NOVEL NEXT Chapter 48: Caravan
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Randoon_the_Wizard: MarsGirl actually made me a chat mod once. For a whole week!
Big_Iron: Believe me, there's no danger of that happening here.
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Thursday, November 14th, 2090, about 5:58 pm MST, Ghostlands (6,154 viewing)
Six wagons stood in front of them, each one boxy and oversized—six to eight feet wide, six feet tall, ten feet long, four wheels to the axle. Gordon blinked, uncertain whether he'd misjudged the scale his whole life or if wagons just came in that many different sizes.
"Okay," Harry said, gesturing toward the wagons. "Here's the idea. You guys tell me what you think."
He laid out the plan: a quest that would take them on a long journey—about six in-game hours. The group would rotate who was on watch, trying to get the caravan to its destination market. There were NPCs on board, which could generate some human interest. But mainly, Harry was thinking long-term: not something to finish in one stream, but something with recurring themes.
"We can all log out at once. Or the quest pauses if we don't want to rotate. That way viewers can predict the kind of content we've got coming. More continuity, less of the 'monster of the week' vibe."
Gordon nodded. "That would help build engagement."
"Exactly," Harry said. "We've never really had stakes before. I mean, sure, Gordon lost all his gear once—but nothing lasting. This gives us something."
Gordon stepped back, thinking. It fit the kind of arc their producer wanted. "I love it. I'm in. We can use today to get set up so you guys can have a good stream while I'm away—and since it's an off-day, there's no performance pressure."
Karen offered a small smile. "Could be a little shorter, a little longer. I get home pretty late—if you want me to take the night shift?"
"Counting on it," Harry replied. "If I do it, I'll be wrecked the next day."
"It's settled," Gordon said. He turned to shake the NPC's hand. "We'll get you safely to—wait, what was the town name?"
Harry rolled his eyes. "This could be interesting."
Later, Harry added, "We don't normally make longform content, so I brought trivia questions."
Everyone groaned.
As it turned out, the quest was deceptively simple. Caravan Jefferson—so named by the game's quest log—was mostly a monk-run grain shipment headed to a distant monastery. But there were a few hangers-on complicating the picture: a prisoner transport, complete with its own guards, and a young noble in his private coach, also accompanied by armed escorts. All of them were traveling in the same direction, and all of them were slightly understaffed. That's where the players came in.
The job listing made it clear: they needed extra hands to protect the run. The newcomers looked tough, so they got hired. That was the player hook. Gordon never found those particularly immersive—but he appreciated the effort. For someone like Marie, it wouldn't be wasted.
Beneath the surface of that simple premise was where the real fun—and the emergent gameplay—would begin. The caravan would pass through three regions: a bamboo forest, a lush farming valley, and a frigid mountain pass before reaching the monastery. Each region had its own hazards, from hostile NPCs to opportunistic PvP players, all of whom might—or might not—choose to attack.
And then there were the logistics, which you wouldn't notice on paper.
A ten-foot wagon wasn't just ten feet. Each was drawn by four oxen on a harness hitched to the wagon's wooden tongue. The harness extended another ten feet in front, making each wagon 18 feet long. Add spacing for dust, hesitation, defecation (yes, really), and the animals' tendency to shy or veer unexpectedly, and suddenly your "six wagons" was more like a three-twenty-foot snake of jostling carts and trundling hooves.
Three hundred and twenty feet. Much longer than it sounds when you're used to covering 5,280 feet a minute on a highway.
Gordon caught himself doing the math. As a ranged fighter with handguns—even a proficient marksman—visually distinguishing between a head, a hat, or a chest target at that range started getting dicey. Add fog? Forget it. And that was in perfect conditions. The real challenge was terrain. Oxen didn't follow neatly. They slowed, veered, got distracted. Drivers had to be constantly attentive.
