Town Builder - 78 - Big Decision

Chapter 78: Big Decision

“Epic plans! Was it a dungeon reward?”

“No, it is marked as a player-crafted good, but the player kept his name anonymous.”

“Maybe his name is Anonymous.”

“That is a stupid trope. It was one of the early start players who crafted it.”

“It’s not fair those play testers got to keep their levels.”

“I heard from a cousin who has a friend who is married to one of the developers that it was because they were hardwired into the game. If they reset them, they would have to reset the entire world. A few programmers got fired because of the coding mistake. They didn’t want to delay the game launch, so they froze their levels and skill development and took all their gear. They also get ten times the rep penalty for killing other players.”

“Unbelievable, someone bid 200,000 on the alchemy school!”

“It’s gonna sell for at least twice that. It generates two expert alchemist trainers. Even though they can only train three players at a time, that will always be useful for guilds building a stable of crafters. And you don’t have to do endless quests to keep getting instructed like other NPC trainers.”

“Disciples of the Hoard will win the plans.”

“I don’t think so. It will either be Eternal Legacy or Divine Deviants. Disciples of the Hoard doesn’t have dedicated crafters.”

“That was before this game. They are recruiting the crafting professions in the real world just like the other large guilds.”

“My sister’s finance quit his job to play full time. Eternal Legacy is paying him twice what he was making as a lawyer.”

I tore my eyes from the conversation as the threads always seemed to quickly divert away from the alchemy school plans after a few comments. Deific Savior sent me a message, “Are those your plans for the alchemy school?”

“Yes. I am staking my claim as the top architect in the game.” My hubris was showing a little, but I didn’t care.

Savior switched to audio chat. “I see. I am transferring you the gold for the archer’s tower. We can’t afford to bid on the alchemy school but will force the other guilds to pay a little extra. Perhaps we could purchase a copy in the future when we are not so strapped?”

I laughed, “I couldn’t imagine the third most powerful guild in the game strapped for gold.”

“We are fifth now in total levels and fourth in global accomplishments. Siberian Bears, a Russian State-funded guild, is now second behind Disciples of the Horde,” Savior informed me. “Our focus is on fortifying our two guild towns and preparing for the NPC auction.”

“I understand. As long as we are on good terms when you want them, I will sell them to you.” I replied seriously. It wasn’t a warning, but things were going to be happening fast. Mad Dog said guilds would make and break alliances as the game evolved. If Savior joined an alliance with one of my enemies, I wouldn’t deal with them.

“Understood,” Savior said and cut the connection.

I felt good about proving who was the best architect in the game. Leaving the auction house, I got a local notification that Stillwater had just completed a successful defense against the incursion. It had taken them six hours longer than Malcum to close their rift.

As I walked to the portal, the players were returning from the walls, excited about what they had seen. The defending NPCs had shown powerful magics and fighting. The undead assaulting had been over ten thousand. It must have been epic, and I would have to watch some videos to see how it went.

Returning to Malcum, I checked my interface; many players had logged off, which made me jealous that they could return to the real world. Only Grinder was still here from my guild. He was off doing quests for Mira to raise his reputation with her. I returned to my manor and spent the evening with Joy and Jaesmin, trying to capture a moment of normalcy.

The NPCs needed to sleep in the game day-cycle, and I did not, so I went to my drafting table. There were a dozen different projects I could work on, such as updating old plans to include my Eternal Architect Class. I recalled Galana needed a larger prison for players to serve their sentences in and choose that.

I decided to research first and read the forums about player experience in NPC prisons. Because the players were so low a level, they were easily apprehended after committing crimes. Killing an NPC in a city confiscated players’ gear, including the contents of their bag of holding. They also went to kill on sight in that city, and their rep was severely damaged within the entire kingdom. The players were then executed and respawned outside the city.

Other crimes like theft, assault, and indecent exposure resulted in prison time. NPC guards manned prisons, and you could escape from them—or get broken out by friends. Any confiscated gear was usually in a prison storeroom for three days afterward. So if you killed an NPC and then were killed yourself, you had to retrieve it before then, or it disappeared. One player mentioned he lost a chain quest item, and the entire quest was reset.

The moral of the story was don’t mess with NPCs. Outside of towns and cities was a different scenario. It all depended on whether you had been observed committing the crime. Even then, the penalty was much less severe, usually just a modest hit to the player’s reputation.

I, of course, had an interface to set penalties for crimes in Malcum. I looked it over briefly, not realizing how many different crimes there were. For now, I left everything in the default settings.

My prison for Malcum needed to be large enough to hold a lot of players. I checked my player population, and it was currently 409. That didn’t include those adventuring outside of town. I would make it modular, and maybe I could get some work out of the players as well. I had my copper mines north of the city. Maybe instead of a prison, I could build a work camp. I went with that idea. I grinned the entire time as I imagined the players' disbelief that they wouldn’t be sitting in a cell relaxing.

