World of Eternia: The Complete Collection (46 page)

Priscilla nods.

“Peter, I want you to
try to contact our adversary, the Digital Bandit, and see if we can
convince the hacker to create some mischief for EDE. If he’s not
willing or interested in assisting us, then find other hackers to
take the job,” Charles orders.

Peter blanches at the
notion of hiring the pesky hacker to work for VG.
I
would rather put the guy behind bars.
“Okay,” he
sighs.

“Lisa, I want you to
figure out a way to add unauthorized content to the Oriental
Expansion that would swing the balance toward our players for the
event. Since EDE has agreed to add our graphical content already, you
should be able to get access to their system and secretly add
something unexpected or unique to our players. It could be weapons,
spells, etc. that wouldn’t be available to EDE’s players. Ask
Victoria for assistance,” Charles continues.

Lisa winces at the
thought of working with Victoria McCluskey, the Chief Technology
Officer for Virtuous Gaming. The researcher finds Victoria to be
uptight and very close minded. “I’ll see what I can do,” she
replies half-heartedly.

The CEO catches the
wince. “Better yet, ask her to see me and I’ll tell her myself,”
he says and sees Lisa breathing a sigh of relief.

“Do we need to inform
either Martin or members of the Board about this?” Peter asks. The
Chairman of the Board of Directors is conspicuously absent, along
with the Chief Financial Officer.

“Nope,” the CEO
replies quickly. “The Board of Directors does not support my
challenge against Richard’s company, and Martin Pembrose is their
darling wunderkind. Once the inter-company event is over, I’m sure
the board will remove me from my position and promote the CFO to take
over the company,” he predicts. “That being the case, I’m going
to enjoy the ride while I can,” he grins.

“Thank you for coming
in today,” Wesley tells his guest.

Heimdell adjusts his
seat, his massive, trademark halberd leaning against the wooden
table. The guest is visiting The Strangers’ headquarters for the
first time, and he finds the place rather . . . humble. Oh, there is
a nice fireplace on the other side of the room. And the non-descript
looking table in front of him is rectangular, with enough chairs for
eight people.
Surely The
Strangers could afford better furnishings for their headquarters?
Perhaps a trophy case or two
even?
The Warlord shakes the extraneous thought from his
head.

Wesley stares at the
head of the Fighters Guild with mild amusement.
I’m
sure he is accustomed to finer furnishings and much bigger halls.
“Let’s start discussing the makeup of our fifty man defense,”
he says.

“Yes,” Heimdall
nods readily in agreement. “I propose a split of thirty fighters
against twenty spell casters,” he suggests, “with ten horse
riders from the fighter group.”

“That’s an
interesting proposal,” the ex-Marine remarks as he rubs his chin.
“You want the riders to be equipped with lances and charge the
attackers?”

“That’s correct,”
Heimdall replies. “The force will be mobile, and given the
inexperience of the attackers it would be frightening to see horses
galloping toward the attackers through the virtual reality headset.
Panic will set in as discipline breaks amongst the new players,
allowing our chargers to swiftly cut down the numbers before the
enemy troops can reset against our lancers.”

“The only problem
with this approach is that you may play right into the enemies’
hands by dividing our forces at the very beginning. Ten players
versus fifty players is a much easier battle for our enemies than
fifty versus fifty. Also, the fog of war may come into play; without
scouting information on enemy troop movement, composition, and
position, we could lose our riders very early on,” Wesley argues.
“I think the wiser course may be preparing for a battle of
attrition instead, and using our environment to our advantage.”

“We can send in some
spell casters as scouts to ensure that our lancers attack our
enemies’ most vulnerable positions,” the warlord argues back,
undeterred by the ex-Marine’s disagreement. “We could use either
air mages to check the battle field for enemy troop formation, or use
earth mages to detect their movement on the ground.”