A four-man escort wasn't going to be able to cover a 320-foot caravan. Gordon rounded up: call it 400. At 400 feet, if the lead wagon rounded a corner, the rear wagons would lose sight of it. Communication across that distance was a problem—especially in motion. If Gordon was on point, he'd lose track of the rest of the convoy. In the middle, he could at least see some of it most of the time—unless they entered winding roads or dense terrain.
And then there was the prisoner cart.
Gordon already distrusted the justice system in Ghostlands. It was intentionally brutal, unjust, miserable—and rife with opportunities for storytelling. Much like a Roman gladiator's life, every cruel edge was a narrative hook. The kind of criminals who traveled in iron cages, under guard, weren't just pickpockets. They were violent. Dangerous. The sort of people who, if freed, might try to slaughter the entire convoy. Death by NPC was just as real as death by monster or misstep.
And in a caravan this long, a corpse run—retrieving your gear after dying—would be tedious, if even possible.
The stakes weren't high, exactly. But they weren't zero.
Gordon exhaled. He still wasn't sure if he was thinking clearly—or if Karen's visit had just scrambled his internal compass.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: Hey big fella.
Gordon preferred the way chat talked to him than how it talked to Marie, most of the time.
"Hey Randoon_the_wizard," he said easily. He began to sketch relative proportions in the dirt.
> Randoon_the_Wizard: I hear you're going on a trip in our favorite rocket ship
If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.
"That's the idea," Gordon confirmed. "Weather allowing, and all the other usual caveats."
It would be much more doable at half the length.
x_TremeSnooze: Billionaire, private compound. Heard you guys have bodyguards too
Gordon frowned. "Okay—first, you're being creepy, but also what's your point?"
x_TremeSnooze: What's the view like from your ivory tower? Why'd you deign to play with us paupers in the first place?
He snorted. "We were having a conversation here, Snooze. But I'll play: We have like… twenty buildings, maybe 100 sheds. Five parking lots, a helipad, a launch pad, and a golf course. So… imagine looking out the window of a community college, but everything the daylight touches will one day be yours!"
> Randoon_the_Wizard: I'll be honest Gordon
> Randoon_the_Wizard: You're really not selling the billionaire mystique
> X_tremesnooze: yeah like… you're not even pretending to be down to earth??
Gordon continued to sketch. "I wear a bathrobe all day. I'm not the droids you're looking for."
> Randoon_the_Wizard: what's the glitch snooze
> X_tremesnooze: nothing randoon. just thought he'd be honest.
There was a pause. Gordon exhaled, just once, too sharply through the nose.
> MrGreening12: wow. Who pissed in your frosted flakes?
Gordon messaged Claire on the internal chat: Claire. IP check on Snooze?
Claire: [typing] …Montana City outskirts.
Harry's voice came from off-screen: "Could be anyone."
Gordon: Damn.
Claire: Block?
Gordon: Eh. Chair at the table.
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Thursday, November 21st, 2090, about 5:15 pm MST, Montana City
Karen was fully loaded when she walked through the door, arms full of fast food. Gordon spun around in his computer chair, still in his board meeting duds, and regarded his visitor in silence.
He had no idea what to say. "Thanks for the fast food, but I don't think we should have sex right now" didn't seem quite right.
His usual "What a lovely distraction, I was having the worst day without you," sort of line seemed like it would be tonally … crass. Which was a shame in its own separate way.
Fortunately, she'd come prepared.
"I come bearing gifts," Karen told him. "Friends?"
"I'd do anything for McDonald's fries."
She settled down in a rolling chair next to him, dealing greasy goodness with practiced speed. He accepted her offerings in silence at first, working up the clarity to express what he was feeling. "Listen, about the other night—," he began.
"—I came on too strong," she interrupted.
"I wanted to talk about why, actually. I think you think you're giving me an alternative to Mars that isn't dying young."
Her eyes teared up. This was going to be tough.
"I don't have to die young," he began. "Karen. Oh gosh, here."
