Hope Engine Page 13

  He jumped to his feet, just about managing to not fall over his robe. ‘Do you not like the treaties, master?’

  ‘I don’t like giving my shit away, no.’

  ‘Oh. I apologise, my master. I had thought these two were worthy companions. Their strength would serve to protect us from the road, giving us time to build our numbers before inevitably betraying them and retaking our land.’

  ‘That is rather genius, if a touch evil–’

  ‘Thank you, master, I only attempt to emulate your terrifying visage within my own life.’

  ‘–but if we made a promise, then I don’t want to go back on it!’

  He started chanting again, and I decided he did it as a nervous tick. I’d forgotten that he saw me as a devious scoundrel who would steal a bone from a puppy. Poor puppy.

  Okay, roleplay. Just like when I’d first bluffed my way into being their leader. ‘You misunderstand me, mortal.’ Had I claimed I was a god? Ahh well, it was close enough, and the trick to these things was getting carried away. ‘I will of course go back on the contract, much in the same way that death goes back on the contract of life. It is a long term prospect, but it must be honoured in the short term. Do you know why?’

  ‘You say it is so, therefore it is so, master.’

  ‘Facts, Horace! Facts. If a contract is not honoured, then no one will sign a contract with me again, you see? I want to lull more fools into their eventual, contractually obligated, demise. The general populace must have forgotten about the recently signed contracts and must be content in the security a deal with me provides. The devil must, as always, lie in the details.’

  ‘Then I have good news, master. The contracts they signed have been added to your Negotiations tab in Overseer mode, and I believe you shall approve of the fine print.’

  Interesting that he knew there was a building mode, and also that he had a much cooler name for it. ‘What have you done, Horace?’

  ‘I anticipated for this eventuality, and although I pleaded both for help and appeared frantic, it was but a ruse.’

  ‘A cunning ruse?’

  ‘Most cunning, master, yes. I saw the road for what it was, and had the pensmith draft a few contracts as soon as was possible, in anticipation of this eventuality.’

  ‘Dastardly, Horace. Tell your lord more.’

  ‘As you say, the devil is in the details. The last full stop on the page is actually a final paragraph, too small for anyone to notice. Innocuous to all but the most knowing and thorough scourings. It says that their lives are yours to do with as you wish!’

  Blimey. Or rather, Eyes Above! I made a mental note to never play a game of wits against Horace. I, of course, had absolutely no intention of going against the spirit of the agreement, but Horace didn’t know that.

  ‘And this pensmith of great skill. Who is he?’

  ‘One of our own. In fact, you know him well, master. The one that does not speak.’

  None of them were exactly great conversationalists, but there was one who was actually mute. The one that had seen me and held a knife to my throat when I first met the cult, and could only gargle saliva as a response. Because he’d cut his tongue out. It made sense that he was into pens. Did I have an army of legal masters at my disposal? Were they a cult of lawyers? That did make a certain sense.

  ‘Masterful work, Horace. We shall lie in wait for their lapse of judgement, and then spring this on them when the trap is ripe.’ When the trap is ripe? What was I saying. ‘Until then, we shall keep them close and treat them as we would close friends. Then, they will never see it coming.’

  And as I planned to ignore the cult’s loophole, they would in fact, just be being treated like friends. I didn’t like this situation, and I didn’t know what I thought of Bri and Ixly as people, but at the end of the day, they had saved my village from attack. And they hadn’t killed me in my sleep, which frankly spoke volumes.

  ‘Did anything else happen during my absence which I should be told about?’

  ‘No, master. We lost two cultists in the initial bandit attack, but in return gained a small army. A good few days.’ He smiled at me hopefully.

  Few days. Yes, that sounded about right. The time dilation in the HOPE engine made the game faster, so my time out of my pod, while only an hour to me, would have been much longer ingame.

  ‘Excellent. Now, let’s go take a look at that road, shall we?’

  Horace and I left the small hut, and out the corner of my eye, I caught sight of one of the pint-sized geckos, this one coloured red, dashing towards the marble temple in the swamp quarter.

