A testament, tucked into the metadata of a Mithril Pub Placemat Set (x1), as transcribed onto proper parchment by Zilara, young northwoman and holy heir:

  Gospel of Mia: Riverglen 3:16 – 13:4.

  The charnel pit was dank. Aldia the wandering day-laboring wizard brought an elaborate mask full of herbs that seemed to allay the stench. Gustavo pulled out a paltry handkerchief that could be Interfaced over his mouth but may or may not have done anything. The squire and healer, meanwhile, suffered a “gag” debuff, reducing stamina.

  A lone spell-light marked the path, floating in Aldia’s hand.

  “No sign of my predecessors,” Aldia said, his voice muffled by the plague mask.

  Muck and grime covered the floor of the pit, with only a narrow band of compressed refuse offering steady footing. The rest of the hole was covered in brown muck. Even one step off the path implemented an ‘encumbered’ debuff and caked Mia’s boot in sickly gunk.

  “Does anybody hear that?” Gustavo asked.

  “Stand firm,” Roland said over his queasiness. “Form a circle. It could come from anywhere.”

  The bounty target found them in due time. A rumbling from the far end of the pit manifested in a sinkhole cave-in. A swirling mound of dire-rats circled upwards, towering over the party.

  The Emperor Dire-Rat King consisted of a triple-sized slovenly rat surrounded by an army of a hundred miniature dire-rats. The swarm swirled around this central focal point. It was Unshackled, and so provided no designation.

  Amidst the whirlpool swayed twin blood-soaked sets of boots, the last remnants of Aldia’s predecessors. The interface menu detailed the decay as -10 hit points alongside picked-clean bones

  “Well, blast,” Aldia said. “That’s a considerable investment from the Tower. Haven’t seen a dire-rat yet that’s been able to resist a fireball.”

  “This one may be your last!” said Gustavo, making an eye for the exit.

  “Its level is…” Mia’s voice fell, the stench and the menace of the dire-beast compounding. “… higher than even the Warden!”

  “What? Most animals north of the valley are this level or above,” Aldia said.

  Roland switched to his trusty board-shield and rusty sword.

  “We felled creatures twice this size with ease near Fort Duran,” said the squire.

  That was before the Shackle. Now the brave squire was bound to Interface-based warfare. His strength capped by leveling requirements, the better to restrain restive humans and keep them beneath the demonic yolk. Mia hoped the Paladin yet understood that fact.

  A whirlwind of pestilent rats loomed in the heart of the sewage pit. It was not of the Menu, but the party hardly needed information spoon-fed them to notice the beast’s storm of claws and at least two dozen snapping jaws. Atop this whirlwind of Simplicidentata menace was a particularly large specimen with twin fangs.

  With knightly quickness, Roland held his wooden shield aloft. With a swing of his rusty sword, he scattered this lesser ratnado to the four corners of the room. Individual rats scrambled, mostly returning to their king.

  “Fireball ought to stagger any man or beast,” said Aldia. “’Course that’s probably what my predecessors thought. Here goes!”

  The mage’s glove was set alight with a warm orange flame. He adopted a crouching stance, took aim, and lobbed a small, smoldering globule of fire at the towering swarm of rats. It scattered yet more of the beasts on impact and drew a startled cry from the lead dire-rat.

  “Should be doing continuous damage. Hard to tell without an Interface guide.” Aldia prepped another fireball. “Keep the horde busy, everyone. Another six of those and perhaps we’ll make a dent in it.”

  Only, the dire-rat king’s cries summoned a great tremor, and an entire army of additional rats started pouring into the trash pit from all compass directions. The rat king grew taller still as other, faster ratnados spun up.

  Threefold ranks of swirling, fury-infused rats charged for Mia. She, clad only in the most basic Hooded Traveler’s Robes and without so much as a shield.

  Aldia drove away one rat-whirlwind with a second fireball while Roland smashed another with his rebar club. But the third storm of rats subsumed Mia. All was dark, as jagged claws cut into her skin. Even her screams were drowned out by the din of a hundred snapping jaws.

