From the journal of Dr. Leopold Tempes – Vitria, 286 A.T.S.

It is a queer thing to return home and find it almost unrecognizable. When I departed, the Vitrian Society for System Study was a largely ad hoc affair, a handful of buildings near the eastern shore purchased with a modest stipend from the Imperator. Today it is a full campus in the heart of the city consisting of dozens of interconnected structures and a staff of hundreds. Even the name has changed, branding me as Professor Emeritus of the Vitrian Institute for System Information and Technology

VISIT is admittedly a better acronym. But such, I suppose, is progress.

I had never meant for such a long absence. Quite the contrary, when first I set out some nineteen years prior I had fully intended to return by year’s end. A short trip to the continent by sea, and an overland journey through the Principalities to gather specimens and population data for my compendium. The sea was with us, and the locals so unexpectedly cooperative that we finished two months ahead of schedule. With such an auspicious start and considerable funds remaining within my budget, I chartered a local merchant to take us across the Middle Sea to Imuria.

There I made the discovery that is most to blame for my many years abroad.

It has long been understood that the System is tailored to the cultures in which it manifests. A review of the available literature shows that System menus have, for example, shifted over time to accommodate linguistic drift. Likewise the default appearance of such menus can often vary wildly from region to region in structure, layout, color scheme and so forth. At the very far end of such cultural adaptation, the System has even presented specific racial or national traits, such as the Class ‘Vitrian Guardsman’ or the oft recognized flaws inherent in the Godborn.

Thus when I was approached by an amateur Imurian scholar of some modest repute, a man by the name of Lyre Doulou, I was initially quite perplexed by his excitement. Doulou, as I soon discovered, had recently returned from a two month expedition to an ocean-side town by the name of Cere. Sent as an inspector, he and his assistants were part of an Imurian initiative to replicate the success of Vitrian census taking. Doulou claimed that, in doing so, he had discovered that the residents of Cere all shared a unique, unnamed class.

To my ears, this was not unusual. Cere, as he had explained, was a small fishing community of only six hundred and ninety-seven. By rough estimates of continental populations, that would place their expected number of Awakened in the low double digits. Perhaps not even that many. That a tightly knit community with only one primary vocation produced awakened with a similar class structure was not unusual. Doubly so if the residents had developed some method of training likely to produce the aforementioned class.

I am ashamed to admit that Inspector Doulou had to explain the matter to me twice more before I finally understood his meaning.

All of them had the class.

It was a preposterous idea, of course. I told him as much, insisting that the villagers had duped him in some fashion. Owing to the half-hearted Imurian attempt at replicating the census, his group had not included anyone with access to the Evaluate skill and had instead relied on self-reporting and demonstrations of superhuman ability. He too had been dubious, but they had been able to convince him with what I was certain were slight of hand tricks or feats of prestidigitation.

Regardless of my skepticism, the inspector made a number of compelling arguments. That the data from Cere and its surrounding towns would be useful for my compendium, that he would use his authority to twist arms to make the Imurian population more amenable to my questions and that he would share his own data. Most importantly he agreed that my research on the matter would be paid for out of his pocket. Given the limited resources of the VISIT’s precursor organization, I could not pass up such an opportunity, even if he continued to believe that the most compelling part of his pitch was ‘what if I am right’?

We traveled overland for two weeks, passing through Neva, Taci and with a two day stop in the city of Reburn. True to his word, Doulou opened a number of doors, both figurative and literal, when the time came to access Imurian awakened and their local archives. He likewise proved an adequate accomplice for drink and mischief, but that needs not be discussed further.

Our arrival in Cere was met with little fanfare. A severe people long accustomed to their way of life, the townsfolk of Cere were neither welcoming nor rude. They accepted our presence but did not let it alter their actions or behavior. They would speak if spoken to and we were provided the necessities of life during our stay, at cost of course. But more than once I was convinced that if I stood in their way they would simply attempt to walk through me. It was as though I were looking at a city of ghosts, or perhaps ill-formed Thoughtborn.

I was eager to get to work, in no small part because an evaluation would confirm not only the validity of Doulou’s allegation but their humanity as well. Instead we were made to wait. Three days, then they would have time for us. As an evaluation requires a willing, stationary subject I spent the intervening days compiling a small dossier on the village.

Culturally they shared little and less with their Imurian kin. There was a shared language, though it was spoken with such a heavy dialect that at first I was not certain. The few who could write had drifted even further, to the point that their scrawling seemed to involve an entirely different alphabet.

They acknowledged the Imurian king, but only in distant passing. I learned later that the seat of their particular liege lord had been vacant for over a century, and that no other had shown an interest in the craggy, wind whipped steps of Cere.

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“More trouble than it is worth,” had been Inspector Doulou’s explanation at the time. Looking back, I suspect he was correct, just not in the way he had intended.

Perhaps most interesting of all was the divergence in local religion.

