Call of Carrethen
Book 1 of the Wellspring Chronicles
Stephen Roark
Contents
Foreword
1. My First Death
2. Stoneburg
3. No GM Event
4. The Ripper
5. Marked for Death
6. The Bandit Tower
7. Ambush
8. Capture
9. Cavey
10. Upgrade Time
11. Reality Check
12. Bonecrusher
13. Sinful
14. Vayde
15. Jungle Sickness
16. Cave Dungeon
17. The Executioner
18. Flame Strike
19. A New Plan
20. The First Portal
21. Mr. Glorious
22. A Bold Move
23. The Witching Woods
24. The Skeletal Horde
25. The Necromancer
26. Charred Bone
27. Daric
28. A Deadly Choice
29. The Right Thing
30. A New Destination
31. The Plains of Arana
32. The Sound of Danger
33. The Stone Giant
34. Leap of Faith
35. Portal Tie
36. Preperations
37. Kattenschind
39. Dangerous Business
40. The Crimson Catacombs
41. The Ilizak Horde
42. The Pit
43. Resolve
44. Loss
45. The Mercenaries
46. God’s Return
47. Punishment
48. The Ripper’s Challenge
49. Dying Changes Everything
50. The Solo Grind
51. The Secret Tunnel
52. The Sparkling Arlan Stone
53. Bleed
54. Superior Numbers
55. Stoneburg Lost
56. An unlikely Ally
57. No More Pulling Punches
58. The Plaguelands
59. Witch’s Blood
60. Fort Keth
61. Spotted
62. A Bitter Reunion
63. Out of the Frying Pan
64. Alice the Feared
65. Revelation
66. A Big Adjustment
67. Don’t Tell The Others
68. A Big Risk
69. The Goddess of Binding
70. Sacrificial Stone of Binding
71. What Now?
72. New Possibilities
73. Old Enemies
74. Out of Options
Chapter 75
76. Last Resort
77. Countdown to Death
78. Jane
79. Deicide
80. Lifelines
81. A Mysterious Message
82. Wintermute
83. Recalibration
About the Author
Foreword
This tale was a lifetime in the making. Countless hours spent in fantastical worlds going on quests and forging friendships. From Kelethin to Cragstone to Ironforge and all the places in between. As a rogue, an archer, a bard, a paladin a death knight, everything I experienced left a permanent mark on me. I loved every moment of writing this story, and I hope you all love reading it.
1
My First Death
“Let the Force flow through you,” Darien said calmly as I missed another sword strike at the hissing Horngrin Ravager in front of me. I swung out again, stabbing my blade forward at the green monster’s chest—or at least that’s where I was aiming.
The horned creature barely had to move to avoid my flimsy attack, then struck back with its spiked mace, hitting me right in the forehead. The blow stunned me, temporarily freezing my body, and chipped away another enormous chunk of my precious health.
My eyes flicked to my HP bar, which sat in the lower right hand corner of my peripheral vision, and I saw it was dangerously low, almost at critical, which was anything below 10 percent. Once I reached that, every blow that hit me would have a chance to deal extra damage, and that would not be good.
The Horngrin was just another one of the many horned, half-man beasts Darien and I had been fighting. Their eyes were wide and menacing, and their skin was a sickly, mold-like color that looked like it might burst over their sinewy muscles. For the most part, they flailed wildly without much strategy, but unlike Darien, I was still getting the hang of the mechanics of the game.
Darien, or D for short, had been my best online friend for about two years now. We’d met in a pretty bad MMO, Medieval Magic Online, which boasted a procedurally generated world and an intricate magic system but had turned out to be nothing more than a bland open continent with convoluted skill trees.
Whether it was being friends with one of the developers, figuring out glitches and exploits, or simply getting in early with the game during Alpha or Beta, D was always one step ahead of me, and the same thing applied to our latest adventure.
The Call of Carrethen.
The world’s first fully immersive, virtual reality MMORPG, made possible with the Wellspring interface, a device that allowed a person’s entire consciousness to be projected from their physical body into an in-game body that they could control.
When it had first been announced, none of us believed it. Actual, virtual reality? No way! But then more and more reports started coming out and we soon learned that this was the real deal.
We’d all expected some flimsy, cumbersome helmet interface like those old “virtual reality” headsets that were basically just a screen hanging in front of your eyes, or something with electrodes like an EEG. But what we got was something completely different.
The Wellspring interface was a simple glowing sphere about the size of a grapefruit, with a single wire that wrapped gently around your wrist—sort of like that thing from Inception that you really never knew how it worked, but it did, and that’s all that mattered. D had, of course, made it into the Closed Beta and been playing for weeks, sending me messages about just how incredible it was. I, on the other hand, had to wait until the release date like everybody else.