Rare Mining Prison Work Camp (100), Health 100,000, Requires Masonry Foundations 43, Masonry: Structures 23, Woodcraft: Carpentry 23, Ritual Enchanting 43 (Generates one level 40 NPC Boss Warden every 24 days, limit 1) (Generates One Level 15 Elite Prison Guard every 24 hours, limit 12) Effect #1: No Escape, Effect #2:+10% mining speed. Structure Regenerates 1% health every 24 hours (stacks with similar effects)

It was just an L-shaped building, with one wing housing stone-holding cells for the prisoners and the other wing wooden for the guards and the warden. I was actually getting the hang of tailoring the drafting plans to my needs. I didn’t want to expend the essence-building resources on high-level guards, but I wanted them to be strong for their level. Although the plans called for spawning level 15 guards, I was certain with the proper building materials; we could get it to at least level 20. I invested more in the prison camp warden to serve as a deterrent for crafty players.

It even had an interesting effect called No Escape. It was not too powerful, as it just tagged an escaped prisoner for 24 game hours so the guards could track them. I was happy with the plans and added Eternal to the title. It would be some time before we could get the resources and construct it. If the player population out-leveled the prison guards, I could build something better in the future.

I had lost half a day to drafting, and when I checked on my interface, I found Malcum now had 709 players. A bit confused at the rapid growth, I sent a message to Grinder, who was in town, oddly enough, having a meal at the inn with Mira. He certainly did work fast.

“Tallis, Whaddya need? Kind of in the middle of something.” He replied cheerily.

“Do you know why the player population has almost doubled?” I inquired.

“Popular place on the forums. The bunny mage, for one. She is handing out quests like candy for all kinds of spells. The Adventurer's Hall is a big draw, too. It is more difficult to find quests in the larger cities. Here, almost every NPC is handing them out. Is that all you need?” He asked a little impatiently.

“Thank you.” I closed the conversation link and went to my quest interface, and I was a little bit shocked. Bella had been promoted to a quest giver, as had Zion and Kuba. Kuba didn’t surprise me, as he was in the process of recruiting his future staff. I was surprised to see he had 67 available quests, but most had minimum levels much higher than the current players. It was neat that I could see the requirements to initiate a quest as well. One of his quests involved giving him a tome that was over five hundred years old. Kuba would then see the player as competent enough to explore a ruin to search for more ancient tomes.

It was definitely a cheat, and I could use it to help my guildmates find rare quests in Malcum. Shit.

I could see why there were so many quests. I had set the quest rewards as a portion of my treasury, which was quite large at the moment. I spent some time reducing that to a reasonable amount of my deposits. The whole quest interface system was much too complex. It was a good job for someone in the Silver Linings Playbook Guild to handle. I locked in 3% of treasury deposits for quests and sent Mad Dog a message for help.

I worked on some copies of plans until Mad Dog logged in, and he had the perfect person to manage the quest interface. “Her name is Forgotten Swan. She is playing a DPS mage, but she likes game lore. I am sure she will cherry-pick quests for herself, but she will do a good job so your quests don’t dry up your gold or experience.” That was another thing about quests offered by my NPCs, the rewards came from me.

Experience rewards, for instance, were accumulated based on my NPCs in town, and the pool was not refreshing quickly enough for so many players. At least the ones offered in the Adventurer’s Guild didn’t draw from my pool. I turned over control to Forgotten Swan but locked her out of increasing the amount from the treasury. She received the title of Quest Overseer. Since the title was not Master of Guilds, it didn’t remove my NPC from that role.

I copied another set of tannery plans and then got an alert a new spy’s training had been completed. Black Beauty was logged in, and I confirmed with her that the spy, a human woman, was to be sent south to spy on the Kingdom of Vereel. Although my rep had been set to neutral on the game launch, they were still a threat.

The next spy loaded into the training queue. A male wolfkin. I would let Black Beauty decide what to do with this asset when it was trained after seven days. Things were going really well.

In the morning, I went to the obelisk watcher to help Sanso and my builders finish the watchtower obelisk. I kind of missed the days of endless building. The construction was much faster in the game than in the real world with magic, and there was never a bad cut. The project had three days remaining, but with my assistance, I think I could help them get it completed in two. My time was probably better spent drafting plans since I couldn’t level up my skills.

The tower was already reaching well above the other buildings and Malcum. Galana had stationed ten of her town guard here to keep the players off of the work site. One enterprising player had learned the summon stone spell and was doing a repeatable quest generating stone for the project. Of course, the quality of the stone was not as good as Sanso’s or mine and was allocated elsewhere in Malcum.

From high up in the half-completed tower, I was able to survey my bustling town. I could see out into the plains with groups of players running around hunting the plains cats. The crescent lake to the north looked stunning as well. Breda had gotten the shape perfect, and it framed the southern part of the city really well. It still needed to be filled with water from the river, but that would happen in time. The industries were slowly being migrated north as planned. Players and NPCs alike scurried on business in the streets.

I hadn’t talked to Sanso for a long time, but it allowed us to bond a bit. I didn’t even realize he had married Elice, and she was with a child. Sanso was an elementalkin, and Elice was human, so I wondered how that would turn out. Half-breeds were not part of the game, to my knowledge. It didn’t take long to find that children's race was always dependent on the mother, but there were plans to introduce mixed races in the future.

