Novels2Search

Chapter 1

The smell of lasagna permeated my little apartment, for some reason in our down time between seasons of whenever we wanted to take a break from the game, we were logged into a small virtual apartment that the system initially designed by pulling memories from our subconscious. My one-bedroom apartment looked exactly like my first apartment in Big Lake. My beige living room had the same old tan carpet and fake white leather couch that sat in front of my holo-screen projector. A discarded holo-tablet filled with thousands of books sat discarded on the arm of the couch. The only difference being that the room felt much larger due to the fact that it no longer held my VR pod. Before jettisoning us off to parts unknown, our kind benefactors uploaded basically every album, book or movie database they could find so we could save a large part of our history and culture, it had the secondary benefit of giving us something to do with our down time.

We could also visit other players housing or go to local taverns and old school movie theaters, it was all virtual of course but that’s the world we live in, if you can call what we do living. We were always given a couple of months between seasons in order for the System to go over data from the last version of the game and make its updates. I had met a small group of friends who I grew pretty close to over the last 12 months of downtime. Unfortunately, in order to make the game fair the AI would disable our friends list inside the game, if we met up in game we could add them again but there was no chat or mail system so it was pretty difficult. Some people strategized potential race and starting locations so they could quickly meet up with their friends, it was a common practice and helped you get a jump start in the season.

My friends and I had already said our goodbyes the night before and we were all pretty much on the same page on how our last day was going to look. After setting up our plan for potential in game meet ups and the rolls we might take during our adventures, we decided we would each spend the day alone preparing for what looked to be our last.

Instead of watching Kirito saving an entire gaming world or rereading the Martian, I was currently sitting at my Kitchen counter in front of an enormous plate of lasagna, reading up on the games newest Patch Notes. I held what looked to be an old timey newspaper, for those of you who don’t know what that is, a newspaper basically giant pieces of paper folded up multiple times in a loose configuration. It’s how most people from the 1900’s to early 2000’s received their news. I don’t know why the Al decided to relay all prevalent information of the Patch Updates this way, but the AI did have access to all of the known historical documentation of the last 500 years, so something about that time must have stood out.

So, when a newspaper materialized this morning, the night after the we all were forced to watch the demise of the last group of settlers, I wasn’t surprised. The AI made the viewing of the events on each potential planet mandatory, some people think it that it’s for the solidarity of our group and to make the settlers feel like we were still with them. I on the other hand think that it’s the systems way of pushing us to be better and reminding us that we are lucky to still be here. What was surprising were all the changes to the AI was making to the System.

System Updates and General Information

I regret to inform you that our latest attempt at colonization has failed and that the list of available planets we can visit is dwindling. According to our data there are only three planets within our range that could possibly support the continuation of the human race. Two of said planets are close enough where we could reach both before our depleting supply of fuel runs out. The initial scan of planets XN-237 and XN-382 show incredible promise. We have already started our journey to XN-237 and you can find more information about each planet on page 6. One exciting addition to the ranking system is that the first-place winner will get to name the next potential planet for colonization.

I am pleased to announce the launch of a new Season of Helion Online! This Seasons theme is based on a Fresh Start for all. The servers are set to unlock at 5 pm, please read over the patch notes below to learn about the new features being implemented. First and foremost being a full reset of your former character names, affiliations, and accomplishments. As of this morning your Friends Lists have now been wiped and any recollection of specific groups or people have been deleted from your memory. This is all in hopes that this Season will be a true fresh start for all you Adventurers!

Talk about jaw dropping news and I don’t mean about the fact that the planet was most likely doomed to be named Planet Diaper or something similarly stupid. I actually had to close my mouth that fell open as read that last paragraph. I quickly tried but failed to pull up my Friends List, bringing up my HUD the Menu options for my Friends List was grayed and crossed out. The implications of this new update were enormous, the last the seasons were dominated by the same five Guilds over and over again. They had made ranking in the top 300 nearly impossible without joining one of them and unless you were an officer you had no hope of even dreaming about the top 100. This really evened out the playing field. While I knew that as fact, I couldn’t recall the name of the Big Five, apparently, the update was already working. This update alone changed the game for ever, but fortunately for me there was more.

Another Big update is the separation of Combat Oriented Players and Skilled Professionals, instead of having classes and professions both we are going separate them. This will forever change how the game is played. Maybe you are wishing to be a Smith, Jewel-crafter, or Leatherworkers, heck why not all three! People choosing this route will now be qualified as Playable Non-Playable Character’s (Kind of an oxymoron I know). More information on Playable NPC’s is on page 2.

