The Duty (Play to Live: Book # 3) (34 page)

His gaze glanced over me, unseeing, his eyes searching the surroundings until finally they alighted on the children busy in the sandbox. He rushed towards them, stumbling and falling, grazing his knees on the stones and forcing himself to get back up. Stopping next to a tiny giggling redhead, he froze, then grabbed the girl's shoulders, demanding,

"Masha? Masha, are you okay?"

The girl's little forehead frowned. "Are
you
all right, Uncle Alec?"

Hearing her thin voice, Doc slid onto the ground. Clutching the girl, he stroked her hair, rocking and whispering deliriously in a soothing voice.

I summoned enough strength to interfere. "Doc? Doc, you're scaring her. What happened?"

He looked around, saw me and began nodding. With a kiss to the girl's forehead, he let go of her. "It's all right, princess. Go play now."

He limped over and collapsed onto the steps next to me. "She's alive," he announced with a happy smile. "Don't you understand she's alive? Half an hour ago, I took her body to the morgue with these very hands! Had I failed, I wouldn't have survived her funeral. I already had a syringe and an ampule in my lab coat pocket."

The skies thundered softly, the first drops of rain rattling on the ground. Doc raised his face to the clouds and laughed with joy. "We can live now! It hasn't been for nothing, Max, you hear me? The first child I ever saved! Now I have a purpose!"

I looked at the preoccupied toddlers, at the Hell Hound puppies scurrying about. I thought about the lonely Lurch and the virtually defenseless castle. I remembered the Fallen One who needed all the help he could get despite all his divine airs and graces.

I nodded my agreement. "
We
have a purpose."

I sprung to my feet and activated the clan chat. "Attention clan! Hear my command..."

* * *

Kremlin Security Force

Sensitive information

Top secret

From a memorandum to President of the Russian Federation:

Yesterday 08.24.203X at 02.41 a.m. our electronic surveillance systems detected a successful penetration attempt. The rapid-response group that arrived at the site located the intruder who was heading for the Senate Palace. After our command to stop, the trespasser attempted to flee the scene after which we opened fire with a shoot to kill policy.

In the resulting skirmish, the intruder demonstrated a remarkable speed and survival ability. The group lost three men killed while the monster's body was found to have nineteen gunshot wounds when autopsied. We use the word "monster" because the intruder proved to be a large anthropoid creature with the head of a wolf.

In the course of the initial identification procedure, photos of the entity were fed to the AI KnowAll and later identified with 99.991% certainty as an Officer Gnoll from the AlterWorld virtual game.

Besides various items of cold steel and armor, the monster's bag held a bunch of broken arrows tied with a white ribbon as well as a parchment containing texts in an unidentified language.

End of Book Three

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MMORPG Glossary
[iv]

AFK

Away from keyboard

Aggro

As a verb, it refers to a hostile mob that has noticed a player and is actively trying to attack that player. As a noun, it refers to the amount of “hostility” the player has generated on the mob. In typical combat strategy, the fighter tries to take as much aggro as possible away from weaker players such as healers and mages.

Alt

Short for "alternate". It refers to the alternate character a player has from their main character. This is not a stable category as sometimes alts can outlevel mains and sometimes mains become moth-balled.

Alt Tab

The act of using the ALT+TAB keys to jump from application to application

Bind

In certain MMOs, characters are teleported back to a safe spot when they die. This spot is predetermined by the user. The act of determining the safe spot requires an explicit action by the user. That action is known as a bind. The spot is typically referred to as a bind spot.

Bind on equip

This term refers to items that become soulbound to the player after they have been equipped. In other words, the item can be traded as long as no one equips it.

Bind on pickup

This term refers to items that become soulbound to the player after it has been picked up from a monster. In other words, the item cannot be traded once a player picks it up. BoP items commonly cause looting conflicts and disputes during game-play.

Bokken sword

A wooden training sword

Buff

Temporary boost to character attribute or combat ability

Camp(ing)

The act of waiting in an area to hunt a specific mob or a specific spawn

Caster

A mage or a wizard

Char/Toon

A player or their character.

Class

Professional archetypes. In D&D games, these would be warrior, healer, rogue and mage. The most typical class types are: close-range damage, ranged damage, healing, crowd control, support.

Cleric

Typical healing class in D&D style games

Combo

A combination of hits, especially causing severe damage like paralyzing or bleeding

Corpse

In certain MMOs, a corpse appears where the player died. Sometimes all the player’s items and money are left on the corpse and the player is teleported back to their bind spot. Corpses typically will decay after a certain time proportional the character’s level.

Corpse Run

The act of retrieving your corpse after you have died. This is typically a dangerous thing because people tend to die in dangerous places rather than safe places.

