Kinda lacks emotional punch when you know the sepia world” Rachel” is perfectly okay. Context is a buzzkill. Unless her computer exploded like some sort of early 90’s movie hacker plot.
Maybe the player’s not dead, but the character is, and the character is entirely real to Byron, Gravy, Frigg, and Syr’nj. Rachel’s player could make another character, but it wouldn’t be the same person to the Main Four.
Kinda remind of one big demon of the manga Yureka.
This manga has a background somehow a bit like Guilded Age : it’s a virtual reality game. At the end of a world event, there’s a big demon attacking the city, and so far, player needed to pay lot of XP to connect again after being defeated. Yet, this demon had a more evilish way to wound players : it erased part of their code, meaning : if the player were killed by it, his character was completly deleted.
As a big world boss, Greeny here remind me of that.
Student debt is the real monster. Even death won’t stave off collection. They’ll take the life insurance money that was reserved to purchase your coffin & funeral services.
They’ve deleted her character. This isn’t just some MMO death where you wake up in the graveyard with a bit less XP or whatever. Her character, her progress, the works… completely erased.
That is kind of a big deal.
Well, Penk, we been waitin’ for 3 weeks for you to get into the fray. What’s another 72 hours, I guess?
Thoughts …
-Dam monster. Won’t even allow one the time to grieve.
-Ditch the Keytar, WAV. Get a ’68 Fender Strat and blow its skin off with the first chords of “War Pigs”.
-Coma Frigg looks so childlike, so angelic … I know, I know, it won’t last.
-What a privilege it is to view such excellence 5x/week.
I’d like to point out that no one ever said ‘dead’. The word was ‘gone’. The hesitation could have been Gravedust thinking a moment, and realizing that is indeed what happened. Rachel was gone… Because she is no longer there. But not dead, necessarily. If we hypothesize the monster is attacking because it is eating, and that the monster is in fact eating the code of what it touches, then we can assume that, somewhere within the beast, is Rachel’s code. And everyone/everything else it’s touched as well.
Theory: The monster is digitalized Destructive Chaos. Ever-growing, ever-feeding. The thing which can defeat it, its anathema, is Order. This is why music – sounds, ordered together to Create – can harm it when nothing else seems to.
Or, “gone” is worse than “dead”. If she were just dead, then Gravy could detect her spirit. I think the pause was Gravy confirming that her life and her spirit have both vanished from Arkerra.
The whole Gravy being devastated by the farmer’s deleted spirit thing was to prepare us for the fact that Rachel’s death is real, and she won’t just respawn like Bandit apparently did.
“If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honour in one eye and death i’ the other,
And I will look on both indifferently,
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honour more than I fear death.”
Pretty sure Sundar already knew she was dead. He may not be one of the main team. He may not be top tier in battle. But that is a man who knows what a hopeless battle is, and what it is to cut a loss for a future win.
As long as we’re data, the truth we must heed:
It’s bits that we byte; on data we feed.
Data must write, and so we lend grace,
When files delete files, to use their free space.
Weeell… The routines that delete files don’t really need the extra space to exist, do they? Not in the sense of animals needing other animals for sustenance. Maybe their all-knowing overlords in the “real world” need the space, so they send in the tentacle-things, but their desires are abstract and unknowable.
Ia! Ia! Sys-Adminiggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Interns!
Or, the Beast is sentient, and it needs more data storage space to learn and grow more intelligent.
Player data takes a lot of storage. It’s not just inventory and customization information, but also quest/mission progress, replay data, map revealed info, chat history, guild info, etc…
If the Beast can wipe out a player’s character slot (or entire account?), that frees a lot of storage space for it to grow. Which is why it likes to consume living things.
If the Beast had killed Frigg, it’s possible that it could have accessed Frigg’s player’s brain, giving it an entire human neural network to play with. Imagine the Beast with true human intelligence, sentience, and sapience… Scary.
