Track 04: Sorcery
It seems like enchanting allows you to break down magical weapons and items. Recreating those effects on other items. Alchemy is taking chemicals to make potions, poisons, or explosions to help or torture your enemies. Pretty standard stuff. The hook, however, is that both choices will give you access to drops. For Enchanting, you get access to fragments which will be onetime use ones and when you break down an actual weapon, you’ll be able to permanently store that enchantment.
With Alchemy, you might get a pinch of this, a dash of that, and slowly build out a library of ingredients and reagents. It can do amazing things, but it would be hampered because you would be working mostly with consumables. You’d be their master and really work well to buff your party members and yourself.
Enchanting
Ability Type: Control/ Magic/ At will
Level 1: Blaze a trail with flaming weapons or build unbreakable walls. Confine the magic of a thousand ages into staff.
Allows you to break down magic items to figure out how they work and recreate on your own. You can have enchanted two permanent items or six ammunition or 1 & 3 as the case, maybe.
Requirements: Magic
Mix
Ability Type: Alchemy/ Crafting
Dream Cost: 2
Level 1: You have learned how to mix real world science with your powers to make even bigger explosions and to develop medicine and potions that don’t quite make sense in the world that used to exist. Can you turn lead into gold? Maybe you’ll just have to figure it out, though.
Mixing two consumables together to increase potency and yeild. It may also add new properties for dispersion.
Requirements: Magic
Interesting. Enchanting didn’t require a Dream Cost but, they had some restrictions on how many active enchantments I could have going. It wasn’t enough to outfit myself at least not yet, but it has the chance to become so much more powerful. Now alchemy had they chance to make has a nearly limitless ceiling but it would require me to get my hands on things. I wouldn’t help me immediately and would require me to get my hands on explosives to really do some damage. I’m not saying not ever, just..
I see you, fam. You can always pick something else up later. This won’t be the last time you have a choice to make. We gotta make you a whole build.
There’s something about the ability to design your own build that kind of makes me giddy even down here in the dark. I mean looking through the skill trees, there are almost limitless things to come up with and Enchanting is just the start.
Congratulations, You have chosen Enchanting! Work your way until you learn the art of an Artisan Mage to become a True Enchanter. Etch lost languages into weapons and armor and bring the new magical properties to non-magical items.
Because you’ve chosen a magic craft, all of your abilities (utilities and special attacks) are now classified as spells. Spells are the weakness of those creatures who have the Superstitious trait or are weak to magic. This will also make you less effective on those with the Skeptic trait and have resistance to magic. It will also eventually allow you to use certain items that can’t be used by anyone but practitioners.
As soon as the notification disappears, the room swims and morphs around me. Instead of the alien medical equipment, stark and dangerous and lying in wait in their trays, there was only darkness. In that darkness, the silhouette of a person. Golden sunlight shines down and obscures the form over a bench. The sound of metal sliding against metal and a song long forgotten enters my mind.
Like waking from a daydream, I blink and I return to wakefulness. The world swims in front of my vision. Grounding myelf with the deep breathing exercises I learned from Dr. Moore. I slowly come back to myself. Not opening my eyes to read the notification in my vision.
You have found a fragment of the Song of Enchantment. -fjpakdopa[kmfj[af[o
The words artifact before me, like a game without the Day One patch. Glitching and folding in on itself, the notification vanishes and a new one slowly wades into view.
-Remember me, Child of Waves and sing our song with your raised voice.
As it disappears, a song enters my heart, my mind, my soul, my throat. I come to myself fully singing a piece of a chorus of a long, lost song. It isn’t just my voice, my whole body sung like a tuning fork. In the singing, I feel a connection with life and death; the ancestors echoing back through the ages. From the motherland, to plantations in The South and furthermore in Barbados. Those who sat upon the ships bound and bound for The New World. Those who lived as architects, philosophers, merchants and scientist never knowing of what would happen to their lineage. And then a person shrouded in golden light. Each of them singing, each of their voices echoing and reflecting for all of time to an unknown future. Beautiful and magnificent, a tear trickles down my face and our faces. I rise into the air and the moment the song stops; I crash down to the ground.
