A sudden bright white appeared all around me, though oddly it didn’t make me recoil as I had expected, after a second, a room faded in.

Everything around me changed all of a sudden I was in what I could only describe as a rather posh, i guess, medieval dressing room. I say guess because I didn’t know what a medieval dressing room should like, did they even have them back then?

Either way there was a long mirror in front of me, rather grubby around the edges, with a silver frame of swirling floral patterns.I got a full view of myself in it. To one side was a slatted wooden wall painted white, and well looked after it seemed. On the other side was a railed curtain, a deep royal red in colour. I spread it open in the centre with both hands, but all I could see was the previous vast whiteness.

“Wait, my other hand works?” I questioned myself out loud. Stretching it out in front of me, before realising I was standing on two legs and seeing with two eyes, all completely without a physical aid! None of this I’d been able to do in almost 18 months. It felt amazing.

With a small giggle of joy, I jumped on the spot a little covered and uncovered my eyes with both hands one at a time. After a few minutes of stretching and messing about I remembered where I was, feeling very impressed with the technology. I mean my hands were photorealistic, I wouldn’t of thought they a 3d model. Which was actually my own body. It must of been scanned inside the sarcophagus, awesome.

Suddenly a UI popped up in front of me, well not in front of me. In my eyes. Creepy.

“Welcome to Ouroboros Online, please setup your character.”The little box with a confirmation button on it stated. I reached out and touched it, which was oddly instinctive yet seemingly impossible. Yet it worked.

Another notification popped up.

“Please select a race and gender.” which quickly disappeared with a staggeringly large list of potential races and what genders they could use, most were either male or female, a few with only one or the other, or even neither.

As I browsed down through the list, a potential stat sheet and preview of the race popped up.

Each race had its own specific base stats and a passive skill or two, as a base the human was selected, the preview showed an exact model of how I normally looked, A tall, gaunt, pale and skinny man, I was about 6 foot tall, and what little muscle mass I had beforehand had been lost to living in a hospital bed for far too long. Every detail down to the scar across my left eye where I fell when the disease first kicked in was present, though I was able to still see through it for a while before the vision was stolen from me by #disease, painfully at that, but now returned by the power of the virtual world! I had pronounced cheekbones with a dark auburn scruffy beard I’d not been able to keep on top of lately and similar with my hair, which had grown just long enough to put into a ponytail. Cold blue eyes but apart from that I was pretty standard looking, neither overly attractive, or ugly.. I think.

The humans were very well rounded, with decent strength, agility, intelligence, wisdom and constitution, they had a passive skill called ingenuity which let them level up faster in certain skill trees, like crafting and the use of technology of all forms, as well as one called Haggler, which allowed them to get more bang for the buck in shops.

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Each stat oversees specific substats of which delegate how your character would play.

Strength

Your physical ability to carry more stuff, wear heavier armour and swing bigger weapons. It also affects damage done by maces and sword type weapons.

Dexterity

Your nimbleness, the ability to sneak, not fumble things and critical damage. It also affects how much damage you can do with daggers and ranged weapons.

Intelligence

This is the big stat for spellcasters, it affects how much mana you will have and how much damage your spells do as well as magic staffs and wands damage.

Wisdom

This stat oversees your mana regeneration as well as your social sub skills and your ability to pick up general knowledge and learn things quickly.

Constitution

This is the wellbeing of your body. The more of this you have the more health and stamina you will have, it also affects the regeneration of both of these.

Passives are a sort of racial perk that help with certain things common to that races lore traits, for example humans as stated above are well versed in technology and trade.

I browsed over a few other races;

Elves had high intelligence and agility as expected making them great at spell casting or as a rogue or archer. There passive was Nature's Blessing. It gave the ability to commune with nature, calming beast type enemies and getting directions and help from trees. - The race preview showed them as a slim but well toned race, very similar to your average human, but generally taller, with long pointed ears. The game seemed to base the model around how I looked, to an extent, though I’d have to garner a little better looking that normal.

Orcs had tonnes of constitution and strength, this would make them great warriors or tanks. Their passive was Berserker, this allowed them for a short time to enter a berserk rage dealing more damage and attacking faster. - They were towering green walls of muscle, ugly as sin.. Even though it did sort of resemble me still.. Creepy. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have tusks jutting out of my lower jaw up to just above my top lip, well not normally anyway.

Goblins were rather pathetic in general stats, low intelligence, not much strength or constitution but, damn they had agility, it was ridiculously high. They had a passive that worked when having a lot of Goblins together called Horde, it added a small amount of stat bonuses depending on how many Goblins were about, though it did reduce their agility in the same way. That could get scary if there were a lot of them. - Goblins were small creatures barely to an average person's chest, with thin stick like arms and legs, apart from that they rather resembled an orc, though rather than the large tusks they had a long witches nose, which, seeing myself like that did bring on a bout of giggling.

After going up and down through the list looking at how the different races looked and their stats several times. I finally decided on the Elemental race, dark to be specific.

The Dark Elemental, though sexless looked badass, with a barely humanoid form, well half a barely humanoid form. They were floating torso’s of stone shaped like a breastplate, with large jagged stalactite arms split into two parts for upper and lower arm ending in a set of rocky clawed fingers. A small flat head like an old barbuta helmet from the middle ages floated on top with a stony scruff at the bottom I assumed was to represent my beard, I liked it, but the best bit was the eyes glowed with an eerie darkness. - Yes childish I know, but hey if I was going to be spending a lot of time here I wanted to look badass!

Stats wise the Elementals had an advantage in the fact all stats were generally high, but the downside was very limited on equipment they could use… Namely none.. But I was assuming between the basic stats and stat growth as I levelled that would be nullified, until major late game when I’d of picked up a load of cool spells and skills to counter my weaknesses.

Additionally the passive skill for the race was called Dark Minion, which let you summon a creature of shadow, awesome.

After selecting the Dark Elemental, I had a small amount of customisation I could do, It was mainly colour and height, I opted for a medium size elemental, slightly smaller than a human stood, though that was not counting the lack of legs, but at floating height. I set myself up as an obsidian black stone with dark, dark purple energy coursing through me like veins of magic lava. I was able to asymmetrically enlarge the top of one of my stalactite arms into a sort of pauldron of a spiked crown with a glowing purple mist flowing in the centre.

1. Looked. Badass.