Book 3, chapter 26

26. Victory?

And just like that, the battle was over.  I did not move from the Temple of Thedum; I remain sitting in my throne, while the many combatants who had been with me were portaled back to wherever they had been when the battleground had started.  Except, of course, that they would have traveled into The Recent Past.  They no longer had the ability to return to The Near Future, which was now known as The Divergence.

My chat icons were lighting up.  Everyone wanted to talk to me, but I didn’t know who to start with.  I decided that Tarisha was likely the most urgent, so I opened her private channel.

Hail

Hello Tarisha.  I guess we won.

Tarisha

Congratulations, Hail!  I know you worked hard for this.

Hail

Everyone worked hard for this.  I hope the system rewards are good enough to satisfy everyone, because there’s no other way I’ll be able to pay everyone back for all of their effort.

Tarisha

You really underestimate yourself, Hail. Or, at least, you don’t realize how important your quests and events are.  I’m able to pay rent for the next ten years just because I was able to give some people inside information on what was coming.  And I’m sharing that money with Lewis and his friends, by the way.  They’ll need it, whether they stay in college or go pro.

Hail

That’s how you make money?  Inside information on what I do?

Tarisha

...did I not explain it properly?  Hail, when we said that I was your Liaison with the endgame guilds, that’s what I meant.  I’m sort of like a meteorologist to them.  I predict Hailstorms.  Get it?

Hail

Sorry.  You’re right.  We’ve covered this.  I won’t understand Earth’s economy so I’m not going to try.  I’m just glad you’re able to prosper because of me.   Just don’t be trading my secrets to hurt my family, or I’ll never forgive you.

Tarisha

I’m literally doing the opposite, Hail.  Everyone I’m involved in is strongly in your corner.

Hail

I believe you.  Is it true that ‘the true pvp meta is at level 40?’

Tarisha

… there are some schools of thought that believe that.  It’s around the level where the death penalty remains manageable.  It’s the same reason why endgame meta starts at 180 instead of 200.  You die so often in pvp that you need to be able to recover your levels quickly.  You can level from 40 to 50 doing two or three dungeons, PVP to death 10 times, and then repeat.
In raiding, it’s sort of the same.  The bosses lose level disparity damage reduction at 180, and your stat growth from leveling is negligible compared to gear.  But it takes a lot of experience to recover 1 level at that point, so there’s a big focus on staying alive.  That’s hard in raids.  Harder in Red Raids than Green Raids.
Reaching level 200 is a real accomplishment.  It means that you haven’t died in a very, very long time.

Hail

Father was level 200 when he left the game.

Tarisha

Yes he was.

Hail

Nial Kingslayer was level 200 when he slew my grandfather.

Tarisha

He’s not anymore.

Hail

What level is he now?

Tarisha

I don’t know.  But I know that he’s been assassinated a couple of times to complete your guild quest to form an alliance.  He griped about it on the forums each time it happened.

Hail

According to Thomas, that’s fine.  As long as I don’t harass him by his true name or send people to bother him on Earth, I can assign quests targeting him.

Tarisha

Yeah, I know Hail.  Hail, do you want me to come to you?  I can now without a cooldown.  The whole time magic screwy thing that the admin had planned to get you back in time to see your brother after he was born is done.  All of my abilities I got when I went canon are being unsealed, and the Near Future is splitting off from the main timeline.

Hail

I know.  Send ten guardians to protect my mother and brother like always, but I think I want to be alone for a while.

Tarisha … I killed Voss.

Tarisha

I heard about that.  Do you want to talk about it?

Hail

I don’t think it was the wrong thing to do.  But his spirit is stuck in the Deadlands because of me.

Tarisha

I’m sure it’s not so terrible as you’re imagining, Hail.  Voss is probably just … sleeping.   Waiting for something to happen to give him purpose again.

Hail

I hope you’re right.  I think I want to be alone for awhile, but I’m going to be popping in and out of different chats.

Tarisha

Okay.  Are you somewhere safe though?

Hail

I’m going to fast travel to Eastmill.   I like the food at Niles’ Inn, and it’s where I said goodbye to Father.  I’ll spend the rest of the day and sleep there.   Nobody really knows about it, and I’ll disguise myself, so it should be safe.

Tarisha

Okay.  If you need help, you can call for me, Hail.  I’ll be there, with 10 of the best other warriors I can find, within seconds.

Hail

I know.  Talk to you later, Tarisha.

I made good on my word, Fast Traveling to my favorite hidden eatery and asking for a private room from Niles.  I had a bowl of Lamb Stew and a mug of Liecha flavored with Dark Honey, and I spent the rest of the day chatting with people in my guild and friends list.

Laurant and Phil confirmed that the surviving bandit Natives were all in custody and under guard in the expanded prison that had been built for them.  Daemon was still performing the headcount on the citizens that we had lost in the violence, but it didn’t appear to be too many.  The battlegrounds had all been designed to penalize attacking the citizenry when they were taking shelter, as virtually all of the Native citizenry had.

