How Maryx Became a Hero
Based On A False Story
I suppose, in many ways, Maryx never wanted to be a hero. Perhaps she didn’t want to work hard for no pay, perhaps getting killed wasn’t quite as awesome as it looks, or (most likely), perhaps she was too busy getting drunk to ever think about such things. And boy, did she get drunk, spending her awake time drinking beer, and her asleep time being too passed out to pay the tab. This meant that Maryx could never visit the same bar twice, so had to go from city to city, searching for the next place to get totally drunk.
Unfortunately this ruse could only work for so long. Back then, the country of Godville was small, with not enough heroes to drive back the monsters surrounding it, and places such as “Dogville” and “Anville” had not quite been invented yet. It was not long before Maryx ran out of pubs where she could get free beer from. Except there was one left, one with the rather wavy pink word “bar”, except that Maryx swore that she could see two wavy pink words “bar” if she stared at it for long enough. Maryx quickly stumbled into it, anxious to get her much-needed beer.
And yet she never got her much-needed beer. For Maryx had not drunkenly stumbled into a bar, but rather into a large shop with the neon sign “Heroes-R-Us”. She was quickly escorted by a new shop assistant that knew nothing about the inverse correlation between drunkenness and heroism, and so took her to the podium where only the finest heroes are sold.
I don’t know why I chose her above all other heroes.
Perhaps when I saw her on that stand, I saw her as a good fighter. Perhaps I took pity on her. Or (most likely), perhaps I was too excited about getting my very own hero to ever look at the 72-point small print. Whichever way, I spent all my money on her, only for her to pass out just afterwards. It took nearly all of my godpower trying to wake her up the next day, with bucket of cold water after bucket of cold water appearing from thin air, only for it all to be poured onto her head. I think Maryx might still be resentful of that, no matter how many monsters I let her kill.
But that was the easy part. I had to feed her, train her, and try to get her to at least a moderate degree of soberity. Progress was slow and tempers were lost.
So what do I have to show for it? Well, not a lot really. Except for the wasted hours spent trying to get her to do as I say. And all the deaths from multiple duels. Apparently she can’t even put her beer bottle down when another hero is mocking me.
Perhaps she has become an atheist. I’ve heard that if you keep looking out for your hero, their IQ rises dangerously high (In extreme cases, it can get above zero), losing all faith in goddesses, heroism and strangely tangible monsters…
What a worrying thought. Perhaps I should try introducing her to beer again.
To be continued…
Now.
Maryx’s Chronicles II: An Unexpected Guilding
Many months after Sophawa found a hero, Maryx realised that Sophawa was being a bit more… annoying… than usual. For a long time, Maryx was doing lots of beer drinking heroic deeds with relatively little god interference (aside from occasional healing), that is, until, her goddess wanted her to change guild…
Let’s face it, being a goddess of a rather stupid heroine is not as fun as it sounds. I mean, it’s fine at first, when level-ups happen every minute and you’re trying your best to get her to build that damn temple (and afterwards trying your best to get her to resurrect her beloved pet instead of going to the Drunken Dwarve again), but afterwards, there’s nothing to do. Literally, nothing to do. At all.
Yes, that’s the point of the game, but I wanted more. Another pointless goal, perhaps. Or a new method of torturing my hero. Or a duel fight which I won’t lose in a total of 2 turns because I came up against someone from “Harvest Moon”. Something like that.
So I stalked the area of Godville, all of it, where gods hang out, where heroes hang out, even where evil blood-sucking monsters hang out. But there was nothing, nothing where I had an excuse, even a lousy one, to stalk Maryx 24/7.
And then I caught sight of a broken guildbuilding, somewhere between Los Adminos and San Sanatos, with a scribbled sign saying “Un1t3d L0n3rs of G0dv1ll3“ (apparently the sign-writer charged extra for vowels) and a single hero, turned to stone by the sheer force of waiting, perched outside it. +Bingo!+ I thought. I’ll get my hero to make this building great again, and perhaps, even, turn the “United Loners of Godville” into the awesomest guild between Los Adminos and San Sanitos!
Which wasn’t as easy as it sounds (And as it didn’t sound that easy in the first place, it was super-uneasy to actually do). First of all, I must have shouted too loud at the hero at the start of the game because she’s basically deaf. And she can’t take a hint either. Even when the whole world is shouting at her to do things, she doesn’t get it! Heck, I even promised her with cake to get her to listen. It was only after she set off to join the guild that she realised the cake was a lie.
But not all was done yet. I was an impatient goddess, and I did not like the idea of the heroine completing the guild quest the slow way. So I used all the godpower I could muster to try to hurry Maryx along the quest, employing miracle after miracle, recharge after recharge, yet it was only after I had completed a total of 30 miracles to with only two working that I realised the Great Random hated me. So, I put some charges away for a rainy day, and let my hero get totally drunk. That day also happened to be a long day of obsessively checking stats, giving voice commands, and stalking the forums. In other words, I went on Godville just a teensy bit too much.
When Maryx finally reached the guild building, she realised what a terrible mistake she made. She almost froze in horror when she saw the stone hero sitting outside the door, and the place was inhabited by many Internet Trolls, each of them saying how everybody’s god was false in the hopes of starting a megawar that could reach even the furthest parts of Godville. All of which made the guildbuilding completely uninhabitable.
But then, Maryx had an all-too-rare flash of inspiration. She could take the Internet Trolls out, with fire! She made a fire outside the building, a large one, filled with more wood than in the forest surrounding her. When the fire was nice and big, she took a burning-hot piece of wood and threw it at the Internet Trolls. But she had failed to factor in the fact that the guild building was made of extra-burnable wood, and while the fire only made the trolls grow bigger, the building completely burnt down. Suddenly the trolls had nowhere to go, and when faced with Maryx’s new sword, soon became history. Or at least, it would have if Maryx had written it in her diary. Stupid heroine.
Now Maryx had a dilemma. To rebuild the building, a feat of construction she really couldn’t be bothered to do, or have her goddess lose all faith in her? I decided to show her my real intentions in sending her to rebuild this building.
And so, when Maryx sat down to eat her lunch, she found a fortune cookie she swore she hadn’t packed. Being the greedy heroine she is, she ate it at once, only to find a small piece of disgusting-tasting paper hidden inside it. When she spat it out, she found the paper had some words which read:
“Maryx, listen. The real reason I sent you here was to form a guild of introverted heroes and even-more introverted gods with too much time on their hands. It shall be called the “United Loners of Godville”, and it shall need some guildmates. Find and recruit other heroes, and they can create this guildbuilding for you. Fail, and I shall send a thousand Godville Administrators to attack your every move, and drink all the beer in the world.”
Maryx was chilled to the bone by that idea. No beer? But what about her liver? She didn’t want it to be strong and healthy again. So she set off back to Godville, scouring all the bars along the way to find recruits and cheap beer.
Alas, she is still searching, unaware that I don’t actually have the power to send Godville Administrators at her, or to remove all her beer. Oh well. As they say “Beer is the perfect way to keep heroes stupid and docile”. And I stand by that.
To Be Continued…