Ding!
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A longer message from the gods.
Do you accept this quest?
Yes / No
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim stood in quiet contemplation. Taking in the wonder of the world in front of him. As he pondered the power that changing the world to this degree would have needed, he knew that his knowledge of the universe and its rules were less than a drop in the ocean.
Nothing made sense anymore. Jim’s whole life and whole career had been working within the confines of the rules. You make an engine move by rotating a drive shaft, you make that shaft turn with gears, you move those gears with force and bingo, movement! Jim couldn’t fathom the parts that would be needed to terraform a planet, more so than terraform, this was a complete reshaping from the core up.
Along with those thoughts, the most single rule that space equals death was broken.
Jim was a person of logic, of sense and reason and now all that was gone.
“Well then” He said quietly to himself.
“I can’t throw myself into oblivion, so what’s the plan here Jim?”
After several moments of deep thought he dropped his arms and lowered his head.
In a beaten tone Jim pushed the words through his teeth.
“Lens, I accept the quest”
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notification
A longer message from the gods has been accepted, open message from Dux?
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim mentally scowled the words in his head to open this ridiculous aberration of a mental breakdown, then the message appeared in front of him.
Slowly the words began to form in a handwritten script in the air.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What sort of idiot says no to a quest that explicitly states ‘you will die an agonising death’ if you deny it? Well, I’m sure you felt the results of that poor decision.
Like I said before, no need to be scared. It’s time to get to work!
You’ll see I made some changes to your vessel and dropped a few items into the storage.
Also you may have noticed that when you exploded, you came back.
This new world lets you “Respawn” on death and I’ve made it so if you choose you can come back up here when that happens, which seeing your determination to kill yourself will be a lot.
Go start the “game” after reading this and you’ll see my gifts will come in handy. Now, the real reason you’re in this mess.
You were the only person not in the immediate blast of that little reality re-write, how in the abyssal hell this took place is rather the mystery to us astral entities.
We’re not allowed to intervene so it’s all on you. Find out what happened for us would you?
If you need to send me a message just put it in the mailbox in the command room.
Good luck, you’ll need it!
Dux - Prime astral messenger
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As his eyes read over the signing off of Dux from the message, Jim anxiously turned back towards the ship. He realised that in his haze of an anxiety driven suicidal rush to the airlock, he took in absolutely nothing of his surrounding guided purely by fear and panic. All of his vigorous training for mental constitution appear to have completely failed him at the hands of this scenario.
Why him? Why out of all the people on the planet had he ended up in this situation. Yes space is dangerous, and he never had panic attacks about normal space stuff before.
With a breath of acceptance, Jim opened the mechanical lock handle and slowly leaned forward to peer into the ship. He tentatively took in his surroundings, observing what he recognised and what looked like the changes Dux mentioned.
It was darker than he remembered, but still had the familiarity of the ISS about it. Torches had replaced the LED lighting, the floor and walls were a polished white stone, the electrical boxes and switches were.. he had no idea.
As Jim started to inspect the once precisely engineered 3D printed control panels, he saw how they were now intricate patterns of metal blocks and stone, painted and etched with symbols. Some vaguely looked like norse runes, others hieroglyphics and others completely alien altogether.
“Ok, I guess those things don’t work on electricity and now my whole living space is unfixable if it breaks.” he let out a sigh.. “Brilliant”.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notification
New items available in your storage bay.
New Quest available!
One small step for Jim.
Begin your journey into Kaldoria by creating your character.
Activate the teleportation bay to begin this quest.
Rewards:
Class - You’ll gain a class.
Items - Basic class gear.
Fail to complete or reject this quest and you will die an agonising death.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Great another quest, can I not just let myself acclimatise to everything before being flung into something else?”
Jim trudged to the central point of the station knowing that the old storage bay was accessed through that section. The signage on the vessel was now gilded metal plates in an old English calligraphy esc font, the engravings of the text were not in English though, but a different language he couldn’t recognise. Somehow Jim understood the language. He wouldn't have been able to read it aloud, but somehow his brain was translating the words.
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As Jim approached the door to the storage bay he noticed how the once electrical door console was now in its new runic form.
“Ok, a problem to solve, let’s get this done”
With some pulling and pinching Jim could move the runic blocks up, down, left and right. Each time he moved one the glow of light on the block changed. Red, Orange and Green.
“Well at least the traffic light system translated over to this new tech”
It seemed as though this would be a simple enough puzzle for him to solve, it would just take time. As Jim moved the blocks around the square, changing the colour patterns he noticed another element of the lock that made things exponentially harder. The blocks moved towards and away from the wall too, changing the brightness of the block.
With a palm to his face Jim was certain that no matter how many layouts and configurations he tried, he did not have the time to spend opening this, he’d be well out of food and water before he even got close.
Racking his brain for an answer Jim wished beyond anything he could understand even the basics of circuitry that went behind this thing. He saw no edge to open the panel, no screws, no clasps, nothing! With the knowledge of the workings of it he could understand the exact amount of combinations or even try and hack this thing open.
Jim rested his palm on the panel, his mind running through a marathon of possibilities he could try to solve this problem.
Then a warm feeling in his hand and a Ding!
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notification
Augment Ability: Mana-optic unlocked.
