Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.1      Finding her Feet

1.1.3    An Eventful Journey

1.1.3.3  O death, where is thy sting?

Kafana sounded thoughtful, as she answered Wellington's earlier question:

{I guess you’re right that the players did benefit from our Shanghaiing them, if not by as much as we benefitted. And while Bulgaria did go out of his way to ensure he personally was the one most at risk from any backlash, his experiments were not all without risk of collateral damage. But I thought a key part of playing this game was to treat the NPCs as people, even though they are not? If we’d stolen from the NPCs yesterday, we’d have been caught by Camillo. Wouldn’t it be safer to act, from now on, as though they have rights and emotions? The game uses our tiaras to get feedback directly from our brains, you said. And magic here seems to work off actual emotion. I don’t know why they designed the game this way, but I get the feeling that if we try to stay at arm’s length from this world, rather than immersing ourselves in it, we’ll be handicapping our abilities. Tomsk, Alderney, what do you think?}

[Alert: Wellington has requested that you add the player ‘Bungo’ to your contact list. Do you accept his request?]

{System, yes}

[Player ‘Bungo’ added to chat.]

Alderney had finished her device and handed it to Tomsk. She replied:

{You’re asking hard questions this morning. Do we judge whether a particular NPC is worth protecting by our standards, by the standards of the time period and culture being portrayed in the game, or do we say that their programmers are responsible for making some of them baddies and therefore they are all innately innocent, like actors playing Shakespearean villains?}

Tomsk was whirling the device above and around himself: {Pah, it is easy. All women are beautiful and deserving of protection.}

Alderney struck a pose. {Ok, I’ll give you that one. Cuteness is Justice!}

Bungo broke in: {If you want my vote, I’d say a normal game player should go with treating them the way the game designers intend, which is according to the standards of the culture portrayed in the game. But we’re Wombles. We’re all about subverting and redefining what’s normal. I say we’re free to write our own playbook.}

Kafana smiled, pleased. Despite what Tomsk had implied, Bungo seemed to have matured over the last 12 years. {Thanks Bungo. Good to see you again.}

Bungo replied eagerly: {Oh god, you don’t know how much I’ve longed to see you guys again. I’d have been here yesterday, but I’ve been playing for over 3 years on Divine Mountain. My character there, Wing Lan Yung, was a level 67 alchemist. Quite famous, actually. I was a monkey shifter, and I flew around on a sword changed by illusion to look like a cloud. It was way cool! So, anyway, if you’re level 60 or higher, then they’re giving you the option of moving over to this world. It is almost like deleting your character, except that you can soul bond 1 item, skill or summon for every 10 levels you have. So I kept 1 item, 5 skills and held a big party to give all my other items away to my guild mates. I’m going to miss my staff and combat skills. And Kuji, my tiger. I had a blue tiger as big as a horse; he was soooo fast. But you guys are more important to me, so here I am with you!}

Kafana had very mixed feelings about that, but didn’t know quite how to respond. So instead she continued as best she could.

{I agree about not feeling we have to stick to the standards of their culture. This game has aristocracy, and that can get pretty nasty. If the norm for this society is treating peasants like dirt or endorses rape, indenture, torture and slavery, I for one am sooo not going to go along with that. Even if they are just expert systems designed to be treated that way. Not because of their human dignity. Because of my human dignity. I draw the line. If that breaks the game or gets me kicked off it, so be it.}

After several seconds pause on the party chat channel, Wellington broke the silence: {Well, let’s talk more about NPCs once we have set off on the journey and have nothing else to do but walk. Right now, thanks to hard work by Bungo and Bulgaria getting us all to level 10, we meet the criteria for the steward to give us the pass we’ll need to enter the city. Alderney, if you’re done getting stuff from Dante, let’s drop by Fra Mattheus for his promised parting gift and then head over to Brusco for our passes and the treasury items gifted to us by Lord Landi. Given your status with him, Kafana, you should probably do a formal leave taking with Claudio and Sienna once we’re ready lined by the gate to leave. I’ve already been given the letter for the factor. We can ask Brusco for advice on expected protocol for house allies.}

Alderney replied: {I’m done, bar travel food. Kafana, I thought you might like to see to getting provisions for us from the kitchens, and equipment to cook it with. Tomsk?}

{I’m done testing this meteor hammer. It works a treat. Let’s go.}

They had a wait a few minutes while Fra Mattheus finished his current summoning. Kafana chatted with the Iberian Moor with beads in his hair and clothing matching theirs, that could only be Bulgaria’s vessel.

