Resetting the world seemed to take little time. In reality it took days, between the representatives' talk, the hiring of other Talespace residents to throw some surprises into the new design, and the mundane task of shuffling data around. There was talk about putting Hoofland on its own cluster of servers for some reason, though it had no obvious effect on anyone there. For all Diver knew, his mind might be stored anywhere on Earth.
Adventuring parties gathered in clusters on a vast, featureless floor. Everyone was naked, lacking their weapons and armor from the last several objective years' work. It'd taken some negotation to make people willing to give up their stuff, and their world would probably lose some Earthside players who felt cheated. But it was their world, not the humans', and any losses were just bits for the people outside.
Diver looked up and saw a hazy set of arena bleachers crowded with spectators, ready to watch the equines' first adventures in a new world. He waved. "We who are about to fly, salute you."
The entire many-bodied Noctis stood together, chattering to themselves. Diver looked to Harvest Moon. "Are you ready, your majesty?"
"Don't 'majesty' me yet. There's a lot of work to do, first."
He'd thought about trying to become a Noble himself, but why? He had the power to run his own life already, and it was the only one he was responsible for.
A countdown flashed in the sky above the queen's Night Guard party. Staggered timers showed that other groups and solo adventurers were going to enter the new Hoofland at slightly different times to keep the servers from bursting. (They were being stuffed full of horses, after all.) One by one the first few groups vanished, and the queen counted down to a new world.
"Giddyup!" said a narrator's voice, and the world faded out, then in.
#
Sky Diver appeared in midair over a forest. His wings wobbled. He rolled to the left and whooped, trying to get used to a subtle difference in how the air flowed. It was as though he'd escaped from a stuffy room into a warm breeze, but better yet, the current streamed through layers of feathers on wings he still found too new to take for granted. He jabbered and veered up into a stall, a graceful spin, and a swift level flight in search of adventure.
He found the swamp before any of his herdmates. He circled around it until his flight power ran out and he had to touch down nearby. A buzzing in his spine made him feel that something magical was here, possibly a power node, but there was no blatant sky-beam like the shrine he'd raided. He pushed into the air again and roamed in spreading circles until he found the others exploring the forest and a hill. "Found something," he said as he led a few strays toward where Harvest Moon and the other equines had converged. "What are you doing?"
The queen and one of the guards kicked down entire pine trees with their hindhooves, sending a snap like thunder through the woods. "Gathering resources. See any axe-worthy rocks?"
"Here, majesty," said a unicorn, and floated one over to her.
"Start chopping these up, please."
Diver watched the earthbound viciously fell more trees while the unicorns sliced them into blocks and planks. "What, you're going to build a castle right here?"
Nimbus fluttered into view, more comfortable in the narrow spaces between trees than Diver had been. "There you are."
Harvest Moon said, "Greetings. Diver, we're without tools. We're just crafting some basics. You should do more scouting."
Diver related what he'd sensed in the swamp. The queen said, "Good catch. You're at a disadvantage when it comes to finding control points that aren't already claimed. We earthbound can sense them more easily." She stamped the ground, shut her eyes, and made faint lines of energy sweep out from her like cracks along the ground. When they faded she smiled. "Right. I'll need to get closer to perform the ritual, but that's the sort of site we need. Shall we begin?"
It looked like everyone here had kept their starting racial powers along with the full powers granted by Mount Improbable and its equivalent quests. Diver escorted the queen to the swamp, and only then realized that it was several miles wide. He skirted the fringe, looking for a relatively pleasant place to land. "I don't like the look of those giant Venus flytraps."
The queen made a face as her hooves squished into the muck. "Fetch Rigel, would you?"
Rigel the guard left his woodcutting duties and came over to attack the swamp with fire magic, drying patches of ground and killing a few suspicious plants. Diver slammed a huge mosquito into a shallow grave, then struggled to pull himself out of the sticky mud. Harvest Moon seemed to have no trouble beyond discomfort.
