The melodramatic question emblazoned across the black screen was typical for any fantasy RPG, really. But it seemed suddenly pointed instead of laughable.
Who am I to begin with?
Booth still felt like himself. Mostly. His thoughts still felt tethered to a single space inside his mind. Or whatever passed as a mind, because he no longer had a physical brain. Turning inward and attempting to really think about it only made him dizzy.
I’d have a headache, if I had a head.
An urge to laugh abruptly bubbled up, but it felt as distant as every other emotion and sensation.
The letters in front of Booth wafted into smoke and faded out. A familiar bordered square filled with legalese faded in. Booth skimmed the plain language at the top of the EULA.
[Warning: The System which is the heart of Redemption Wars has been trained to analyze uploaded data and use it to generate a powerful and meaningful custom experience for each individual player. To do this, it uses Neuroconnect to gather as much information about you as possible. Accepting this End User Licensing Agreement will allow Neuroconnect access to your neural network, as well as public records including but not limited to school and work records and aptitude and personality testing. The data gathered will be utilized in limited ways to create custom class and origin story options for you. Once used by the game, the data will be erased in accordance with privacy regulations. Your data will not be stored on Redemption Wars servers.]
Instinctively using the motions most other VR games used for navigating menu screens, Booth moved his gaze with slow deliberation down the page, although he didn’t read the rest of the small print. The text scrolled with his eye movement until it reached the bottom of the text box, where an “Accept” button waited. With a nod of his head, Booth activated the button and a new bordered square appeared.
Only after he’d navigated that far did it occur to him that he had no eyes or head for the system to track and make use of. Yet whatever happened in his mind—or whatever he was now—apparently the game must read his intention. Useful information to have.
He read the plain language section of the next agreement. This one was dated with today’s date.
[Warning: This clause overrides all previous agreements between the User and Ugly Star Productions. Per the offered terms of Neuroconnect Initiative, in response to the current pandemic disaster, in accepting the offer made by Ugly Star to upload and preserve your consciousness, you allow unlimited access to all regions of your brain and neural connections. This data will be permanently stored on our servers.
In order to expedite the upload process and allow as many people as possible to upload without overtaxing Redemption Wars servers, many optional customization adjustments have been removed. Our System will choose a class and origin story for you, based on the brain map generated by Neuroconnect. These may not be altered. The System will generate a starting avatar which resembles you, limited by the game’s existing cosmetic options. Your name will default to a variation of your legal name, adapted to suit Redemption Wars lore. You may make limited changes to your appearance and name, including gender, but we highly recommend you not spend too much time on such things, since the System cannot complete your upload until you’ve saved your avatar and entered the world. Depending on your current level of illness, time may well be of the essence.]
Despite the almost conversational tone of the second paragraph, it carried a sense of stern urgency. Booth skimmed even more quickly through the briefer section of legalese that followed and accepted. The agreement box flashed and vanished. A new, larger bounded rectangle began fading into view.
Here we go. Let’s see what they gave me, I guess.
Unlike most modern MMOs, Redemption Wars didn’t immediately provide a model showing his character’s appearance. What solidified in front of him was a stylish but simple rectangle which for the moment simply read “Character Sheet” across the front. Tabs across the top indicated it had multiple layers of information, but the letters of later ones appeared grayed out.
[Class | Origin | Race | Stats | Appearance]
Booth experimentally tried to open the grayed-out tabs, but none of them activated. Redemption Wars apparently wanted players to walk through the options in a specific order. The later tabs would probably open sequentially as he completed the previous ones. He chose the only tab he could, the first one.
As the tab activated, a 3D image of a gleaming shield crossed by a metal flail floated into view. Some unseen light source glinted off the shield’s heraldry, which showed a golden wheat sheaf on an olive green field. Behind the disembodied shield and hammer, a long aerial view showed what looked like temple grounds or training barracks on a terraced hilltop. A text description unfurled beneath the images.
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[The System has custom generated the following Class for you: You are a Tilier of Voshell, a holy warrior in service to the patron goddess of fields and farmers. The goddess Voshell oversees the tending of nature to keep it orderly and safe and bountiful as it provides for the people who care for it. As a soldier of Voshell, your mission is to protect the land and her people from chaos and harm. Your primary Stats should be Strength, Endurance, and Personality.]
Booth read through the description a couple of times, absorbing its meaning.
Since Booth had no college aspirations—no natural academic talent, so without football there was no point to it—his life plans had boiled down to running his family’s farm alongside his dad and later Toby. His whole life, his dad had been teaching his sons about crop rotation and best practices for fertilizing and all the things they’d need to stay competitive in the big business agriculture had become. Toby had the head for academics. Maybe if he’d gotten to that age, he’d have gone to college. Booth’s only plans other than working the farm had been training as a volunteer firefighter. He’d applied at the local station just before things went to hell.
