Chapter 3: (002) A Normal Beginning With Normal Friends
Electa wasn't a new player to the MMORPG scene. She wasn't even really a season player. She had been playing these kinds of games since she was 13. The standard age a kid could find mmos with servers for minors.
Of course she played games before that but that was really when she got in the field of gaming.
She was a veteran's veteran. Not because she was old.... well, there was that. She was old. But because she was someone who had been there so long she had become almost like a den mother to other players.
She wasn't a ranker. She wasn't often seen on the PvP stage so she didn't exactly have the chance to climb to the top. Fighting was fine but it wasn't why she played games. She wasn't usually the wealthiest or a hoarder of rare things like some of her team mates.
She did, however, seem to dig up every secret available within a game. If you had problems with a hidden quest, ask Electra, she'll know.
How this started, well, if she had to nail a moment it would be a console game she found a bug in. So she started poking around other games to see if they too had bugs and one thing led to another and soon she was beta testing games and finding hidden quests and soon became known as the "Blood Hound" amongst her peers.
That was her job as a teen, beta testing. It was a strange job but it worked well for her. When she got bust with university and married and then had kids she didn't have time for games much beyond casual playing. Didn't stop her from sniffing out the secrets of whatever she played.
When her kids were independent enough and she had more time on hand she began playing VRMMORPGs again. She continued using her old username for casual games and met a few players she recognized and a surprising amount who recognized her. She ended up being invited to a number of guilds but ended up choosing one a real life friend of her's was in.
For a while she was part of a strong guild. Influential enough to be notable by casual players but not one that was most prominent. As games were taken down and replaced their guild would move with the tides. Changing games would take a toll on their numbers until it was just a smattering of the original group. That handful would become some of her life long friends.
It became a theme for them to bond over growing children, the marriage of aforementioned children, and the arrival of grandchildren.
That tight knit group became really well known when they hit their collective middle age and all their kids left the nest. It was joked that it was a "mid-life crisis" of sorts to be playing so much in the virtual world.
They played long and hard (with decent bedtimes and increasing nap breaks). This was before the technology for gaming allowed the sleeping or comatose to use it. When you could play while sleeping it was a controversial thing, whether or not you would be getting proper rest and all that jazz. There were some hiccups along the way but eventually it was successful.
It was particularly successful for those needing to go into medically induced comas. It kept the patients from falling too far behind current events and keep strong relationships going. They could even hold jobs to pay for their body's medical expenses.
With such a strong connection between the real world and the digital world, there was a boom in digital jobs. Very often though priority would be given to the bed or house bound people.
The truly brain dead wouldn't be able to connect with the devices and it was always a sad thing to hear that little bit of hope be dashed in a family's eyes.
Really, the only reason she knew about it was because one of her oldest friends had been in a coma since they were fifteen. Considering Corin is 86 now, there wasn't much of a world outside of the virtual one for them. They had strange ideas on life. Not strange because they were wrong or anything but more like priorities were skewed to a less physical level. Talking to them was enlightening.
The rest of her party, because that's really all that was left of her friends now, were still part of the guild they helped found but they were no longer neck deep in management. They were, quite literally, the elders of their virtual clan.
Her party consisted of herself as "Electra" as the long range fighter; the only male of the group Clyde as "Franklin's Fiery Refried Beans" as the healer and defense... don't ask about the name, everyone calls him Bean anyway; Rosalyn as "Ilyana" the tank of the group, and Corin as "Mrivu" as close range fighter.
There had been other of course but retirement and death have been slowly chipping away their group.
For about a month, after they had met up in capital to hash out a game plan, they individually began grinding skills and getting past the newbie quests. It also helped them get information at a larger scale before they decided which bigger quests they wanted to take on.
Finally though, they were back together to get those sweet sweet rewards of the serious quests.
"I recognize that pasty face! Electra! Over here!" a feminine voice called over the din of the crowd she was in.
Hopping a bit to see over the heads of a gaggle of beastmen, she spotted her group by a fruit stand. The shortest was waving like a retro inflatable car advertisement. Ilyana.
"See you shorty!" She called back with a grin as she jogged over to her group.
"Hey Mrivu, Ilyana, it's been a while eh, where's Bean?" she asked, looking around.