The queen stopped and stamped the earth, sending up a shower of dark sparks. "Here we are. I'll need an uninterrupted hour. Are you ready? If trouble comes, I want Rigel guarding me while Diver fetches the others."
The ritual began. Harvest Moon's version of it involved a drumming of hooves on the soggy ground, carrying her around in circles and posing with her head upturned, her mane swirling in a breeze that only affected her. Diver kept watch from the air as much as possible, occasionally fending off a shambling fish-monster with the fire-mage's help. "How many points is this one worth?" said Diver.
"Three," Rigel said.
"Even without a temple or something?"
"Two without, three once we build one. It doesn't need to be fancy to count, though; once we get some basic carpentry going we can make a wooden shrine-fort."
Diver fidgeted, feeling useless. He took to the sky again and kept watch. Soon enough, the orange flare of Harvest Moon's colors streamed into the sky from the middle of the swamp, like a flag. Finally he could focus on helping the carpenters or move on to find the next point.
In the distance a party of twelve appeared. Diver smiled at having such good eyesight, but the newcomers were heading closer. The new beam was hard to miss. He landed and told the queen, "Company."
"Make contact. Find out their intentions." There'd been some politicking, horse-trading and jockeying for position in the waiting area, but it wasn't clear that the new array of Nobles would turn out the same as the old.
Diver saluted and flew off again. When he reached the approaching dozen, who were all naked and unequipped like himself, he called out, "Hello, travelers! What do you want?"
They were all pinkish or brownish with similar mane colors. It was kind of unsettling, like looking at nude misshapen humans on all fours. All earthbound too. The herd leader said, "We're looking to do some crafting in that forest. Have you got tools yet? We can save time if we work together."
That sounded good. Diver landed to rest his wings. "Sounds good. Meet here, then send out a few ponies so you don't outnumber us." He winced inwardly; he'd already given info away while trying to play cautious.
"Don't worry!" said someone in the oncoming herd. "We're looking for the queen. Seen her?"
"Excuse me." Diver flew off to the woods but waggled his wings in a particular way to warn anyone in the swamp who was paying attention. In the forest he called, "Strangers. I don't trust them."
Nimbus was just about to leave the carpenter party for another scouting mission, but turned back to laugh at Diver. "Shouldn't you be all loving and trusting now?"
"If goodness means gullibility, the world's in more trouble than I thought. How big is our herd?"
"Eight counting you and the three at the swamp."
"Then let's gather here. I'll fetch the queen's group."
Diver hurried over to Harvest Moon and her two companions, working on the swamp shrine. It was just an incomplete wood-block platform so far. The queen looked at the strangers, who now turned toward the sky-beam she'd created. "Indeed. Withdraw to the woods. If the strangers try to capture the focus point, we can harass them from the air."
On their way to the forest, though, Diver and the queen's three (none of them fliers) got intercepted. The pinkish herd had steered to cut them off, all still looking friendly. A strange feeling came over the pegasus; a fight seemed inevitable and yet no one had done anything openly hostile. He had the choice of how to act, but the right answer was obvious. The ones he cared about were in danger. He flew to within a few paces of the strangers and punched the ground as he landed, kicking up dust and flaring his wings wide. "Whoa there!"
The smilers' leader said, "What's wrong? We just want --"
"Horseapples. Stop and talk or we'll treat you as hostile."
They kept coming, saying, "Are you threatening us?"
Throwing the first punch wasn't a bright moral line, against people who liked to get you good and surrounded before politely asking you to kneel. Diver darted forward and invoked ice onto his forehooves as he smacked the grin off the leader's muzzle. The stallion staggered, frostbitten, but kept to his hooves. Darn earthbound toughness. Diver swerved up out of retaliation range a moment before someone tried leaping after him.
