“Guilds in the game practiced different levels of secrecy with their capabilities. Guilds would often exaggerate or outright lie about their possession of items and blueprints to make other groups hesitate to attack them. Strong guild would conceal their trump cards to reveal them against unwary attackers. Sun Tzu’s words echoed in the minds of planners across the game world.”

  From “Guild Versus Guild: Combat, Diplomacy, Subterfuge and Treachery”

  Year 1, Month 2, Day 7, 16:00

  Torgon traveled immediately to the offices in the guild base and called for Dr. Masters. She arrived with a curious expression on her face. “Dr. Masters. I need to get in contact with Singularity. We’ve received a curious potential proposition from Thomas Cook of Cook industries.”

  She replied, “I’ll pass it along. I don’t know how long it will take.”

  Torgon thanked her and then continued to the crafting hall. On the way he alerted the guild that a ceremony and small celebration would be held that evening at 21:00 hours to open and hand out the bone shard rewards from their undead farming. A system message arrived while he began crafting weapons.

  “Your proposal has been received by Singularity. A decision will be made within one in-game day. Enjoy your time in the world.”

  Torgon said to himself, “That was fast. It’s out of my hands now.” He returned to his work, fashioning weapons for his guild mates and friends to use against everything that sought to tear them down. He tossed the successful attempts into the guild inventory and looked down at his armor.

  Hyperia came over and looked at Torgon then down at her own armor, “We’ve been neglecting some of our gear. The upgrades aren’t coming in as quickly as I’d like.”

  He nodded, “Armor is just harder to find. Everything we do find is mismatched and we still look like thrift store golems.”

  She laughed and quirked her lips up in a mischievous grin, “You know Torg, you could always add armor crafting to your repertoire. With the Gauntlet of Creation your ability to craft is going to stay higher than everyone else’s. Your speed is incredible.”

  Torgon thought it over, “I’ll check into it. The weapon blueprints are easy for me. With some experience spent to free up skill slots I could branch out into armor crafting, mix things up. I’m getting bored doing the same thing over and over again. I could also dabble in automatons and vehicles. It wouldn’t hurt to see if I could develop a baseline of all the crafting skills and support where needed.”

  He stood up and brushed himself off. “Let’s go open up these loot boxes and see what we get.” The pair walked to a park where a gathering of thousands of guild members was taking place. Tables piled high with food and drink lined the area. The limbs of the trees sparkled with magical lights from spells, constructs and the dance of the faeries.

  Torgon and Hyperia joined the rest of the leadership team at a raised table overlooking the festivities. They spent a few minutes enjoying the selection of foods prepared by Chef Bridges and Chef Daniels for their enjoyment. Torgon allowed himself to relax and soak in the joy surrounding him. These moments of carefree fun kept him going during the stressful periods of conflict.

  The party continued for half an hour before Torgon stood up and addressed the assembled players with the aid of magic. “Thank you all for coming! I realize that most of you are here just to enjoy the amazing culinary creations of our cooking department, but we do have a reason for this gathering. Thanks to the efforts of all of you, we have collected 57 complete bone shard sets.”

  Cheering erupted from the crowd and Torgon waited for it to die down before continuing, “We’re going to open them all up here and most of them will be available for anyone to purchase via guild contribution points. A few of them will be given as awards to select players to help benefit the guild. Is everyone ready?” More cheers sprang from the crowd and Torgon reached down for the first set of shards.

  He opened the first set and shared the reward with the crowd, “Here we have a blueprint for a level 10 common strength potion! I’ll pass this along to Stabitha and she can assign it to whoever will make the most for us” He continued cracking the shards open and distributing the rewards. There were several skills or blueprints that weren’t in high demand, and they would be available for anyone to purchase from the guild inventory.

  Over the course of the next half hour Torgon distributed all but five to the guild. The merriment resumed and the guild springs and bath house were again filled to capacity. Torgon motioned for the rest of the leaders to follow him, and they convened an impromptu meeting inside the keep.

  Ovarrix was the first to speak, “What has you all excited Torg? You dragged us off from the party as fast as you could.”

  Torgon laid five blueprints on the table, “These blueprints could alter our plans significantly. I didn’t want to share these with the guild to keep them as a surprise for our enemies.”

  Allestor leaned forward and rubbed his hands together, “This ought to be good. Spill.”

  Torgon pushed the first blueprint forward, “This is a blueprint for a mana explosion landmine. They last for 24 hours once they’re planted. It’s at level 15 with solid power. The resources and crafting time aren’t horrible.”

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  Ovarrix grinned, “I can definitely find a great use for them, even in small quantities.”

  Torgon agreed, “I’ll pass this blueprint to Mark’s team. He can assign someone to make them. I don’t foresee us deploying them until we’re pushing into the central ruin.”

  Allestor disagreed, “Use a few early. The threat of us having landmines scattered around our defenses would have a larger impact than the mines themselves.” The rest of the team nodded in agreement.

  “Alright,” Torgon said. “I can see the wisdom in it. I’ll get them to pass along the mines to Ovarrix as soon as they’re done and he can employ them as he sees fit.” Ovarrix inclined his head to acknowledge the point.

  Torgon selected the next blueprint, “Here’s a blueprint for a defensive tower. It’s level 10 and common rank. It’s built from inventory transportable wood and stone blocks. It can mount a single siege engine at the top of it for better fields of fire. It’s a permanent installation. The blueprint itself makes a kit that can be assembled in the field. It takes up 20 inventory slots.”

