“As one of our newest V.I.P’s, you are entitled to an empowered re-roll with the singular caveat that you do recreate Calista Stricthaven as her exploits in the Earth version of Sable Unlimited tested very well across a number of our demographics, particularly your last misadventure in that dreadful little dungeon that brought you here. So, after you pick your race you’ll be automatically assigned female as your gender. From there, you’ll be able to alter some of the more superficial aspects of your appearance, such as hair color, hairstyle, eye color, and so on, but you’ll notice that on the whole you’ll still look like the old Calista. Understood?”

As the Attendant asked this, a series of floating windows appeared and began orbiting around Calista. Each window displayed the basic female version of every race available in Sable Unlimited. There was a human, halfling, gnome, goblin, orc, half-orcs, lizardfolk, every variation of the standard dwarves and elves, as well as the elemental races - Earth-Yansue, Water-Yansue, Fire-Yansue, Air-Yansue – and finally the divinely inspired Empyreal.

Calista took a deep breath as she tried to slow herself down. What am I going to do now? This is insane. I can’t actually be creating myself, can I? I can’t be locked on another planet that’s been turned into a game world. I can’t. What is this woman trying to do to me? This has to be a joke. This has to be a great big joke that Concept is playing on everyone. That’s it. It’s a game event that I didn’t see coming because I’ve been too busy to read the patch notes.

The Attendant was watching Calista with her chin in her hand. “Let me guess, you still don’t believe this is happening.”

“I … I don’t know how to ask this, but this has to be a gaming event that Concept set up. Right?”

“Concept is our shell corporation on your world. It’s nothing more than an arm of our parent corporation which shares the same name.”

“How … how do you have a shell corporation hidden on Earth?”

“If I am not mistaken it is not hidden but is publicly traded. However, to answer the spirit of your question, I would answer that that information is classified.”

“This can’t be real.”

The Attendant gave her patient look. “I can assure you that it very much is.”

“Then prove it,” Calista said defiantly.

“I was hoping you’d ask that,” answered the Attendant. “I would take a moment to gather yourself as we’re going to hit you with the rest of your memory download now. This should help. Again, I’d like to apologize for the delay on these memories. We’ve been having trouble all morning with our data warehousing and so you should have had this information as soon as you reached consciousness here.”

“You mean there’s things I still don’t remember?”

“Quite. Are you ready now?”

Calista nodded, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

“Alright, here it comes …”

A flood of memories rushed into her mind. There was a mage, blue robes, a white staff. He had been her friend and companion throughout the dungeon. She remembered him now. What was his name? Lefty. That’s right. It was Lefty. They had fought their way through the dungeon. Trolls, dragons, a medusa. There had been betrayals, torture, traps, and all manner of obstacles they had overcome. They had fought the final boss, an arch-mage, together and won.

Then everything had fallen apart. The entire dungeon was collapsing. So they had gone the only way they knew to go, which was through a series of doors. They had collected keys that fit the doors until they came to a burning door in a room filled with water. That had led them to a mountaintop where the voice, a voice not unlike the Attendant’s voice, had told them they were dead in the real world and that all that was left to them was this.

Then the final door had unlocked with her sword.

The memories faded and solidified themselves in her mind as she returned to the present. Before her was the Attendant. Still seated on her invisible chair, the blonde woman was examining her nails. As Calista came to, the Attendant looked up at her again. “All done? Well that was quick. Are you ready to make your character now? I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but this data housing memory issue has really put me behind schedule this morning. So, if you don’t mind …”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Calista took a deep breath. I never considered myself a power gamer, but I guess there’s a first time for everything. She gave the Attendant a nod. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

She turned her attention to the twenty one avatars orbiting her person as a control panel appeared next to her. It had been a while since she had made a character, but as she scrolled through the different races with their different bonuses and special abilities, she began to narrow her choice down to a few options. Sea elves were the only playable aquatic race in the game and would give her a dexterity bonus, a plus to swimming and water survival, the ability to breathe underwater, and bonus proficiencies in both harpoons and tridents. Then there was the Air-yansue who were a race of air elementals from the far continent of Hav’eah. They gave a plus to both dexterity and charisma, a racial bonus to saves against air-type spells, and the ability to cast ‘fly’ on themselves once a day. Oh, and they looked pretty with their floating hair and their sky blue skin. Finally there was the Empyreal, a celestial race that gave a bonus to strength and charisma, a stamina bonus, and the ability to cast light once a day.

