It took Hunter a solid hour of wandering around to finally admit he was utterly and totally lost. He was supposed to be moving towards that large clearing he’d spied from his perch on the crag–hell, he probably was supposed to have reached it already. Instead, he was no longer even certain which way was north. To make things worse, willing some kind of map to appear did nothing but make him feel like a fool. He was getting both impatient and frustrated. He needed a break, something to take his mind off things for a while.
Tired, he almost considered calling it a day and logging out. Then he remembered he’d been meaning to take a look at his skills and attributes and whatnot, and decided to stick around a bit longer.
Most games had some kind of character sheet or status screen where all the relevant information could be found, and Hunter expected Elderpyre to be not much different. He tried to will some kind of character sheet in existence and a semi-transparent window full of neatly organized words and numbers popped up before him.
Well, at least that worked.
Character Information:
Name:
Hunter
Race:
Transient (Human)
Class:
Mystic
Qualities:
Aether
0
Élan
10
Insight
0
Inspiration
2
Serendipity
0
The developers had really taken obscure stat names to a new level of crazy. There were absolutely no explanations available about anything, either. Hunter tried to will additional information to appear and failed spectacularly.
Great.
The devs had never heard that old UI/UX saying, he supposed. A user interface is like a joke; if you have to explain it, it’s not very good. He’d have to figure it all out on his own at some point. For now, a cursory glance was enough. He willed the sheet to scroll further down, and read the next section.
Attributes:
Health
100
Essence
100
Stamina
100
Strength
10
Dexterity
10
Intellect
10
Willpower
10
Presence
10
Unlike the Qualities on the previous section of the screen, Attributes were straightforward. To a veteran gamer like himself, they were more or less self-explanatory. Judging from the perfectly decimal values, he suspected he was average at everything–the very definition of a baseline human being.
There was still more to the character sheet, so he scrolled even further down.
Skills:
Close Combat
8
Evasion
2
Polearm Mastery
8
Survival
3
Abilities:
Low-Light Vision
2
Traits:
Incandescent Soul
Improvise, Adapt, Overcome
Perfectly Average
Mystic Sigil
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Skills, Abilities, and Traits were straightforward, too, although he wasn’t sure what the difference between them was. He should ask someone about them if he got the chance–Mortimer, maybe.
So that was that, a snapshot of the man known as Hunter. With no additional descriptions and explanations, there wasn’t much of a point in poring over the hovering screens trying to figure out what did what. Content for the time being, he decided it was time to log out. How long had he even been in Aernor? He’d totally lost track of time. Too long, if his growling stomach was any indication.
Alex woke up in his room in the Happy Motel, his body feeling stiff from hours of lying in bed. He went to the bathroom, took a leak, splashed some water on his face. He picked up the telephone on the wall and a bored-sounding someone gave him permission to leave his room and go get some fresh air and grab a bite.
It was a bit weird, the whole call-to-get-permission thing. Did real prison work that way? Hunter didn’t think so. When in Rome, he should do as the Romans did, he supposed, and left it at that. It was late afternoon already, and he was famished.
The cafeteria, much like anything else in the place, screamed “old roadside motel”. It was mostly empty, save from two men sitting at a table and playing backgammon. One was dressed like Alex was–a convict, then–and the other was dressed as a guard.
“Oh!” the convict lit up when he saw Alex walk into the room. “Bob, look! It’s the new guy! Come join us, new guy!”
He sprang to his feet and pulled a third chair next to the table as the guard turned around and gave Alex a sheepish smile.
“Come, come sit with us, don’t be a shy Sheila!”
A bit awkwardly, Alex sat with the two men and tried to look friendly.
The one dressed like a guard–Bob–was a big chubby guy with a bad haircut and a slightly confused expression permanently slapped on his round, honest-looking face. The other one was a pale, lanky fellow with no hair or eyebrows and the widest smile Alex had seen in a while.
“I’m Humbug Hank!” said the guy and grabbed Alex’s hand to give it a vigorous shake. His jolly voice had a trace of eastern European accent. “You can call me Buggy, everybody does. This is Bob, Bob the Nob.”
“Hello!” said Bob.
“Alex. Uh… nice to meet you both. I just got here.”
Yes, yes, we’ve been expecting you. Carpenter told us we would be having a new tenant at the motel. Not much of a welcoming committee, good old Carps, but don’t hold it against her. Don’t tell her I said it, but she’s a good apple, that one. Not as good as Bob here, though–Bob’s the best. Just don’t play backgammon with him, he’ll straight-up destroy you.”
