Jaded Life - Rewrite, Prologue

• AN: I finally make the plunge and will rewrite the beginning of Jaded Life, likely the first 30 chapters. While the overall story will stay the same, I think I have learned quite a bit since originally writing it and will adjust some scenes and parts, following some of the feedback I have received. Enjoy. 

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Last but not least, we have an earth-shattering announcement out of the world of e-sports, the number two team on the Craft of War-Ladder, team Amarantine, have announced that their long time co-captain Titania will separate from them due to personal reasons. This separation will also remove the last player using one of the hero-versions of an old class from the ladder, as Titania with her Harbinger of Light the ascended version of the old Lightbringer class was the last holdout against the wealth of new classes Hailstorm Productions has introduced over in the last couple of years. As a replacement for the healing and shielding Titania provided the team will bring in Acrasia the gamer turned model who was featured in the last CoW-Commercial. We certainly look forward to Arcasias debut-game next week and wish Titania luck in all her endeavours

And now we have some breaking news, just came in, if we'd use ink, it would still be wet. After a couple of announcements that they would be ready soon™, the new challenger to the Throne of Games is finally announcing that beta-testing will begin in two months. Yes, you heard right, Pantheon Entertainment is claiming that their VR-Capsules are ready to be shipped and will be installed for the first draft of 10.000 Beta-testers in the coming months so they can start testing the first, fully immersive, virtual reality massive multiplayer online role playing game with the simple title of Road to Purgatory. If they can live even up to ten percent of the hype, it will be the biggest sensation in video gaming since the introduction of online gaming. Sadly, there will be no dedicated press-passes for the first draft of testers but Pantheon Entertainment promises that every testers stream will be available, with testers having the ability to temporarily disable the stream to preserve privacy and keep their character strengths and weaknesses confidential.

As always, I'm Jill Ankerton, you are watching GNN, the Gaming News Network, ...]

I managed to keep from throwing the remote at the stupid screen, it would not have helped, just broken one of the two. Not that I really needed the stupid thing, either of them, the wall-screen was simply connected to my tablet running my news bots. Sadly, I had yet to take my handle, Titania and Amarantine, the team I had founded with my best, well only, friend, in school and pretty much everything to do with CoW out of the featured tags.

At least that bit about Pantheon sounded cool, even if part of me was a little skeptical. The idea of a virtual reality game had been proposed a dozen times already, starting with clunky head-sets and motion-frames and Pantheon might just be the latest in a long line of failed products and companies. But maybe not, it might just be the holy grail, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Time would tell and hope would die last. Or something like that.

But that part about Titania 'separating' from Amarantine due to personal reasons? Such a load of bull, it made my blood boil. As the person behind the Titania-handle I knew the truth. CoW-management wanted to promote the telegenic Regina Flind, aka Acrasia, so they made a deal with one of the teams and our team-management caved. Yes, I was a founder of the guild that spawned the team and I played on the team since it's inception but I never wanted to do the business part of things, schmoozing with people to get advertisement deals was simply not in my nature so Chris, the original captain and my old school friend had quickly hired a professional and then sold the whole shebang for a nice chunk of cash.

Well, I guess what goes around comes around, we didn't want to deal with control and management meaning they will follow the money. I was the better player, of that I was certain, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t about our ability to play a game, was it? It was about selling advertising time, about generating interest in the video-on-demand, about people watching us play and, last but certainly not least, about people paying for our merchandise.

And that was the whole problem, while I had a dedicated fan-base, they hadn’t been fans of the person behind Titania, they had been fans of Titania, the character. That was on me, who had never been interested in using a face-cam while streaming, who had never sought out publicity to the point that the vast majority of people involved in the scene wouldn’t recognise me on sight. Acrasia, on the other hand, had a large, highly dedicated fanbase following her every move on social media.

Yet, despite understanding the metrics and logic going into the decision, there was a pain in my chest I didn’t understand. It was a pain that I didn’t want to feel again, even while my mind was trying to organise the chaos that my thoughts had been for the last few days. My life had been pleasantly predictable and routine for the last few years, but now, that routine was shattered and I didn’t know which way to jump.

[PING] You have mail...[PING]

Hm, flagged priority?

"Greetings Miss Samantha Jade Jacobs

We, of Pantheon Entertainment, salute you and we thank you for your interest in joining us on the Road to Purgatory. We are proud to announce that you have been drafted for the first wave.

If your interest has not waned since you submitted your application and you have no different commitments that keep you from taking full part in the Beta-Test as specified prior to applying please notify us now so we can schedule the installation of the new Capsule-Technology free of charge for our first wave. The Capsule will need standard supply for power and network and the unit measures 90*210*60 centimetres.

So, remember proud warriors, ready your breakfast and eat heartily. For tonight we dine in purgatory!"

After reading, my mind went into a momentary blank, processing the information before I realised just what I had received.

“Well, paint me orange and call me president, Lady Luck must have had a hot threesome with Fortuna and Tyche, I got one!” my shout echoed through the empty aparement, as I started laughing like a demented lunatic.

There was probably no gamer worth their salt that did not submit at least one application to Pantheon in the, mostly vain, hope to get into their beta test. It was one of those things people had done, simply in hope of winning the lottery, not really thinking that their number would come up.

But first things first, send confirmation and get a list of possible installation dates so I can get used to that sucker, they claimed there would be a home zone available prior to game launch.