On days when he let himself think about it too much, Booth wondered if he was a has-been already. Maybe he’d peaked in his teens, and his glory days were over.
Tilier of Voshell. In less fancy terms, he was basically going to be a farming god’s paladin.
Of course I am.
It made perfect sense, and on the one hand Booth was flattered, because at least they figured him to be a good guy. Strong. Doing the right thing. He didn’t have any particular objections to any of those things. But a little part of him was mildly annoyed, because it was so damned on the nose. But it was so damned on the nose that he was impressed and flattered all over again.
Which was exactly how a goody two-shoes paladin of this particular goddess would probably feel, so they probably got it just right.
How predictable am I?
A list of his starting abilities followed the flavor text. Proficiency in heavy armor, shields, most weapons. A small but reliable healing ability called Touch of the Earthmother—a variation of the predictable and paladin-defining Lay on Hands. Something called Voshell’s Wisdom which allowed him advantages against “certain types of creatures,” which sounded neat but not frequently useful.
The list was short and had nothing awe-inspiring or surprising, but he was level one. The things he could do would flesh out quickly enough. He didn’t study the list in depth. He’d been gaming long enough to have a fair idea what all of them entailed. He could figure out how to make them work when he got there.
Small numbered icons to one side of the tab indicated that there had once been three classes to choose from. Two of those were grayed out, victims of the rush to get people through character creation and onto the servers.
Rush, as in hurry. Meaning you.
Booth accepted the Class “suggestion,” and the Origin tab opened.
The floating iconography this time was an old-fashioned wooden plow with metal blades. The background setting showed a cluster of stone buildings with thatched roofs surrounded by fields and rising smoke from distant farmhouses.
The description was heavy on details, but very little meant anything to Booth.
[The System has custom generated the following Origin for you: Small Town Boy. You are a Southlander from the region of the Mindet River Valley near the city of Arlerico, under the rulership of the Fellowship of Freeholders. The Southlands are fertile farmlands south of Lake Morene, the last bastion Freeholder lands bordering the wilderness of Iraekh territory further south. The Southlands have a reputation for grim, proud determination, having survived for centuries despite a long-standing feud with the Meres-folk across the river and bearing the brunt of semi-regular Iraekhi incursions. You grew up in Traton, a close-knit farming community near Arlerico.]
Booth read it twice, but most of the description remained a soup of unfamiliar proper nouns. Off the top of his head, he couldn’t remember any MMOs that used an Origin, and he hadn’t bothered to read up on lore for Redemption Wars. Until the trailer had taught him that the angelic figures were called Radiants, he hadn’t even known that much. He had zero context for most of his Origin’s text. He picked up the two pieces he could more easily grasp—that his people were grim and proud, and that he’d been a farmer.
So I’m a farm boy farmer god’s paladin. FFS.
But like the Class tab, the Origin had no place to make adjustments.
And you’re supposed to be hurrying. You don’t know exactly how this works—obviously you’ve been uploaded, but if your physical body dies before you lock things in, then what? Or what if all the slots run out before you get yours claimed?
Booth accepted his Origin and moved on.
The next tab had no floating icon. It showed a town green with several people dressed in simple clothing, trousers that laced up the front and belted tunics or dresses of rough, dull-colored cloth, sturdy boots and shoes, brimmed hats. The people moved and mingled with each other, and a faint whisper that might have been distant conversations emanated from the image.
[Your Race is Human – Southlander. The System has selected this Race to align with your Class and Origin choices. It cannot be changed. You gain a +1 bonus to all Stats.]
Booth felt a twinge of annoyance—not that he’d probably have opted into a different race, anyhow. He usually ended up playing humans instead of elves or dwarves or whatever other fantasy races a game presented. They tended to be well-rounded and worked well with the melee-based class he generally preferred. Often, he had to admit, the class he preferred was a variation of paladin.
The game really did choose what you probably would’ve chosen for yourself, just a lot faster.
There was still something about having that choice robbed that irked him. Which was ridiculous given the circumstances, and he immediately felt like a jerk for even thinking it.
The full list of Races appeared, even though no other options were selectable. Human had several variants which he guessed based on how his worked were regional or national. The only one he recognized was Meres-folk, because his Origin had mentioned them. Only two other main races were listed, Shining One and Touched. The variants for Shining One all ended in “-is” and sounded vaguely Latin. Those under Touched seemed elemental in nature, words like “Mud,” and “Flame,” and “Storm.”
Booth tried to select one of the other Races, curious to see exactly how different they were from typical fantasy races.