Maybe that’s what HR wants with the Five, now. Kill their minds, so he can use their brains. Basically, he might be trying to turn them into the Borg. If they’re already subconsciously making Arkerra more realistic, imagine what they could do if they didn’t have to waste so much brainpower being human.
As far as resurrection mechanics go, Bandit didn’t have a clue as to what had happened to her after death. There’s no way any of them have meta-knowledge of a resurrection spell and cost and downtime and whatnot.
This is outside the death/resurrection cycle for an MMO. WAVwouldn’t have allowed himself to be seen were the situation not extremely FOR REALZ (remember, even divination didn’t show him, implying that WAV works entirely behind the scenes on a game-mechanics level.
Its also worth considering that H.R mentioned at one point that the VR players were rubbing off on everyone around them, allowing them to be more human than would be normal for NPCs or even player controlled characters. There’s a certain level of questioning whether Rachel was entirely the player’s creation or whether that magical influence had given the character life within the machine merely directed by an external player.
There’s also the possibility of a metaphysical connection being channeled by the plugged in players. If characters around them begin to evolve beyond the predetermined mechanics of the game, there’s magical influence. There’s nothing to say that this connection wouldn’t also follow through to the players. There’s the very real possibility for psychological damage if this is the case. Rachel’s player may well become depressed or worse, E-merl’s player may well take the loss as though he had really lost a lover.
Once you get interdimensional magic involved, all bets are really off.
I can hardly imagine that, but then I was pretty stunned to hear a muzak version of “Warchild” (Tull) in an elevator once. Yes, really in an elevator. And what’s up with ELP’s “Father Christmas” in the Jingle-jingle background lately? Clearly the people that put this stuff together have no idea what that song is about. :-)
I believe that was her player talking. No longer in character. Though the character Rachel is being erased from existence, Rachel’s player will be okay.
I don’t know if Rachel’s player is really as old as she looked on Xan’s screen, but I’m kinda wondering if she’s gonna retire from gaming. I’m older and have had to pretty much retire from gaming for health reasons, and I would’ve loved it if I could’ve gone out in such a heroic way.
“A deep man believes in miracles, waits for them, believes in magic, believes that the orator will decompose his adversary; believes that the evil eye can wither, that the heart’s blessing can heal; that love can exalt talent; can overcome all odds.”
:*-(
I wonder if Gravedust’s hesitation before he confirmed Rachel was gone lament something.
“Jesus christ, the blood! Oh, god! There’s intestines everywhere! The eyes? WHY THE EYES?”
“Is she…gone?”
“Uh…yes. Just yes. No details. Just yes.”
He had to confirm that she was “gone” euphemistically, metaphysically, and physically (not sure if his scrying works digitally).
Gravedust can only sense life and death. I imagine he was trying to find something, anything, of Rachel.
Rachel nooooo :(
Kinda lacks emotional punch when you know the sepia world” Rachel” is perfectly okay. Context is a buzzkill. Unless her computer exploded like some sort of early 90’s movie hacker plot.
Or a large hairy man with a handlebar mustache shows up at her house…
He’s stated he only kills if he has to. And unlike his prior targets, it’s entirely possible she has a real life to go with the one in Arkerra.
Maybe the player’s not dead, but the character is, and the character is entirely real to Byron, Gravy, Frigg, and Syr’nj. Rachel’s player could make another character, but it wouldn’t be the same person to the Main Four.
It would be the same person if she told them that she reincarnated in the other character (wich would technically be true).
Character wipe, mang! Character wipe.
Nasty business.
Sepia-world-wise, ‘Player Rachel does not exist’ at login, ‘we’re not liable for data loss’ and other yadda-yadda at Arkerra Online TOS.
And assuming that even ‘regular’ players are puppeting the actions of real Arkerrans, someone somewhere bited the dust fo’ realsies.
Either way, E-Merl’s getting the short end of the digi-destroyed stick.
