Jake, May, 21st 2104.
In the almost three weeks since the destruction of the undead horde, players had been frantic. Xavier the [Chronicler] variant had become the face of the ‘Sons of Jake’ and the most wanted man on the server-world. He had managed to go on seven different podcasts and then had gone back into hiding from the rest of the pod-casters. His secondary class [Inheritor Among The Ancients] had given him a better claim for the thrones of all human kingdoms than any of the current rulers and he had the unique [Rebuke] ability, which allowed him to command opponents to leave or take damage from disobeying a Law. When combined with his primary class, he had a terrifying fighting power.
Jake had spent a number of hours, over a number of sessions, gathering information on his current character’s own heritage. From the videos he had seen, there were a lot of opportunities to mess up the ‘Ancestral Expression’ step, but he thought he had a decent idea of where he should go. Thirty generations before, his character had a server-world renown runner ancestor, who had carried a message of victory from a great battle with the forces of Chaos in his time. From what he had read, there was a good chance he could get a +2 Speed out of that, which was significant enough to aim for.
It was, according to Helen, very much like singing. Not exactly, but the button combinations were similar. Some called the process ‘swimming the gene pool,’ though Jake thought that was not strictly accurate. Still he got his swordsman into a safe location and then began the ritual.
Once the loading screen ended he was in a see from above view, slowly moving his figure up, following the channels, fighting the current, avoiding the sticky patches and dark routes. He was nearly caught at the tenth turn, but furious button mashing allowed him to push through and then he managed to get close to where he thought he wanted to go.
“***** it!” He exclaimed and then shrunk down, hoping no one had heard that.
Jake had missed a turn and had no idea what was on this side of the family or where it would go. His character was running out of energy and going back was probably worse. So He could not pause and check the charts he had looked at or open a video quick enough.
“Forward then,” Jake muttered.
He pushed along, avoiding the dark passages or those that seemed off. He tried to enter a brighter one, but the current that way was too strong and he made the snap decision to go up the faster route. The lines generally became darker and darker and he hoped he had not made a wrong choice. He hadn’t seen anyone willingly go into one of the dark sections and he would not be the first.
Finally, he found a brighter spot and he pushed there until he saw that most around it were dark and inferior. He was just about out of energy and had not seen any of the rare power-ups, so he allowed his character to rest there and tried to be content with the score.
“You have accessed the Ancestral Expression of [The Loyal Thane]. An unknown ancestor, some 39 generations ago fought to the end at an important battle, Lawfully serving his liege to the end. Through Ancestral Expression, your character has gained +2 in each stat and a quest location to your ancestral armory. Any character sharing your last name or (click to see full list of related names) may join you on this quest.”
Quests of this kind were kind of rare. Given how generations worked, chances were good that almost anyone with a last name could join, but some were very household specific.
Aadvik Patel, May 21st, 2104.
Aadvik Patel, Lord of (e)Cycles, fumed as he looked over the data his editor had found. It did not look good. Unlike humans, his character’s ancestry did not have a deep pool of 230 or more generations of humanity to use for his advantage. The centaur half of his ancestry went back 20 generations and it did not look promising. In this server-world, his centaur ancestry, per the contract backed lore, was the product of a mad giant sorcerer’s magical crossing of species, while the Gengees were autochthonous, a cursed word which meant that for unknown reasons they had sprouted out of the rock and had a similarly shallow and unimpressive depth of generations.
Worse, studies suggested that using ‘ancestral expression’ would give him worse limb control for the limbs that his original form did not have, to a potentially disastrous degree.
He had made the mistake of doing his meeting with the celestial patrons on stream. That had not gone well. It was not confirmed that the number of potential patrons that visited you demonstrated favor, but he had only met one, very hesitant patron.
In short, he didn’t think he could really show the new system and that meant bad things.
He wondered if it was worth it going over to try out a chaotic altar. Perhaps that would give him a better class selection?
“Hey, Roberto, what do we know about the chaotic secondary classes?”
