The Incompletionist

With the quality of accommodations in this safe zone, dare I say starting town, in which we found ourselves were more than sufficient for our needs. They were down right pleasant and I was willing to wager that they would prevent anyone of our little gang from being tempted to embrace the murder hobo lifestyle that I had come to associate with any sort of blue screen scenario. Unfortunately food didn’t appear to be included in the deal. The meager repast of trail mix, nutrition bars and beef jerky that we scraped together from the daypacks and gear that a handful of the team had with them when we were “awakened” wasn't going to cut it.

Apparently even the details of our dietary requirements were referenced in the Unified System induction process that I willfully failed to properly complete as an expression of my withheld consent for the entire awakening process. We had to explore the town across the coming week to scavenge food, supplies, gear, tools and class related items to prepare for the tutorial that would begin when our instructors and support personnel arrived at the end of the week. The hilltop was a safe zone, so the threats were minimal, but this was also a limited time opportunity. When the instructors and support personnel did arrive they would claim their designated spaces and our freedom to explore would be significantly limited.

Yeah. Basically these were like bonus quests where we could rack up equipment and experience headed into the scripted tutorial. I am sure that great performance would unlock additional opportunities in the future and the time boxing meant that we couldn’t just take our time and progress at our own pace. Apparently the team all had class specific quests to guide them through the process as well as a minimap to navigate the town and training facilities for this purpose.

The plan was for us to actually get a full night’s rest and split up the next day to begin our little scavenger hunt. As a conscientious objector to the Unified System and its, frankly, pretty poor UI, I wasn’t sure if I had any class based quests or even a class. I figured that I figured I’d be going old school on our little scavenger hunt with Queakers supporting me as my faithful pointing dog. During dinner I mentioned as much and I got an unexpected surprise.

Queakers barked to get my attention, looked directly at me and after what I am guessing was a little focus manifested the image of a small slate above her head that displayed the words, “Sorry Harris. I have my own quest and won’t be able to come with you tomorrow. Stay safe.” First off, Queakers is the best girl and all, but I never imagined that she would speak so politely. Good on you Queakers. Secondly, if the Unified System could allow Queakers to communicate like this, it couldn’t all be bad. Third, I would need to be careful what I said around Queakers from now on, because there was a very real chance that someone could buy my secrets from her for literal peanuts. Finally, I guess I was on my own tomorrow. No map. No plan. No help. No problem.

Queakers' communication board looked solid, but was effectively an ethereal copy of the slates affixed to each bedroom door in the hotel for the purpose of identification and communication. Hers just floated through over her head and was apparently thought controlled instead of chalk powered. Those gathered around us as we ate at the bar were all colors of surprise and excitement, but no one was shocked. Were we just getting used to magical changes this quickly?

After “dinner” we took awhile to search through the hotel for secret passages, spyholes, trap doors or other creepy shenanigans before everyone was satisfied that it was safe enough to turn in. In another shocking development, Queakers walked right into the room that Sarah had claimed for her and jumped up on her own bed. She barked out what I assumed was a good night and curled up. Apparently my dog was moving up in the world and had enough on her mind that she needed some privacy.

***

I got up early, but apparently not early enough. There was no one still at the hotel when I made my way downstairs, but they had left me some trail mix and a few crude and distasteful drawings on the communication board on my door. I had a handful of the remaining trail mix from which someone, probably Sarah, had picked out all of the chocolate chunks. The weather was temperate, the sky was clear and the sun was streaming in at a low angle that gave everything a golden hue. It looked like a beautiful day. I couldn’t help but wonder to myself where everyone was. I don’t mean the team or the inhabitants of our safe zone. I was willing to accept that they were working through whatever process had been laid out before us, but again I wondered why.

What was the purpose of this tutorial? The resources represented in the hilltop safe zone, including the buildings, grounds and their maintenance, were not insignificant. Add in instructors and support personnel and we were basically talking about the equivalent of a small college operating for a year to get nine people and a dog up to speed on the basics of being awakened. That kind of resource deployment boggled the mind if it was applied with any frequency. It just didn’t seem like it could make any sense.

What about our families, other friends, coworkers, enemies, strangers, everyone else? Where were they? I didn’t have much family left and I wasn’t all that close to them, but I was still stressed just thinking about the possibilities. Jim’s parents were awesome and he was extremely close to them. What must he be feeling? I resolved to ask him just that this evening. Could the Unified System possibly provide this kind of experience to everyone? If not then what was happening to the folks that weren’t awakened?

I also recognized that on balance we were all taking this situation way too well. There should be more freaking out and less task focused productivity from the group. We were good friends and I certainly felt some comfort from having them with me during this experience. I trusted most of them as people, but I trusted all of them as capable. This was a good team with which to be stuck, but I hadn’t heard anyone asking any real questions yesterday. At first I figured they just covered everything before I got there, but I was starting to wonder how they were so focused.

If my friends were adapting well, then that was positive, especially in the sense that it didn’t appear that we had any real choice. If they were out exploring and locating the supplies that we’d need, I’d also do my best to do my part. So in the absence of guided navigation and in a bit of good hearted competition with those that had it, I decided that I needed to approach this little scavenger hunt from a different angle. I headed to the hotel lobby looking for one of those little racks with brochures from local attractions. A bit of a long shot that definitely didn’t pan out, but I wasn’t discouraged. I figured I had the next best thing ... a really big library full of maps.

I gave the bookshelves a quick once over looking for anything with Tactician in the title. Also a bit of a long shot, but what if it was there. It wasn’t there, but I did confirm that I could read the language. It looked just like English to me, which seemed weird, but not really more weird than anything else. I did find some records that pertained to the development of the safe zone complex, complete with some original drawings and a serviceable map that was pretty accurate to current conditions based on what I had seen yesterday. Better still my map had information on the purpose and key features of each structure. Every building that I saw last night had a spot for a sign, but they were all blank. I expect that they get filled in as they are populated and opened, but I more or less had the master plan.

Was this book a little too convenient, maybe, but I sure didn’t care. Chalk another one up for actually cracking open all the books you find in an RPG. You know what I am talking about from D:OS and BG3. Anyhow, on to the next phase of my plan. I overlaid a piece of tracing paper also conveniently located in this kick ass library and got to work eliminating options that I expected would be well covered by the other questions. Armorer - Nope. Weaponsmith - Of course not. Spooky attic - Yes please. Creepy unlabeled blank spot in the wall space between two adjoining buildings - Jackpot.

My first stop was a book shop that would apparently eventually sell spell tomes, but was currently mostly desolate. I say mostly because I found what had to be a prior inhabitant's private stash on some shelving that ran underneath the display case where I expect they put all their super expensive image pieces, like Meteor Swarm, Wish, or Taco Tuesday. In this smallish collection of worn tomes I found a few histories, some books on military tactics, a book on the fundamentals of magic and another focused on the magic artifice.

The bookstore had a small backroom that seemed like it had once been a private space for employees with a short flight of stairs that led to a small landing where you could turn onto a longer flight of stairs that led to the second floor apartment. The apartment was a complete bust, but as I came down the stairs I noticed a small brass plaque etched with the phrase “It’s a secret to everybody,” and a big, old style brass key attached. Yeah. That was way too on the nose, but I grabbed it and looked everywhere in the apartment, backroom and bookstore for a place that my new key would fit.

Failing to find a keyhole for my new key, I headed back to the landing where I found it and looked around a bit more. There was a glass paned window on the landing that looked down into a little alley. I got to thinking about some of those spaces between buildings from the map that I snagged from the library. There wasn’t supposed to be space between the bookstore and the magic artificer with which it shared a wall, but who puts a real secret on the map.