A base upon a rock

Four people sat on the same side of a curved table. It stood in exactly the same spot where some ten or eleven weeks before a large debate was held under open sky, and where it came to an end after a day and a night. At the time, it was merely a dusty plain in the outskirts of a city that was not theirs. A flat rock was used for a table, and a scroll and quill were purchased from a merchant by the Eastend street. A declaration was written. It now hung framed behind the backs of four figures, whom the text referred to as the Administration. And the rock was still there, underneath the square stone tiles.

Much has changed since then. They now had a ‘town hall’, although modest and temporary. The table was a gift from the ruler of Sorostade in the spirit of good cooperation to come. The windows even had sheets of foggy glass fitted in them. The interior was somewhat dark, but the enhanced eyesight of Players compensated for this.

‘There will be pushback to this,’ said Esther from the leftmost seat at the table, the quill stopped in her hand. She was the group’s scribe on top of being the council member assigned to management of resources and logistics. Initially, using the quill and an inkpot was problematic, but many stained sleeves and inkblots later it became as natural as a pen.

‘Obviously,’ agreed Oneiron from the far side. ‘Nobody ever asked for taxes.’

‘We can only return to our world if we work together. And that means pooling resources,’ said the unofficial head of the assembly, the Priestess Seelastraxx, seated in the middle position by the table and dressed in the pure, white robes of her office. ‘For now, we don’t even know how to collect a tiny tax and where to put it. Ugh, my head hurts. I want to be back in bed.’

‘Don’t break yet, we’ve only just started for today,’ cheerfully said Esther, and patted a stack of papers to her right.

‘Over a thousand people and not one real economist,’ Seelastraxx replied, massaging her nose bridge. ‘We could really use one right now.’

‘But you’re doing such a great job at it and all!’ sarcastically said Oneiron from her left, seated between herself and Esther.

‘Well, I am pretty awesome. Anyway, let’s keep going, Esther. What’s the next topic? Please tell me it’s not finances.’

Esther shuffled a few papers from the top and read the headlines.

‘A complaint from Lord Regent Tepper. A scouting party to the north reports finding a giant doorway. A raiding readiness notification. A potable water problem. Which one do you like, your awesomeness?’

Oneiron, the Wych Player behind peacekeeping and conflict resolution, had not much to contribute during those meetings. Him and the small force that volunteered to keep the town a peaceful zone were invisible and ignored until something happened. This allowed him to observe the Administration members at work, and it brought him some pleasure to compare this adult discussion to the collective hysteria that was the gathering of Rockbase players in the hours and days following the transportation to this world, so many weeks before. As hundreds of confused people coalesced into this place and chaos was reaching its peak, and at the time when nobody knew how to cast spells, a luminous explosion of a Holy Nova in the dark of the night stunned and silenced everyone. At its centre stood the notorious Priestess Seelastraxx, radiant and captivating, like an angel sent to save them. And when on that same night she was proclaimed as the head of the new ‘temporary’ government, it was her who was stunned and silenced.

How little everyone knew, thought Oneiron, now seeing this angel pick her nose and flick the booger away.

‘Let’s hear about the raids. I’ve been waiting for this one.’

‘A summary for seductive harlots, delinquents, and people with attention deficit: The Clans provided a roster and a cost estimate.’

Seelastraxx snorted, genuinely amused.

‘Clans? Plural?’ asked Krush.

‘Yeah. They decided to do a mixed group, cherrypicking the best people regardless of Clan membership.’

‘Good, they managed to not be stupid. Alright, get to the point. What do they want?’ urged Seelastraxx.

Esther went along the table and slipped a sheet in each colleague’s hand.

‘That’s a lot,’ said Oneiros.

‘That’s less than I thought,’ said Esther herself. ‘We have half of that in stock already. I checked.’

‘Esther, I love you,’ Seelastraax confessed. Esther rolled her eyes, while the Priestess scanned the sheet and summarized: Sixty people just for the raid, another ten as packmules. Half a ton of alchemy and food. In and out within a week’s time. Where’s the catch?’

‘No catch, really. We just have to assign people to go out and collect stuff, craft stuff, and donate to them said stuff. A glorious fetch quest for the greater good!’

‘Okay. Approved. Now about that giant gate?’

---

‘Fascinating,’ said the sailor. ‘You have such a thriving community here. How many are you?’