The flip side to this is that the Combat Oriented Players can now sole focus on Combat and will now be called Player Combatants. PC’s they will no longer be able to choose a profession or level up any crafting skills. If at any time you would like to swap between from a PC to a Playable NPC, you are allowed to do so but will take a penalty to your Level and receive slightly below average skill rankings when transferring over. All PC’s will now start in an individualized starting zone void of other players crafting a unique starting experience based off your race.

This leads me to the last big update; CLASSES ARE NOW GONE! Yep, you read it here folks instead of choosing a class in the beginning of your journey, you now have the freedom to be whoever and whatever you want! Want paladin like powers? Devote yourself to a Deity and prove your worth and you might get lucky! Want to summon spirits to fight alongside you, figure out how to do it. The opportunities for greatness are endless! There are even more updates, but we will leave the rest for you to discover

The article continued to talk about the new races and where to find a synopsis of all of them starting on page 4 along with a few other minor updates and general information on page 3, but I wasn’t interested in that right now. I quickly flipped to page 2 and read through the Playable NPC information.

Playable NPC’s say welcome to the new normal!

NEW PLAYABLE NPC are a game changer! With the changes to Pain Tolerances, if you choose to live a life of Luxury, void of the pains of everyday life you can! Commit yourself to a craft and find that all your dreams can come true. The major benefits of this playstyle include an increased boost in experience from quests and crafting items, a healthy stress-free life devote of pain and the absence of death. If you chose to become a Playable NPC, you will be allowed to skip the personal starting zones and will be given a small space as an apprentice in a town or city depending on your Race. Unlocking recipes, crafting legendary items and even your job title will all count towards increasing your rankings. We don’t need 800 warriors; we need 800 people willing to work hard building a society!

The article continued to spew its propaganda of its newest feature, but I had read It was obvious to me that the System decided that it needed more players to choose the route of Crafting and Building over swordplay and sorcery. I probably decided that hat as a player base had become much too focused combat as of late. But For all the bonuses and positive benefits playing as a crafter would entail the AI it left out only one key fact; in last five iterations of the game and of all the numerous amounts of players who choose to focus sole on crafting, only one had ever made it into the top 100. We all knew who controlled all the money, power, resources and ultimately dominated the upper rankings: it was the high-level adventurers who ran powerful guilds.

There were definite benefits, and I could see many players choosing this route, while getting top 100 might have been ruled out. The fact that the number of deaths along with our personal level and skill rankings were such a big factor in rankings in the past meant that the increased experience boosts from crafting and quests, and lack of penalty from not dying meant that quite a few crafters would make it to the top 300. Maybe even one or two would make it into the top 100. Yep, an easy life for a few that lead to an almost 4.5% chance at being chosen would make quite a few people chose that path.

I had a feeling that most people would still choose the combat route, it was a proven winner in the past and it guaranteed the best chance a survival. I moved on to page 3. In fact it might even make placing in the top 100 even easier as more people would settle on being mediocre.

General Knowledge

With the new updates means that some of the old stylings and features will need to be reworked. Playable NPC’s lead to a major change in our Stats.

Strength – Affects melee weapon damage and carrying compacity, can determine ability to wear armor and use certain weapons or tools. Strength may determine requirements for use of weapons and armor.

Agility – Affects movement speed, small melee weapons and range weapon damage and, can determine ability to move undetected and ability to dodge. It will help improve crafting time.

Dexterity – Affects melee and range attack speed along with accuracy. It improves hand eye coordination and can affect blocking and parrying weapon affects. It also helps determine the care in which you craft items.

Constitution – Affects one’s health and health regeneration. Can determine one’s ability to shrug off damage and can even dampen affects form poisons and other debuffs.

Endurance – Affects your level of stamina and stamina regeneration. Anything that physically exerts one’s body uses stamina to some degree. A higher constitution score will allow you to work for longer periods of time.

Intelligence – Affects your mana levels and your ability to cast spells. It slightly increases your ability to think logically and figure out solutions to problems. It will also help you to craft new recipes, modify spells and learn new abilities.

Wisdom – Affects your mana recovery rate in combat and while at rest. It slightly increases your perceptions and ability to ward off certain spell affects.

Charisma – Affects your ability to affect others and control summons. Slightly increases your likely hood of NPC’s liking you which can lead to discounts or quests.

