The Bathrobe Knight: Volume 2 (2 page)

              Robert took a quick appraisal of the man as the door swung open, and he and Gary made their way to the seats left open on the opposite end of the table. He was dressed in a navy blue suit and a yellow patterned tie--which were enough to make him immediately stand out from everyone else gathered in the room. The dress code at work was usually pretty lax, nothing too flashy or revealing, but casual was definitely the word when it came to office attire. Charles had blonde hair, perfectly parted, and striking blue eyes that were only beginning to show his age with small creases around the corners. Unlike everyone else, he sat leaning back in his chair at the head of the table, one leg crossed over the other, perfectly at ease.  

              Even after Robert and Gary had taken their seats, an awkward silence continued to permeate the room. Robert looked around from face to face, but no one dared look up to meet his gaze. 

              "Gentlemen, it was my understanding there was a rather important meeting that was supposed to take place today," Charles said, breaking silence. "So? If everyone has their black socks on, we can get this started." Everyone chuckled uneasily in a low tone, still afraid to be the first to speak up or break the uneasy pause, but more afraid not to laugh at the joke. One of the more unusual clauses of the bylaws stated that everyone had to wear black socks to meetings. Robert wasn't even wearing socks.    

              "Alright, well," Gary began from beside Robert, "we have a number of issues that need to be addressed. And, as much as I would love to get back to answering inane questions about where the fluffy, pink unicorns and candy canes are, I really don't want to sit here admiring the view all day." He gestured to the view outside the office allowed in by the windows that made up the walls on two sides of the room. "I think it's safe to go ahead and say that you'll see a common theme linking them together as well.

              “First, I believe that everyone is familiar with the Unity Arc and what happened there--or what didn't happen and should have," Gary grunted, more than chuckled, at his own bad joke as he paused and looked up at Charles, who motioned for him to continue with a slight nod of his head. 

              "The Unity Arc was one of the few major plot devices designed into the game from the get-go. It was supposed to give everyone a chance to get used to the VR sim and the in-game mechanics--a feel for the world and the play-style--before dropping them into the inferno. While we were testing out the game and working out the final kinks, it was the best way we had to keep the races locked so that they weren't able to party or group up with each other. This was supposed to encourage the players to focus more on each of their own individual starting areas. We really wanted to push everyone to help us find any bugs, glitches or inconsistencies in those initial player realms. Sure, players were able to venture off and explore anything they wanted, but we really wanted to corral them on the individual starter islands as much as we could. If they don't have any reason to go wandering off other that just to see the world, it makes sense that they would always come back to where they started in order to continue progressing through the game. Fleshing out the beginner areas is critical to retaining the player base. First impressions and all that jazz.

              “Anyway, after the we found out that the AI was spinning like a top working wonders, that it paired up correctly to the game world of Tiqpa, there was a pre-scripted sequence of events that was supposed to take place within each of the racial starting towns. That's the Unity Arc. Or, rather, the 'Unification of the Races Arc.' Whatever you want to call it. In any case, it was supposed to allow each race's ruling council to kill off the sovereign or whatever ruling power that was already in control of the race. After that, the races would be allowed to party up and carry on however they wanted.

              “Well, for whatever reason, the Unity Arc failed to trigger within the Human lands. Qasin, the King who was in power there, was never deposed by the Human Council. What's more, we've found out now that he actually went on to conquer the other two races that were situated on the same starter island, the Black-Wings and White-Horns, led them all into a massive battle against a White-Wing invasion and then up and disappeared from the starter lands entirely.

              “Robert here," Gary paused and took a sip of the water that was in front of him, then gestured to where Robert sat beside him and continued, "Robert and I discussed it immediately after the incident took place. Well, immediately after the Unity Arc failed to complete, anyway, before all that other stuff happened, and he's assured me that everything was scripted correctly. He's good at what he does, and I believe him--not that I understand any of that technical mumbo jumbo snake talk anyway. 

              “But here's where things get interesting. The Unity Arc was so important we actually had people sit in on the council meetings. They went incognito, and through the use of the GM console even the NPCs couldn't tell the difference between them and one of themselves. Everything went swimmingly, except, as you know, within the Human lands. Nelson, our team member who was present at that meeting, reported the sudden appearance of a strange man. The summoning circle in the King's court suddenly lights up like a Christmas tree in July and out walks a man looking like a demon: broad-shouldered, pale skin, claws--the whole nine yards. Well, Qasin, the King, declares that his ultimate weapon of a warrior has appeared, hands him a soup spoon, and sends him off to do battle with the White-Horn and Black-Wing armies. 

              “But, hey, it gets even better. This demonic figure Nelson reported was wearing a bathrobe like he was summoned from the seventh circle of Hell in the middle of brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed or something.”   

              No one else had so much as made a sound during Gary's recollection of the Unity Arc or the appearance of the strange bathrobe-clad figure. For everyone present in the room, everything he had recounted was more or less common knowledge now. There really wasn't much more that could be said anyway. In truth, they really didn't know much more.

              Robert took a sip from his mug of coffee and waited for someone else to continue. When no one ventured anything, he spoke up himself. "I've spent enough time going through the coding, both alone and with the help of several people here, that I can assure you that there's nothing present anywhere that would contribute to any of these events occurring.  

              “The code . . ."  Robert trailed off, trying to figure out how to put things in laymen's terms so everyone would understand. "The code used for every occurrence of the Unity Arc is roughly the same. Variables are different. They naturally point to or indicate different NPCs, rulers and councils throughout the game, but everything else is the same. There's no reason why, as far as I can tell, it would be different in this one instance within the Human lands than it would be anywhere else. 

