Now that I had a pretty good idea of how I ended up in this situation it was time to figure out where I wanted to go from here. After copious amounts of introspective meditation, I had concluded that each of the various rituals I had been subjected to had essentially forced another path open to me. According to some hints in the library, and a lot of confirmation from the Akasha, typically people would only have one or two primary paths available to them, and everything else would come later, once those had solidified.
After everything that had happened, I had five: one free path still available from my human heritage, and then several other paths opened by the various heritages and templates I had been subjected to. To keep track of things, I made a list. To be fair, it was a little hard to visualize some of them, but I tried to summarize them.
* Atlantean Human: Free
* Half-Giant: Some sort of psionic warrior
* Primordial: it felt like this one weaponized their magical bloodline and ancestral links
* Spark Ignition Ceremony: this one was the one that forced open my sorcerous gifts
* Mana Rite: this opened up another psionic class, though there was some flexibility here
It was much easier to see once it had been written down. As could be seen, there was quite a mix of influences available, and the spectrum had me start to think heavily about what I wanted. I had made a promise to myself and to the memory of my mother that I would grow in strength, and I owed it to us both to do my best at that. From what I was able to glean during my meditation, whatever I decided for these five paths would become my primary foundation for the foreseeable future - only once I had fully explored the paths to mastery would I have the flexibility to choose another primary path.
Until then, no other paths could surpass my experience in these five. Going back to gaming terms - and it was rather curious how that was becoming a more and more convenient thought mode as time went on - any other “class” would either half to be two thirds or half as many levels as these, depending on the requirements and complexities of the class. So if I wanted a solid foundation, it had to be in these classes. That meant my free class was incredibly important.
There were a few key factors to consider. First of all, my class paths were only one avenue of increase. They represented the strength of my soul and the breadth of my experience - all of the techniques and skills I would develop - but they were parallel to the growth of my body. There were racial “classes” as well that grew in similar ways. These represented the evolution of my physical form - essentially, the expression of my DNA and manifestations of the Akasha on my physical self.
As far as I could tell, barring intervention from deities or otherworldly powers, there were six primary aspects that could make up your power. Your body and your physical prowess - so physique and skill, in other words - were two, and the other four were the esoteric forces of the world - what was known as life force (what I would term Ki), magic, psionics, and the soul. I wanted to make sure that I covered all of my bases with my choices.
I really wanted to have as broad a foundation as possible. I had magic and psionics handled already. That meant that my free path needed to handle both ki and soul if I wanted to really cover my bases, or my slightly more flexible psionic path would have to pick up the slack. Whatever I chose for that free path should also be a moderately physical path in order to supplement the psionic warrior and weaponized magical one.
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That helped to narrow down my choices, but actually choosing and figuring out how to step down these paths was going to take a lot more time and meditation.
So much meditation.
I decided that my first step would be to formalize the conceptualization of my status, progress, and paths. I needed to see where I was currently in as much detail as possible. I decided to fully lean into the tabletop gaming paradigm as I spent a significant amount of time trying to link my present state through introspective meditation with how that compared to others based on what I could access from the Akasha. I wanted to be able to visualize this in an easy to consume format, ideally a page or two at a glance.
In other words, I wanted a character sheet, dangit!
So I began to go to work. It soon became clear that while I could certainly use my experience to frame how I perceived the world, the world didn't actually work the way my old games had - which was completely fair. To begin with, this parallel racial/class aspect to things - that wasn't something I had ever played with.
Another difference was the way multiple classes (and to a degree those racial heritages as well) worked ran counter to my expectations. In a lot of places, classes didn't “stack” bonuses. Multiple classes of the same or lower level could certainly fill in gaps for each other, but not everything would overlap. In simplest gaming terms, if two classes both offered a +2 to the same “save” at level 1, you would have a +2 to that save, not a +4. However, if two classes offered a +2 to different saves, you would get +2 to both saves. This meant that multiple classes were great for developing a strong foundation, but focusing on a single class would likely lead you to greater heights of power more quickly. It was a question of breadth versus depth, and I had to juggle the fact that I would likely need depth in order to tackle the wards, with the desire to establish as firm a foundation as possible before facing the dangers of the world.
Finally, and most importantly, attaining a new level in a class didn't automatically give you a bunch of new strengths and abilities. What it did do was raise the ceiling or increase the limits of what was possible to achieve, and sort of guide you on the way there. There was a certain amount of rubber-banding that took place between your current level and your limit in a skill, so someone with great potential but a lack of achievement in a specific skill or attribute would not only find that their limit was greater than others, but also that it was easier to grow in that skill or attribute than others. That being said, there were limits to how high in a class you could grow - each class had one or more key attributes associated with them, and if you didn't have a high enough score in at least one of those attributes (generally, the “level” +10) you couldn't proceed any higher with that class! This was why my lower Charisma value would have meant I had little chance of succeeding as a Sorcerer before all of the rituals I had undergone.
This ultimately meant that “leveling” was a slow gradual process of training towards your limits, breaking through those limits either through heavier training or effort, and then further training to solidify and maximize your gains. It became increasingly difficult to break through those limits without challenge and adversity, as well, so you could only remain cloistered or sheltered in the early stages - eventually, you would have to venture out and push yourself far past your comfort zone in order to see further improvements.
Well, I already knew I couldn't stay here forever, even if I figured out my supply problem, but now I knew that there was a hard limit on how much I could grow here, too. I would have to take that into account when deciding on breadth vs depth as well.