he realized that he could see and hear everything. He didn’t have the sensory input from his real body and turning as normal, instead of the slight press on a keyboard or movement on his wrist with a click of a button. This was way too realistic. He was in the game.

( WC: 515, Total WC: 515 )

[Trill]

Toma was absolutely amazed that anything in the game could be so realistic that he could see out of the eyes of the character. He was told that it was quite a bit upgraded with the latest expansion, but he never expected anything quite like this. He thought that he could even smell the air here in the world, faintly moldy with the deterioration of the buildings around him and of the sweat of the other adventurers running around the main square where he spawned.

From what he heard about games like this, he expected some sort of indicator as to who he was supposed to talk to first, unless this was one of those open world adventure games where things just got more difficult the farther away you got from the city. There were no floating symbols or exclamation marks above peoples heads, nobody calling to his attention, nothing of the sort. That was sort of unusual, but he thought that he would first need to take a seat and get used to the user interface. If he remembered right, he just had to reach out and make a gesture to make the menu come up. He would do this on his keyboard with a single press of a button, but he saw other people standing and staring at something that he couldn’t see after making such a gesture, pointing at something else that he couldn’t see. So he repeated the gesture that he saw and a main menu of options appeared in the air before him. He blinked a bit as it seemed crystal clear, and even slightly transparent.

First, he explored the menu a bit with his eyes, trying to get used to the layout a bit so he could access different parts quickly in the future. There were menu buttons for everything he could need. The primary screen showed his character information and side menus were available to access his skills, inventory and the area map. He reached out and pushed the skills to show that he only had one, the one he had chosen with his character creation. He did agree that it was a somewhat useful skill to keep enemies from getting to him and beating him up but with his attack damage on the screen there, he probably couldn’t do much in the way of damage even if he had the correct spells for this class.

He considered that maybe it was a bad idea to create something that required that he had to be a part of a group to succeed in this world, but there were many other parts of the world where he could do things here and there and not have to worry about the strength or weaknesses of the monsters.

He closed out of that menu and brought up the menu for the map, curious about the layout of the city. The layout looked quite a bit like the London that he remembered, though it seemed to be on a much smaller scale and most of the outer parts of the city, like where his university was, were not on the map and indicated as adventuring zones within easy reach of the city. He remembered something about the description of the game from what Dale told him, that the expanse of the world, in actual movement space and time, was half as fast as the real world.

He closed out of that menu as well and noticed that he didn’t have any gold as he started the game, wondering what he was going to do for gold here and there if he was unable to defeat monsters on his own. That was going to be quite the predicament. Especially since if he wasn’t able to get gold, he couldn’t get to an inn to rest or get food to regain his health or get the expected various buffs.

( WC: 650, Total WC: 1,165 )

[Trill]

Toma moved over to the fountain in the middle of the square, taking a seat on the edge and looking up at the Bell Tower for a moment as he ran his fingers over the rough and pitted stone. He blinked and looked down at the stone as he examined the stone beneath him. He could feel every groove and pit, that wasn’t right. He didn’t even have textile gloves that were at best in their alpha stages in the real world. How could he feel this? Maybe it was just his imagination, but everything looked, felt, smelled so real. The sunlight bearing down on his face, warming his clothes. The shadows of people moving by cooling the air just slightly as the motions moved air along and blocked sunlight.

It was almost uncannily eerie that he could feel everything that was going on. He didn’t think that there was any game that one could be so immersed in that it was able to make you feel like you were there. This was something that should have been far beyond the technology of even the most advanced games for the next twenty or so years, but he knew that he was feeling something that would be quite important to him in the future, or the past, or whenever he decided to think about it.

He shook his head and blinked as there was a notification on his screen that someone wanted to add him as a friend. It was a name he recognized from the real world, Dale, as well as the character stats, showing him as a mid-leveled Samurai. Why would he keep the same name as he did in the real world, he wondered. Maybe for easier identification? He wasn’t all that sure about how that sort of thing worked or how some people thought, but it wasn’t something that he was all that concerned about. He pressed the accept button on the menu and a ringing sound immediately came up, a telepathic communication? That was something that he hadn’t known about, but at least a menu came up for it.