It was a difficult decision. Absently, she flipped through all of the races one more time. Might as well get on with it. She highlighted the three she liked. Sea Elf, Air-yansue, and Empyreal. Sometimes a major decision like this came down to aesthetics. What did she want to look like, versus what would she tolerate looking like in exchange for the abilities available. She liked how the Empyreal looked the most, but the ability to cast light paled in comparison to flight or breathing underwater. Decisions, decisions, she thought as she flipped between the three windows.

Then a notification popped up. Strange. She reached up and touched it. [New race available: The Kindred.] She looked back down at the race selection menu and flipped all the way to the end. Sure enough, there it was: The Kindred.

She opened the lore box: ‘Born from the unnatural union between a mortal and a daemon, the kindred are the rarest of Wraath’s races. The kindred are little known outside of their own and those who do know of them tend to misunderstand them due to their daemonic ancestry. Daemon are chaotic neutral spirit offspring of Sylvanis, nature goddess of Wraath. Recommended classes include arcane spell casters, druids, rangers, and all rogue-types.’

She read through the stat block which stated both dexterity and charisma got a bonus, as well as bluff and sneak skills. As an added bonus, she could cast darkness once a day. Weird. I don’t remember seeing this race before. She flipped through the other races again just to see if anything else had changed, but nothing had, so she returned to the Kindred and read through it again. This looks like the kind of character all the edgy kids would want to want to play. But I don’t know, I kinda like it. She toyed with the different appearance options. You could have horns or eyes that glowed or pointed ears or skin of almost any color, including the really cool ones like red or blue or indigo. Finally, she said to herself, Let’s not overthink this, and then reached up and hit the [Select] button.

All of the other windows disappeared and the [Kindred] window floated forward and merged with her own outline. Suddenly, she was no longer a translucent, ghost-like shade of her past self, but a base version of a Kindred female dressed in simple peasant garb.

The Attendant, who had been using a hand mirror to examine her make up, sat up with a start. “Excellent. It looks like you’ve made a great choice. Not only are the Kindred are our newest addition to the world of Wraath, they’re a race option available to only a few select players. We hope that you like them as they’ve only just been made available to our V.I.P’s as of this newest patch.”

“Yeah hey, I’ve been playing this game since it came out and I’ve never heard of them. Where did the kindred come from?”

The Attendant tilted her head, “You will find that this version of Wraath is much different from Earth’s version. Our game designers, who are the finest in the known Universe, take the best aspects of each beta test on all of our candidate worlds and merge them here into one master game where players from all galaxies join to play. You may not know this, but the Kindred have always been among us on Wraath, but because of their reclusive nature, they have been known to only but a few.”

“Wait. What do you mean by players from all over the known Universe?”

“I mean that because of our highly selective criteria, we must pull player candidates from all corners of the known Universe to fill our game world. I hope that you can appreciate that this is an exhausting process that has provided you a very unique chance at a second life here on Wraath.”

“So this isn’t the same world?”

The Attendant shook her head. “No, it’s much, much bigger, though you will find that we’ve placed you in a corner of the map that is most familiar to you.”

“Oh,” Calista considered this for a moment. “Is there anyone else here I might recognize?”

“Very much so,” answered the Attendant. “You’ll find that nearly all of the non-player-characters you interacted with in the Earth version of the game inhabit this world as well. In addition, you may even run into some of the same players, though this is … less common.”

For a moment, she considered asking about Lefty, but decided to sit on it for a moment. “Okay, I’m ready to continue.”

“Good. Now you may customize your appearance. As I stated before, we’re limiting your options somewhat here as our test audience will form much of your initial core audience. It’s also my understanding that some of your previous adventures have been used in our promotional material leading up to this season, and so you’ll still need to look similar to the original Calista. However, since you’re now a new race, the Kindred, as opposed to regular human, I’ll see that you have as much leeway as I can give you here.”

A mirror then appeared before Calista that reflected her current appearance. Beside her, the buttons on the control panel changed to a series of cosmetic commands.

“Please take all the time you need, because once your appearance is set, all changes are permanent.” The Attendant then leaned back in her invisible seat, pulled out a small file, and began working on her nails.

Right. Here we go, I guess. She flipped through the different controls. The Kindred had a lot of options. Pointed ears, fangs, claws, horns, wings and even several types of tail. However, in the end she settled on a slim female with green eyes and red hair. If she was going to be able to survive in this world, she needed to be able to blend in with a crowd. After a few, final adjustments to her eyes and hair color, she hit [Accept].