Mark woke up at 4am sharp. He had logged out around 11pm the prior night, and scarfed down a cold sandwich left on the table by Bliss. He wasn’t particularly hungry, just felt warn out after a 16-hour gaming session the prior day. He put a pot of coffee on and started perusing the forums. It seemed everyone from LM_STARS “a” team was over level 50. He wasn’t particularly worried about keeping up in the short term, the amount of XP needed for each level up just got progressively more and more which would slow down everyone’s leveling pretty soon. Judging by the forums it seemed the general public was mostly dealing with lvl.1-20 stuff. There were a lot of complaints about screwing up their build with the unclassed characters, and cries for more guidance from EAB about how to make a good unclassed character. There were the standard stories about PvP, and complaints about the open world pvp in this game. One of the ‘features’ of this game is there are no “no-pvp” zones. Pvp is allowed anywhere on the map. The only consequences being the guards in cities becoming agro on the pvp “red” players, or getting yourself flagged permanently “red” in a region. So of course, there is a sizeable number of 14yos with too much time on their hands running around attacking people at random. PvP was actually a solid strategy for power leveling, he seemed to recall if you took player bounties and killed your bounty you got x5 the xp you’d normally get for killing a player of that level (generally players were worth x3 the xp a similar leveled basic mob). Which meant if you bounty hunted players your level you only needed to kill 7 pvp’ers to level up. He remembered there were some players who basically power leveled straight to 1000 using this method. Since being a “red” player basically made you stand out as a giant xp pill to bounty hunters, random ganking pvp was pretty rare in this game back when he played. Of course, since everything is new, ganking is a major epidemic right now. Most players don’t know about the bounty hunting mechanic. And so, they were crying about the issue in the forums.

There was a new “LM_STARS” video gathering millions of views. He popped in the thread titled “YOU GOT TO SEE THIS!!!!!!” He clicked the video and nearly spat out his coffee. It was a mini-movie about his character.

The movie started with native drums playing in the background and a panning shot of the wild jungle and a wild Jaguar warrior. He was sure some of this was probably pulled out of his play video at some point in time, but it was cut in a way to set the scene, the scene fades to black and we get a “story” told mostly through pictures. A young boy living in squalor, scrambling through a market, snagging a cotton cloak left bundled up forgotten under a table then seemingly deciding what to do with his windfall before going to the pyramid to “change his fate”, the boy climbs the great pyramid to the backdrop of the human sacrifices to bravely consult the priests at the top, which leads to him being instructed in human sacrifice. His character looked particularly devilish when he took a bite of the heart, some effects were clearly added to darken the room and make the flames seem more supernatural. Next we have the young man as a young adult, setting out on a journey, and meeting the demonic Quetzalcoatl, they way they cut it by focusing on his Quetzalcoatl tattoo and the image of Quetzalcoatl on the Ceremonial Macuahuitl made it appear as if this was a mission given him by the priests the scene was demonic and barbaric, next we cut to the young man in the center of the city at the base of the pyramid, again the way the scene was cut seemed to imply he had just left the pyramid, and then in a flash of red light he had transformed into a hawk and took flight into the sky, the hawk vanished into the clouds and the screen faded to black with a simple LM_STARS logo.

The replies were numerous,

-What game are these guys playing? I’m STILL running fetch quests for my mother!?

-I play in Tenochtitlan and chose one of the template shaman, and I can’t fly. What shit is this? Should I remake as a classless character?

-Does anyone know who this guy is? Anyone recognize him?

-He’s using an RP name, Eztli, I saw him in the square when he turned into the hawk yesterday. I thought it was an NPC quest.

-the poster above me is a liar

-the poster above me is a liar

-the poster above me is envious

-What level do you have to be to fly?

-do you think a hawk has a high attack power?

-first post!

-anyone know how to join LM_STARS?

-f-you

[email protected] post, you’re too late for first

-they’re really pushing themselves in this title, where is school_girl?

-seriously, I want to see holly!

Closing the forum post out of embarrassment, he checked the clock. Noting it was almost 5:30, he changed into some joggling cloths and left the house at 6am sharp. The three-mile jog took exactly 35 minutes, and he took a hot shower, then made breakfast for Bliss, feeling a bit childish with all the gaming he’s been doing he made a smiley face out of eggs bacon and toast on her plate, then covered it and put it in the microwave, as she clearly wasn’t up yet. Then he logged back into the capsule.

He checked the LM_STARS message board and email, noting nothing of importance he sent a message to holly about his desire to do a couple of different instanced dungeons north of the city today, then entered Underworld

He was still standing on the small cliff by the side of the river, a new herd of Caimans were piled together on the river bank, sleeping. He waved the wand over his head and turned into a hawk, then nearly became Caiman food, as he nearly blew the takeoff, falling down to the river bank before sorting out his wings and taking off into the sky inches from a Caiman’s open mouth. He was now high enough level he wanted to unlock the Panther and Python forms, so he took a long detour back to the city crossing over swamps and jungles, his sharp hawk eyes searching for a panther or python. Whether it was bad luck or they were higher level then he recalled, he never spotted a single Python or Panther, even with the long detour, dispirited with his bad luck he checked his MP, and regained his spirit, now that he was level 67 he could pretty much maintain this form for days without issue, spreading his wings and enjoying the feeling of flying, he caught an updraft and soared high into the sky, lazily making his way north.

