When my son Michael was born we took him to the temple like every mother would, to have his Talents read. Everyone, including monsters and animals, was born with certain talents. The common ones that every person, animal, and monster had were divided into three groups, physical, mental, and social. Each of those groups had three talents, one which determined your maximum effect, one which determined how long you could perform at that level, and one that determined your accuracy when applying that effect. The physical ones were the easiest to understand, with Strength for effect, Endurance for length of the effect, and Dexterity for accuracy of the effect. For mental, you had Intelligence for effect, Willpower for duration, and Wisdom for accuracy. The Social ones were somewhat debated, though, as they didn’t fit as well. Most agreed that Charisma was the Force, but were confused with Personality being the Duration and Perception being the accuracy. From my understanding, Personality was about how consistent, honest, and likable you were, and Perception was all about noticing details, which made them kind of fit.
Sometimes, however, people would have other talents, like Fire magic, or Swordsmanship, that could indicate their gods-chosen path in life. They could also develop talents by working hard at a specific skill or get new talents that were absorbed from monsters with Talent crystals, though our village was too remote for the later and a baby wouldn’t have a chance to do the former. Talents were ranked None, Petty, Minor, Average, Major, Expert, or Master, which determined how quickly you developed skills or stats related to them. Some monsters also had Perfect talents, like a ghost’s talent for avoiding physical damage, but those talents were innate to the creature and couldn’t be taken.
With hope for my child’s future, on the second Holy day after his birth, I took him to have the talent ceremony performed. The priest took a hair from his head, laid it on the magic relic it the Room of Discovery, and said a short prayer to the god of knowledge and magic. The black magic mirror in the middle of the relic glowed slightly, and glowing words appeared within it.
Name: Michael, son of Brin Mason
Race: Human
Age: 0
Common Talents
Strength: Petty
Endurance: Major
Dexterity: Petty
Intelligence: Petty
Willpower: Average
Wisdom: Petty
Charisma: Petty
Personality: Major
Perception: Minor
Stats
Strength: 0
Endurance: 0
Dexterity: 0
Intelligence: 0
Willpower: 0
Wisdom: 0
Charisma: 0
Personality: 1
Perception: 0
That was it. No extra skills to guide him in life, and, while he could sustain any effort he did put in as well as the next person, it would be very difficult to develop them further. His stats were pretty much what you would expect from a newborn, zeros across the board except for a one in the one major talent he had.
It wasn’t long before the rumors started. Other women in town had heard of his talents and came to offer their advise. Some recommended that I end his life. Many people did this when their child was paralyzed or born sick, and the priests even recommended it as a way to save them suffering in this life and let them have it better in the next life. This, however, was something I wouldn’t do.
The kinder women suggested that I give him to the Gods to raise. Many unwanted children and orphans were given to the church to raise, with many going into service positions in the church. I at least considered this, but decided not to do it. I didn’t want to give my son up, no matter how low his talent was.
So, I and my husband did the best we could to raise him. He had siblings which were relatively normal, getting Petty in no more than three talents, and fitting in well enough with the other villagers, but Michael was special.
As his eighteenth birthday approached, I started to worry, however. Our youngest son, Gabriel, had moved out on his sixteenth birthday almost a month ago, our two daughters got married at seventeen and fifteen, with the youngest, at thirteen, having several boys interested in her, despite her low Dexterity and Intelligence. Brin said it was because of her Master Charisma and Major Personality Talents. Michael, however, still lived with us, but by tradition a child must move out of their parent’s house by their eighteenth birthday or we risked more rumors starting about us, rumors of a perverse nature.
I didn’t think Michael could support himself, however. Other than his Endurance stat at 22, his Willpower at 14, his Personality at 27 and his Perception at 8, his performance was basically that of a small child. It wasn’t for lack of effort, either. Every day he would move a pile of damaged bricks his father had brought home from work from one side of the house to the other, moving them one at a time and stacking them as well as he could. Despite this his strength and dexterity hadn’t even reached 2 yet. Once he was physically exhausted, he would come into the house where he studied math and the sciences. He was able to do addition, and only occasionally made mistakes with subtraction, but multiplication was very difficult and he hadn’t even tried to learn division yet. Then he would read and write, practicing his art and poetry to try and develop his social skills. Charisma was only at 2, but the others were ok.