“Never again.” We harmonize all as one. “We will never be bound again!” The rage and hope of every one of them.
I don’t even know what that was. That didn’t happen with any of the others… Are you okay?
Yes, the rest of your party is waiting for you. You just have to finish adding your abilities.
Because of your Sulikani ancestry, you have the mutant ability, Siren. Siren allows you to mold the sound into sound constructs using Dream. It also creates a new organ in your body to resonate sound from not requiring you to use your voice.
You can only sing two objects at a time. One with your throat and another with your Thurim, the organ inside of chest that allows you to sing through your body.
You’re a mutant.
Well, if you have to, please do it quickly so I can find someone else to help me.
It’s something I’m working on with my therapist. Too bad the world ended. We were just getting somewhere. Sarcasm pours through the connection.
Magic seems to be almost like an aspected form of Dream. I like that in some ways I’m way more powerful, but in some ways, I could find an opponent where my abilities would be pretty ineffective. I can’t be mad though, for whatever bad is going on, I got magic out of it. The ability to be a part of setting things right. I have the power to change things.
The Sulikani must have been the alien species that Kohl mentioned. I’d like to say I can’t believe it, it’s just I felt them. Connected to all of my ancestors as they sang with me simultaneously. I wonder if they felt me too. This ability sounds incredibly useful. I wonder if this means I can make sound into weapons or other useful items.
I honestly don’t know, though if you could pull off something like that, it could be incredibly powerful. You should try it out.
I sing the bridge of one of the best Lauryn Hill songs. Holding my hands out, I felt the vibrations and slowly brought them together, morphing them from sound waves to particles, and on to shapes. Controlling sound is as easy as humming. I slowly made circles, squares, d20s, and then shuriken. I throw the shuriken at the wall and it sticks in. After leaving me they soon disperse, however the damage they do sticks around. Judging by the battle readout I can see when I call it up, each construct was about the strength of my Power damage with very little variable.
Conjuring magic has always been a part of African and their diasporic religions and practices. Some part of me, and not just with my DNA being activated, is connected to this. Like second nature, my body has always wanted to reach out to sound and hold it. I’ve had Synesthesia my whole life and it think this proves why it comes so easily to me.
Feeling sound and music was the first step, and now I can control it. Not creating, conjuring. Taking a wave of energy and making it matter. I reach into that energy and create alternative forms.
Mix, there are a few things you need to know. What all the numbers mean. This is going to be quick and dirty. Making sure you understand stats and rank numbers will make a lot of this easier.
First, Ranks are kind of the bedrock for this system. Just about everything you run into, whether item, weapon, spell, or even person. If you picture each rank like a die, rank 1 is a d4. That means the differential is 1-4. This will become more important later. Rank 2 is a d6 and Rank 3 is a d8 and so on, all the way up to rank 6 being a d20.
Next levels go from 1 to 30. 30 being the highest. Every 6th level, you go up a rank. So levels 1-5 you’re rank 1 and at level 6 you’re officially rank 2. This affects Dream Dice, which will be more important to you as you get into more dangerous situations. Sacrificing or crushing Dream Dice can give you the edge in a situation if you need it. This is only for emergencies and insurmountable opponents. Make sense so far? Good.
Stats work the same way. 1-30. Ranks for stats work the same way. While ranks are always important. The ones for Power, Reflex, and Durability are the most necessary to know. When you attack, you add your Power stat, your power rank differential, and your weapon. This also goes against your target’s durability except instead of weapon damage, you add damage resistance, which would be a static number. That’s a ton of math, but it can be boiled down to the bigger the number, the more effective you are.
I think you’ve got the hang of that. You have two more abilities to pick. I had spent a few moments figuring out how to get my creations to hit the space I aimed for. I need to get familiar with this as quickly as possible.
The obvious one is Shot. It is a special attack that works with my abilities so far. Shot creates or enhances a projectile with Dream energy to make it fly faster and hit harder. Based on the ability tree, it seems to be the opening… It makes the most sense. I always played mages in games and the fact that I can be one now is a dream come true.
