Sunset in a Dead Land

[Taskmienster]

[The entire idea for this quest was built on a single picture: This. And the guy at the end was built off of this
Thank you artists, you are my muse.



Althanas was an intricate game, an anomaly that Lars wasn’t used to. He had toyed with the codes for a little while, but had gotten nothing more than stops and errors. It was discouraging but did little more than strengthen his resolve. He would crack the code, he would bring back the information that GramVR wanted, and there would be a new game on the web soon enough. He would be in charge of it, the master coder of his own world… with a handsome bonus and new title. That was enough to make him continue, make him travel the world and find the heart of conflict in order to find the most complex of codes on the server.

His interest and search brought him to some land on the main continent, to a conflict that was supposedly a long lasting rivalry between canon of the site and the players. The administration took special precautions to keep it relatively simplistic in nature. The land was called Raiaera, a land of the mythical creatures known as high elves. They were well versed in the ability to cast magic, had a mind for art, and a pointedly uppity nature from what little Ethan Calhoun had been able to figure out. Their enemy was a necromancer by the name of Xem’zûnd, a powerful… something. Honestly, Lars couldn’t figure out what the hell he was other than an enemy, and that he controlled a shit ton of undead freaks.

“Fuckin’ hell,” he thought as the ship brought him into the docks of New Aurient. The harbor was massive, reaching out to sea like a hand with way to many fingers. Each finger was wide, waiting for a ship to dock between it, but only a few were open. Ships, boats, small yachts lined the harbor instead of open slots. Along the docking area were droves of people, man woman and child, trying to get on any ship leaving port. It was a sad sight. The elves the hacker had heard tell of were meager, scant people with big ears and little stomach for violence. Painters and peasants alike vied for their right to join the ships, the captains of non-Raiaeran decent taking full advantage and jacking prices that Lars could hear from the edge of his own ship. “This is pathetic… what the fuck is going on?”

Little did he know that the stretch of the destruction was reaching all the way to the coast, absorbing small towns, sucking in the lives of families without the ability to defend each other. The undead were on the move without hindrance from trained soldier or courageous citizen, a prospect that was unbecoming of so well spoken for a race. But it was the way of the world, the way of the game, and Lars could see the tell tale signs of panic that raced through the populace.

“The war’s upon us boy,” an elderly, grizzly elven man said from behind him. He was an ugly fuck, even compared to the people Ethan had seen scrapping about in the slums of Radasanth. His armor was pristine though, his weapon polished, and a number of random jewelry strewn about his person. A player character, it was the only assumption. If there was one thing he had learned from playing from game to game, it was that everyone wanted to play the old and practiced warrior with the scars to prove that he had done very little other than register. Either that, or people would take the beautiful character with a portly person sitting in the background. His girlfriend was bad about that, not exactly beautiful in real life, but by god she was the most voluptuous promiscuous person on the server. “It’d be good if you got a straight head on your shoulders and helped out maybe?”

“Hey, here’s an idea…” the gangplank dropped to the wooden dock, and the warrior assembled to assist the country of Raiaera began to shift their way off the deck. “Go fuck yourself… oh, and while you’re at it, grow some balls and be something more than a fuckin’ grizzled wanna be warrior.”

The man growled after the hacker, which he figured would happen. But it didn’t matter, there was something to do, something to toy with. He was one of many warriors that left the island nation of Corone in favor of the chaotic land of the high elves. They would be organized, sent on different tasks, spread throughout the ranks of the ‘bladesingers’ – whatever the fuck those were – and the troops of the high elven people. In the mean time, he would toy with the reality of Althanas and attempt to hack further into the abilities he knew he could mathematically and technologically figure out.