Broken Lands

There was just enough time to look around the room before the World Tree decided to tell them where they were.

Spoiler

Welcome to the Treasury!

Access to the Treasury is the alternate reward offered for maximum completion of the Meteor Pillars Event.

Access will be available for 26 hours and 52 minutes after the first Treasure Challenge is initiated by any Participant who entered the Treasury through the same Pillar.

The Treasury is a location in the World Tree with the capacity to fully duplicate any item within the World Tree. Items placed in the Third Branch Treasury are either Third Branch materials or goods that can be created using Third Branch or lower materials by a Third Upgrade craftsman. In addition to resources and equipment, the Treasury includes Sphere modification treasures and a selection of tokens that apply only within the Arcatiz World Tree.

Visible treasures in the Treasury are illusions. To gain the displayed treasure, you must pass the associated Treasure Challenge.

A Treasure Challenge will list two to five choices for the method to gain the item. These Challenges will be associated with the Treasure in some way, but the association may not be obvious. If you fail or withdraw from a Treasure Challenge, you may attempt it again with no penalty. Once you have completed a Treasure Challenge, that option will no longer be available for that item for you. It will be replaced with a different Challenge. There is no limit on the number of times a particular Treasure can be acquired within the allotted time as long as the Treasure Challenges are successfully completed.

Multiple people may attempt a Treasure Challenge simultaneously, either independently or cooperatively. Cooperative Treasure Challenges will allow collaboration but will grant only a single treasure. Independent Treasure Challenges will grant one treasure per success.

There are treasures that require multiple people to even attempt the Treasure Challenge. These will be identified prior to the start of the Challenge. In most cases, these are the large treasures.

You may choose to leave the Treasury at any time with no penalty. If you do, you will be granted aurichalc based on the number of hours (Suns) and minutes (Flowers) remaining on the timer.

Most Participants are able to complete approximately one Treasure Challenge per hour as an individual. The minimum time known for a Treasure Challenge is three minutes. The maximum time known for a successful Treasure Challenge is five hours, sixteen minutes.

The first Treasure Challenge has not yet been initiated. Time Remaining: 26 hours, 52 minutes

Congratulations on a highly successful Meteor Pillars Event and enjoy your rewards!

[collapse]

Sophia found herself grinning as she read the description. It was definitely not written by the Guide; the Guide didn’t use two words if one would do and spoke like a form letter given sentience. This was highly technical, but it read like it was put together by someone who actually wanted the person reading it to feel like they knew what they were doing. The line at the end was also not typical for the Guide.

It was definitely written by the World Tree, which introduced some interesting comparisons to Cliff. According to the Guide’s messages, Cliff was new. Was the World Tree’s personality even newer or was it simply something different from Cliff?

If Sophia had to guess, she’d guess that the World Tree was different. Cliff was in a Tower, something that didn’t live, while the World Tree was an entirely-too-large literal tree. Sure, it was a magical tree, but it was still alive. The World Tree was also unique; every other Tower was unliving, at least as far as Sophia knew. The World Tree was supposed to be the first Tower, even though it was a Tree; did that mean that the Towers were inferior duplicates? Were they all supposed to be Trees, but something happened that meant the Guide had to build Towers instead?

Was the Guide managing all of the other Towers and leaving the World Tree and now Cliff to handle their local Towers? That would certainly explain why it rewarded Cliff joining the Kestii Tower; even if it never managed to duplicate the feat, Cliff’s presence meant one fewer Tower for the Guide to manage.

If it was that much effort, why did the Guide create Towers at all?

It probably came down to the reason Mimir created the Guide. It almost certainly wasn’t the War of Two Mimirs; that might have pushed him into sending it out before it was ready but he had to have been working on it long before then.

Whatever the reason was, it was unlikely to matter now, at least not directly. Sophia wasn’t certain how old the Guide was, but the Broken Lands were cut off from everywhere else more than sixteen hundred years ago; even if the Guide was relatively new then, it wasn’t now. Today, the reason the Guide’s design mattered was how it affected what the Guide did, not whatever made Mimir create it the way he did in the first place.

On second thought, if the Towers were supposed to have something running them, like the World Tree, it might explain why the Guide was so happy about Cliff; he was restoring intended functionality. Whether or not the Guide could manage without the help, it was easy to see why the Guide would like that.

“Is it even worth doing these Treasure Challenges? Can anyone tell what sort of rewards we’re talking about? A full Sun is pretty impressive for an hour.” Bimet scratched a claw against one of the stone floor tiles. It screeched, sending Bimet in an aborted jump back that ended with him falling on his long tail. “Not doing that again.”