Kinda remind of one big demon of the manga Yureka.
This manga has a background somehow a bit like Guilded Age : it’s a virtual reality game. At the end of a world event, there’s a big demon attacking the city, and so far, player needed to pay lot of XP to connect again after being defeated. Yet, this demon had a more evilish way to wound players : it erased part of their code, meaning : if the player were killed by it, his character was completly deleted.
As a big world boss, Greeny here remind me of that.
This was all just an elaborate plot by the mages college to confiscate something else from E-merl to cover his debt.
“She gave you her heart? We’ll take that, too.”
Student debt is the real monster. Even death won’t stave off collection. They’ll take the life insurance money that was reserved to purchase your coffin & funeral services.
90’s hacker movies were the best hacker movies.
They’ve deleted her character. This isn’t just some MMO death where you wake up in the graveyard with a bit less XP or whatever. Her character, her progress, the works… completely erased.
That is kind of a big deal.
Well, Penk, we been waitin’ for 3 weeks for you to get into the fray. What’s another 72 hours, I guess?
Thoughts …
-Dam monster. Won’t even allow one the time to grieve.
-Ditch the Keytar, WAV. Get a ’68 Fender Strat and blow its skin off with the first chords of “War Pigs”.
-Coma Frigg looks so childlike, so angelic … I know, I know, it won’t last.
-What a privilege it is to view such excellence 5x/week.
I bet he makes one hell of an entrance, though:
Rachel is NOT allowed to be Really Truly Most Sincerely Dead.
SOMEbody better fix this.
I’d like to point out that no one ever said ‘dead’. The word was ‘gone’. The hesitation could have been Gravedust thinking a moment, and realizing that is indeed what happened. Rachel was gone… Because she is no longer there. But not dead, necessarily. If we hypothesize the monster is attacking because it is eating, and that the monster is in fact eating the code of what it touches, then we can assume that, somewhere within the beast, is Rachel’s code. And everyone/everything else it’s touched as well.
Theory: The monster is digitalized Destructive Chaos. Ever-growing, ever-feeding. The thing which can defeat it, its anathema, is Order. This is why music – sounds, ordered together to Create – can harm it when nothing else seems to.
That’s some serious wishful thinking there.
…Well, Rachel’s an awesome character, who would WANT her to die? D:
Or, “gone” is worse than “dead”. If she were just dead, then Gravy could detect her spirit. I think the pause was Gravy confirming that her life and her spirit have both vanished from Arkerra.
The whole Gravy being devastated by the farmer’s deleted spirit thing was to prepare us for the fact that Rachel’s death is real, and she won’t just respawn like Bandit apparently did.
Good riddance. She was almost as annoying as Penk’s helmet.
“If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honour in one eye and death i’ the other,
And I will look on both indifferently,
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honour more than I fear death.”
Too character are going to be pissed, one is Frigg.
*two characters* (I hate auto correct)
Don’t you mean “autoco-weck?”
;)
Pretty sure Sundar already knew she was dead. He may not be one of the main team. He may not be top tier in battle. But that is a man who knows what a hopeless battle is, and what it is to cut a loss for a future win.
As long as we’re data, the truth we must heed:
It’s bits that we byte; on data we feed.
Data must write, and so we lend grace,
When files delete files, to use their free space.
I’m not good at clever comments, so I’ll just flat-out say that I like this.
Weeell… The routines that delete files don’t really need the extra space to exist, do they? Not in the sense of animals needing other animals for sustenance. Maybe their all-knowing overlords in the “real world” need the space, so they send in the tentacle-things, but their desires are abstract and unknowable.
Ia! Ia! Sys-Adminiggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Interns!
Or, the Beast is sentient, and it needs more data storage space to learn and grow more intelligent.
