Moments of stress and chaos reveal truth. Kaldalis had always been a firm believer in that. And there was no greater stress than societal pressure. The will and desire to do what others wish of you because it makes life that much easier to navigate.

Neither Reno nor SeventyEight could respond to Kaldalis’s question. Not before a commotion went up in the new town of Cotanaku. Even amidst the excitement of the little settlement they’d worked so hard to make becoming a real town, Kaldalis could sense the change as it swept across the adventurers nearby.

Kaldalis was slightly terrified by what it might mean before it reached his attention as well.

A quest appeared on the left side of his vision.

You’ve Been In The Pipeline

Attend Cotanaku’s first Town Hall meeting.

Kaldalis had to focus on it a moment more to get the full details.

Attend Cotanaku’s first Town Hall meeting. Diplomats from the Kingdom of Zara have arrived and met with the council of Cotanaku. What could that mean for the fledgling nation?

It didn’t give Kaldalis much to work with, but he knew enough to be concerned.

The previous night, when Garyung - the new elected expedition leader - had upgraded the encampment into a proper town, he had made a small mistake that led to huge potential consequences. Through something of a clerical error, Cotanaku had been declared the first city of a new nation, rather than as a colony of its parent nation, the Kingdom of Zara.

Kaldalis didn’t know what it might mean in the long term. He did know that anyone from Zara here to talk to them about it was not going to be happy about this development.

It made him all the more concerned since he had become something of a security blanket for Garyung. The man was basically the mayor from Halloween Town, and needed someone else to help him make critical decisions. Executive dysfunction was a hell of a problem, and despite being extremely competent and wildly popular, being presented with a hard decision outright paralyzed him.

If the Kingdom of Zara was putting pressure on him, Kaldalis knew he was going to be called on to help deal with it.

“I guess that answers your question,” Reno said, visibly examining the empty air where the quest would be hanging on her own UI. Reno was Kaldalis’ real-life best friend, Nakala, and as a developer for Echoes of Rundan, she seemed to be adapting pretty well to the game. “As much as I wanted to talk through our long-term plans, this seems like something that might affect our plans.”

SeventyEight - his other real-life companion, Amy, who was also an e-sports legend - looked nervous. “What do you think this all means?” she asked in a quiet voice. “Is there going to be trouble? Maybe even war?”

“Nobody’s gonna start a war,” Kaldalis said quickly. He winced at how unconvincing he sounded, even to himself. “At least, I hope not. Ikzoz said that the most likely outcome is agreeing to be annexed by the kingdom, but that’s going to require Zara to send an army to occupy the town. I imagine that’s expensive. It’s also going to be really bad for, you know. What they call ‘our type’ around here.”

Reno rolled her eyes at the derisive term, but SeventyEight frowned. “What do you mean, ‘our type’?”

“Player characters. The kingdom doesn’t like us being in positions of authority.” Kaldalis stretched his arms out to motion at the town. “Since this all comes out of Garyung’s mistake, if we can’t settle this in a friendly manner, the kingdom is going to be even harsher on all of us. Possibly even forcing us into second-class citizenship.”

“We can beat this, though. In the short-term, we just have to not be threatening,” Reno said with a smile, as if she were trying to disarm the unrest she created. “If it’s expensive for them to occupy the town, we just have to make it seem not worth it. They’ll wait until a time when it’s most financially convenient, especially if they think they can do it any time. That can give us time to think of a better solution.”

Kaldalis shook his head at the approach. “Let’s get moving. We’re going to need to see where this meeting goes before we can make our own plans.”

He found himself leading them into town, through the beachside gate and towards the quest marker on his minimap.

Prior to the upgrade, the council meeting chambers had been a smaller wooden building. It was one of the first ones built when they’d established the settlement. But it had been upgraded. A lot. The building was one of the few stone structures in town now. It was two stories tall with many windows and a tall tower on the front, making it look almost like a church. Consistent with this, the front entrance was now a huge double door. It looked like the entire town’s population were filing in through those giant doors.

The trio found themselves being pushed together by the press of bodies crowding their way into the building. There was no pushing against the flow once one got pulled into the crowd. Kaldalis forced himself to relax, even as panic rose in his throat. He just had to be a salmon and go with the flow.

Once they got inside, they were able to spread out a bit more comfortably.

The building was larger than it looked from the outside. Kaldalis was surprised to see that the entire first floor was one huge auditorium, with room for a few score people to be seated. At the far end of the room was a stage set up with a lectern in the center of a long table. Many of the members of the council were already seated at the table, chatting among themselves. Near at hand there were a few of the other members talking with people already gathered at the front row of seats - which seemed mostly to be NPCs from around town.

Kaldalis looked around the rest of the room, and quickly found who he was looking for.

With a wordless gesture - the most useful method of communication in the middle of a crowd - he guided Reno and SeventyEight towards the far left side of the room, about halfway up.

