Complete Eastern Brisshal Case Files: Log 1 - The Trapped Beginner

[Cleo Looker]

It was a strange thought that her investigation would begin not even a few minutes after character creation, but well, when one kept an ear close to the ground and was used to listening out for clues and gossip, one tended to find a lead relatively quickly. Research had shown that places like inns and taverns tended to be popular places in games for information gathering and quest collecting, so she'd had no reason to believe any different just because Terrasphere was a different kind of game. You could take the gamer out of the game, but their habits tended to remain, or so the psychological analysts had informed her. She'd not been too sure about it until she'd sat at a bar and just listened out for passing conversations.

Really, she felt that she'd struck gold. Listening to a bunch of people drinking and talking about some 'poor newbie' or something along those lines. It matched up with information they'd received, about the girl connected to the MetaVenture incident through a family member, declared deceased herself. Meeting that family had been a particularly hard part of the investigation, that they had already been wounded by VR once only to lose another loved one to it was probably a pain that was unimagineable. They had, at the very least, been supportive of her investigation and had given her as much information as possible. Granted, not much of it could be useful, considering that she was looking for somebody online, where basically everybody, including herself, went by a fake name.

Still, all she could really do was wander the beginner town and hope beyond hope that she found some sort of clue. A passing conversation, anything really. She had to keep her senses sharpened and honed. Really though, it was quite a longshot. After all, what were the chances that she happened across somebody with 'Quincy' written above their head, or something as equally telling? It was like walking around in reality and hoping that the target just happened to be wearing a nametag with their name on it.

@Quincy

 

[Cadmean]

Quincy sighed. She had just stumbled her way back into the closest town after finding herself out in the woods following her- well. She wasn't going to be thinking of that now. Definitely not. Regardless, reaching civilization felt like a monumental accomplishment after everything that had happened. She could probably find some shelter here, food, maybe somewhere to buy a cheap change of clothes? At least she'd manage to scrounge up some money before everything had gone awry.

Remembering what she'd heard from other players, Quincy looked down to her hand as she walked. Tried clenching it in a fist and quickly opening it. She did this once, twice, thrice.

Nothing.

She sighed. "No palm menu..." she muttered to herself. That meant no way to contact her classmates (not that she knew who they were in-game anyway, since they had never exchanged contact information), but more importantly, no way to log out. At least, not that she had found thus far.

Lost in her spiral of negative thoughts, Quincy wasn't paying attention to where she was walking, and ended up bumping into someone. "Oof!"

Stumbling back, Quincy's gaze snapped upwards towards the taller woman she had bumped into. "O-oh, I'm so sorry! I wasn't watching where I was going, that was my fault!" she said to @Cleo Looker, bowing her head and cringing at her own clumsiness.

 

[Cleo Looker]

The sudden impact of a body slamming into her own, not forcefully enough for the offender to have been running or panicking about anything, but forcefully enough for the person to have been caught unawares by her presence. She glanced up, practiced, trained eyes catching sight of a young woman who seemed to he staring at her hand, just before the impact sent Cleo stumbling backwards, her legs scrambling to catch herself and not fall over. She barely managed to get both feet planted firmly beneath her and remain rooted enough to stay standing, her eyes trailing up and down the woman that had bumped into her.

"Ah, no harm done. At least, I don't think any harm was done..." Surely enough, a quick check proved that the force hadn't been enough to actually deal any damage. Though, wuth Terrasphere being what it was, she supposed that she should have expected to feel pain if something had been forceful enough to actually cause damage to her. Red eyes flickered up and down the girl's form, eyes narrowing slightly. "Still, I odn't know what your hand has done for you to be staring at it so intensely. Is there something interesting about your hand that I'm not seeing?"

It was, admittedly, a light hearted way to start probing for information, but sources tended to be more open with their information when they felt like they weren't being interrogated by something.

