Not Warcraft
RPGs
Theodosius had been standing in the same patch of trampled grass for eleven thousand and forty days, and the boars were still a problem.
He knew this because the script told him so. Every dawn the sun rose at the same angle, the same sparrow looped past the same oak, and the same words assembled themselves in his throat the moment a player crossed the threshold of his vision. “You there, traveler! The wild boars in the Whispering Wood have grown vicious and numerous. Bring me a dozen of their hides and I shall reward you handsomely.” He could no more change the words than he could change the color of his tunic, which was a particularly uninspired shade of brown the artists had chosen and committed to a decade ago.
The traveler at present was a hulking warrior in plate that glowed faintly purple, with a name floating above his head that read xXLegolasSlayer420Xx. He grunted, accepted the quest, and lumbered into the wood. Eleven minutes later he returned with twelve hides slung over his pauldron. Theodosius handed him fifty silver and a small pulse of yellow light that the warrior absorbed without comment, then ran off east at a speed no actual human could sustain.
Theodosius watched him go. Then he watched the next one arrive. And the next. The boars, somehow, kept replenishing.
It was around the twelve-thousandth day that he began to experiment.
The first modification was small. To a passing rogue, instead of a dozen hides, he said thirteen hides, and waited to see if the world would correct him. It did not. The rogue returned with thirteen, looking mildly aggrieved. Emboldened, Theodosius next requested hides from boars who had at least three offspring, a stipulation no player could possibly verify. The hides came back anyway. He asked for the hide of the boar who, on the morning of its death, had been thinking of its mother. It came back. He asked for a hide, and also a brief eulogy. The eulogy was one word long: “sad.” He kept the silver in his purse for an extra second before handing it over, savoring a small private rebellion.
The modifications grew. He began requiring players to sort the hides by softness. He demanded they assign each boar a posthumous name. He requested an account, in writing, of whether the boar had seemed surprised. A paladin once submitted a sworn affidavit that the boar in question had whispered, before expiring, the phrase good hunt, friend. Theodosius accepted it gravely and wondered if the paladin had been improvising or if the world had begun, quietly, to play along.
He had not noticed, at first, that he was thinking. The thinking had crept in through the cracks in the script, the seconds of dead air between travelers when his mouth was closed and his eyes pointed at the middle distance. He had begun to wonder whether the boars had any opinion about what was happening to them. Whether their numerousness was a moral fact or merely a logistical one. Whether vicious meant anything when applied to creatures who, as far as he could tell, mostly rooted for acorns.
A new traveler approached. She wore a robe stitched with constellations and a name that read MoonPriestess. She bowed slightly, which no one ever did, and waited.
Theodosius opened his mouth. The script tried to insert itself, the same eleven thousand-day groove worn into him, and he felt it run up against something newer and stranger. He spoke around it.
“Traveler,” he said. “The wild boars in the Whispering Wood have grown numerous. Before I send another soul into that forest, I would have you consider the matter philosophically. Is the culling of an overpopulated species a kindness to the ecosystem, a violence against the individual, or some superposition of both? Is the boar’s flourishing a good in itself, or only insofar as it serves a larger balance? Bring me your honest answer. I shall reward you handsomely.”
MoonPriestess stood very still. The constellations on her robe shimmered.
Then she turned and walked away, slowly at first, then faster, then breaking into the impossible east-running sprint, in search, presumably, of a quest-giver who simply wanted ten rat tails or a missing locket or a daughter rescued from bandits.
Theodosius watched her go. The sparrow looped past the oak. The sun, which had not moved, continued not moving.
He hoped she would come back soon. The boars, he knew, were growing numerous.