As we worked, the structure drew a lot of attention from the players, and Mad Dog sent me a warning that the game forums were picking it up as the tower grew in height. This meant guilds would be sending players to investigate. Maybe this obelisk was a little too ostentatious.

We worked much of the day, and I had to stop frequently to handle messages. Since my guild knew I was not in seclusion, they thought it was ok to message me, but it did slow me down. Chaotic Heart took over the trade interface for me in Malcum. He was going to track our exports and imports. His official title was Minister of Trade. His real-world name was Henry, and he was the Mad Dog’s computer guru. That was code for hacker.

Reborn Apostle took on the role of Religious Advisor. His job was to track the workings of the in-game gods and figure out how Malcum’s dedication to the Sullen God fit into the world pantheon.

Ghostly Mermaid was named my Admiral just because she asked so nicely. The petite water elementalkin had a melodic voice, and she was a singer in the real world. She wasn’t even disappointed when I told her my fleet consisted of two canoes for fishing and one trade barge. But I did have an underutilized shipwright who was about to get a lot busier by the look in her eye. I also told her about Danny’s plan to build a steam-powered skyship, and she left immediately to talk with her in Goatyah.

Danny was back and focused on growing her town. She had an Adventurer’s Hall just like mine but less than one hundred players. She didn’t have an NPC like Neral running her guild Hall. Neral greatly enhanced the efficiency and offerings of my building.

The Eternal Epic Alchemy College auction ended, and it sold for 575,000 gold. The Siberian Bears purchased it and were quite vocal in the forums about claiming their prize. There was a huge shitstorm in the forums when the leader of Siberian Bears left the auction house with the plans in his personal dimensional bag. A hard-wired player managed to steal it without his knowledge. The Russian guild didn’t know who had committed the theft but was ready to declare war on all the other guilds because of it. Thankfully, the Siberian Bears had set their operations over ten thousand miles away from Malcum.

The following day, the Watchtower Obelisk was completed after midday, partly because I had worked through the night. When it was done, over two hundred players were watching. Not that its purpose was not obvious. I checked the stats, and we had gotten a 50% bonus for the plans. I had been hoping for more with all the resources I had invested in the large structure.

Very Rare Watchtower Obelisk 750,000 Health, Requires Masonry (Bonus: Overwatch NPC, Level 75, Always Active Unless Slain. Respawn 72 hours) (Bonus: Increases Town Map Visibility by 75%) (Bonus Ability: Nowhere to Hide) Effect: Building Regenerates 1% health every 24 hours

The glass pyramid room at the top had its furnace lit with essences. The NPC operator spawned when the building was activated, which was a bit of a surprise. He was a halfling and slowly walked around the room, following the lit beacon. I would have to review the plans and determine what I had done to make that happen.

Excited, I went into my interface to see the results. My town map had massively expanded, and I could identify anyone on the map—even their guild affiliation. That was new. I turned over the interface and expanded it in front of me. I was able to sort out who was in my town, and chills went through me with all the members of different guilds down there. One familiar name popped out to me, Grey Weasel of Eternal Legacy. The vampire had not returned to the Endless Dark but had come to Malcum in disguise.

There were members from every top guild among the 906 players on my list. Seventeen had been in stealth and revealed. Another twenty-eight had been using a skill to hide their true name. I sent a message to Mad Dog, “Are you aware of the obelisk’s effect on your person?”

“Give me a moment, mate. Nope. No icons in my interface saying I am being affected by anything. Let me have Chaotic Heart try to go into stealth and see if he is aware.”

I watched my interface, following Chaotic Heart, who was delivering some goods to our smith, Manarag. I was notified he was now in stealth inside the forge room. “Can you see me now?” Chaotic Heart said, entering the chat.

“Yeah, you are in the back corner of the forge. Farthest from the wall.” I said teasingly.

Chaotic Heart guessed, “Nope. I don’t know I have been discovered. My guess is your NPC’s levels are just so much higher than mine that I don’t notice. Maybe when players get closer to his.”

Mad Dog was happier than me, “Tallis, mate. You need to keep it a secret. I suggest you give Black Beauty access to your town map so she can respond to player threats with her agents. We will start spreading the word the obelisk tower just increases your town map range.”

I little giddy, I responded, “I understand. There is one vampire in Malcum that needs to be outed. He is currently in Mama’s Bread and Butter Bakery. He is disguised as a human, and his name is Dark Night. His real name is Grey Weasel, and he works for Eternal Legacy.”

Mad Dog tried to convince me otherwise, “I know when you get power, you want to show off a bit, Tallis. But you can learn more by watching than showing your hand. You have the royal flush this hand, mate. You need to learn when to play it.” I knew Mad Dog was referring to my flashy display with the Alchemy College. It was hard to resist.

“Fine, I will set permissions for you and Black Beauty to access the town map and overlay with the watchtower obelisk.”

“Good, mate. You should talk to Blood Crisis. There is a blanket court case for all the hardwired players coming. I know you wanted to wait, but this may be the time to get your emancipation.”

I panicked on hearing that. I was worried if I got my freedom, would I lose all this? Would the corporation that produced the game just delete my character? It was their full emersion pod after all. It is what I wanted, but was it too soon?

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