Jungle, and small villages passed by, most of the villages sported hostile “red” mobs of NPCs. When the pyramid came into view on the horizon, he started to see signs of the first players out this way. Spinning lazily in an updraft a thought occurred to him “highest man-made object?” shouldn’t there be an accolade for climbing the tallest natural object in the region as well?

Excited he set his avatar to afk which amusingly paused him mid flight in the sky, and opened a web browser. He seemed to recall which mountain he needed, but instead of trusting his memory of something he heard about in the war, he double checked it first. -Pico de Orizaba. A volcano about 200KM south east from Tenochtitlan it even had an Aztec name Citlaltépetl, or White mountain.

Taking his avatar off afk he tumbled in the wind, it took a moment to remember how to fly, catching himself after a hundred meter fall, then turned into the rising sun, climbing higher until he was brushing up against the low hanging clouds in the sky, traveling at a ground churning pace eastwards. He figured he’d probably have to bend his flight south a bit, but he wasn’t sure how much, navigating by topography was a little tricky so he was going to depend on the insane eyesight of the hawk to fill in for whatever faults he might have as a navigator. The human villages continued to spread out under him and after about 40 minutes he caught sight of a faint mountain ridge to his southeast, banking in that direction, he flew another 20 minutes before those eyes could make out what was probably his destination, a large cone volcano with a glacial covered peak. The volcano was so tall he realized he was probably flying too low to make the peak, and started to climb.

The closer he got the more absurd the mountain in his vision became. It simply dwarfed every other landmark around it. His sense of caution started to kick in as he neared it. He had been lulled into complacency because of how realistic everything looked in this game, he forgot this was essentially a fantasy game. It wouldn’t be surprising at all to run into a family of dragons or something on this mountain; it was far too eye catching, and its long distance from Tenochtitlan made it an ideal quest location or home for a field boss. Furthermore, he knew the further you got from a hub city like Tenochtitlan the higher level the mobs tended to be, up to level 500 at least.

He closed in on the mountain in a slow spiral high from the sky, paying sharp attention for any movement. As he neared the peak, he started to notice around the base of the mountain were groups of Chanekeh. He felt a headache coming on, Chanekeh were at essence “nature sprites” and in Ireland or even further north with other native people these would probably be a blessing to find, however the Aztec version were level 200-250 killing machines which simply slaughtered anything encroaching on their domain. With Chanekeh here the chances of something terrifying like one of the five Centzonmīmixcōa probably was on or near the peak. Likely Tlo-tepētl, the real question was whether the game classified Tlo-tepētl as a demi-god (in which case he’d be a level 1000 boss monster) or a field boss. Either way, neither was something he could fight. He was tempted to take a dive for the mountain peak and see if he could get the Accolade without fighting anything, then take the death penalty and respawn in Tenochtitlan.

He pondered for a long moment, then laughed to himself, this was a game, why not try it right? So he climbed high until he was about 1000 meters above the mountain, then made his way close to the peak, before making a dive for the absolute highest speck of land his eyes could see. The biggest advantage of the Hawk form was it was absolutely the fastest flying creature when it was in a dive, easily getting to 250 KM/h, as the ground grew larger and larger in his eyes, he got more and more nervous trying to judge when to pull out of the dive he wanted to basically land on the peak without any pause to see if he could grab the accolade for reaching it. At the last moment he spread his wings to pull out of the dive and promptly killed himself on the mountain peak.

It was so fast he didn’t even feel the impact. His soul floated above his corpse, a red smear on the mountain peak. He actually started laughing it was so stupid. After catching his breath he looked around, and figured staying here was a waste of time, he hit the respawn button and lost all his XP in his current level resetting his progress to 0/2,211,000 toward level 68. It could have been worse, had he been under 50% on his progress toward level 68 he would have lost the level as well. His character spawned in the central plaza at the steps of the great pyramid. Checking his items (didn’t have many) he was glad to see he didn’t drop anything. Death carried with it a chance to drop something. It was a low chance to normal players, and zero chance in a raid dungeon, however if you died in PVP or were killed as a red player your chance of dropping an item was 100%. When red players died, they actually had a chance to drop two items.

As he was checking his inventory, his eyes caught on something new, and he grinned. His death wasn’t in vain.