Harvest Moon and the others charged now, too. Diver glimpsed only parts of the fight as he swerved, dived, hindleg-bucked and rose again to pummel the newcomers. He kept his advantage only for seconds, though. Someone yanked him down and stomped him, and by the red flare of pain Diver figured he'd taken a major wound. Shouts came from somewhere off to the side; the forest party was running in with improvised spears!
It still went badly. The queen's herd was outnumbered, and with almost no equipment on either side, the earthbound had the advantage of strength and endurance. The enemies ganged up on him and stomped him flat. The last thing he saw was the underside of a grey hoof.
#
Words appeared, white on black. "DEATH. Sky Diver experienced too much emergent gameplay." Below that was another note: "'In the name of the Dictatorship of Dong!'"
Diver floated in void, then felt gravity reassert itself as the world faded back in. He was in that slapped-together tavern where he'd been before the new world started. Of course; he'd found no save points there yet. Diver shook out his wings and confirmed he was intact, then trotted around until he found a horseshoe-shaped portal with a vague view of the new Hoofland beyond it.
His ears flicked back as more horses respawned nearby. "So we all lost?" The rest of the party appeared a few seconds later.
The queen groaned as she climbed to her hooves. "The what?" she said.
Nimbus said, "You saw the killing-quote too? I thought they were going to rebuild the Sunward Ho queendom."
A large TV on the tavern wall listed similar death taunts for each person who'd been revived here. Diver said, "I'm guessing the former Sunward Ho gang reorganized to overpower any rivals as soon as we began the new world. Seems like an all-earthbound party is good for getting a quick start, since they've got the highest raw stats plus that node-finding power."
Nimbus flapped twice and hovered. "Wait a minute. The world hasn't been reopened to Earthside players yet, has it? I thought we were keeping them out for the first few hours."
Dread washed through Diver, making his mane and tail prickle. "Then this trolling nonsense isn't just Earthside players messing with our world as a game. The locals are in on it."
Everyone griped at once. Harvest Moon stomped the floor. "We must adapt. If we've really improved ourselves, we should be able to defeat a few troublemakers."
Nimbus said, "Including all the Earthside players who made throwaway accounts just to see how badly they could break Hoofland?"
The rest of the queen's guards argued. One of them said, "Lose-lose. If we play the game their way, we're fighting a war against creatures from beyond the universe. If we insist on keeping the shadows out --"
Diver interjected, "We just established it's not just the Earthside players doing this."
"Even so, the shadows are behind it! If we keep them out, then people will say, 'this world isn't serious and doesn't really matter, because they reset it whenever something bad happens'."
"So this is natives' introduction to democracy," Diver said with a rueful grin. "We set up a system for the most effective thugs to take over."
Harvest Moon said, "Control over the land and its magic is about more than fighting ability. It evolves out of consensus and patient effort."
Diver flopped down on his haunches. "Yet berserker pony herds work pretty well in the first stage of civilization. Sounds historically accurate. I imagine if we reset Earth, we'd get the same kind of rush from some other group. How long before the shadows arrive?"
"A few hours subjective."
He grunted. The moment humans logged in, the residents would be back to second-fiddle status, having their time rates constantly adjusted to meet outside needs. "Okay. Your majesty, let's jump back in and try to re-establish contact with your other subjects. Then we can set about conquering more of the focus points."
#
Back in the new Hoofland, the queen's party landed on a vast, cold steppe where a yeti stomped randomly around. Moon said, "Spread out. Sky, scout."
Diver saluted and took to the air. No one was around for miles. No obvious resources, either, unless you could dig with your hooves. Just sun and tasty-looking grass. He landed to report. "What now?"
"Nimbus and Sky, fly east and west and return in an hour or so. The rest of us will search northward."
He looked around the nearly featureless plain. He could run forever on it, and it wouldn't matter too much who technically ruled the place so long as nobody re-invented the Mongol Empire. "Ideal horse terrain, isn't it?"
The queen looked wistful. "Yes, but we have responsibilities."