  That couldn’t be good.

  Chapter 18: Theme Park

  ‘This is all getting a bit much, you know?’ I rubbed my temples, feeling the stress of the day settling on me. For a second, the black outline of the screen I was wearing flashed. That was weird. I hadn’t felt the metal connectors at my temples and it had jolted me out of the virtual life I was living. Odd, since I had been in the HOPE engine longer than my real life. Still, my mind knew there should have been two chunks of metal just there, and when they weren’t, it broke my immersion. But the edges of the screen receded and I was back to Severo. I should fill out a bug report, perhaps.

  ‘Do you mean the duplicity, master?’

  ‘No, no of course not, Horace. That’s as invigorating as ever.’ Horace’s hood bobbed up and down in agreement. ‘The rules! There’s so much to learn that’s so different, and frankly far more complex, than my world.’

  ‘Then you must live a simple life in a simple world, master. Is being a dark lord easier in your realm?’

  ‘I’m not a… umm, yes. Let’s just say the stats aren’t quite so granular as they are here. Also, dark lords are called “politicians” in our realm.’

  ‘We have those here too. They keep their lairs and dens of inequity in the major cities, though.’

  ‘We won’t be getting any dark lords wandering past on the road then?’

  ‘Oh, very possible. The road can bring treasures from anywhere, as we don’t know its start or end.’

  Here’s how it broke down. It really had become a theme park management sim. Random people travelled the road, they could be friendly, neutral, or hostile. Depending on the features of my village, the travellers would choose to pass by, visit for a day, stay the night, join me, or attack. How they acted would be based on reputation, firstly – if I was in good favour with, for example, the Pristine Guard, and the person visiting liked that faction, then I would be hard pushed to make them not love me. Then it came down to their personal disposition. If they were ready to murder, then making them happy would be tough. Finally it depended on the mood of the surrounding patrons. If my minions were unhappy, and in a bit of a stabby mood, then the visitors would probably pass us by.

  Once they decided to stay the night, if they stayed a second day, then there would be a possibility of them attempting to join my village, at which point I would be notified, and negotiations would begin.

  Which left us with the final thing that would give me a sway in said negotiations. Facilities. Right now, we only had a single visitor staying with us, and he had been shoved inside the lumber mill. Apparently I needed to build an Inn as a top priority, followed by various attractions. As far as I was concerned, this was just adding more stats on top of the already stat-laden overseer mode.

  ‘Shall I prepare the Altar for you, master?’

  ‘Horace, the “Altar” is the ground in a random hut. It doesn’t need preparing. Tell me again why we need the inn.’

  ‘Adding to our forces will allow us to grow in power for the grand fight. It can bring followers to our cause, and commodities of the finest array.’

  ‘By commodities of the finest array, you mean gold?’ He nodded. Okay, a money earner, that sounded like the right stuff. ‘And grand fight being when we take over the world?’

  ‘That, yes, master, but also when we need to…’ he looked around in the most shifty way possible before
continuing. ‘Overthrow our allies. And, I suppose, allow us to mount an effective defence of the village.’

  ‘Well, that all sounds very useful. Let’s build an inn.’ We headed back to the Altar after my inspection of the guards and explanation of the new rules. Basically, if I was in my Altar when an attack occurred, I could command anyone inside my village as if I were playing a real time strategy game, but instead of building a barracks and recruiting soldiers out of nowhere, I had to attract them to my village. Simple stuff, really. ‘I will need to talk to the others, though. Fetch Bri and… no, fetch Ixly here first, and Bri ten minutes later, but I’ll meet her in the middle of the village.’

  Horace scraped the floor with his deference to me and ran off.

  I was going to have to sort things out with Ixly now. I was under no illusions regarding whether or not his spy had heard everything about how I was planning to betray them.

  But first, an inn.

