The last thing Ethan Cole remembered was drinking coffee.
Specifically, the fact that he hadn't had any in six hours, that the empty mug on his desk had been mocking him since midnight, and that he absolutely, positively was not going to fall asleep before pushing Patch 1.0 to the live servers.
He remembered hitting DEPLOY then the little loading bar crawling across his monitor.
'just five minutes, I'll close my eyes for just five—'
And then he remembered nothing.
---
The first thing Ethan noticed was the smell.
Not the stale recycled air that he usually caught at the NovaCrest Studios'. This was something else entirely, it was like cold stone, burning torch oil, and the distant metallic bite of a winter wind cutting through gaps in ancient walls.
His eyes opened slowly to meet a stone ceiling.
'That's new.'
He sat up or at least he tried to but something heavy shifted on his head and nearly toppled him sideways, he grabbed the armrests of the chair beneath him on instinct, steadying himself, and the weight on his head settled with a dull metallic clank.
A crown.
He was wearing a crown.
Ethan's eyes moved slowly downward to gaze at the iron gauntlets on his hands. A deep crimson cape draped over broad shoulders that were definitely broader than his own. Black plate armor engraved with a thorned crest across the chest and boots that could stomp a car flat.
He was sitting on a throne.
'A throne he had personally designed.'
"...No," he said.
His voice came sounding different from his own but he recognized the quality that he had spent two weeks getting exactly right in the audio engine. The kind of voice that was meant to make players feel a chill when the cutscene loaded.
He knew this voice.
He knew this throne room.
The vaulted ceiling stretched thirty feet above him, held up by columns of black granite veined with glowing red ore — Ignarite, a resource he had invented, balanced, and assigned a mining difficulty of 74. Enormous iron chandeliers hung above, their candles burning low and casting everything in shifting amber shadow. At the far end of the hall, two massive doors stood sealed, carved with a relief of a battle scene.
His battle scene. He had sourced the reference art himself.
At the base of the throne steps, four armored guards stood perfectly still, facing outward with their hands resting on the pommels of greatswords.
NPC guards. He knew their patrol patterns, their aggro radius, their response scripts.
He had written those scripts.
"Okay," Ethan said quietly, to no one. "Okay. I'm in the game."
What do I know?
He was Lord Malachar. A tyrant lord and the ruler of the Ashenveil region, the designated tutorial antagonist for Dominion Online's opening questline.
Level 45 at spawn but designed to be defeatable by a coordinated group of six players around level 20.
Everything was designed by him, to lose.
What are my assets?
The Crimson Castle itself was formidable by early-game standards. It had thick walls, a working portcullis system, a garrison of 200 soldier NPCs, a dungeon beneath the castle with three sub-bosses, and a treasury that respawned basic resources on a 24-hour timer.
What are my threats?
Every single player who logged into Dominion Online. Which, given that Patch 1.0 was the full public launch would be a lot of people.
The launch window was 48 hours from patch deployment.
He had pushed the patch right before falling asleep.
So he had roughly 47 hours before the first players spawned into the world.
And then they would come for him because that was the beginnerquest. [Slay the Tyrant Lord.] One of the first major story objectives, recommended for parties of four to six, dangling rare loot and a region liberation cutscene as reward. He had designed it to be satisfying to complete.
Deeply, thoroughly satisfying.
For the players.
What do I have that they don't?
Complete knowledge of game mechanics. Map data. Racial faction disposition scores. Resource locations. Boss weaknesses. Exploit awareness — though the update he had pushed might have patched some of those.
That was a problem. He didn't know exactly what Patch 1.0 had changed beyond the major features. The patch notes document had been 47 pages long and he had written maybe 30 of them personally. The rest had come from other teams.
He needed to read his own patch notes. From inside his own game.
Wonderful
He also had—
The thought arrived the same moment a soft chime rang in the air in front of him, and a translucent blue panel materialized out of nothing, hovering at eye level with the quiet patience of something that had been waiting for him to notice it.
---
[ STATUS — LORD MALACHAR ]
|---|---|
| Title | Tyrant Lord of the Crimson Castle|
| Race | Human (Halfblood) |
| Level | 45 |
| HP | 24,500 / 24,500 |
| MP | 8,200 / 8,200 |
| STR | 312 |
| DEF | 287 |
| INT | 144 |
| AGI | 198 |
| Respawn | DISABLED |
---
[ SYSTEM NOTICE ]
This entity has been granted Developer Override Status.
Autonomous decision-making: ENABLED
Upgrade Points Available: 1,000,000
---
Ethan stared at the screen for a long time.
Then he looked at the Respawn line again.
Then at the upgrade points.
Then back at Respawn.
"Disabled," he read aloud, in Lord Malachar's deep theatrical voice, in an empty throne room, surrounded by NPCs who would never answer him.
He leaned back in the throne.
"...Cool. That's fine. That's totally fine."