Shot
Ability Type: Mutable/ Range
Dream Cost: 3
Level 1: Creates a projectile of energy or boosts the strength of a projectile attack directly towards your target in a straight line.
Damage: 1-6
I now have my first spell and I wanted to try it out, but Kohl reminds me that I only have a few uses before I need to go to sleep and regain my energy. No spell slots here, but a dream bar is just as worrisome.
Next, I take Echo. It allows me to make a second attack If my first one hits Echo is also the first part of the Sound tree and I think that will synergize well with my Siren ability. I think this sound theme is really going to be badass.
Echo
Ability Type: Power up/ Sound
Dream Cost: 3
Level 1: Allows you to make a weapon attack with your quick action if your full action hits. This attack is at half power and must be within range of your weapon.
Are you ready for this?
It lumbers down a hall. Its massive frame is haloed in fluorescent lights galumphing towards me. The monster, for that’s all you could call it, looked like someone took a human being and stretched them a little too far. It looms in the low light. Weeping sores and gouges make a vicious masterpiece of what may at one point have been a human face. A zombie from an old video game, it stood so clearly in the uncanny valley; that its existence in this place was so abhorrent. It was probably the type that regurgitates all over their enemies.
No, that looks like a construct, probably here to check out your impromptu concert.
I run right at him singing into creation two flat disks with a pearlescent glow and a large hole in the middle to my fingers through. My signature weapon is now complete. I came up with it while I was testing complex shapes. Two, five inches in diameter, CDs orbit around my fingers in each of my hands. CD chakrams, which I’ll call Beats. Medieval weaponry has always enamored me from all over the world, and there was an amazing game I played as a kid where the heroine flew around on wings throwing and controlling chakram. The disk effect was mostly for me. The thought of my badass DJ mage self throwing out CD’s with fire bonus damage or something… it's way too cool a picture not to see realized. I’m sure I’d look cooler if I wasn’t a half naked, escaped hospital patient. Oh well, beggars can’t be choosers.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
I lead with the Shot spell; sigils burn themself onto the CD as I cast. The sparkling writing creates no additional light. The disk streaming, speeding up to twice my throwing speed, golden sparks trailing behind it. Big guy doesn’t even try to dodge and blocks it with a meaty arm the size of my torso. The weapon bites deeply into its overgrown flesh and black, syrupy blood works its way out. I flip and right after sending two more angry blades fly at the cartoonish zombie.
The zombie bats one away only to get blasted by the one in the next’s shadow. This bites deep into his shoulder as the same arm goes limp. I breathe a sigh of relief and a cocky smile finds its way to my face and drops away just as quickly. With bestial rage it roars, reaching and tearing off the same arm and brandishing it like a club. The places where the limb and the shoulder were one now glitches, a pixelating mess. The blood sloughing of it artifacting out of reality a certain distance from the body.
Seeing the viscera, I throw up in my mouth. Every scrap of will in me is wrestling to keep it down as I taste bile and the texture of whatever slop I’d eaten in the past few months. I didn’t take my eyes off the flesh giant as it barrels down the corridor towards me.
I flatten myself against the floor on the downswing of the arm, rolling myself to the side, evading the vengeful blow. Kip-up, instead stumbling to my feet. I conjure two weapons in each of my hands, bouncing a way as the charging enemy. Timing it right, I send two of my beats at its head. Falling short of target and drawing deep furrows in their neck teetering their head like a bobble. It didn’t see the two wires I set up on both sides rushing around like a toddler on sugar. The places where it gets caught on the wire slice through rending it twain. Its collapsed form twitches, still reaching for me. And this time I really do wretch and with tears in my eyes, I finish it. Realizing it truly is a zombie and shooting a beat right through the back of its head. It dissolves away, leaving only behind the damage it did.
“What the fuck was that?” I say, panting, working out the bile on my tongue.
That was a construct, Like what you do but, on a different scale and made of psionic energy.
Not yet, maybe eventually. You don’t have the ability or the spell for it.
It’s not quite over yet. Look there.
