I stood at a crossroads. Metaphysically and figuratively, if not precisely literally. There were four glowing doors floating in the swirling mists of the void. Then again, so was I. Floating in the void that is, not glowing or swirling.
Of course I knew which door I wanted. Nothing had changed my mind since our first planning session last month -- I would see what the Path of Fate offered, and if it wasn’t suitable, I would take the Path of Action and customize a healer class for my role in DVI. The Path of Action would allow a class choice a bit more specialized than just the basic healer available from the Path of Self, and of the classes that were known, I was still waffling back and forth on both druid and shaman. There were several other styles of healers but both the classes I was leaning toward had nature themes and regeneration-style spells, and I usually prefered heal-over-time mechanics rather than shielding or big direct heals.
The metaphorical sense of the crossroads, thus, was a bit lacking. There was no deliberation or hesitation or weighing of options -- that had already been done before ever logging in. I opened the doorway to the Path of Fate and stepped over the threshold ….
… and onto a path of silver cobblestones spiraling upward through the mists.
“Hello!” a cheery voice rang out as a young girl materialized before me. Probably a girl, by her voice, but the figure was androgynous. “Welcome to the Path of Fate. I’m Yama Destina -- call me Desi -- and I’ll be your guide today.”
“A guide? I thought it was just a ‘here’s what you can be, do you accept -- yes or no’ sort of thing?” I asked.
Desi laughed. “No, no. That was way back in the early days. We’re several iterative patches of development and refinement of the creation options, now. In fact, we just went Omega on the latest refinement last week with the Skamokawa community server opening.” She waved her hands around dismissively. “But that doesn’t matter. You’re here to take a gamble and see what Fate can offer you on the first day of the Chinookan Pacifica community server, aren’t you?”
I nodded and Desi leaned forward and shielded her mouth conspiratorially. “Just so you know, as the thirteenth person through that door, either your race or class will be at least Ultra Super Rare, guaranteed. The other will be randomly rare or higher as normal for the Path of Fate.”
That was quite a few more people taking the random route than I had thought, but Mika and Susie had both said they would at least try it, too. Apparently, there were more with a gambling bend to them than just half of one circle of friends.
“Is that fair to the others?” I couldn’t help myself from asking.
This time Desi’s laugh was more of a chuckle. “Actually, we get to keep saying that until there are ten Ultra-Super-Rares accepted. Only two players have so far, so it’s perfectly fair. After that, it is more of a lottery, but I like that you asked.” She smiled at me and reached up to pat my hand. “What are you hoping Fate holds in store for you today?”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I plan on being my group’s healer, if Fate allows,” I said. “If it has other ideas, though, I’m going to back out and go to the Path of Action.”
“Ah? No special hopes for your race, just your class?”
With that, I shrugged. “There isn’t a lot of information on rare or higher races, Desi, so I wouldn’t even have much of an idea what to hope for.” I was pretty sure that she wasn’t a GM or Dev. It just wouldn’t be feasible to have enough staff to give every new player a personalized guide, probably not even for just those taking the rarer paths of Fate, Action, or Identity. So Desi was probably a construct of the game, personified subroutines or maybe even an actual AI. After all, games still needed NPCs, so whatever AI scripts powered them could likely be adapted in order to manifest guides. So even though the chances of there being a human behind her appearance were small, I was still talking to her as if she were one. If nothing else, natural language processing had come quite a long way in the past few years. It wasn’t just predictive text anymore.
“I see. A healer, so you think more about your group than about your personal glory and power. I think I like you. Tell you what, and this isn’t something that we offer until there’s ten acceptances.” Desi winked at me. “This is special.”
She stepped off the cobblestone path and floated in a lazy circle around me. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll guarantee that your class will be a healer type. It’ll still be a random choice which one, this is Fate, not some choose-your-own-adventure old-school tabletop-based fanfic, and in exchange, you’ll have a geas, an obligation. Consider it a quest or duty.” Then she held up a hand and waggled a finger under my nose, “Ah, but I must say that accepting this offer would also close the door behind you. You would have to stay on the Path of Fate and not be able to decline the character and try again on Action, Identity, or Self.”
My response was immediate. “I like the idea, Desi, but if that geas would interfere with my friends, I can’t accept the offer. I’d have to just see what Fate can deal me without you tinkering with it.”
Her smile, if anything, grew bigger. “I was hoping you would say that. Again declining personal glory for the benefit of your friends. I can’t promise that a geas won’t at times be an inconvenience to your friends, maybe they would rather do some other quest than help you on yours, but it wouldn’t ever be harmful or detrimental to them.”
“I’d prefer to ask them, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind an occasional inconvenience,” I said, stressing the frequency. If anything, they’d probably advise me to take a minor inconvenience as a guarantee for a rare or higher healing class. Jenna might not since she doesn’t know games as well, but everyone else understands that a more powerful healer tends to make more challenging content accessible earlier. Won’t do anything about impossible resistances or enemies strong enough to one-shot a character, of course, but it makes exploring the unknown much safer.
Desi nodded. “Then shall I put my fingers on the Scale of Fate for you? Step off the stones of the path and enter the mists with me, where the way is only ever forward.” She held out her hand to me.
“Thank you, Desi.” I took her hand and stepped forward into the mists. The spiraling cobblestone path immediately faded away, and even the shadow of the doorway disappeared. There was no going back, but since I was guaranteed to be a healer and would have had a random race selected for me anyway, there was virtually no downside beyond the future geas and even that was outweighed by the upsides.