Name: Rui Qin
Race: human
Genus: sapient
Class: C
Level: 132 (5,262,348,963 experience points to the next level)
Affiliation: Wen
State: hungry
Brief description: 5 foot 5; teak-coloured skin; has been growing his hair for a few hundred years and wears it in a single plait, which is tied around his waist; left leg missing beneath the knee, and usually wears a prosthetic; brown eyes
Accolade points: 1,200 max (as a member of a secret order, your fame level is naturally limited)
Endowments: mornings
At your age, any sleep you wake up from is a boon.
Curses: old age
If unused for six months, a stats level will start to decrease at a rate of 100 experience points a day.
Attributes:
Hidden
Health 46,200/46,200, stamina 72,600/72,600, mana 46,200/46,200
6 gates opened, 10 shen points activated, 6 chakra points cleansed
Endowments: magicka resistance 25% (from blessed robes), secret keepers, as a member of a secret society, you can hide many of your stats; respawn x1, you will be brought back to life in your home temple after death
Abilities and spells: passive identification, deflection shield, fear, mask presence, sense presence, inverse sight, doppelganger, safe circle, haste, slow, armour break, counter, dodge and deflect, rubber flesh, make it rain, stealth, disguise, detect, share inertia, mage-light, summon text I, summon text II, summon text III, summon text IV, summon text V, summon text VI
Tattoos bestowed: Rui Qin’s personal ba gua
Active quests: Investigation continued, recording history
Eight Era, cycle 1719 – cycle of the lost sheep, season of Unkh, day 280
Rui was a monk of the Shiji library; the library was started by one of Yu the Great’s advisors, but it didn’t have any kind of official stance until one was established by Sima Tan and his son Sima Qian. By then, the library was forgotten, and when the winds changed the land became barren and unpopulated, until the library was alone in a desolate landscape. As such, the Shiji library and its monks were an unofficial secret society, they weren’t opposed to being known, but, right then, the secrecy worked for them.
Rui sat on a bank overlooking a strange landscape, with his bare feet soaking in a lake and brightly coloured fish nibbling at his toes whilst a strong sun tanned his already olive-coloured skin. The land around him sloped steeply down in an oval shape, so that it looked like he sat at the bottom of a sink. The lake covered most of the bottom of the “sink” and was oddly full of geological features. To the west was a sea that Rui didn’t know the name of; part of the sea overran and poured down into the sink, kind of an inverse to an overflowing sink. The water cascaded down over a series of step-like waterfalls to fill the lake at the bottom. In the lake were a series of little islands; the lake also had a second lake inside it. The first lake ran around the outskirts, and the second lake sat inside the centre of the first lake and was fed by a circular waterfall; the second lake, in turn, had the equivalent to a plughole, which swallowed all the water to keep the second lake from filling and joining the first lake.
Rui sat on the eastern bank, the least busy part of the sink. The current here was still enough to mean that the fish had to keep in constant motion or else be lost to the current. Rui had spent a month in the area, on and off, and had decided to discover where the water drained to, so Rui picked up his staff and waded into the lake, intent on finding the secret.
The water reached his knees quickly as he waded further into the water, and the current was strong enough to make Rui use his staff to stay steady on his feet. A large silver-and-bottle-green fish brushed past his legs, and Rui stooped down quickly, grabbed it and wrestled it into his bag of holding. He wasn’t about to pass up a free lunch.
He reached the oval waterfall that separated the two levels of the lake, and jumped down, landing on top of the water before letting his feet sink beneath the surface. The water current picked up, and Rui found it more and more challenging to stay upright; at such intensity, even his trick of walking on the surface of water couldn’t help. He also had the problem of dropping into the plughole to worry about. What many people don’t realise is that, from a certain height, landing in water will kill you just as assuredly as landing on, well, land.
Rui had a plan, however; there was a large rock jutting out of the water, and Rui needed to get close to it to cast a spell. He staggered as the pull of the water and a patch of seaweed nearly caught him out before his staff slammed down like an anchor. Now his progress was slower; he was careful of his steps and leaned on his staff as much as possible.
