I’d suspected something of the sort, and shrugged. "I generally prefer to group with guildies, but it doesn’t look like anyone is going to get to Mars within the next game day, and I don’t want to delay working on my rank, so I guess I’ll play people roulette. What’s the attitude toward honesty in The Synergis?"
[[Wildly varying with location and individual. Many value fair dealing, and there’s more than a few regions where they have local rules that amount to a very stiff code of honour. But others would think you a fool for not maximising every advantage. I personally prefer to make it clear that I’m lying, if I have reason to lie. It depends on the circumstance.]]
The party finder wasn’t too difficult to work out, and allowed me to use Stage 2 of the Challenge series as the basis of a search request. In return my HUD produced another arrow, along with a list of more than a dozen…
"Why are most of the details hidden?" I asked Dio, comparing my rank and location information to the absence of everything but age groupings for some.
[[Fragile Bio ego, usually. To make yourself look like someone of higher rank, or a person of reputation.]]
"Wouldn’t people of reputation be recognised?"
[[Some never compete without an active focus hiding their face. And appearance is a fluid concept in The Synergis.]]
"Even for lan Challenges?"
[[Bios of higher rank can usually manage Core modals with varying appearances—strength can overcome some of the disadvantages of poor synchronisation. Once you’ve ranked twenty, it’s only in the most intense Challenges that synchronisation becomes a real factor. Hiding rank is also very common in areas like this where lan duelling is permitted—the weak so they cannot be marked an easy target by the strong, and the strong to lure the weak, and all the permutations of that you can think of.]]
"You don’t have to accept lan duelling Challenges do you?"
[[No. Not your thing?]]
"Some rando spamming duel at me isn’t my idea of fun. We’ve had good guild duelling matches though."
My arrow had taken me to a big, quite beautiful wall mosaic, all swirls of tiny blue, black and brown squares. Before it, a small crowd of people were centred around a tall dark-haired guy with a Swedish accent, who was saying: "…it is only reasonable that we establish rank before deciding party makeup. How else can we decide?"
"I don’t see you turning off anon," an American—no, Canadian—man replied.
"Sixer trying to get a leg up," commented another.
As someone openly Rank Six, I decided not to participate in this argument, and found a convenient low bench to settle on study my options. Rank was not how I’d decide on party members—especially not when everyone here would be at least Rank Six, and no higher than Eight, which was the maximum that had been achieved in the game so far.
Admittedly, that seemed to be a fairly big strength increase, but I’d still base my party decisions on finding players who didn’t suck all the fun from the game. I understood the reason for the arrow now: most party finders didn’t take personality into account, but with a virtual game, you’d benefit from a chance to meet each other beforehand.
The main combatants of the argument I dropped from the list of potentials immediately. A step back from them were a pair of guys in matching outfits who were probably a team, and hanging behind them two near-identical teens who were obviously brother and sister—or pretending to be. A woman stood to their right, wearing an expression of boredom, but, hm, was probably grouped with the anti-six guy, judging from that exchange of glances. I began working out who else were already in small teams, then was distracted by a shoulder patch of a woman standing alone.
Bio of The Synergis.
Discovery of my work produced a pleasant little glow. I hadn’t checked in-game sales—I didn’t know how to, in truth—but seeing my art in the wild was always a special moment. I promptly invited the woman to group on the grounds of good taste, added invites to the brother-sister combo, and picked a peaceably smiling wall of a man to round out the group limit. The invite message for each was a simple "Why are we wasting time?"
They all accepted, and I studied the little collection of tools and information that grouping had given me. A chat channel, names, guilds, and the little teammate directional pointers you see in shooters. No ranks, though, and none of the traditional health and mana bars. The twins were Imoenne and Arlen, the man was The Lewit, and the woman wearing my patch was Althea Goodnamesweregone.
"Great name," I said to her, as we collectively stepped away from the crowd.
"Thanks," she said, with an easy smile. She was a white woman, with a muscular frame and a high ponytail of bright red hair. "And thanks for the escape."
"Same," said the man, who was as pale-skinned and dark-haired as his name suggested, but in no other way reminded me of Goth stereotypes.
"Almost, we were mesmerised by the insistence that an argument was necessary," Arlen said, his French made notable by a pleasant but very young-sounding voice. I was competent in the language, but my inner translator still obliged with a smooth switch to English with only a little lag.
His sister added a short, shy nod in agreement. The twins were both very dark-skinned, their hair beautifully arranged in close caps of tiny braids specked with turquoise (Imoenne) and scarlet (Arlen) beads.
"I just want to see what’s next," I said, with a shrug. "Are we all set? No-one needs more prep time?"
"Good to go," Lewit said, was echoed by the others.
THE HEART OF MARS
Choose a path.
Solo or Party
Gauntlet
Gateway series
Length: Thirty minutes (2 of 9)
Core Unit
29
party progression
The inevitable arrow led us to another cramped, rough and simple corridor, even narrower than the first entrance tunnel. I paused well short of the simple opening.
"I’m presuming more lasers, not necessarily with any warning. A whole series of shield training."
"With only occasional warning, according to four of my guildies who are two stages ahead of me," Althea said. "They took turns shielding their group to get through, but in the fourth stage the bolts hit so hard that they couldn’t always hold the shield, and they wiped."
We all glanced up and back, to the distinctly creepy collection of silver flying things waiting for us to die. It was bad news that the impacts increased in strength.
"How long were the sections?" Lewit asked. "The same as the first?"
"Longer each time, but that might depend on the path you pick." Althea shrugged. "If we follow a similar progression, we should be fine for this stage, but we may hit a wall further on."
"Let’s practice taking turns with the shields first, and decide what to do about the later stages in the next rest area," I said, then added silently to Dio: "Are our Cycogs allowed to project shield shapes or anything like that?"
[[No, we’re just here to snigger at suitable intervals.]]
"I’ll remember to pay you no attention, then."
Before entering the tunnels, we chose a squad formation to make it easier to shield everyone at once. Setting a rotation order, we activated our focuses so we could practice swapping off shields for a while. Then we started out.
Our formation was immediately stymied by the tunnels, which refused to widen out, but merely branched and branched again, and left us trailing along single file.
"Perhaps it is best if we shield even if it doesn’t open up," Arlen suggested, and so we started our shields in the order we were walking, and just in time, too, because we weren’t even halfway through a rotation before a shot slammed into Lewit’s shield and made us all flinch.