A red haired beauty made her way down the street, looking this way and that with her dark green eyes. Well, it’s me, though. It turns out that Hide Nature allows me to alter the color of my hair and eyes in addition to hiding my race. So I opted to play around for a while. I’ll probably swap coloration from time to time. It’ll be good if the guard start getting suspicious, as well. They could start looking for a redhead, only for me to actually be a brunette. Plus, if my hair and eyes change color when I transform back to succubus form, it adds a bit of flashiness to the whole process.
Anyway, after exiting the basement I had been summoned in, it became clear that the house above it was abandoned, and with good reason. I’m fairly sure a stiff breeze would bring it down. I’ll admit I was a little bit disappointed with this discovery. I was hoping it might be a place I could use, but I suppose it would be incredibly unfair for me to have a hideout dropped into my lap this early in the game, even if it was one in the middle of the slums.
Heading out in the streets, I was a bit concerned about being attacked, given that I was wearing a rather fancy looking gown and had a well groomed appearance. Luckily, that didn’t happen. Apparently the guards station more people in this district than the others to maintain order. While I question how the guards managed to miss the group of cultists marching into the basement of an abandoned house, their presence now is quite convenient.
“Excuse me, Mr. Guard. I seem to have gotten a bit lost.”
The young man looked at me with surprise, not expecting someone to actually approach him in this area. Usually residents in this district would be avoiding them, after all.
“Wow miss, I’m not sure how ya managed to wander into here. I assume you were looking for one of the shops in the central district, but how on earth did ya manage to wander to the middle of the slums?”
Oh, so the central district has shops. I guess I’ll pretend that’s where I was trying to get.
“I’m not exactly sure myself. I’ve never been to this city before, and apparently made a few wrong turns trying to get where I was going.”
“Ah, ye’re one of those folk who recently started showing up, aren’t ya miss. We’ve had quite a few of ya get lost in the slums today, though I didn’t expect one of you to make it this far in. We actually stationed some extra guards here today to make sure nothing happens to ya new folks, but that doesn’t guarantee yer safety in this area. I’ll escort ya back to the central district, but if yer gonna be staying in the city, ya should really learn the roads ya should and shouldn’t go down.”
Ah, I had forgotten that the NPCs in this game do acknowledge that players are different. They don’t see anything strange about people just vanishing into thin air only to reappear several hours, or sometimes even days, later. That should help me out some though. I’ll be able to get help without looking like I’m completely clueless since a lot of people who didn’t exist before just suddenly appeared this morning.
“Thank you very much. I’ll do my best to learn the layout of the city while I’m here.”
Along the way the guard, whose name was Jared, explained that he grew up on a farm in the outskirts and was a recent recruit, which was why he was assigned to the slums. Apparently most guards start out there, and move to other districts as they are promoted. More importantly, I was able to learn to the basic layout of the city from him as we walked.
The city is roughly circular, and is separated into four districts. The eastern district is the slums we were currently in. The guards do regularly patrol the area, but the locals are accustomed to dodging the patrols so even with their presence it’s not considered a safe place to be usually. The central and southern districts are the commercial area where you can find most shops and inns. The northern district is where the palace and noble mansions are. There is actually a second wall surrounding this district, and access is strictly controlled. Finally, the western district is where the Mages Association is located, and also shops pertaining to the practice of magic.
“Now, I don’t trust them mages myself. Way too dangerous if ya ask me, bein’ able ta kill a man with just a word and all. But if you need anything magical, or want to be a mage yerself, that’s the place to go. They have the ‘sociation office there where they give trainin’ ta new mages and teach ‘em to do magic ‘n such. Honestly, I don’t know much ‘bout it, as I’ve never bothered ta go over there. I find a blade works fine, myself. Doubt I’d make much of a mage anyhow.”
I’m pretty sure my guides accent got thicker as we walked. He was probably told to speak properly, but couldn’t keep it up with how long we were talking. It actually suited him pretty well, so I decided not to mention it.
