Rhudaurion's: The Butcher's Nursery

RHUDAURION'S: THE BUTCHER'S NURSERY ((PART 1))

Jacob said to me with a sneer as he unlocked the basement door, “It’s in here. Let’s go, you rose-tinted goggle-wearing gore-hound.”

He beckoned me into the basement, and we soon found ourselves amidst a catacomb of old cardboard boxes and various generic stuff that hasn’t seen the light of day in well over a decade.

“It’s okay to admit that you’ve got a problem…” I wondered aloud to my friend, referring to the vast amounts of dusty junk everywhere inside the basement.

Jacob didn’t respond, but instead made his way towards an old computer that was smothered with papers and old shirts. “Here it is. Our old ’96. It still works, too.” He said as he flipped the switch behind the tower and turned on the monitor, “It’s already got everything you need, good sir. Diablo and Diablo 2, Starcraft, the first two Warcraft games, and Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. I couldn’t get Warcraft 3 to work though; at least not without the computer having a seizure. You can expect Diablo 2 to lag a little, too—but it does run.”

I smiled and said, “Nice, nice… you’ll let me test this baby out first, won’t you?”

“Knock yourself out,” Jacob said, “Here…” He pulled up an old suitcase for me to sit on.

I did so, and began exploring the ancient desktop for the first time in many years. After spinning the cursor around for a moment, I decided to delve once more into the world of Diablo. I slid the disc into the tray and thumbed it in, and double clicked the icon. The old Blizzard North logo flashed onto the screen, followed by the cinematic of the Wanderer’s Sword stuck into the ground with the memorable sunset behind it.

“Oh, yeah-h-h, here we go!” I said eagerly, skipping the intro and was thrust into the main menu screen. “Diablo… version 1.02…? Hmm… needs patching. I’ll take care of that later, though.”

I noticed a few previous characters had already been saved, mostly test characters with a mess of garbled letters as names. I deleted them without a second thought and proceeded to create a warrior named Drakhan, and was brought once more to the tiny, eminently doomed village of Tristram. Through the heavy pixels, the warrior was just as awesome as I had remembered him to be: an awesome fighter-dude wearing blue jeans and other little pieces of armor to go along with his default outfit. After bumbling around the village a bit, I headed straight for the cathedral, approached the wounded townsman lying on the ground near the entrance, spoke to him for about half a second, and left him for dead without giving him a second thought. Before long I descended into the cathedral and braced myself for even more nostalgia.

At first I was greeted by the dark ambiance of the dungeon itself, followed by the heavy drums from Matt Uelman’s piece, followed yet by the usual ‘The sanctity of this place has been fouled’ mumblings of my warrior. At this point, nostalgia had struck me hard over the head with a shovel… and the only cure was for me to bury my blade deep into the skulls of those Fallen demons and zombies alike. Before I knew it, I had cleared the first level of the game and looted a few nifty trinkets here and there from various chests and sarcophagi. It wasn’t long before I nearly cleared the second level as well—with the one exception of that one particular room containing that one particular enemy wielding that one particular cleaver.

The Butcher was probably busy butchering things inside that bloody room of his. I wasn’t in the least bit afraid of him—though I was concerned that if my warrior did die then my game would crash, and I promptly saved the game, just to be safe. Nostalgia and vengeance had forced me to swing the door to the room open, and, as expected, the fat bastard came careening towards me, though he wasn’t nearly covered with the amount of blood that I remembered as a kid. The Butcher howled his usual slogan of ‘Argh, fresh meat!’ and we began slugging it out in a very old-school fashion. The sound of our swinging weapons spammed the dungeon, often accompanied by my warrior’s grunts and groans from being hit by that cleaver of his. Eventually, though, I managed to kill the Butcher and looted that cleaver of his—which does incredible damage though breaks easily compared to my more valuable weapons.

I could have gone farther into the game, though just wasn’t feeling like it. Just for kicks, I decided to start a new game with the same character with the intention of killing the Butcher once more with his own weapon. If I recalled correctly, Diablo was known for randomizing its many different dungeons and enemies inside them. It took several new games before I noticed the pathetic, wounded townsman yet again laying on the ground—a tell-tale sign that the Butcher was indeed in this layout. Good deal.

So I spent the next thirty or so minutes clearing out the first two levels, with, of course, refusing to open the Butcher’s chamber until the moment was right. By this point I had already reached a fairly decent level and I felt confident in my warrior this time around. I swung the door open, and the demon comes careening towards me yet again—though instead of saying ‘fresh meat’ he instead says ‘kill me’ in the same dark, guttural voice. I was confused, if a bit shocked. I didn’t think the Butcher was capable of saying anything other than fresh meat. Still confused, I was forced to put him down, though with relative ease this time, while using his own nefarious weapon. When the Butcher fell to the ground once more, the game froze for just a few seconds, and once the cd-drive kicked back up, the malevolent cleaver-wielding demon uttered the phrase ‘again’.