He flew west over gentle hills, seeing nothing that resembled the part of Hoofland he'd explored before. Of course there were no maps or compasses available... Aha! There was a cluster of ponies banging rocks together, around a faint beam of light that rippled white and black like smoke caught in a spotlight. The ponies here were varied and he soon spotted Danio the zebra. "Hello, the camp!" he called down.
They let him land. Danio said, "Where is the queen?"
"East. Did you get ambushed by the Dictatorship too?"
The zebra and the dozen ponies with him grimaced. "You mean Sunward Ho? Yes, a few of us have died twice already. We've gained some stragglers and lost others who've reappeared somewhere else in the world."
Diver pointed a wing toward the sky-beam. "Are you willing to turn that over to Harvest Moon?"
"Of course. It's a two-pointer."
Diver kept scouting and eventually found a stream with willows growing along it. Danio's team hurried to cut wood and start crafting some tools with that and their rock supply. With that done, Diver returned to find the queen and bring the good news.
Harvest Moon at that point had reached a canyon similar to the one Diver had seen when the world was destroyed. "I detect a powerful node down there," she said, nodding toward the bottom of the magnificent red-striped cliff walls.
"Need a lift?"
He and Nimbus shuttled several of the party down. It was tough work; coordinating with another flier meant learning not to bang his wings into hers, and they lacked the stamina to drop safely the whole way, needing to stop on ledges partway down.
Once that was done, he kept watch and explored the canyon floor. This narrow section left him feeling vulnerable; he was supposed to be above any danger. The queen busied herself with the node ritual.
"Streaks in the rock over here," he called out. "Ore?"
"Oh, good," said an earthbound scout he'd had to lug down here. They were heavy!
By the time Harvest Moon took control of the node and its beam of light shot into the sky, the scout had kicked, cussed and cracked some chunks of copper ore out of the canyon wall. Diver looked skeptically at them. "It'll still be a while before we've got anything like the manufacturing we'd need for weapons and armor."
"Haul this up," the miner said, pointing to the small pile of ore. "We can get going faster than we could Earthside, since we're not exactly doing an accurate model of the periodic table."
Diver grumbled and started lifting rocks out of the canyon. Even with how crafting worked in this world, there still wouldn't be time to --
The party up at the surface shouted a warning. Diver repeated it in the queen's direction before even getting a good look for himself: another gang of eight or so flesh-pink ponies!
"This... is... Hoofland!" one of them yelled, and shoved one of the queen's mares off the cliff.
Diver caught her but went spiraling out of control, barely reaching one of the canyon's ledges. They crashed into a cactus and took a wound each. Shouts of battle sounded above. Diver looked up there, then back down. There was no time to ferry more ponies up there to help. "Be right back," he told the mare, and flew up and into the fray.
The goons were unarmed like the last bunch, all earthbound, but the queen's party was putting up a better fight this time. One of the foes tumbled over the cliff, laughing. Diver shuddered and yanked another one over the edge by the tail.
Then one of them smacked his wing so hard he lost control and fell screaming to his death. The last thing he saw was Nimbus trying to ferry someone up, and looking agonized at being unable to help him.
#
"DEATH. Sky Diver played Coyote to SuperNinja98's Road Runner. 'In the name of the Dictatorship of Dong!"
He rolled over, groaning. His wings and tail hurt the worst. He was back in the generic tavern, still without a proper save point.
Given the name of his killer, and a decades-old pop culture reference a native AI probably wouldn't get, the outsiders had started showing up. Diver kicked a barstool, part of the furniture designed for humans in this standard fantasy set. He wasn't a human anymore, yet he was caught up in stupid human ideas of power and conquest.
Three more ponies, including Nimbus, appeared in quick succession around him. "Welcome back. I guess they can't get to the queen, at least."
Nimbus materialized, cursing, fluttering her wings. "Which means she's stranded. And respawning could take us God-knows-where again, so even that doesn't help us rescue her."