Brin and I talked about it, but we didn’t know what to do. His endurance was more than enough to do manual labor, but his strength would mean that he could barely carry anything and his dexterity would mean that he constantly dropped things. He definitely wouldn’t be able to do any intellectual work and, while he was fairly good in social skills, his lack of charisma meant that things like Shop assistant were out. At most his social skills meant he could manage as a prostitute in a city, but his lack of charisma meant that he would be everyone’s last choice, though his endurance might save him with some clients. While we knew that he was interested in women, as we had caught him staring many times and even had to stop him from peeking into the women’s side of the public bath twice, I knew he would want that kind of a life even less than we wanted it for him.
For that reason we had both been working extra hard for the last two years, trying to save up enough money to buy him a better Talent so that at least one of his skills would be good enough to hire him. The average for an adult was ten in each stat, but if he could get to a seven or eight in every stat a job cared about, they might at least let him work part time, and therefore earn enough to live. Today a trader was coming in from the city and they always carried at least a few talent crystals with them.
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That night, however, my husband came back home dejected. The merchant had indeed had talent crystals, but they were all too expensive. Excellent and Master crystals for the basic talents, as well as a few magic talents and Excellent Archery. We didn’t have enough saved for an Excellent talent, or even for a common skill, which were cheaper. The merchant said that he had seen Average and Major crystals for all the basic talents in the city, but hadn’t brought any because he didn’t think there would be a market for them.
We had no choice, then. Brin would take all of our savings, including anything he thought might sell for a decent amount of coin, and go to the city with the merchant when he left tomorrow. He would then find someone coming this way and hitch a ride back. It was the only way to save Michael.
That night, however, as we went to bed, saying goodbye because he would be leaving early and I couldn’t be certain he would return, there was a knock on the door. I put on my clothes and slippers and went to see who it was, but no one was there. That’s when I noticed an envelope on the floor, having been pushed through the mail slot. It was addressed to Michael.
I opened it and a note fell out along with a crystal the size of a small marble. A red smoke-like light swirled within the crystal. I read the note. “Michael: I saw how hard you were working today, and felt like I should help you. Few people have the drive to perform like you do, but your poor talents have held you back from greatness. So I offer you this talent. With it, and your drive, I know that you will one day reach heights that only legends and heroes can. Signed: D.S. P.S. If you happen to travel to Verlos City, come by the adventurers guild and show this to the receptionist. We will be glad to have you join us.”
I looked at the crystal again. Common talent crystals were supposed to be black, magic talents blue, skill talents green and monster talents red. I had also heard of Demonic, Abysal, and Celestial talents, but had never seen any of those as they were extremely rare. As this was red, I knew it was a Monster talent, likely taken from a Dungeon in Verlos City, as this ‘D.S.’ guy had ties there. I focused on it. If I knew enough, sometimes I would see its information. But no matter what I tried, I couldn’t make the information appear.
I talked to Brin about it, and he decided that, whoever this D.S. was, he had helped us out by making a dangerous journey unnecessary. We woke Michael and told him to hold the crystal in his mouth but not swallow. The magic stone was basically a sugar crystal that was bound together by powerful magic, so he thanked us for the candy, then grew extremely tired as the crystal dissolved and went back to sleep.
The next day Michael seemed far hungrier that normal. He ate three times the amount of eggs he normally does at breakfast and twice as much bacon, then went outside to move bricks like he always did. Normally he would come back in around eight thirty or nine as his muscles hurt too much to continue, but today he was out there until noon. I got up from the embroidery I was doing to earn extra money and got him to come in for lunch. He was moving two bricks at a time, though he was struggling at it. Brin had told me that each brick you could carry without exhausting yourself was one point of strength, so he must be nearing two. When he came in he quickly ate three ham sandwiches with extra cheese and went back outside to keep moving bricks. He stayed out there all day, struggling to move three bricks at a time by the time I called him in for supper. He ate three bowls of chicken soup, the meat coming from boiling what was left of the bird from last night overnight, and removing the bones then adding the vegetables at lunch time, then went back outside and started moving bricks again. By the time we had to make him come in to go to bed, he was struggling to move four bricks at a time.
“So, what do you think the talent was?” I asked Brin as we got in bed. Monster talents were known to generally be powerful, but have a downside, making them cost as much as a similar talent one or two grades lower depending on how bad the downside was. “I think it must have been Orc strength. He ate about three times what he normally does for every meal.” From what Brin and I read while deciding which talents to buy him, I learned that Orcs have Master, Excellent, or Major strength talents, but need to eat a lot more animal products to build and maintain their muscles. In fact, most Orcs were carnivorous because of this, leading to them hunting people and animals for food.
