QUILL

Stunned and dejected by the awful turn of events, Quill sat quietly in his seat, mulling things over while the players around him shouted and cried, fought and swore. 

What now? Was he really going to go out and play this game? If this was a super bad joke, maybe he should just sit around and wait for a punchline to appear? It didn’t feel like a joke, though. It felt like selfish people out for revenge. It wasn’t the first time he’d been screwed over.

Before going to Japan, Quill had been involved in soccer leagues in his home city. He’d gotten to know a guy named…well, Quill now only referred to him only as Turd. Turd was a very active, outgoing, personable guy. He seemed to get along with everyone, and Quill had built what he’d thought was a close friendship with him. So when Turd had decided to start a new local co-ed sports league, Quill had offered to help out. And because the new venture wouldn’t make money for a while, he’d deferred payment for his services until later. 

For a year, the two of them had gotten along great, and become close friends. The league had grown. It brought in money. Quill hadn’t thought to question things for a long time, but then he noticed Turd spending a ton of money on himself: eating out multiple times a week, consuming his weight in alcohol, and buying expensive things for his kids. This made Quill feel weird. If he was spending all this cash, why wasn’t he paying Quill back for all his time and effort? So he’d gone to Turd and brought it up and even gone so far as to suggest they become official partners. 

Turd hadn’t liked that. Not one bit. At the suggestion of partnership, he’d gone cold and said, “Don’t threaten me.”

His sudden change in attitude and the odd response had stunned Quill. Threaten? What? How could partnership be threatening?

The conversation had gone downhill from there. Turd had tried to entice Quill to keep working as a helper only, offering scraps of payment every now and then, but less than Quill was worth. Turd had refused to share his financials and refused to explain how he could spend so much money on other things. So many obvious lies came out, and it was such a total change in behaviour. The guy hadn’t acted like a friend at all, only in self-interest. It had felt like Quill was seeing his true nature for the first time, and he’d been shocked at how duped he’d been that year.

The next day, Quill had logged onto social media and found the guy advertising to replace Quill in the organization. When confronted about it, Turd had denied everything, yet his lies were clear. More trust was lost. 

Thing is, at the very beginning of all of this, Turd had asked Quill to start a joint bank account with him for the new soccer league. Something about his personal tax situation that he wouldn’t explain clearly. At the time, Quill had gone along with it to prove his friendship. Now that all trust had been broken, Quill went to the bank and checked the account, something he’d left entirely in Turd’s hands up to that point. 

Thousands of dollars sat in the account. Not enough to pay Quill for what he was owed, but a fair chunk. So Quill had taken it. All of it. And closed the account. And then sent Turd an official invoice for what was still owed.

And Turd’s personality changed once again. Earlier, he’d gone from friend to wary manipulator. Now he became outright hostile. He’d sent horribly abusive emails to Quill filled with statements designed to hurt him and undermine his confidence. Then Turd had gone around spreading lies across multiple soccer leagues, destroying Quill’s reputation and ruining friendships and team relationships. Turd had done everything he could to hurt Quill for having the audacity to stand up for himself. Because it had gotten in the way of Turd’s self-interest. 

These NOVisionWizard CEOs were the same. The player base and employees had stood up for themselves and demanded better. But selfish people hate it when you refuse to give them what they want. They hate it when you refuse to be manipulated for profit anymore. They lash out. They try to destroy you. They poison the community against you, so you won’t spread the truth to them and stop the selfish person from manipulating others. They’re evil. 

So Quill sat in the coliseum and felt like the victim of yet another selfish revenge plot. Almost every time something sucks in life, selfish people are at the root of it. Quill snorted at the absurdity. Humans: we’re our own worst enemy. 

Eventually, most people drifted out of the stadium and into the city. As the crowd thinned, Quill eventually stood up. He looked around, then down at himself. Still naked. He should probably do something about that. After living in Asia for years and taking a lot of public baths where everyone was nude, he wasn’t nearly as bothered by public nudity as he had been before going to Japan. Still, probably best to observe the social niceties. 

He’d been sitting fairly high up in the stands. Behind him, on the rim of the stadium, were the flagpoles he’d noticed earlier. More to the point, there were flags, and he could use one to cover himself up. 

Enduring several jeers and laughs from players making their way past, he scaled a flagpole and tore off a flag. It was mostly red and turned out to have a symbol he didn’t recognize. Folding the large flag in two, he wrapped it around his waist like a towel. The fabric was very thin, but at least his manhood was appropriately hidden from view. 

Following the others, he, too, filtered into the streets outside the stadium. With no goal in mind, he aimlessly wandered, taking in the scenery. It continued to awe him. The attention to detail was phenomenal. He now understood the rage over full-dive gaming and why beta testers for Golden Impact had been so excited. The surroundings looked like some old German or Swiss city. It felt real.