I’d entered a prerelease contest to win a Wellspring device and a copy of the game. I never thought I’d win. I’d never won anything in my whole life, but one day my mom had called out that a package had arrived for me. When I saw what it was, I couldn’t believe it.
I tore open the cardboard box to discover a small case of white metal with nothing but the Wellspring logo and a single latch on one side. It had been made with obvious care and precision, and my heart started to race as I looked at it.
Is this really happening? I’d thought as the latch clicked and I pulled the case open.
Inside, was a Wellspring device, sandwiched between two layers of egg crate foam, with a small card sitting on top of it: Congratulations on being the winner of the Wellspring Launch Contest! We hope you enjoy your journeys.
I snapped a picture of it on my phone and messaged it to D and then got to work setting it up. It was simple enough. A simple power cord and a small lead with a bracelet that slipped around your wrist. I lay down on my bed, slipped the bracelet on, thumbed the activation button on the sphere and closed my eyes.
The sound of rushing water filled my ears as I found myself hurtling through a twisting purple-blue portal that swirled around me like an enormous electrical coil. Then, the game world began to come into view as pieces of the portal peeled away. My feet hit the ground, and I found myself in another world.
Th
e world of Carrethen.
“You really going to let this thing kill you, Jack?” D shouted as I missed a block and the Horngrin’s mace struck me in the ribs. “He’s only level 5.”
“I’m only level 2!” I shouted back indignantly as I activated Broad Strike. It was one of my sword abilities that could be activated every 6 seconds and dealt an additional 15 percent damage to a normal blow. This time, it actually connected, but the Horngrin’s health was well past half. I wasn’t going to win this fight unless D stepped into save me.
D was well ahead of me, like always, and was already level 7. He’d been helping me level, stepping in to finish off a monster when it looked like it was about to get the best of me, but that meant I only got a fraction of the experience that I would have gotten if I’d dealt all the damage myself.
“I’m going to die!” I shouted.
“It happens.” D chuckled.
“Is it weird?”
“What, dying?” he asked.
“Yeah!” I shouted back, lashing out with my sword to block the Horngrin’s mace. I stabbed back and actually landed a blow. The Horngrin leapt back squealing. It was incredible how real everything felt.
An exciting game could always give you a nice shot of adrenaline, get your heart racing and your blood pressure up, but actually being in a game like this was a whole different experience. I felt like Neo in The Matrix when he’s first fighting Morpheus.
“It’s not as weird as you’d think.” D chuckled as the Horngrin prepared its next attack. “You’ll see.”
The Horngrin leapt towards me, its mace held high above its head as it hurtled through the air. I brought my sword up in a desperate attempt to block the blow, but I wasn’t used to the game yet and I was too slow.
The mace easily knocked my sword aside and hit me right in the chest. The attack registered as a critical hit and I watched as the remaining sliver of my HP drained away. Before I could react, the entire world went white.
2
Stoneburg
Wooosh!
I was back in portal space, hurtling through the purple-blue coil as the sound of rushing water filled my ears.
There had been talk about death in a virtual world, and how that would affect people, especially young gamers. But the developers assured us all there was no risk of developing PTSD or any other psychological disorders from dying in the game world. And I could finally see why.
That’s it? I thought, feeling myself relax. That wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be!
It really was just like logging into the game for the first time. The portal peeled away, and I found myself back at the Bindstone on the hill above Stoneburg.
Bindstones were large glowing blue crystals, hovering above a small circular platform that a player could bind their character to and return to after death. Or, using a Bindstone Shard item in your inventory, you could portal back to the one you’d chosen if you needed to go back to town to sell off loot or stock up at the merchants. That ability had an hour long cooldown though, so you had to choose carefully when you wanted to use it.
Bindstones were scattered about the world of Carrethen, but the one I was currently bound at was in the town of Stoneburg, which lay on the Northeast tip of the main continent of Carrethen, just below the wild North and its snow topped mountains. It was a small village, with only a few buildings, but it was bustling with people. Somehow, through pure word of mouth, it had become the cool place to start out and it’s where I had met up with D, so we could begin our adventure.
Carrethen was the largest game world ever created, dwarfing all other games to come before it. World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, all paled in comparison to the size of Carrethen. The developers hadn’t fully disclosed its actual size, but there were rumors it was about a quarter the land mass of the continental U.S.
Supposedly, more than 2 million players signed up in the first week, and as I looked around the Stoneburg Bindstone, that seemed about right.
There were players everywhere.
