The walls shook and started to shimmer, they rotated and refracted as they quickly became more reflective.
Before Jim had time to try and see how this room was moving autonomously, the walls stopped rotating. The room now a perfectly mirrored cylinder, Jim could see his full body for the first time properly, a blurry nightmare of a vestige.
He couldn’t help but throw a wave of his arms, followed by the robot.
“I am Jimatron” he spoke in a robot voice as he swivelled his blurred blocky arm around in a 360 degree motion.
He quickly stopped his fooling around as several selection options formed in front of him in the air. Hovering were images of different faces, human, beasts, beetles, birds, lizards, some quite beautiful, some deformed and mutated.
As Jim focused on the different heads, he could see that each one had a familial resemblance. As if they were him, with features he recognised from his human face but with extremely well done special effects makeup.
Jim focused on the creature that resembled a Bald Eagle and with a shimmer of lights his pixelated body began to morph from the feet up. His height increased, his toes turned to talons, his knees raised higher up his legs, his back bending inwards and expanding wider and broader. His chest became covered in a glorious plume of blue and white feathers, his nose stretching and connecting with his mouth to become a beak, his eyes growing deeper and wider and the coup de grâce of the transformation, two monumentally huge wings sprouted from his back.
With a wide stretch Jim's wings spread with a flap into the air above him and his feet left the ground. Hovering for a few minutes he took in this bizarre experience with a smile, although the beak had no muscles to smile with he still felt his muscles contract. His brother would have loved this as he thought about his family. Did they survive whatever happened down on Earth? As the glided to the floor his wings folded inwards and his talons caused a quiet scratch on the mirrored floor. He felt a deep regret for not having the thought of mind to have tried NASA on the comms relay before entering the chamber. However the thought of another agonising death for not continuing the game’s quests was on par with the emotional turmoil of that decision.
His thoughts turned back to his brother Luke. Luke was by all means the joker of the family. Always pranking Jim, and always getting into trouble for playing the clown. Luke’s dream was to be a pilot, but that was a dream far gone by as he could never fully commit himself to anything for too long. ‘’Luke would have totally chosen this Eagle body’’ Jim thought to himself. He thought of Luke soaring through the skies became a picture in Jim’s mind and channelling his inner Luke he spread his wings and roared.
“Iiiiii Ammmm the mighttttty Eagleeee Mannnnn! CAW!!”
His voice rang around the room reverberating against the perfectly polished mirrors. He soon realised his hearing was also vastly improved as a headache scoured through his temples from his wailing howl.
The usual message script appeared in the air.
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Do you wish to select ‘Karura’ as your race?
Benefits: With mighty talons the Karura are among the fiercest combatants known to Kaldoria. With powerful wings they glide across the battlefield, spotting enemies with enhanced eyesight, hearing and movement recognition.
Positive traits: Strength, Constitution, Perception, Armour Penetration and Slashing.
Negatives: Karura are extremely noticeable standing well above the crowd in height and stature. You’ll always have the attention in the room which makes for trouble when trying to be less detectable. Your mighty talons also afford you the struggle of finer works, making anything requiring a delicate touch a battle within itself.
Negative traits: Dexterity, Charisma, Stealth, Artisan Crafts, Tool Work.
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Deep in thought and clicking his talon on the floor Jim paused to read through the message again.
“Negatives to tool work, as awesome as this would be I think that maybe this isn’t the smartest choice for me”.
Jim was an engineer, and if he was going to have any advantage in this new world he knew he’d probably need to play to his strengths and experience of his old life.
“Ah sod it I’m trying them all.”
With one last flap of his wings Jim chose to focus on other images, cycling through the options of races.
OrkJim was tall with greeny blue skin and humongous tusks protruding from his bottom jaw. It felt amazing to this big, every man had always wondered how it felt being a giant sized behemoth. He felt strong, like he could snap anything he tried to break. His legs felt heavy but unwavering.
“Wow this feels great!” Jim said as he leapt 20 feet into the air without much effort.
After a few lumbering jumps he turned to the description in the air. Considering the system prompt he weighed up the pros and cons.
“Hmmm, super strong, that’ll be good in a scrap. Butttttt, huge negatives to Charisma, intelligence and Wisdom. Next!”
With another blurry haze of transformation Jim was back to himself, Human Jim.
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He turned and took the rest of his body, no claws, no tails, nothing out of the norm.
“Hmmm, is this just a normal human?”
The selection he chose was almost at the bottom of the list with the rest of the creature-like choices, well below the other human-like options.
As the message Script started to form in the air Jim noticed the name of this option as the light in the room turned into a misty blue, clouds began to form and break in the ceiling and a full moon appeared above him.
Pain ran through Jim’s skin and he cramped to the floor, his body convulsing. He started to regurgitate blood and the once mirrored ground became warm and wet with his blood. The sound of tearing flesh and breaking bones filled the room of mirrors and Jim glimmered his reflection once the pain started to normalise.