Sophia agreed with the dragonfly-winged squirrel. She didn’t like that noise either, and her hearing wasn’t as acute as his probably was.

“I see several things in here that are worth more than a Sun,” Xin’ri answered quickly, “And a bunch more that might be if I knew what they were - and that’s without checking out other rooms. It’s definitely worth trying the Challenges to see what they are.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Notii interrupted. “We have a chance to rest before everything, so we should take it. It’s evening now, or close; it will be best if we start well rested. That’s even more true if we want to spend more than a day doing Challenges. There may be no combat but that just means we’re going to have to think our way through them.”

Sophia glanced back at the Event page. She hadn’t paid attention to the time limit originally, but Notii was right; it wasn’t counting down, and it said it wouldn’t start until they initiated the first Treasure Challenge. “Whose turn is it for dinner anyway?”

“Dav’s,” Xin’ri answered immediately.

Sophia wasn’t sure it was actually Dav’s turn, but she wasn’t about to argue. He was a pretty decent cook, as long as he stuck to things he knew how to cook … and anyone was better than Ci’an. The wolf-eared girl was better than when they started traveling together, but kebabs was still her best dish. Sophia liked food on a stick, but it got old after a while.

Sophia set up her tent while Dav cooked. Somehow, he ended up cooking for everyone, even the other teams. It was actually pretty nice; it gave them a chance to try some things Sophia had never seen. It also made the point that while Mareth looked like a sparrow, he wasn’t one; like most of the group, he was an omnivore.

They had a leisurely breakfast in the morning before they went to look at the first Treasure Challenges.

Xin’ri went first, since she was the closest of the twelve of them to a craftsman and probably knew the most about what she was seeing. She made her way directly to the metallic golem, touched it, then frowned and pulled her hand back. “This is a Talent Model Combat Monkey Automaton. It doesn’t say anything more than that, but the name tells us something. It requires a minimum of two people to attempt the Treasure Challenge, with the options Control, Adapt, and Explore. The timer hasn’t started, at least as far as I can tell … we can come back to this. I’m going to check another.”

She turned around and touched the display that looked like a frozen flame, probably because it was in reach. “Stabilized remnants of Meltwater Sprites. This one will let me in on my own, but I’m not going to accept, not yet. The Treasure Challenge options are Meld and Dance, whatever that means.”

Xin’ri pulled back and waited more than a minute before she nodded and said what Sophia already expected. It was the best possible outcome at this point, even if it was a little boring. “The timer hasn’t started, because I didn’t start a Challenge. We can read all of the labels before we begin and pick out what we want without wasting time on it!”

Sophia grinned. Unlike the fact that they could rest before starting, being able to find out what everything was before the timer started wasn’t obvious in the message from the World Tree. It was there if you looked for it, at least as a possibility, and definitely a nice bonus. She had to assume the fact that it was only implied if you looked for it was intentional, to indirectly reward people who tested their options. People who simply jumped into their first Challenge would miss out on the chance to make better choices, but that was all.

They spent hours cataloging the contents of the Treasury. There were only a few things in the first room, but there were dozens of other similar rooms. Most of the stages had a theme, which made Xin’ri speculate about why the automaton was on a stage with a lot of preserved materials; were they used to help keep it in working order or was it just because they fit?

Sophia didn’t really care about the automaton, though of course she’d help Xin’ri get one if she wanted it. She was far more interested in some of the other things they found.

The top two items on Sophia’s list were both treasures that fell into the “in addition to resources and equipment” category, though oddly enough only one of them was on the list. That one was an Event token, which could be used to trigger an Event. Notii had heard of them; if it was used on the door as you entered, the same way a key might be, it would trigger an Event to begin on that level of the World Tree. It didn’t always start immediately, but if it didn’t, it would give the team that used the token a countdown to when the Event would start.

Event tokens came in two varieties: team and branch. Either could be obtained individually, oddly enough; Sophia had expected them to require a group, but they didn’t. Sophia intended to pick up a branch event token; with that, they wouldn’t have to wait on the next Event; they could trigger one instead.

It seemed odd to Sophia that the others weren’t particularly interested in triggering Events. The explanation turned out to be simple, if surprising: while the Meteor Pillars event was good for gaining Thread, especially if you hadn’t done it at a particular upgrade, repeat Events were worth a lot less and they expected to see most Events at least once in the time they were going to be on the third branch. They’d already seen most of the common ones, which made the Event tokens less useful than they otherwise would be.

As for other rewards, well, this Event was definitely an exception. Most Events were better than simply being on a branch, but not by enough to make picking up an Event token worth more than getting something else. They did plan to pick up one team Event token per team, but they’d only get more if the Event tokens turned out to have quick Treasure Challenges.