The death count among the bandits, whether you count Native or Traveler, was very high.  But not as high as many might think, considering that the majority of deaths on the battleground had been mercenaries who had just wanted to fight.  If the battlegrounds themselves hadn’t targeted the bandits, the bandits would have been able to slink away.  Which was, of course, why I had used battlegrounds to root them out to begin with.

Corinth griped with me that he had gotten pushed into a different battleground than me for the final battle due to level.  He also promised that he’d be pushing to catch his goblin marauder leveled to catch up with me if I didn’t start leveling again soon.  I informed him that I had gotten level 44 in the battleground due, and he had shared his own gains, which had kept the distance between us equal.  We were both benefiting from [Through the Valley of the Shadow], after all, since I had accidentally inflicted him with that curse and he had decided to keep it active, rather than use one of the options available to Travelers to cleanse it.

The word was out that I could Brand Travelers, as well.  And of the curse/boon combo, and my [Mark of Karmic Balance].  Not everyone who had received the trio of permanent or semi-permanent afflictions I could inflict were complaining about them.  Karmic balance was seen as a net positive by a lot of Travelers and there was a petition of people who wanted to get it, despite the difficulty it would inflict on their Reputations long term.

As for Branding, and [Reaper’s Embrace], only time would tell how the Travelers would react to those.  Right now there was too much scattered noise on the forums to get a clear picture of what anyone though.

The most popular message, by far, was some variation of “GG had fun” from mercenaries on both sides of the brief war.  The winners were celebrating, and the losers were celebrating too.  Only my army was working, securing the Bandit Natives until the trial could start.

I should be celebrating too.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about everything.  About Voss.  About the battlegrounds.  I had done all of that.  I was responsible.

Blue lights flashed in my private room at Niles’ Inn, and Thomas was there.  As was a rack fo ribs.  He sat down and started eating.

“So, do you want to talk about it?” he asked, his mouth half full of digital flesh.

“Not really.  I don’t know how to put it into words,” I admitted.

“Yeah,” Thomas said.  “You did right.  But it feels wrong, doesn’t it?”

“I should be celebrating,” I said.

“Hail, we are celebrating,” Thomas informed me.  He got some sauce on his face, but it vanished a second later.  It was only their for the sensation of getting sauce on your face while eating ribs.  That was important, for some reason.

“Celebrating was more fun when I didn’t really know what I was celebrating,” I commented.  “It feels cheap to celebrate that I killed Voss in cold blood.  Or all the bandits that were ground under my heel when I unleashed the battlegrounds on them.  Am I going to be a tyrant, Thomas?”

“I doubt it,” Thomas answered.  “But nobody would stop you if you went down that path.  Not from the admin, at least.  The players would probably love it, and as long as we could find adequate environments to raise future seeds of consciousness in your lands, we wouldn’t have any problem letting you rule the natives how you wished.”

“You really wouldn’t mind?” I asked.

Thomas shrugged.  “I’d be a little disappointed, because I didn’t think you were that sort of person.  But from an official standpoint, it wouldn’t be bad thing for the administration.  Is that what you want, Hail?  To vanquish your enemies?  To chase them, to deprive them of their wealth?  To hear the lamentations of their--”

“That’s not me at all,” I said hotly.

Thomas nodded.  A mug of a brown ale appeared beside his plate, and he took a swig of it.  “Then don’t.  You chose to be ruthless with the bandits, but you also showed them mercy in the end.  Those two traits are not irreconcilable, Hail.”

I sighed and went back to my stew.  We sat in companionable silence for a while.  “Thomas, what’s this all about, anyway?  Why did you make me to begin with?  I understand by now that it wasn’t just a simple act of my father loving my mother that brought me into this world.”

Thomas wiped a bit of sauce from his cheek.  It vanished rather than staining his robes.  “I dunno, honestly.  I wasn’t in on the planning stages, so I can’t say as to what the original developers had in mind for you to be in the first place.  Honestly, there are people in the admin who think you’re out of control, and that we should rein you in.  They say that you were just supposed to be another type of pet for elite players like Gideon.”

I glared at him, offended by the words, but not his honesty.  “What do you think?”

“I think that when Gideon rejected you to your face, I stopped seeing you as a program, Hail, and started seeing you as a person,” He admitted.  “You’re not like other AI’s.  Those might seem to have free will, but few actually do.  They say that Thedum really does, and that some of the other big names will after they’ve gotten a few decades more runtime.  Most are just following logic trees to a desired outcome, and after a while they get really good at it.  On the other hand, you’ve had free will, as far as we can measure, from what was effectively your infancy.”

“And that makes me special?” I asked.

Thomas shrugged.  “It seems to.  I was never much for philosophical debate.  But that’s one of the reasons that I’m limited on how much help I can give you.  The others on the team want to … they just want to see what you’ll do on your own, without being told.”

“Except when you break the fourth wall.  Like now,” I said.

“You’ve won a great victory, Hail,” Thomas reminded me.  “I didn’t think you should celebrate it alone.”