Dix couldn’t help looking at Crossroads with a bit of fear. He’d been hiding his fear before, but he was a little too shook up to keep that up the act. This was a god who was forcing other gods to do something. Wait, he said “we”. That means he is being forced as well. What the hell is up with… nope. Nevermind, beyond my pay grade. Species change, first. Figure out what I am going to lose when I get to Mantra, second. Find a way to keep everything, third.
Crossroads, of course, caught Dix’s fearful look, but decided to ignore it. He was used to people fearing him, but this case was a little different. He knew the kid had had an epiphany of some kind, but not the exact details. He could make an educated guess though, but even that would be an unnecessary distraction at the moment. Right now he needed to figure out if Chance was about to make a mistake or not.
“So, before all those questions running rampant through your head interrupt us some more, let’s get started on your race.” With a wave of his hand an absolutely massive listing of races and their bonuses appeared in the air in front of Dix.
For a moment all Dix could do was stare at the list. It filled an area that was roughly the size of a movie theatre screen, was partially transparent, and appeared to have much more than one layer to it. The writing making up the listings was so small he could barely make out individual letters, and there was little spacing between letters, words, and entries. Shaking his head, he looked through the list at Crossroads. “Is there a way to make this more manageable? Maybe shrink it to the size of a book, let me see only one race at a time, and give me some way to sort it?”
The four armed god grumbled, but got to it. Stretching out his arms, the entire list crumpled up into a ball and fell back into his hands. Tearing and clapping noises came from the direction of the god, but Dix had turned away, not wanting to see the angry and embarrassed god. After a short time, and a lot of what seemed to be swearing, a slightly glowing book-like object thumped on to the shelf next to Dix. Picking it up, he quickly realized what Crossroads had done. He had made a tablet, and given it a way to sort through the options.
Dix had never once used any sort of online dating app. He had never used social media of any kind. No Facebook. No Instagram. No MySpace. But here, in a strange holding cell for illegal immigrants to his soon to be new home world, a world of magic and monsters, he was finally reduced to giving up on all of his long held morals and beliefs against the use of virtual narcissism. And even he, an internet dating virgin, recognized what the god had made.
Tinder. Now optimized for Racial Profiling.
Probably with some other adjustments as well, but that was the gist of it.
It was probably more like an app for finding houses, but Dix hadn’t ever used one of those, either. For a man of his age and generation, he was shockingly out of touch with the digital world so many of his contemporaries lived in. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to use these sorts of things, merely that he had no interest. He was always partial to making appointments and first impressions in person. It led to a great many dates and new acquaintances for him, and a subsequent increase in his actual social, and love lives.
The pseudo app for alternative racial lifestyles had a number of filtering sections filled with sliders, bubbles, and check boxes. While some of the options, tentacles, intrigued him in rather disgusting and disturbing ways, most were exactly the sorts of things he was looking for. Namely the check box marked humanoid. Dix really didn’t want to adjust his body that much. Switching into some sort of blob, or quadruped based locomotion didn’t appeal to him. Neither did gender changes, pseudopods, barbed genitalia, quills, obvious gills, beaks, hooves, fins, or a vast majority of other things. After working through a seemingly inexhaustible list of options that were mainly cosmetic, but appreciated nonetheless, Dix finally reached the last section. The option there was quite interesting. It was another checkbox, this one labeled Extinct. With a sudden surge of excitement, he checked the box. Before he could immediately hit the search start button, a warning screen popped up.
Warning!
While much is rumored about these races, few facts can be verified. As such, most of what made them unique must be discovered anew. Sometimes even the reason they went extinct has been forgotten. Others have had their cause of death maintained in the record for posterity. Be wary of choosing one of these races, as myth and legend may have made them out to be the most vile of existences.
History, abilities, and skills either have incomplete information, or are missing entirely. Should you choose to accept an extinct race, these problems will not be fixed until you discover the reality for yourself. Racial abilities and skills will be available for use at much reduced power, but will only display information that is known by the existing members of the race. Once the secrets of their skills have been learned, they will return to full power and growth.
Races will continue to be listed as extinct until new members of the race are born.