When he was within 10 feet of the large boulder, Rui cast his spell. A strand of power like a rope left Rui, lassoed the rock, tugged and then settled, and Rui lifted his staff slowly and cautiously. The spell rope tightened, but took his weight, and he started to walk towards the lip of the plughole and looked down. Water and light disappeared with no end in sight. Rui cast a mage-light and jumped, launching himself away from the edge and sailing down at a steady and comfortable speed.
For a long time, he dropped; the light from his point of entrance became a smaller and smaller pinprick before disappearing completely into the gloom. The sound of the falling water was peaceful so far from the source, and Rui found he enjoyed the descent. The problem was that the further from his anchor he was, the more force was placed against it. He wasn’t heavy, however, so he should be good for a few hundred yards, but, after an hour of free fall, he was starting to fret that the distance was growing too great. He estimated that, at his reduced rate of descent due to the spell, he was around 5 miles down. It was further than he was expecting the rock to last; he must have underestimated the size. And then he was free-falling in earnest.
He screamed as the air buffeted him, and he cast a spell quickly, which acted to reinforce his resistance to impact damage. And then the ground said hello.
When Rui came to, there was an intense pain in his gut; he looked down to see a stalagmite protruding from his side, and Rui nearly passed out at the sight. Then he realised that he was actually leaning against the stalagmite, and it had only opened up a small – but heavily bleeding – flesh wound.
Rui clambered to his feet and staggered around for a moment, attempting to gain his bearings. Rui used his inverse-sight spell, which allowed him to see using darkness, and the more light there was the more obscured his vision would be. It was a bit too dark, however, and his eyes hurt, just like an overly bright day could give you a headache.
He was in a large cabin, which was heavy with moisture. It seemed that the waterfall was little more than mist at this depth, and the walls and floor were coated in a sheen of damp. Rui found the only exit and frowned. Someone had taken the time to carve out an arch with pictures and writing inscribed over it. The problem was that his sight spell wasn’t great at making out fine detail, but it did give him great depth vision.
And then the world exploded.
When Rui came to yet again, he discovered he had been thrown a good 20 feet through the arch. His ears were ringing, and the air was obscured with dust, so he pulled his top over his mouth and nose to help filter out the dust. He cast the make-it-rain spell, the moisture in the air formed into droplets, there was a rainstorm for a few moments and the air cleared.
He expected to see an impact creator or a massive whale carcass, but what he found was a rock the size of a house, shattered into eight chunks and thrown around the room. It was the rock he’d used to anchor himself against. He was lucky he hadn’t hung around or it would have crushed him completely.
Rui used mage-light and inspected the archway; the curled decoration looked like gnomish. However, the problem was that there were three different dialects of gnomish; fortunately, Rui spoke all three. There was a further problem: time had not been kind to the carvings, and Rui had difficulty trying to decipher the words – although it might just have been that it was an artistic design and not writing.
It might read ‘time has passed, or perhaps ‘past is the metric’, or ‘tomorrow’s call awaits’. Rui tapped his teeth with a nail; none of them were exactly something most people would put over their doorstep. Maybe this was a temple or library. Rather than monks, the gnomes might call themselves “past keepers” or something.
‘“Yesterday’s future is built on tomorrow’s past,” as the abbot is wont to say,’ Rui said to himself as he left the arch and walked into the mysterious depths.
Location discovered: hidden location discovered
You have discovered a hidden location; explore further to unlock its secrets and potentially receive a great reward.
You have chosen not to be informed of experience gains.
It was no surprise that the location was marked as hidden; it was miles beneath a lake!
Rui’s staff slapped the stones as he walked; the sound was his only companion, which was why he had the staff to begin with, as he liked the sound. The path led him to a broken door; the doorway was cracked, and the door itself was a few feet away from the actual doorway. Rui studied the door, as it had more writing curved near the middle, and the carvings were in better condition than those on the archway.
Now that he could see the writing clearly, he realised it wasn’t any of the three gnomish dialects. The words were similar to archaic gnomish, but the sentence structure was distinctly wyild gnomish. As far as Rui knew, there was no fourth gnomish tongue, just archaic, wyild and pictish. If this was some sort of meeting point between the archaic and wyild gnomes, then why would they make a new language? Surely, everything would just be written twice, so each side could read it. Making a new language meant it had to be taught to everyone. On the other hand, if this was some settlement started by a group of archaic and wyild gnomes together, then this would be a significant discovery. It wasn’t unknown for a gnome to move from one branch to another, but to create a new language – well, Rui knew of no such settlement.
