Character Creation_Darkworlds : London

I wake up. My eyes are still closed and the air is pleasantly warm. I'm inside though. The room smells of camphor and old-fashioned furniture. A memory rises that I struggle to place then I realise the mix of smells reminds me of my great aunt's wardrobe. I used to hide there when I was small, excited, waiting for my cousin to find me. It's a smell of mothballs and old clothes. There's also the chemical stink of petrol wafting in, and of cooking — someone is frying bacon.

The sounds of a gramophone. I don't recognise the tune but it's old-fashioned traditional jazz. I'm in a room with thin walls and single glazed windows. Horses' hooves clip clop outside, but also the chugging of vehicle engines. A car backfires.

My eyes open to see a paisley-patterned wallpaper. I'm sitting in a chair that isn't comfortable. It's upholstered in horsehair, and scratchy. Before I do anything, I look at my hands, but they're not my hands. They're very lifelike, but not mine. Just like Miskatonic’s advertising promised, I have awoken in the game.

I blink. I can feel the beating of my heart and the rising of my chest. I guess these must be the sensations of my actual physical body, but I'm deep in trance. I turn my head left and stare at a wall for minutes before I make sense of it. A mezzotint print of a rural scene hangs there. I blink again. There's a graphical display in my field of vision, words and figures I can't make much sense of. They don't interfere with where I'm looking.

I'm not alone in the room. I turn my head to the right and see a middle-aged man with a bald head. He wears a three-piece tweed suit and sits patiently, wearing brown shoes that are scuffed. He studies me with great interest. A faint smile plays on his face. "You're awake."

I clear my throat and go to speak but then nod instead. It's less effort. I know I'm in game, but it feels real. He feels real. "Where am I?"

"In London. In my flat on Gower Street."

"Who are you?"

Without moving he says, "My name is Aleister. I'm here to guide you through your character creation."

I glance up and point at the figures on my HUD even though he can't see them. "Can you explain what these figures mean?"

"We'll get to that. I would imagine you're seeing a lot of zeros at the moment."

I nod. Lots of zeroes.

He smiles again. "You have no skills, no abilities. You are Level 1. Pretty useless."

I nod and repeat what he says. "Pretty useless." I feel drugged. My head is clearing but still I'm drugged. I guess it's the Dreamland Inducer tablet I took. I hope I get used to it and the side-effects eventually wane.

He continues. "But you can grow to be useful—to be special here."

I glance up at the figures on my Heads Up Display and see:

I point again. "What do these mean?"

"These are your four base statistics. Your health is of course your physical health and if you’re injured, you'll subtract damage from this figure. Your sanity is something that you need to take special care of. Your mana is for casting spells, and your reputation is a similar statistic to your sanity. Both Sanity and Reputation effect how you progress in the world."

"Is this a class-based game?"

Aleister shakes his head.

"Then how do I get on?"

He sits forward, folds his arms and says, "Choose a life."

"Choose a life? How do I do that?"

"Let's begin at the beginning. What kind of character do you want to be?"

I feel pathetic and juvenile, but it's true, what I say, "Badass. Strong." We all want to be strong; that's why we play.

Aleister raises his eyebrows as if he's heard it all before and is bored and even disappointed. Finally he says, "Do you want to be someone who engages in combat?"

I nod.

"With firearms? Or with magic?"

That gives me pause. After less than a minute's thought, I say, "I like the sound of magic."

He steeples his hand and touches fingertips together as if in prayer. Like a schoolteacher he begins. "Your skills are initially determined by the life you've led. As we talk through your life story, that will suggest a profession for you. But I note the fact that you want to be a magic user rather than a street brawler. My own taste too. Although I was a boxer, so don't disdain physical combat. You too will need it eventually."

"So what we do now?" I am still in my seat looking around the room. An aspidistra sits in a china pot in the corner. The room contains a sofa and two armchairs. I'm in one of them. Aleister in the other. There's also a piano with sheet music on its stand, and lid up revealing the black and white keys, grinning like discoloured teeth.

The sound of gramophone jazz stills wafts through the wall.

Aleister says, "As I said, we have to choose a life for you. I'll guide you in this process. Are you ready?"

I fan out my hands. "Sure."

He nods. "So, how old are you?"

I think for a while. I don't want to be too immature, but I don't want to be too old. I want to be physically able. "30?"

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"That means you were born in 1897."

I laugh. "It sounds weird. But let's go with it."

"And what is your social class? Social class in England is very important. You are born into a class and it's very difficult to leave it."

I think hard. I want to have had opportunities. There's no point being a peasant working the land. I briefly toy with being an aristocrat but that brings its own constraints so I say, "Middle class."

"What did your father do?"

"Job wise?"

"Yes."

I have no idea. I think of doctors or lawyers then remember the profession suggested by Miskatonic's personality test. It was mine, but it could have been my father's too. "A priest."

Aleister nods. "A priest. And of course he would have been an Anglican priest—tending to his flock in some remote parish in the country." He scratches his cheek. "Or perhaps the city?"

I remember the grimness of Outer London. "The country definitely."

"North, South East or West? I take it you were born in England? Not the colonies?"

"England."

"In which county?"

I ask him to choose for me.

"I'll choose Sussex. And say that you were born in Arundel, a very historic and picturesque town on the south coast of England. Your father was parish priest. And of course Anglican priests are allowed to marry therefore you have a mother."

He thinks he's clever. Maybe he is. He smiles. "What did your mother do?"

I shrug. "She's a stay at home mum."

"I think we'd better describe your mother as a housewife -- the vicar's wife. I see her putting on teas and making cucumber sandwiches for the local cricket team. Perhaps she leads the Women's Institute?"

This is actually fun. Already I'm getting a picture of my parents - my imaginary parents that is. I imagine we lived a very peaceful life in a vicarage in a beautiful old town in the south of England.

He says, "Because you were a son of a vicar you'd have to go to a public school, a private school."

"I know what a public school is." The denizens of Inner London go to public schools. We don’t. Still, I can be someone else in this game. "I'm not a snob though," I say quickly.

"I never suggested you were, dear boy. Were you particularly sporty at school?"

I laugh again. "I see myself as being more bookish. I was always interested in History and Latin…" It's amazing how I can cook up a story so easily. Lies must come more naturally to me than I'd thought.

"And what happened after you left school?"

"My father pressed me to go to theology college. He wanted me to be a vicar like him. But I didn't want to. My faith wasn't strong. Still I was under his influence so I became a priest too."

"Interesting." He was smiling. "And what did you do in the War?"

"The war?"

"The Great War - 1914-1918. A man of your age would have had to have served in the war."

"Well could I join the infantry? Or perhaps in the cavalry?"

Aleister says, "I calculate that the beginning of the great War you were 17. You would have been in your first year at theology college. I suspect that you would have entered the army as a Padre around 1917. One year's service."

"I was an army chaplain?"

"Indeed."

"Makes sense."

Aleister stands up and goes to look out of the window at the street scene below. He looks wistfully at the scene, though I don’t know why. "Perhaps you would like to check your skills now?"

I look up at my Heads Up Display and an icon of an outline figure. "How do I activate the commands on the HUD?"

Aleister says, "Simply look at them at them. The neural net knows where your eyes are looking, and you'll be able to select the command. Thinking the word