“Well miss, this is the Central district. I need ta be gettin’ back, but from here you should be able to find yer way. Be careful not ta wander into the slums again. While most folk are decent enough, there’s some that’ll take any chance they can to make a few coins, even if that means takin’ ‘em from some poor lost person by force.”
After thanking Jared, I turned toward the merchants stalls and shops. First order of business was to sell the extra robes and daggers I had gotten off of my summoners. I had no use for them, and they would just take up room in my inventory, so I may as well convert them into money. That done, I wandered around for a while seeing what types of equipments were available.
While most equipment I could buy was the typical medieval style weapons and armor fitting the Astoenn kingdom, there were a few with designs very different from the usual. Asking one of the store keepers about it, he explained that they were weapons traded with other regions. As an example, there was a sword that appeared to be made from a hard, sharp glass rather than iron or steel. According to the storekeeper that was the style of weapons for the Draconids who lived in the mountains to the South of the Great Central Desert. It seems every region has their own distinct style of equipment.
The Central District seemed to be focused on stores for adventurers. Aside from the weapons and armors, there were apothecaries and alchemists, as well as a few general tool shops for other things that one might need while travelling such as tents, ropes, and torches. The Southern District was made up primarily of inns as well as shops and stalls for all variety of foods. I imagine for most people this would be an important place, but while they can, players don’t actually need to sleep in this game, and I don’t even need to eat regular foods.
Since players have no real need for an inn, they had to make a few changes to keep them relevant. While they do still rent rooms for an individual to rest in, the inns in SWO also have rooms for group meetings. They vary in size from just large enough to hold a few people to grand halls large enough to fit several parties or even a full guild in if needed, and you can set it so no one but the designated members can enter if you want to have a private discussion.
As I explored, I tried to look for alleyways and side roads where I would be able to lure someone when I got hungry. There were a few, but the Central and Southern districts were very busy, so I doubt I would be able to Seduce someone and take them somewhere to feed on without being noticed. I might have to make my way back to the slums in the Eastern district, though that would bring it’s own hazards. As I was pondering that, my thoughts were suddenly interrupted.
“Excuse me, are you interested in joining our party?”
Ah, another one. I had mentioned that my appearance was rather eye-catching. Well, there were some downsides to that. While touring the city, this scene had happened several times already. Even when they weren’t actively trying to recruit me I received a lot of attention, particularly from the males. Thus, most invites to party with people were very blatantly laced with ulterior motives. Just like the others, I gently let this one down.
“Sorry, I am going to solo for a while until my friends can get here, then party with them.”
The young man was clearly disappointed by this response, but nodded acceptingly. Then turned to the three other men standing behind him and shook his head before turning back to me. I’m guessing he drew the short straw and was given the job of asking.
“Alright, I understand that. If you change your mind and want to join us even temporarily, we’ll be glad to have you. So please find us then.”
And with that, he walked away. That was the usual pattern, and definitely the preferable one. So far, there had only been one variation on that, a guy who was persistent and kept insisting that I come with him or add him to my friends list, until his party came and dragged him away while apologizing for his behavior. It was actually kind of funny, but I’m getting sick of party invites. I decided to find a job to do and get out the city for a while.
Luckily, finding a job was pretty easy. There’s a billboard near the front gate where locals can post a job they need done. Most of the time, you would take down the request when you take the job, then return it to the requester when the job is done, but some jobs are always up and you just need to bring the results to the requester. I decided to do one of these. The job was simply hunting giant rats in a field outside town, and then returning their hides to a leatherworker in town.
Arriving to the field, I found it wasn’t as crowded as one would expect a beginning hunting zone to be. I guess part of that might be because the players are spread out more due to the randomization of characters. Most games have races that are very popular and others that are less played. SWO managed to avoid that by convincing a majority of players to randomize their characters though, so the players should have started out spread relatively evenly through the world.