  Into my Altar, vision up in the air. I looked down on everyone scurrying around like ants. Well, I wasn’t zoomed that far out, they were more hamster sized. I looked through the available inns. The Debris level inn was… I really didn’t want to build that. It looked horrible. Hovering over the next level up was the Wooden inn. Now that looked a bit more like it! It even came with a swinging sign hanging off some sturdy looking rope. Oddly, the material costs next to it, though vastly more than the Debris inn, weren’t greyed out. My lucky day.

  I selected the inn and the foundation overlay came up in my village. I chose to put it right in the centre. Well, as central as I could get it, as I wasn’t allowed to build over Bri or Ixly’s quarters. It would become a hub for the village, and any visitors would have to walk past any other attractions I built to reach it, so they could see everything I had to offer. Good stuff.

  I stretched the foundations out – a bog standard, Rubble hut sized, two by two wasn’t going to cut it for my premiere building. After a bit of tinkering, I settled on twenty by sixteen on the ground floor, and eighteen by fourteen on the second. Picture-bloody-esque. Good job me!

  I returned to my body, still mentally giving myself a pat on the back when I noticed I was surrounded by Steggar. Two of the large, dull yellow Steggar stood behind Ixly, black bladed weapons still in leather loops at their waists. They weren’t as big as Ixly, but I had no doubt any one of the three dinosaurs in front of me could one-shot me.

  ‘You know, Ixly, you’re remarkably silent for someone so large.’

  He inclined his head. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And the door to this hut… I’m pretty sure you can’t physically fit through it, so good job on that too.’

  He shrugged away the compliment, a slight grin twisting his lizard’s face. ‘I do what I can. I was in my marble temple when I received your summons, Severo.’

  ‘I see you brought–’ I tried not to. I really did. I tried not to, but I actually gulped before continuing. ‘–Friends.’

  ‘Oh, you know how Stagodon are.’

  I laughed nervously. ‘Ha, yes. Those Stagodons. Always… donning stags. Those rascals. Very good at not killing owners of villages that their leader lives in though, am I right?’

  Ixly smiled. I tried not to flinch at his baring of teeth. ‘Of course, you haven’t met my kind before. Stagodon are loyal servants to the Steggar. A brood matriarch offers her clutch to a Steggar when they prove themselves worthy. They imprint at birth and are completely unshakeable until their death. These two are my honour guard, my best of the best. Getting them to leave my side is sometimes the biggest challenge of the day. I had barely managed to convince them to stay outside the hut when you awoke earlier today.’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t want to be a bother.’ I thought back to the red gecko that had overheard my conversation with Horace ‘And the smaller ones? Are they just younger Stagodon?’

  ‘Oh, no. Those are Geeko. They are devious, dangerous, and dastardly. Never trust a Geeko. Unless you’re their master, of course. They make perfect spies and, despite their physical weakness, excellent assassins. They are a bit more… wilful, than the Stagodon, however.’

  ‘Fucking super,’ I muttered under my breath. I let my eyes linger on the obsidian blade of the honour guard. ‘So, Ixly, I feel we should clear the air. Your Geeko, may, possibly, have overheard some troubling information an hour or so ago.’

  Ixly tilted his head. ‘Oh?’

  Was he playing with me because he already knew, or had he not heard? If he was telling the truth about his honour guard refusing to leave his side, then maybe this wasn’t a show of aggression. How would he react to me telling him Horace’s scheme. No, the Geeko must have told him. Come clean, be open and honest. This wasn’t some silly drama where hiding information would help. Unless he was hiding information. No, get it together Severo, you live with the guy.

  ‘You’ve dealt with Horace, right?’

  He tapped his talons against the drum at his side. ‘I have, yes.’

  ‘He has certain ideas. And I don’t share those same ideas and… ambitions. If you know what I mean? I want to be open with you here, Ixly. Clear lines of communication. Right?’

  He tapped his drum again. ‘Communication is the key to any success. I know of what you speak, Severo, and I’m glad you brought this up. I had heard of his plan, and I didn’t much care for it.’

  My shoulders relaxed from a position I hadn’t realised they’d been in. ‘Don’t worry. Neither you or Bri have anything to worry about. I may not have made the decision to have you in my village, but I will honour the spirit of the agreement. You’re safe here.’

