Ch.3
She smiled gently, then gestured towards the campfire and the sword sticking out of it. “In front of thee is a Hearthflame. Touch the hilt of the Blade.” she paused and then looked at me expectantly.
What the hell? Did she really expect me to touch the weird sword? That seemed kind of crazy, but on the other hand, maybe she was testing me?
I mean, what was the worst thing that could happen? Nothing bad could happen by touching a weird sword sitting in a campfire in a situation that screamed it was straight out of a video game!
Screw it! I stood and then put my hand on the hilt of the sword in the fire. Melnaria reached out and rested her hand on top of mine.
An involuntary shiver passed through me as I felt something pass from her hand into mine, where it seemed to take a miniscule portion of that new, brightly shining energy inside me, and pushed it into the sword’s hilt.
She smiled, though whether it was because of my trust or my obedience I had no idea. “I have aided thee this first time, but from now on, simply by touching the hilt of each new Blade in the Hearthflame and willing it so, thou mayest attune thyself to it.”
Do you wish to attune yourself to this Hearthflame? (Yes/No)
At this point, pop-ups appearing in mid-air should have hardly been surprising, but it still managed to make me jerk backwards, instinctively, only to find out that I couldn’t let go of the hilt of the sword in the fire!
I panicked for a second when I realized my hand was stuck there. It was completely irrational, but there were too many new things happening to me too quickly. I tried for a few seconds with all my might to pry my hand off of the Blade’s hilt. Then, after a few seconds of genuinely freaking out, I realized that I wasn’t being harmed. A few seconds later and a couple of quick breaths to calm myself, and I did what I should have in the first place and replied to the pop-up by saying, “Yes.”
The moment I said yes, the flame brightened and grew perceptibly. It still wasn't a bonfire, but before it had looked like little more than a campfire that was burned down to just embers; now it was burning like it had just had some fresh firewood thrown onto it.
A moment after that, my hand was able to let go like nothing had happened, though I was a little surprised that I had felt nothing more than some warmth from it.
I was starting to feel a bit surly about all of this. “What the? What just happened?”
The Bride showed her dimples in a small, pleasant smile. “Congratulations, thou are now bound to this Hearthflame. As you travel this Realm, thou wilt find more Hearthflames, and bind thyself to them, as well. Once thou hast found a second Hearthflame, thou shalt be able to use them to travel betwixt them. The area around a Hearthflame thou art bound to shall always be safe for thee. ALWAYS.” She stared at me intensely as she said that, as if it were really important for some reason.
After a moment, she continued. “What’s more, shouldst thou fall in thy Dream, whether in battle, through treachery, or any other means, ye shall return to the nearest Hearthflame to where thou hast fallen. As a new Dreamer, thou undoubtedly SHALL fall. Doing so is never good, as thou wilt drop any Records you have gained, but have not yet expended. If you return with haste, however, thou canst recover most of them, though often that will mean once again facing the danger which hath defeated thee before.”
I had SOOO many questions! The campfire and Bride had made me think about Black Spirits; a series of games that was considered the progenitor of a more difficult genre of video games usually referred to as Spirits-like games... but this? This was sounding more and more EXACTLY like those games.
So, I’d made a character from The Game to play a Spirits-like game? My head felt like it was about to break!
A second later, I realized that I could now remember the name of something! A quick mental search told me that I still couldn’t remember my own name, or those of my family, friends, or personal acquaintances, either. I COULD remember the name of the place, well places, really, that I worked – I was a Network Admin for several small and medium sized businesses in the Portland metro area.
It was weird that my brain still called that other game The Game though instead of, well, whatever it was really called.
I did I.T. for a few businesses, too, helping them unfuck themselves when some Boomer downloaded a virus by opening the wrong email attachment and so on. Really, that described almost 80% of what I did! Did some moron open the wrong email attachment and downloaded a virus? You called me.
Did you put off upgrading your servers too long and you had them melt from overuse and overheating? You called me.
Did some idiotic janitor dump a bucket of cleaning solution onto the company’s server farm by accident? Yup, you guessed it. You called me.
