Part I: The Many Riddles of Turandot

  So quiet and unassuming was Riverglen that the city guard was relegated to one of two duties. First: manning the wall, a yawn-worthy role that existed to keep the odd wild dire-boar out of the market. The second task was purely ceremonial but of much higher status. A simple, but sacred, duty:

  To guard the sewers, within which recent converts must learn to vanquish sewer vermin.

  A constant drip-drip of water off overhead brick wafted from deeper into the sewers. Ahead, a bright glare of midday sun shone through secure grate bars.

  Not a lot to guard down here. Mostly ensuring that eager new converts didn’t wind up getting overwhelmed and wiping to the first rat or slime that manifested down here in the sewers. Once or twice yearly, in the slower winter seasons, when the Grand Pilgrimage usually saw fewer adherents due to the less-than-favorable weather further down the path, the lowly level 2 Dire Rats down here would all fuse into a level 8-10 Rat King. A bit much for the level 1 initiates fresh from the conversion hall to handle. These pious but overeager converts tended to rush into the Pilgrimage path, often before they even knew how to properly quick-open their Menu!

  Alas, rescuing off-season would-be pilgrims from these level 10 Rat Kings proved enough to promote Calaf, brave and most devout sewer guard, to level 7 in less than half a decade of leal service.

  Brave Calaf stood a dutiful watch right at the entrance to these sewers, alongside his partner.

  Four figures approached, silhouettes in the pre-noon light.

  “Hail, travelers!” Calaf raised his visor. “You embark now on this greatest and most sacred of ancestral duties: vermin exterminator!”

  Indeed, each convert started at level one. These travelers had recently received the Brand, through which they could access the Holy Menu.

  “The Ancient Heroes of Yore once patrolled these same sewers,” said a bored voice across the way from Calaf.

  “It was here that they honed their skills, after being blessed with the Holy Menu,” Calaf said.

  “… and where you, too, shall practice your skills before departing on the grand and holy pilgrimage.” Again, Calaf’s fellow guard sighed.

  Calaf bowed to the new converts.

  “Greetings. I am:”

  There was a yawn from Calaf’s side.

  “Hey. Gorman! Introduce yourself.” Calaf unsubtly tried nudging his fellow guard.

  “Oh, right.” Gorman shot up, pretending to be alert. “Greetings, brave pilgrims and/or converts. I am:”

  Gorman had been serving at this most exalted position for a few years more, hence his higher experience level. How one could fall asleep at such a prestigious post was beyond Calaf. Truly, the Most Holy Interface worked in mysterious ways.

  “Halt!” Calaf blocked the sewer gate with a spear. “Before you can embark on this most sacred journey, you must first prove you have mastered the Menu as the Heroes of Yore did. Show me – rather, us, your titles, brave travelers!”

  One at a time, the converts stepped forward. Interfaces shimmered at a distance, a common form of introduction under the Menu.

  “No doubt going to repsec into Shielder at level 3? That was my first class too.” Calaf waved this hero through.

  A future cleric, clearly.

  “Go in peace, sister!” Calaf said, then let her through.

  “Been practicing on the local boar population?” Calaf laughed. “Shows foresight. Good luck on your travels.”

  One final initiate remained:

  “Any one of you could be the world’s next hero,” Calaf said. “Go, fear not the rats. There will be a time when their claws cannot even get past your armor rating.”

  The four prospective heroes entered the sewers, in search of rats.

  Just another day at this most exalted post underneath Riverglen. The first station on the Grand Pilgrimage.

  Calaf and Gorman could usually hear the Cathedral of the Menu’s grand bells ring through the very earth every day at noon. The church itself was across the river, but the thundering cry echoed through the porous stones and labyrinthine sewers of Riverglen.

  By the time it reached their posting the grand bells sounded something more like this:

  Pling plong pling. Pling pling plong, plong plong. Plooooong.

  Such as it was every day, each day of the week, as Calaf stood at his post.

  Until this day.

  On this day, the bells sounded something like this:

  Pling plong pling. Pling plinggggggggggggggggonggggggggg.

  And then, something stranger still:

  Silence.

  Calaf looked at the damp ceiling above them. It trembled, nigh imperceptibly, from some most unnatural tremor. Then, he looked at the light pointing out towards the riverside through the sewer entrance.

  “Something’s not right.”

  “Choirboys probably dropped the damn bell,” Gorman said.

  “Even so. Something is up…”

  Why, to use the bell was a simple act of the Holy Menu! Select [Action], motion over to [Item: Bell], and click [Use]. It should be hard to whiff at that, let alone cause the bell to cut off mid-ring. Why, the bell itself would have to be interrupted somehow.