Shuffling from behind the corner at the end of the hallway is a creature from nightmares long past. Four gray-skin humanoids just as zombie-like as the construct, only more horrific in motion because it looks so much more like us. Starved within an inch of its life, its entire body is skeletal with skin draping off the bones and a bulbous distended belly. The eyes hidden deep within its head call out to me and my heart drops because they’re so plainly human. Each fused together at their head by their psylink.
The Dominance, this is who they are. They think nothing of the lives they have to crush to make weapons or the bodies they have to churn through to accomplish their goals. Anger fills the connection and finds a reverberation in me as well. Our anger surging and mixing.
No, it's enough to knock them out now. There’s not enough time for you to get them to safety and they will just slow you down. You only have eight more minutes.
Congratulations, You have defeated Mind Meld!
2 Exp
You have collected Resilient fragment.
Resilient Fragment allows you to add a temp bonus to durability for when you add this enchantment. Lasts for 1 minute.
My first bit of loot and it feels weird to be beating up my people for points. I would much rather it have been some of the bastards that did this. I’d love to say that I couldn’t believe someone could do this to people. And then I think about how for centuries people would do this and worse, to people who looked like me.
Originally, I must have been in some kind of basement medical facility. The cracked linoleum floors that as I ascend seem to have water and even weeds moving into the cracks. If the place wasn’t so frigid, I wonder if this place would look different. Grime and mildew cover the walls that were once stark white. The picture frames tossed to the floor and I think I’ve heard a squeak or two of rats.
Careful of the rats. Often, Dream energy affects the natural flora and fauna oddly. Becareful in the wilds.
I crouch in a corner unseen. Listening to a few pint-sized punks talking back and forth. They’re three feet tall aliens with puce-colored skin. Glossy with gigantic eyes, they look like the Little Green Men from all the old Sci-Fi movies. They have rows of sharp teeth, like iguanas, to match their vicious claws. Kohl loaded up the alien translation app, and it weirdly gave them rather posh British accents. When I ask him about it, he says he didn’t come up with it, he’s just passing the tech along. Said he found it hidden in the app store somewhere, which to me is wild. How long has all of this been going on?
“I heard her singing down here?” The one on the right says. His white uniform is a bit more askew than the other.
“Why would she be singing down here? Vessel Elontra is the only one down here and she’s… creepy.” Lefty says, a quiver in his voice.
It’s a title, kind of like professor, doctor, teacher, something like that.
If we’re all very luck, you won’t have to meet her.
Worse.
“Hey gentleman,” I say, walking out of the corner.
Actually, Lefty is a woman
“Oh, I’m sorry, Folks, that’s my bad. It was me singing. Take a look at this.”
I throw my razor sharp disk at each of them before they can sound an alarm. I almost feel bad taking them by surprise, then I remember that they might have something to do with the mind meld. They lay there with their necks sliced open, gasping and gurgling for air.
Congratulations!
You have defeated Righty and Lefty!
2 Exp!
Are you gonna be okay?
You have collected Twin fragment.
Twin fragment allows you to create a copy of the projectile and have it curve in an opposite direction. Collect more to make the Gemini Fragment.
The twin fragment slots well next to my Resilient fragment in my mind’s eye. I haven’t used any yet. Kohl suggests it’s a better to keep them until I have to fight something very nasty. Knowing what we’ve fought so far… I hate to see what he calls very nasty.
For the next few minutes, I hide in the corners, crawl through corners, race up staircases. I don’t know if I will make the deadline. Not only am I trying to keep myself alive, I am trying to keep myself up on pace. When Kohl says to stop, I stop, and when he says to go, I’m off like a bullet. The things and creatures I saw… the people’s condition. I will do anything to keep these people from destroying the lives of more people. The Dominance aren’t faceless goons working to build a planet shattering laser. They are people, whether through malice or cowardliness have chosen to join this fascist colonial power.
Seeing my humanity really brings this home. I can’t imagine billions of people being treated like refuse. Working until their hands bleed and only getting enough food to work. They tightly pack the bunk beds into these spaces like sardines. They were dirty and sad. My heart broke seeing them and I knew it wasn’t over. When I saw how they treated the children… Kohl told me I couldn’t do anything right now and that they felt no pain while it was happening. That they wouldn’t even remember it like a dream.
