Cass stood with a stretch. She’d expected to be stiff from two days of inactivity, but she felt better than she had in days.

“I’m not stiff?” she muttered more to herself than to Salos.

No, I expect not, he replied anyway.

“Why?” She smiled despite her confusion. How good it felt to ask a question and actually expect to receive an answer?

I was using your body for much of the last two days. It has only been yours again for a dozen hours or so.

Cass pursed her lips. That reminded her, “How does that work exactly?”

What, possession?

“My body transforming into you,” Cass said slowly. Her memory of Salos possessing her was blurry at best.

Your body is condensed mana. Or potential. It is what makes it a ‘spirit’ body, rather than a ‘physical’ one. As I mentioned, they take the shape the soul within resonates with. I have certain ideas of what I should look like, and so when I possessed you, the body conformed itself around me.

When you are in possession of your own body, it takes the form of a human, because that is what you believe you are.

“Right, but, I was also gruesomely injured,” Cass said. “That wasn’t in my head. That really happened. My leg really—“ her words caught in her throat, the image of exposed and snapped bone taking up the entirety of her mind. “I was very badly hurt.”

That is thanks to the fact that we have separate health states.

“Health states?” Cass repeated.

The most obvious example is we have separate Health, he explained. But also, if you were to get sick, only your status would list the disease as a status effect not both of us. Every wound is a kind of status effect, even if it isn’t generally listed on your status, so obviously, if I possess you, it is my status the body would embody.

“Obviously,” Cass agreed dryly.

What do you find difficult about that explanation? Salos asked.

Cass shook her head. “I guess I’m just having a hard time with ‘status effects’. They just sound made up. Where I’m from, if you’re hurt, you’re hurt. There is no system to tell you how badly or how long it will take to heal or how it will affect how strong you are or how long your stamina will last. Things like that are the realm of games.”

Interesting, a world without the System. It is so outlandish, I still barely believe it. Yet, your confusion over even basic concepts relating to it makes it difficult to believe you could be from anything besides such a world.

“Do you know how to say you don’t believe me in fewer words, Salos?” Cass cracked a smile as she teased him.

I believe you, he huffed. It is an exciting concept. The stuff of fantasy. Imagine a world where it is impossible to estimate the difference in power between individuals? I suppose you don’t need to imagine.

“For me, it is this world that seems like fiction,” Cass said. She looked out over the cavern again, soaking in the sight of the enormous glow mushrooms and the shimmering pool. The air tasted of magic, the roof glimmering with it. This was an alien world, with alien rules and alien expectations.

What’s not to understand? Salos asked.

“I don’t know, Salos, just about everything.”

Like?

“Health, for one,” Cass said. “How does that work? I get hurt, it doesn’t go down. A couple hours later it's lowered for no reason I can discern. What’s up with that?”

It drains as you heal, obviously, he said. Why would it drop immediately upon being injured? Health represents your body’s ability to heal. Higher current Health allows for faster healing speed. As wounds are healed, Health is consumed. As Health is consumed, wounds heal slower.

Well, sometimes, injuries can lower Health directly as well, I suppose, blood loss being the most obvious example.

“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Cass said. “That’s complicated and weird.”

What’s complicated about it? You heal faster when you are altogether healthy, and slower when you are not. It is perfectly reasonable.

“Sure, Salos.” Cass rolled her eyes. She walked down the hill as she spoke. “And what about the stats?”

What about them? he asked.

“Well, there are a whole nine of them, for one.”

Sure. It is nice and orderly. Three rows of three. Three stats for your ability to physically act on the world, three for your ability to mentally act, three for how the world acts on you. A column for power, a column for control, a column for depth. What is difficult to understand?

Cass put her face in her hand. “Salos… What?”

She had actually thought she’d had a decent handle on them. There were a lot of them, but most of them sounded intuitive. She’d mostly asked to double-check her assumptions. Somehow, he’d barely spoken and had already made it more complicated.

Huh?

“That didn’t make any sense.”

No?

“No.”

Hmm, okay. Interesting.

Cass shook her head and knelt beside the pond. The water was still and dark. Glowing orbs floated in the liquid, but their light did little to illuminate the depths.

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Alright, how about this: You know there are three rows of stats, yes?

“Sure,” Cass said, poking the water with her staff and watching the ripples.

Each of these has a name: Physical, Mental, and Body. They can also be called—

“Don’t immediately start complicating it,” Cass interrupted. “Three rows. Physical, Mental, Body. What does that mean?”

It represents a grouping of what each row affects. Physical is Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance. These three affect how you physically interact with the world. Similarly, the Mental row affects how well-equipped your mind is to process information and mana, and the Body row how well your body can react to the world around it. Do you understand so far?

He didn’t actually wait for Cass to confirm or ask for clarification.

Each column also is a grouping. Columns reflect how a given stat interacts with its domain. These are Power, Control, and Depth. That is to say, one stat represents how well you project that row into the world, one represents how much finesse you project it with, and the last how much of it you have to project. Each row is arranged in that order.

“I’m gonna need some examples, Salos,” Cass said with a sigh.

Hm? Really? Alright. Well, most consider the Physical row the most intuitive, so let’s start there. Strength is Power, as such it affects how strong you can hit things or how heavy an object you can lift. It is how easy it is to affect the physical world around you.

“That’s straightforward enough,” Cass said. That all lined up with her preconceptions from games at least. But then, Strength was hardly one of the stats she had questions about.