All Player Combatants will now start in instanced starting zones based on your Race. Quests and rewards will reflect the habits and behaviors of the race you have chosen. There will be many secrets to discover in your starting zones meant to give you a leg up in the game if you can find them. You will have You will also have the choice to leave or stay at any point after you hit level 5, but the starting zone will scale with you until you reach level 10.

Many of your experiences will be defined by those around you and because of that we have reworked the old Name Plate system. Hostile targets name plates will show up as red and non-hostiles will show up as yellow. Elite mobs will similarly be divided as Dark Crimson for hostile creatures. Copper for elite non-hostile creatures or other important figures.

Unknown players will show up as yellow, friendly players will show up as green, and party members will show up in purple. Playable NPC’s regular PC’s will be blue and for everyone white will indicate regular NPC’s. The Gods of the Realm will be indicated by the color Gold; Tarnished gold for the evil aligned gods and rose gold for the benevolent ones. Playable NPC’s will show up with a silver name plate from now on.

With the removal of classes Characters will now be much more defined by their skills and abilities than their titles. That being said earning rare rewards for epic quest chains or by gaining the attention of the gods means that the game will be much more fluid in its combat dynamics. Do not forget that flexibility is key in this type of playstyle. Not one will get far on brute strength alone…

Again, I decided to move on before finishing the article. The fact this article and the new colors schemes were basically fabricated to highlight and elevate the new Playable NPC play style in the eyes of the players was annoying. They were basically saying two things, the first being that Gods, the Playable NPC’s and Authority Figures like Kings and queens were special and that the AI was putting them in that order: Gold, Silver, and Copper. The second thing was that it “regular PC’s” were at the same level as “regular NPC’s”.

I would like to say that it almost changed my opinion, but I would be lying. I tried crafting in the past and the painstaking time it took to create even one item would bore me to tears and knowing that I would be committing to that life of misery for next the three almost four years would be excruciating. Choosing this playstyle might be a good way to have a decent chance at survival but I would be condemning myself to the equivalent of working in a sweat shop in order to achieve it, all work and no play was no way to live. If this was going to be my last few years alive, I was determined to enjoy them. I skimmed the to the new racial features and hopped into my character creation screen.

I didn’t think that I would discover a new feature of the game so early, especially without actually entering the game, but I did. As soon as I thought to bring up my new character sheet, the room started to fade and after a couple seconds, and I was launched like a rocket through the ceiling of my fake apartment. I was jettisoned off into space, instead of a fill in the blank character sheet, I found myself floating in space surrounded by billions of stars with a spectacular view of Aternia, the land we all called home.

Looking out I could see Aternia in all its glory, Aternia looked huge as it was suspended before me slowly rotating around giving me a full view of the planet. I quickly realized that the topography had changed since the last season, as the large continent I called home for that last 6 years was nowhere to be found. Having never seen earth from space and I had no real way of gaging its size but from previous iterations we knew it was roughly twice the size of earth. Much of its landscape would go undiscovered during our time on it and the story lines caused boarders and even the landscape to shift constantly. After taking in the view for a few moments I spun around only to find a ghostly apparition of myself.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Here I was standing there in what I realized a darkened room, if you could call a cube of force floating in space and void of all life, a room, staring at an avatar that was more shadow than person. I realized that I was getting excited once more to play a new game, sure it was one with increasingly heavy stakes, but this season seemed to be everything it had promised and this new version of Character Creation truly cementing the feeling of a fresh start and now that there were no set classes our biggest factor affecting our playstyle would be our Race. Realizing that I could still pull up a menu about our potential starting races I quickly reviewed them all once more.

Beastkin – Nomadic Anthropomorphic Humanoids that come in many shapes and sizes along with varying degrees of animalistic features. Beastkin all gain a decent bonus to increased skill growth with Leatherworking profession.

Lionel – Gain two Strength and one Agility per level along with three free stat points. Racial bonus: Roar of Courage – Passive and active Buff that wards against Mind Affecting abilities.

Panthera – Gain two Agility and one Dexterity per level along with three free stat points. Racial bonus: Shadow Skulker: Increased Stealth in low light and while in cover.

Wolfen­ – Gain one Dexterity and two Wisdom per level along with three free stat points. Racial bonus: Pack Tactics – Increased Combat reflexes and awareness while in a group.

Bearstein – Gain one Strength and Two Constitution per level along with three free stat points. Racial bonus: Thick Hide – Increased natural defenses.

Dwarves – Short and Stout these brave and true people are natural warriors and blacksmiths.