“Hello. You’ll be travelling with us, I believe. How should I address you?”

He replied in a shy quiet voice: “Please, address me as ‘Bulgaria’. I am told that is the orderly way to handle such things? My duty is to act as the adventurer known as Bulgaria. Just as his is. I understand that you, like he, have another name when you are not here in your vessel? Though he initially chose the name, the name Bulgaria is not his, nor mine; it is ours. And the process of discovering who ‘Bulgaria’ is here, is something that we carry out together. We dream each other.”

“Oh my. I don’t know if the Bulgaria I knew elsewhere is rubbing off on you, or if you were erudite before becoming a vessel. Did you have any skills before? Can you still use them?”

“I was a cripple, a burden on my family. I had few skills of note, although I did read a lot - the library was warm. I didn’t expect to be picked, but the moment I saw him look at me in the circle, I knew he realised what being picked would mean to me. And he picked me without hesitation, without thought for which vessel would be most advantageous for him, or best able to do things for him when he wasn’t present. I know this for certain because, while for most things it is random which part of the spirits control period we see as dreams, a vessel always always gets to see the entire choosing ritual from the spirit’s point of view as their first dream.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Bulgaria. I only wish I had the opportunity to talk with my own vessel and get to know her too.”

Fra Mattheus spoke up, standing directly behind her. “Wish granted!”

He chuckled warmly. “I always wanted to get a chance to do that. Cov brings order to all things, and sometimes he is kind. Come in, come in all of you, I believe I mentioned that I would have something for you?”

They filed in after him. He turned and held up a pendant.

“When you arrived here, I gave you a blessing from Cov, and it has been maintained while you’ve not wandered too far away from this Sanctum. This blessing has protected you from much of death’s sting. It ensures you respawn somewhere safe, and reduces how much you lose on dying. As you gain in level, the sting gets stronger, and more harmful effects will get past the blessing, but it will always help a bit. But now you are about to journey beyond the range of the protection from this Sanctum, and we must do something about that. This pendant is a gift from Cov himself, a holy artifact. It may be neither destroyed or stolen, although you can renounce it if you become irrevocably evil or foolish beyond all understanding. While you wear it, you will be under his protection, and you can even attune it to a specific Sanctum to ensure that is where you respawn if you die.”

“But it has another deeper purpose. This pendant is the focus that links questing spirit to corporeal vessel. It retains the imprint of the vessel’s previous body and if either party takes it to a Sanctum guardian with good cause, the guardian can break that link, returning the vessel to their previous state and leaving the spirit to start anew with a different vessel, if one willing can be found.”

“So you understand that the health of the relationship between the two of you is vital. To this end, if the spirit goes to sleep in this world while holding the pendant, they will dream of the day experienced by the vessel when the spirit was not present, and with practice both parties will be able to highlight parts of their day as being of fun or importance for the other to see, which will increase the chances of them dreaming those parts.”

“As a guide, the pendant will glow when touched. The greater the mutual respect, the stronger the glow, and the stronger the protection of Cov’s blessing. So be warned: if you do not respect and earn the respect of your vessel, death will have a mighty sting indeed.”

He handed out the pendants, intoning “may the blessing of Cov be upon you” as he handed each one over.

“By the way, if any of you find yourselves interested in taking up the way of Cov, make sure you look up Suor Isabella when you reach the city, and she will set your feet on the right path. Tell her about the play you put on. She’ll like that. Have a safe trip.”

He ushered them out and got straight on with the summonings.