It felt like Melnaria was reading me like a book. I felt like my face was somehow transmitting my thoughts to her, and as much as I felt that it should be bugging me, I just didn’t care that she seemed to know my every thought almost as soon as I did.
“Parts of thine memories are sealed to protect thee whilst ye adjust to being a Dreamer for many reasons, but mostly because 'tis proven to help Dreamers adjust to their new circumstances more quickly. The Great One wishes Dreamers to thrive and advance, because doing so allows the Great One to create more Dreamers and because all Dreamers have an important Destiny!” she told him, excitement obvious in her every breath.
“Destiny? What does that even mean?” Again, I felt like I was asking what had to be the most obvious question in the world. I felt like I was being led around by the nose, here, but an obvious question wasn’t necessarily a bad one.
“Alas, that is one of those things I cannot yet impart unto thee. Rather, let me impart the last few things that I can. The Hearthflame is also where ye will be able to Advance once thou hast gained sufficient records. There are many types of advancements, and the cost of such advancements are determined by thy current level. Records come from combat, training, and learning. Being taught by an expert gives a greater number of Records than being taught by someone merely competent, but both give Records. Higher quality training methods also give more Records than lower quality methods. And so on.”
That all made a lot of sense, but my Min/Maxxer senses were tingling!
“Can you tell me more about the different kinds of Advancements?” I asked her.
She nodded. “Advancements come in several different types. The first, and most important, is levels for thy class or classes. You have chosen two classes; they will need to be advanced separately.”
That seemed fair to me. Really. I thought I had been pulling one over on who or whatever was in charge, when really it seemed that what I did was expected. It did raise a couple of other questions, however!
“Uh, so how many classes can you have?” I asked, excited to know the answer.
She grinned at me. “Two is the limit for someone at thy level. As ye advance, thou mayest find opportunities to gain additional classes or to trade in your current class for a different one.”
Oh, well. Still, it was pretty darned cool, anyway! Sounds like there would be a chance to both get a third or maybe even a fourth class at some point, and that Prestige Classes were a thing, too!
‘What other kinds of Advancements are there?” I asked.
“Thou mayest purchase what thou callest Feats, Talents, and Masteries, though many of these things will cost a significant portion of the records needed to advance a level in thy Classes. Also, each new purchase in each category for that level will cost twenty percent more than the previous purchase.”
The power gamer in me was just about doing back flips! So many Feats and Talents would be mine! I just needed to find a good place to grind for experience!
Whoops! Records, not experience. Come on, man, you need to use the right term.
It was hard to think of being able to buy Masteries as anything other than super OP. The Mastery system was another third Party system, letting a character purchase some Alternate Path Class abilities... those were Class defining traits! Being able to have several of them was crazy!
Whoever this ‘Great One’ Melnaria was talking about was not worried about balance or OP characters, that’s for sure!
“And that increased cost disappears when I level up a class?” I asked.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“When thou dost level up thine Primary class, but yes.” Melnaria, the Bride of Virtue answered.
It was all I could do not to start dancing in place. “Was there anything else important for me to know?” I asked her.
“Nay, thou hast the information the Great One hath sent me to impart unto thee.” she told me with a smile.
She might speak in medieval dialects, but Melnaria is OBVIOUSLY down with the power gamer part of me! Huh. Dang she’s sooo hot! I wonder if that Bride of Virtue title is ceremonial or... you know? Literal? It’d be a shame if she was married already!
At least that’s what I told myself. She might have just been amused by seeing a grown man acting the fool, though.
Nah. Hottie McHotterson, the Bride of Virtue or w/e, was definitely down with the power gamers! “Well, uh, thanks? I really do appreciate this. Having a conversation about all of this,” I gestured to the world around me, “makes me feel like the odds that I’m actually locked in a padded room reserved for crazy people is at least marginally smaller!”
Because of course I had considered that a possibility; this world definitely felt like way too much of a combination of personal fantasies for me to not consider approaching it like it was a delusion.
On the other hand, if I really was a character from The Game in a Black Spirits-like world, it was going to be dangerous as hell, and give no fucks about my feelings! Spending mental energy worrying about whether or not it was real could easily distract me from something that wanted to kill me!