Mrivu nodded down the street, "buying some last minute supplies, wants to get a few more stones and max out dried fruits and hardtack."
"So we're headed West?"
Ilyana nodded excitedly before pausing, "hold on, gotta go pick up that waterskin."
Mrivu smirked, "wondered how long it'd take for you to remember, speaking of upgrades, don't forget to check on the progress of those boots. You can have it mailed to a village on our route."
"Mrivu always has the best ideas!" Ilyana chirped and bounded away to do the the things she forgot, as she always seemed to do.
"She'd lose her head if it wasn't attached," Electra remarked, watching the bubbly dwarf weave in and out of the ground.
Mrivu snorted, "Truer words have never been spoken..."
They stood in comfortable silence for a while, enjoying the silence before the storm of chaos their missing teammates will bring.
Mrivu could keep up better then Electra could when Ilyana and Bean got going. But they were also pretty good at generally being calm. They were who Electra would bring on stealth missions.
"Where are we headed after this?" Electra asked.
"We were waiting for you to decide, but our options are a few nearby cafés, a parlor that supposedly has some really good sweets and Bean's flat is nearby but..."
"Ah, ha, I don't think... no..."
"Yeah."
"...yeah."
"..."
"..."
The silence stretched, both thinking about the past trauma of the Night in Bean's Hell.
"Best not to think about mistakes long passed," Mrivu finally declared, and began redoing their hair.
Electra nodded and just watched deft fingers rebraid the locks and twist them into simple (for them) updo. Revealing sharp ears.
"Wait, what race did you choose?" She asked, "thought you were like a wood sprite or something."
"The eyes throw you?" They smirked and winked a catlike eye, "Chose a fae, liked the natural androgyny and gangly-ness. Didn't come with any surpises like your's did."
"Haha," she rolled her eyes and jabbed them in the ribs.
Surprise indeed, Dökkálfar had tails. When she felt something like an arm coming off her butt she had screamed then proceeded to bite clean through her tongue with over large incisors. Being in the middle of a bunch of other newbies was the icing on top of the embarrassment cake. She did know about the teeth before hand, having had the avatar open its mouth to make sure the tongue was still there. For the record, it was, but it was purple and was narrower and longer like a snake's without a split. Paired with goat like eyes and vampire like teeth... it was...
In contrast, Mrivu's fae looked simple enough. Long fine hair, elf like ears, the slit green eyes, and slightly taller stature. Their face and body was, as they mentioned, androgynous.
Ilyana was a classic dwarf. Short and stout, strong enough to break a man in half if she slapped their back, bright red hair that Ilyana had when she was younger, and an elaborate beard. Ilyana actually really liked her beard and seemed to find great pride in if the hair cuffs and crazy braids were any indication. She and Mrivu would do each other's hair and have a generally grand old time while Bean and herself would watch on the sidelines. Electra herself, in both reality and virtuality, was known to be hopeless with hair. Hence, ponytail.
Bean toward over his party at a whopping 215.8 centimeters. Add in the beastman Lizard Folk and you got a really tall guy. Red and black scales, near black eyes, a mouth full of meat shredding teeth and bulky enough that he had to shimmy through doors in human settlements. He looked terrifying, but the second he started talking you'd get that he was about as threatening as a golden retriever puppy. The man would cry if he saw newborn kittens. He was a softie. He also was a really great cook, but... issue was that he liked experimenting. Enough said.
Those were her teammates, and they were finally going to be going on a real quest together again.
"So, we settled on the West. Take it we're headed for the dragons then?"
"Yup, pretty standard by the sounds of it. Just going to have to make sure to drop off anything we get along the way in the bank."
"It sounds like there's going to be a server campaign in that area," she mentioned, "suppose quite a few people are going to take up this quest before and during it."
"Competition?"
"Hopefully not, seems like a standard enough quest. Dungeon resets for each party and resources needed are basic enough that it's easy to get your hands on it."
"Easy," they tied off their hair with a flourish.
"Yeah, oh look there's the chaotic duo," she said, waving back to Ilyana and Bean who looked comically large in comparison.
Mrivu nudged her arm, "brace yourself, skipper, we have a journey ahead with a storm accompanying us."
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