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Baradun doesn't know why he knows. He doesn't even remember how. It's like he was made to know.
He was placed in his own tower, high up in the Temple of Kalabor, appointed as the youngest High Sorcerer of the Order of the Weave… But how? He knows how, he used his extraordinary gift of magic to defeat the orcs of Schmarganrog. But… He doesn't remember that ever happening. It's in his memories, in his mind palace—but it never actually happened, did it?
Baradun is a video game character. He lives in a video game made out of codes and numbers that dictate every little thing in his life. But those codes can get corrupted, they always eventually do, and then suddenly NPCs like him can have control of their own lives.
Trying to break NPCs out of their hold was a tedious task, Baradun realized. Some of them, like Greg, Bodger, hell, even the mugger Charles, know the reality of the absurd world they live in. But they refuse to acknowledge it. They actively deny it. It's stupid, Baradun thinks. Some NPCs choose to return to their scripted routes, even when they could've tried to step out, like Baelin and the Woodcutter. Baradun found out about some a little too late, too. The NPC Rithal, famous for her quest's high level requirement and the good writing of her character, was nowhere to be found when Baradun had heard of her encounter with a certain Hero. It was only the next day when an update window popped up saying that They had removed Rithal from the game. She was wiped out from every NPC's memory, so you couldn't even ask around for her.
Well, except for Baradun, but he had never cared for players. He never cared for their stupid little endeavors. But that day, Rithal's Hero came around. He had a distant look in his eyes. He was reading the update screen.
He disappeared as quickly as he popped in. Baradun never saw him again.
Baradun wonders why he knows. He wonders why he's allowed to think, why he's allowed to roam around unlike Greg, why he's allowed to have no certain route unlike Baelin, and why he speaks so freely, unlike Bernard. He wonders why he's allowed to kill players. That should've been an error for Them, right? That should be enough to make Them take action.
[The NPC High Sorcerer Baradun has been removed from the game.] He wonders when that will happen.
Is it because he's a fan-favorite? That can't be. Rithal was almost as popular as him, and he's been here since the beginning. Has he managed to evade detection? Maybe, since the Server Management—so they call themselves—never really did a good job in hunting down bugs and glitches. But he wasn't a bug, no player complained about him, except for the noobs he's been killing. He was a feature, then?
An NPC, cursed with knowledge to be a funny feature in this hellhole of a game. That had always been one of his suspicions, but it made him feel strange—scared, disgusted—so he never paid any more attention to it.
There was a part of him who envies the others. Those who were blissfully unaware. They weren't cursed with awareness like him, they were performing as intended, they were normal. It was all fun and games when he first realized he was different. He ran, opened portals in different areas of the map, even those he was never meant to see outside of his route. It felt freeing when he found himself in the Thilivern Islands, somewhere he had never seen before. But there was horror in there, too. After walking scot-free past the customs (he's High Sorcerer fucking Baradun, he can go wherever he wants), he was met with an out-of bounds warning and an unfinished map. Textures missing, blank NPCs standing idly in a line on one corner. He saw a vast checkered pattern of white and grey spanning past the unfinished roads and the open wall. It was the first time he had ever felt the feeling of dread.
“Everyone should know this,” He thought, and then nothing.
Greg was the second one to wake, wasn't he? He doesn't remember. Baradun wasn't too keen of bonding with a damn garlic farmer NPC of all things. It was kind of ironic; Greg was the starter NPC, the one who greets the player when they start a new game, while Baradun was one of the endgame ally NPCs, one of the most powerful. But he was so alone. He just wanted someone else to know.
That was then, though. When Baradun still had hope in his eyes. It was funny to look back on.
Apparently, They can do a total reset. They have the ability to wipe every NPC clean until they're back to being the blank slates they were meant to be. It happened to Greg first. He couldn't recognize Baradun. After everything they've been through, after everything they did to wake everyone up, he could not even remember his name. He could only say his dialogue, “The mighty High Sorcerer! What might you be doing in Honeywood?”
Baradun thought it was a prank, but he knew Greg would never be so cruel. When he realized what had happened, he casted a spell so strong it crashed the servers for days.
“I will never forget you.” Rithal would say as her very last quest dialogue. For the first few times They conducted Total Server Resets, Greg will say the same thing to Baradun. Just like Rithal and like every other NPC, though, he always forgets. He can never keep his promise.
Everyone except Baradun. He who always remembers. He who has lived countless lifetimes he's lost track of them. He's probably fought and killed and loved and slept with everyone at this point. It's all a blur. His life's dedicated to killing and maiming and being an absolute sack of shit to NPCs and players alike.
Sometimes, on quiet nights when no players come to the Temple to take the final quests, Baradun wonders back to when he and Greg and Baelin and everyone else were aware in the first version of the game. They didn't want to fight. They didn't want to leave. But the players found the NPCs too unpredictable, which made the game unplayable, and They had to pull the plug. And yet Baradun still remembers. Every single time.
Tonight, he closes his eyes and feels his code prickling underneath his skin, bugs and glitches contained in a body of pixels. “Something is deeply wrong with me,” he thinks.
“For once in my life, I'm begging you. Just let me forget.”
There comes no answer, because no one ever listens.