Astral Reckoning Official Forums

Thread: Miner's Nightmare Quarantine

Malady Daniels:

Got kicked out of the level 7-10 dungeon in the mine by a bunch of NPC soldiers and told that it's being cordoned off because of the demon stuff. They're not letting anybody in, so I guess we're just forced to go find a mass hunting party for Ujax now if we want to level? I haven't got any money for that man, this sucks.

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Lionel Jones:

Well, can't say we shouldn't have seen this coming. The NPCs already tried to take it over before and got their shit kicked in for trying to steal from us.

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Hiss Meo:

@Lionel Jones Try that on one of the stainless steel boys, see what happened.

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Lionel Jones:

yeah no fuck that I'm not suicidal. Why do the NPCs have tempban powers, again?

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Ol' Skinner:

Who knows? Better than no moderation at all, if you ask me. Not like DDA didn't have some sort of punishment coming. At least for the jail time you just have to log in once a day until it's over.

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Silver Nosster:

Dropping in with some news on the situation.

Cutting a long story shorter: The 'real' dungeon Miner's Nightmare is based on further down everybody's learned to avoid trying to explore is the problem.

The Ignorant take anything related to Corruption and Demons very, very seriously - so the law of the Empire basically means that the entire area is under their direct supervision until the problem is dealt with. At which point management 'should' be handed back over to the Pioneers' Alliance according to the original agreements for dungeon management and discovery (If you haven't asked around for details on this stuff, you really should before you end up ticking off both the national government of the country you're in and the Pioneers), meaning that Miner's Nightmare will have access restored to the public for however long the Reminiscence persists.

Truthseekers has been asked by the Imperial Councilor, Lord dun Ocri, to go down and clean up to the Empire's satisfaction with some help from the Branch Manager of Meteo's Pioneers' Alliance branch. It's on short notice and we've been busy with other things, so expect us to mount our expedition in the next day or so, Real-time, once everyone going along has made time for it.

For new players, both the Pioneers' Alliance and our own Employment Bureau at our headquarters in the Western Residential District are offering Quests if you need something productive to do in the meantime. You won't gain any Experience this way until after you complete The First Step and class change at Level 10, but any Experience from Quests will be held in reserve and awarded at that time, so you can potentially jump a few extra levels after that.

If you have any relevant questions, I'll be watching this thread for however long it takes for me to finish travelling home.

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Fan Damyeon:

@Silver Nosster Open the fucking dungeon

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Hex Check:

@Silver Nosster wait isn't the Imperial Council the ruler of the Empire? Why are they asking Truthseekers to deal with it when they have an army of super strong NPCs already here?

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Moonlit Pool:

This reads more like an advertisement than anything

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Silver Nosster:

@Fan Damyeon I already stated our intention to do so. However, not all members of Truthseekers have personal, home access, to virtual reality dive tech, but do have real-world obligations.

@Hex Check Yes. Lord dun Ocri is one of the three noble Lords of the Empire of Stone, and a member of the council that rules the territories. One of the consequences of stumbling across the 'Lord' Title myself was being made to meet and negotiate with the Council. As a result, Truthseekers has agreed to take over any Demon related cases and my Title has been downgraded to Anh-Elret, since as a new player I don't have the necessary background to force them to acknowledge me as anything close to an equal. It's a somewhat realistic outcome.

To reiterate: Demons and Corruption are taken very seriously on Merrow by the locals. But compared to us Newborn, we don't have the same cultural stigma against interacting with it, and since Truthseekers already went up against one of the most powerful demons in the setting with little to no Corruption, rather than risk contaminating themselves, this is the result. Refer to the vid one of our members, Jupiter Trails, created for context if you're confused, it's begun trending recently on various platforms.

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Employment Bureau, Truthseekers' Main Headquarters

With a little convincing, and thanks to Grand calling in a favour with his stoner colleague for not ratting him out the night before (Something he apparently does infrequently, only for the co-worker in question to forget about being exploited not long after, perhaps as a consequence of his addiction), me, Jade and himself were able to get in and online much earlier than usual to make ready for our return to Liggit Mine.