He pressed accept and spoke softly, “Hello?”

He didn’t hear anything for a moment then a voice on the other side that he recognized as Dale’s, “Hey, put your hand up to your ear to activate it, we can talk this way. I’m on the other side of the square and can see you, but it’s too noisy to talk face to face.”

Toma nodded and slowly raised his hand up to his ear, like he had an ear-piece in, “Is this better? I’m totally new at this. Now what?”

( WC: 445, Total WC: 1,610 )

[Trill]

Toma could hear him clearly as if he was talking to him right into his ear as if he was on a phone with crystal clear reception, which is a rare enough occurrence.

Dale spoke into his ear, his head, with no issues or interference, “Great, I see that you chose the name Trill. I had an idea this was you since you looked new and confused. And a random newbie wouldn’t have been able to figure out how to get this to work or just not accept the friend request and connection.”

Toma.. Trill nodded faintly, “Yea, I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to be doing. What is this though? You told me that it was realistic, but you never said it would be this realistic.”

There was a hesitation on the other end before Dale spoke, “Yea, just as you logged in, there was a massive event and most people aren’t quite aware of it yet. It would probably be better if we went somewhere else a bit more quiet and secluded to talk. The Square isn’t necessarily the best place to be talking about this.”

Trill stood up and looked around the square, trying to figure out where his dorm-mate was located, “Alright, where are you at? You seem to know this place a bit better than me so would know a quieter place.”

After a moment he could see someone waving from in front of one of the stores surrounding the square as Dale spoke, “I’m the guy with the red hair waving in front of the materials store. Yea, I see that you see me. Come on over here.

Trill did just that, weaving through people who seemed to be confused and some where a bit irritated as he dropped his hand away from his ear and the ‘call’ disconnected. He looked over his dorm-mate and nodded, “You look a bit what I thought you’d look like. And of course you had to choose Samurai, with your love of all those Kung Fu movies.”

Dale laughed and motioned down an alley, “Yea yea, we’ll talk about that here in a moment, there’s a park this way and it would probably be a quieter place to speak without starting a panic. Some have already figured it out.”

Trill just nodded and moved to follow along.

( WC: 392, Total WC: 2,002 )

[Trill]

It wasn’t an extremely long walk to the park through the alleys and ways as Dale led him along. He remembered something similar though the walk was generally much longer when in the real city and he actually had time to get to the center of the city outside of his studies.

The park was lush and green, having waving green grass cut to just the right height, not too short as if just trimmed and not long enough to be a nuisance. Large green trees were rather sporadic but usually had someone sitting under one or another to have lunch or read a scroll or talk to their friends under the tree. It was quite interesting the role-play iterations here in this game. There were yellow and blue flowers planted all around the outside of the park along the paths with paths at well-spaced intersections that led through the park. That was something at least.

Dale turned to him and motioned over to one of the unoccupied trees before moving over in that direction and taking a seat before it and offering the spot beside him to Trill; which he took without too much thought as he looked up into the leaves.

Dale stared out across the park, not looking at Trill and hesitating for just another moment before taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, “We’re going to be here for a while.”
Trill turned his attention from the overhead leaves blowing in the wind, as peaceful as they were, to look at Dale, “Here in the park?”

“No,” Dale said, his face a bit grim, “Here in the game. There’s something wrong, or something right. I don’t know if it was designed this way or if this was some massive bug that showed up when the expansion launched.” He paused for a moment to turn his attention to Trill, an almost sickly expression on his face. “We’re stuck in the game, if it really is the game. It happened with the release of the Expansion so I don’t know for sure if it’s a ‘bug’ for a ‘feature’.”

“What do you mean we’re stuck in the game? That makes no sense.” Trill asked, his face growing a bit wry as if this were some kind of joke. “Stop pulling the leg of a new player.”

Dale just shook his head and opened up his menu, pointing in the lower right corner at the log out button and pressing it, but having no effect. He grimaced and shook his head again, “Check your log out button. It’s still there but it’s not functioning. You can’t go back to the real world. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you can’t even feel your real body.”