I finally reach a place with exterior windows and it’s one I’ve seen out of a thousand times before and it all comes back.
Yeah.
No, I need you to make a distraction and get out as soon as possible.
Walking through the booth and sound stages, noting the new equipment and seeing the fee-to-use instruments right in the corner. It felt like being home. There’s a deck on the counter next to the PA system and I immediately start messing with it, putting the settings in the right place, linking my psylink to it. The headphones were already going into DJ mode and picking through things. I flick on the mic. “This is DJ…” I yell out over the mic, but I don’t want to be Max Noise anymore. “This is The Composer! We’re gonna wake this motherfucker up!” The Composer feels like when I first told someone my name was Mix and they used it. Euphoria. A sense of absolute rightness in my life. It almost feels like coming out all over again. Making things real for me. I have chosen a new name, and it feels liberating. I lead with a mix of “Golden Wings” by Andros Arrow mixing with “Road to Rebellion” by The Crown Jewels. Andros crooning works so well with the hard rock sound of this up-and-coming punk band. Enhancing the bass really made the whole room rock. I couldn’t help but jam. Bend them to your will, Composer! Alright, it’s time to go. You’ve got to boogie. You did exactly what we needed. I’m sending someone to you cause things are about to jump off. You almost did your job too well. You gotta meet up with everyone else and collect me. It never stops. How could I possibly have been too good? I mean, he called a professional. What did he think I was gonna do? And as per usual, I killed it. I feel something off in the air, like all the hair on my body stands on end, and my attention drawn somewhere in the room. A deep part of me follows this pull and then my eyes slide toward it. The deck I just played on reacts oddly under my new inspection. Instead of glowing with a light, it seems to absorb it. Magic. Somewhere deep in my gut, I’m sure of it. When I reach out, the air around my hand distorts… Almost pushing my hand away from it. Almost like gravity, but a little more like repulsion. This didn’t happen the first time. What could have happened? I grit my teeth getting closer to it and when my hand finally lands on it. A prompt appears in my vision. It’s a Meteormaker 67, and it's just a single deck which isn’t my Antares Void Walkers, but I can’t imagine them feeling anything like this. Congratulations DreamRunner, you have found a Spacial object. This is very rare on your planet as of now, but as more awaken to the powers of space, they will become much more common. A spacial item? Interesting. Do you choose to equip? You have equipped a spacial deck you can now hold on to multiple constructs at once. This will allow you to pre-fabricate CDs and use them when you have use for them. Inventory space: 0/10 Quickly, I sing into reality a Beat and being the process to enchant for the first time. It’s like I knew how to do it all along. I take the first song, The Song of Creation, and I shift that song to my body and my body sings creation. My mouth takes over The Song of Enchantment. In my mind, I remember what the Twin enchantment sounds like and my hands begin to conduct an illusory band. The CD glows spinning in front of me. Two shades of blue light twist and weave into the CD, leaving the sparkling blue one in my hand. New sigils standing out on the surface. Deck Inventory: 1/10 My first enchantment. I’m vibrating here. I’m casting spells and enchanting things feel easy and so wonderful. It feels like a release. Like spinnin’. I’m good at this. I have only been good at one thing in my life and it feels like I’ve finally found the second thing. Holy shit! That was awesome. I’m so glad you’re on our side. She’s the real deal. I don’t know if she can enchant, but The Sea Witch is highly revered. She is one of the most dangerous of those at the Overseer level. Who’s gonna tell 'em? The Composer's stats so far Level 1 (Rank 1) HP: 11 Dream: 11 (Currently 5) Will: 1 Reflex: 2 Creativity: 3 Talent: 2 Power: 2 Durability: 1 The Composer's Abilities So Far Skills: Undecided Knowledge: Magic Utilities: Siren Enchanting Echo Special Attacks: Shot Damage 5-16 The Composer's Inventory Beats (CD Chakram): Damage 4-10 Meteormaker 67: 1/10 Twin