Of course, I'm technically trespassing at this hour since I'm not an employee of Gaming Sanctuary, but the two of them assured me that the sleazy owner rarely if ever pays any attention to what's happening at the business so long as it turns a profit and no incidents occur, preferring to focus on managing a nightclub he apparently also owns on the other side of the city and sleeping through the daylight hours the internet café operates during, essentially making it so that he's making money at all hours of the day.

Admirable in a way, negligence and obvious scrimping on facility costs aside.

Due to the nature of the terrain, I can't call for a full deployment of the Guild's personnel, so it will be limited primarily to the usual crew of Officers, Grand and some of the transplants from Wolf Hunt - a Restorationist to assist Angelus, an Elementalist standing in for the absent Jupiter, and a Ranger to assist Jade with whatever monstrosity the Fearstruck Miners have degenerated into over however long it's been since the incident that caused the mine to be abandoned in the first place. The Ranger assisting with them is the crossbow-toting scout that was guiding us through Ujax on our first hunting party, equipped with the crossbow we got a while back from that Aberrant.

Also, as a...I guess you could call it a side-benefit of the detailed survey of Ujax Forest I requested that Jericho undertake with Wolf Hunt, the majority of the participants have recovered their strength to around the Level 15-16 range, matching the Officers.

Traditionally, an Officer would hold a significant advantage in that regard over them to help ensure the hierarchy in place means anything, but most of the Officers are busy with matters in Meteo, and the actual Experience gained from hunting in Ujax Forest and Fander Field in general around that point onward for all of us is kneecapped, so there's little point in bringing attention to it.

Clearing my throat, the quiet, sparse chatter ceases and all their attentions turn to me, stood in front of the desks. Even this early, the Bureau is manned, and it won't be long before our contracted partners show up to peruse the selection of Quests we have for the day - including a standing series of requests set by ourselves to gather crafting materials at a slightly lower than market value, the difference paid in Experience.

"Alright, let's start the briefing," I segue into the broader context to get everybody up to speed, "...That's the long-and-short of the reason we're up early. I don't feel the need to have to explain how Miner's Nightmare works to you all, but it bears mentioning that the Reminiscence is based on a snapshot from some time in the past. The Cursed Lair we'll be entering has likely changed since then, and is overall of a higher level than that, but the core mechanics should be about the same."

"What's a 'Cursed Lair'?" our secondary healer, a shorter red-headed Firm woman, Karin Estoll, sticks her hand up abruptly, the force used enough to slightly off-balance her. From the total interactions of a single, brief introduction the other day, I take her to be a rather enthusiastic sort.

"A Lair is a generic classification used to describe dungeons that form naturally in the world, or more broadly, places where a specific type of monster gathers in higher concentrations, such as a bear's den," I explain, frowning, "To be honest, it's used as something of a catch-all term, so specifics vary wildly. The 'Cursed' prefix applies to places like Farmer's Secret, which is an 'Anguished Core'. I believe they're masses of Corruption, in simple terms, that are also dungeons. Details beyond that don't really matter right now, as it happens. According to the current plan, our job is to clear a path to as close as we can get to the Pool of Desire, so that Zomn Klaeriss can seal the area off. Though she is vastly more powerful than us, and well-equipped to blaze a trail through herself, it's for the best that she conserves as much of her strength for that finale, to be safe."

"I was gonna ask why she couldn't do it herself," Jade comments, "So, what are we getting paid for this?"

"Not much," a sigh passes my lips, "50 Stone Gold straight to Truthseekers. If, somehow, we are able to deal with the problem completely without essentially sweeping it under the rug like we are, I've been informed that we'll get substantially more."

"How much more?" Windy questions.

"I don't know," I shrug, unbothered, "I wasn't told, and I didn't ask the Zomn to elaborate because we lack the ability to do anything about it ourselves. Perhaps in the future, we can come back again, but that's then."

""Sucks,"" she and Jade complain in unison, then giggle after sharing a surprised look.

"Ah, it appears the shared brain cell got caught in between hosts," Grand smirks viciously, shoulders shaking with mirth.

"Cram it up your ass Henry," Jade flips him off, still smiling. He opens his mouth to say something, only to instantly stop and reflect inwardly on whatever it was he was about to say.

"...Anyway," I try to bring us back on topic when a dark-cloaked figure suddenly appears a few steps behind the group out of thin-air, with no sounds or special effects to mark their arrival. They're just there, as if they always have been. Caught-off guard, the party recoils away, reaching for weapons.

