Heralds- The Proving Grounds, page 21
A handful of other Kingsmen she had come here with also had weapons drawn. They couldn’t kill her, but they didn’t know that. They’d just assume kicking her out of the guild made her vulnerable. Her health was full. No one had made an attempt… yet.
She could teleport away. It would be easy… and very visible.
“Just go along for now.” Sam’s voice appeared off to her right.
Jen shrugged. “Of course.”
Gorin sneered a bit. He waved for her to follow. She did. The others fell in behind her.
Within the camp everyone was working to get people back up and put things in order. Groups were collecting here and there, some loot was being divvied, though the big important types had found their way into the largest tent. Someone waved at Gorin from the entrance.
He glanced aside, then looked back at Jen. “Wait out here.” He cut his eyes up to the Kingsmen following her. “Don’t let her leave.”
Jen shrugged and sat down on a rough wooden bench. The previous friends, weapons still drawn, settled in around her. Gorin was lead into the big tent.
“Wonder what’s going on in there…” Sam’s voice was nearby.
Jen shrugged. She tried to make it look like she was rolling a sore shoulder.
She couldn’t talk to Sam. There was no “press to talk” button. Everyone around her would hear anything she said.
“I’m sorry, by the way. I mean, if it’s worth anything.”
Jen tilted her head a bit.
“Don’t give me that look. I had a window. I had to go for it. Granted, it wasn’t a great window. I’d rate it about a six on a ten scale. But when would another chance like that come? Injured? Alone? Disoriented? I had to.”
Jen shook her head a bit.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. I didn’t mean to leave you out, or leave you in there alone. My bad.”
It was quiet for about fifteen minutes before Gorin reemerged from the tent. His arms were loaded with black bits of armor. It looked like what most of the Seven Eyes had been sporting. It must be good stuff.
He set the armor down and turned his attention back to Jen. He glanced around at his people. “She say anything?”
“No, sir.”
Sir? Really. Jen tilted her head up at him. “They didn’t ask anything.”
“A guilty conscience is often heavy.” Gorin crossed his arms.
“Oh, please.” Jen rolled her eyes. Sam groaned.
“How long have you been planning this?”
“Planning what?”
Gorin sneered. “Don’t play stupid. Your companion attempted to assassinate Tobin Ironblood. Only by the sacrifice of Killian was he spared.”
“I know, I was there. I was helping.”
“I’m sure. So help us now. Answer the question. How long have you been planning this?”
Jen shook her head. “I wasn’t planning anything.”
“Oh, nice.” Sam’s voice. “Technically true.”
It was the truth. Sam and Bulorn had plans to kill Tobin but Jen had no such intentions. As far as she was concerned their job, as laid out, was to get normal players to rally against him. Attacking him directly was foolish and against the spirit of the event. It was supposed to be armies struggling not a single skirmish or knife in the dark.
“No?” Gorin scoffed. “I find that hard to believe.” He paced a few steps. “What about Samara Redblade, then? Tell me about her.”
“We leveled some.” Jen shrugged. “She suggested we join the Kingsmen.”
“Look at you.” Sam’s voice sounded almost joyful. “Little miss spin the truth. I love it.”
Jen tried to keep her expression neutral.
Gorin didn’t seem to notice. “So she recruited you as an accomplice.”
“No, she suggested we join the Kingsmen. Which we did.” She pointed straight up, where her nameplate would be. “I did so in good faith. I’ve been helping to the best of my ability.”
“And yet it wasn’t enough to allay my own suspicion. We’ve kept our eyes on you.”
“And you did that why, exactly?” A new voice.
Gorin turned aside to face the newcomer.
Amallia, Jesse to her friends, stood a few feet away in new black robes, her blond hair spilled out the front of the hood that was pulled low to shade her eyes. She didn’t look happy. “This young woman is responsible for my still being here. And she was actively healing Tobin as he fought the Seven Eyes. What use is that for a traitor? It would only make life harder for the rogue that tried to get the drop on him.”