Also, wyild gnomes got their name from living in forests and the wild, so why would they then settle in a town, even if only other gnomes lived there? Gnomes were rather fractious people, although one or two would head to the cities, the rest were mostly loners, and the archaic gnomes were near hermits; a town or even a hamlet of them was unheard off. This would be a significant find.
Rui made a sketch of the writing and placed it carefully in his satchel; he would spend many an enjoyable night obsessing over it.
The corridor continued, and Rui had to duck every so often to avoid the hanging crystals, which were – or would have been – the light source for the tunnel. Something had come along and cracked every single one of them; such wanton vandalism.
The tunnel then started to split and fork; one of the paths was dark, with more cracked crystals, and the others were lit with the crisp, white glow of the crystals. So, whatever had come along had taken the time to crack all the lights it passed, but not all the lights in the tunnels. Perhaps it wasn’t someone deliberately smashing the crystals, but something massive moving down the tunnels, or something with a tail or horns. Rui could either go down the dark path and risk running into the creature, but also have a chance that said creature had already set off all the traps, or go down the lighted path and keep watch for traps.
There was the possibility that the traps could reset, of course; otherwise, the secrecy of the area would be at risk. Rui knew a woman, Gloria Feetham, who bred chickens and used them as a kind of lemming train. She sent the chickens down the path, and when she stopped hearing the chickens dying, she knew the path was safe. The plan had backfired when she’d come across a self-arming trap, which had killed her. She was a nice girl; she used to give Rui as many free eggs as he could eat – so many boiled eggs.
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Rui went for the lit path; he didn’t want to come across whatever it was that could break the crystals from its size alone, and he had plenty of experience in disarming traps. If it came down to a choice between a fight and a puzzle, he’d choose the puzzle. These days, his martial arts were more for exercise and flexibility than battle.
Rui was looking for some particular signs of traps: floor tiles raised slightly, even just by millimetres if these were expert trap layers; tiles that were off colour or with markings; and holes in the walls or floor was another good sign as were rocks in strange places. Some of the more exciting places Rui had visited had strategically placed statues, or – on one memorable occasion – a focusing crystal. That one had nearly got him.
Rui lay on his stomach and looked for an out-of-place tile, but they were uniformly flat. Rui squatted on his haunches thinking, There’re no out-of-place tiles, and no holes in the walls or floor; the tiles are scuffed but not patterned. They were just the general scuffs made over time. Rui didn’t like it; there were two types of traps. The most common type was to deter outsiders by causing enough harm to make people think twice about coming in. That type of trap needed to be visible but camouflaged; otherwise, you’d end up harming your own people.
The second type of trap was the killing trap – a literal death trap – and those were the traps used when you didn’t want anyone to come in, ever. The place looked completely abandoned, and there were no signs of traps, which meant that these traps were here to kill. You didn’t need to worry about hurting your own people because, presumably, you were never coming back.
Rui tapped his staff on the floor and then used his passive-identify spell; once activated, it would identify any item, put a name above any person and highlight traps, as well as other things. Rui didn’t like using it, as it felt like cheating; however, whoever had trapped this corridor was cunning. And gnomes were known for cunning.
The revealing of the traps wasn’t instantaneous; Rui needed to concentrate on a 6-foot square for a moment for the spell to reveal the first trap. This made Rui very, very happy. First, his spell had worked, and he wasn’t going to get an iron spike through the foot (which was the purpose of the trap), and, second, because Rui had a high level, and the trap had resisted his spell for a good three seconds. Anyone hiding things with this level of skill had to be hiding something truly special.
Rui stepped around a pile of dead rats; the pile showed that Rui was right to choose his own path and not just follow the previous creature’s path, as the pile of rats showed that the traps were self-rearming; hence the pile of dead rats. One rat would get caught, stagger off a little and die. The next rat along would do the same, so the trap needed to rearm. So, if Rui had followed the dark path, then Rui would have tripped one of the self-rearming traps, either through overconfidence that all the traps had been sprung – just like Gloria – or from the dark, because his ability to highlight traps was 40% less effective in the dark, and these traps were ingenious; Rui wouldn’t like to bet his life against them.