  It took a few moments, Calaf’s ears focusing in on the din out across the river. Echoes distorted it, but even at this distance it was hard not to miss the screams.

  “Maybe some goblins got past the gate guards?” Gorman said. “Not the most competent lot.”

  “No… this is coming…” Calaf focused his ears. “Yes, from the church itself. Has to be.”

  “Been putting points into hearing?” Gorman asked.

  “Where else could it be?” Calaf huffed. “Stay here. I’m going to go investigate.”

  So long as there was someone at the post, their duty as sewer guards remained. But they were guards of the Holy Church of the Menu. They were also honor-bound to protect the cathedral if any crisis was brewing.

  “Ah, points to INT, then. Yeah, I’ll keep an ear out. Make sure a Rat King doesn’t get the converts.” Gorman chuckled to himself.

  Calaf took a step out into the light…

  Smoke billowed from the Cathedral of the Menu! Wafting out of a shattered bit of stained glass. Across the river, shouts and panic came from Riverglen’s central courtyard.

  “There’s a fire!” Calaf yelled back into the tunnel. “Go find the initiates and tell them to wait before venturing deeper into the sewer.”

  Why, if there were an emergency down here, one that required healers, they may not be able to bring in a proper cleric.

  Only, instead of an alert grunt from Gorman, Calaf instead heard the echoing din of screams and shattering metal wafting off the brickwork.

  What is going on here!? Calaf thought as he trudged back into the sewers.

  Three snarling balls of Rat Kings awaited in the sewer’s very first chamber. Each beast consisted of a swirling rat-nado of teeth and flesh all tied right at the tails. The largest rat in each cluster wore a fancy gilded crown – wherever did the beasts get those?

  No matter. Initiates were in danger! One was already on the ground:

  Death's door! The Interface was telling Jorge and all Branded within line of sight that even a single blow would mean this pilgrim's end!

  Another member of the party had taken a glancing blow from the lead Rat King:

  Plagued! The dire-rat swarm had inflicted this status effect upon the hapless pilgrim. Purification or an antidote was required, before...

  With a wobble, Gerard’s health dropped to 2, and then…

  Ordinary dire-rats shouldn’t carry transmutable plague! And certainly, there were hardly enough rats in here this morning to form even a single rat king, let alone three. What is more, the levels were off. Level 12? Far stronger than any rat ever should be.

  Gorman was already standing between the two yet-unpoisoned neophytes and the tri-cluster rat swarm. Even with a one level power delta, three versus one could be a little tricky. Calaf brandished his spear and joined Gorman in the rotation order.

  With a mighty thrust, Calaf pushed his spear into the nearest Rat King.

  Hit!

  “There we go!” said Gorman. “Hold ‘em there!”

  Gorman, too, thrust at the Rat King as it writhed on Calaf’s spear.

  Hit!

  Defeated.

  “Two more to go,” Gorman said. “Don’t get-”

  The remaining two Rat Kings lunged.

  “Aw, same to you, then!” Gorman whacked the second Rat King with the butt of his spear, then thrust with the pointy end.

  Another down. All the while, though, Gorman’s health ticked down… 27… 26…

  One more foe was all that remained. Only… it was going for Sarah, the initiates’ team cleric-to-be!

  “Watch out!” Calaf lunged.

  Alright, he wasn’t poisoned. Scratch still hurt like hell though, even despite his well-crafted Iron Banded Guard’s Mail.

  Twin blows from both Gorman and Calaf’s spears finished off this third Rat King.

  And then, as a quick and unobtrusive update in the lower-right of the fighter's visions…

  None knew where the gold came from. Answers were not even in the sacred texts. But the money evenly distributed itself into the guards and initiates’ interfaces all the same. Sewer trash required no explanation. And Rat King’s Crowns were… used for crafting something, Calaf didn’t quite know what.

  “Here, you two take them.” Calaf provided all three crowns to the two initiates still standing.

  And as for experience…

  “You’re lucky we made it in time,” Gorman said, health still decreasing. “Rat Kings… and over-leveled. What could have caused that, huh?”

  Left to its own devices, Gorman’s plague would time out with 5 HP to spare. As it was, Sarah ran up and provided Gorman with an antidote.

  “I, ah, don’t have healing spells yet…” Sarah said sheepishly.

  “Don’t worry.” Gorman stretched, feeling better already now that the poison status had dissipated. “Initiates seldom need them. Could complete this station of the Pilgrimage unarmed, theoretically. These Rat Kings were well beyond what anyone below level 10 is meant to deal with.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Calaf added.