Gorin cut his eyes back and forth between them. “She did?”
Jesse rolled her eyes. “Clearly you weren’t watching that close. Yes, she fought an orc champion that had me on the ropes when you all arrived. Where were you, off spying on the rogue you didn’t catch in time?”
“I’ve had… other responsibilities today.”
“Uh-huh.” Jesse waved her hands in a shooing gesture. “You all have better things to be doing than hounding our own.”
Gorin shook his head as he picked up the black armor. He glanced around at his people. “Dismissed.” He almost spit the word as he turned to leave. He found time to toss a few displeased glares at Jen.
Jesse watched them go. She kept her eyes on Gorin as she leaned closer to Jen. “I think he likes you.”
“I’d hate to see that, honestly. He seems a bit obsessive.”
“Right? And yet he can’t read people for crap.” Jesse plopped down on the rough bench beside Jen. “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. Jesse.” She held out her hand.
Jen shook it. “Jen. Like Jennifer. Jeneve is just… more fantasy?”
“It is. And I dig it.” She shaded her eyes a bit against the failing light. Seemed the hood didn’t accomplish much. “Looks like that’s my ride.” She pointed toward the gathering group of Tobin, Paul, and the rest. Well, minus the white hooded rogue, Tim. Tobin seemed to be wearing that hood now in addition to a complete set of the black armor most of the Seven Eyes had shown up in. They were wrangling horses.
Tobin didn’t look pleased.
Jesse stood up and stretched her shoulders. “Oh well. Nice talking to you.”
“Thanks for believing me.”
“Actions louder than words, etc, etc.” Jesse shrugged. “Also, while that Gorin guy can’t read people, I am a super good judge of character.”
A window popped up in front of Jen. Amallia had requested to add her as a friend. Jen smiled as she accepted. Jesse was the first person she had added herself. The rest were all Heralds. So far none of the Seven Eyes folks seemed like people she’d want to hang out with.
Jesse nodded and waved as she started toward her party. “Later on.”
“I hope so.”
“Aww, you’re making friends.” Sam’s disembodied voice was about as irritating as ever.
“Did you take notes? You could probably use some pointers.”
“Ooo, scathing.”
A soft note let Jen know someone on her friends list had logged on. She would need to report on all the… happenings to Kail and Anna. Whichever one was around, they’d probably be on the island. She opened the window.
Bulorn had logged in.
21
Jen tilted her head as she stared at the notification.
“Umm…”
“Sup?” The sound of the office chair spinning could be heard with Sam’s voice.
“Have you tried logging in?”
“I did a few times. Didn’t go. Still kinda pissed. Why?”
“Because Bulorn just did.”
The chair stopped spinning. “… Don’t mess with me.”
“I’m not.” Jen pointed at her friends list. Sam should be able to see what was directly in front of Jen on the computer’s monitor.
“Holy…” The chair squeaked and feet thumped against the floor.
“Hey, lock the…”
Jen could hear the door bang against the frame.
Sigh.
She took her headset off and closed the door properly before locking it, grumbling all the while. “Break your own stuff you damned ingrate…”
The ruined orc camp reappeared when she put the headset back on. It was quickly clearing out. The whole place would probably disappear and be an open field or something in a few minutes. Events did that. They brought buildings and reasons and then took them away again pass or fail.
Only a few Kingsmen and Reserve Corps were left milling about. All of them were preparing to leave. Jen rubbed at her chin.
Gorin probably wasn’t going to let her off that easy, reprimand or not. He assumed Jen was guilty by association, which was only a half truth. He might keep monitoring her… but at least she could make it harder on him.
Dropping the guild might be suspicious though. She opened the in game web browser. It was slow, what with most of the computer’s resources devoted to running the game, but it worked.