  Hyperia spoke first, “We can use them to make semi-permanent encampments wherever we think it would be useful. They would be excellent for beefing up the defenses at any of the resource farms we claim.”

  Ovarrix agreed and continued, “If we have the resources to burn, we can use them to hold key monster farming areas or just as extra strengthening for the dungeon encampments.”

  Torgon laughed, “Resources are abundant for us. Everybody has been working on their gathering skills for the quick attribute points. It’s a preferred method for working off the experience debt as well. Moving on.” He presented the third blueprint.

  “This level 10 advanced quality blueprint makes bags that expand your inventory by 20 slots. Not a huge amount, but it’s the first craftable bag we have. I’m unsure if it will be better to use or sell them at this stage.”

  “Sell them Torg,” Dusty said. “There are research lines for bags. The level zero basic bag is one slot. The level 10 basic bag is 10 slots, and each rank improvement increases the slots by 50%. It’s something we can work on, we just haven’t yet. Expanded inventory will be more valuable to individual players that need it. The bags that drop have sold well on the auction house.”

  Torgon looked around, “Everyone else agree?” There were no objections from the rest of the group. “I’m going to want a few bags for team leads that do any sort of deep exploration. You know how much value I put on the biggest inventory possible.” Laughter echoed around the table.

  He presented the fourth blueprint, “This is the penultimate blueprint I wanted to share. It’s a war wagon. It doesn’t have the transport capacity of the one we’re building for the quest. It’s a level 10 common blueprint. Each war wagon holds up to 10 players and up to 10 bulk material units. It carries 4 driver automatons and 16 guard automatons. There are arrow slits for the players inside the wagon to fire. It’s a combat unit.”

  Ovarrix whistled, “That’s outstanding. We can make them and group them with formations or as escorts for long trips. They’ll be relevant against players for several sixdays, and they will continue to be useful in lower-level zones against creatures.”

  Torgon smiled, “I’m going to pass that blueprint off and get a prototype ready for us to test in a few days. Our automaton production is faster than our mana engine or carriage production.”

  Dusty said, “I want a few just for the faster travel along roads. The teleports are great, but the network doesn’t have enough connections.”

  Torgon nodded, “That is a good segue to our final blueprint and the most important one.” Everyone leaned closely as he revealed the final item. “This is a level 20 advanced blueprint. It’s for a clockwork horse mount.”

  Gasps echoed around and Allestor jumped up and shouted, “Oh yeah! Steampunk Knights here we come.”

  Hyperia let her enthusiasm recede and asked, “How hard is it to build?”

  Torgon winced slightly, “The material requirements aren’t bad, but the difficulty is high. It’s a starting chance of success of negative 10%. It’s a baseline time of 28 hours per attempt. Getting the mounts produced in quantity will take a long time. We need to discuss how to use the blueprint.”

  Hyperia pursed her lips and said, “Do we want a few quickly or do we want a dedicated crafter that will focus on mounts? Torg can make several faster than anyone else, but he has so many different things to work on.”

  Torgon said, “If it helps, nobody can ride them until level 20.”

  “Do they look cool?” Allestor asked. Torgon projected the image of the completed clockwork horse and the model slowly rotated over the table. Allestor sighed, “Yeah, they look cool.”

  “Do you want it Torg?” Hyperia asked.

  Torgon shook his head, “No, I don’t think I do. I would rather start training a dedicated crafter for it. I’m already spread thin, and it would take a new set of skills. I want to branch out into the siege weapons and automatons next. I need to add alchemy to boost my spell casting stats.”

  Hyperia shrugged, “That makes it easy. We’ll add mounts to the vehicle department and get someone who focuses entirely on making them. Living mounts won’t be available to us on a guild level until we get the building, but I’m sure there are going to be tons of quests to get special mounts in the future.”

  Ovarrix added his own two cents, “Whoever gets the blueprint can be dragged along on quests to make sure they have the free experience to boost the relevant crafting skills they can pick up. That will give them a higher starting chance and let them progress faster. It wouldn’t hurt to dedicate the Faerie tree buff to them as well until their success rate cracks 50%.”

  Allestor added, “I want the first mount. Torg, I also need you to find a lance blueprint.” Chuckles echoed around the table.

  Torgon grinned, “Sir Allestor and his knights of badassery are in the cards.”

  Ovarrix asked, “Now that you’ve shared the blueprints with us, what else do we need to do?”

  Torgon said, “We’re going to change our approach slightly. Ovarrix, I still need you running teams along with Dirk and Markus. Allestor you’ll be ranging up and down the Broken Hills with pvp teams to provide coverage. I want to drag Hyperia and Dusty on a few potential questlines that Dusty found references to.”

  Dusty interjected, “We’ll need a full party Torg. Do you have ideas for the last two slots yet?”

  Torgon shook his head, “No. It will depend on who is available and who is needed elsewhere. I’d like to take a couple of the kids with us to get them experience in this type of work. Pursuing crazy quests is always different than straightforward monster fighting or dungeons.”

  “I can start going over the rosters tonight and suggest a few names,” Hyperia said. “I’ll ask Eileen if she has any suggestions as well. Some of the kids have serious hero worship when it comes to us.”

  Torgon breathed deeply, “Yeah, they do. I think that’s all. Stay close to the base and work on training or crafting until the base raid. I want to hammer that out quickly and then move on to more productive tasks. I’m itching for some actual adventure.”