Party List

Nyx Alaion (Zoe Fox)

[Shroud] : [Knife]

11,000 / 11,000

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Aleister Demian (Jasmine Burch)

[War] : [Ebon]

11,000 / 11,000

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Fiona Woods (Evan Woods)

[Plate] : [Aegis]

11,000 / 11,000

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Evie Lucian (Cassandra Bailey)

[Soul] : [Radiance]

11,000 / 11,000

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Mellody Softsong (Ashton Burch)

[Muse] : [Revel]

11,000 / 11,000

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Caoimhe Phadraig (Kieran Moor)

[Slayer] : [Tyrant]

11,000 / 11,000

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Firo Strix (Blake Walker)

[Mage] : [Invoker]

11,000 / 11,000

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Hibiscus Jade (Marissa Harper)

[Arrow] : [Seeker]

11,000 / 11,000

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Zoe

The whole group was having a good time as they traveled the halls of [Áine's] palace toward the quest marker. They were chatting and joking with one another, still laughing as Firo continually tried to chase Nyx, while Zoe was careful to use her stealth skills on cooldown to stay out of reach.

They were moving through areas of the palace that they hadn't seen before, toward the far western end of the palace. Zoe noted that they didn't run into any [Fae] whatsoever as they went, but she also couldn't remember if they had seen NPCs around the last time they had visited the Vault, outside of [Áine] who had acted as their guide anyway.

And then she heard the sounds of combat layered over the dancing piano melody that was used for ambient background music in the palace. It was quiet, barely audible over the music at first, but it got quickly louder as they kept approaching the quest marker.

"Hey, guys?"

"Yep, I hear it." Mellody responded to his wife.

"Ten bucks says the Unseelie assholes are attacking the Seelie ones." Bisky said.

"I agree, but damn, that wording sounds so awkward." Caoimhe chuckled.

"Then what should I say?" Bisky asked, her tone joking.

"I mean…" Caoimhe began, trailing off as if he didn't have an answer.

"Yeah?"

"It's most correct to use the full name of Seelie Court and Unseelie Court I'd guess?" Caoimhe continued. "You could also probably legitimately use 'good' and 'bad' fae as quantifiers too, since that's sort of the understanding for Seelie and Unseelie."

"So are Seelie and Unseelie nouns or adjectives?" Firo asked.

"Either, or." Caoimhe confirmed. "As a noun, it typically means something like 'benevolent fae', but as an adjective I think it just typically can be used for 'benevolent' in general." Caoimhe's shrug was included in his tone.

"Good to know, good to know." Firo said.

"Is it?" Fiona chuckled.

"Eh. It's not bad to know?"

"Fair."

"Holy. Shit."

Zoe, continuing to dance ahead of the pack with her invisibility and movement skills, was the first to reach the next corner that would finally take the group to their quest marker destination. As it turned out, the corner they were headed for was a breach in the palace wall that looked like it had been destroyed from the inside, with pieces of the wall scattered about on the outside.

It led to a fairly large bailey between the palace and the main walls outside - and the entire thing was overrun with combat. What caught Zoe's attention though was the particle effects flying all over the place, and she was immediately worried for her poor PC's processor and GPU.

Unlike with the battle outside of [Gorias] which was predominantly physical with spells being launched here or there, the fight before her now was a mess of magical effects being thrown around everywhere. Explosions of colors in the form of fire, ice, lightning, and everything in between were blowing up all over her screen.

"I feel like we die if we walk out there." Firo said as he finally caught up with the stunned Zoe. "Also. Tag."

"You got me," Zoe said, still dumbstruck by the fireworks.

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Most of the group had similar responses as they approached the gap in the wall, with the exception of Aleister, who immediately began cursing up a storm as soon as she approached.

"The damn effects are making me lag. Piece of crap graphics card." She muttered as a few of the party laughed.

"Is your card that old?"

