[crow]

On a certain day in late autumn, four NPCs met at a certain remote temple, hidden off to the side in a vast area that had once been at endgame levels two expansions ago.

At a glance, the group was fairly diverse. There was a tall, handsome young man with an open, friendly face, wearing the gear of a knight who perhaps had some swashbuckling tendencies. Beside him was a scowling rogue dressed in dark leathers, toying idly with a blade. A shrine devotee, too young to have quite reached her majority and wearing the finery of a completely different god than the one enshrined here, joined them. And finally, a completely unremarkable gunman in the uniform of the town guard for a small city rounded out the lot.

[crow]

It wasn't a group that any player would have expected to see together. Fabian, the knight, and Ren, the shrine devotee, perhaps... They had been part of the same plotline once. But Streil, the rogue, operated in a completely different city than the shrine to which Ren belonged; and though Fabian was more central to the overarching plot and might be expected to travel, Streil's questline was frankly too minor for him to be involved in it. Unless there was some sort of twist with Streil's character in an upcoming expansion that they wanted to foreshadow...

[crow]

But even then, that didn't explain the presence of the gunman. He was a weed among flowers, so to speak, much too plain for the company he was keeping today.

And since when had those generic guard NPCs been so expressive anyway? This one had a big goofy grin on his features. "So," he said, "where's Core?"

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" said Fabian. His brows were creased in worry, looking about him as though he expected to find someone eavesdropping on them at any moment.

[crow]

That in itself wasn't something players were used to seeing him do. His character was the forthright, upstanding type, who wasn't good at subterfuge or anything that might require clandestine meetings.

But then, it didn't look as though he was very much at ease in all this, so maybe it wasn't out of character yet.

Ren opened her mouth to speak, but before she could quite get the words out, she froze--- a strange expression overcame her features, and her eyes changed for a moment. It was subtle, but nevertheless, slightly unsettling.

[crow]

And then she blinked again, and smiled. For their parts, the other three didn't look surprised by this at all, with Streil even going so far as to roll his eyes.

"You made it!" said Ren, her countenance completely different from before as she beamed at them. "I'm glad. And Fabian, what kind of a question is that? Of course it's a good idea! None of us have ever had a family dinner before, have we?"

"We don't eat," Streil pointed out. "And we don't have families anyway, most of us."

[crow]

"Thats not true," the gunman cut in. "Ren does. Should we bring Rana? Core, you can summon him, can't you?"

"We'd better not," said Fabian quickly. "Rana hasn't awakened like we have, and we're trying to keep our numbers low as it is. If the programmers find out..." He trailed off, his expression becoming complicated. A heavy silence fell over the four of them for a moment following his words.

Core sighed. "That's not what I meant," he said. "I meant us! This! You know that I think of you as my children, don't you?"

[crow]

"Ugh. Pass," said Streil, wrinkling his nose in disgust. However, rather than looking offended by it, Core only laughed. Streil had always been like this, and by now Core considered it a part of his charm. In that sense, he really wasn't very different from the concept of a doting parent.

"Be that as it may," Fabian said, "isn't this still a little too risky? We agreed not to meet up like this to avoid drawing suspicion..." He looked over his shoulder again as he spoke, though he knew it probably wasn't possible to spot the real threat of the developers.

[crow]

"You're starting to sound like Ren, scolding me like that! You two didn't have some sort of agreement about this, did you?" said Core, eyes twinkling with mischief within Ren's features.

"Is that why you possessed her?" said the gunman.

"Hmm... It isn't, but maybe it should be," said Core. "I pick her because it's the most comfortable and she's used to it, but not having to listen to her scold me is kind of fun, isn't it?"

"She's going to scold you more if you say that," said Fabian, with a slightly defeated air.

[crow]

Core laughed again, then sobered. "Don't worry," he said. "I've been analyzing user activity for months! This place is super abandoned." He motioned to the temple, which... really did look to be pretty sparsely populated. The only figures that could be seen in the surrounding snow fields were a bunch of mobs, wandering around aimlessly without anyone to attack.

"But what about the developers?" said Fabian, still not convinced.

"Ah... I'm stalling them! It's really complicated, so you shouldn't worry about it," Core replied, patting Fabian's shoulder as if Fabian really was a child.

[crow]

It made for a particularly strange image considering the fact that he was possessing Ren right now, and she looked the youngest of all of them physically, while Fabian was significantly taller than she was.

"So what is a family dinner anyway?" said the gunman, apparently not as concerned about the matters that were worrying Fabian.

"Yeah, what's the point when we don't even eat?" said Streil.

"It's the thought that counts! And even if we don't eat, we can do all the other traditional things, like... um, thanking the gods, and me making you feel bad about your life choices as your dad!" said Core.

"... Please don't use Ren's face to say that," said Fabian.

[crow]

He had a vague sort of grimace on his face, and Streil, for all his efforts to look as though he didn't care and wasn't following the conversation too closely, also furrowed his brows. Only the gunman seemed unaffected, still appearing no more than blithely curious about the whole ordeal.

Core laughed it off. "Should I take over Fabian then?"

"Just make your own damn body," said Streil. "I don't want Fabian calling himself my dad either. For that matter, it's not like you are."

[crow]

"Am I not?" said Core. "But it's because of me that you guys can think like that, isn't it? And I love you like my children." He threw an arm around Fabian and another around the gunman, though he could only really reach the middle of their backs considering their relative heights.

"What do you know about love anyway?" Streil retorted.

Core inclined his head. "Plenty of things. There's lots of little quest lines and subplots about it. Plus it's a really popular conversation topic, especially over private messages!"

[crow]

"... It's probably a good thing our user base doesn't know you can just look into those," said Fabian. He was beginning to look pretty tired. It wasn't to the point where he wished he hadn't come, but... For all his reach, and for all that Core had developed a wider range of emotion than any of them currently had, he was still pretty oblivious sometimes.

"Hey hey, so what are we doing for this dinner anyway?" the gunman cut in, impatiently steering the conversation back to his original question.

[crow]

"Are you really going to, um, shame us about our life choices?" said Fabian.

Core drew his arms back and tapped at his chin with a finger, supporting his elbow with the opposite hand. "Hmm," he said. He looked as though he was seriously considering it for a moment before finally shaking his head. "No, I don't think I will. It doesn't sound like a very fun tradition."

"I'll do it," said Streil. His tone was mostly filled with derision, but there was a small smirk playing over his features too.

[crow]

He probably really would have done it if they had given him the go-ahead. And given his personality, he probably would have enjoyed himself too. Streil had a bit of a mean streak, which made sense considering the  repertoire of emotions that he had available to him... But it didn't make him the most pleasant person to be around.

"Well, first things first," said Core, breezing past this suggestion as though it had never been made. "The food! Even if we can't eat it, we can at least look at it."