  A status effect! For the rats carried plague. Mixed-Interface warfare, by which one foe was Unshackled and the other was not, was sometimes hard to judge in terms of efficiency. Shackled had advantages in some ways, while UnShackled had advantages in other ways. At least the damage had been lessened, compared to that of a properly-leveled Rat King of this size and strength. But the grizzly wounds on Mia’s person were damaging enough, and the status effect along with them…

  Hit points ticked down under the influence of the plague.

  5/21.

  Mia lay on the floor, barely able to pull herself up to a clump of relatively high ground. A Basic Heal would keep her going for only so long, but that status would catch up to her in time.

  ”I’ve got an idea!”

  Gustavo ran for the far wall, receiving support from a flurry of fireballs courtesy of Aldia. With a great whooping cry, the burglar leapt up the wall and climbed up loose and highlighted bits of brick as well as his Interface would allow.

  Surely their companion wasn’t about to climb up and out of the pit, abandoning the rest of the party to their fates. Mia gazed up as well as she could from her prostrate position.

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  The thief reached an apex in his climb and then turned around. He hovered over the scene, acrobatically hanging onto a lip of barely-cemented bricks. With a wicked smile, Gustavo the Smuggler leaped, then summoned his Interface.

  Dead center on the stage, Roland shuddered at the sight of a familiar instrument of torture. The object held no direct significance for the maimed Mia, gaol-born such that she was.

  In the short time available in Gustavo’s fall to the towering dire-rat, he managed to ‘Equip’ and then ‘Use’ the item. He jammed it into the back of the Rat King’s hide.

  Trash though the creature did, it was too late. Deep magic wove its way into the monster’s soul. Interface windows emerged, readable by the entire party:

  The foul creature was now of the Menu. Restricted back to the most basic of levels, though the rat deluge’s sheer numbers gave the king a higher-than-usual store of health to draw upon.

  Roland stood strong to tank the blows. So high was the level delta that the storm of claws scarcely did more than scratch damage to the knight. And the good Paladin easily resisted the infliction of plague status with his natural Effect Resistance.

  Another fireball fried a dozen hit points off the beast, while a blow from the rebar club scattered its numerous underlings.

  “One more. Just keep it there,” Aldia said.

  With another sulphuric whiff, the battlemage’s glove smoldered alight. Aldia had one last trick up his sleeve:

  Experience was meted out, divided four-fold amongst the group. Aldia examined the chewed-over corpses of his predecessors, while Gustavo stealthily looted one of some paltry advance pay under the Battlemage’s nose. Mia was left with dozens of XP before her next level up. Her health was at 4/21, a Quick Heal having failed to stop the steady damage over time of Plague.

  Mia’s limbs felt languid, like lead. Too fatigued to even get out another Quick Heal. Yes, this would be the end of her. She gazed up at knight Roland, while Roland gazed down upon her wounded form. Oh, would this brave hero still remember her and her sacrifice?

  “Mage.” Roland called back. “Aldia. Surely you have some wards against disease. Aldia!”

  The pointy-hatted Battlemage ran up to Mia’s position.

  “Ay, there should be a cleansing spell thereabouts level eight. No matter. No matter. Take this, and quick!”

  Mia was bequeathed these items. She wasted no time in pulling up her Interface and using a single Antidote, arresting her health loss on 3/21. She used the Poultice of Healing immediately after, topping up her health, good as new.

  “I…” Mia rose and swiped refuse off her robes. “I thank you, good sir mage.”

  The king of rats in these fruitful river lands was dead. What’s more, his subjects were now bound forevermore in soul-thrall. Any human, Shackled or not, ought to be able to easily find and squash the varmints now that they were bound to the Interface’s dictates.

  “Ah, Shackled the chief rat?” Aldia said, dusting his battlemage gloves off. “Good man. That was the objective of our bounty contract. Aids in pest control, yes? I won’t ask where you got that brand.”

  “Animals can be shackled too?” Roland asked.

  Now Aldia shifted through refuse for the remains of his fellows. He fished up only a single, torn battleglove.

  “But of course,” Mia said. “The dire-scorpionbees and dire-wasps of the spire annex are likewise Shackled.”

  “Get a contract to Shackle a beast every now and again,” said Aldia. “There’s a spell for it, at higher level than you or I are like to ever achieve.”