"Unfortunately, it's getting up there now." Mellody answered for his wife, who was still complaining. It seemed like Aleister had muted her own mic, and was now coming through Mellody's in the background. "We've been taking turns with upgrading equipment, and she's next in line for a GPU upgrade. I think the current one is something like seven or eight years old? It's a good one, though, so it lasted pretty well."

"To be fair," Bisky said, "these particle effects are crazy. They're everywhere."

"Yeah. Hang on a sec…hope this isn't timed or anything."

"It shouldn't be." Bisky reassured Mellody as he clearly took off his headset to help Aleister try to reconfigure things to stop the game from lagging.

"I dunno if either of you can hear me," Fiona said, "but there's a setting somewhere to turn off non-essential, non-party effects somewhere. I forget where."

"Uh…game configuration, visual settings, combat settings, effects, I think." Firo said.

There wasn't a response for a moment, then Aleister returned to the mic for a quick thank you before returning to being muted.

"Must've worked a little, at least." Firo said.

"It's a good setting." Fiona said. "When the game first launched, I used in large scale PvP because you could set things to only show your own party's effects and effects from enemies targeting you or your party members. It was like a quick and dirty cheat to see who was directly engaged with your party at any given second."

"That got patched out pretty fast, didn't it?" Caoimhe asked. "I think I remember you whining about it."

"It did. There's separate settings for PvP matches now, and the effects settings are all, nothing, or just your own." Fiona said. "It's probably for the best…"

"Aight, we're up and rolling again." Mellody said, as their character started hopping around.

"Should be good to go. Sucks I can't see all the effects, though." Aleister sighed.

"Not gonna lie, I'm thinking about turning them off too." Cass said, "They gotta be brutal on the GPU."

"Yeah…" Zoe agreed.

"Well, Áine's over there. Let's see what our next battle looks like first - maybe it won't be in the middle of all this." Bisky said, using a pointing emote to point out [Áine].

The [Fae Queen] was standing a little ways removed from the danger of the battle, but not so far that she was truly safe. She was clearly shouting commands and directing her fighters with large, sweeping motions off her staff all while casting huge spells. It looked like something from a movie, showcasing just how badass a major character was.

Fiona whistled in appreciation. "Damn. That looks sick as hell."

"No argument there." Zoe said. "I wonder when we'll get spells like that."

"Not any time soon, I'd imagine." Firo said sadly.

"Two, three or four expansions, you think?" Cass joked.

"More than that." Caoimhe chuckled, as the group quickly ran over to [Áine], who had the quest marker over her head.

As they approached, a cutscene was triggered and Zoe chuckled as she heard people immediately mute themselves. She did the same, mostly out of respect for the others, but didn't really expect much from a cutscene on a battlefield.

"Ah, friends! What timing!" [Áine] offered them a half-hearted laugh. "I'd love to greet you properly, but you can see the sort of situation we are in." With a flourish, a large barrier appeared around [Áine] and the party. It took less than a few seconds for enemy spells to begin peppering the barrier

"That's the [Unseelie Court] attacking, yes?" was the only dialogue option available, so Zoe clicked it.

[Áine] sighed. "Yes, it is. Shortly after your victory on the other side they moved against us here. I suppose there's no need to worry about striking two targets at the same time to split enemy forces when the enemy can't split forces, right?"

"They committed their whole force here?"

"After they retreated from [Gorias], they sent the majority of the [Unseelie] forces here, yes. I suppose we should consider ourselves lucky they didn't manage to transfer a large number of [Fomorians] this way as well."

"Is that a possibility?"

"It would take some time, but yes."

At that point, the conversation had a few branching options for Zoe to look through. She could ask some secondary questions about the [Unseelie Court] itself, or about the state of [Áine's] defenses, but the top choice, and the one that clearly was the way forward was what Zoe went with; "What's the plan? And how can we help?"

[Áine] grinned, the smile stretching unnaturally wide on her face, making the otherwise rather fetching Fae look terrifying. "I do have a plan. But to enact it, I need more protection than my [Fae] can reasonably provide. If you think you're up to the challenge of defending me, we could proceed to drive them back immediately."

