Current Quests
Secret In The Monastery: Reach a safe zone without the cultists raising the alarm.
Dave and Hugh huddled in the recess between the buildings, wrapped in several of the thick blankets that Dave had found in cupboards.
“We can talk. The walls are double thick here and the wind is constant at this height,” said Hugh.
“Right, cool,” said Dave. “What’s my backstory?”
“What?”
“Oh, yeah. You said I’m a summon. What’s my role in this game?”
“This isn’t a game!”
“Oh, well. You wouldn’t know, I guess. You’re an NPC. Doesn’t matter. What’s my role to you?”
“I was about to die, panicked and thought you might help?”
“Okay, cool. I guess that worked out, huh? Still alive!”
Hugh smiled and nodded.
“You said there was another guy. Or gal?” probed Dave.
“Yes. Jason Asano. He was summoned almost a year ago by accident. Actually, the same cult that’s trying to kill us right now summoned him. It’s been my job to figure out how Landemere Vane, that’s the man who summoned Jason, how he did that in the first place,” gabbled Hugh in the enthusiastic tone of someone talking about their favourite topic.
“Why don’t you just ask that Vane guy?”
“Well, Jason killed him when he got here.”
“That… seems like an overreaction.”
“No! It’s not like that. Vane was a cannibal.”
“Hugh, that sentence brings up more questions than it answers.”
“Oh, I suppose it would.”
“Okay, so Vane-guy summons Jason by accident, decides not to waste a free lunch but then Jason kills him?”
“And Vane’s familiar, sister and mother.”
“... What the hell? Collecting the set?”
“Oh! Well, he had help. He rescued some adventurers who helped him with the rest of the Vane family.”
“That still sounds psychotic, Hugh.”
“I never thought about it! I’ve never said it out loud until now.”
Dave collected his thoughts and his eyes fell upon his HUD.
“Hugh, you said that Asano also got something that I have?”
“Yes! The map!” said Hugh, brightening up. “All outworlders like yourself and Asano get a series of racial abilities to help them survive in their new world but one of them is always astral affinity. The other abilities are usually abilities that provide guidance in the form of familiar patterns from stories, myths or legends from your world?”
“Yeah, I think I have that. I have a heads up display with interactable buttons. Hang on, I think this one is my menu bar.” Dave focused on the button that looks like a pale cogwheel.
Again, the world greyed out but this time, Dave had three buttons distinct in front of his vision no matter what way he turned.
“Yep! I opened my menu bar. I can only see you and the world in greyscale and there’s buttons; character, configuration and help,” relayed Dave.
Hugh was keen to explore Dave’s menus and Dave was curious as well. They had time and he may as well actually learn how to play this dream properly. He hoped it wasn’t going to end soon. He wanted to kill a few more cultists and complete the quest before he woke up.
The character button took him to a screen that had an animated picture of himself in an oblong portrait centred in the screen with a smaller circle on the upper right labelled ‘legs’. Dave concentrated on it and found that he could ‘click’ on the icon and another screen opened. It was information about his pants. Monk’s trousers. Dave went back to the previous screen and found that it was only the animated equipment section. He scrolled down and found the character sheet.
Name:
David Florian Bauer
Race:
Outworlder
Rank:
Iron
Progression:
25% (1/4 essences)
Attributes:
Power (no essence): normal.
Speed (Magic): Iron.
Spirit (no essence): normal.
Recovery (no essence): normal.
Racial abilities:
User Interface and HUD
Quest System
Inventory
Map
Astral Affinity
Stranger In A Strange Land
Essences:
Magic (1/5)
No Essence (0/5)
No Essence (0/5)
No Essence (0/5)
“Yep!” said Dave. “Astral Affinity. Found it.”
“If your ability works anything like the quantification ritual, It’s likely that your other racial abilities are listed in the area?” said Hugh.
Dave started listing them off and Hugh nodded the whole while.
“It seems pretty similar to Asano’s abilities. Except for the last one. He got a language adaption, the ability to absorb awakening stones and skill-books and magical tracking immunity. What does yours say?” said Hugh, momentarily forgetting about his wounds.
Dave mentally clicked on the ability and started looking at the details.
“Third language adaptation? Gives Byzasic as a mother tongue? I’m speaking Byzasic?” asked Dave in surprise. He replayed the words in his head. It was definitely not English or German, the two languages he could speak. Well, that he could speak before he went to sleep. This dream was weird. He could still feel the other two languages in his head but Byzasic had a clear prominence now, like English normally had. So weird.
“You are,” said Hugh. “A middle-empire accent, though. What else?”
“Ugh, yeah. Sure, what else am I dreaming up? This is funky as hell. Essence and awakening stone absorption?”