There were two people seated there, surrounded by a few empty chairs. One was a Talsar, an eight-foot-tall lizard man, and the other was a Suyon, a short orcish-looking creature. “If you’ve both been watching my stream,” Kaldalis said as they approached, “then you probably recognize these two.”

“Hey, Kaldalis,” Balrim said, looking up before patting a chair next to him. The Talsar healer smiled warmly. “We saved you a seat.”

His shorter companion, who happened to be a pretty ruthless DPS, looked up at Reno and SeventyEight with a cocked eyebrow. “Who’re your friends?” Myrin asked. “Did you adopt some newbies?”

“Uh, kind of,” Kaldalis said. “These are some friends of mine from the outside. Reno is the one who got me into this game, and, uh, I’ve been friends with SeventyEight for years apparently.” He introduced them by gesturing to them in turn. “Reno, SeventyEight, this is Balrim and Myrin.”

“Nice to meet you,” Balrim said, offering a handshake and a big smile full of triangular reptilian teeth.

“Wait wait wait,” Myrin said, holding up her hands as if directing traffic. “Wait. Wait. Waitwait waitwaitwait. Wait.”

Balrim stopped mid-handshake with Reno, staring back at Myrin.

“SeventyEight? Like, the SeventyEight? The actual real-life SeventyEight.” She looked from the Finnian - now blushing again - to Kaldalis and back again. “You’re joking, right?”

“See?” Kaldalis said, pointing at Myrin and whirling on Reno. “It’s not just me!”

“Can we just…” SeventyEight began.

“Easy, Myrin,” Balrim said before putting a hand on the excitable Suyon’s shoulder. “Take a breath. That’s it. In and out. You see, it turns out, contrary to popular belief, celebrities are just people. Maybe you should take that into consideration before you open your mouth again.”

Myrin gritted her teeth together, obviously struggling to contain herself. “Nice to meet you,” she said, mimicking Balrim’s tone from a moment before. She offered her hand to SeventyEight, giving as polite a handshake as she could while simultaneously scrunching her face up like she’d just bitten down on a lemon.

“Thank you,” SeventyEight said, giving Balrim a grateful smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” Balrim said, “she’s really nice, I promise, but it’ll take her a day or so to forget that you’re a big deal. I’m just trying to ease the transition a bit.”

“Hey,” Myrin said, but offered no further dispute as she moved to shake Reno’s hand as well.

The quintet took a moment to arrange themselves in the surrounding seats. Balrim and Myrin had saved just one seat beside them for Kaldalis, but there were a pair of seats directly in front of them where Reno and SeventyEight could sit and still be a part of the conversation.

After barely two minutes of polite and muted conversation, Myrin’s excitement boiled over. “Okay, look. I’m just going to nerd out about one thing, and then I’ll be good,” Myrin said. “I promise.” She turned to SeventyEight with a vicious grin. “Game five. Global finals. That flank-”

“I know!” Kaldalis cut in. “That’s what I said!”

“Jesus Christ you two are fuckin’ weird,” Reno said with a laugh.

“Did you see it?” Myrin demanded. “Because if you’re talking about that, you didn’t see it.”

“I was a Teufel girl growing up,” Reno explained. “Splintered Crater never appealed to me.”

SeventyEight made a strangled noise. “Okay, look. If you really want to talk about it, I can give you five minutes. But then we can move on after that?”

Myrin made an excited noise, but struggled for a moment to find actual words. Kaldalis was interested to see where Myrin’s excitement actually settled, but his attention was drawn away by a large hand tapping on his shoulder.

“Hey, Kal,” Garyung said as soon as he had his attention. “I was hoping I could borrow you for this meeting.”

“Uh, hey Garyung,” Kaldalis said, trying not to reactively shorten his name back at him. Not being called ‘Gary’ seemed to be the giant Bhogad’s one rule. “What do you need?”

The muscular man looked uncomfortable. “I just need to run my idea for this situation by you,” Garyung said, though his lowered voice and the look in his eyes told Kaldalis a lot more than his words.

Shit. Garyung didn’t have a solution for this problem. He needed Kaldalis to come up with something.

Kaldalis wanted to fight, but he was the one to blame for this situation. He needed to accept responsibility.

“Sorry, folks,” Kaldalis said, turning back to his friends. “I need to help with this. I’ll be back soon. You guys play nice.” He looked pointedly at Myrin, who grinned broadly.

After another moment of meaningful glares, Kaldalis followed Garyung towards the front of the room.

He stepped up beside him and lowered his voice enough that he could consider the conversation private. “So how much time do we have to talk through this problem?”

Before Garyung could answer, Ikzoz knocked against the lectern a few times, getting the attention of the room. “Order!” he called. “Order in the chamber. As soon as everyone is seated, the meeting will begin.”

“Um, how fast can you talk?”