Plus, as surreal as I found my situation, too much of this felt too danged real to simply be a dream. Even if Melnaria was right, and me ‘falling in battle’ just meant I’d rise again at a Hearthflame, I had absolutely ZERO desire to test that!
I’m sorry, I refuse to test that ‘feature’ of this world out if I can help it!
“So, what do I do now, Melnaria, Bride of Virtue?” I asked her.
“Thou shalt have to decide upon that thyself. There is a new world, full of opportunities for thee! Be thee a hero or a rogue, a villain or a champion, venture forth and seize thy Fate! Bend Destiny to thy whim or be broken by it! Fare thee well, Dreamer.”
She smiled at me one last time, then touched the hilt of the Blade within the Hearthflame and was gone in what looked a great deal like a Star Trek TNG transporter effect!
“Well, damn. THAT’S something you don’t see every day.”
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I spent the first few hours after Melnaria left just practicing with my new abilities.
The new me was pretty darned ridiculous, as far as the power of a starting character was concerned, and feeling the differences was pretty mind boggling, to be honest.
I knew beyond any doubt that I was now faster, stronger, and tougher than all but the very most elite of Olympians and pro athletes. I was pretty sure I'd mop the floor with most pro MMA fighters, and with just a few levels, it wouldn’t just be most of them anymore... it’d be ALL of them!
And that was without any of the supernatural powers I had access to now! Frankly, it was sort of freaky.
It was SUPER cool, though!
Finally, I ventured forth from my safe Hearthflame space, headed towards the sound of rushing water.
The room was impressive. The only light was bioluminescent fungi and moss, but there was a decent amount of both of them on the walls and floor, making it easy to see. The channel for the underground stream – I’m not sure if it was technically a big stream or a small river – was about 30’ wide. Of course, I had no clue how deep it was, but I wasn’t willing to bet it was very shallow.
There was an area with a great deal of white water, but even there the water flowed quite quickly despite what looked to be some big rocks... which my Survival skill told me usually meant that the water was quite deep.
Even though the mushrooms and moss seemed to light the room up quite nicely, I decided to turn on Eyes of the Efreet and take a look around. Being able to see in the IR spectrum was odd, and this was a perfect chance to play with it a bit more. My eyes lit up with a silvery-blue glow and the world around me changed.
Man, was I ever glad I decided to try my cool new power out!
Otherwise, I would have completely missed the gigantic freaking spider lowering itself towards my head on an over-sized thread of silk! We’re talking about a body the size of a medium sized dog, here! Each of its legs were almost four feet long!
Above its head I could see a message labeling it for me.
Giant Spider, 3rd lvl.
I didn’t like spiders very much. I didn’t exactly hate normal spiders; they do an important job in the environment, you know? But THIS spider’s torso was nearly as big as mine is, and it was obviously looking at me as dinner, coming down that line of webbing right at me like that!
So, I did what I’d spent the last couple of hours practicing! I jumped upwards and to the cave wall behind me to get out of its reach, and then, in mid-air still, I bounced off the wall and straight at it with a flying kick!
The basics of combat in The Game are pretty simple. Each target has an AC, an Armor Class, which is also referred to as Defense. Their AC is 10 + their Dex Mod. + whatever else they have that increases AC. Armor, magic, and various special abilities can all increase AC. It’s about not letting things hit you in the first place, by dodging or deflecting attacks passively.
Each attacker has a to-hit bonus derived from their character level, Stats, Talents, Feats, and items, which is the other side of the equation from AC to see if an attack lands.
I used Spark Strike and spent a point of Pneuma to get a +2 to hit with the maneuver. I was at +1 from my base attack bonus, +4 from my Strength stat, +1 from Martial Mastery (Brawler) and +2 for using Pneuma to Enhance the Maneuver, then –1 since I was Power Striking.
The attacker then, in The Game, rolls a 20-sided die, and adds their ‘to-hit bonus’ to their roll. If that total equals or exceeds their opponent’s AC, they hit and do damage!