Again. Again? The Butcher wanted me to kill him yet again? I… I thought I could oblige him. Unnerved though strangely curious, I quickly saved my game and began a new game, repeating the process a few times until I saw the wounded townsman laying near the entrance yet again. I descended into the cathedral once more though did not bother dancing with the enemies that chased me throughout the first level. I then descended down the first staircase and emerged into the second level and, to my growing discomfort, the door to the Butcher’s chamber was literally one footstep away from the warrior. In fact, the staircase seemed to have been placed on top of the bloodstained floor in front of the splattered door.

I muttered, “An impossible seed...”

I saved my game again, and opened the door. The Butcher charged me at what I thought was twice his normal speed, while uttering, ‘kill me’ once more—though brimmed with despair this time. He swung his cleaver twice as fast, delivering more consistent strikes onto my warrior, and dealing nearly double his normal damage output. His bloodied body also bore the marks of my warrior’s ill-begotten cleaver from the last fight. I was uneasy, though determined to grant the Butcher his request. After chugging what seemed like an inventory’s worth of healing potions, I somehow managed to kill the Butcher yet again and sent him to the ground. The game froze again for a few seconds, the cd-drive kicked back up, and the Butcher then uttered ‘again’, though this time his gargled words sounded even more melancholic.

I had chills running throughout my body. The bloodied corpse of the Butcher looked just as it seemed when I was a boy of no older than six—it appeared dark, and deeply crimson, and far larger than it should have been. Those dark feelings that I had felt as a child returned to me, conjured by this game and by—as Griswold the blacksmith would say—his bloodstained visage. Indeed, it still haunted me to this day, especially now when the Butcher was saying and doing things he shouldn’t. I should oblige him yet again, I thought to myself. I saved my game once more and started a new game. The wounded townsman was there the first time around, without me having to start multiple new games. How convenient that I’d see him on the first go…

Just for kicks, I decided to actually talk to the wounded townsman… anything to delay my inevitable encounter with the dreaded Butcher who was certainly going to test the integrity of my courage.

I clicked on the wounded townsman. He spoke to my warrior and said, “You… you bastards…! You did all this… for… for a game? A damned video game?! I hope… Hell… is worth it…?” (The sound of muffled screaming can be faintly heard in my right speaker. It cuts off quickly after the man says ‘worth it?’) My heart sank in my chest to the sound of that frightened man’s voice. Whoever said those words was not acting… those were real words, from a real man, haphazardly recorded using a crude device and put in as a sound file to be played by the wounded townsman. My eyes were watering from the anxiety that gripped me so feverishly, and I groaned in my mind. I clicked on the wounded townsman once more—the same dialogue, the same hysterical muffles and cries came through the speakers again.

With great reluctance, I proceeded into the dungeon beneath the cathedral. But just before I clicked to proceed downwards, I suddenly remembered that I needed to stock up on healing potions. I walked to Tristram as fast as my warrior could, and clicked on Pepin the local healer. Nothing. I clicked on him again. Still nothing. Pepin could not be interacted with. I tried the others—Deckard Cain the elder, Griswold the blacksmith, Farnham the drunkard, Adria the witch, Wirt the peg-legged bastard child, Gillian the barmaid… though I still had Ogden the tavern keeper to click on, and as thus I did just that. Ogden responded in what sounded like a crudely recorded voice—though it did sound vaguely like the voice actor used for the tavern keeper in the game. The speed of which the audio played was very fast—too fast to comprehend in one go, and routinely skipped around. Here’s what I could make out of it:

“Ah, you've returned… we had to change a lot since you last worked here. Much effort was given to make this game as dark and twisted as we could… the way you wanted it. Then they (but who?) came, as usual, wielding censorship and other restrictive measures to keep us from reaching our potential. We were so close I tell you. We had to cut back on, what, at least sixty percent of what we wanted to really happen in this game—replacing it with less ‘taboo’ and ‘nightmarish’ material. Huh! They wanted ‘Diablo’ instead of ‘Mecephyrus the Thrice Damned’. They supposed ‘Diablo’ would be catchier somehow. We had to cut back on many of our scripts and completely redo them. Though we’ll have the last laugh in the end… The only thing those damn censors didn’t find offensive was Mr. Uelman’s work. Luckily for him, he doesn’t have to redo anything.” (The rest becomes a garbled mess of corrupted sound data.)

“Something went down during development... I somehow managed to... unlock it?” I mumbled to myself, “But how...? The Butcher... it started with him. I must kill him again. Hopefully, by doing so, I can perhaps find out a little more. Back down to the dungeon I go...”

I then saved my game, which seemed to freeze the game for a few seconds, then returned back to normal. The computer's tower was blowing excessively. Something in this game was forcing the computer to work harder, to use larger loads of resources on an already elderly system. Hopefully my system wouldn't overheat or lock up entirely—I must find out what took place within the darkest recesses of those .mpq files!