Welcome, Player! You have been selected for the game universe centered around ‘Total War.’ You are the thirty-first Player to be selected for this game universe since the Systems introduction on Earth. Several changes have been made based on multiple data collections. You may choose the game within the Total War Universe you will be playing, you must defeat each game while remaining alive to earn your rewards.
Changes include the right to choose your difficulty, and a selection of perks you may select based upon your chosen difficulty, game, faction, and starting unit. You may now begin changing your appearance. Upon completion you will be prompted to select your game, then your difficulty, and then your perks. You are limited to three perks, anything beyond that will require you to choose detrimental effects. Please begin your selections Player.
Sighing I stared at the box in front of me with complete bafflement. Alright, apparently I’ve been chosen for those sick games. What other explanation was there for this predicament? Secondly this System apparently didn’t give a rats ass about when it took a ‘Player’ into its games. I mean, taking a man while he’s having a nice shit? Really? I suppose I should be thankful I had at least finished before being taken but, well, I still had to wipe. Scratching the back of my head, I removed a sock. “Sorry whitey, time for you to serve a purpose” the little voice in my head imagined my sock screaming nooooooo! It was enough to make me smile, but I still had to do it. I refused to have this issue unsolved.
When I finished my nasty little business, the sock actually turned to dust. Apparently, this System didn’t like shit covered socks hitting its floor. Serves it right. Ok, moving on from that I had to choose my appearance? Alright, this should be fun. Hmm, change the chin, I always wanted it to be stronger looking. Cant the eyes ever so slightly and give me a bit of a sharper appearance. Turn them yellow, change the pupil a bit and turn the hair into long brown dreadlocks. A five-o'clock shadow, go ahead and make me ripped as well. Considering I was about to be thrown into a world that literally revolved around an ever-changing geopolitical environment where war was as constant as a lingering fart. The fact I could make myself taller was a big perk, so I slid that up to just a little over six foot.
I nodded in appreciation at the image before me. I no longer looked like a squat black dwarf at least. Now I actually looked like someone who could fuck your world up, at least in this screen. A piercing gaze, shredded body, and my normal dick, no need to improve that beasty. Confirming my selection, I started screaming as my flesh wriggled and writhed under my skin. I could feel my bones breaking and regrowing all over to increase my height. I passed out at some point, I doubt for long considering the pain was still massive!
“Son of a bitch that hurt…” A message telling me that drastic changes would be painful was blinking in front of me. Now you tell me, I was beginning to see why several of the Players on the T.V regularly called this thing a dick or some other creative euphemism.
That left selecting my game. I ruled out the whole Warhammer aspect of the game universe right off the bat. I had no desire to fight in that death trap, not yet at least. I’d choose something a little easier, one I was more familiar with for the first game experience. I looked through the list. It was a massive list. Total War had begun adding in popular games regardless of their genre into the line up like they had Warhammer but I’d go with a classic. Oldie but goodie mentality here. I chose Total War: Rome, the first in that series. Things got more interesting after that, I could choose any of the known factions, but there was a new one that had certainly never been in the game itself.
Mercenary -
You have chosen the life of a mercenary. You belong to no faction and yet all at once. Coin is your life's blood, and no job is beyond your reach as long as they pay you properly. You are no limited by factions in the choice of your recruitments, though you are limited in the number of units you may have active on a campaign at a given time. This may be increased with system rewards.
Ooh, shiny new thing! I chose it and smiled a bit. I had to admit, most people would be freaking out right about now but this was a dream come true for me. Not the game itself, but a chance at a new life, something away from my life. The Lumerians had improved multiple aspects of society but I always felt living in a game would be better, any game, even with the possibility of death. I mean, you could die just getting out of your bed nowadays, at least with this you knew where you stood.
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Following my selection of a faction, a new little list popped up. Each one was the difficulty and a few of the possible perks you could select based upon your faction selection. A few of them actually made me laugh. I was only looking at the Hard setting though, the one I’d played most as a kid. No need to go into that brutal shit like the moron in Starcraft. Hard would be a good enough choice, for now; I made it without looking at the others beyond the cursory glance. The perks were nice, though apparently, they had a ‘limiter’ or actual cost. The best actually took more than one slot. I frowned a bit at that; they had detrimental aspects too.