Strolling down streets at random, he found himself entering a vast plaza on the edge of town. Two sides of the plaza were lined with large buildings. The other two sides were enclosed by towering city walls of curved gray stone, with a tall gate in the middle. The portcullis was up, and there were a couple of players looking through the gate at the open world beyond. No one seemed brave enough to leave the city quite yet, though. 

The plaza was busy, and a lot of players mulled around, talking and thinking, and for good reason. 

In the center of the plaza stood two circular portals: one fiery orange and one swirling blue. Above each was a name. For orange Horde: Ogrim’idgar^⁠1. For blue Alliance: Stormstadt.^⁠2 Above both portals, in large, glowing purple letters, was the phrase, Choose Your Faction. 

Throughout the history of World of Fantasy’s many iterations, the Horde’s culture had traditionally been characterized by supremacy through competition, with warriors fighting it out amongst each other and their enemies so that the weakest were forced to grow or die and the strongest became the most powerful and ruled. It was about individuality.

The Alliance’s culture was more democratic and valued cooperation above all, believing that people achieved greater success by raising both themselves and each other up and making up for each other’s weaknesses. It was about teamwork.

Players would be split into two camps. He could readily enough guess that he was in the city of Stormstadt and that the orange portal would take him to the other player city, Ogrim’idgar. He watched as a couple of people emerged from the blue portal into Stormstadt. However, a fair number of players from this side were streaming into the orange portal. And a look around told him why. 

The plaza was ringed with impressive statues, each about ten meters tall. On the Alliance side, they were of white marble with blue veins, the primary colours for that faction. On the Horde side, they were black marble with orange veins. Each statue represented a player class, and they were animated. Closest to Quill, a male Alliance fighter in studded mail swung his sword and then pulled back, and as he did, he transformed into a female fighter who made her own lunge with a two-handed claymore. 

A quick glance at the circle of statues revealed a simple truth: The Alliance’s classes were kind of classic and simplistic, and the Horde’s classes were way cooler. It seemed likely that many of their classes would be superior in PvP. Probably had open-world advantages, too.

The Alliance classes included alchemical fighter, paladin, cleric, tattooed ranger, druid, elemental mage, monk, rogue, and artist.

The Horde classes included berserker, death knight, blood priest, demonic hunter, shifter, warlock, thief-assassin, and eldritch terror (necromancer).   

Quill arched a brow. Had the devs created a disparity between factions for some reason? If so, given the death game they were in, it wouldn’t be a good reason. Still, he grew serious and started giving real thought to his future in the game. 

Choosing a faction and your eventual class would be one of the first and most important decisions of the game. Whichever role you chose to play would determine your abilities, who you played with, and how you advanced. If people were really trapped in here and needed to clear the game to get out, then players likely only got one shot at this decision. So Quill should probably look around and take his time about choosing.

He strolled along the statues, reading the info cards hovering at the foot of each. To his dismay, it seemed like some of the classes were still unfinished. 

For the Alliance:

Alchemical Fighter - The tough, hard-hitting core of any offence, fighters are experts in many melee weapons, using unique potions to grant themselves temporary abilities. Abilities include: dual wield, battle potion creation, elemental infusion for weapons, enemy specialization, and more. 

Paladin - Those who protect; paladins are a noble class of those who live to serve, bringing light to a world too often in shadows. Abilities include: spells of protection, counter damage (placeholder text)

Cleric - Spell casters of divine magic, clerics weave unparalleled healing and cleansing spells. Abilities include: healing, AoE healing, damage vs undead, resist disease, cleanse curse, and more.

Tattooed Ranger - Ranged attackers that rain death from the skies, rangers cover their bodies in intricate tattoos with mystical powers that can give their arrows newfound effects. Abilities include: tattooing, elemental infusion for arrows, enemy specialization, enhanced travel speed, and more. 

Druid - Bonded to the goddess of nature, druids resonate with plants and animals of the wild and wield primal magics. Abilities include: healing over time, the ability to shift into other humanoid forms (bee [flight], dryad [magical], (placeholder text)), and more.

Elemental Mage - Mastery of the magical arts flows through their dextrous fingers, giving them the ability to shape the world around them or to bring about unparalleled destructive force, according to their element. Abilities include: elemental specialization, spellcasting, teleportation, and more.

Monk - Trained as heroic warriors from a young age, monks fight with both fists and hearts, with a generosity that often earns them the gratitude of the populace. Abilities include: elemental specialization, donation, skin hardening, stamina regeneration, and more. 