His editor looked up from his device blankly for about five seconds before saying, “Not much. The ‘First Worlder Guild,’ and the ‘Old Worlders’ and like everybody in the ‘Sons of Jake’ guilds hunt down any known Chaos aligned person. So there are no streams to explain the process to the end.”
“Besides,” Carmel, one of his advisors said, “The world is nearly over. Just play it straight, and win big in the last battle. You have enough influence stored up to be at least given a company of [Heavy Cavalry] or [Horse Archers]. It is something a lot of your fans have been expecting. Don’t blow those expectations.”
Roberto briefly met Aadvik’s gaze, but winced away. He was read in enough to know that Aadvik Patel, eldest son of his family, failed doctoral student, hated thinking of things in terms of expectations.
“Massive battles should draw in watchers,” the Lord of (e)Cycles said he relaxed back into his gaming chair before continuing, “Just 11 more days until it starts. See if someone can find another version of ancestral expression. If we have to work with a suboptimal patron, I guess we do what we have to, but It’s a complicated game world. At least I have like five different fully upgraded titles. Maybe we can do the ancestral expression thing backwards or something?”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“On it chief,” Roberto said as he went back to scrolling.
Jake, May 23rd, 2104.
Jake had waited a day to gather a party to complete his quest. As expected the generational drift made it fairly open to people, so long as they had allowed their character to regularly generate or managed to get their weirdly named character adopted into a family. His final party selection was Travis’s new, spare character, a wannabe assassin creatively named Titus II, Michael’s one and only character (adopted into clan Morgan) and Bubba on his spare account. John was invited, but he had started helping out at a youth group on Friday nights and was unavailable.
The four of them took advantage of the improved roadways and raced over to the ruined battle field. It stood over the sea, long grass covering the chalk hills and the ancient battle site. A stone pillar cracked with a thunderous roar that made all of the players jump and turn down their volume. It crumbled in on itself and revealed a brownstone stairway into the earth.
“Somebody brought torches right?”
“Always,” Michael said as he lit a torch and walked to the front.
“Great. Let’s descend,” Bubba said as he seemed to naturally take command.
Travis took up the second place, looking the ground over for traps or obstacles, while Bubba cleansed the air around them and Jake guarded the rear. They passed through a number of layers, breaking open doors, destroying the low threat Sentient Devouring Jelly by the pound and sweeping up all random objects, especially books, up into their bags or storage devices. They were like locusts and this was their grain field.
Once they reached the center of the dungeon it changed from imposing stone stairs and loose monsters to a deserted home. A prompt instructed Jake to light the fire. A brief loading screen popped up and then their visit was assessed.
“You have taken the Expression of a long dead ancestor and honored his long unfulfilled wishes of lighting the fire once more. Celestial Patrons will note this; you are also the most eligible of his descendants to use his weapons.”
A vault opened up from the stone table and weapons were revealed within. Jake quickly looked them over and felt a bit of pleasure at seeing the three fine swords.
“We can’t read the titles until you make your pick… so pick!” Michael said after some exasperation.
“Oh sorry. There are three, [Grim Leggbit], [Three Fiends] and [A Blade of Mars]. Let me share you their tabs.”
[Grim Leggbit]
The Northerner sword made of White Iron and handle that has incorporated a piece unworked Adamantine. The smith who forged has imbued top tier understanding and fascination with the forcible removal of limbs and on hearing of from future sight cursed relative of the future invasion of his realm by giants, he wanted to make a weapon to rival giants. However, the Northerner’s weapon won was by a long dead thane over a game of chess. He bet 100 hides of land for this sword and no one gainsaid it.
(Click link for damage ratings.)
+50% damage to attacks to limbs, with a further +5% damage to all attacks against giants.
+10% blunt damage when attacks are made with the pommel or hilt.
Very resistant to many forms of damage.