Still, what were the chances that she'd run into a Quincy? Or, more accurately, that a Quincy had run into her? And during her first times actually playing the game too! Lady luck, it seemed, was smiling down on her from above.

"Anyways, like I said, no harm done. I'm Cleo. I'm new here." She nodded, sticking a hand out to shake as a greeting.

@Quincy

 

[Cadmean]

Quincy was lucky that @Cleo Looker seemed nice. She reached up to take Cleo's offered hand, giving it a small shake.

"Oh, I'm Quincy. Nice to meet you. I'm also, um, new. New to this town, I mean," Quincy said. Then recalling the question that Cleo had asked about her hand, Quincy paused. Did that mean Cleo was a player? Most of the people from the game, who called themselves Landers, all just seemed to accept the palm menu gesture as just another weird thing that players did, and usually didn't ask about it.

Well, if Cleo was a new player, then the palm menu would be helpful for her. Quincy sure wished that she had tried to play around with it more before she lost access. Summoning up a bright smile and hoping to make up for that bad first impression, Quincy began to explain, "Oh, and about my hand, that's the palm menu! If you do this really quick"--Quincy repeated the palm menu gesture, though it had no effect for her--"and you can open your menu! That'll let you message people and log out and... do some other helpful functions!" she said, failing to remember any of the other buttons accessible through the palm menu. Hopefully Cleo wouldn't pick up on the fact that she couldn't actually see the menu, as that would be rather awkward to explain.

 

[Cleo Looker]

"Quincy? Nice to meet you. Much obliged." Cleo's eyes lit up slightly. Now THIS was amusing and interesting all wrapped up in one. That she was new to the town matched the description she'd heard of some new player being killed in unfortunate ways around here, or out further into the wilds. It was pretty convenient if this was the person that she'd been looking for, though she did need to undergo a few more tests, of sort, to really be certain that she wasn't about to just bombard the wrong person about questions pertaining to a person they didn't even know anything about. Now that would be something that was truly embarrassing, expecially given her background.

She opened and closed her palm, repeating the gesture that Quincy had showed her and saw her menu pop up. She'd seen it a few dozen times already, but she still acted surprised, narrowing her eyes at the menu. "So how do I do stuff like send messages and friend invites and stuff? That is something that you can do in this game, isn't it?" She asked. This was truly the test. She already knew how to do those things, but if this was the case she thought it was, then the girl would hopefully really struggle to remember.

"Party invites too, actually. I haven't played with any friends yet, but I might make one or two so knowing how to contact them would help." Actually, that reminded her that she did need to build some kind of informant network in this game, hopefully without blowing her cover. She was, after all, under strict orders not to reveal that she was from the VRSA to anybody, even if she was attempting to sway them to her cause or use them for information.

@Quincy

 

[Cadmean]

A cold, cold sweat began to run down Quincy's back. This was exactly what she didn't want to happen. @Cleo Looker's questions were all reasonable, but Qunicy couldn't help but feel just the slightest spike of irrational anger mixed in with her anxiety. Why did Cleo have to put her on the spot like this? How was she going to explain this away?

"Um, I think it should all be pretty clear if you select the buttons," Quincy chirped, pulling on a smile she didn't really feel. "The game is designed really well, the layout is all simple so it's not hard to find things you need! I'm not really good at explaining tech stuff and I don't want to give you the wrong answer."

Her eyes darted to the side, seeking an excuse to duck out of the conversation without making Cleo upset at the abrupt departure. Ah, a weapon's store. That could work.

"Oh, uh, I think I might have to go now," she started, pulling a handful of coins out of her pocket, rather than her inventory. "You can do all sorts of stuff from your menu so you should probably try that out..."

 

[Cleo Looker]

Too much was adding up for her to ignore it, or try to reason away that it was all just a coincidence anymore. This was somebody that had been lost in the real world, alive in the game, wandering around and even talking to her. For a minute, a spike of dread lanced through Cleo as the cold realization washed over her that she was, indeed, talking with a dead person. A dead person who seemed fully alive and well. What on earth did any of this mean? How in the world was this kind of thing possible and why had the developers created a system that could put people in this kind of position?

