I turned around, grinning as the introductory NPC came up to me. It was always the same when you made a new character, but she was still quite the sight. Named simply as ‘The Narrator’ by most of the community, the pale-skinned woman with a short black bob of hair approached me. Her loose-fitting, long robe-like dress seemed to shift with the background as if it were made from the void of space itself.

“Ah, a returning player.” She commented, looking me up and down. “Are you sure you don’t want to reload your previous save?”

“No, not this time,” I said, shaking my head. “Lost all my stuff, and my build sucked. Starting from scratch seems like it’s the best option.”

“Very well, player. We will begin character creation now.” The Narrator gestured, and the familiar window opened in front of me. Along with it came the blank default human male template in the void next to her.

I began with the skills selection, opening the trees menu for it. What kind of build was I going to go with? I pondered it for a moment, looking over my options. I knew that Soren was playing a multi-crew captain build, focusing on the social and command skill trees that provided buffs to those around him when he started barking out commands. His sister, Lea, also played, though she was your stereotypical engineering type. As it turned out, in hyper-realistic virtual reality having a degree in mechanical engineering was a benefit for trying to learn how the technobabble nonsense worked.

I settled on it, sliding the bar over to the piloting tree. I took the entry-level skill, which was unimaginatively named ‘Basic Piloting Certification’. It’d allow me to continue down the tree obviously, but added some helpful entry-level training sims focused on being at the controls of small ships.

The skills themselves were pretty clever. When you levelled up and put more points into your skills, it unlocked more and more advanced training simulators. Inside the simulations was full access to wikis full of information that you would need to know, as well as the ability to actually practise the actions in an environment that wouldn’t kill your character. You could practise replacing a plasma conduit, if you were an engineer for example. You would learn how to actually manipulate the tools and safely isolate the sections to complete repairs. For me, they would be piloting simulations. Places where I could get the feel of different spacecraft, practise docking and release, and even down to racing tracks where the player could get a feel for how the spacecraft they owned would handle under different conditions and speeds.

When I was still running solo, I’d been a pretty skilled fighter craft pilot. I’d spent hours in different combat simulations, right up to the top levels of the skill tree. My most used ship was the entry-level NovaCorp Rattler, tuned up using some high-level components I’d very carefully shepherded and managed to get into the small fighter. It was my own arrogance when I’d upgraded to the Cobra that my lack of practice in that particular spaceframe showed and I managed to get myself killed.

I groaned quietly at the memory, looking at my other options. I had six skill points to assign in total across the various skill trees, and I wanted a more varied build than I had last time. Focusing on just my piloting had pigeon-holed me into only one area of the vast amount of game, and I wouldn’t make that mistake again. I picked up ‘Basic Foot Combat Certification’ and ‘Personal Equipment Maintenance’ from the combat and engineering trees respectively. From what I knew, multi-crew ships often had to deal with boarding and ground missions. I’d dabbled in both a little bit, but I was by far the least experienced here. However, getting access to the basic sims would give me ample opportunity to get better and I was planning on taking full advantage of them.

I looked back at the piloting tree again, at a couple branches that I’d never taken before down it. ‘Medium Weight Starship Certification’ was going to be a must. The larger the spaceship, the more difficult it was to move initially, but they could be incredibly potent with their larger reactors and weapons. I knew Soren ran something in the medium-weight class, and he’d likely expect me to pilot it.

The last mandatory skill I needed for the build that was forming in my mind was ‘Long Distance Novaspace Navigation’. There were two forms of faster-than-light travel in Stellara Nova, the Jumpgates and Novaspace. The jumpgates were how the majority of transit was done, they were massive ring constructs that allowed ships to instantly travel between gates in different systems.

Novaspace was very different. It was an alternate plane of reality full of extremely angry energies that were constantly trying to rip apart anything that was made of matter, like ships. However, the Novaspace Slipdrive was a carefully made piece of technology that created an energy barrier around the ship that would protect it from the destructive nature of the alternate reality. Being able to navigate the currents and being able to use it effectively to travel was an entirely different matter, but the skill should at the very least give me the training I needed to learn how.

It was honestly more than a little exciting as I skimmed over my five choices. I had one more to pick, and I started looking towards one of the maintenance skills before I came across a skill tree I was unfamiliar with. It was labelled ‘Personal Quirks’ and was even stranger than I had been expecting. There was only one marker to pull a skill point, and it had a question mark hiding what the actual skill was.

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I looked up at the Narrator, confused. “What's this new skill tree? I’ve never heard of Unique Quirks before.”

With the barest hint of a smirk, she replied, “It is an option added in the latest update for new players. The game system AI will generate a quirk suited to your available player data, and it will be added to your player sheet as a passive benefit.”

“Huh…” I thought about it for a moment. Putting the point into something like engineering was definitely more important, and would give me more flexibility on the team to help out where it was needed. On the other hand… Getting to experiment with a personally tailored passive benefit? I’d have no idea what it would be, but it would be suited to me. So long as what the Narrator was saying was true, of course.