Buggy went on about this and that, jumping from one subject to the next. Alex wasn’t prepared for that kind of verbal diarrhea, but he didn’t find it unpleasant. Bob the guard, on the other hand, barely said a word. He showed Alex the kitchen and where to get food, smiling and gesturing with polite excitement. Alex wondered if he was slow in the head, then immediately felt bad for it.
The food was nothing to write home about. In line with the Happy Motel’s general theme, it was cheap motel food. Tasty and filling, yes, but not exactly top of the shelf. Alex reheated some macaroni and cheese in an ancient-looking microwave oven, grabbed an apple, and went back to join his new acquaintances.
“So…?” asked Buggy as Alex was finishing up. “Tell us about yourself. What are you in for? Don’t worry, we don’t judge around here. We’re all friends. Parking tickets? No, no, not that. Jaywalking? Shoplifting? It is shoplifting, is it not? It must be. You don’t look like the violent crime type–not that we have violent crime types here. Carps wouldn’t have any of that, no sir.”
Was it okay to talk about stuff like that in prison? Did this place even count as a prison? Alex didn’t have the slightest idea. He turned to Bob the guard, who instantly responded with a bright friendly smile and not much else.
“I was caught using other peoples’ credit card numbers on the internet.”
“What? Really? They busted you for that?” Buggy’s eyes went wide. The guy’s mannerisms were so theatrical that Alex briefly wondered whether he was mocking him, but decided that wasn’t the case. Buggy was simply a walking, talking caricature. “They’ll bust people for anything these days, I swear. At least I got it coming. I’m in a gang, myself. Real shady shit, true gangster style, as we say. Well, I’m not in the violence department, though. Carps would fry my gonads if I was and had lied about it and she found out. No, I’m more of a support guy myself. Cooking the books and such. Street-level accounting. Real shady shit.”
“That’s… cool?”
“You bet it is! But hey, don’t feel bad!” Buggy flashed Alex another smile and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. “Yours is wicked cool too, just… in another way, yes?”
Friendly or not, that excited chatterbox of a man was starting to get annoying. He didn’t want to be rude or standoffish and start on the wrong foot with these people, but if Buggy kept yapping like that he’d have to perforate his own eardrums with his spork.
“Have you seen Aernor yet?” Bob finally said, changing the subject and looking both shy and hopeful at the same time.
“Just earlier today” said Alex, hesitating.
“It’s a beautiful place. Enjoy your time there.”
“Bob used to be like us,” Buggy piped in. “He did his time in Aernor. In fact, he liked it so much he decided to get a job and stick around the Happy Motel. Really helped me get my mind wrapped around the number-crunchy part. A real savant when it comes to the System, that’s our Bob.”
“The System?”
“That’s what we call it. All those Attributes and Skills and whatnot. Have you seen that monster of a character sheet yet? It’s mind-boggling.”
“It is a bit convoluted, yes.”
Buggy looked at Alex as if he expected to hear something more than that. Alex didn’t know what. He didn’t know if he was even supposed to be talking about these things, non-disclosure agreement and all.
“Oh, come on!” Buggy burst into motion after a few seconds of awkward silence. “If you’re too shy to ask, I will. Bob! Why don’t you give our new friend here the old what’s what, too?”
Alex started to say that no, it wasn’t necessary, but then he saw how Bob’s face lit up at the idea. The guard ran off to the kitchen, then returned with a handful of chalk and a small blackboard, the kind restaurants and pubs use to advertise the day’s special. He propped it up on a tripod, then started to scrawl.
Bob’s handwriting was the neatest Alex had ever seen, perfectly balanced between readability and calligraphy, each letter flowing perfectly from the previous one. Compared to his own chicken scratch, it was art. There was a sharpness and a focus to the man that hadn’t been there earlier, too. After a minute or so, Bob had perfectly recreated the character sheet he’d been studying earlier, minus the details and numerical values.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Buggy said. “It’s been more than a year since Bob here last set foot on Aernor, but still he remembers it all perfectly. He probably has a photographic memory or something.”
“Character information,” Bob read aloud, as if he was reciting a poem. “Name: this is what you call yourself and others call you. There is power in names, so choose yours with care. Race: the sapient species you belong to, or the people you come from.”
“Yours probably is Transient (Human),” Buggy said, suddenly a bit more serious. “The Human part is self-evident. Transient means that you’re like a visitor to Aernor, not a native. You can log in and out and stuff.”
“Class: the character framework and template for the abilities and aptitudes you can obtain. Class is not necessarily restrictive, just the starting point for your character’s growth.”
“What did you pick?” Buggy asked.
“Mystic. Walter told me it would be an interesting choice.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Grimm,” Alex explained. “He told me his friends call him Walter.”