It took some shuffling, but he got her chair over next to his and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.
"Probably not the time to talk about blood doping and workout regimes. I'm sorry. Look—it's not 'you give me a reason to stay here or I die and you never see me again. That's not what we're living in."
She sniffled.
"I am bending over backwards so I don't have to lose you guys to do this," he told her. "But this isn't about running away, even with how nice to me Hiram gets. Is that okay?"
She nodded into his shoulder. It was getting wet.
He held her for a little longer.
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"All right," he muttered, flexing his shoulders. "I suppose it's time to meet the nice folks we're gonna be keepin' safe."
Harry grinned as Gordon slipped into a southern accent. It wasn't a great impression—probably the best a New York-born Montana boy could muster—but he leaned into it anyway. The irony wasn't lost on him: all the NPCs in this region spoke in muted British, northern German, Russian, or French accents. Definitely not southern.
He remembered defending his class choice when he first rolled Gunslinger. "If they didn't want gunslingers," he'd said, "they shouldn't have put six-shooters in the game." He stood by that.
Still, he made for an anachronistic figure as he approached the ox-drawn grain cart. Atop it sat the eldest of the saffron-robed monks, bald-headed and serene, jotting inventory onto vellum.
"Howdy," Gordon said with a slight drawl.
The stream would love that. He made a mental note to look up more southern vernacular.
What the developers had done—literally confirmed by head dev Simmons "Smith" (whose real name was certainly not Smith)—was simple and stupid in equal measure. Apparently, he'd once worked with Gordon's father. Which made sense. Hiram seemed to have his fingers in every talented pie on Earth.
As Smith had explained in a livestream Q&A: to appease their diverse and often contradictory investor base, the design team had dumped all ethnicities, all regional aesthetics, all languages and cultural trappings—except for a few they thought would be "too problematic"—into one big creative salad. Then they hit "randomize."
"Now," Smith had said with a shrug, "nobody can be offended—because everybody's offended equally."
This, naturally, had offended everyone terribly.
According to Sam (Smith's community manager), the result had given him an endless stream of hilarious complaint emails to read aloud in the break room.
But the truth was: there was no other game like Ghostlands. And the naysayers? Still playing it. Hell, some had gotten subdermal implants just to stay competitive.
The thought cheered Gordon up immensely.
The monk before him was named Ggeng. What that stood for, if anything, Gordon didn't know. There were countless languages in Ghostlands—Eastern, Western, Elvish, Dwarvish, Orcish—each with their own alphabets and etymologies. A nerdier young man than Gordon (which Gordon did not consider himself to have been) might've dug into the lore and figured it all out: the significance of the nose piercing, the jade-and-bronze construction, the Peruvian-Meso-Japanese aesthetic overlay.
Sometimes, he wondered what he was missing out on.
He should've read the wiki. Today was a new day. Maybe he'd even give Marie a run for her money in the authenticity department.
…Nah. Who was he kidding? He was a cowboy. A cowboy in a medieval fantasy world.
Still, didn't mean he couldn't have a little fun with it.
"It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance," he drawled, reaching out to shake the monk's hand.
> x_TremeSnooze: You sound like a hick.
The monk—hands previously folded with dignified precision—looked briefly bewildered. His sun-browned face wrinkled with mild confusion. But he said nothing, merely wiped his hand lightly on his saffron robe and refolded it across his chest.
"It is very important," the monk said in a crisp, stilted British accent, "that we make all possible haste to the monastery. I trust your perusal and preparations are complete."
Gordon sighed. "Well," he drawled again, "about that."
He pointed toward the distant nobleman's coach, nearly a speck at the front of the line.
"See that? See how far away he is? Looks like an ant with a fancy hat."
The monk blinked.
"If a ghoul jumps outta those bushes and tries to eat his face," Gordon continued, "I will be forced to stand here and watch it happen. Do you catch my meaning?"
A long pause.
"We're gonna have to condense this caravan."