+9 to hit at 1st level is pretty good, to be honest. Ok, it's REALLY good.
The kick connected pretty easily, and that was one dead spider. 1d6+10 physical + 1d6+5 lightning + 2d4 force... that all made for about 27 points of damage on an average, non-critical hit.
To contrast that, 1-6 points of damage, or 1d6, is how much damage a club does on a hit; so about the same damage as a baseball bat. Average damage of one to 6 is three and a half points of damage, which we’ll round to four to make the math easier. Your average high school ‘jock’, the really dedicated ones, probably have about a 14 strength, which is +2 damage. Two-handing a weapon increases your strength’s damage bonus by 50%, in this case to +3.
So, a stud, totally buff high school jock swinging a baseball bat as hard as they can, with both hands, is going to do about six or seven points of damage, on average... I just hit this spider for almost four times that, in a single blow!
Plus, at 3rd level, a normal creature has between fifteen to eighteen hit points, so this was more than 50% overkill, most likely! In The Game, players can go to negative health equal to their Constitution score (Or lower with certain Feats and other stuff), but monsters die at zero!
My foot connected with its head, there was an impressively loud ‘ZORCH!’ from the discharge of electricity and pure elemental force, and its head was essentially blasted clean off of its body!
I landed just in time to realize that the giant spider hadn’t been alone! There were at least two others I was now noticing with my IR vision from Eyes of the Efreet! One was about 150 feet away, but the other was only maybe 30 feet away.
I noticed the nearer spider trying to be sneaky as it launched a web in my direction. Luckily, my AC is nearly as silly as my damage. A first level melee combatant is considered to have decent AC if it’s around 16. Mine was 20!
Base 10 + 5 Wisdom + 3 Dex + 2 Dodge bonus from Elemental Embrace(Air)! It was going to get so much sillier, too.
Silliness doesn’t account for luck, though, and either the spider’s luck was good or mine was bad... maybe both? Anyway, the web hit me!
Oh, shit! Gotta get out of this! I could still move, but I knew I was in for a lot of trouble if I didn’t get out before it got to me!
I was thanking my lucky stars that I’d taken the Escape Artist skill. One of that skill's biggest benefits at lower levels, other than escaping manacles and such, is that it makes it easier to get out of this precise situation!
It took me two rounds of trying, and in the meantime, the spider that had webbed me had gotten close enough to try to bite me! It succeeded, too, since my AC was lowered by a bunch as I was held in place by the web!
I could feel it injecting poison into my arm, could feel it going numb, which my Alchemy and Survival skills both chimed in to inform me was NOT a good thing!
A moment later, though, I managed to break free of the web trapping me and wasted no time attacking. Sadly, I couldn’t use Spark Strike again until I reset my hand of abilities which for now was only Spark Strike and Eldritch Shield.
Combat Arts in The Game worked a lot like a collectible card game, in a lot of ways. It's weird now that I’m using it in real life, but it was a fun system in The Game. There were three general types of abilities – Stances, Passives, and Actives. Stances you always had access to, but you could only use one at a time... even though they’re similar they’re also separate from Style Feats. Passives were either always on or could be toggled on and off, and usually were utility abilities like Eyes of the Efreet.
Active Combat Art maneuvers, though, were like cards played as part of a combat round. Actives were further subdivided between Boosts, Counters, and Strikes.
A Boost did exactly what it sounded like, it let you enhance a combat action. Sometimes they gave a bonus to hit, or on a skill roll or combat maneuver check, some of them gave an enemy a debuff, and sometimes it just did extra damage. Boosts were incredibly useful, but I didn’t have access to any of them just yet.
Counters were basically a defensive version of a Boost. Whereas a Boost could only be played on your turn, though, a Counter could be played in response to an attack on you, an ally, or maybe someone or something you were trying to protect. Sometimes they required you to beat the attacker’s roll with a skill roll. Sometimes they gave an increase to your AC or saves. Sometimes they gave DR or elemental resistance in order to reduce the damage from an incoming attack. A lot of what each one did depended on the kind of Combat Art they came from.
All Counters were a response to an attack, though. The only difference was the kind of response.