  The dire-rats remained, individual escapees from the rat king’s pile. They, too, were Shackled. Curious, that the minor rats inherited the lead rat’s shackle. There was much about the nature of this thralldom that the heroes did not understand.

  “Come,” Alda continued. “Let’s get to the alderman. Again, bounty will not cover costs at all. So we’ll split it four ways, yes?”

  The group returned to a minor local magistrate from whom Battlemage Aldia accepted the extermination contract. He lorded over the city from a palatial manse right off the town square. It was, Mia silently noted, the first proper human dwelling she’d ever visited that wasn’t a demon-run prison spire. A hall – rustic and provincial to hear Gustavo and Roland say it – proved positively regal to Mia’s eyes.

  Many a Shackled maid dutifully went about their tasks on the premises. They were all about Mia’s age, all wearing visible Brands somewhere on their skin. All had simple Menu designations and were never more than level three. They worked silently, ignoring any guests unless specifically instructed to tend to them.

  “So, you brought in subcontractors,” said the village alderman. “Eh, so long as it’s done. Governor’s been wanting us to shackle the beasts of the land for some time. Don’t want to keep those bat-wings waiting, eh? Don’t bite the hand that feeds.”

  The alderman let loose a sly look at the nearest serving girl. He glanced briefly at Mia, who slunk behind Roland.

  Unshackled such that this freeborn lord was, he did not have a Menu designation. A Shackled manservant announced they were in the presence of Esteemed Lord Alderman Quisling. This Quisling was a thin man of perhaps forty, with a bony face and emaciated cheeks. What an ‘alderman was and how they should be addressed escaped the lowly cleric. Certainly, the entire room gazed upon Mia as if dire-crawfish had infested her nose when she bowed down to the floor in greeting.

  While Mia looked upon this situation with innocent curiosity and a nervous fear, her Paladin scowled.

  “You take orders from demons?” Roland subtly shifted his sword-hand towards his threadbare scabbard.

  “But of course we do. Everyone does, save for those insane foreign sellswords and marcher lords. Demon governor gets its commands from that living mountain up north, and us humans play nice. Send them some prisoners now and again. They keep the supply of servants going. Tit for tat, yes?”

  Unshackled guards in the flanks, well-supplied and well-fed, all took a step forward. Reminding Roland that they were guests whose invitation could be rescinded.

  Battlemage Aldia’s employment was accounted for. The other three, however, were Shackled without a master. A dangerous proposition.

  “Hey. You three seem capable enough. Could use some skilled fighters to oversee the new Shackled.” Alderman Quisling motioned to his personal manservant. “Go on. Give it to ‘em.”

  The manservant presented an item:

  “Take this, won’t ye? We can do business more formally.” The alderman steepled his hands. “Just remember that eighty percent of the items and loot you receive while indentured goes to the local lord, yes?”

  Quisling chuckled with a shrewd, rasping growl.

  “Why, I’d like to employee ye to go find my wayward daughter,” Alderman Quisling said offhand. “Got some bandits who object to my lordship. Shackled their families to ensure compliance but even that did not cow them. In fact, go out and kill ‘em all, as soon as the contract ink is dry, yes? Chop chop, little Shackled. Don’t you know to take orders from your betters? Have you not been housebroken?”

  Roland drew his sword.

  “Sellout fiend! Cavorting with demons, even while your fellow man sits in chains!?” Roland brandished his sword two-handed “Even now at Fort Duran, free men are fighting and dying to free this continent from the Demon King. And even without this Shackling, your greatest ambition is still to live under their yolk. Pathetic.”

  Mia had never seen the Paladin so righteously enraged, even in the depths of the ever-dark gaol.

  Alderman Quisling’s reaction was muted. “Aye, can you even attack a non-Shackled? I thought That Thing would have put a hard stop to that when it created the process.”

  “Always time to find out. Die, traitorous fiend. Have at yo-”

  The simple, foggy glass windows of the meeting chamber shattered inward. Everyone was surprised, Quisling most of all. Guards were thrown to the floor, injured by falling debris.

  There, with bat-wings spanning the now-gaping window, was:

  The rogue Demon Sentry #1, now far from its post, grabbed Roland and flew away at high speeds north and east.

  This portion of the gospel on parchment ended, the next sequence lost. The description continued again some twelve verses later...