“True, you could use
mages in that manner to obtain information that way. However, how
will the mages pass on such information, especially in real-time, to
the roving chargers? The point I’m making is that you will need a
priest amongst the horse riders to receive information and pass it to
the rest of the unit,” the knight points out. “The divine sphere
has magic which allows communication by two parties in two different
instances; thus, distance is not a factor for this spell. However, it
will drain mana while the spell is active. Hence the priest cannot
maintain the spell continuously. It would instead be a check-in
process for regular updates.”

Wesley turns his focus
on the fighters. “Let’s say we agree to a twenty-twenty-ten
split. How will the homebound fighters be split further?” he asks.

Heimdall smiles at the
question. “Yes, that is the key issue, no? You could split the
spell casters evenly with ten priests and ten mages, and create a
very well balanced magical unit. There are a lot more possibilities
for the fighters due to the availability of the subclasses—knights,
lancers, barbarians, defenders, and archers. Plus we need to have
players with trade skills to set up the equipment which we will be
using to defend the siege.”

“In particular
archers are the least popular class in the game, and we may have
trouble finding high level archers to bring into the tournament,”
Wesley worries aloud. “We could supplement archers with other
classes, like thieves, that offer ranged combat abilities as well.”

“We can also
compensate by bringing in fighters with some proficiency with the
bow,” the warlord replies; Heimdall sees this as a non-issue. “We
will scour the MOBA arena for the best snipers around, and see if we
can convince them to participate in the tournament. Moving on, I
would like to make use of the two guard stations. The stations can
serve as supply depot for weapons, armors, and ammunition. If we can
lure the attackers to go after these two points, spell casters
stationed on the mountain can fling spells down on the enemies.”

“I don’t know about
that,” Wesley shakes his head. “Wouldn’t our troops get hit as
well?”

“I’m sure we could
come up with something to hit standing targets, like a wall of fire
surrounding the guard house, for example,” Heimdall suggests.

“I’ll have to check
with our mages, but I believe a wall of fire has a limited range.
However, our spell casters can probably figure something out,” the
cavalier nods in agreement.

“Depending on how
well the guard stations are fortified, we could insert priests to
cast spells to immobilize enemy troops surrounding the buildings, and
then cast the wall of fire to roast them to death,” Heimdall
suggests.

“In other words,
we’ll use the station houses as death traps to whittle down enemy
numbers further,” Wesley smiles in approval of the warlord’s
idea.

“Indeed,” the
warlord nods, “that is the plan. We could insert a small number of
players inside the stations, perhaps five players in each with a
three fighter, one mage, and one priest split.”

“However, we’ll be
turning these players into sacrificial lambs, since they won’t be
able to escape if the stations are targeted by the attackers,”
Wesley notes.

“True, the stations
will serve as Venus fly traps—for players. We can fortify the
structures to make them endure the onslaught a bit longer. I strongly
believe the sacrifice is worth it, though. Think of the tradeoff—five
defenders for maybe ten or more attackers! I would make that exchange
any day of the week,” Heimdall replies.

“Remember, the goal
is to whittle down the enemy numbers so that they can’t breach our
portal, at least not in large numbers. Once the enemy troops manage
to take out our stations, they will be funneled into the path carved
into the mountain. We can station defenders right in front of the
portal to form an impenetrable wall. And if our lancers manage to
return in time, they can run and charge at whatever enemy troops
appear on the path. If we can funnel the attackers into the tunnel,
we will have an overwhelming advantage regardless of numbers.”
Suddenly, the veteran fighter remembers the Oriental Expansion. “Are
we getting access to the new player classes from the expansion?” he
asks.

The player liaison
ponders the question for a moment. “I have not asked the game
developer about this yet. That being said, it is almost irrelevant
because the new classes will still require lots of playing time in
the dungeons to level up the characters. Also, the players will need
to finish class specific quests to get access to higher tier
abilities within the new classes. Obviously we won’t be getting
that sort of time. Besides, it would be to our disadvantage to bring
in players who wouldn’t be familiar with using their new player
classes. So in the end, it wouldn’t be wise for us to rely on new
classes from the expansion for this event,” Wesley concludes.