“He got that as well as skill book absorption,” nodded Hugh indicating that Dave should go on.
“And ‘Locked’. It’s greyed out. I think I get different ones depending on if I rescue you or not,” said Dave.
“That’s amazing! That means that when you were constructing your body for this realm you somehow left a bit as pure astral potential. I wonder why?” mused Hugh.
“Strategy,” said Dave. “Always have reserves as part of a battle plan, a plan B or the willingness to realise you were wrong. It’s probably built into me because of my profession.”
“What’s that then?”
“I’m a quality assurance analyst at Siemens. My job is to go over other people’s data and make recommendations about which drugs to pursue further research into,” said Dave.
Hugh looked at him with a blank expression that Dave was overly familiar with from the smalltalk of many parties.
“I give advice on if an experimental medicine really works or if people are just fooling themselves,” said Dave.
“Oh! A kind of head alchemist?” said Hugh, excited.
“I guess so? Alchemy is a thing in this dream?”
“Why do you think you’re in a dream?” asked Hugh, clearly very interested.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Dave grunted. He’d never been questioned like this in a dream before. Weird. Had he figured out how to do lucid dreaming?
“Can we save that for later, just in case? I want to get to the end of the quest before this stops,” said Dave.
“Well then tell me about your abilities?” said Hugh who was clearly ready to commit everything to memory.
“Well, my HUD has three bars in the top left; green, white and blue, I guess that’s my health, stamina and mana? Yes. Anyway, they’re all connected to a circle within a circle. The outer circle is split into thirds and one of those thirds is a shifting rainbow hue. Oh! That must be the essence I absorbed! Bottom left is my minimap, I can zoom it in and out a bit, it gives a representation of the terrain with red dots for enemies, blue dots for friendlies and white dots for neutral. Also on the map is an indicator which is, I guess, showing me the way to my quest objective. That way?”
“Yes, that’s the direction of the Abbot’s office,” said Hugh. “Wasn’t there something earlier about the world going grey?”
“Yes, that’s when I press the cogwheel at the bottom next to my quickbar, My vision fills with the menu and has character, configuration and help buttons from there.”
“Well, what do they do?”
“Character just tells me about myself and my character in this world. Mostly nothing right now, I don’t have a lot of stuff but it looks quite detailed.”
“How detailed?” insisted Hugh.
Dave pressed some buttons and went into his character sheet.
“Pretty detailed. It’s giving me numbers and everything,” said Dave as he explored his menu. It turned out that he could extract most numbers of interest to him to two decimal places.
“That’s amazing! The Magic Society will love you. What about configuration?”
“Magic society? Well, config. What’s it? Here we go; toggle notifications, toggle tooltips, subtitles greyed out, HUD options and macros. Wait!” Dave checked in HUD options, turned on the text box, enabled mechanics in chat, and checked that the chat box would expand when used. It did and he promptly turned off notifications.
“Oh, thank heavens! That would have driven me mad getting those visual and audio notifications all the time!” said Dave with pure relief.
“What happened?” asked Hugh.
“Every time I loot something or use an object there’s this massive notification, ‘you have done the thing you just did’. It was really annoying. I just turned it off. Now I can just look notifications up in a text box.” said Dave.
“You can change the way you interact with reality?” asked an amazed Hugh.
Dave shrugged in a matter-of-fact kind of way.
“It’s my dream, why not?”
“This isn’t a dream, Dave! Please, take this seriously.”
“I went to sleep and woke up in a place where magic is real. This is a dream,” said Dave flatly.
“Oh? What colour is your hair?” asked Hugh.
“Brown,” said Dave, self consciously taking a hand to his head. “WHAT THE-”
“Ever been that surprised in the dream?” grinned Hugh.
Dave was exploring his completely egg-like bald dome with his hands.
“This is weird!” said Dave as he massaged his head.
“Your eyebrows too,” Hugh was trying not to chuckle because it hurt.
Dave’s hands flew to his missing eyebrows.
“You have no hair on your whole body,” said Hugh with a grin.
“I thought it was a bit breezy,” said Dave and ran his hands over his arms and legs.
“It’s because your body is brand new,” explained Hugh. “Your soul went from your world, through the astral to this world but a body can’t exist in the astral so your soul constructed a new body upon arrival.”
Dave nodded. That kind of made sense. If the lore was that the astral was a place between universes it made sense that things which needed a universe to exist, like atoms, weren’t welcome on the journey. Dave had always thought of himself as physically unremarkable. Average height, and build with straight brown hair and light eyes. He was physically fit but only as much as anybody who enjoyed physical hobbies.
“Souls are real then, hey?” asked Dave.
“Oh, yes. I understand there’s not much evidence for them in your low magic world?” asked Hugh.