Harvest Moon appeared with a groan several feet above a table, and crashed onto it.
"How?" said Sky. "You were below the fight."
"I had my other subjects kill me." Moon extricated herself from the furniture and hopped up onto another table. "We're getting nowhere this way. The invaders will be able to get down there eventually and steal the node I just claimed, and probably the one Danio earned."
"Can we get a map?" asked Diver.
Nimbus flew over to the big TV and poked it with one hoof. It didn't give them a world map, but it did show standings: Danio 2, Harvest Moon 3, Southron 1, Deplorable Basket 1, Major Key 1, Sunward Ho 7, Dictator Dong 8.
Diver said, "Major Key! He logged in and grabbed a point already?"
A few more dead ponies appeared, revived, in the mirror-funhouse distance of the vast tavern. Diver grimaced at the list again. "I need an outside perspective on what's going on. Can we make contact?"
The queen stared into space and waved one hoof, poking at a hidden interface. "I have access to my friends list, but I can't just ask where they are until we set up a proper map of the new world."
There was an objectively right coordinate system for Hoofland, since the software had to track where everyone and everything was, but the ponies didn't automatically have access to it. Hiding information had been part of how AI got developed in the first place, forcing early models to learn about their environment instead of just knowing.
Diver said, "Even hearing 'I'm by a big mountain' would help. But right now I'm more concerned with seeing the big picture. How do you open the new interface?"
Once the queen showed him, Diver called up his friends list and made the "screen" visible to the group. Major Key the unicorn popped up as a blue hologram. Diver said, "Congratulations on grabbing a node so quickly. Do you have ordinary Net access where you are?"
"You don't?" Key chuckled. "Oh, right. It's easy to forget you're trapped in the machine."
"Thanks, I think. We have to go through some rigamarole, probably involving crystals, before we can get a computer equivalent. Can you tell us what's going on with this Sunward Ho/Dong thing?"
Key rolled his eyes. "It's all over the Thousand Tales forums. A bunch of goons decided to take over and have a war now that they blew up the world. Both factions are the same basic group, not really enemies. Do you know how many man-hours of work went into crafting magic swords and other stuff that's now erased because someone thought it'd be fun to flood the world with lava?"
Harvest Moon said, "That's about what we know already. What's their goal besides taking over?"
"Goal? I don't think there is one. What's the goal of a kid banging his toys together and saying wham, pow?"
Nimbus bared her little fruit-eating fangs. "We are not toys!"
"To them we are," said Diver. "As for looking like toys, we very much did ask for this." He wished the artist who'd drawn the basis for Hoofland's characters were around today to see what she'd wrought. She'd had a statue in the old Hoofland.
Key's words shook Diver out of his melancholy. "You'd better get going if you're going to compete with the goon factions. I'll ally with you guys if you want, but no promises on actually handing over my nodes. Assuming we can even find each other."
Diver said, "Why not turn them over? What do you gain from ruling a place you can't really live in?"
Key blinked. "It's for fun, of course. Even if I took over I'd only be a half-assed tyrant at worst, since I've got a life out here."
The queen said, "If we're going to meet up, then give us map data. There must be a sketch on your world's forums, at least."
Key turned to someone outside the hologram display, speaking orders. Then: "I'm sorry there's not more I can do. It must be frustrating for you to have all us outsiders intruding."
A crude map with many blank areas filled the display. The ponies scrambled for something to copy it with, then realized they had not even a bar napkin or a pencil.
Diver sighed. "We can keep going like this, trying to win a war against jerks from beyond the universe, but we're at a big disadvantage. Our bodies are what we actually want to live in; theirs are whatever they picked for a short-term rush and they can probably make new accounts later."
"If they care," said Nimbus, stamping the floor. "Probably most will get bored once they make a mess of our world again, and stop playing. Then we can take over again but we'll all know it's only because the humans lost interest."