Then the path opened up, and Rui’s breath caught. An intricately carved and delicate façade was spread out across the far wall, with elaborate formations, and unfortunately dead plants and trees scattered around. The remnants of the plant life showed that it hadn’t always been below ground; something had sunk the entire region, killing the plants. The addition of the crystal lights meant that the original inhabitants had tried to keep the area alive, but the traps meant they’d given in finally and surrendered the land.
Rui looked over at a set of guilt gates lying about 10 feet away from the guilt fence. The gates had been pulled free, and they’d buckled a little in the middle, just like they’d been grasped by hands and pulled off. This told Rui that the creature that had passed before him had either two prehensile tails or forearms, and forearms normally meant a creature that stood on bipedal legs. And bipedal legs usually meant intelligence.
Rui sat down, used his summon-text-VI skill and pulled out a quill, which he licked. As he did so, his tongue was cut and a dribble of blood was absorbed by the quill. Rui opened the book, flicked through to his last entries and read the text. “Chain lightning, flamethrower, mana bolt, body double, iron flesh, marked target.”
Rui chewed on his lip. The text was simple enough; these were the spells he’d prepared in the past and were still ready to be used. Rui had studied magic, along with history, for his entire life, but had only learned a handful of spells he could perform at will. This wasn’t due to how difficult it was to learn magic and how long it took – or rather it was, but not directly. Since it was so hard to learn spells, Rui had decided a long time ago that it would be more beneficial to have a lot of spells that required planning rather than a small stock of spells on – as it were – his fingertips. Storing spells in a book meant they couldn’t be reused, it was true, but he could stock up a lot of spells over the course of a week. Also, he could charge mana into the spell and then cast it at will, even if his mana level was zero or at least minimal mana, as it still needed a small amount.
The spells Rui had committed to his repeated casting – such as passive identification, deflection shield, fear and slow – were either bought through unlocking them with experience points, or from an occasional master. However, he wasn’t much liked at the monastery, and so he’d had to earn most of his spells on his own. It made life far more difficult than it needed to be, but – despite the fact he had few friends – he liked life at the monastery, and he was comfortable with his own self, so he wasn’t going to change for others. It helped that the abbot was one of his few friends.
*
Rui spent the next few days studying his texts and writing out a few spells ready for emergencies. When he was satisfied, he copied out the names of each spell onto a blank page, tore the page out, slipped it into an inside pocket of his mid-calf-length robes and banished his book. Far too many monks had been lost by losing their journals. Happy with his prepared spells, Rui stretched, and completed a routine designed to waken the muscles and improve strength, length and flexibility. He cast a spell for light, set off into the wide, gaping maw of the broken gates and went through what Rui decided was a half-buried barbican.
The pathway was bordered with large walls, and small windows that were little more than slits were placed every few feet; these were probably arrow slits for defence. The walls were high – too high; the gnomes must have had problems with lessun or half-giants or something. Rui walked over to one of the walls and ran his hand across it; there were scratch marks in sporadic patterns. Some of them could have been from arrows; others were too thick and too long. Claws would rule out half-giants; there were deep grooves near one of the arrow slits; if it had been made by claws, it would hint at over 5-inch-long claws. The celling had several gaps, which Rui assumed were murder holes (or meurtrière, which always sounded more official). Rui thought he was in the gatehouse, and the gnome builders had built it to withstand sieges.
Fortunately, the double portcullis had been left open, and Rui entered the courtyard of a small metropolis. The walls lining the gatehouse had been hard stone, but the buildings inside were made from sand and clay. To Rui – who had spent over 600 years travelling the Sphere via air, sea, land and caverns – it was remarkably dull. Of all the hidden cities and temples, with their extraordinary beauty, he’d finally found the plainest city ever built.
Still, that was something in itself.
Rui liked the numerous earthen bowls placed around, even if they now only held dried soil and dead plants. Many of the houses had hanging baskets, so perhaps the city was once more beautiful with plant life to cover the bland architecture.