Dwarves use less stamina while Blacksmithing and Mining.

Hill – Gain two Constitution per level along with four free stat points. Racial bonus: Sturdy Folk - Gain Poison resistance and increased starting health.

Mountain – Gain two strength per level along with four free stat points. Racial bonus: Richer Not Poorer – Increases gold and loot drops from enemies.

Iron – Gain one Constitution and one Endurance per level along with free stat points. Racial bonus: Iron Legion – Gain increased defense while wearing Heavy Armor.

Elves – Long lived and beautiful they are steadfast, prideful and most of all loyal. Elves gain a 5-level increase to all crafting professions due to inherent knowledge.

High – Gain two intelligence per level along with four free stat points. Racial bonus: Arcane Knowledge – Increased Skill advancement with Basic Schools of Magic.

Wood – Gain one agility and one wisdom per level along with four free stat points. Racial bonus: One with Nature – Gain an innate ability with Nature magic without the need to learn the prerequisite schools of magic.

Dark­ ­– Gain one Charisma and one Intellect per level along with four free stat points. Racial bonus: Seductive Whispers - Your Charisma is more potent when regards to dealing with NPC’s and Summoned creatures.

Gnome – Inquisitive and curious, their attention spans match their height. Gain a bonus to inventing new crafting recipes.

Tinker – Gain two Intelligence and one Wisdom per level along with three free stat points. Racial bonus: Genius - Gain an increased to Mana pool and Mana Regeneration.

Deep – Gain one Agility and two Endurance per level along with three free stat points. Racial bonus: Nimble Fingers – Increased skill advancement of Lockpicking and Sleight of hand skills.

Rock – Gain one Agility and two Constitution per level along with three free stat points. Racial bonus: Magic Resistance: Decreases magic damage taken.

Humans – Prolific mortals who are as varied as they are numerous, the youngest of all the races in Aterna. Humans gain a minor experience increase to learn all crafting professions.

Arkan – Gain one Agility per level along with five free stat points. Racial Bonus: Militant Society – Gain a plus 5 to all Martial Proficiencies and a free relevant Martial Ability.

Cuen – Gain one Constitution per level along with five our free stat points. Racial bonus: Prodigy – Every three levels gain an additional free stat point.

Sprites (New) ­– Short in stature and bound by nature they are attuned to the very essence of their home. Gain an innate ability called Cultivation, which is a subskill of Herbalism.

Forest – Gain two Dexterity per level along with four free stat points. Racial Bonus: Imbued Strike – Infuse mana into a strike to increase the damage done.

Water – Gain one Agility and one Dexterity per level along with four free stat points. Racial Bonus: Born to Water – Increased swimming speed and gain the ability to breath underwater.

Earth – Gain one Constitution per level along with five free stat points. One with Nature – Gain an innate plus 5 proficiency with Earth Magic.

Many races gave bonuses to agility which was a stat I wanted to focus on, water sprites are out, their being able to breath underwater may be powerful and unique but it was extremely situational. I also couldn’t see myself being three feet tall for what could potentially be the rest of my life, so that meant gnomes were out as well. Wood elves racial ability seemed powerful, but it seemed to narrow focused. Arkan Humans bonus was a strong early game play on but overtime its effectiveness would lessens as players levels and skills increased, but it was also potentially useful if I need to swap weapons later on.

The biggest question was whether or not I wanted to play a caster like character or a melee one. For those two options two of the races stood out to me and that was the High Elf and Arkan Humans, they also came with the bonus of not spend my last days covered in fur or being three feet tall. Mostly it was their class abilities the drew my attention and choosing between the two races would determine the route in which my character build would go, either a martial character or caster.

For those of you who don’t know me my mind tends to wander, it makes weird connections and I often find myself distracted following a single thought down some rabbit hole, often wondering how I got myself to one random train of thought or another. It’s kind of like sitting down to watch a YouTube video and an hour later finding yourself saying “Why am I watching random cat videos.” Reading through my class options and daydreaming about my future builds to eventually lead me astray. Far too often in mmorpgs melee characters started out stronger in the beginning and ended up being cannon fodder for the spell casters in the late game.