Hard - Beneficial
Evolving Items - 9 PS
Upgradable Starting Unit - 4 PS
Increased Health x2 - 2 PS
Increased Damage x2 - 2 PS
Increased Health x1 - 1 PS
Increased Damage x1 - 1 PS
Increased Diplomacy with Allies - 3 PS
Easier Diplomacy - 5 PS
Respawning First Unit - 10 PS
Hard - Detrimental
Difficult Diplomacy + 2 PS
Decreased Damage x2 + 1 PS
Decreased Health x2 + 1 PS
Sticks and Stones + 10 PS
Harder Diplomacy Gain + 3
Ever Low Tier Unit + 6
It went along that line for a while in both tabs. It made it difficult. I had several I wanted and fiddling with the options I learned I couldn’t take a detrimental that directly opposed a beneficial or vice versa. Alright, let's do this like a merc might. Diplomacy would increase my contracts, no doubt, but at the same time no matter what I did it would negatively impact my rep, as it were, with the other nations. Lets go ahead and take the ‘Difficult Diplomacy’ and ‘Harder Diplomacy Gains,’ if any of the other games were something to go by then even with negative starting points people would always be people. That actually made a lot of these choices a lot easier haha. I took ‘Sticks and Stones’ as well. It made my units starting gear the absolute lowest possible and removed the evolving item ability but I could raid the dead around the battlefield for those improvements. That gave me eighteen perk spots and a lot to work with.
Alright, the whole health and damage things seemed pretty self-explanatory. The more health my troops had, the longer they lasted in a fight, kind of like defense or ‘shield’ that helped them survive the fights a bit longer. The more damage, the more likely they were to fell the enemies. Seemed a bit controversial in a game like this but I went ahead and took the third tier of them for three points each. That dropped me down to nine points. I took the ‘Upgradeable Starting Unit’ for four slots, bringing me down to five in total. Apparently, the upgrade part of that allowed my starting unit to actually ‘evolve’ into a higher tiered unit after a set amount of experience was gained. It made me laugh my ass off for about five minutes, Pokemon Total War!
Still laughing I went ahead and selected some very small one slot perks. ‘Of the forest,’ it was kind of like ensuring the units under my command were more adept in the forest. Gave like a percent or two increased movement speed and aim for bow units while in wooded areas. ‘Sacking’ was next, self-explanatory again. Gave me an odd increase in the amount of coin I gained from just raiding a settlement or sacking it.
That left me with three slots left. Frowning as I went through everything, I didn’t see a whole lot that I wanted. Shrugging, I chose a three slot at random, thinking it would be useful. What I got was “Loyalty Increase x3.” It would seem that even in this game your men being loyal to you was needed, I liked the fact it was an incremental daily increase as well. Just three points a day, but depending on how I ran shit it might be the difference between life and death.
With that, all of the perks I wanted or was willing to go bat-shit to acquire was done. That left me with the unit selection. I could only choose from the ‘Mercenary Units’ right now, but apparently, that would change depending on my diplomatic relations with some factions. I’d have to choose one faction to help conquer the game to win it as well. No matter what I asked, the System never told me if I would be able to bring anything into the other games. I’d have to assume I couldn’t for now and focus more on my own shit where I could.
I went through the list for a bit and found the best unit you could get in the early game from the merc troops. I knew their gear would be shit thanks to my ‘Sticks and Stones’ addition, but they should still be pretty damn amazing.
Mercenary Hoplites -
Among the best armored Roman Mercenary Units, capable of forming a phalanx and breaking chariot charges.
I’d made my choices. I’d ensured I had a chance while knowing I had to take a few hits for those chances. Now it’d just depend on how I could handle actual fights. Confirming all of my selections I could only think that practice would make perfect in the art of killing.