“Nobody calls him that,” Bob said, suddenly frowning.
“Huh?”
“His name is not Walter and he has no friends.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Buggy said. “We’re great pals, me and old Walt. He’s one of the good ones if you get to know him a bit better.”
Bob ignored him and turned to the blackboard again.
“A Mystic’s main focus is their Insight,” he said. “It reflects the amount of eldritch secrets and inhuman knowledge they have obtained.”
That sounded right. There had been something about Insight in Mystic’s class description.
“Seeker of secrets, striker of accords, keeper of forbidden knowledge. Living proof that insight begets power–especially the inhuman kind,” Bob recited, confirming what Alex recalled. “It is an interesting choice, friend. May it serve you well.”
“Uh, thanks.”
The three of them sat there for a moment, Bob lost in thought.
“So, about that System…” Alex cleared his throat. He knew he wasn’t supposed to ask, NDA and the joy of exploration and discovery and all, but he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity to make sense of the basics, at least.
“Yes, yes,” Buggy piped in, “tell him about the differences between Qualities and Attributes and Skills and Traits. That’s, like, eighty percent of the confusion.”
Bob nodded to himself and stabbed a meaty, chalk-stained finger at the blackboard.
“Skills, Abilities, and Traits,” he recited, “are more specialized and personalized aspects of your character. The important thing is to learn to differentiate them. Skills reflect your aptitude when performing general actions, like fencing, or cooking, or spellcasting. In most cases, you don’t have to pay any attention to them; they mostly work in the background. You learn and advance Skills automatically as you perform related tasks and actions.”
Alex had already seen how Skills worked. Just grabbing a weapon and fighting the Ancient Shambler had granted him the Close Combat and Evasion Skills, and the more he fought, the more they gained ranks.
“Abilities, on the other hand,” Bob continued, “are more specific. Spellcasting would be a Skill; a specific spell, Magic Bolt, for example, would be an Ability. You have to spend Insight to learn new Abilities, and they advance in rank with use.”
As far as he remembered, Alex had one ability so far–Low-Light Vision–and it functioned exactly as Bob had said. It had taken him a point of Insight to initially learn it, but after that he became better at it simply by using it.
“As for Traits,” Bob concluded, “Traits are like passive characteristics and descriptors of your character. Buggy, for example, would have the Alopecia Areata Trait.”
“And would be proud of it!” Buggy flashed his pearly white smile. “Eyebrows are overrated anyway.”
Bob went on explaining this and that and Hunter struggled to keep up and memorize the inner workings of which stat did what, but gave up after a while. He’d always been the type of guy who learned by doing, anyway.
“…and this is it, I’m afraid,” Bob concluded. “Anything else, you will have to figure out on your own accord. It really is for the best.”
“Thanks for the explanation, Bob," Alex said and gave him the friendliest of his smiles. “It really helped get some things straight.”
Bob nodded and said nothing. The moment he finished his lecture, he slipped back to his shy and quiet demeanor. Alex was beginning to like this strange, well-meaning man. He liked Buggy too, despite the fact that he was loud and kind of obnoxious at times. The Happy Motel would be his home for the next year or so. It would serve him well to have someone to shoot the breeze with.
“Hey! What the hell is going on here?”
Officer Carpenter burst into the cafeteria, furious.
“Bob, is this what I think it is? Clear that goddamn blackboard before you get us all in trouble again!”
“Hey there, Officer!” Buggy gave her a confusingly cheerful greeting.
“Shut up, Hank, you idiot. I’ve told you a thousand times, no Elderpyre talk with Bob! With anyone! We have NDAs, for fuck’s sake!”
Bob rushed to haphazardly splash some water on the blackboard and erase the chalk marks with his bare hands and Carpenter turned to Alex.
“And you. You’ve been here for less than a day, so I’ll let you off with just a warning. You don’t discuss anything Elderpyre-related with anyone. Not Hank, not Bob, not me, not your goddamn mother.”
“Alright, noted.”
“Alright, noted, what?”
“Alright, noted, ma’am.”
Alex didn’t like to be pushed around, but in Carpenter’s case, he suspected she barked so that she wouldn’t have to bite. Like his mom used to do back in the day. She was technically right, too–he shouldn’t have been talking about Elderpyre. Not so openly, at least. Buggy and Bob seemed like okay guys, but it would be silly to think he could trust them right out of the box.
He said goodbye, pocketed a few apples in case he would go hungry later on, and headed back to his room, eager to log back in. With his newfound cursory grasp of the contents of his character sheet, there were a million different things he wanted to try and experiment with