“I have no reason to lie to you,” she said with a melodious chuckle. I looked up confused, before sighing. Right, of course. The AIs could read the thoughts going through my head. There was something… Suspicious about that laugh though.

“Alright then,” I grumbled back as my face heated up, quickly throwing my last point into the Quirks tree. Might as well have some fun in this game, right?

Onto my appearance. I frowned, looking at the blank doll in front of me. When I was running solo, I wore a heavy spacesuit most of the time, and I never got to look at my body much. It helped me to forget what I looked like and slip into that anonymity that it provided. I’d probably go for something similar again, and play up the mysterious pilot angle with the crew members I didn’t know. Wouldn’t help me get close to them, but that was partially the point. It would help me hide my shyness behind a literal mask.

I clicked the ‘randomise male appearance’ button on the screen in front of me and watched as the game simulated its genetic randomization process on my screen. Soon enough, I was looking at a tall, lanky figure that would become my body. I didn’t pay attention too closely to the details of it, the body would be buried under a visor and suit as fast as I could earn the credits to buy one.

As I moved on to checking my default stats, I could’ve sworn that I saw her give a small frown at my appearance. However, whatever look crossed her face passed faster than I could process it. Deciding to ignore how weird she was being, I quickly assigned my base stats.

Stellara Nova did stats in a bit of a controversial way. The mental stats were not mentioned anywhere in the player menus. What you could learn in the game and how well you could do was based on whatever you could do on your own. It was something that had received a lot of criticism at first, but the devs claimed that it was a core feature of the game. They said part of the point was to make the game as realistic as possible, and they didn’t want to give any boons that may be abused. After a little while player-led Trades and Profession organisations began to pop up more and more to help new players learn faster.

Physical stats however were another story. Each one was on a scale of one to twenty, like the old tabletop games. Players started with an eight in each of the stats. The game broke them down into strength, representing the player’s raw power levels. It was probably the most straightforward of the four. Dexterity was also pretty clear, representing the level of flexibility and precision of control the player had over their body. Stamina was a bit more complicated, representing both the player's endurance for physical exertion as well as how quickly their body tired throughout typical daily activities. Finally, Kinesthetic Sense was what always had the ground pounders in the game talking. It was the instinctive awareness of the player’s body, knowing how to move your muscles and make your body do what you want. Some called it muscle memory, but the game’s version was much more intense, from what I’d heard from the few ground-based bounty hunters I’d worked with in the past.

I had eight points to distribute here, but I had a solid grasp of what I wanted to do already. I threw two points into each, making my physical stats as all-round as I could at this point. I could specialise down the line, but for now, I needed the all-around basics to make sure that I wasn’t going to get hurt by it down the line. I clicked the ‘confirm’ button when I was done with my character, sighing with relief. This was always the worst part of starting, getting the foundation for your build set up.

“Are you happy with this?” The Narrator asked, a slight frown on her face. She almost looked… Disappointed? It was hard to read.

“Yes. Please spawn me at Union Starport.” I replied, putting it aside. I really wasn’t in the mood to be judged for my choices by the game’s introduction AI.

“Very well, please standby as we transport you into the game. Your name will be generated upon spawning. You can change it at any time for five hundred credits at any spaceport.”

With the wave of her hand, my vision went black again as the game began to load around me. It was a familiar process, the part where I’d experienced it hundreds of times logging in.

Except… That white box hanging in my vision was new. Then there was another, overlapping. Visual glitching began to appear as they started to multiply.

Oh shit, what the hell was this!? Was the game having a problem loading? I’d never seen or heard of this before.

My vision was rapidly swallowed by the visual glitching like it was attached right to my eyes. Closing them or trying to clear them away was impossible, and it was starting to make my head hurt. Sharp pains dug into my skull as the world went completely wrong.

Then, as suddenly as it happened, it ended. The loading screen finished as the pains began to fade from my head, blinking away the bright spots in my vision. As I opened my eyes, a text box popped up in my vision. I mentally tabbed it off to the side as I woke up in the hospital on Union Starstation as I expected.

The long white hair that dangled down into my face as I sat up was completely unexpected, causing me to give a very feminine yelp of surprise. That, of course, didn’t help matters as I reached up and grabbed at my long hair. What was this?! My character didn’t have long hair!

Quickly, fearing what I’d find on the rest of my body, I mentally tabbed back up the pop-up into my vision hoping that it would give me an answer to what was going on.

[Welcome to Stellara Nova, player. Unfortunately, there was a technical error loading your character’s appearance and stat profile. As a result, your appearance and physical stats have been randomly generated based on your skill tree selections. Good luck, player Kaela.]

I stared at the text for a few more moments longer, just processing. Then, I looked down at my new, female body.

Holy shit.