Rogue - Gamblers, daredevils, swashbucklers, and knaves, rogues walk the shadows as often as the light, often morally ambiguous in their ways. They have access to both typical blades and unique weapons they manufacture themselves like throwing cards, hand cannons, bombs, traps, and poisons. Abilities include: roguish crafting, disguise, pickpocket, steal, backstab, and more.

Artist - Mysterious and legendary, their unique skills can bring victory in all sorts of surprising ways. Abilities include: (placeholder text)

Quill surmised that the fighter would be capable of damage and tanking, expert at neither. The paladin would tank with some self sustain or maybe help allies. The cleric would be a dedicated healer. The ranger would be pure ranged damage. The druid…maybe their role would depend on their form, although who knew what all those forms were. The elemental mage would be great for damage and probably had really useful utility spells, like that teleport. 

The monk might be another mix of tanking and damage, like fighters. The rogue would be a great utility class and PvP type. The artist was a total mystery. It didn’t sound like a combat class at all. Maybe some kind of bard with buffing abilities? Or was it a non-combat class of some kind? A type of supporter?

He continued to the other side of the plaza.

For the Horde:

Berserker - Fierce fighters with unrivalled brute force and tenacity, they wield massive two-handed weapons, forgoing armour and shields. They fly into rages and sacrifice their own health in order to dramatically enhance their attributes and damage. Abilities include: extra attacks, enhanced critical damage, raised max HP, rapid health regeneration, elemental burst, and more. 

Death Knight - With the ability to become immortal just shy of death, they can drain the very life of their foes in order to restore themselves. Capable of wearing the heaviest armour, they shrug off vast amounts of damage and hit back, hard. Abilities include: life drain, temporary immortality, elemental infusion for weapons, elemental resistance, and more. 

Blood Priest - Blood priests specialize in causing damage over time with poisons and diseases. They can sacrifice others to provide bursts of healing to allies and are often followed by a stable of mind-controlled thralls for just this purpose. Abilities include: offensive elemental spellcasting with damage over time, sacrificial healing, and more. 

Demonic Hunter - These wild killers have the unique ability to switch between ranged and melee attacks in an instant and can infuse both themselves and their tools with demonic energy. Their unique weapon is the double-glaive, capable of being thrown and returning or wielded in hand. Abilities include: unique double-glaive use, paralyze, enhanced attack speed, magical vision, unique demonic element, and more. 

Shifter - Animalistic warriors, shifters regain health by swiftly devouring their enemies on the battlefield and can assume a variety of forms for any occasion. Abilities include: battlefield sustenance, night vision, shapeshifter (were-wolf [speed], were-bear [defence], were-tiger [strength], were-tentaculous [tentacles and poisonous], were-griffon [flight]), and more.

Warlock - Warlocks make dark pacts with abyssal entities, which grant exotic abilities, such as bonding followers to their side. They can specialize in two different magical elements at the same time to create their own elemental reactions. Abilities include: elemental specialization (2), demonic pact (slavering abomination [tank]; succubus/incubus [life stealer]), and more.

Thief-Assassin - Thieves and assassins both, though specializing in one, these deadly foes rule the night and leap from the shadows at the backs of their enemies, slaying in a single, unstoppable strike. Filching gold is as easy as a slip of the fingers. You can even steal your opponent’s weapon right out of their hands. Abilities include: backstab, stealth, steal, steal weapon, lock pick, shadow teleport, and more.

Eldritch Terror - With creepy spells, these necromancers can command hordes of undead and even bring downed allies and enemies back to life to fight at their side. Abilities include: undead resurrection, command undead, anti-elemental curse, temporary immortality, graveyard of decay, bone goliath, and more. 

Hmm. Berserker would likely be all damage, probably physical damage outside of that burst. Maybe good against groups of low-level enemies? That death knight would be pure tank, perfect for boss fights and raids. The blood priest was weird. It probably wouldn’t do much healing, especially if it ran out of thralls. Demonic hunters sounded like wicked PvP types, just deadly in an arena, or for doing high-damage in PvE. Shifters, like druids, would be dependent on their forms. At least those were listed here and it seemed like they had amazing versatility. Were-tentaculous was new. Probably hentai anime inspired. 

Warlocks were a classic class but that ability to dual-wield elements? There must be something to that. Thief-assassin, depending on specialization, was probably going to get rich easily or cause massive damage bursts. Assassins had always been top of the PvP classes. Eldritch Terror was new to Quill. They seemed to be a damage class. Probably a lot of fun if you liked bones and didn’t mind bringing friends back to life so you could throw them at your enemies. 

So many great choices. Quill felt overwhelmed. How could he choose? Especially when his life would be riding on this decision.