The field itself was quite spacious, so there was plenty of room for everyone. It was made up of rolling, grass covered hills with a few trees placed randomly. Along the ground, a number of rodents wandered about, occasionally digging at the ground and doing whatever else a giant rat does in it’s spare time. Further out there were also a few roaming packs of wild dogs. There was also a job for hunting them, but I wasn’t confident I could take on a pack of 3-5 dogs on my own with just a dagger and a single target spell, so I was going to stick to the rats.
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Unfortunately, because it was so open, I had to keep up my human disguise while hunting. I would rather not see the pandemonium that would ensue if the guards at the gate saw a demon running around near the city. It wouldn’t be too much of a loss, though. I won’t be as mobile without my wings, and the dagger would almost certainly be weaker than my claws, but I still had a weapon and a spell I could use to fight with. Since the rats are solitary and simple monsters, I assumed I would be able to use the Charm spell effectively here.
Targeting the closest rat to me, I drew my dagger in my right hand, then raised my left hand toward the rodent and cast Charm. As I expected, rats don’t have a lot of willpower so Charm worked quite well on them. The rat no longer hostile, I simply walked up and rammed my dagger into its neck, then slashed it to one side for a one hit kill. Thankfully, damage in SWO is a lot more than just a strength vs. enemy defense calculation. The number of things that go into figuring out how effective an attack is are tremendous. Because of that, with a single blow the rat turned into a bunch of light particles, and in it’s place was just a hide I could take to town.
Ah, I didn’t mention that before. Enemies do disappear like that about 10 seconds after they are killed. Did you think I was literally looting the bodies of the cultists earlier? I’m not exactly squeamish, but I still think I would be uncomfortable stripping a dead body and searching it for stuff. The daggers and robes were in a neat pile when I finally got to them.
With a safe and effective hunting method, I continued to kill rats in my general area, take breaks to let my mana regenerate from time to time. As noon rolled around and I had been hunting for a couple hours, my mind magic went up to level two, and I unlocked a second spell.
Confuse
Causes the target to become confused about the situation surrounding it. Confused targets will behave extremely erratically. A few of the possible actions a target may take are:
* Going to sleep
* Attacking allies
* Fleeing in terror
* Become dazed
Mana cost: 15
Well, it’s a bit random, but seemed like it could be a fun spell to mess around with. It was a little more risky than my charm spell since the confused enemy could still be hostile to me, but I decided to give it a try. Moving to the next rat, I cast Confuse at it. The rat jolted for a moment, then curled up and fell asleep right where he stood.
“Well, that’s convenient. Actually, wait a minute.”
I suddenly had an idea. My Life Drain ability doesn’t actually say anything about the race of my victim. I had been sort of assuming I needed beings with a high level of sentience since in mythology succubi are only seen feeding on men, but maybe I could feed off monsters as well. That would make eating while staying in town a bit easier.
After a quick check to make sure no one would notice what I was doing, I quietly knelt down beside the sleeping rat. To keep it from attacking me if it wakes up, I grabbed it’s muzzle and held it closed with one hand, while I put the other hand on it’s stomach and held it up so it’s clawed feet couldn’t reach me or the ground. I glanced at my satiety and noticed I was at about 85%. Then I activated my Life Drain ability.
Sure enough, I was able to drain the life from a rat. Also, it woke up as expected, but since I had it held in a position where it couldn’t do much of anything, it could only thrash about as it’s health steadily fell. I was draining less health per second, mostly because I was holding the rat at a distance rather than pressing myself against it like with the cultist this morning. However the rat had a lower total health so it still died much faster than he had. My satiety also only went up by a small amount though, so draining monsters seemed to be considerably less effective. I doubt I could maintain myself long term like this, but I can delay the necessity to hunt for a while and I could do this without the danger of being attacked by guards, so it still wasn’t a bad deal. And monsters with more health might have filled me more.