  ‘Excellent. My followers would not tolerate a diet of your bubonic buttercup. There would have been blood in the swamp, as we say.’

  ‘Umm, huh?’

  ‘Horace’s meal plan. It was only bubonic buttercup. Three meals a day. I would not have stood for such an insult.’

  ‘Umm… separate issue, let’s come back to that. I meant the other thing.’

  ‘Other thing?’

  ‘Your little red Geeko overheard the conversation between myself and Horace after you and Bri left.’

  Ixly laughed, and it was bloody terrifying. I think it gave me a concussion. Note to self – don’t try to be funny… shouldn’t be too hard.

  ‘Severo, the contracts are for peace of mind, or if there’s a dispute in a capital city, or if you want to get a magistrate involved. Out here, the word is the law. There’s no one to enforce anything. Small print means nothing. Also, you are far too underpowered to threaten me.’

  He flipped his hand and rapped his knuckles on the drum. A shadow dropped from above me and skittered out of the hut, obsidian dagger catching the light as it left. Excellent assassins, indeed. And when he said communication was key, he didn’t mean words. Oh jeez, how much could he command with a tap of his finger. Was he having whole conversations musically?

  ‘That was just a precaution. I didn’t know what you might try when you summoned me. I trust it won’t be necessary again.’

  He didn’t say it as a question, but I answered it anyway. ‘No, I don’t think an unseeable Geekar hanging from my ceiling ready to kill me, will be needed. Thanks. But, a question, Ixly?’

  He made a grand gesture, sweeping his arm out before him, indicating I should proceed.

  ‘What is your current goal? I mean, why are you here, in the middle of nowhere. Why not a major city, or on the front lines of a war, or even just back in the Steggar home lands. I mean, at level forty four, you could be pretty much anywhere you want, right?’

  He lowered his head and continued tapping on his drum. He had never been one to snap an answer out quickly, but he took time with his thoughts.

  ‘’Major cities wanted me to fit a mold that I couldn’t stand, the front lines of a war changed a few lives, but only for the worse, and my home lands were… nice.’

  ‘Your homelands were nice, so you left?’

  ‘“Nice” never changed the world.’

  I d
idn’t know what to say. Here I was, just trying to find out where the main quest started, but I’d struck some theological chord.

  ‘Now, back to the real issue,’ Ixly said, slapping his drum. ‘The meal plan.’

  Chapter 19: Slavery and Small Talk

  ‘We must act, master,’ Horace urged me in a hushed tone.

  ‘I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what he meant.’

  ‘They are slaves.’ Apparently, Horace had decided to do a bit of eavesdropping instead of running straight off to deliver my message to Bri, and he was not a fan of how Ixly described the Stagodon. Luckily, he had taken the rest of the discussion as me tricking Ixly by appearing to be open, when really still planning to betray him at the appropriate time.

  ‘Horace, you are a slave to the dark gods. I don’t see the difference.’

  ‘It’s completely different! We are servants to a God! They are slaves to a mortal! I won’t stand for it.’

  ‘The dark Gods don’t like slavery?’

  ‘Slavery is a cheap mortal copy of the dark God’s actions. They don’t need slaves. They take pleasure in breaking the will of man, in enticing their inner corruption. In taking one pure of heart and making him see that evil is the way, watching him fall to their twisted desires! Only when the good inside a human is gone, and he pledges his cold, black heart to the darkness, are the gods happy. Chains of steel are an insult to all dark followers.’ He caught his breath for a moment. ‘Or, depending on the god, they just kill entire continents. But still, slavery is right out.’

  I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Horace, you’ve made a very odd argument, and from entirely the wrong perspective. But, I agree that we shall not stand for slavery in my village. Leave this to me. Equal rights for all Stagodon.’

  He bowed. ‘I apologise for my tongue, master. Slavery is… a touchy subject among most, and to hear a player speak of it so brazenly… it makes my blood boil – without having to cast Blood Boil on me, no less.’