With a warning like that, it seemed as though most people would run the other way from the extinct races. And it could be argued that any race that had gone extinct was not a good choice. Afterall, they were all dead. But Dix figured an extinct race could give him two things. One, it could give him an option that others didn’t get, making him unique. Besides, extinct or not, when they were alive dinosaurs were awesome, and deadly. Extinct races from Mantra may have those same traits. Second, they were a mystery, and he loved mysteries. Having a race that would grow in power as he learned more about it, and grew himself, sounded like a fun adventure. And changing from human, which had the absolutely thrilling ability of… what exactly?
Cocking his head, Dix realized that he had no idea what Humanity’s skills and abilities were. Maybe he would be giving up something good, but he was going to switch anyways, no matter what they had. But he was still going to look before he made his final decision. Knowing your enemy was important, and he was positive he’d have to fight at least one human at some point in the future. They were too big of assholes to avoid forever.
After a twenty second wait for the tablet to search and pull up the viable options, Dix was presented with exactly zero options. He was confused for a bit, before remembering that in his zeal to look the same as he always had, he had checked enough of the cosmetic boxes to ensure he remained almost entirely human. It would result in a comfortable option, and also quite possibly his death. Sighing in disappointment at himself, he hit the button to clear all of his earlier choices, then reselected only two. Humanoid and Extinct.
This time he got three options. Singular, Non-Viable and Viable. Each had a message beneath them, a number to the right of the name, and a plus sign to the left.
+Singular (322)
The races contained here were not really races at all. All of these now extinct races had either a single member, or only a single gender ever existing on Mantra at any given time. This does not mean that the races themselves aren't viable candidates, simply that they never existed as an actual race here.
+Non-Viable (107)
The races listed here were unable to establish themselves amongst the other races of Mantra. Viability is ascertained by the ability to carry enough children to term that a new generation can be established. Having failed to do so, these races have since gone extinct.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
+Viable (3)
These races were successful in establishing themselves amongst the other races of Mantra at one time. Viability is ascertained by the ability to carry enough children to term that a new generation can be established. Unfortunately, despite their successes in breeding, they are now extinct, although reasons vary.
Four hundred thirty two sentient races were extinct. It was a shocking number. Earth, as far as anyone was aware, had only one sentient race develop in however many millions or billions of years the planet had existed. So how the hell had this planet made over four hundred races? With the listed categories and their descriptions, along with his own circumstances, Dix at least had some idea how it had come to this. If Mantra had a habit of snatching people off of their own planets, perhaps it didn’t always continue to do so long enough to get enough people to make a functioning race.
The sudden realization that these numbers also meant that there had been at least four hundred and thirty three different human or humanoid species in existence made him a little light headed. It was one thing to imagine aliens and fantasy races living amongst the stars. It was quite a different thing to KNOW that they existed, and in such numbers. If there were enough races to have this many extinct on one rather strange planet, that he still hadn’t gotten to, then how many more were out there, still living. Dix enjoyed the awe of the thought for a moment, before finally getting back to making some useful decisions. There weren’t exactly a lot of options for him to do more world hopping to meet some other races, so he may as well get back to trying to get to his first one.
He decided to start with the smallest category first. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for in a new race, but a smaller number of options to look for right off the bat would be easier. The fact that they were the most positive examples off of the extinct list had nothing to do with it.
Mrnhrn
A race of sentient fungus colonies, the Mrnhrn communicated and sensed the world through spore transfers. As such they were completely unable to understand that the new creatures they had been feeding off of, and using for locomotion, were in fact also sentient species. This was, unfortunately, discovered after they were all killed. Eventually, to prevent the spread of the new version of the “Corpse Plague”, the entire area was burned to ash. All understanding of this race came from the few small, but very dead, samples that were obtained before the conflagration that destroyed all of the others.
Despite this race being listed as humanoid, Dix was completely uninterested. Although he was really curious why they had been included in the humanoid listing. Maybe it had something to do with the locomotion, and the “Corpse Plague.” Yet another thing he wanted to never encounter. With a bit of a shudder, he moved on.
Nirhaji
The Nirhaji were a peaceful race of farmers. They had a large town and the surrounding farmlands all to themselves for hundreds of years. Until a nearby volcano erupted one night due to an overabundance of fertility rituals performed by a different race. One of the magma elementals was launched so far that it landed in the center of the Nirhaji’s town. In the hope of saving some of their people many of the elders attacked the magma elemental. Having nothing but farming implements, they were mostly unarmed, and resorted to trying to tear off chunks of the elemental with their teeth. Somehow, the fire and the rage of the elemental was digested and absorbed by the Nirhaji elders, transforming them into something else. Something violent, angry, and burning, that slaughtered all of the remaining Nirhaji. This new race, transformed from the old, was called the Janir, and can be found in the Non-Viable section of the extinct races.