  The two initiates remained, still, on the floor. HP hovering precariously at death’s door. There they would remain for another ten minutes or so until they bled out. Healing serums were standard issue for guards. Calaf handed his stash to Gorman with yet another Interface transaction:

  “We need to… evacuate these initiates,” Calaf said, still short of breath.

  “Don’t need to convince me.” Though healed of poison, Gorman still ached from his wounds. “I’ll get ‘em out of here, then lock the grating so nobody else can come through until we figure out what’s going on. You head to the church, find a priest who can exorcise the rats here, keep ‘em from over-leveling again.”

  Once more, Calaf emerged into the light of a Riverglen afternoon.

  Smoke out of the cathedral’s painted windows had died down by the time he reached the nearest bridge. There were still faint sounds of panic up ahead, but the immediate danger had subsided. Still, Calaf rushed forward.

  A crowd of worshipers remained outside the cathedral doors. Scared. Weeping. Kept out of the church itself by a wall of beleaguered guards from the wall garrison. But Calaf trudged through until he found the person he was worried about most.

  “Charlotte!”

  A woman slightly shorter than Calaf in the finest of white church-going dresses led numerous mid-level worshippers in prayer. Her Menu designation was thus:

  “Oh, beloved Calaf! Thank the Interface you are here.” Deaconess Charlotte spoke only after she finished her prayers. “It was horrible. You shan’t go in there, my love. It’s the Pryor… he was…”

  His beloved Charlotte was unhurt. But Pryor Yordan… could it be? Calaf rushed through the line of beleaguered level 4 town guards who were blocking the civilian entrance to the church.

  Pandemonium ensued within the First Church of the Menu. Pews thrown aside in a panicked mad dash for the entrance. Some parishioners had been injured in the frenzied retreat and remained, hovering around 5 HP, hurt but stable, awaiting medical attention or to be traded a healing potion. Smoldering tapestries evidenced where some explosive had blown open a hole in the far wall, past the stage where the choir once assembled.

  And there, sprawled over the altar beneath the now-broken stained glass, was Pryor Yordan.

  The man who had so purposefully and selflessly raised every orphan in Riverglen. Who had personally plucked Calaf from the orphanage and provided him with the most holy position of sewer guard! Dead. Struck down mid-communion.

  “Where are the guard captains?” Calaf asked. Each sermon should have been attended by a level twenty-five or above guard captain.

  “Dead,” said a basic city guardsman trying to apply a healing item to an unconscious worshiper hovering around 3 HP. “There was another. Wild barbarian of a man. Secured the assassin’s escape out the back.”

  Calaf checked the Brand on Yordan’s corpse. The HP timer ticked down to -3. When it hit minus-five…

  “Get a cleric here,” Calaf ordered.

  They would have to perform rites before the late Pryor's hit points reached -5. While no resurrection spells yet existed, at least they could preserve the body, intern it in the below-ground crypts for some future, blessed day.

  Charlotte appeared, having been allowed in by the line of guards out front.

  “Allow me to perform the last rites,” she said.

  “Of course.” Calaf nodded solemnly. “Please, let me… just, check the body.”

  Calaf consulted the Most Holy Interface, then selected his old mentor.

  “No relics…” Calaf checked again to confirm.

  “That fiend. She stole them,” Charlotte said. “And in the reliquary… it appears they stole dozens of relics earlier and were using this commotion to cover their escape.”

  What could these thieves have been after, killing and looting Pryor Yordan’s body?

  The benevolent and maidenly Deaconess Charlotte placed her lacy gloved hand on Calaf’s shoulder mail. “Oh, beloved Calaf. This brazen heresy demands a response.”

  Calaf nodded. He grimaced, averting his eyes from the murdered Pryor. Anger flared.

  “Go, dear. The culprit cannot have gotten out of the city.” Charlotte motioned to the smoldering hole in the back of the church. “I will perform last rites to the departed.”

  Yes, there was still time. Charlotte, his betrothed, the universally loved and pure deaconess would handle the burial of his foster father. Why, she was the ranking church officer left, with everyone else north of level twenty gone or injured. Calaf though, Calaf was one of the few guardsmen left capable of pursuit.

  “Catch this interloper, Calaf, and surely the church officials will prioritize our betrothal all the sooner,” Charlotte said.

  He knew what he had to do.

  This will be a write-a-thon rules-enforced slow burn for quite some time. Keep reading as our pure perfect hero and this fiendish thieving heretic chase after each other and gradually grow closer :p