Pausing on the steps of the merchant’s building, I tucked the daggers into the sheaths on my Heartrose Garb and then pulled on the dark brown leather armor set I bought to cover the rest of my body. Looking down over my freshly minted, mostly, newbie gear, I nodded. I wasn’t looking too bad coming out of the tutorial.

  Alright, time to find Lyvon and get this quest rolling.

  I made my way toward a figure that the Prelate had pointed out to me. It was difficult to pick out the man’s original appearance. Almost all of his features had either rotted away or been replaced by savage scars or long standing wounds. His leg had been replaced by a piece of wrought iron fence, its length vanishing into a plate armor boot.

  Lyvon eyed me with his single remaining eye as I approached. His voice sounded like he was gargling hot coals and rocks, “You new?”

  Regarding him with my best friendly smile, I nodded, “The Prelate says you might need help.”

  The featureless zombie coughed a ragged laugh and shook his head, “Good thing we always need help. Tevis is long gone toward the Fade, and it seems the last thing she remembers is me asking for help culling the ruins. I hope the Masters have mercy on her and she goes soon.”

  My brow furrowed and I asked, “What do you mean, ‘go’?”

  He gestured for me to advance out of the misting night rain and continued, “Are you sure that you wish to hear this? I am sure that the Masters didn’t tell you the details when they offered you this body, or this life.”

  Ignoring the ominous tone as set dressing for the game’s gothic lore I offered a half smile and nodded, “Tell me the details.”

  The ghoul continued with a shrug, “You are part of the 3rd Spiral Crusade. Everyone here is a spirit in a body given to them by the Masters. We were all sent to descend the Spiral and find a way to slow its spread.”

  He hefted something meaty and raw looking from a battered old plate and tore some of the meat free with his few remaining jagged black teeth as he spoke, “What they don’t tell you, is that the more time that passes the more of yourself you lose. I remember some parts of my life, but I’ve been here for hundreds of years. It’s all just faint glimmers now.”

  The zombie got a far away look in his eyes and he muttered, “My mate, our young…”

  Lyvon seemed to come back to himself and finally level his yellowed eye at me, “It happened to us,” he paused for effect, “and it will happen to you.”

  I tried to keep an unworried smile from my face and gave Catacomb an inward kudos for the lore and the atmosphere. After a moment I smiled, “I’ll take my chances,” pausing before adding, “for the cause.”

  Lyvon gathered himself and reclined in the shadows of the mausoleum, his yellow eye the only clear feature as he said, “One task always needs doing,” he pointed a rotting finger to the south and grumbled, “when our people lose themselves, we can’t destroy them as they always return to their existence after time. They gather in what remains of the City of the First Crusade. Strike them down to make the ruins safer and return to me with a token from their remains.”

  Lydia announced the changes to the quest:

  “Quest Evolving

  Purge Your Forebears!

  XP Gained: 55

  XP Reward: 175

  Remnants who have lost any semblance of their previous selves dwell in the Necropolis to the south! Gather ten index fingers from their remains and return them to Lyvon.”

  He gestured to a group of players at the edge of the square, “I gave those Remnants the same task. Speak with them and perhaps you can join them.”

  Without another word Lyvon sat on a crate and turned from me with what passed for a sullen but resigned expression.

  I shook my head at the strange encounter. It seemed as if the developers were going pretty hard with the ‘dark and foreboding’ vibe. Maybe this wasn’t the best choice of a job given my recent troubles. Forcing a smile, I trudged into the rain and crossed the park toward the group of other players.

  There were three of them.

  The most immediately imposing was a massive hulk of a male zombie. Somehow, despite the fact that the bodies on offer seemed to trend toward smaller males and larger females, he had managed an avatar easily two and a half meters in height. He was covered in thick black stitching over his dark purple skin. The flesh around his lower teeth and jaw was gone leaving onyx colored bone beneath. The flesh on the creature’s knuckles was completely gone. Despite obviously finishing the tutorial, he was still wearing the basic breeches and torn tunic he had awoken in.