‘One thousand, two hundred, and thirteen Players as of two days after the disaster,’ informed T1c, the fifth member of Administration. The sailor stopped in his tracks, his mildly raised eyebrow betraying his surprise.

‘How do you know it so precisely?’

‘We conducted a census as the first thing. Name, level, class, and real-life skills.’

‘Wow. Great idea,’ the sailor admitted. ‘Wish we thought of that.’

‘Are you more or less than that, Emissary?’ asked T1c.

‘No idea.’

‘Anyway, there’s fewer than that in here. Some people chose to go their own way. We don’t know how many exactly stayed in Rockbase. Also, some live in Sorostade over there, across the bridge.’

‘I see.’

A scent on the wind caught T1c’s attention.

‘Smell that? Over there is our market. There’s a stall led by our girl Lufillis. She makes the best pies in the town, no kidding, it’s not even close.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yeah. Turns out, building a stone or brick oven is quite easy, the tricky part is making it efficient. Anyway, you’d think people would at some point have enough of her pastries, but no. Not to get too philosophical with you, but I suppose this is some kind of bond with the scent. It smells like home, or something. A powerful thing for us exiles, don’t you think?’

The sailor-emissary nodded. ‘I think I’ll want some of that later,’ he smiled faintly.

‘I’ll take you there immediately after we meet the council. I want some too, not gonna lie. Oh! If you look that way, Emissary-’

‘Why do you keep calling me that? My name is Cobbalt, with a double B, or just call me Cobo.’

‘You don’t want to be called Emissary? If someone had sent me somewhere and named me an Emissary, I would insist to be called that. I’d be wearing it like a badge.’

‘Haha, fair enough. It does sound pretty cool, but let’s drop that in informal conversations, alright? We’re just nobodies who played a game, nothing more.’

Cobbalt followed T1c into the building, hearing an ongoing conversation inside. At the end of a corridor were double doors open ajar, but a massive form of a Dark Knight blocked the way. As they got closer, the armored mass of armor plates and wicked spikes stepped aside to let them in, apparently recognizing T1c at a glance.

‘Don’t be intimidated by our big friend Kiji. He’s here to turn away people before they bother the guys inside.’

‘I’m not intimidated easily,’ replied Cobbalt. ‘I’ve seen worse things out there on the sea.’

The circular chamber was large by the standards they had at Rockbase for the time being, but it was nothing compared to what stood in Sorostade. A few dozen people could fit inside, fewer if they wore their combat gear and weapons. There was almost nothing in it, bar the table on the far end and five chairs of which four were occupied. As they approached the council, Cobbalt could now hear what they were talking about.

‘...more water on the south side. There’s only a single well there, it’s not enough. No surprise nobody wants to live there, and they leave the city,’ said a female voice that Cobbalt already liked.

‘Krush, what can we do?’

‘Groundwater levels are already low. We need water from outside. Capture rain, haul it from a river in Sorostade, or uh… can Mages conjure water?’ asked a gruff male voice.

‘Conjured items don’t persist,’ reminded the pleasant voice. ‘Were it not so, a lot of problems could be solved.’

‘Then… oooh! OH! How far from here is the nearest mountain spring?’

‘I’ll tell you when a surveying party returns with a map. Are you daydreaming about some megastructure again?’

‘... if the Romans could do it, why can’t we?’ murmured the male, then lit up again. ‘You know… we could have baths here. Our own baths. And plumbing. Toilets!’

‘Stop. I think you just broke Seela. She’s never going to let go of this idea now.’

T1c stopped a few steps away from the table, and motioned for Cobbalt to stand with him. Cobbalt took a confident pose, with his staff planted in the floor, and reached into his bags to retrieve a sealed scroll. He noticed that the voice he liked hearing was that of the Mage sitting on the far right. He would be thinking about black hair and blue eyes for the rest of the day.

‘Who’s that?’ asked a man whom Cobbalt had not heard speak yet. He seemed only casually interested in what was happening around him. Then the man straightened up and leaned forward. ‘Other than a master Monk?’

‘That, my friends, is an Emissary from outside this land, and like us, a fellow Player.’

This reveal seemed to be of great interest to all four seated figures, but the very attractive woman in white seated in the middle sighed, and said to her colleagues:

‘This is going to be a long day, isn’t it.’