There was no way to hide her presence, which made sense. If there was the anonymous hood all the PVP people were fawning over would lose some its luster. Well some of it, but not much really as the big advantage with it was not being given away by a nameplate when you were close enough to do harm. Though not being able to search for the person was beneficial, too.
Some rumors persisted of a bug in the beta that permanently set your character to appear offline to all sources pinging you, but its use became a banable offense and instructions on how to do it were impossible to find. People didn’t seem to think it was worth the risk given that it was still only about half what items with an anonymous tag could do without a visit from a wrathful GM.
The chime from her friends list sounded again. Sam was back. She was on the island. Not really odd given that seemed to be where they showed up when they died.
Bulorn was listed as still being there as well.
From Samara: Awesome. Get back here ASAP.
Jen raised an eyebrow. Really?
To Samara: Can’t. Being watched. You dropped the guild when no one was looking and died. You’re off the hook. I’m not.
From Samara: Point taken. Though I doubt you being limited to walking really helps us in the long term.
To Samara: I freely admit that I am not looking forward to it.
The orc camp began to disappear around her. She was the last one in the area now. She checked her map and started walking back toward Morblina. It would take awhile.
Sam probably know about the bug. Jen seemed to recall she mentioned something to that effect before. It seemed like the kind of thing she would use without hesitation, especially given the finite existence of the beta. She might be more loathe to use the bug in the live game, what with the possibility of losing her account and all, but this seemed like extenuating circumstances.
To Samara: Hey, you know about the appear offline bug? Did they patch that out? Maybe I can use that.
From Samara: Derf. That’s kind of the nuclear option. Losing your account doesn’t help us either.
To Samara: Well my existing option is more stone age than nuclear age. I guess you get to pick.
From Samara: Well, when you put it that way…
Sam appeared beside Jen as she walked. “You have a point. I’m going to do it too, just in case. And don’t freak out or anything but we’ll be holding a bit of a class.
Jen tilted her head, confused for a moment.
Bulorn appeared beside them.
He didn’t look happy… and he raised an eyebrow when he noticed Jen’s guild tag.
Sam stepped between them and cleared her throat. “Okay, so, it’s a little tricky and will probably take multiple attempts but it hasn’t been patched out yet. Not that I’m aware of, anyway.”
Jen made a point of ignoring Bulorn and after a few moments he turned his attention to Sam as well. “Lets get on with it. I’m not sure how many Seven Eyes have noticed I’m still around.
Sam nodded. “Probably bad, yes. Okay, so this involves making your desktop and your headset disagree. Step one, find your way to the computer. Helps if you hit the button on the side of the headset to turn on camera mode.”
“Obviously.” Bulorn rolled his eyes, his hand already there.
Jen had forgotten the button even existed. The tip was for her. She turned on the camera mode. The room was just as she recalled it, though everything seemed a tiny bit closer than it should be. Like putting on a pair of glasses with a prescription a little too strong. A small window in the upper left of her vision showed the game world in front of her.
A message popped up in front of everything else when she moved toward the computer.
“You are leaving the tracking area. Results will be unreliable until you return. Getting too far will result in being disconnected.”
“Ignore the pop up.” Sam’s voice was a bit distant now. “Okay, so, there is a tiny delay when you change your status in the launcher. Alt tab out of the program, obviously, then let me know when you’re ready.”
Jen did as she was told. The tiny picture flickered a bit but remained. “Ready.”
“Cool. What you want to do, after I’m done explaining it, is lift up your headset. That will automatically list you as ‘Away,’ except that it takes a moment for the launcher to catch up. Literally about a third of a second. In that window you need to swap the launcher to ‘Busy.’ You’ll confuse the system as it will try to input both commands. If you do it right you’ll get a spinning loading circle for a few seconds. While it’s doing that, you Ctrl Alt Delete and kill the game’s process. Congrats on adding the third state of ‘offline.’ You need to do it in that order because Offline is the one you want to keep and kind of negates setting the other two. You’re going to erroneously be listed as still online for thirty seconds or so while the server processes all three steps and figures out that ‘Offline’ is correct. If you manage to get back online in that window you can be glitched as permanently showing offline because the two states of ‘Away’ and ‘Busy’ are both considered higher priority in whatever list they use for that, but ‘Offline’ is telling them both to stuff it. Keep in mind this literally only changes how the friends menu and searching for a player with commands works. You’re still online in every respect. If someone can see you, they can see you. Capiche?”