Mostly everyone was low level still, but I spotted a few players who were almost level 10, and one level 13 who was busy showing off a suit of plate mail that was clearly not that impressive in the scheme of things but compared to the cloth or worn leather armor we were all wearing, it was awesome.
I was surrounded by swordsmen, spearmen, archers, mages, and more adventurous users who had created “hybrid” characters. Unlike other games, Call of Carrethen didn’t restrict players to only using preset character templates, and allowed for much more flexibility in creating your character.
The game had starter presets of course, but also allowed for full character customization which allowed for highly individual play styles. For instance, instead of choosing to be a knight or a mage, you could distribute your starter points among your attributes as you saw fit: Strength, Quickness, Coordination, Focus and Wisdom.
After that, you’d be taken to the skills page and choose what you’d like to train. So, if you wanted to be a glass cannon melee character focused on nothing but speed, you could assign all your starting attribute points to Quickness and Coordination, specialize in daggers and pray you were fast enough to dodge incoming attacks, as your Strength wouldn’t be high enough to wear heavy armor. Or, if you wanted to be a knight with enormous strength, wearing plate mail and carrying a size of a refrigerator, you could do that too.
As you leveled and killed monsters, you’d gain experience and the game let you assign those experience points among your skills and attributes as you saw fit, rather than having the game do it for you. But the more experience you put into a skill or attribute, the more costly it became to raise. Diminishing returns. Supposedly the game took a lot of its mechanics from an old game called Asheron’s Call. I’d heard of it, but never played it myself.
On top of that, you could choose to specialize in certain skills, which gave them an earlier boost when you created your character and lowered their costs to improve as well. On D’s advice, I’d specialized in Sword, trained First Aid, Melee Defense, Magic Defense, and Lockpick.
“Lockpick’s pretty useless,” he’d told me. “But can come in handy sometimes.”
I’d also trained Magic Lore, which was a skill that allowed you to use enchanted items to boost your stats.
D was probably running back to the Bindstone now, so I pulled up my character sheet and looked at it. I had 1,246 Unassigned Experience Points.
I need more health! I thought, hovering two fingers over my Health attribute. A green up-arrow appeared, indicating that I had enough experience to raise it. I only have 25 hit points, and it only cost 86 experience to raise it. I tapped my fingers on the up-arrow, producing a satisfying chirp.
My HP was now 26. I tapped it again. 27.
“Nice,” I muttered to myself, taping three more times to raise it to 30.
“Don’t forget to put some into Sword!” I turned around to see D running over to me.
“I wanted to get my health up—”
“Nah, don’t worry about that right now,” he said, stopping in front of me. “Those things don’t hit hard enough to worry about. Once you learn to dodge and swing that sword of yours, they won’t touch you. How much do you have left and what’s your Sword at?”
I switched from my Attributes tab to my Skills tab to check.
“Sword is at 87,” I told him. “And I have 978 XP left.”
“Dump it into Sword,” he told me. “And don’t stop until it’s at least 115.”
The flexibility in character customization in Call of Carrethen was incredible, and had limitless possibilities, but also left you open to the possibility of completely gimping your character if you allocated your experience wrongly.
“What are you putting yours into? Coordination?”
“That and bow,” he replied. “That’s the number one stat for increasing your bow skill and your damage. Strength is important too, so I’m putting some into that, but mostly I’m just dumping
it into Coordination and Bow so I can do as much damage as possible. Once you get a suit of plate, you can just tank mobs and I’ll sit back from a distance and just blast them with arrows”
D, as usual, had everything figured out. He also knew where to find some good weapons to get me started with. There were other melee skills of course: Axe, Polearms, Maces, Clubs, and also something called Unarmed Combat, where characters used fist weapons, sort of like brass knuckles. Sword, supposedly, was the easiest melee skill to get used to in virtual reality, which was just another reason I was feeling so defeated after my first in-game death.
“Not as weird as you thought?” D asked, twirling his chestnut colored Longbow around in his hand.
“Nah,” I replied, waving my hand in the air. “Just like logging in. Do we have to go back to my corpse? I can’t tell if I dropped any items.”
“Nah, you don’t start dropping stuff until level 5—” he began, but before I could blink, D raised his bow and fired an arrow over my shoulder.
“What the—?”
I whipped around as the arrow cut through the air and struck another player. A mage, in a red robe, who was casting a spell in D’s direction.
A Lightning Bolt streaked from his wand straight towards me. It passed right through me but struck D and drained a small sliver of his health.
But D was already firing back, quickly, as he sprinted towards the player. I took a quick moment to inspect him.
Jerick—level 8.
Two of D’s arrows struck Jerick in quick succession, dealing enormous damage. He was already at half health and backing away as D charged him.