Players were always remarkably efficient when it came to taking action. Especially when they were up to no good, they feared neither dirt nor exhaustion, and their drive went through the roof.
Just like now, when someone called on them to stir up trouble on Treasure Island and attack the nobles' soldiers...
The night was pitch-black, and the silhouette of Treasure Island, a great coastal city, looked especially forbidding beneath the sparse starlight and occasional flickering torches.
The air carried the briny tang of seawater and the tension of an approaching storm.
Sir Felton, an officer in the private army of a certain Marquis, gripped the hilt of his overly ornate Sword so tightly that his knuckles turned faintly white.
Leading a full hundred soldiers under his command, he hurried along the deserted streets toward the city's heart... a granary beneath the eastern city wall.
At the head of the column, Felton instinctively glanced back. He could hear the dull scrape of his soldiers' armor in the night and saw eyes as sharp as hawks' whenever they met his gaze. Reassured, he relaxed.
Felton and his subordinates carefully scanned every dark corner along their route and every shuttered window in the buildings lining the street.
They were watching not only for possible rioters, but also for other nobles' private troops.
Earlier, their shared objective had made them reluctant allies. Now, however, Felton knew that once the city was about to fall under their lords' control, those allies beside them would automatically become enemies with drawn blades.
That suspicion froze the atmosphere around the column solid.
Before long, Felton spotted their objective... the granary's tall stone structure stood at the end of the street, a hundred meters away, dark as a crouching beast.
Its gates were shut, and the silence was