{Choose an Aspect}
{Once made, this choice cannot be undone. Your aspect will either grant you a new ability, or significantly upgrade one of your existing abilities.}
{When you’ve chosen 3 aspects, you will be given a class and gain the power to level up. Your 3 aspects will become your main progression paths.}
[Darkness]
Primary stats: MAG, PSY
[Darkness] focuses on creating illusions, on fighting using deception, and on gaining powerful advantages when fighting in the absence of light.
Choosing this aspect will grant you the [Shadowrithe] ability, allowing you to conjure and manipulate tangible darkness with which to attack your foes.
[Hellfire]
Primary stats: MAG
[Hellfire] focuses on using profane flames to destroy people, places, and things.
Choosing this aspect will improve and add to the capabilities of your racial [Hellfire] ability, and move that ability into the [Hellfire] progression path when you gain your class.
[Domination]
Primary stats: PSY
[Domination] focuses on exercising varying amounts of control over another creature’s mind. This can be to control them, paralyze them, trick them, or merely extract information from their minds.
Choosing this aspect will grant you the [Mental Domination] ability, and move your [Command Infernal] ability into the [Domination] progression path when you gain your class.
[Drain]
Primary stats: VIT
[Drain] focuses on stealing [Blood], [Mana], and power from other creatures or enchantments.
Choosing this aspect will grant you the [Consume Heart] ability, which combines the benefits of your already existing [Devour Flesh] and [Blood Drain] while being easier and faster to use.
[Minion]
Primary stats: MAG, PSY
[Minion] focuses on summoning, commanding and supporting multitudes of creatures which are weaker than yourself.
Choosing this aspect will grant you the [Animate Dead] ability, and move your [Demonic Summoning] ability into the [Minion] progression path when you gain your class.
Ashtoreth looked these over, nodding each time she was sure she understood one. She’d been hoping for an [Armament] or [Companion] aspect, but there was still two more chances to see each.
In fact, she wondered if wielding a weapon would have helped her get offered the [Armament] aspect. She’d been offered aspects like [Domination] without using their related abilities, but no [Armament].
She’d trained with a lot of conjured weapons, was all. She knew [Armament] would be very strong in her hands, and she knew it suited a mixed combat style well. It would have been a great first pick.
Except it wasn’t there.
She wrote off [Minion] and [Domination] fairly quickly. They weren’t her style in the first place, though she knew each was powerful in its own right. [Minion], especially, was a necessary aspect for any serious summoner. But in the end, neither would help her take the tutorial by storm and snowball out of control, as she’d planned.
In that sense, [Drain] was highly attractive. The only physically-oriented aspect on offer, and it would work well with anything, leaving her open to build any strategy she liked with her next two aspects. Sure, she already had the means to keep her [Blood] and [Mana] full… but she’d also already determined that drinking blood took a long time. The process could be improved.
“Lookin’ good,” she said, giving a conciliatory tilt of her head.
As for the others… [Darkness] was certainly attractive, but it was another magical element to attack with. She took a look at [Shadowrithe] and, as she’d suspected, it didn’t seem more attractive than [Hellfire]... profane and shadow damage as opposed to profane and fire.
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Demons and devils were about equally resistant to both, all in all. In the case of [Shadowrithe], the conjured shadows took more [Mana] than [Hellfire], and since she’d have to kill things by crushing or suffocating them, it would take longer to finish a fight.
Sure, the later abilities would no doubt add some great utility and be quite stylish… but the same could definitely be said for [Hellfire], an element she had more practice with.
Two choices, then: [Hellfire] or [Drain]? A look at [Consume Heart], the [Drain] ability, showed her that it would let her restore her [Blood] and [Mana] very quickly, far more than her current [Blood Drain] allowed—it let her tear the hearts right out of creatures and absorb them through her palms, no chewing required.
[Hellfire] on the other hand would obviously help her kill faster—those hellhounds had already struggled with her flames as it was.
What it came down to was this: she wasn’t sure which would help her move more quickly through the tutorial, and she suspected it was [Hellfire]. But [Drain] would reduce her risk of dying, and would work with any other aspects she came across—including the much-desired [Armament] and [Companion].
{Choose [Drain] as your first aspect?}
“Heck yeah!” said Ashtoreth.
{You gained the [Drain] aspect and the [Consume Heart] ability.}
She took a look at [Consume Heart]:
[Consume Heart]
You can use magic to tear a creature’s heart from its dead body, and you can absorb hearts through your palms.
Eating a recently-slain (within 1 hour) creature’s heart will grant two benefits:
* It will restore [Blood] as if you’d drained all their available blood, as well as rendering the rest of their blood magically inert.
* It will also increase each of your stats by 10% of that creature’s corresponding stat. For each stat, you use only the highest possible bonus out of all creatures you’ve eaten.
* The stat bonuses will begin to fade after 6 hours, completely fading after 12.
The second half of the ability was the exact same as [Consume Flesh], making the ability a perfect combination of [Drain Blood] and [Consume Flesh].
“Convenient and efficient!” said Ashtoreth.
She reached out toward the closest hellhound corpse and used the ability, enclosing the heart in a telekinetic glove, then bursting its ribcage and sprinkling herself with a little gore as she pulled the heart to her hand.
First she looked at her [Blood] and [Mana]:
Blood [1655 / 1800]
Mana [825 / 1030]
“Here goes.”
Her fist closed around the heart, blood gushing between her fingers with a squelch. She felt the heart burn away into pure magical power that flowed into her palm and then up her arm and through her body.
{You gained [Devoured Flesh] buff: +4 DEX, +4 STR, +3 VIT, and +3 DEF}
“Wow!” she said, letting out an exhilarated gasp. “That’s nice!”
Blood [1800 / 1800]
Mana [1030 / 1030]
A single hellhound heart was enough to bring both to full, she thought. The excess [Blood] must have just automatically been converted into [Mana].
She tore another heart out of one of the Hellhounds. “These still-warm hearts sure beat potions!” she said. She looked down at the white robe she’d been wearing when she’d spawned. “I wish I had pockets!”
…Or rather, the robe had been white. Blood had run down from her chin when she’d drunk from the first hound’s corpse, and now it coated both her hands as well as her chest below the shoulders where one of the hounds had scratched her.
While the one-hour time limit would prevent her from gathering truly obscene stockpiles of hearts, it still wouldn’t keep from having a stock of consumables that clearly outclassed health and mana potions.
She moved out into the hallway, then used her claws to tear away some pieces of the dead human’s blood-stained robe. These she tied in many places, fashioning a makeshift sack with a strap on it, which she hung around her neck.
She ripped out the remainder of the hellhound hearts and stored them in her new red carry-sack.
Then, with a handful of hearts around her neck, and the her newfound [Consume Heart] ability upgrading her [Vampiric Archfiend]’s [Drain Blood] and [Devour Flesh] abilities, Ashtoreth proceeded through the darkened halls, finally ready to do what she’d been planning to do for years: save humanity.
Moment’s later, she heard someone in the distance begin to scream.
“I’m coming!” she said, taking off at a run in the direction of the noise.
She felt a tremor of excitement run through her. Somebody needed her help!