Accolade: Aztec Explorer – Found 1 of 3 natural wonders in your region, (Peak of Citlaltépetl), +2.5% to all Attributes, +10 affinity with spirit magic

He had a pretty good idea what another “natural wonder” would be in central Mexico, this was likely Lake Chapala. It was about 400km from Tenochtitlan (this time to the west), and likely probably a home for another field boss or god, he was sure. As for the 3rd “natural wonder” he would probably have to do some research to find a likely candidate, though he suspected it was probably the volcanos Popocatépetl or maybe Iztaccihuatl just to the south of the city

Looking around the central square he paid attention to the party formation announcements. To his disappointment he didn’t hear anyone calling for the raid dungeon he wanted to do. As a result he figured he’d make his own team.

Turning into a hawk, he took wing, this time without embaressing himself, and soared to the north gates of the city, then dropped from the sky next to the guard house. Eztli approached the guardhouse and presented himself to the guardsman.

“Hello soldier, I heard your captain was looking for help with something unexpected.” Eztli heard no such thing, there was actually 8 quests he was skipping to start this dialogue, but the nice thing about the AI in Underworld is it didn’t know he had skipped the rest of the questline, He just had to say the right words to trigger the quest.

The soldier stood there a moment, almost as if he wasn’t going to answer the question then said “Stay here sir”, and knocked on the guardhouse door. Shortly after a short fat man waddled out of the guard house. “A savior! You’re a Savior! Bandits those horrible monsters took a precious cargo back to their hideout. The guardsmen found the hideout but were all wiped out trying to enter. It seems these men are led by a terrible demon, a Tzitzimitl. I suggest you gather a strong party before venturing forth."

Quest Notification: You’ve been offered a sharable RAID. It’s advised you form your party now prior to accepting the raid. Once you accept the RAID you can not add any more members to the party. This is a Level 70 raid, minimum level allowed is level 50, all characters under level 65 will be raised to level 65 during the raid. All Characters higher then level 70 will be lowered to level 70 during the raid. Maximum party size is 8.

Accept the Raid; Battle the Demon Tzitzimitl? Y/N

Mark changed his speaking channel from local to “region”. Region chat was heavily monitored, spammers, scammers and abusers could find their accounts suspended if they cluttered up region chat, so Mark wrote up a quick party invite and posted it

LF7- lvl.70 RAID, min lvl.50. Need Tanker, Healer, DPS whisper Eztli with character info for invite

He was expecting to take half an hour to scrape together a team, considering the low level of the general public at this time, but it seemed his fear was unfounded as the name of his character Eztli had been revealed in several form posts after the posting of the video from LM_STARS. As a result, he was deluged with party applications.

In a few minutes he had invited the 7 most promising members. Two template Jaguar warriors (tankers), Marz_20_XxX, and POUNDU, both level 60, at this stage in the game the template characters tended to be better balanced toward certain roles. It wouldn’t be until around level 200-500 that their advantages would melt away and they would fall behind most classless builds. This was especially true for tankers. He grabbed 3 classless for DPS, FISH_LOVER, Duuca, and Sexy_Librarian, for classless characters they all had solid DPS skill trees and were all level 50-60 meaning they were solid players, the healers were both template builds “ENRAGEA” and “Golden_Flower”, at level 50 and 61 respectively.

It didn’t take long for the group to gather at the gate. Everyone had actual equipment on, making Mark feel a bit naked without any equipment. Obviously, they had been grinding quests in and around the city (quests were the easiest way to get equipment and material rewards, only humanoid monsters dropped usable items, and no one here was a high enough level to go hunting hostile tribesmen yet. Once they had all gathered Eztli gave them a quick rundown, it was almost surreal, he remembered running this quest so many times in the past his instructions were almost automatic.

“This RAID is simple, we’ll run it on EPIC difficulty, don’t worry a PUG can do it. I’ll set the drops to need/roll at the end. Which means all drops will be auto looted and only when we clear or quit the raid will they become available. The unclaimed items will be distributed randomly. This is a simple one, there is one path, and it’s just wide enough for two tankers to block off so the rest of the party can attack from range, which is why all our DPS is ranged DPS. I’ll be providing curses and blessings, healers focus on the tankers, when we get to the boss, the strategy is simple. He’s vulnerable to taunts so the tankers can hold the agro, the DPS needs to spread out a bit, he has a melee attack which creates a damage wave which will go straight through the tanker and hit anything behind it. Luckily the battle is in the only big room in the dungeon so we don’t have to be stuck behind the tankers. There are no other mobs, just do your job and it will go easy. Got it?”

Everyone nodded. Eztli accepted the quest from the fat man, and set the difficulty to epic.

Raid Accepted: Battle the Demon Tzitzimitl

Eztli then waved the wand over his head and turned into a hawk, then launched himself into the sky, saying over the team channel, “Use the team map to find me, I’ll be at the dungeon’s entrance.” And flew straight to the entrance of the instanced dungeon, figuring it would probably take the rest of the team ten minutes to get here; as it wasn’t far from the gates of the city. He was probably going to run this dungeon all day just to equip himself with proper equipment; He was planning to run this one until he was level 75, he figured it would probably take 6 times to manage that.

Stretching his limbs after transforming back into a human shape he took a seat on a rock next to the dungeon entrance and waited for his team.