Jen blinked a few times. “I think so?” Yeah… she wasn’t going to get all that right in one go. And she’d need a stopwatch or something. She had to step across the room to unhook her phone from the charger. It could keep track of the time.
Bulorn vanished before Jen was even set up to start. He reappeared when Jen was still going over the steps in her head.
He appeared online to her friends list.
“Damn.” He shook his head.
Sam shrugged. “It’s a small window, and it takes some doing. We’re here to confirm the change for each other. Try again.”
Bulorn was still grumbling a bit as he vanished a second time.
Sam glanced over at Jen. “Now you.”
“Won’t popping online and offline constantly tip someone off I’m doing strange stuff?”
“Friends list is mutual and voluntary. Guild people might see you blip a few times but it doesn’t make a sound or anything. Can you imagine the noise of hundreds of people logging on and off all day?”
Well, that meant it was only going to annoy the other Heralds… and Jesse. And maybe Hank but she was fuzzy on that one.
She took a breath and tried to follow the sequence Sam had laid out. The clock on her phone made it seem like she had plenty of time.
Sam was waiting when she reappeared in the game. She shook her head. “Once more, with feeling.”
Jen sighed.
The second time she returned, Sam shook her head again. “Nope.”
Jen opened her friends list. Sam was still listed as online, though she hadn’t seemed to bother trying yet. Jesse had gone offline, which was good. She was the only one that might notice something was up and she was part of Tobin’s inner circle.
Bulorn reappeared beside them, grumbling.
No sound triggered.
Jen glanced back at the friends list. Bulorn was listed as offline.
Sam clapped in an exaggerated fashion. Almost like a seal. “Hey, good for you.”
Bulorn tilted his head. “It worked?”
“Yup.” Sam nodded. “Cool, confirmation that it wasn’t fixed. They don’t put everything they do in patch notes, you know.”
“Mmm.” Bulorn nodded. “At least I can still act, now. And I assume Hank resetting our characters will fix this. Or at least that he’ll prevent the normal penalty for using it.”
“Let’s hope, right?” Sam glanced back at Jen. “Well, it works. So hop to.”
Bulorn disappeared.
Jen frowned. “I can’t help but feel that we made a mistake letting him know.”
“He already knew about the glitch.” Sam shrugged. “And I kind of spilled that I knew how to do it when I was yelling at you on the island instead of typing because I was super excited to be back in. So… my options there were mostly to let him tag along or deal with him following anyway and being a jerk later.” She shrugged. “Besides, it conceals him from the Seven Eyes folks which works towards our ultimate goals and not screwing things up for Hank.”
“I see.”
“And I still see you. Make with the glitching.”
Seven tries later Jen was ready to concede that it wasn’t possible and Bulorn had somehow cheated. Which was kind of true as that was exactly what she was trying to do.
Sam tilted her head as Jen reappeared once more.
Jen sighed and lifted her hands back to the headset.
“Woah now. Hold on. You did it.”
“Wait, what?” Jen swung her head around. Nothing seemed different to her. She opened the social interface. It all looked the same… except that where she should have the option to set ‘Away’ or ‘Busy’ it said ‘Offline.’ “Huh.”
Sam grinned. “A rule breaking paladin. What will they think up next?”
“Shove it. I’m doing my duty as a Herald for a greater cause than myself, and putting my account on the line to do it. That’s pretty paladin.”