To be fair getting a spell caster to those heights was a terrible grind usually resulting in many deaths early on. And I wanted to have the best of both world, why couldn’t I have it this version of the game had no preset classes or talent-based progression so why did I have to pigeonhole myself into playing in single style based off one simple but important choice all before I even set foot in the game. I am all in for when it comes to min-maxing when you have hours to play around with talent choices and stat points that eventually lead to maximizing your characters potential, but this was not that kind of situation. This lead me to think about that second season and how well I ranked. I did my best while playing a ranger class that had the best of both worlds. I also realized that Arkan human and high elf truly did have the best options for that style of play. Arkan human would give me a huge boost to my melee abilities early on that would quickly become less pronounced and being a high elf would give me the long game benefit of a boost to my magic ability.

Seeing no easy solution at that point, my mind began to wander once again. I followed down a particular rabbit hole, thinking about flinging spells, slaying monsters, and saving the world. All the while discovering the grandest adventures and secrets the System had in store for us. That lead me to thinking about what other new features the System might have come up with. I don’t know how but eventually my thoughts brought me to Rocket Power and how it was one of the best tv shows ever created “woogity woogity” am I right? And what ever happened to real rock bands singing the music intros for 1990’s television shows. I mean come on have you ever seen the extended version of the Jason Paige singing Pokémon theme song it’s amazing. It be fair I might have stepped out of the character creation screen for a minute or two to watch it on my holo screen.

Floating once again in the void of space figuratively and well literally if you count the fact that my body is floating in suspended animation on an enormous space station. I got back to working on my new character, while pondering my choices I walked around my shadow, with a flex of my mind I switched back and forth between my options and started playing around with my avatars appearance. I made some slight changes, I tried shortening and lengthening my hair along with changing its color, before settling on my normal close cropped Brown hair style. While looking knock off Orlando Bloom from Lord of the Rings was cool in theory running for your life through thick vegetation with long flowing hair was not.

Eventually I settled on my preset model that looked exactly like me, I might have been a bit taller but who wouldn’t give themselves a few inches if they could. Of course, I would change slightly once I made my final decision. Some races had innate features you couldn’t override, but for this last life I wanted to more or less look like me, even if my choice landed me with pointy ears.

My issue was still the same though, of which race should I choose. If I was being honest with myself high elves were the better option in the long term, but it leads me to the same issue of dying far too often early on during the season. I just about locked in my choice when a thought I occurred to me, “It was too bad that there wasn’t a half elf-half human option, as mixed races were thing other video games.” As soon as I thought it a prompt appeared.

Congratulations you have discovered a hidden feature: Mixed Races!

Not everything this season is as it seems, continue to think outside the box and you will be rewarded. You now have access to a few combinations of races, think about your possible combinations to learn what combinations are available. There are both benefits and consequences to choosing these races. So, choose wisely!

Rare Achievement Earned!

Congratulations you have been the third person to discover a hidden feature, you will earn an achievement and a reward. Achievement earned 3rd Rate Explorer. As a reward you will earn a minor boost to your rank, +5 increase to your ladder rankings.

Unfortunately, the season hasn’t started yet so your rank bonus will not count. As compensation for your ingenuity your rewards will become active in game once you discover another hidden feature.

Well, that sucks, having a boost like that early on in the game would be huge, at least now I knew I needed to unlock a new feature in game as soon as possible. The new character creation screen was extremely intuitive, all I had to do was think of the changes I wanted to make, and it showed me the options available. I quickly found out that not all races were compatible with each other. None of the Beastkin or Sprite subraces for example couldn’t be of a mixed race and all Mixed races had to be half human. Luckily for me, Half Elves were definitely available.

If you would like to play as a half elf you must chose two subraces in which your heritage and racial abilities will be based upon.

You have chosen to play as a Half-Human/Half-Elf of the Arkan and High elf subraces respectively. Your choice comes with benefits and consequences. Your Stat modifiers and Racial abilities are as follows.

Half Elf (High Elf/Arkan) - Gain two intelligence and one agility per level along with three free stat points. Racial bonus: Heretical Heritage– Increased Skill advancement with two of the Basic Magic types and gain a starting plus 5 skill bonus to 3 Martial Proficiencies.

Your Magic Your magical prowess comes from your elven heritage. The bonus will take the form of affinities and awarded randomly upon entering the game. The number of magic affinities and the actual skill progression bonus you will be receive, will be at random and cannot exceed more than 5 total basic magical affinities and a total of 10% min. – 20% max. boost to skill growth (10% maximum skill proficiency per single affinity bonus.)

You man now choose your proficiencies from the lists below.