Diver shut his eyes and took a few deep breaths while the others argued. It didn't really matter who ruled, right? There was no need to push for power and dominance, so why not do exactly what Nimbus predicted? Some wounded pride about always being weaker than humans didn't matter.
The outside world still did matter, though. Diver wandered off from the group to see what other ponies had appeared in the tavern. "Is anypony here part of Noctis?" Nopony here was, or they'd re-entered the world already. He checked his own friends list and saw that Golden Scale was listed as 'online', as though she could ever not be.
She appeared as another image hovering in front of him. "How are you doing?" she asked. Diver explained, and she grimaced. "Yeah, we're all having the same problem. Now that the shadows are here we keep getting raided before we can do more than tie a rock to a stick. Want to meet up so we have enough of an army to control a larger area? We can't fully share information, though, until all of me can physically meet up."
"Let me run something by you. Can you get enough Earthside contact info to find out where the goons' leaders are?"
"Sunward Ho was last seen taking over a river we haven't named yet, and --"
"I mean finding where they are on Earth."
The mare blinked and rubbed one ear. "Maybe? It's not our specialty to know things like that, but we know people. Why?"
Sky Diver really didn't. His scanty friend list reminded him that Hoofland was only one part of the larger Talespace world, and that he'd left behind the far larger "real world" with hardly a glance back.
"I want to pay the leaders a visit," he said.
Expressions flickered across Golden Scale's muzzle. "You... You said you were going to live here, in Hoofland. That you wouldn't run off for at least a month."
Diver stepped forward and hugged her image, but passed right through. Only the rules of this game world made it impossible for her to teleport to him, or him to her. Only his promise prevented him from ditching Hoofland entirely. "You're right. If I can get the queen's permission, though, what if I visit Earth as a diplomat? That doesn't mean leaving you behind or treating this world like it doesn't matter. Just the opposite, really."
She sighed and mimed returning the hug. "All right. But besides this visit of yours, I'm still holding you to your promise!"
The questions now were whether Key and Noctis could gather the right physical location from the forums, and whether anypony in this land of magic actually had any Earthside money.
#
News drones flew down a suburban street, tracking a bizarre procession. Six quadruped robots were pulling a cart. They were dressed up in horse-like manes and tails, and their cargo was hidden under an old-fashioned wagon top, giving the group the look of a nineteenth-century pioneer group. A lone human rode in front, holding an unnecessary set of reins and grinning like a fool.
The horses (such as they were) turned a corner onto a street of battered apartments, and took up a chant:
"Tribute ponies on the road
Carrying a heavy load
Well-hung monarch's in our space?
Pay him off or buck his face!"
Sky Diver's mind inhabited the left rear robot, turning him into a metal beast of burden with a view of little but the other circuitry Clydesdales. He set his body to keep up the chant, but meanwhile wrote a message in his mind to the Westwind Corporation employee who was their driver. "Any problems?"
The young man had volunteered when the horse-souls rented his company's robots, and had even brought a cowboy hat. He said aloud, "We're trending on the news feeds. Must be a slow day. My boss let the police know we're out here for a prank, so that's taken care of."
Diver sent back, "It's not a prank. It's deadly serious. =)"
At last the wagon reached apartment 942, and the human hopped down to ring the doorbell. Some people had come out of their own homes to see what was going on.
A fat man in a comic-book t-shirt answered the door even before the human reached it. Someone must've tipped him off. "What the hell?" he said, staring past the human employee to the cart.
The other horses tapped Diver with their necks and legs, urging him on. Diver disengaged his reins and trotted over, awkwardly. This body wasn't built to a true horse shape; it felt like he was trying to walk on his whole foot-bones instead of the tips like a normal person.
Diver said, "Hear ye! We have determined that this castle is the home of the dread Dictator Dong, ferociously potent warlord of the magical pony land of Hoofland!" He made sure the other horses' speakers relayed his words loud enough for all the onlookers to hear.