Player data takes a lot of storage. It’s not just inventory and customization information, but also quest/mission progress, replay data, map revealed info, chat history, guild info, etc…
If the Beast can wipe out a player’s character slot (or entire account?), that frees a lot of storage space for it to grow. Which is why it likes to consume living things.
If the Beast had killed Frigg, it’s possible that it could have accessed Frigg’s player’s brain, giving it an entire human neural network to play with. Imagine the Beast with true human intelligence, sentience, and sapience… Scary.
Maybe that’s what HR wants with the Five, now. Kill their minds, so he can use their brains. Basically, he might be trying to turn them into the Borg. If they’re already subconsciously making Arkerra more realistic, imagine what they could do if they didn’t have to waste so much brainpower being human.
Just pointing out that dead is not dead for ever.
Frig and Gravedust have both been dead and buried after all.
I know they are in tubes in sepia world unlike Rachel but the mechanic for resurrection exists in the game.
Not for this kind of death, surely.
As far as resurrection mechanics go, Bandit didn’t have a clue as to what had happened to her after death. There’s no way any of them have meta-knowledge of a resurrection spell and cost and downtime and whatnot.
They died within game mechanics.
This is outside the death/resurrection cycle for an MMO. WAVwouldn’t have allowed himself to be seen were the situation not extremely FOR REALZ (remember, even divination didn’t show him, implying that WAV works entirely behind the scenes on a game-mechanics level.
Its also worth considering that H.R mentioned at one point that the VR players were rubbing off on everyone around them, allowing them to be more human than would be normal for NPCs or even player controlled characters. There’s a certain level of questioning whether Rachel was entirely the player’s creation or whether that magical influence had given the character life within the machine merely directed by an external player.
There’s also the possibility of a metaphysical connection being channeled by the plugged in players. If characters around them begin to evolve beyond the predetermined mechanics of the game, there’s magical influence. There’s nothing to say that this connection wouldn’t also follow through to the players. There’s the very real possibility for psychological damage if this is the case. Rachel’s player may well become depressed or worse, E-merl’s player may well take the loss as though he had really lost a lover.
Once you get interdimensional magic involved, all bets are really off.
Please enjoy some music while you wait. Your battle is important to us.
*Muzak version of the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida plays*
I can hardly imagine that, but then I was pretty stunned to hear a muzak version of “Warchild” (Tull) in an elevator once. Yes, really in an elevator. And what’s up with ELP’s “Father Christmas” in the Jingle-jingle background lately? Clearly the people that put this stuff together have no idea what that song is about. :-)
You mean The Kinks’ “Father Christmas”, I’m betting. :)
;__;7
Excuse me, you seem to have a number on your face.
What that’s an outrageous accusation how dare you suggest such a thing
Morituri Te Salutant – “Those who are about to die salute you.”
“What we do in life, echoes in eternity.”
T_T
I never expected Sundar would be the group’s carry.
He looks well-fed to me…
Well, portage is about all fighters are good for…
While it IS wishful thinking, I do hope something can happen wherein Rachel is somehow brought back… with little or no damage.
S-she’s fine, r-right? She said so herself…
Ask any psychologist – “I’m FINE” means I’m …
F‘d up
Insecure
Neurotic, and
E<motional
I believe that was her player talking. No longer in character. Though the character Rachel is being erased from existence, Rachel’s player will be okay.
I don’t know if Rachel’s player is really as old as she looked on Xan’s screen, but I’m kinda wondering if she’s gonna retire from gaming. I’m older and have had to pretty much retire from gaming for health reasons, and I would’ve loved it if I could’ve gone out in such a heroic way.
I’m expecting an Otherworld scenario here (Or a .hack one for those not familiar)
-_-
“A deep man believes in miracles, waits for them, believes in magic, believes that the orator will decompose his adversary; believes that the evil eye can wither, that the heart’s blessing can heal; that love can exalt talent; can overcome all odds.”
“Armored one”? Just about all of them are armored. She’s armored. I don’t understand why she’d call him that.