The responses available gave Zoe the chance to sound various amounts of heroic to evasive. She went with a medium option. "It depends what you have in mind. What is the plan?"

[Áine] pointed to a lone tower that lay near the breached wall. Most of the wall around it had been destroyed, and it was surrounded by the enemy at this point, a short but meaningful distance behind what had become the line of battle. The tower itself was damaged, but still standing. To Zoe, it even looked like the tower was standing despite having sustained more than enough damage to cause it to fall.

"That tower houses a spell circle capable of casting a spell capable of wiping out the entire enemy force." [Áine] stated simply. "Or, at least, removing their ability to continue the fight, anyway." The [Fae Queen] shrugged, as if she found the whole thing almost entertaining.

"There's a reason they immediately surrounded it. The magic contained within the tower is how they haven't managed to destroy it. Put as simply as possible, if I can get to the top of the tower and remain safe for a short period of time, I should be able to end the battle."

Zoe leaned back in her chair and sighed loudly as the chair squeaked with the reclining motion. "Another defense fight?" With a groan, she returned to her normal seated position and clicked on the next dialogue option.

"Not like we have much choice, then. What's the plan?"

[Áine] grinned once more, the width of the smile still appearing off-putting. "Let me know when you are all prepared. We don't have a lot of time, but you should be able to make your preparations. Then I'll teleport us closer. The tower's magic is too strong to allow us to land on it, but I can get us close."

"Isn't that dangerous with all the enemies around?"

"Yes, it is. So I hope you prepare accordingly. Make sure your magical defenses are prepared."

Zoe groaned again as she clicked on the final dialogue piece. "I'll let you know when we're ready."

"Good."

And then the cutscene ended. Zoe unmuted, but remained quiet as everyone else finished their own scenes. Most of the group had only muted, so she didn't want to chatter while they could all still hear the chat. Bisky and Aleister had already unmuted before Zoe had, and seemed content to also remain quiet, although Aleister was muttering under her breath about these 'stupid defend the NPC fights'.

Despite the set up for it though, Zoe was hopeful that this one wouldn't be quite the same as the fight that had them defending the wall. Honestly, Zoe was kinda hoping that this one - given the magically-inclined enemies - might even be a lot of dodging and avoiding big spells. She really enjoyed dancier fights that required a lot of movement, especially when it was a balance between lots of movement and squeezing attacks amongst it all.

Even though [Knife's] entire design was about planting behind the enemy and performing long attack strings, Zoe got immense pleasure from trying to figure out how to do that while also having lots of movement required. Figuring out small optimizations and tricks to eek out that last little bit of extra damage was too much fun.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Fiona said as he returned, with only Caoimhe remaining in the cutscene. "I hope they don't just drop us on a big battlefield like they did at Gorias."

"Agreed." Mellody said. "The lack of clear fight direction aside, the fight wasn't that interesting."

"I think I disagree." Firo said, sounding thoughtful. "While the fight design wasn't anything special, it was kinda neat to be dropped into more of a scenario that just a boss fight."

"Different strokes, right?" Aleister said lightly. "I imagine the big battle is boring for people that like to focus on just performing their job as well as possible, while the big boss fights are less interesting to people that prefer more…I dunno, thoughtful fights?"

"That's an interesting take, coming from you, Aleister." Bisky snorted.

"I know you all joke about me being a vampiric, bloodthirsty demon, but I really like the more intricate mechanical fights."

"Says the one who laughed like a psychopath in the middle of the battlefield while slaughtering tons of mobs." Cass said. The silence that followed was heavy with Aleister's embarrassment.

"...Even I can get a little carried away sometimes."

"Hey, no judgement here." Zoe added. "There's something special about shredding hundreds or thousands of enemies like a hot knife through butter. I never would've expected that feeling in an MMO raid setting, but…eh. Still great."

"Nyx! You get me!"

"I bet y'all love games like Dynasty Warriors, don't you?" Firo asked.

Zoe felt her eyes immediately drift toward the ceiling of her room innocently. "I mean…the good ones, yeah."

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