Still, she couldn't just allow @Quincy to leave, picking up now on the mounting tension within the girl. There really wasn't a good way to bring any of the things she had to talk about up, so it was probably a good idea to just rip the bandaid off and go head first into the topic. Really there was only one thing for it, she just had to be cautious in case of a particularly violent reaction from Quincy, but nobody had ever accused her of having an easy or safe job.

"Quincy Dallas, correct?" She called out to prevent the girl from leaving, seeing her pulling coins out of her pocket and glancing to the side at a weapon store. "Declared legally deceased. They refer to your state of being as 'UI locked' if I remember correctly."

 

[Cadmean]

Quincy stilled as she heard her full name. This was the one place she didn't expect to hear it. Her gaze snapped back to @Cleo Looker, her entire body tensing. But more than just the shock of hearing her last name, the next words that left Cleo's mouth were even more unbelievable.

"W-what do you mean, 'deceased'?" Quincy couldn't keep her voice from raising in distress. A barrage of questions left her mouth: "What does 'UI-locked' mean!? I don't understand anything that you're talking about! Who are you!?"

As Quincy spoke, she started clutching onto what she was holding--crossbow in one hand, coins in the other--tighter and tighter, subconsciously trying to seek comfort from something, anything at all. She didn't know what to do, how to process the inconceivable things that Cleo was telling her. There was part of her that wanted it all to be a lie, but there was something about Cleo's demeanor that suggested she was deadly serious.

 

[Cleo Looker]

Ah, the good old 'pretend complete ignorance' response to being confronted with information that the person was so certain was a secret that only they were in the know about. The clutching of the crossbow was a concern, it reminded her of times suspects had reached for guns or knives in the past, though she couldn't quite reach for her own weapon, considering a large spear wasn't exactly the most subtle of weapons to lug around and would come across as more threatening than anything else. So she held off from brandishing it, or even wrapping a hand around the haft in an attempt to reassure herself.

"My name is Cleo Looker, in the real world I'm a detective, miss Dallas." She explained quite seriously, fixing the girl with a look that spoke volumes as to the level of severity of what she was about to say. "I suggest we find somewhere to sit and I can explain your situation to you as best as I possibly can?" She held out a hand, offering it for @Quincy to take. If she didn't take the offered hand, that was fine, but she did keep an eye on the girl as she started walking, to make sure that Quincy followed. Once they were settled, sitting at the edge of some kind of fountain, Cleo breathed a sigh.

"Okay, I imagine you have quite a few questions. Feel free to ask any questions you have and I'll do my best to answer them."

 

[Cadmean]

Quincy's vision had faded out, slightly, the world seeming to lose color as she struggled to contain her emotions. It was hard to focus on what @Cleo Looker was saying over the pure shock running through her, but as Cleo continued to stay still and be non-threatening, she gradually began to get at least her breathing under control. No longer halfway to hyperventilating, Quincy brought her gaze up to meet Cleo's.

"O-okay," she said with a small nod, not trusting herself with any further words. Though she didn't take Cleo's hand, she followed after the woman, eventually settling herself on the edge of the fountain a slight distance away from Cleo. She just needed some space to herself.

When Cleo offered to answer her questions, Quincy couldn't stop herself from blurting out the first one that had come to mind, the most pressing question of them all: "What do you mean, I'm dead?"

 

[Cleo Looker]

Ah, well, Cleo supposed that it was too much to hope for that the girl would take her hand, as good of a sign of trust as it would have been. Still, yet again, it was going to fall to her to bring bad news to a person, as she had many times before during investigations, informing loved ones of their kin's passing or something as equally morbid. It was something that she never liked to do, but it was important that somebody give the bad news, because Quincy, like all victims or relatives of victims, did deserve to know what had happened and was owed at least that much.