Use: See the underlying Mana routes and blueprints of common rarity mana created items, armour, weapons, augments, buildings and creatures.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Jim removed his hand from the panel the exterior glow of the runes faded and a dim purple glow began to seep through the metal and stone, revealing pathways of connections just like the Hololens visual blueprints of the ISS.
“YES!, this changes the game, thank youuuuu Hololens!”
He could clearly see the route he needed to trigger by sending the pathways of purple light to it. There were two ‘nodes’, he assumed that was a fitting name for them, one above the panel and one below. The below node was already full of light and considering the door wasn’t opening and thinking logically, he obviously needed to get the light to the top node. The feed of light to the overall panel was coming from the right, connecting to other routes and the rest of the room, but that was for later investigation. Jim would love to know what was powering this place.
The trial and error began, and with pushes, pulls, slides and yanks Jim could see the light moving back into the centre. A hundred or so combinations later and he nearly had it. He could see that only one of the cubes was left to turn green.
“Ok…” he said nervously as he tentatively slid the most bottom right cube inwards a fraction, then…. UP!
The console turned a solid state of green and... clang! The sound of a metal trigger and the door teetered open.
“YOU BEAUTY!”
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notification
Augment Ability: Mana-optic experience gained.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim dismissed the message and with a flick of the hand pushed the door open.
The room once full to the brim of labelled white cubes of storage material was now a mostly empty shell of its former glory. There was a hip height clasped container full of metal slabs and tools, another similar box full of crystals and glowing wires and finally a cupboard by the door.
The cupboard had a small note stuck to the front of it with the words “From Dux” printed onto it.
“Ok, I guess this is the one I really need to investigate.”
Jim flung open the door to reveal the oddest selection of clothes he’d ever seen. He could only compare the garbs to something LARPers might wear, or Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings cosplayers.
There were grey cloaks, chainmail shirts, huge metal boots, top hats and floppy hats, velvet gloves and gauntlets and what looked like a Venetian mask.
“Ermmm ok…” Jim said as he tried to place a gilded flat cap onto his head.
ZAP! An electric shock tingled through Jim’s finger.
“Ouuuuchh you little… what was that for?”
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notification
This item does not suit your class, you cannot use or equip it.
Current class: ERROR
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“No need for the shock!” Jim said as he shook his hand and sucked the end of the tingling finger.
His gaze moved to a small handle within the cupboard and another small note. “This one” the note said as Jim moved to open the drawer.
In preparation for another shock Jim took a quick deep breath and yanked the draw open quickly.
No shock.
“A.. watch?” Jim said with hesitation.
With a quick jab of his finger Jim poked the grey crystalline wrist piece. It shimmered in the dim light. No shock came this time either.
Jim investigated the watch, there was no face or arms, no sound or visible buttons. He tapped the face of the item and..
Ding!
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notification
Item investigation skill increased.
Item investigated successfully.
Item: Storage link.
Rarity: Rare
Use: This item connects to a storage utility allowing the user to access stored items at any given time. The size of the items being transported through the link is dependent upon both the size of the storage space and the size of the space surrounding your current location.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“That feels like it’s going to be coincidentally useful” Jim spoke quietly and inwardly.
With an accepting breath Jim slid the item over his wrist as a visual list of the items in the storage bay popped into life from the watch.
Without further investigation he looked away from the new heads up watch screen, it was dismissed and vanished. He knew the next step was going to be finding the teleportation bay and starting this whole new life, this adventure, this mandate from the gods.
“Pffffft, gods, yeah right” Jim scoffed as he walked back towards the central hub of the station. He didn’t feel right calling it a station any more. The interior was far too mediaeval and moody for this to be anything like the old ISS. He wondered what this thing looked like from the outside, and if anyone on Earth could see it. If you had a decent telescope and the correct timings and coordinates you could see the ISS from the planet's surface, but what would you see now?
Jim decided quite quickly that it really didn’t matter much right now, he had to get out of here. It was very cool having a magic storage unit to access at any time, but one thing that did dawn on him was that the old storage bay, the one with all his food, was gone. He had a maximum of a weeks worth of food and water in the kitchen area. A few hours ago this thought would have sent Jim into a spiral of doubt and panic, now though the acceptance of his situation was settling in.
“Ok, next job on the list, teleportation bay!”
As Jim climbed ladders up towards the control room he walked though the main corridor and for the first time since this whole calamity kicked off a reflection caught his eye, his reflection.
With a dropped jaw and frantic movements of his hands over his face Jim’s panic was back.
His reflection, his face, his body… it was pixelated?! He was a blur, a blocky blur! When he looked down at his hand they were still his hands, his human hands, he could see that clearly, but his reflection was totally different.
“AH what is this nonsense!” Jim shouted.
“Nope, enough of this, i don’t need to know” He moved on quickly, accepting that his brain was now mush and to just roll with it.
As the door to the “Teleportation Bay”, or the old airlock that Jim had only hours ago tried to hurl himself out of, shut behind him a message appeared.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notification
Quest.
One small step for Jim.
Begin your journey into Kaldoria by creating your character.
Activate the teleportation bay to begin this quest.
Activate? Yes/no.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tilting his head upwards and with closed eyes Jim took a deep breath, grounding himself as he spoke “Yes”.
A flash of light engulfed the room as Jim winced. With blurry vision he crept his eyes open slowly. The room was pure white, with no floor, no sky, no walls. As Jim turned his head and looked around the room, text began to form in front of him.
—----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Kaldoria Beyond.
Begin character creation.
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