Rui noticed a strange haze at the edge of his vision, like water running down a window. He turned, but the effect stayed in the corner of his eye. Rui stopped walking and pulled out his spell parchment; the reason spells were easier to write than to cast was because it was like trying to do complex equations in your head. Just because you knew the maths, it didn’t mean you could keep it straight in your head as you worked through it. The bit of parchment in Rui’s hand was like a chapter heading; you funnelled a little magicka into the chapter title (around 1–5 mana points, depending on the parchment) and then the pages in the book where the spell was written down would activate and cast the spell. The words would be used up, and you’d need to rewrite it (unless you knew the tricks to make them more durable). It did mean that anybody with 5 mana points or more could activate the spell, regardless of their other stats.
The spell Rui used was mana sight; it wasn’t a popular spell, as it allowed you to view the magicka imbued around you. Spells such as reveal were more popular, as they showed you things such as hidden traps, but showed less detail. For instance, if you placed a glyph designed to be invisible then “reveal” would show you the glyph, whereas “mana sight” would show you the flow of mana in the glyph, which would allow you to see the range of effects for the glyph by how far the magicka radiated, the power of the glyph by how much magicka was stored, the quality of the glyph by how tightly bound the magicka was, and many other things, if you knew how to interpret what you were seeing. So mana sight was the more powerful spell, but reveal was more useful for the casual explorer.
Rui’s vison picked up shimmering waves of magicka cascading from up high to encase Rui in a large dome of magicka. Lines of power like streams traced the floor, and pockets of power were positioned around tactically to feed the magicka. The pockets of power were glyphs, and mostly electrical, if Rui was reading them correctly. The lines of power would activate if Rui stepped on or over them, and the amount of magicka trapped would eviscerate him and create a sizeable crater. Clearly, the dome was in place to protect the surrounding area and confine the trap that Rui had wandered into.
Rui smiled, cracked his knuckles and wiggled his fingers; it was time to disarm a trap!
There was no magical disarm spell, there were dispel spells that would remove status effects from people, such as fear or taunt. The dispel spell could even remove wards and curses, but it wasn’t a controlled effect; it was like a controlled explosion, and since Rui was in a dome designed to contain the force of the trap, setting off a controlled explosion would kill him. No, Rui needed to disarm the trap, not dispel it.
Rui sent out a small ribbon of magicka, which reached the lines of power, and started to entwine with them and integrate into the mana of the glyph. What he was attempting to do was to match the magicka and channel it through his body, then split the mana and walk through the gap before closing it up behind him. Like placing two mirrors between lasers, the beam was never broken and the alarm wouldn’t be sounded.
Rui’s mana wrapped around the glyph’s, and then he inserted his mana into the stream. As soon as his mana inserted itself into the stream, the glyph’s mana flowed up Rui’s mana and entered his body. It was like he’d placed his fingers into an electric socket, and he was thrown backwards, nearly losing consciousness. Rui shook his head and flexed his fingers; his hand was tingling and starting to go numb. Rui looked around and noticed his fingers were dangerously close to touching the trap, and so he pulled his hand back.
Magicka worked not too dissimilarly to electricity, and what had happened was the magicka version of an electric shock, where the glyph had more magicka than he did. Fortunately, instead of setting off the trap, he’d just been blasted backwards. That really shouldn’t have happened, however; how could a trap contain more magicka than he did? Perhaps there was a soul crystal charging the glyph, but why? Using so much magicka was a waste. On the other hand, if the gnomes weren’t ever expecting to return, then what better booby trap than to overcharge a glyph? Who could hope to disarm such a powerful trap? It was a guaranteed kill – a guarantee that Rui was now trapped in.
Fine, he couldn’t disarm it, so why not just step over it? That was nice and logical; the problem was it was too logical and too obvious. Rui lifted his leg and moved it slowly over one of the lines of power. His foot started to tingle, then grew numb, and then the flow of power changed and a surge of energy raced towards the glyph. Rui pulled his leg back and the charge fizzled out before it could set off the glyph. A bead of sweat rolled down Rui’s cheek. So, he couldn’t just step over it. If he sat here for a few days, he could work out a spell for levitation, presumably the trap didn’t reach the domed ceiling. But Rui didn’t want to spend days stuck close to enough stored magicka to kill him ten times over.