So when they were sat down and the most pressing question was blurted out, Cleo could only sigh and try to collect her thoughts. It was important to approach this kind of topic with some tact, so she would have to dive into that emotionally sincere place inside of her. Quincy probably wouldn't benefit much from insincere apologies or platitudes, so sticking to just the pure facts would probably be the most sensible way of going about this, for better or for worse. She wasn't a therapist or psychologist, though, so maybe she was wrong.

"Well, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you've been declared deceased in the real world, Quincy. I think there has been a funeral for you. I'm not aware of the specifics of the grieving process there, I'm afraid." She placed a finger on her chin and hummed. "I can't say for certain, but I believe your time of death would sync up exactly with the time you became UI locked in this game. If you have a method of remembering even the vague time and date you noticed you couldn't log out, that would help tremendously."

With that said, she paused. "Do you have any other questions for me?" Cleo asked. It would be best to let Quincy take the lead, then fill in any gaps based on questions that were asked.

@Quincy

 

[Cadmean]

For a moment, it was as if @Cleo Looker's words bounced right off Quincy, failing to register. Dead? That was impossible. She was right here, wasn't she? Sitting by this fountain, still breathing, having a conversation with another person like there was nothing wrong.

Except there was. According to Cleo, she was dead. Had been dead, for at least a few days, if what she was saying was true. Her grip on her crossbow tightened, knuckles turning white with just how hard she was gripping onto the frame. Without her conscious say-so, wisps of dark smoke began to emanate from her fingers in response to her distress, but it was as if Quincy didn't see them at all. She instead brought her gaze to meet Cleo's, mustering up every last bit of determination she had in her.

"If UI-locked means not being able to use things like the menu and stuff," she began slowly, trying to stay calm, "then that was a few days ago. I think. It's been a few nights since then, or it felt like it. Just after I started playing."

Quincy swallowed as she thought back to the events surrounding her deaths. First, she instant she had loaded into the game, she was face to face with a pack of crazed wolves. Then, when she had woken up in a temple after that painful, slow death, it had been in the middle of a goblin raid. She'd had no chance to even try to run before she was killed again, and then brought back in the middle of the same assault for her third--and, apparently, actual--death.

"I woke up in the middle of the forest and all my things were everywhere. I tried to use the inventory to put them all back, but I couldn't open the menu at all," she said. "I wanted to try and message my-" Friends? Acquaintances? Classmates? What even were they to her, or her to them? She swallowed again, and continued, "-my friends, but I couldn't find a way to do that either."

She stopped then, trying to get her thoughts in order. There was another subject Quincy wasn't sure she wanted to touch, but hell. She was already dead, apparently! What could be worse? "So, um," she said, the smoke curling around her fingers growing noticeably thicker as she broached this next topic: "If you know who I am, does that mean you've met my parents?"

 

[Cleo Looker]

Ah, the sudden wisps of dark smoke didn't seem to be a good sign. Cleo found herself sitting just a little more straight, eyes locked onto the girl's fingers as they released whatever magic that was, if it was even magic, responding subconsciously to the threat that it may or may not present. In the end, there really wasn't any way to know for sure how somebody would react to knowing that they had died in the real world, since it wasn't exactly a situation that many people could ever run into. In fact, it was possible that this was the first time anybody had ever had this kind of conversation in the history of humanity.

That would've been a humbling thought, if it wasn't such a heavy and dark topic...

That is what I mean but UI-locked, yes. After the third death, it seems to be guaranteed that a player will find themselves unable to interact with functions such as the palm menu, locking them out of their UI, the ability to log out, their inventory and other such things. We're not sure if this is a side-effect of the game...terminating...a player upon their third death, or a different, if related, system.

The girl's story seemed consistent with the things that the VRSA had started to put together, though it would definitely need to be reported just in case. This could be valuable information for them in their investigation. It seemed to be something of a universal experience. It was interesting that Quincy hadn't respawned at a temple after her third death. It implied that the system treated the third death differently than the first two. That implied that it was something intentional and not some kind of software error. If it was an error, it was a bad one.