Active Combat Art Strikes were exactly what they sounded like. Sometimes it was a single, big hit. Sometimes it was an AoE attack. Some of them let you attack multiple times, or against multiple targets. Some of them healed, or caused crowd control, or some type of debuff – it all came down to the Combat Art’s theme that the Strike came from.
Combat Arts had all kinds of different themes, too. Fist of the 4 Elements did what it sounded like – it allowed its users to command the 4 elements of Western alchemy in combat, and oddly was just as useful with melee or ranged weapons. Hex Razor, on the other hand, was all about cursing your enemy into submission. Broken Blade was a style that was essentially super Karate, and both its maneuvers, philosophy, and history were obviously based off Karate.
There were dozens more Combat Arts, aside from these few, too.
They were divided into 9 Circles, just like spells were in The Game. Obviously, higher Circle abilities were more powerful – they did more and hit harder!
When you used an Active ability, it was temporarily discarded – similar to how a cooldown works in many video games. Different classes regained their abilities differently and could hold a different number of ‘cards’. The Disciple, specifically, chose a small number of ‘cards’ to have access to at the start of a fight and a larger number in their draw pile, and randomly added a new card every combat turn until they had all of them in hand.
Remember, what I’m describing how it works in the tabletop RPG. I have no idea, just yet, how things will work here... though I’m thinking it will be similar. Everything has been, so far!
Once a player had used all of their Actives, they went back to the scenario from the beginning of the fight and did it all over again. The Disciple Class could also discard all of their remaining cards, though it took a full combat round, and start over again; drawing a full hand of Actives from scratch.
Most spell casters, once they used a spell, it was gone. Combat Art users, though, could re-use their maneuvers an infinite number of times in a day if they stayed in combat that long and managed to survive! Of course, each class that granted Combat Art maneuvers had different ways to regain them, too.
The balancing factor between spell casters and Combat art users was that spells were generally stronger – even much stronger in most cases – and had access to a lot more utility abilities. Combat Arts strength was they could be used over and over and over again.
Right now, I only had 2 actives, so I could start every fight with both of them in my hand and using both returned each of them to my hand.
All of that was how it worked in the game and what I'd seen said that was how they worked wherever I was now, too.
My base damage should be plenty versus these spiders, though.
The spider wasn’t ready for me to escape its web so quickly; I got the feeling that these spiders weren’t used to anything they considered edible fighting back! My knife hand strike, what a layman might refer to as a karate chop, might as well have been an axe's blade as it blasted through the bulbous spider’s exoskeleton and discharged a huge load of electricity all up in its gooey innards.
It fell over and started smoking, it legs twitching a few times before curling in on it.
The last spider had been running towards me as fast as its no-so-little legs would carry it, probably worried it would miss out on dinner if it didn’t get to me in time.
I could feel the venom from the spider’s bite flowing through my veins, and wasn’t sure what that was going to do to me, so I charged it, sprinting forward and, to get the extra little distance to reach it, went straight into a flying kick.
The kick landed as a Critical Hit! 42 points of damage! Lightning Dragon Style for the WIN!
The force behind the kick was impressive, and it essentially contributed to that force since it was running towards me as well.
The discharge of electricity was really impressive, too! Lightning wreathed it, throwing off blueish white streamers as its limbs twitched spasmodically.
I essentially blew it into itty bitty spider chunks. To put it bluntly, the force seemed excessive.
Holy cow, that’s gonna be a lot of exp! An encounter with 3 enemies that were all 2 levels higher than me? Hell yeah!
I checked the area around me for more foes and found none.
Whoot! Killing three 3rd level enemies solo is gonna be a freaking BONANZA of experience! Err... Records. Right. Gotta use the correct terminology.
My excitement at my victory was so huge, I’d forgotten all about the spider poison, at least for a moment! A throb of pain from my shoulder reminded me of it.
Wait. The Hearthflame is right behind me. Should I go see if I can use it? Yup, I totally should! Also, if this is really going to follow the Black Spirits formula, using the Hearthflame should reset everything! Meaning the poison should go away and I should get three more spiders to fight!