"Welcome to the flight deck of our C130 Modified Plane Series P4ND4. We will be departing shortly to Demopolis and will reach our destination in roughly 30 minutes. In the meantime, please preview the information gathered by our trusty Panda Spy Associates and get ready for a rocky landing. You're not required to put on your seatbelts for this flight as the planes' gravity has been adjusted such that it would fly like a baby in a lullaby rocking bed. Do enjoy the flight and be ready to depart once the green light at your front door blinks." The Plane's intercom clicked twice before deactivating and the sounds of the planes' engine could be heard loudly for a moment before it got muffled by the sound barriers that the plane's interior had raised.
While there was the option of viewing the takeoff through their rooms' miniature portholes room, most of the Pandarens and Pandawans chose not to do so. From previous experiences, it had become clear that they had to get as many points as possible from the start especially when they had the lead. However, that also meant that they would be prone to suffering a heavy blow at the start if they went in too reckless.
What's more, the first Demopolis Raid had been deemed to last at least a week, mainly because Jin had implemented a resurrection procedure for the enemies. He could have done that for all of his raids but this time around, he wanted a more persistent kind of battleground where it would be a battle of attrition more than conquering the territory. (Nobody told his customers that Demopolis was part of the Dungeon World and that resurrection was a fairly common thing even though it did cost money to accelerate the process) That is, however, only to the smaller fries of this entire raid fiasco and limited to locations where the System deemed that the Pandarens aren't getting enough action.
This meant that they had to capture high value targets or complete the objectives as set out by Jin and with the simplicity in the nature of the objectives, they believed there would be some sort of a 'combo' which they could exploit. True enough, Jin did set perks and achievements for meeting the goals of the main objectives. From mere quantitative achievements such as killing 1000+ mafia demons to unique ones such as protecting your fellow teammates and other teams in a scuffle for 30+ minutes.
As the Pandawan Team (which at the moment included the two Police detectives for inclusion's sake) studied the 'research notes', they found out more about the series of achievements that could yield them Panda Coins, Demopolis Points as well as a secret voucher similar to the one that had been given out in the full complete exploration of the Nian Island. Even though few Pandarens had managed to get the voucher, there was actually an NPC that had brought them to a discreet location to show them the details of said voucher.
As much they would want to show it out to the Pandamonium Forums and display it out in full view for the rest to be jealous of, the Panda NPC re emphasised that this feature was not fully implemented and thus requested the Pandarens to sign a non disclosure agreement to ensure that such information was not leaked out prematurely.
Still, each time a Pandaren obtained the voucher. The Panda NPC was able to publish a small portion of a photograph of the said item which made people guess crazily what it was. Some conjured it was a picture of Nian but there were Pandarens who painstakingly tried to compare every detail of Nian with the Dungeon model especially since the cultivators were able to take screenshots with their visors with a quick voice command. They found that while there were striking similarities, yet at the same time it seemed to be a different model.
Some customers tried to find these completionists for an answer but it seemed that the System had enabled certain anti bullying and tracking measures to ensure that these customers were not harassed within the store instance.
Aside from the few who publicly revealed to have vouchers, most of the other completionists were able to keep out of sight of this unique situation. And since there was another of such vouchers available for grabs in the achievement section of the Demopolis Raids, there was a high amount of interest on this particular voucher.
The Nian Island completionist achievement secret voucher might have seemed hard, but this Demopolis Secret Voucher was even more demanding. And yet Boss Jin personally had claimed that it would be worth it because once the feature was released, it would be quite an exclusive item and a sort of keepsake for those who had worked hard for it.
The research notes included not only notes about the rules and rewards, but also a physical map plus a digital map that could be accessed within the groups' main meeting rooms. The map featured a total of 50+ districts of Demopolis and which gangs had occupied them.
The Merchants District was being held by the Atrocity mafia, the Petal District was directly under the command of the Tyr Gauntlets and the Cosmo District was filled with the presence of the Eld Enclave Mafia Family.
For the start of the raid, Jin had limited the choice of each team to one of these three districts, waiting for the first Pandarens and Pandawans to take over these districts before spreading out into the surrounding areas.
The Pandawans decided to go to the Merchants District mainly because they believed the 'brawns' faction were the easiest to deal with compared to the 'brain' or the 'all-rounders'. Not to mention, they were melee cultivators who wanted a good fight too.
The team did think of hitting the weaklings and working their way through while learning more about the battlefield when they saw the monstrosity of details in the map, but Xiong Da disagreed. "Fortune favours the brave and right now, we should set the example for the other Pandarens and set what we intended to do in the first place." With a sweet talker like him, he managed to cement the initial conviction for the rest to take on Atrocity.
Hence, everyone within the Pandawan team agreed to hit hard fast and while finding a place for retreat as time goes by so there would be enough time to recuperate as Jin had now placed a mini cooldown timer for those who were killed in action as part of the new rules. (More would be explained further as the action unfolds but there was a way to get their teammates back and avoid the cooldown period.)
All that was left to do now was to wait for the green light to appear at the top of their meeting room to battle the 'weakest' of the three factions…