Then the smoke grew thicker as Quincy asked after her family, if Cleo had met her parents. The agent swallowed, but it was to be expected that she was going to be asked this kind of question, given the circumstances. She gave the girl a gentle nod, smiling as warmly as she could.

I have, yes. In the real world, I'm something of an investigator, you see. Your situation and your family were brought to my attention quite recently and I had the pleasure of speaking to them.[/speech]

She withdrew a simple cloth from her inventory, a spare that she had bought, intending to use it to polish her spear. Instead, she held it out for Quincy to use as a hankerchief or just something to maybe hold and draw comfort from.

I understand it's a very troubling topic and conversation. You're in the lead, here. I'll answer any questions you want me to. And I have all the time in the world, so don't feel pressured to ask everything here and now, if you don't feel ready for it. But, if you could give me the contacts of your friends, if they play this game, I can probably contact them for you?

@Quincy

 

[Cadmean]

After a moment of hesitation, Quincy reached out and took the cloth from @Cleo Looker. She didn't do much with it for the time being, simply toying with the corner of the fabric as she listened. Not that she was really taking in everything that the detective said. Her mind was still stuck on the fact that she was dead.

But the mention of her classmates snapped her out of it, just briefly. "I can give you their names. And, um, if you want their real names I can give those too," Quincy said. They had supposedly made plans to meet up in the game the first night Quincy had logged in, but Quincy had never arrived at that meeting. Spawning in a wolf's den tended to throw a wrench into any plans one had made beforehand.

She listed off a few names that she could recall--some of her classmates had decided, like her, to just use their own names inside the game as well. A few of them didn't, but there were one or two distinctive enough that they stuck out in her memory. She was probably forgetting a few still, though.

But when that was done, there was once again nothing to distract Quincy from having to face the thought of her own demise. She fidgeted again, pulling a little at the handkerchief in her hands. "I-if it's okay, can the rest of this wait? I'm feeling a little... tired. I think I'll, um, go now. To the inn in town. So maybe we can talk about this later?"

Tired wasn't the right word, but unpacking everything that Quincy felt at that time was too much to ask of her. She stood quickly from the fountain, only just barely waiting for Cleo to respond before turning and scurrying off. She didn't even remember to return Cleo's cloth in her haste to escape. Thin wisps of smoke rose from where her feet met the ground, manifestations of the dark ugly pressure in her chest leaking out in little uncontrollable bursts.

 

[Cleo Looker]

It still felt like she was sitting next to a live grenade that could go off any minute, but Cleo did her absolute best to make sure that it never went off, or at least, that it never appeared to Quincy that the agent was feeling ill at ease. The last thing that she needed was for her own nervous energy to set Quincy off and cause a scene, or create some kind of issue that would perhaps put herself, Quincy or any bystanders that happened to be nearby in danger.

The smoke was concerning though. Very concerning. Though at the idea of being given a list of names, both in-game and real, did make her eyes light up. Potential leads, or at least, contacts that she could use. She wasn't sure what she could use them for yet, but this would probably help out in some way.

That sounds like it'd be really helpful, yeah. Let me just pull up something to take notes on and then I'll listen.

It was simple enough to send a message to herself with the list of names that Quincy had given her, many of which were matching pairs, having apparently decided to use their real names as in-game names. One or two exceptions, but for the most part, they'd probably not be too hard to find.

That left the two of them sat there, though Quincy piped up, wanting to leave. Cleo flashed the girl a patient smile, nodding.

Of course. I know where to find you for the moment. And I think you'll probably not struggle to find me, if you have anything else you want me for.

With that, she watched the girl scurry off, her patient smile fading into a worried scowl as she watched the smoke rising from Quincy's footsteps. She was concerned.

Very concerned...

@Quincy

THREAD COMPLETE