"Stop!" I command before things turn violent, "Don't attack it, or else."

"It?" Angelus shoots a questioning glance at me as the figure, heedless of the tension takes calm, gliding steps forward towards the desk as though they weren't there. It's vaguely humanoid, and bipedal, with no discernible gender, race and it's face is completely obscured beneath several layers of heavy cloth, but it's a creature I'm acquainted with...

"It's a Mysterious Stranger," I slowly step aside to let it pass, "Or if you want to look at it another way, our best client."

From within the folds of it's clothing, it retrieves a pair of thin, stone slates, and passes them over to Mr Lonsz. Then, after offering a simple nod, it vanishes just as abruptly as it arrived, while the clerks move into action, no longer idly listening in on our meeting.

"...You know, one of these days you're going to run out of things to exposit on and you'll just vanish in a puff of smoke like they did," Olrica jokes, putting her daggers back into their sheathes at her waist.

"Right?" Jade sighs, staring at me like she's given up on the world, "Well, get on with it then, I know're you're itching to explain."

"I just did?" I scratch at my cheek, "...You didn't think all these commissions came from nowhere, did you?"

Silence.

Rubbing the bridge of my nose in consternation, I clarify for them, "If we were going to rely on the locals alone, building the Employment Bureau instead of just using a similarly furnished room would be pointless. The most basic benefit of a real Employment Bureau is that Mysterious Strangers show up at least once a day to hand off some job requests we can pass on to others. More than that, I have no idea, just that attacking one is like snapping the neck of the golden goose."

"So...this isn't just a fancy lobby," Reit Alno, the Ranger, 'ohhs' at the revelation, "That makes way more sense."

"I had wondered what the deal with that guy was," Windy concurs, thoughtful, "Neat, I guess."

Meanwhile, Jade's eyes narrow, folding her arms, once again offering judgment for my apparent reticence.

I clear my throat, apologetic, "I was going to mention it again at the lecture the day after tomorrow just in case someone hadn't come across it by then. Most of us aren't around this early, after all, so..."

She drops it with a nudge from her best friend, "Fine. So, are we good to go now? Any more spooky interruptions?"

"As I was about to say before we went off-topic," I wrest back control of the conversation, "We'll be stopping by the Warehouse on the way to meet the Zomn, so we can get some of the potions I had ordered in out of storage. The Mana and Stamina potions can be used at your discretion as you need them, but if I give you a buff potion, you are not to use it unless I give the order, understood?

I pause to make sure everyone understands, "Compared to the cheap restoratives you're accustomed to they're a lot more pricey, so we'll save them for emergencies and return any unused potions to storage afterwards. Having said that, we'll need to make use of them before they expire anyway."

Karin sticks her hand up again, "Um, Potions have a BBE?"

"Most do," I nod, resigned to the familiar status quo of having to carry around several dozen different potions for different situations and having 30 Stone Gold in restoratives go bad because I forgot which ones I was supposed to be drinking first out of a pile of identical bottles, "Same as D.E.F. Potency will dilute, the contents can turn toxic and so on and so forth. So, if you happen to find an old potion when you're out exploring, think twice before drinking it if you don't want to give yourself the mother of all stomachaches."

"Studied a case where a guy swallowed expired cough medicine and got hospitalised with liver failure and bleeding throat," my pharmacologist second-in-command supplies with helpful morbidity, causing a few people's faces to turn green.

"Thanks, Win, very cool," Grand, one of the disturbed people in question, complains.

"Just saying maybe don't eat strange drugs you found in a back alley," Windy shrugs, "Consult a licensed professional before you try and self-medicate. Or whatever's closest for this game, I guess. Boss?"

"If you're curious about a mysterious vial of something or other, just bring it to a decently skilled Alchemist for authentication," I advise, filing away this tangent for later lectures, "An Appraiser can potentially tell you what an item can do, but unless they're also an Alchemist or some other relevant profession, it's unlikely they can tell you anything more than surface-level information, like whether it's safe to use. I'll add a section to the guild's guidebook I'm writing on this, now that it's been brought up."

"...Any more tangents or are we good?" Angelus, interested but still irritated, asks the group. We shake our heads.

Windy pumps her fist, "Then let's get this show on the road!"