              “I can also tell you we've tried to track down this mysterious bathrobe-wearing figure that Nelson reported seeing, and it's impossible. There's no indication anywhere in the user logs, registrations or character files that match anything even remotely similar in name or description. I even had Gary cross reference the item database for instances of bathrobes existing within the game world. They're not there. The object simply doesn't exist." Robert finished and took another sip of his coffee.

              "Oh, but
he
does," someone else finally spoke up. Stephen, who was in charge of monitoring and maintaining the website and forums, had finally called up enough courage to lift his head and add to the conversation. "There are dozens, hundreds, if not thousands of threads open on the forums right now talking about that massive fight that broke out on the beach. Don't get me wrong, everyone seemed pretty stoked about the whole thing, but it's impossible to cover up the facts any more. 

              “We did a pretty decent job of dispelling any rumors that popped up before now. There were always random guys complaining about being killed by some freak in a bathrobe or getting slain by a spoon-wielding demon, but they were easy enough to dismiss as trolls and blatant attempts at getting attention from other users on the boards. Let's be honest. It was too weird to believe anyway. As for the King and what he was doing with the other races, there's enough mythology to support the idea that White-Horns and Black-Wings are created to be subservient races. We never even had to touch that one. Users jumped up pretty quickly to defend the idea and explain that it was just naturally part of the game progression. Heck, they were even pretty quick to jump on the idea of the White-Wings invading another race's island without provocation or warning. Turns out most of the players had a blast doing it and even managed to keep it off the forums until right before it happened. They all just assumed that it was a server-wide event being controlled by the GMs. 

              “Now, however, there's no chance of explaining what went down during that huge battle.  The King of the Human race showing up and indiscriminately killing everyone, normal mobs converted to have glowing red eyes and attacking . . ." Stephen was really on a roll now ". . . including the giant Hydra appearing out of the water, this mysterious bathrobe figure showing up and taking on the leader of the White-Wing invasion and killing him! There were even claims that a girl was even riding on the giant Hydra, using it as a mount and casting spells from on top of it! I couldn't even believe the lunacy myself until I saw clips from the in-game footage starting to show up. Oh, and don't even get me started on that stone magic that was cast towards the end of that fight."

              Gary groaned, remembering the work that incident had caused. "Yeah. That. It took us hours of manually going in and unfreezing each individual character on each individual account to get them back to a playable status. Most of them actually unlocked themselves after the timer wore off in-game before we could even get to them. I know we've tried to maintain a hands-off policy when it comes to the game world, but that was unavoidable."

              "Where did the Hydra come from?" Robert asked.

              "Well, we can't be certain," Gary began, "but from the footage we've seen that's been posted around the net, it looks a lot like a dungeon boss that was staged at the end of the passageway of mines connecting the Human and White-Horn lands. There's a quest players have a chance of picking up from an NPC in Valcrest that would ask them to clear it from mobs so that normal travel through the mountain could continue. You know, a 'we desperately need you brave heroes to save us' kind of thing. I don't remember the details exactly, but I think the odds of triggering the quest were pretty low. Normally, players would just kill the mobs and try to escape the Hydra to cut some time off their trip. You'd have to venture back to the town after you were a high enough level to leave the island altogether to even be eligible for picking up the quest."

              "I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the mobs that were present were also from the mine then?" Robert queried further.

              Gary shook his head in response. "No, they’re actually from a silver ore mine outside of Valcrest, the city that the players sacked, which makes them traveling in the same pack even harder to explain."

              "So what would cause a mob to break its leash and roam that far out of its designated zone?  Kass mentioned before that she was chased a good distance by a group of Minotaur without them giving up and recalling, but that's pretty normal. Those would have been programmed differently. They were part of the White-Horn army and basically given free range. But a Hydra? From a dungeon? I'll need to go back and check the tethering limitations in the code and see if something is interfering with it. There might be a condition or exception I missed that's allowing the players to lure mobs such a long distance."

              "Kass?" Charles suddenly asked from the opposite end of the table. Eyes around the table flitted over at him briefly as he spoke before they quickly lowered again.

              "My daughter," Robert answered. "She's been playing the game for a while now."

              Charles gave a small nod to indicate that he understood, but his eyes seemed to crinkle just a bit around the corners as he did so. It was so fast Robert would have missed it if he hadn't been looking directly at him. 

              "Well," Gary continued, "it's not unheard of for players to lure mobs and use them to get other players killed. I think there have been a few reports of something similar that have come through my inbox."

              Stephen looked up and agreed. He had apparently gained a little confidence after speaking at length earlier. "There have definitely been posts on the boards complaining about basically the same thing. Players would be standing outside a camp aggroing mobs one by one and a higher-level player runs through the camp, attracts everything and leads it directly to them then sprints off. If the other players are casting spells or attack them and don't run away as well, all the mobs will switch aggro to them as the other guy sprints off into the distance and watches them die."

                "But a Hydra? From a dungeon it shouldn't be able to escape at all? So far?" Gary shrugged, showing he didn't have an answer.

              "Where is the Hydra now? Or any of the other mobs for that matter. We should be able to track them using GM functions, right?" Robert asked. "Did it return to its spawn point like it should have, or is it still roaming free? That could cause some pretty big issues if there's a giant boss just roaming around the starter islands freely."