The man stammered and blushed. "Okay, what? How did you --"
"Because of your penetrating might and vigor, we representatives of Queen Harvest Moon" -- a chorus of "All hail!" from the others -- "have come to declare our offering of tribute. Behold!"
Their human hustled back to the wagon and whipped off the cover to reveal a keg of beer.
"We recognize the awful might of your empire and the overwhelming girth of your army. In return for this gift, we ponies of the Night Queen's domain seek peace with the Dong forces and recognition of our rule over our ancestral lands."
The human who was using his weekend to lead a horde of goons in harassing Hoofland's people, looked incredulous. They'd tracked him down to where he lived, in the real world. "Hey, man, we're just having fun."
Diver's muzzle couldn't vary much from its stern expression, and he stamped the ground with one titanium foot. "Indeed, it is the royal perogative of the virile Dong to amuse himself as he pleases in our magical pony land. We seek only peace to prevent the annihilation or conquest of our land, which would force us to seek redress in some other way." The other horsebots stomped in unison. The driver waved to a news drone.
The dictator stood in the doorway, arms crossed and leaning back. "I'm not even in charge of this. It was another guy's idea, the one playing Queen Sunward Ho."
"Another team of tribute ponies will be dispatched immediately to make peace with the mighty Ho of the ferocious Dong, provided you tell us where Ho lives."
"I don't think he'd want me to... uh."
"But how else can we deliver tribute? Perhaps you can accept this tribute on behalf of our nation, and do what you can to use your deep and piercing might on your Ho to bring about peace between all our people."
Dong was sweating now, faced with this "royal treatment", the attention of his neighbors snickering at him, and the prospect of angry robots. "Look, uh, Hoofland people. The invasion is a thing we're doing for fun. But we were never trying to win, exactly."
"Indeed?" Sky Diver had guessed it. Key's attitude was the same: the point of fighting in Hoofland was to have fun, not to win, and that was doubly true for humans who had better things to do in their own world.
"Yeah. So." Dong glanced over at the wagon and the vaguely menacing horse guards. "A whole keg of beer, huh? What kind?"
#
Nimbus hung upside-down from a rafter, laughing as the diplomat group returned to the off-world tavern. "That nonsense actually worked?"
Diver grinned up at her, then spotted Golden Scale and hugged her for real this time.
Scale said, "Our human agent says the stunt is all over the forums. Ours and the goons'. The invaders are already working with it like it was their own idea for a plot twist. Instead of them griefing us, they're re-organizing as mercenaries, or going off to do other things, or making legitimate accounts to play without wrecking things."
Diver said, "How often do the characters of a game find out where you live and show up in person to make fun of you?"
The bat-pony flipped and landed on a table. "Okay, but now we're supposedly their vassals or something."
"So what, if it costs a keg of beer and it turns trolls into friends?"
"It's the principle. What if they try to extort more favors out of us? We came here to be free."
Harvest Moon stepped closer to put one hoof on Nimbus' wing. "Let any humiliation fall on the Nobles for arranging a deal. As for further demands from the outsiders, I think Diver's theory is right: we'll get more benefit than cost. Think of the bribe as an investment in good relations with some tech-savvy humans."
Nimbus still looked skeptical as she turned back to Diver. "How did you come up with the plan, anyway?"
Sky Diver said, "From Major Key. For someone playing Earthside, competing for power here is just a game, and they don't win anything. The invaders didn't care about taking over so much as messing with us, and if we were willing to be a little ridiculous and do something that was fun for them instead of only thinking of ourselves, we could convince them to change their narrative."
Nimbus whistled. "Maybe it's because you two messed with your heads, that you could come up with a stunt like that."
"Could be," said Diver. It was hard to tell how much of his thought process was artificial. He preened gently at one of his wings, which calmed him a little.
"What now?" asked Nimbus.
Harvest Moon leaped onto a table and stood tall. "My loyal subjects, we still have a land to conquer!"