Trill patted down his body a bit and then shook his head, “I feel my body here, but I can’t feel, hear or anything on my real body. I kind of thought this was what was supposed to happen in a game like this.” He opened up his menu and pressed the log out button, just to test it as Dale said. A little red circle with a cross through it appeared on the right side, indicating that the log out function wasn’t, well, functional.

“See, this is what I was worried about telling the others around here, some of them have already figured it out.” Dale said, looking around the park slowly, “Some of them are hardcore gamers and will take it as some sort of blessing that they don’t have to worry about their physical bodies. Though even the characters, the personas, need sleep, food, water and such of that sort.”

Trill shook his head and closed out his menu, leaning back and looking back up at the tree, “Maybe I should just look at the bright side of this and think of this as an extended vacation. I may never be able to go home if this was intended as a feature.”

Dale nodded as he continued to look about the park, “This is true, we could all use a break. Even though the school year was just starting, this was one of the ways I used to relieve stress. It’s kind of fun running around in the world and beating up monsters.”

Trill turned his attention back to Dale for a moment then looked down at the grass, feeling it with his fingers, he knew the feel of grass very well and he was quite sure that if this wasn’t real, it was so close that he couldn’t tell the difference, “Yea, I wanted to talk to you about that. If I’m going to be here for a while. I would like to ask you to teach me how to fight. I know that my class isn’t very ‘Solo-Oriented,’ but I would like to know how to do my spells and abilities effectively before I get pulled out there into the field on something like gathering gold or materials or something where I don’t know what I’m doing and get myself killed."

( WC: 848, Total WC: 2,850 )

[Trill]

Dale nodded a bit as he opened up his menu and glanced through the options with his skills and abilities as well as his equipment. “Yea, I think I can spare a bit of time to do that to help you out as a new player. There’s not a whole bunch I can do to help you level quickly as I’m quite a bit above your level. Though there is the Teacher system which will lower my level to a few above yours.”

Trill blinked a bit and then shook his head, looking out over the park and to the various people talking and laughing with each other here and there, like they didn’t have a care in the world. “That would be much appreciated. I really don’t know anything and since you’re the one who got me into this, you have the responsibility to help me out when I’m trying to get used to this world.”

Dale looked a bit upset but his tone didn’t reflect it as he stood up and dusted himself off, “Yea, something like that. I really didn’t know that this was going to happen. It’s the beginning of the expansion and I thought that they might have made some sort of mistake, but we’ll find out soon if we can get out of here and go home shortly. I can’t do anything about that sort of situation, but I can make sure that you don’t just go and get yourself killed while out in the field.”

Trill stood up as well and patted the dust off of his starter robe, using his staff to help himself stand, “Well, at least that’s a start if nothing else. I know that you didn’t mean to get me stuck here with everyone else. You just wanted to help me find a way to relax when I’m not doing my studies.” He trailed off for a bit in thought.

Dale looked over to him and tilted his head as he recognized that look on Trill’s face, “What is it?”

“Well,” Trill started, “I was kinda wondering what the real world response to this might be. I mean, are our bodies still there or are we completely in the game? What will happen to our classes, our families, our friends if they find us motionless before a screen or not there at all. What if they unplug the computer, will we be affected or are we actually part of a completely different system now and don’t rely on the computer anymore?”

“All of those are good questions.” Dale said, stopping a moment before continuing, “There are probably some good answers, but I don’t have them and I doubt that anyone here has them either. Unless you somehow contact someone in control of the system, if this is a system at all. As real as this all feels, it could be an entirely different world, some parallel universe or something.”

Trill shook his head, “You and your conspiracy theories, but honestly, it doesn’t sound all that crazy now that I see it first hand.” He shifted his grip on the staff so it was little more than a walking stick, he wasn’t going to fight anyone in town if he could help it, and if nothing else, he was sure that Dale could stop most of the people here in town if they wanted to cause any sort of trouble.

“So,” Dale started, “The best area for beginning characters is the Windsor Greatwood or the Savill Flower Grove. Both have quite a few low level monsters for you to fight and they aren’t quite the largest threat that you’ll face here in the world. In fact, they’re far from the largest threat you’ll see just in the immediate area.”

Trill nodded and set to move forward, “Great, then lets start there.”

Dale nodded as well then started off, Trill followed.

( WC: 650, Total WC: 3,500 )