Moving along, Dexterity is the control for your physical stats. That means it affects muscle control, hand-eye coordination, and flexibility. It allows faster, snappier movements, especially small movements. High dexterity can multiply mediocre strength just by applying that strength more efficiently.

“And which of the two makes me faster?” Cass asked, thinking back to her initial plan of running away.

Both, Salos answered. Stats and speed, specifically running speed have an interesting relationship. More Strength will allow every step you take to push you further and with higher velocity. This means you move faster, but you aren’t taking those steps any faster than without higher Strength. Additionally, high-strength sprinters frequently find themselves tripping over uneven ground, unable to compensate for even mildly loose footing without appropriate Dexterity.

On the other hand, high Dexterity sprinters spend a lot more stamina to cover the same distance, relying on taking more steps faster than going any particular distance with any one step.

Which brings us to Endurance, the Depth of the physical row. It represents how long you can keep using your physical stats. It directly controls your stamina. It is also possible to shrug off some status effects if you have high enough Endurance. Usually things like electric shocks, staggers, and some poisons.

Does this make sense so far? You’ll see this pattern reflected over the other two rows as well.

Cass nodded. So far everything more or less lined up with her assumptions. Speed wasn’t quite what she’d expected, but it made as much sense as being controlled entirely by Strength or Dexterity.

Good, then continuing on, you have the Mental row: Will, Alacrity—

“ALACRITY! Ala stands for Alacrity?” Cass couldn’t help herself. The excitement had just slipped out. That had been the only stat abbreviation she hadn’t had even a guess for after all this time.

There was a long pause. Disbelief bubbled over their connection. Cass’s mouth snapped shut again in embarrassment.

He muttered, I was beaten by someone who didn’t know what Alacrity’s abbreviation was. Oh, gods beyond, this is going to be a long partnership.

Cass coughed.

You have the Mental row: Will, Alacrity, and Resolve, he mercifully continued after another minute.

Resolve was another surprise. She’d assumed it was Resistance, but she supposed Resolve was just as reasonable.

Will is the power of the mental row. It is often described as how strongly you can exert your desires over the order of the world.

“That doesn’t really explain anything to me,” Cass said.

I find myself unsurprised, Salos said. Think of it like mental strength, perhaps? Imagine ideas have a weight to them. The bigger the idea—the more detailed, the more complicated—the heavier it is to hold. More Will makes that easier to conceptualize all at once.

This is critical to those who use magic. More powerful spells require greater and greater amounts of Will to bring to bear. More Will also allows more Focus to be expended on a single skill or spell and allows more force to be tied up in that Focus.

To make an analogy to Strength, Will is the ‘how hard do I punch’ of magic.

Does that make sense?

Cass nodded slowly.

What are you still confused about? Salos sighed.

“It’s not exactly directly related, but, um, does having more Will make one more stubborn or maybe impulsive?”

She could feel Salos’s confusion and her embarrassment for even asking the question spiked.

No? I’m not sure what would have given you that impression. Is that a cultural association with Will?

“I guess,” Cass said, her head hanging as if Salos had a pair of eyes she was trying to avoid contact with. Perhaps her fears were unwarranted, at least the ones about the stat changing who she was as a person.

Anyway, Salos continued, his confusion bubbling just below the surface, Alacrity is the control for the mental row. It is all about how fast you can think. High enough Alacrity and your perceived time can slow to a crawl as you dissect a problem in front of you or reposition your body with heightened dexterity.

Then there is Resolve, the Depth of the mental row. Again, Depth represents how long you can use its row. In this case, how long you can keep your mind on a task, the Focus at your disposal. It also can help resist mental manipulations.

“Like demon possession.”

Yes, like possession. But also charms, stuns, or mind controls. It may even lessen the effect on you of social skills like Diplomacy or Barter.

Cass decided she didn’t need to get into the weeds of social skills right this second and also that she wasn’t sure she wanted to know how they worked. Neither of the ways she could think of sat well with her.

And that brings us to Body with Fortitude, Perception, and Vitality.

“How exactly are these not physical stats also?” Cass asked.

I suppose they are, but, the distinction is usually made between action and reaction. The Physical row is about how you act on the world and how you move. The Body row is about how you handle action on you, how you react.

First, Fortitude, the power. That is how well your body can take a hit. This is defense at its most fundamental. How easy is it to pierce your skin. How hard is it to break your bones. How difficult is it to tear muscle.

It also affects how much pain you feel. More Fortitude, more damage you can shrug off without collapsing from the pain.

Perception takes the role of control of this row. This is where the rows and their roles begin to break down. Perception does not modify Fortitude directly the way Dexterity or Alacrity do for Strength or Will respectively. Instead, it is about how you gather the information to react to forces on you. It is generally considered to modify the other two controls.

It lets you collect more information on your surroundings. Everything is more vivid. More real. More detailed. Both around you and about your own state.

Without appropriate Perception, you cannot make use of high Dexterity or Alacrity. You just cannot have the information you need to position your body or thoughts effectively. You will lack feedback on your changes.

Finally, Vitality. Vitality is the Depth of Depth. While you can think of it as how long your body can take the abuse reduced by Fortitude, it is generally thought of as how well your body recovers.

Not only does it affect your health pool, but it also affects how quickly all three resources—Stamina, Focus, and Health—will recover.

So there you go, Physical, Mental, Body. Power, Control, Depth. It cannot be simpler.

“I don’t know about ‘can’t be simpler’ but I can see a kind of structure to it.” If nothing else, it was good to confirm that these things worked the way she thought they did. Most were what they said on the tin and the few she hadn’t understood had simple analogs to a similar stat in a different row.