After that lengthy period of wrestling the two disparate endpoints of my meditation together, I finally came up with a view that could approximate one of my old character sheets:
Agathon, Atlantean Half-Giant (1*)
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Age:
* Biological: 8
* Chronological: 1343
Health: *
Stamina: *
Saves:
* Fort 0
* Ref 0
* Will 2
Attack Bonus: 0
Strength: 8/14
Dexterity: 10/14
Constitution: 10/16
Intelligence: 18/22
Wisdom: 14/16
Charisma: 18/22
Flaws
* Primal Instinct
* Free-Spirited
* Loner
Traits
* Stoic
* Mathematical Prodigy
* Trope Savvy
Feats
* Hidden Talent
Skills
* Concentration
* Lore (Akasha)
* Meditation
Qualities:
* +4 to Lore (Applied Arcana) checks
* +2 to Lore (Theoretical Arcana) checks
* +4 to Lore (Applied Psionics) checks
* +2 to Lore (Theoretical Psionics) checks
* Low-Light Vision (40 ft)
* Powerful Build: Treated as a size larger under certain conditions.
* Magical Knack: +1 to Caster Level
* Naturally Psionic:
* Add Hidden Talent to Feats
* Add 2 to Power Pool
* Unlock Power Resistance
* Add Manifester Level to Power Resistance
Abilities:
* Psionics:
* Stomp 1/Day
* Defensive Precognition 3/Day
* Force Screen 1/Day
* Arcane:
* Levitate at will
* Arcane Sight permanent
* Magic Aura permanent
* *
Languages
* Atlantean
* Giant
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There it was. The sum total of my experiences so far in this life. The result of my mother's experiments and rituals. I was significantly advanced in some ways, but the sheer output of time (1335 years in stasis overall!!!) and the existing resources my mother must have paid out to get me here… there were clearly some things I already had a head start in, like some innate and permanent abilities, but I needed to get started on actually solidifying my paths forward.
Based on these statistics, I was slightly weaker than, but just as dexterous and sturdy as, an average human adult male. At 8. And I was already around a meter and a half, which had some hefty implications for my adult self. Thankfully the caverns had large natural ceilings so I shouldn't need to worry about bumping my head. When I began training physically, that would have quickly become quite irritating. I also had a lot of room to grow in my stats!
Speaking of growth, there was an interesting feedback loop when it came to training your attributes. Training the skills and proficiencies empowered by an attribute - Athletics and Strength, Lore skills and Intelligence for example - was naturally an excellent way to train that attribute. So you would refine your skills to their limits and that would naturally push you to the limit of the attribute itself as you trained, which would then expand further the limit of your skills. This meant that my work on Meditation and Concentration had already been improving my “Wisdom” attribute.
I was using more familiar terminology, but your mental attributes ultimately boiled down to three aspects:
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* The force and power of your thoughts - your ability to process and retain information, the speed of your thoughts, how much you could keep track of simultaneously
* The force of your will - how well you were able to control your impulses, maintain focus, and resist external factors
* The force of your personality - how much your presence could command, how well you could present yourself and your beliefs among others, and ultimately how well you could assert yourself over your environment
Or, in short, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. There was an interesting mirroring of attributes across the mental/physical divide : Strength and Charisma, Dexterity and Intelligence, and Constitution and Willpower. The ability to assert yourself, the ability to react, and the ability to endure.
That thought stuck with me as I began to push for my first classes. Racial Advances were interesting because they were the best, or most common, example of the fascinating interaction between the physical and metaphysical in this world. Advancing a level could have a real, immediate effect on your physical form - this wasn't just new knowledge, this was some energetic aspect of the universe going in and flipping various epigenetic triggers in your DNA, changing how your body built itself. Some of the texts I was reading referred to it as a “life spiral”, but it sounded like a DNA Helix to me, so that was still how I conceptualized it in my mind.
The other interesting aspect of my current sheet were the sections on flaws and traits. It seems that everything I had experienced so far was going to have a long term impact on my personality and decision making - some with severe consequences. Primal Instinct made me ill-suited to wielding weapons, and Free-Spirited meant that armor and anything weighing me down would be pretty detrimental, so I should likely focus on unarmed and unarmored combat, so that meant knights and sword-slinging samurai were probably out of the running. Loner meant I wouldn't be running around as a beast master either, and familiar summoning or anything like that would also be out of the picture. Shame, as the training dummies probably weren't terribly talkative.
I put aside any other thoughts and focused on taking my first step on the road to the future. In my mind, I reached out and pressed towards the path that represented my Half-Giant heritage. There was a thrum of energy resonating in the air and in my body, and I directed the coalescing thoughts into my “Character Sheet” thought form.
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Half-Giant 1
Health: */10
Saves:
* Fort +2
* Ref 0
* Will 0
Racial Attack Bonus: +1
Feats: Pick 1
Skills: Pick 6
* Acrobatics
* Athletics
* Concentration
* Craft
* Deception
* Diplomacy
* Insight
* Intimidation
* Lore (Applied Psionics)
* Lore (Theoretical Psionics)
* Lore (Survival)
* Meditation
* Perception
* Profession
Qualities:
* Stomp 1/HD
* Low-Light Vision Advancement
* Divided Ancestry : Open Human and Giant Racial Heritage Paths
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I felt the changes solidify as certain aspects of knowledge and intuitive understanding settled in, things that my ancestors along this gene-line had learned and sublimated as key aspects of the culture. I had a general understanding of how to move my body to hit something in an effective way - nothing specific, more just a sense of “don't put your thumb inside your fist, dummy”. My vision sharpened further, as details became clear even further out in the area, dark corners suddenly seeming less so. My health was more clearly defined - I had a better understanding of the physical limits of my body, how easy I was to injure and how far I could keep pushing myself before I passed out from blood loss or trauma. I was particularly excited about the final aspect of the quality improvements - it looked like the path to access more of my Atlantean and Giant heritage wouldn't be as challenging as I had feared.
I would need to settle on some decisions around the skills I would like to access, but decided to settle on my first “class” path before I did so.
I had done a lot of thinking and meditating on the Akasha to decide what I wanted to do with my free path. Ultimately, it came down to the realities of my situation in the caverns. I needed a path that I could advance with minimal external interaction, as all I had in this place were books, training dummies, and the unseen servants. My flaws meant it should also be something largely independent - I couldn't rely on gear to supplement me.
I also wanted to play to my strengths. Based on my plans, both of my magical classes would be relying on my Charisma, and my other classes would be using either Intelligence or Wisdom as their key factors. Ideally, this class would also rely on one or the other. I would be working on training up my physical body, but… I was 8. I was partially hampered by needing actual years to grow before I could get to the highest levels of ability.
It would also be useful if the path had knowledge of and skills that could be applied to the care and maintenance of the body. I needed to juggle both properly rationing my food while making sure that I achieved optimal nutrition for my growth, or that I could supplement it somehow - either through magic or one of the other esoteric forces. On top of that, as I'd considered earlier, knowledge of the soul and ki energies were needed, but like I said, I had been doing a lot of searching in the Akasha, and had therefore come up with a cunning plan...