“None.”
“Should we do a final test?”
“What? For What?”
“To prove this isn’t a dream.”
“Go on.”
“Well, here people pinch or slap themselves to test if they’re dreaming.”
“My world too. Yeah, okay, fine! You’ve got me interested now. Slap me, see if I wake up.”
“I don’t want to move. I got hit twice with an axe.”
“Alright, I’ll come to you and relax myself all close like this with my eyes closed and you just massage my ear, okay? And, when I’m not expecting it, you twist my ear real hard, yeah?”
“I can do that.”
Dave hunkered down on one elbow next to Hugh in the cliffside recess.
“Where’s your family from? Tell me about them,” asked Hugh as he gently held Dave’s ear.
“Well, I grew up on the Sunshine Coast. My mum’s from Rockhampton and my Dad’s from Hamburg. He was backpacking around Australia, met my mum and decided to stay-ARRGH!” Dave screamed. He’d been keeping an eye on his minimap just to make sure there were no red dots, drifting off into his personal history and was genuinely surprised to have his ear twisted so hard.
“Not dreaming!” said Hugh happily.
“Oh, bloody hell. Yeah, sure, it’s not a dream.” said Dave. Then he stopped and felt a bit sick. “This isn’t a dream. I’ve killed four people!”
“Oh, damn,” said Hugh, realising he may have triggered an existential crisis in his ally. His best hope for a way to live.
“Oh, hell. I sure hope they deserved it. They were labelled as cultists. Please tell me it was an evil cult?” Dave pleaded and looked at Hugh with a scared look.
“Yes, yes, yes. It’s fine, don’t worry. These are cultists of The Builder and they’re literally trying to end the world,” soothed Hugh.
“What? Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“But they live on this world!”
“I know. Mad!”
“Like, what’s their deal?”
“They worship a great astral being who wants to wreck the world for reasons I don’t know. They came here, killed everyone I know and tried to kill me.”
“... yeah, okay. So, they had it coming,” said Dave. He was still uneasy about the casual killing he’d done earlier but had always figured in his own mind that laws about self defence made sense in a reciprocal kind of way. If someone was undertaking an activity that endangered your life, it was only fair when you did the same in return. With these few seconds reflection Dave decided that he regretted the casualness of his killings, but not the action. Screw those guys.
“My Lady tells me that you’ll understand this: High magic setting with gritty realism,” said Hugh.
“Your lady?” asked Dave with one eyebrow raised.
“I’m a monk of the goddess Knowledge.”
“Oh, gods are real? Wait, of course they are. High magic. They fit in. Gritty realism too so… the world kind of sucks but there’s good things and hope for more good stuff?” asked Dave.
“Well, today hasn’t been great,” grumbled Hugh.
“Fair. How do you know your god is real?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know? Evidence?”
Hugh looked confused but then seemed to have a new thought.
“Oh! Yes, gods can’t manifest in your low magic world. Weird.”
“Yeah, hence my scepticism.”
“Sure. Think of something. Something definite like a specific number or word.”
Dave thought of his mobile phone number.
“0280941894,” said Hugh.
“No way!” said Dave in astonishment. He thought of the number plate on his old car and Hugh’s face went cross eyed.
“383DNS.”
“Mother’s maiden name?”
“Taylor.”
“Bloody hell,” said Dave, stunned. Hugh sat for a few moments in a comforting silence.
“I hope this god of yours has better morals than Cambridge Analytica,” grumbled Dave.
“She says ‘yes’?” offered Hugh. “She strictly avoids interference of most kinds and likes people to figure it out for themselves.”
“But she’s talking to you? That seems like an interference?” inquired Dave.
“There’re privileges for being part of the clergy,” said Hugh smugly.
“Ha! She plays favourites,” said Dave with a grin and Hugh gave a whiskery smile in return.
They sat for a while in silence, huddled in blankets and avoiding the wind as best they could on the side of a cliff. Dave was learning his new abilities and Hugh was enjoying the act of sitting perfectly still while having serious lacerations.
Dave read from the help menu and discovered basic facts about this new world. It was visually similar to his Earth, had monsters, multiple sentient races and, most importantly, a magic system upon which the political, social and economic power in every society in the world seemed to be based. It was described as the result of a high magic concentration which made magic coalesce into one of several different forms.
The purest forms were essences. They were used to bond to a sentient being’s soul and give them magical abilities related to that kind of essence. The soul could fit four essences but once you’d put in three, the soul would spontaneously create a fourth ‘confluence’ essence for you out of a mixture of the previous three, which was often very powerful. Each essence had a maximum of five associated abilities. Dave checked the numbers on his character screen and noted he had four remaining open ability slots for his magic essence. It looked like you got a freebie ability when you bonded your first essence.