Imuria is well known as a land of deities and demigods. To my understanding, Lal Kales held court in Imuria from 76 B.T.S. to 138 A.T.S. over the course of two consecutive reincarnations. Even before the resulting wave of worship, Imuria had a long history of local deities in the form of natural spirits, protector gods and so forth. Even small Imurian communities were notable for hosting a large temple with multiple gods ranging from local entities to the established canon of Imuria.

It was curious then, to learn that the people of Cere worshiped only a single graven idol.

The figure was carved in relief upon a standing stone, perched at the edge of the highest point of the nearby cliff face. The image depicted the supposed savior of Cere standing with his back to the viewer, his head turned to stare over one shoulder. According to legend, this man had visited them some three centuries earlier during an unspecified calamity and they had raised the stone to honor him. Though roughly hewn and lacking in artistry, the figure depicted was still somehow deeply upsetting.

I was told by the villagers that this deity provides no boons, it hears no prayers and offers no protection. In a land where the act of worship has a history of powerful results, they choose to dignify only this. When asked the man’s name, I was told he had none, or that none was known. Only a title.

It Who Is The Harbinger.

Suffice to say I was glad when the third day arrived during our time in Cere. I had slept poorly, turning and writhing through uncommon nightmares during my stay. I was eager to disprove Inspector Doulou’s assertion and be on our way, or alternately, to at least have some meaningful reason to stay in such a dreadful place.

I conducted the first Evaluation on the village Foreman and was delighted to find that I was correct. Doulou had claimed that all the villagers of Cere were awakened to an identical class, but while the Foreman was awakened, a low level Fisherman class was far from what I had expected. Further evaluations reinforced my belief. Most of the population was unawakened, and the few who were fell into entirely predictable demographics.

It was only through Doulou’s persistence that I continued beyond the first half dozen evaluations to see the truth of the matter. The inspector could not reconcile my results with what he had seen during his initial investigation of the town. Given the contradiction, he insisted we continue, even well past the point of reason. Were he not my benefactor, I would have refused.

We had conducted upwards of ninety evaluations, a staggering list that had drained my mana pool thrice over when I finally made the connection.

My work over the previous months had involved countless Evaluations and documentation of the resulting statistics. I knew quite well the baseline results for an unawakened human, for a Godborn, for all manner of Systemborn. I knew the growth rates for the classes I was evaluating and once my sample size grew large enough, I could see it with a simple glance at my notes.

Their ability scores were too uniform.

In a large enough population there is always a return to the mean. If you look at 10,000 awakened growing +4 at 50% you will see an average of +2 per level. But in a small sample size you will see outliers. Some will be higher, some will be lower. Even in unawakened groups you will see deviations as a result of flaws. But the population of Cere had no variance at all. Their awakened had one statline, their unawakened another.

No random chance could reasonably produce such results. But masking could. And given the strength of my evaluation skill, it was a powerful mask indeed. But not so powerful that I was unable to pierce it.

I could not then, and do not now understand why they told Inspector Doulou about their class, and then attempted to hide it from me. Perhaps they did not realize that they needed to hide what they were until the secret was already out in the world. I do know that telling the Inspector what I had discovered was a grave mistake.

Had I joined him in confronting the Foreman I almost certainly would have joined him in death. I do not know what was said, but I know that Doulou’s other compatriots were brutally murdered in their beds, and that I narrowly escaped by dint of being awake when they came for me. I know that Doulou’s remains were found reduced to ash and bone on a pyre, up near that horrific carving, when the village was captured after two weeks of fighting.

The Imurian state did not take kindly to the capture of one of their inspectors. Though they took a much more firm stance when the team sent to investigate my claims failed to return. What followed was open warfare that ended only when every man, woman and child in the village of Cere was dead.

Little remained of the village when I visited the aftermath. Fire and spell had obliterated every standing structure and I spent days digging through smoldering ruins in hopes of finding something to make sense of what had occurred.

It was beneath that despicable standing stone where I found my prize.

Would that I could say that I had solved some grand riddle or received some clever insight. In truth, I simply no longer wished to look upon the thing. In my anger I shoved it from the cliff face to shatter on the jagged rocks below. And in the shallow hollow beneath, I found a tin case.

Inside were two things.

The first was what had once been a Class Codex. Time had rotted through it, diminishing its magic to only the most dull traces but even those were foul and nearly overpowering. It was written in the same odd characters that the villagers of Cere had adopted, and I could make no more sense of it than the few unburnt notes I had found in what remained of the Foreman’s home. I had little doubt that this book was the origin point of the [Disciple of The Harbinger] class that was ubiquitous among the villagers.

The second was an arcane pact of some design, this one preserved by whatever cyclical powers enforced its terms. I could not read it, and much as with the codex I do not believe I would do so if I could. But I could read the names and the date. Six-hundred and ninety seven of them had signed it. They had made their bargain, adopted that evil class. And they had done so in the 57th year of the reign of Regia Amari.

The first of two local incarnations of Lal Kales.

The Imurian God Queen who died five years Before the System.