The darkest of black hair was breaking through his flesh from everywhere, his bones were bending and stretching. He clawed his skin trying to get the pain to relieve itself quicker, and with a howl he stretched his head towards the ceiling.
Once he got slightly more used to this new body he quickly turned his attention to the prompt to see what hellish option he’d just chosen.
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Do you wish to select ‘Werewolf’ as your race?
Benefits: A hidden race with similar abilities to a human 90% of the time, however with one harrowing transformation you can become a Werewolf. Werewolves have the benefits of being able to have all the abilities of humans, however upon a rage induced transformation you lose the majority of your consciousness and become extremely powerful in those moments. You are also forced to transform under a full moon.
Positive traits: In transformation, extremely enhanced: Strength, Speed, Durability, Sight, Sound, Smell and Taste. Added bonus to Tracking in human form.
Negatives: Werewolves are hunted by Human factions, seen as a plague on the race. The Werewolf trait can be passed to a human through a non-deadly bite. If discovered you will be hunted endlessly by bounty hunters.
Negative traits: Hidden curse, unwilling hunger and aggression under transformation.
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Jim read the description of the race with hesitation. He definitely wasn’t the type of person to take on a big risk like being hunted endlessly. The pro’s for sure did not outweigh the cons of this one.
He cycled through more options, methodically taking in the words guiding him through the positives and negatives, and having some fun with weirder racial traits along the way to.
Draconids, the humanoid dragon one, could breath fire and also had wings and flight. But struggled with speed and climate, very much the specialist warrior type. The elven version of Jim was beautiful, it was as if a world where Jim was a movie star or model was right in front of him. This option dug out his teenage fantasy of being Legolas, mowing down enemies with flurries of arrows and winning the heart of a magical princess. But the elven one reads like it’ll force him down a political and religious route.
“That’s a big no, sorry Jimolas!”
He had no idea what would be the best choice, and he wondered if all the people of Earth would have had the same option of choosing a race as he did. If so there must be millions of Kurura’s, Draconids (Dragon people) and Elves down there.
The one race that caught his attention several times was the Mul. Half human, half dwarf. There were a few options that were half and halves. Mainly human types with the creature based options being rather silo’d. Jim guessed you wouldn’t get many water nymphs having children with Orcs or Fae’s. Did this world have restrictions on the biology of races and mixing? He had the quick thought of selecting some of the weirder options and having a cheeky look at the nether regions, but rather quickly decided he didn’t want to know. No one wants the images of a 10 foot tall dragon’s… bits… in their head.
Jim settled back to the Mul and selected it again to see the benefits and negatives, along with checking out the luscious beard that accompanied the option.
With a tickle of energy his body began to morph again. His height dropped a foot or so, his muscles growing into a stoutly broad shouldered build, his legs, calves and feet becoming thick and sturdy. Jim’s hair turned to an ashy brown and grew into a braided mullet, then the hip length beard grew quickly from his now overly square chin.
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Do you wish to select ‘Mul’ as your race?
Benefits: Skilled and strong, the Mul are known to a rare few in Kaldoria, more myth than well known within both the Human and Dwarf races. With increased Strength, Patience and Intelligence the Mul are fine warriors, legend tells of their formidable shield walls. The Mul also have advanced natural skills with crafting, building and forging.
Positive traits: Strength, Constitution, Crafting, Building. Added bonus to crafting Mana rich weapons, armour and items.
Negatives: Looked down upon by dwarf and human kind as “Half breeds” the Mul tend to have a difficult time finding groups of others of purer races to work with. With a lack of bardic inspiration you won’t be as natural at joining dwarven songs, and humans will see your lack of commercialisation a waste of your talents.
Negative traits: “Half Breed” negative Charisma with humans and dwarves. Class lock. Classes Unavailable: Wizard, Mage, Bard.
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With a breath of contemplation Jim reread the prompt again, and again, and again. The only close second was a normal “Human”, giving him no obvious positives or negatives, but a good starting boost to skills across the board.
He decided and the prompt changed.
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Do you wish to select ‘Mul’ as your race?
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“Lens, I chose Mul”
As soon as the words left Jim’s moustached mouth purple light sprang from the mirrors into his body.
He felt a warm and structured binding of this new skin echoing through his bones, through his tendons and muscles.
As he looked down towards his hands, he could see finer details in the purple light. Cogs turning and dropping into place, becoming bands of runic lashes around his limbs. He felt like he could hear the gears grinding and turning into place around his body. Locking into their new homes with a tightening and burning pinch.
Then it stopped, and the floor immediately fell out from his feet.
The fall felt like a lifetime, his beard blowing wildly through the air as he spun and flailed. He tried to take his surroundings in but the rush of air and heat was intense. With a realisation he concluded the only thing that could be happening right now was that he was falling… to Earth!