The Flower of Delusion

It happened when I was playing a Santa Claus (or Father Christmas or Saint Nicholas or Ded Moroz, depending on the localization settings) character in Elverind, striving to become a perfect Santa for absolutely everyone. I would do my best to help every newbie out by either completing their quests, locating rare ingredients, or giving leveling-up advice.

Santa was a character class that required commitment to the point of self-sacrifice. Helping another player with their quest was sometimes a daunting task involving a lot of sweating and tear-shedding. Nonetheless, I and other Santas were prepared to do that.

There was only one quest no Santa who had been around for a while would take. It was given by a Level Seven player named Thomas Brown. Every morning this guy would make a perfectly timed appearance on the main square of the city of Urmagar, asking you to bring him the Flower of Delusion.

The problem was that no one had ever heard of that flower. Many players tried to find it, and all of them failed. Eventually, it became a common belief that this flower never existed in the game and that the quest was impossible to complete. And Thomas Brown had been turned into a local meme, a game landmark.

Our server had a special location known as the Week-Long Christmas Party that would only open for seven days after Christmas. It would provide some fun quests and music and gifts before it closed until the next Christmas.

Once I wondered what kind of stuff was going in this location while it was fenced off. What if it has some unknown mobs, some hidden quests? What if it is where the Flower of Delusion can be found?

After the week-long party was over, I decided to stay in that location to make sure. I spotted several other curious players do the same, but all of them left shortly after we discovered nothing. No new quests there, and no mobs.

Staying alone, I went on an exploration of that deserted land. I roamed the valleys and climbed the mountains, meeting not a single creature. The location had far, far more space than anyone would need to host a Christmas party. More than once I was about to give up and leave, but some kind of stubbornness was keeping me in.

Then this desolate place began to come to life, as though obeying my will. I now encountered the kinds of mobs unseen before. Crossing a valley that used to be lifeless when I had last checked, I found a village populated with quest-giving NPCs.

I stayed there and did some great leveling up over the next year, completing a lot of quests and discovering a lot of new plants and animals. (I’m still keeping my fifth place in the Pioneer Ranking since then; I used to rank second at best.)

And one day I just stumbled upon it. The small, inconspicuous plant on a mountain slope appeared, at a closer look, to be the much-wanted Flower of Delusion!

I’m not sure what exactly I expected to achieve by completing this quest. Universal glory? Everyone’s admiration? My statue in the Hall of Fame? Anyway, the actual outcome was shocking.

When I approached Thomas Brown in Urmagar and handed him the flower, his face contorted with anger. He attacked me, screaming insults.

Offended, I pulled my sword out and killed him. Coming at his respawn point, I killed him once again. I would probably have done it a couple more times if it weren’t for him hastily leaving the game.

This whole situation gave me a nervous breakdown so bad that I was rushed to a hospital. It was probably my health deteriorating through months of playing too hard.

When I embarked on recovery, Thomas Brown visited me in my hospital room. He gave me his apologies and told me his story.

The game of Elverind was initially developed by two guys. One was now the CEO of LM Inc.; another was the founder of Cronus, a small creative studio. At some point, the two of them had a serious disagreement.

LM Inc. decided to cut their costs by stopping a collaboration with Cronus that charged them rather high rates. All quests developed by Cronus had to be removed from the game, but the contract between two parties prohibited removing a quest while there was at least one player trying to complete it.

Cronus used this legal loophole to hire Thomas Brown whose only duty was to log into the game every day and ask other players for help with his flower quest. That counted as a completion attempt so the quest remained in Elverind, landing massive payments to the studio’s banking account and paying a decent salary to Thomas.

LM was annoyed at that, but they had no legal means to stop it. The quest was designed as virtually impossible, with near-zero chance to ever be completed.

…until I came to ruin the whole thing for Cronus, and personally for Thomas. When I gave him the flower, the quest was marked as completed, ridding LM of the last piece of Cronus heritage, and of the burden of regular payments. Thomas lost his job and blamed me for that: it was why he had freaked out back then. But, having a second thought, he realized that he was wrong.

Both of us decided not to hold a grudge against each other, and parted as almost friends.

After full recovery, I came back to Elverind but took a different character: a paladin instead of a Santa. I’m no longer playing savior to everyone. I’d rather not have my good intentions paving the road to hell once again.