“I don’t know. We can check his status in the morning if you want to know.” Once a person learned to talk, they could simply say or think “Status” to see their talents, stats, and skills on their own, or say “Show status (or a part of their status) to
“Yeah, we should do that. We need to help him adapt to whatever the down side is.” With that I closed my eyes.
Thirty minutes later Brin and I were starting to doze off when I started hearing grunting and banging noises from his room. He then stopped and a minute later did it again for about a minute. After the third time this cycle happened I shook my husband. “Can you go talk to him?” I asked.
“He’s an adult man. Adult men do that sometimes, usually while thinking about adult women. No reason to embarrass him over it.”
I sighed. “I know that, but can you get him to be quieter? We kept it quite when we were saying goodbye last night.”
He nodded. “Fine, I’ll go talk to him.” He put on his pants and walked over to Michael’s room. When the noise stopped, he knocked on the door. “Michael? Can we talk?”
“Yes, Dad.” he said. “Come in.”
“Are you dressed?”
“I’m wearing pants. Do you want me to wear more?”
“No, it’s fine.” Brin said as he opened the door and peeked inside to make sure Michael was decent. Seeing that he was, Brin entered the room.
“What do you want to say, Dad? Am I in trouble?”
“No, you’re not in trouble. It’s perfectly normal to do that. You are a man, after all, and there are a lot of fine women in town for you to think about like that, it’s just that we are trying to sleep and were hoping you could be quieter about it.”
Michael stared at him for a few minutes before realizing what Brin was saying. “You thought I was playing the adult game by myself?” When Brin had given him the talk at twelve after Michael noticed two horses doing it, Brin told Michael that sex was a game that adults play with each other when they love each other, but that it was wrong to play it with someone that wasn’t an adult. Since then he’d referred to it as “the adult game”.
Brin nodded, and Michael shook his head. “I wasn’t doing that. I was exercising.”
“Exercising?” Brin asked in surprise.
“Yes. Push ups, sit ups, and squats. I have to try hard on the fifth one, but I can do that.”
“Why are working out in the middle of the night instead of sleeping?”
“I’m not tired.” Brin started to say something but Michael continued. “Every night my body is tired and my brain is tired, so it’s easy to sleep. But it isn’t now. I do five push ups, five sit ups, and five squats, and I’m sore and tired, but a minute later I’m not, so I have to do it again.”
“Very unusual.” said Brin, then thought about it. “Well, try to be quiet with it, and when you get sleepy, lay down and you should be able to sleep.”
The next morning I knocked on his door to wake him up, only to find that he was still doing pushups, this time in sets of ten. After seeing me there, he finished his sets, ate breakfast, five times as much as normal this time, then went outside, carrying six bricks at a time with a bit of effort.
That night at supper we asked if we could see his Status. “Sure.” he said with a mouth half full of ham. “Show Status to Mom and Dad.” He shoved another piece of ham in his mouth.
Name: Michael, son of Brin Mason
Race: Human
Age: 17
Common Talents
Strength: Petty
Endurance: Major
Dexterity: Petty
Intelligence: Petty
Willpower: Average
Wisdom: Petty
Charisma: Petty
Personality: Major
Perception: Minor
Stats
Strength: 8
Endurance: 24
Dexterity: 7
Intelligence: 2
Willpower: 14
Wisdom: 2
Charisma: 2
Personality: 27
Perception: 8
Monster Talents
Average Troll Regeneration
Skills
Workout: 3
There were a few surprises there. First, his Strength and Dexterity were around what you would need to work a manual labor job. With a bit more work, he could support himself by being a basic craftsman of some type. Designing furniture or houses took more intelligence, but he could do the bulk work of shaving boards as a carpenter. Second was the monster talent. Now that it was part of Michael, he, and by extension anyone he showed his Status to, could read the details of that talent.
Average Troll Regeneration: +900% petty wound regeneration rate, +400% minor wound regeneration rate, +100% average wound regeneration rate, +900% Mental and Physical fatigue regeneration. Increases nutritional needs in proportion to the amount of injury or fatigue it regenerates.
After that, the low level Workout skill, which just makes physical stats increase a bit faster from exercise, seemed meaningless, even if he likely only got it last night.
The next day he went with his father to where the local lord was building a new castle. Brin was part of the Masonry team that was building the wall. Michael had no skills connected to construction, but they could put him on the wheel for the crane, as it just required him to walk forward or backwards to lift or lower the load attached to the crane. With his Endurance and monster talent, he never got tired, so he was able to work hard all day. That night he brought home his first pay from a job. As he still wasn’t tired, Michael ate a quick supper which was still twice what he would normally eat and went back to carrying bricks and stacking them.