  Behind him and leaning against a fence was a skeleton wearing a tattered cloak and basic leather armor like my own. They had a double bearded ax on one hip and a shield slung on their back. They stood with their arms folded over their chest regarding me with glowing red eyes.

  The third individual was also a skeleton. They were wearing a ragged and filthy black robe and a pair of leather sandals that weaved their way up their leg bones. There was a ring on each of the index fingers of their skeletal claws that were clutching a book with a stained wooden cover.

  The giant figure turned to me, raising one eyebrow as he hissed a question in an accent I didn’t recognize, “What’s up bro?”

  He held out a giant fist for a fist bump and I obliged, maintaining my smile as I gestured over my shoulder, “That NPC said you guys are headed off to thin a bunch of mobs in the city? Need a fourth?”

  The shield bearer spoke up in a strong husky feminine voice, “How did you change races already?”

  Seeing nothing to hide I said, “Side quest I ran into by going down in the tutorial rather than up.”

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  The robed skeleton cursed in a reedy masculine voice, “Fuck, I knew I should have done that.”

  The giant guy chuckled and thumped the skeleton on the chest, “You snooze you lose fucker.”

  The armored skeleton nodded, studying me a little longer before turning and walking toward the ruins, “I’m Lina,” she gestured at the giant, “that’s Pedro and,” she nodded in the direction of the robed guy, “Phil.”

  Offering a nod, I noted there was something familiar and unnerving about the three of them. Some distant memory tickling the edge of my thoughts. After a brief pause I said, “Name is Florin. Nice to meet you.”

  Pedro, the grinning giant, chuckled and said, “That’s an interesting name.”

  There was a note of what might be suspicion in his voice and the zombie shared a glance with his two allies before saying, “Anyway, come on bro. We are heading out.”

  Lina and Phil shared a glance after the giant turned and then followed after him. With a quick survey of the park around the vault exit, I followed the group down the muddy path amidst the ruined gray buildings.

  –

  “The City of the First Crusade

  When Remnants were first introduced to the Spiral some two hundred years ago this is where they settled. The Haithans of L’Chasse were initially welcoming to the strange undead. However, when the Crusade failed and the Lady Flame established her Immolated Order this place slowly became a dumping ground for the Remnants lost to the Fade.

  Questing: Level 1-5”

  Pedro snatched a leaping ghoul out of the air by its head and spun, heaving the body into a nearby wall with a crunch. The giant zombie was covered in cuts and wounds but ignored it with a throaty chuckle and bloody grin.

  Lina was laboring behind her shield nearby as a hulk that rivaled her giant zombie ally hammered its fists against her, howling unintelligible words.

  Phil stood back amidst a small field of sharp flame shaped gravestones chuckling dumbly as he thrust his hands toward the creatures. Where he inexpertly gestured hands of nearly invisible force slammed into charging undead monsters. He casually back slapped a female zombie in a robe into a mausoleum wall.

  After leaving the HUB park my three allies of convenience had quickly devolved into their own discussions with little interest in interacting with me. Accepting the snubbing with a shrug, I slipped away from the group and into stealth after a short distance keeping an eye out for the very ambush that would eventually fall upon us.

  My superior agility allowed me to scale ruined walls easily. I found myself onto what remained of a roofs of black slate tiles, leaping across spaces between structures. This really was a city once. There were buildings that looked like governmental centers, homes, and even barren patches of muddy soil with benches and dry decorative waterways that may have been parks. There were occasional signs that the ruins had been lived in once.

  What may have been a tavern with a broken and hanging sign that still had empty tables and a bar lined with blackened mugs.

  A wagon with the bones of some kind of beast still below the yokes that had held them in life. The inside was laden with broken crates and barrels, their contents long since rotted away.

  Occasional snippets of my allies' conversation sometimes reached me through the misting rain.

  “Anyway, she’s a fuckin slut,” Pedro grumbled.

  Phil answered with a hurried sycophantic voice tinged with a New England accent, “She’s missin out bro! Doesn’t she know who you are?”