Crafting

A general category of skills that allows players to manufacture objects from raw resources

Crit

"To crit" refers to landing a critical hit either with melee or spells. Effective damage is usually increased from a base of 150% to upwards of 250% with extra talents/skills/buffs.

Crowd Control

Refers to a set of spells / abilities that temporarily paralyze or stun other mobs or players. Crowd control is an important group support ability when fighting multiple mobs.

DD

Direct Damage. Used to refer to a class of spells and abilities that allow players to damage enemies from a distance. The firebolt is the archetypal DD.

DD/DPS

A character whose primary role in a group setting is to deal damage to the opponents.

Debuff

The opposite of a buff. An offensive spell cast on enemies that weakens an attribute or combat ability.

Donator

A player who invests real money into virtual gear

DoT

Damage over time. Refers to a class of spells that deals damage over a period of time. These spells typically do more damage than DD spells overall.

DpS

Damage per second. Used when figuring out weapon speed and damage.

Drow

A Dark Elf race

Druid

Hybrid class in D&D style games—part healer, part support, part fighter.

Enchanter

A mage specializing in buffs

Epic

An extremely rare item or quest. Has come to mean something exceptionally cool and hard to get.

Experience

A quantity gained when completing tasks/quests, killing mobs, or various other achievements in games. When enough experience is accrued, characters often “level up” and become more powerful.

Familiar

Same as pet

Farm(ing)

The act of accumulating currency or a specific item by repeatedly killing a mob or repeatedly performing a series of actions

Gnoll

An NPS (AI-controlled character) race of humanoid hyenas

Guilds

Semi-permanent player groups. In typical games, players must use a substantial amount of capital to start the guild.

Health

A base attribute of characters

LFG

“looking for group”

Lich

A race of the undead

Loot

Currency or items that are dropped by a mob when it is defeated

Mana

A commonly-used pool of magic potential (magical analog of health points)

MMORPG

Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

Mob

An AI controlled monster. 'Mob' originally comes from the MUD era, where it was short for 'mobile', to differentiate monsters that would patrol a set of rooms as opposed to monsters which would stay in one place until killed.

Mount

Any riding animal from a donkey to a dragon

Newbie

A new inexperienced player

Newblette

A new and inexperienced female player

Noob

The pejorative form of newbie or an unskilled arrogant player

NPC

Non-player character (ie. controlled by AI)

Nuke

Refers to casters, to cast the highest damage spell or spell combo to effectively pull or finish of a npc. Mages usually are the most effective class in highest burst damage.

Nuker

A caster who throws a lot of damage spells on a target.

Perma

Permanent, permanently

Pet

A creature that can be summoned to help and defend a player

PK

Player Killer—a derogatory term—as in a person who primarily plays to kill other players

PK counter

Shows the number of players already killed by a PK and allows to calculate the chances of his dropping an item if killed by another player

Port

Short for teleport. Used as a noun and a verb.

Powerlevel

Same as rush. When a higher level player tries to help a lower level player level faster. Most games have mechanisms that prevent power leveling.

Pull

A standard hunting strategy where a player lures a single or a group of mobs to the group so that the group can hunt from a safe area instead of hunting in areas where new mobs may spawn.

PvP

Player vs. Player combat

Quest

A set of tasks of a player to complete

Quest item

An item needed to complete a quest

Race

Typically fantastical creations, such as Elves, Trolls and the like.

Raid

A more substantial engagement involving a large organized group of players typically set in a dungeon and involving difficult mobs

Regen

Short for regeneration (of health, mana, or other replenishable attributes)

Resist

A parameter showing one's chances to resist a spell, whether partially or completely

Respawn

A character's resurrection after being killed

Rogue

A game class used for scouting and spying

Root

Can refer to a class of abilities as well as its effect. A root spell immobilizes a target. The target is then said to be rooted. Early versions of these abilities involved references to plants, hence "root".

Rush

Same as powerlevel

Server

Due to technical reasons, each server can only support a limited amount of players. Each MMORPG typically has several servers. Players cannot interact with players on other servers.

Slot

A storage unit, especially in a player's bag

Snare

An ability which slows down a character's movement speed, but they are still capable of moving.

Solo

The act of playing alone, hunting mobs alone.

Soulbound

An item-control mechanic where an item cannot be traded. In other words, only one person can own the object and it cannot be traded. See also BoE and BoP.

Spawn

Resurrect

Stealth

A type of invisibility that lets stealth characters sneak up on others for large critical strikes or for scouting.

Stun

A typical form of crowd control ability that immobilizes an enemy

Tank

As a noun, refers to character classes that can take a lot of damage. As a verb, refers to the act of drawing aggro from mobs before other team members strike with their abilities.

TSB

Toxic Sperm Buildup

Uber

Slang form of super