Heimdall raises his
hands to concede the point. “Okay, let’s talk about the rest of
the split for our fighters, and then nail down the split for the
spell casters.”

“Virtuous Gaming Co.
(‘VG’) is pleased to announce that the company is now seeking
applicants to participate in the upcoming One Hundred Man Tournament
between VG and Eternia Development & Entertainment, Inc. (‘EDE’),
scheduled to take place within the new Oriental Expansion being
released in the World of Eternia. Interested applicants for one of
the fifty player slots are invited to send an email with the player’s
full legal name, address, phone number, and a full description of the
applicant’s gaming experience in MMORPG along with highlights of
outstanding in-game achievements. Applicants meeting initial criteria
will be contacted by phone or email for future consideration. Prizes
will be awarded for participation on behalf of VG, with bonuses to be
awarded for winning the tournament.”

Priscilla Lombardi
types the following in the header of the forum topic at VG’s own
General forum: “Solicitation for participants in upcoming VG-EDE
tournament within World of Eternia.” She copies and pastes the
solicitation into the message. After one final check for spelling and
grammar, she clicks “post.”

She visits EDE’s
forum, and posts a duplicate topic in their forum. The Vice President
of Public Relations sends a quick message on her smart phone to her
boss: “done.”
While I’m
waiting for the player applications to come in, I will work on
narrowing down the list of possible commentators for the live event
to present to the boss
, she thinks.

Marcus Stanberry stares
at the solicitation from Virtuous Gaming, and absently rubs his long
beard. Ever since his team, The Golden Boys, had lost out to The
Strangers for the right to participate in the quest to lift the Curse
from Eternia Castle last year, Marcus had vowed not to shave until
Marcus gets his revenge against them. Now, the golden opportunity is
at hand. He quickly shoots a link to the topic to his teammates, most
of whom had stopped their subscriptions for World of Eternia. The
title of his message is, “Care to take on The Strangers?”

Brrrriiiinnnngggg!
Marcus checks his smart phone and sees the caller is Jonathan
Padowsky, a former member of the Golden Boys. “Hey man! Long time
no talk!”

“Likewise bro!” the
man replies in his thick Polish accent. “I’m currently visiting
my family back home, so I can’t talk too long on the line. Are you
serious about taking on The Strangers? In a match that will be
streamed and watched all over the world?” he asks.

“Definitely,” the
former leader of the alliance replies. “We gotta pay these
Strangers back ten-fold, and humiliate them in the worst ways
possible. So, are you in or out?”

“In. Email me the
details. Ciao!” Jonathan ends the quick international call. The
phone lasted only fifteen seconds.

Marcus rolls his eyes.
JP is a bit eccentric as a person, but Jonathan can certainly hold
his own as a spell caster
. I
might as well offer a follow up email and see who else wants in,
Marcus thinks and starts typing up the message.

* * *

Overnight, Marcus
received a total of ten commitments to participate in the Hundred Man
Tournament.
Ten out of twenty
ex-alliance members ain’t bad
, he admits.
I
was expecting more like five or six. Unfortunately, the group is a
bit unbalanced, with eight fighters and two mages counting JP. I may
as well get started with the application process.

After double checking
the email address to the Virtuous Gaming representative, Marcus
starts to write the email:

“Dear Sirs,

I am the leader of a
group of former World of Eternia players belonging to a top alliance
called ‘The Golden Boys.’ After losing out on the right to enter
the World of Eternia’s anniversary campaign to The Strangers last
year, our players were severely disappointed and decided to quit the
game altogether. However, after reading your solicitation for players
to represent your company in the upcoming Hundred Man Tournament
being co-sponsored by Eternia Development & Entertainment, Inc.,
ten of us are interested in joining this event as your
representatives.

We fully expect The
Strangers to participate in this event, and we relish the opportunity
to defeat them on an online battlefield, in front of a worldwide
audience. In total we have eight fighters and two mages, all at the
maximum character level of sixty.