(Three Fiends)
A two-handed cruciform-shaped sword forged of pure steel for a natural born giant (that is, a tall human). He was a loyal knight to the a faraway king and served his liege lord faithfully, for his entire adult life. He faithfully followed his liege’s son as a bodyguard in a crusade against a fiendish incursion. He earned great renown for killing three fiends with one blow of this mighty sword. He struck down many targets and warriors with powerful strokes, but was killed by chaotic archers, after breaking a siege weapon with his mighty arms.
(Click Link for damage ratings.)
+20% chance to do ordinary damage to a target after cutting through a target.
+1% damage to all chaotic beings.
+50% damage to fiends.
[A Blade of Mars]
A falx originally forged for an unknown commoner before the fall of the Great Empire of Man. It was used brutally against their [Legionnaire-Hoplites] and well tested in battle. Through the vagaries of fortune it became the preferred weapon of a [Steppe King] and was used in great battles against a a thousand, thousand enemies. It was upgraded and made to fit the standards of a warlord and a conquerer. While the exterior remains an inferior bronze, its reverse edge has been hardened with White Iron.
(Click Link for damage ratings.)
+200% damage against shorter foes.
+50% damage to limbs.
Sharp edge is very weak.
Weak to many forms of damage.
“So, are you staying with the leg theme, going two-handed sword, or the mix of the two? Extremes or mix?” Michael asked after a quick read through.
“That is not what these are! Each of these are each a distinct historical duty and mode of conduct. Not everything is just damage!” Travis replied hotly.
Michael, after some noisy clicking said, “[The Blade of Mars] does the most damage by 10 points on average. Get that one.”
“You are hopeless.”
Bubba looked over the options and said, “They are all very good, but I am surprised that there isn’t a sword that was made for the thane.”
“I think the quest is implying he died with the sword on him and it was lost,” Jake said as he leaned back in his chair and tried to think the options. They were all very good options, even if he were not trying to use swords like this. [Grim Leggbit] tempted him to return to the sword and shield build of his last character. It did not have the highest pure damage stats, but it was easily the most durable. That was important, especially as it was unlikely this character could get enough money to get a better sword before the end. Still he could potentially rule [Gim Leggbit] out as there was another factor. In 11 days, the last month of the game was starting. Maybe he should just focus on pure cutting damage and prepare to wade through undead, goblins or other low level foes? But the weakness was concerning, he did not want to be disarmed by a mis-strike or parrying with the wrong side.
“I think I am going with the [Three Fiends]. The way I see it, if I am on the frontline, that will be the best tool for the job, without having to worry about the weird parry required from the barbarian sword thing. The Northerner sword is fun, but not this character’s skillset. Travis, what do you want?”
“I am Titus the II right now, so I want money. Which is sad. If I could have brought my [Paladin of the Sun] or [Knight of the Loyal Companions] I would really want [Grim Leggbit], but alas, they somehow do not share ancestry. So money, if you please.”
“Bubba?”
“[A Blade of Mars]. My secondary class is not quite ready yet, but I am going for something like ‘loyal general’ or whatever it will be titled and if something breaks through to me, a really high damage thing could really work.”
“Your character is also very tall, so that helps for the other bonus,” Michael noted as he looked at the last sword.
“You want that one?”
Michael paused for a second before he remembered they could not see a nod and said, “Yes!”
“What was all this talk about choose the one with the most damage?” Travis interrogated.
“All loot distribution is based on deception,” Michael said with a smirk before adding, “I just liked how it looks. It matches my play style too, but mostly how it looks.”
“It does look cool,” Jake conceded as they gathered money, family documents, valuables and other goods. With [Chroniclers] and their variants seeking to build out information on the server-world’s genealogies to level up, family documents were actually valuable.
Papers rustled in the real world and then Bubba said, “Thank you for the quest. I have a little time, so I am leading a strike on one of the remaining three hundred sites. You want to come?”
“No. I have some homework, but thanks for the offer,” Jake said and then started returning towards town as he listened to Michael’s and Travis’ answers.