The goblin swung, a meaty thunk was heard and a spray of blood shimmered in the air for a second before vanishing. Over Amera’s head, a crimson ‘7’ flashed for a second. That was the last hit needed. Her hit points depleted, the adventurer sank to her knees, giving a low, moaning cry before collapsing forward to the ground. The wooden training sword slipped from her fingers, bouncing a couple times on the stony ground before it vanished as well.

The goblin stepped forward, on top of the prone heroine. It’s weapons vanished from its hands, replaced for a moment by a stout coil of rope. For a few seconds, the goblin waved its hands and the rope, going through an animation.

When the animation finished, Amera stood up again, but instead of her normal, tall proud pose, the young maiden stood hunched over, defeated. Her weapon remained gone. Instead, her arms were pulled behind her back, wrists crossed and lashed with rope. More roped wrapped her arms and torso in bands, running above and below her ample chest, pulling her tunic tight against her firm, round breasts.

The plain, green cloth tunic, which before had been pristine and whole, was now dirtied, stained with mud and torn in multiple places, revealing, in some places scandalously so, the pale white skin beneath. Her brown woolen hose was likewise now torn and dirtied, while her shoes were unequipped, leaving her barefooted. Another item had been added, however: a tight band of cloth circled her head, covering her mouth. Her character model had also changed, beyond its new pose, her auborn hair now tangled and wild, her face dirtied, her cheeks reddened with the same of her capture.

A third and final rope was tied around the maiden’s neck, running in an arc to the goblin who had captured her. With an unintelligible bark, it turned and started to walk across the zone. As the rope connecting her to her captor tightened, she had no choice but to follow after, bent over, head bowed, a defeated prisoner.

Elsewhere in the zone, other players paused from the goblins they were killing, or waiting to respawn so they could kill them again, and turned to watched the odd procession as it passed. If one of them had gone up to Amera’s captor and made a single attack, it would have been enough to free her, but none of them did. The chat said it all:

“What a noob!”

“Yeah, who fails the Goblin Quest?”

“She didn’t use any of her abilities.”

“I don’t think she knows how to equip items. She was still using the training sword and cloth tunic...”

“Enjoy the enslavement quest, noob!”

Of all the quests in the popular Lands of Adventure VR game, the Goblin Caves was considered to be the easiest of them all. Most players, just starting out, or starting new characters, did it first, to get some XP and a little gold to help them on their way to bigger and more impressive quest lines. It was so easy, you’d almost have to try and fail…

For those who did, though, there was another quest line that was unlocked. If a player, somehow, managed to be defeated by the goblins, and wasn’t rescued in time by another player, they would be captured and dragged down into the goblin tunnels. This started the “Goblin Enslavement” quest line, one of the hardest and longest of all the quests in the game, as the unlucky character struggled to find some way to free themselves from their captors and get back to the surface. Given how long it was and the low rewards, you’d be lucky to come out with a basic tunic, much less whatever starting gear you’d had on you, most players avoided the quest line altogether, considering it a joke on the part of the developers, punishment for any noobs pathetic enough to fail the first quest.

“Bye bye, noob!” The other players continued to taunt as Amera neared the gates to the goblin mines. Once through, she would be beyond rescue, doomed to toil in the mines, under the lash, and worse, of her captors until she could complete the long enslavement quest line and escape.

With the Cloth Gag item equipped, Amera couldn’t respond to the taunts and jeers of the other players, but underneath it, she was grinning. Most of them would never have guessed this was an alt-character she’d created that morning and that her main was level 100, or that this was the fifth character she’d created and intentionally failed the Goblin Caves Quest, so she could do the Goblin Enslavement Quest-line again and again.

The goblin model reached the gate and vanished. The rope remained, still tugging the adventurer forward. She reached the gate and vanished as well. After a brief loading screen, she found herself standing in the antechamber of the goblin mines. The high pitched sounds of picks striking the wall and chains rattling mixed with the lower sounds of the goblin guards barking orders, whips slapping against skin and screams of the slaves. Goblin Guard NPCs, dozens of them prowled around, many leading captives around on ropes like Amera. Some were NPCs, others players, like Amera, who had failed the quest line.

Amera’s captor grunted, jerking the rope and dragged her forward. She followed after him, towards the mine, ready to enjoy another fun play through of the Goblin Enslavement Questline...