  “Eh, she closed her DMs. Fuck her, bro.”

  Lina remained silent, except to offer the occasional affirmation.

  In the end it was my loud temporary allies who drew in our technical ambush. I say technical because it amounted to a herd of silent ghouls and skeletons charging through the muddy alleys and ruined buildings toward the sound of their constant loud banter. It wasn’t as if our enemies plotted to catch us unawares. They just answered our loud and insistent dinner bell.

  The creatures looked a lot like the still cognizant NPCs back in the square except… you could see the true difference immediately. The zombies and skeletons prowled like beasts, often dropping to three or fours to move about. The lights in their eyes were dim and lacking in the spark of intelligence I had seen in the other Remnants. They made little noise and moved in a pack like animals. There were no minds there, just anger and emptiness.

  To my allies’ credit they weren’t really surprised when the pack of monsters charged out of the mist.

  Tearing through the pack of mindless attackers wasn’t hard, but not because my allies worked together. Each of them chopped, bashed, or casted their way through different enemies ignoring any semblance of tactics.

  After years of playing these types of games for my job I could recognize these types of gamers easily. They were the vast majority of regular players. My streamer friends and I sometimes made jokes at their expense in the early years of my channel. They were here to bash their way through content and likely wouldn’t spend much time with the end game.

  We would joke that they weren’t ‘real’ gamers.

  The first time I sat down at a convention and met my fans, I chastised my younger self and those mean spirited jokes.

  Who was I to judge someone else’s experience?

  Watching these three, however…

  The way they acted screamed that they were used to pandering to an audience.

  Pedro crushing that mob into the wall with a cheesy grin…

  Phil laughing like a maniac as he immolated a stumbling ghoul…

  Lina was the most professional of them all but even she accompanied a large number of her strikes with unnecessary flourishes and comments.

  Even if they weren’t streaming, they quipped nonchalantly and approached the combat with casual disinterest, as if trying to impress. On top of all that… I had a sneaking suspicion that I knew these three. I really hoped I was wrong.

  As they acted as the center of the attack, weathering haphazard charges by bestial monsters I rushed in from hiding and tore into distracted enemies with my daggers leaving bleeding debuffs and making it easier for my allies to dispatch them.

  The brutal and violent exchange ended in less than a minute. The last of the creatures was destroyed when a cackling Pedro tore the head off of one of the mobs and threw it into a nearby alley. We all stood surveying the mutilated and still burning corpses in the misting rain.

  After a moment of silence Pedro exclaimed, “Woo! That’s the real shit, right?”

  Phil chuckled and nodded, moving to give the giant zombie brawler a high five and a chest bump, “Hell yeah, bro.”

  Lina started looting the bodies and I helped her. The work of gathering quest items was a bit more grisly in this game than in EO. Instead of just gathering six boar livers from the monster’s inventory and dropping it into your own, you had to do the grisly bloody work with your own hands.

  As I moved to join her she gave Pedro and Phil a disgusted look, somehow conveyed with her fleshless features, and used a blade to hack off the index fingers of the creatures.

  I tore off my first finger with a grimace as I asked, “How many you reckon?”

  She sighed and shook her head, “There were fifteen in that group. They all appear to have their fingers which means we have the quest items for three of us.”

  Pedro broke into our conversation grinning broadly as he spread his hands, “Whoa, guess that means we are out right? Done and done!”

  Eyeing him with a raised eyebrow I glanced at the other two. Phil chuckled and gave me an aggressive nod.

  Lina sighed and shook her head as she said, “Pedro, do we really want to go around pissing off other testers?”

  Pedro gave her a leering smile and said in a voice laced with warning, “Why don’t you mind your fucking business Lestra? Men are talking.”

  Lina gave him a long look and then bowed her head.

  “Fuck, I knew it,” I thought to myself.

  Grimacing, I stood and surveyed the three of them, placing faces with the familiar personalities. The biggest streamer amidst this motley group was the giant. Glaring up into Pedro’s leering face defiantly I squared my shoulders.