Choose three Martial Proficiencies – Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, Archery, Axes, Long Blades, Short Blades, Spears, Shields, Stealth, Thrown weapons…

I wasn’t overly joyed at having only two free stat points per level, but I could live with it since my main stats I would focus on were taken care of. Not being able to choose my magic proficiencies was also a blow to the gonads, but it also meant that I could grow stronger faster in one or two of my primary magic skills than if I had chosen the high elf race alone and got the flat 5% bonus across all of the basic Magic’s. Considering most casters focused on one or two areas of expertise I figured this would work out nicely if the random affinities complemented each other well.

The list for the martial proficiencies continued but I had read enough to make my decisions. Light armor unlike in most games basically consisted of cloth robes for mages and wraps some ninja/assassin time characters would wear. Heavy Armor was the same typically made of plate armor much like a knights during medieval times or Lamellar armor you would see from Japan. Medium armor was everything in between, light chain shirt or leather armor. Depending on the materials used, lighter metals such as mithril or even monster scales would cause some scale mail armor to be classified as medium as well.

Anyone could wear light armor, but you needed skill ranks to wear medium or heavy armor and actually be able to move as normal. I needed some kind of protection and typically heavier armor gave a penalty to movement speed and spell casting, so choosing Medium Armor was my first choice. Stealth was also a must, while not the flashiest of skills would help me survive and starting with a plus 5 to the skill would hopefully be enough to keep the any of the higher-level mobs in my starting zone off my back. The last choice I made was simple as well I needed some way of dealing damage early on, so I chose the Spear Proficiency.

I had thought about bows or short blades, but I would hopefully have spells for long range attacks from magical abilities. Swords, even short swords and or long daggers were expensive due to the additions amounts of metals needed to create them. They were also required you get up close and personal with your attackers and I didn’t fancy being stab over and over again by mobs. After making my final selections and approving my avatar, I was sent back down to my fake apartment.

Continuing with the character creator I was happy with how my new character was coming along so far, the next prompt was also new as well.

Age bares quite a difference in your base stat distribution. They say age before beauty and wisdom comes with age and that remains true here as well. Choosing your age will determine a bonus to your starting stats.

As a Half-Elf you are mortal, but you will live quite a bit longer than your average human. Choose between young (16 to 50 years of age). Mature (51 to 100 years of age), Middle-aged (101-150 years of age), Old (151-200 years of age), Ancient (201 to 250 years of age).

I quickly used the slider to check out the bonuses, but it was fairly basic. You would get two to three stat points that boosted your physical stats at the younger years. And as the slider moved from the left to right the stats reconfigured themselves you got a fairly balanced distribution in the mature and middle-aged category and quickly skewed towards Intelligence and Wisdom based the farther you moved down the line.

The only surprise was that if you chose ancient you actually got a penalty to all physical stats and pretty huge gains to your Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma stats. The charisma stats bonus was a bit curious as it was the only stat that hadn’t moved gained a bonus in any other age category, but who didn’t instinctually trust a cute old man.

I set my age to 24 and got a plus 4 boost to my Strength and Constitution along with a plus 2 boost to my Agility score. I was going to get a big boost to my intelligence with every level I gained and having few extra physical stats early on to help with my physical damage. It also helped to balance out my lack of free stat points early on while I leveled up.

As a young Half Elf your base stats have been set slightly below average for a level 1 human. You have 12 free stats to customize your scores.

While making my decisions I realized that as I entered in the stat weights my avatar would change to reflect said stat weights. Not gonna lie I played around with it for a while, pumping my constitution to 24 made me look like a fricken whale. Obviously increasing your int, wisdom and charisma really didn’t affect anything, but I still tested it out half hoping my character would either look like a cheesy cartoon superhero with glimmering teeth or for him to drop into the Thinker pose as he pondered the wonders of the universe. But neither of those happened. I quickly made my decision and accepted the changes.

Strength ­– 13

Agility – 10

Dexterity – 14

Constitution – 14

Endurance – 10

Intelligence – 10

Wisdom – 9

Charisma – 7

In the end standing before me was a five-foot eleven-inch Half Elf with short gunmetal grey hair slanted silver eyes, high cheek bones and slightly tapered ears wearing rough spun cloth carrying a spear. I tried to change my hair and eye color to look more human but continued getting error prompts, apparently this was a sign of my heritage. A last prompt entered my vision.

What is your name? ________________

Westly Bauer… that’s my name, I had tried before to come up with something witty and creative, but it always ended up sounding tacky and stupid. I mean who wants to be called Lady’s Man2117 or Ash Ketchum their rest of their lives. Ok well Ash is kind of cool, but still for this life I would just be plain old Wes.