Next, you had awakening stones. These appeared to bond to the essences and awaken the remaining four abilities of the essences. It was noted that the abilities awoken seemed to be influenced not only by the awakening stone but by the essence itself, racial traits, previous abilities and, hypothetically, an individual’s personality. Partial essence pieces called quintessence were relatively common loot items but couldn’t be combined into a whole essence and so, were most commonly used as fuel for magical rituals, crafting and industrial applications.
Both essences and awakening stones had rarities; common, uncommon, rare, epic and legendary. But, for both of the types of magic stone, the rarities indicated the scope of the abilities acquired, not the power. The more rare, the more narrow the scope and thus, the more predictable the abilities which made planning an ability set easier.
Next, the least common type of naturally coalescing magic was the spirit coin. It could be farmed in specific locations, the help menu didn’t say how, or generated from magic abilities such as being collected as loot from monsters. The smallest denomination was the lesser spirit coin which dropped from normal rank monsters. The other spirit coins were named as per the monster ranks they dropped from; iron, bronze, silver, gold and diamond ranks.
Essences, quintessence and awakening stones were all classified by a word which defined their power, such as growth, wrath or dimension but coins were, instead, a general kind of unassociated magic. Spirit coins were often used as magical fuel for ritual spells or making items work and could, the menu said, be consumed by adventurers in lieu of food and drink. It ended by noting that taking a spirit coin above your current rank gave that person a short term boost in power at the cost of crippling weakness after that boost. Dave mentally noted to get some definite numbers on that for later. It seemed important.
The last, most common and most important form of magic coming into the world was when it coalesced as monsters, which made no logical sense but that’s magic for you. It noted that there were ways to loot stones and coins from the corpse of a monster and the most common method was a looting ability or ritual. That triggered a memory and Dave checked his character screen. Under his ‘quest system’ ability he was happy to read, ‘Can manifest magic into physical form objects as reward for meeting challenges’ and, ‘ability to loot monsters’. He could extract money from kills and it looked like not everyone got that kind of passive income.
All of these magical objects and creatures being formed out of high concentrations of magic made Dave think of how crystals would spontaneously form in solutions with high concentrations of ions but he also filed the thought away from later. Best to focus on the basics for now.
The rest of the help menu did not relate to himself or his current situation so he skimmed over it. It explained common ways the power of magic shaped different societies and how abilities worked. In short, abilities worked by you wanting them to, often with bodily and/or spoken gestures.
Dave decided to look through his inventory and see what starting gear he had. There was a handwritten note in there. It was the only thing he hadn’t acquired by picking it up or looting. He withdrew the note and looked at the simple bit of slightly rumpled, folded paper. As though a note stuffed into a pocket. It read, ‘It’s possible to go back - Celestial Book.’ The handwritten script was neat and precise.
“Hugh, what’s this note?” asked Dave, showing it to him.
Hugh winced as he moved his arm to hold the note.
“Oh! It looks like the Celestial Book has given you a note as you passed through the astral realm. That is very interesting,” said Hugh.
“Celestial book?”
“Oh, yes. That’s a great astral being. They live between realities in the astral with their own agenda.” Hugh handed the note back.
“Like inter-universal gods?”
“Kind of. I worship the goddess of Knowledge. My specialty is astral magic! So, I guess, today is both the best and worst day of my life... Anyway, my Lady cares for knowing all things in this world but The Celestial Book is more specific; it cares for understanding the true nature of magic which spans across all worlds. I worship Knowledge but I also venerate The Celestial Book,” said Hugh.
“And, The Book left me a note,” said Dave in a thoughtful tone.
“Knowledge rather likes you, too,” mused Hugh.
“She sounds nice,” said Dave.
They both sat in a comfortable silence, mentally digesting their new information for a minute.
“Oh, there they are. Going room by room, coming back. We’ll wait until they’re past us and climb back in,” said Dave, watching his minimap.
“What then?” asked Hugh.
“Well, we’ll be alive and have enough time to think of a plan!” said Dave with satisfaction.
----------------------------------------
So, what is magic? To all of you, people from a reality where it’s native, it’s just how stuff works, part of the natural world, but that’s not what it is. It’s a forceful leashing of the natural world. Or, in its more benign forms, a suspension of natural law. Magic functions based on Platonic idealism. The concept of perfect forms. Mad thing is, the essences are built by the environment that magic finds itself in. And, since we can manipulate the environment, we can manipulate the rocks. I'm surprised more people haven't cottoned on. It’s basically agriculture.
- from The Booker Lectures, Byzas Technical University, 2688th year of His Majesty Byzas The Great’s reign.