When I came to, I was laying on a low-quality bed in an unfamiliar room. As I got up I felt a couple of inconsistencies with my body and looking at my hands confirmed it. Different from my normally extremely pale skin that stemmed from my part-time job as a late-night bartender and my gaming addiction, my arms were slightly tanned and looked significantly stronger. After getting up and inspecting the rest of my body and the clothes I was wearing, which consisted of a short-sleeve shirt and pants that I had no memory of owning, I was forced to face reality.
This was what my character looked like the last time I logged out of Avalon. Sighing loudly at the ridiculousness of it all I looked around the room and found my characters, or rather, my gear sitting against a wall. Picking up the light leather armor, I found that I was able to put it on quite easily, after that I looked at my ‘weapon’ leaning against the wall. A two-meter long pitch-black pole that had a large curved blade sticking out of one side, a scythe. A couple of friends I met near the beginning of the beta thought it was weird when I came walking out of the forest with it one day but after getting used to the fighting style it worked really well.
After releasing another long sigh at the absurdity of both the situation and the scythe in front of me after seeing it in person I picked it up along with a sturdy pack that held various things, mainly a map, and left the room… after spending a minute or two figuring out how to actually carry the scythe without hitting anything. Being taller than me and having nothing to strap it to my back I ended up setting it over my shoulder. As I remembered the layout of the inn I logged out in and compared it to the hallway it served to reinforce the fact that this was probably Humanity’s Edge.
Walking down the stairs to the entrance and handing the room key to the old man sitting behind the counter I asked him a couple of questions about where we were saying my head was a little fuzzy. Despite giving me a strange look he answered them all politely. I handed him a tip as thanks, then remembering that a couple of friends liked to log out here too so I let him know he shouldn’t be surprised if more people ask him similar questions. I left while thinking about what the innkeeper had told me.
Stepping outside, everything looked just like it did in Avalon, only more real. Although this probably was Avalon, so I suppose that only made sense. Having played for an absurd amount of time in the last three weeks I recalled that there was a café not far from the inn I had stayed at.
Walking down the street, here and there were people freaking out, panicking, or just outright sobbing. Most likely they were people similar to me who woke up in Avalon after downloading that update. I guess the only reason I wasn’t in a similar state was that I was used to suddenly moving somewhere else, that, or I was just in really strong denial.
Finding the café exactly where I remembered it basically solidified that this was in fact, Avalon. Sitting down at one of the outdoor tables, I called over a waitress and ordered a light breakfast. I wanted to order some coffee but the waitress just looked at me strangely when I asked for some. It took me a few seconds to realize that getting something like coffee while the entire human world consisted of this sliver of a city was a fool’s errand. This led to a thought of why a café existed in a place like this in the first place. A few minutes later my food arrived, interrupting my thoughts about how no matter what's going on in the world, somebody’s going to try and profit.
My breakfast consisted of eggs, what looked to be bacon, and some type of fruit juice that tastes similar to a watered-down orange juice. Whether these were from animals I was familiar with remained to be seen. I never really looked into what kind of livestock the game had if there was any in the game itself, to begin with. Tasted good though.
Now with food in my stomach and some level of acceptance that I was actually here in Avalon, I pulled out some paper and a pencil I got from a general goods store and began to organize what I knew about Avalon from the game, and what the old innkeeper told me. First I listed off the general world details the developers told us when we first started.
- The world was around the same size as earth
- A year was roughly 365 days
- There were 4 seasons with spring being significantly longer and summer being shorter but much hotter
- There was only 1 sun, but there were 2 moons, with one moon being significantly smaller and it orbited the other… a moon’s moon?
- The smaller moon periodically changed color
When asked why so much was similar to Earth, the devs just said ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. Which everyone just took to mean they were too lazy to make it different. Continuing on, there was the stuff that people found out through playing the game.
- An unknown amount of time ago humanity fought against something, considering what now populated about 80% of the city, most likely monsters, and lost, badly.
- Humanity originally didn’t just mean humans. Elves, dwarves, and other races used to live together but they pretty much disappeared when everything went to shit. Mostly relegated to stories and myths at this point.
- Avalon wasn’t the name of the world or the continent, it was the name of the entire city in its heyday, no one could figure out the name of the world or even the continent.
- A year is broken up into 12 months (go figure), but instead of each month having a name they are based on the seasons, with the start of the year beginning with winter
- The first 4 months are winter, followed by 4 months of spring, 2 of summer, and ending the year with 2 months of fall
After that were the last couple things the innkeeper told me. It was mostly things I already knew, but hey, when you aren’t entirely sure where you are, and may or may not be in an entirely different world, it helps to double-check.
- Today was the 17th of the 3rd month of Spring
- This was, in fact, Humanity’s Edge
- Everything is kinda fucked outside the southeast wall going into the rest of the ‘city proper’
With everything written out like that, it really drove home that I somewhere completely different...again.