My experiment done, I continued playing with Confuse on the rats. Honestly the inconsistency probably slowed me down some, but it was really entertaining and that’s the important part. One rat charged me and I had to actually have a (relatively) fair fight with it to take it down. Another began hallucinating and attempted to climb a tree that wasn’t actually there. It was obnoxious to have a few rats flee from me occasionally, and I didn’t feel like chasing them so I just moved on when that happened. One actually came back as I was about to attack another rat and jumped me from behind. I took a decent amount of damage from the surprise attack before taking that one down. I also managed to put a couple more rats to sleep for easy meals.
After spending the entire day massacring the rodent population outside town, I glanced at my character screen and saw I had leveled up a couple times.
Name:
Lilith
Class:
(none)
Active Title:
(none)
Race:
Succubus
Level:
3
Inactive Titles:
(none)
Health:
111/111
Energy:
100/100
Mana:
114/114
Strength:
3
Endurance:
3
Constitution:
4
Dexterity:
4
Intelligence:
8 + 1
Willpower:
8
Charisma:
5
Stat point available: 4
Every level gives 5 health and 5 mana, as well as 2 points you can invest in your stats, so now that I was level 3 I had 4 points to spend. I considered whether to put them into defensive or offensive stats. My defenses were very low, while my offense was actually fairly high. Especially my Intelligence which was 9 after putting on the robe. That said, before too much longer I would have meatshields… er, I mean party members… to stand behind so I shouldn’t be taking too much damage.
One other thing I wanted to do was increase the duration of my Charisma based abilities. I really didn’t like the idea of having a Seduced or Enthralled enemy turn hostile to me again in the middle of a fight, or for that matter a person I have seduced in town to feed from suddenly regaining control mid-drain.
In the end, I think 1 in Endurance and 3 in Charisma should be fine for now. That’ll make Endurance an even number giving me another point of health, and boost the duration of my abilities by a decent amount. It’s not the end of the world if this investment doesn’t work out. I’ll be getting more points as I level, and I can always boost stats with gear as well. For now, my stats look like this:
Name:
Lilith
Class:
(none)
Active Title:
(none)
Race:
Succubus
Level:
3
Inactive Titles:
(none)
Health:
112/112
Energy:
100/100
Mana:
114/114
Strength:
3
Endurance:
4
Constitution:
4
Dexterity:
4
Intelligence:
8 + 1
Wisdom:
8
Charisma:
8
Two more levels to a class. For now, I decided to head to town and turn in the rat hides before finding another job. There were diminishing returns on the amount of experience the rats were giving, so I need to find bigger targets now.
I walked into the leatherworker's shop as the sun was setting. The middle aged man behind the counter looked up from the hide he was currently cleaning as I walked in and greeted me.
“Welcome, if it’s leather you’re looking for, my selection's a bit limited right now but I’m sure we can find something to fit you.”
“Actually, I’m here with some giant rat hides for you.”
The man perked up at that and began clearing off a space on the desk.
“Ah good, I’ve been having a hard time keeping up with the demand today, so I was starting to run low. Just set them here and let’s see what we’ve got.”
Hmm, I hadn’t thought of that before. Thousands of people just appeared all over the world one day, and most player’s first task would be to acquire suitable gear. I imagine most shops that deal in weapons and armor are running short on merchandise by now. That also explains why the owner of the store I sold the daggers and robes to this morning looked so happy to be buying instead of selling.
Opening up my inventory, I pulled out all the hides I had collected and set them on the counter. The man looked through the hides, inspecting each one carefully before nodding with satisfaction.
“Yep, these will do nicely. Thank you very much, this should help a good bit with keeping my stock up.”
As he was counting out my pay, I asked about what the hides were used for.
“Ah, giant rat hides are only really for making low end leather armor and equipment. It’s not very strong, so armor made of basically anything is stronger, but it’s cheap to get so most people buy a set starting out. Other than that, it’s mostly used for small things where the strength of the leather is less important, like sword grips or lacing for boots.”
Giving me my pay, he asked if I was interested in any of his wares, but since I’m a magical type armor would just prove a hinderance to me I declined. Stepping back out into the street as night set on the city, I decided this would be a good time to take a break to eat something, and logged out.