There was starting to be reasonable doubt that the extinct races were good choices. What kind of idiot bites magma? Also, some doubt that there were really as many races in existence as the numbers had suggested. If one race had become another through some sort of magical accident, how many of the others were one offs of the same sorts of things. Many of the Singular’s could just be some poor bastard who fucked up in a magical experiment, or drank too many of the wrong potions. Still, there was only one more option in the current listing, and he hadn’t been deterred yet.
Runeborn
Thought to be the first race on Mantra, the Runeborn were jealously considered to be the chosen of the gods. They brought magic, skills, and power to the other races. And led by Humans, the other races killed them for it. Unable to learn the secrets of the Runeborn after they were extinguished, in a fit of rage the other races destroyed the homes, cities, and temples of this now extinct race, leaving no stone atop another for anyone to find.
Dix was quite excited by this option. Not for the theoretical power of the beloved first race, although it was a nice bonus. No, Dix was excited to have the option to choose a race that was such an obvious testament to the idiocy of the human race. Here was a race that had given them power, and humanity killed them for it. Most likely, a small number of rich and powerful people wanted more, so they talked, lied, or ordered the rest of humanity and their allies into doing it so that they could then keep anything valuable for themselves.
Despite being human himself, for the moment, he hated humanity as a whole. Humans in large groups made the worst decisions available. They were worse than sheep. As a group, they seem to actually get dumber, willingly throwing away reason and logic to revel in the release of hatred, jealousy, and rage. The genocide of the Runeborn seemed to be a prime example of this. On a singular basis, some very few of them were almost decent, but that was no reason to hope they all could be. In fact, most evidence that Dix had seen throughout his life pointed to the exact opposite. Even he himself was a completely lost cause.
Dix stared through the tablet in his hands, eyes unfocused. His mind was telling him that this was the race he should choose, despite having only looked at three options so far. He didn’t even know what they looked like, yet alone what powers they had. All he knew was hearsay and legends. Despite that, he was pushing back because he thought it was a bad idea. His resistance came from something else entirely. This may be his only chance to get a look at a comprehensive listing of the races. Strategically, this was a chance he really shouldn’t miss, but mostly he wanted to see what other sorts of utterly ridiculous racial descriptions there were. In the battle of strategy versus humor, laughter always won.
Looking up, he asked, “Don’t suppose you can give me any more info on any of these races?”
Crossroads had leant back into his chair and crossed his arms behind his head while Dix started working with the list. Now, without changing position or opening his eyes, he just grunted, shaking his head. “That list is the information I can give you. Even if you take one of the races there, I can’t tell you much more about them. Just the basics to survive as one.”
Dix was disappointed, but not surprised. This was how things had been going since he got here. Only certain pieces of information were given to him, and he had to infer the rest from small slip ups, and hints. For the most part it was incredibly frustrating, but it was also a nice mystery that he would have to work his way through. Adding a mystery race to the already difficult quest to figure out what the hell was actually going on around here promised to ratchet his frustration through the roof, but at least he wouldn’t be bored. Mostly.
As a new thought came to him, he had to hide his smirk behind his hand. Crossroads, being a god, was probably aware of it anyways, but there was no point in giving the game away if he hadn’t noticed. “So, is this list a small part of my compensation for all the skills I have learned so far that you are going to take away from me?”
Crossroads sat up in his chair so fast it looked like he’d been launched by an explosion. His scowl suggested he might actually have been. “Who told you?” His scowl only deepened when Dix started laughing. “No playing, kid. Who told you? No one is allowed to mention it.”
Struggling to get his laughter under control, Dix managed to get out only two words. “You. Now.”
Crossroads was stunned. This kid figured it out, and then used me to confirm it. How the hell did he manage to get this plan past me without my knowing? How does he keep surprising me? He’s still dead, so I can still read his every thought. But the only thought that crossed his mind was “give.” How did he get a whole plan from one word? When Dix stopped laughing, Crossroads only said one thing, “Explain.”
Dix stretched his arms above his head, and then down and around, to loosen his shoulders and back out a little bit. Trying to get anything from this god was like pulling teeth from a wolf with your bare hands using no anesthetic and without tying it down. You might get the job done, but what’s left of your hand will look like it went through a blender.