"Uh, right. You've read the literature already, then?" the voice said, shifting to a more normal tone. Greg Henderson, the God of Order, found it silly to use his divine voice for prolonged conversation.
"Yeah, the Sages are like the game world police, right?" I asked, expecting confirmation.
"Correct. There are two classes of Sage: Full-time and Part-time. We prefer to draw our full-timers from experienced long-term players, who have shown their dedication to FOG. Our part-timers have a special role however, more like undercover police, and we find it is useful to train a select few newbie players," explained Greg.
"So I could be a part-time Sage."
"Yes. You will be able to play a normal character, but you will be able to file reports on game abuse and control a special pool of Ether Gold that you can allocate to the Bounty Pools' Red Section however you wish. In game terms, your character will be some type of greater being--like an angel or whatever--bound into the body of a more normal race. In your normal body you'll advance as a normal character, but you can manifest your true form when dealing with Devils or any Red Section offender. You'll automatically transform if anyone listed in the Red Section attempts to kill you."
"What are these Bounty Pools? I've never heard of them," I asked.
"A new feature as of two weeks ago. There are four sections to the bounty list: Gold, Green, Red, and Blue.
"Gold is all NPCs. That's where you'll find quest-related bounties as well as a random assortment we put in just to make things interesting for the bounty hunters.
" The Green Section is for bounties on PCs who have committed crimes in-game - stealing, murder, fraud, public display of dark magic - these things are punished only at the character level to make Ether an overall comfortable place, but since some of these things are actually what certain character classes like rogues or necromancers are expected to do--though you're supposed to do your best not to get caught-- they do not result in user account suspension or termination.
" The Red Section is for bounties on players who commit system abuse; player-killing is a Red Section offense generally only when you repeatedly target Noobs-- most Red Section bounties are on Devils and their associates.
"The Blue Section is for bounties posted by Guilds. If you join a Guild, odds are you will get caught up in a Guild feud sooner or later.
" For any bounty, all you have to do is kill or capture the named character and report to the appropriate Guild. As far as the bounty system is concerned, the Sages function as a Guild."
"There isn't a big problem with noob massacres, is there?" I asked, worried. In some past MMOs there were problems with player killers camping out in the newbie spawn areas.
"Not much since we started recruiting part-time Sages like you. As soon as you kill more than three newbie player characters in the space of an hour, you get listed in the Red Section."
"All right, this doesn't sound like too much trouble. I was supposed to meet someone today, though, so I'd like to just play the game for a while," I decided.
"All right, I won't keep you any longer." The voice of Greg went silent, and I was left with the character creation screen once more.
**CHARACTER CREATION
NAME
GENDER
RACE
APPEARENCE
ADVANCED APPEARENCE
CLASS
PROFILE
SPECIALITIES
ITEMS
START IN: Epic City
Please select what you want to alter**
There was, however, a second window to the side this time.
UNLOCKED: PART-TIME SAGE ABILITIES
ITEMS GRANTED: Advanced Map, Advanced Journal
GREATER BEING RACE:
GREATER BEING APPEARANCE:
I didn't want to waste much more time before finding Suzie.