Rui sat down and thought about the trap; glyphs had a zone of influence that, if someone passed through it, would set the glyph off. However, it looked like a cloud normally, not distinct and separate lines. So, how would you create a line of mana? Well, logically you could have a second glyph, and then the mana would be pulled from one glyph to the other, like magnetism, with the magicka moving from the stronger store of mana to the weaker.
Except these lines didn’t go anywhere; some of them just stopped. If they were being attracted by a glyph, they wouldn’t stop, or if they did, they would peter out; these just stopped, suddenly and without a drop in power, so what was causing it?
Runes; it had to be. The runes were being used like powerlines, and the glyph was the battery.
Did this help?
Well, yes. If it was indeed runes, then activating the glyph would have trapped the gnome in the trap; the fact that there wasn’t a dead gnome meant it had escaped, but how?
Rui traced the lines and something jogged his memory. There wasn’t any pattern he recognised, but something about this seemed familiar. It wasn’t until he stopped focusing on each line of mana and thought about the trap as a whole that it occurred to him – it gave him the impression of a maze.
That was it! A maze meant that runes could be carved into the ground to create a deadly trap, but also allow the gnome to escape!
Rui summoned a beast, an errant falcon, and used his far-sight spell to see through the eyes of the falcon, and encouraged it to fly high up in the dome and circle it. From this vantage point, Rui scanned the maze, looking for his route to take, and then he started walking.
It was rather off putting trying to walk whilst looking down upon yourself from the eyes of a falcon. More than once, Rui felt a foot start to tingle as he wandered too close; the perspective from a falcon’s eyes wasn’t the best. Or at least not to Rui; the falcon must be comfortable to be able to hunt properly.
The closer to the glyph Rui got, the narrower the path became until, eventually, Rui had to walk as though he were on a tightrope and where even moving one foot past the other sent pins and needles up his leg, and his shoulders thrummed as they skirted the boundary. The problem Rui was now facing was that he wasn’t as small as a gnome.
Rui stood sideways and shuffled along. The path narrowed until even Rui’s nose and the tops of his toes buzzed, tingled and started to go numb. The mana lines pulsed alarmingly as they picked up his presence, threatening to set off the trap.
Rui stopped, returned his vision to his body and dismissed the falcon; he was close now, and he wasn’t going to get much closer.
There were a lot of ways to disarm a glyph, although 90% of them involved you having more mana storage then the glyph; the “electric shock” was going to be an issue. How could he cancel out so much magicka if he couldn’t interact with it? He couldn’t set it off safely, and any disarming meant removing the magicka, but he couldn’t because touching such a potent current of mana would either send him flying and potentially into the trap, setting it off, or the current would just fry him without ever having to trigger the trap.
Really, he needed to keep the magicka where it was and just take it out of the equation somehow. That is, leave the power there whilst making the glyph impotent. He needed to separate the glyph from the magicka, but how?
There were runes involved, which changed things. Theoretically, he could write a rune to stop the message reaching the glyph, like a resistor, so the runes would be fed by the glyph but couldn’t alert the glyph to his passage.
Rui used his quill to write a rune, and then channelled magicka into it. It wasn’t just any word; it had to be written in runic script, and Rui knew a few variants of the script. He checked and double checked the script; his life was resting on him having written it correctly.
Once happy, Rui used his rune-craft skill, and his rune connected to the trap, it glowed, and the stones cracked and started to melt as the power of the magicka stored in the trap entered the rune and passed through it. As the stones bubbled and spat like lava, the rune settled and stabilised. Rui wiped sweat from his brow, which had nothing to do with the heat.
And that was the easy part.
Rui now needed to activate the trap and trust his life in his new glyph. His high-disarm-trap skill meant that the chances of an incorrect idea occurring to him were minimal, but it didn’t mean he was guaranteed to think of the correct method to disarm it; not such a powerful trap anyway. A weak trap wouldn’t even be activated by his presence, but this monster would kill him, even with his abilities.
Taking a deep breath, Rui stepped onto a line, and the mana flared and shot off towards the glyph. It reached his rune, and Rui’s heart stopped, time stopped, and Rui expected to die.
The flash of mana winked out. Rui opened his eyes, not remembering having closed them. The rune had worked.
Rui swallowed, wiped the sweat from his face and then hurried out of the trap.