Taloc watched Isla as she walked away from the party. She appeared to be Human, and physically, she looked exactly as she had before they ended up in this game. Her gear, which consisted of a chain mail shirt that protected her torso, leather armor leggings, a longsword, a bow, and a shield, gave him the impression that she was a fighter-type class. Vanya was clearly an Elf, and she looked similar to what she had before, but her face was more angular, and her ears were the standard pointy things expected of the race. She carried a bow and some bags, but little else. He knew she went for a healing class, so the bow appeared an odd fit as the Cleric classes did not really use them. She wore no armor, and her clothes were a reddish-brown tunic with a green cloak. He had not seen her stand before the transformation, but he was certain that she was now shorter. Vultressant looked like a smaller, grumpier version of himself without hair. Well, he had some on the sides, but he certainly was going to need a hat to protect his scalp. He too carried a bow, which was an oddity for a caster. Ewtain wore a long cloak with a hood that he had put up once he was fully on this side of character creation, but he looked the same otherwise. Ewtain did not have a bow but instead carried a short sword. Taloc was a Human himself, so he probably looked the same as he had before, but he would have to check later. Maroftis, on the other hand, was unrecognizable in his new body, which was green and scaly and complete with a tail. He looked like a cross between a crocodile and the little commercial gecko who walked and talked in a British accent. He had a sword strapped to his belt, but Taloc was unsure how well the Korak could wield it, given that his hands were more like claws. Maroftis was now the tallest member of the party, and if Taloc hadn’t changed in size, then he estimated that the reptile was north of seven feet tall.
Well, he would have answers for what everyone was shortly. He made the eye motion to summon his HUD, then he willed his character information to appear. His HUD displayed a tidy screen that had his attributes, skills, abilities, health points, and mana points displayed. He had randomly chosen his attributes, so he had expected his stats to be generally around 14. He had chosen to be Human so that he would be able to put all five attribute points into a single stat each level, allowing him to fix any problems with his original stats. His attributes were listed as Charisma: 12, Dexterity: 14, Fate: 14, Intellect: 12, Psyche: 14, Strength: 20, and Vitality: 14. Below these were listed HP: 140 and MP: 120, and while Taloc assumed that these stood for health points and mana points, he focused on each of them and verified that he was correct. The 20 Strength was a pleasant surprise. Getting ten points randomly assigned to any one of the seven attributes must have a low probability, and that it had appeared in an ability that would be beneficial to him was excellent.
Taloc had a long list of skills. His only language was Common: rank 10 as a result of being Human, and the skills bow, track, and wilderness lore were added due to the Ranger class. His other skills were direction sense, hide, light armor, listen, long blades, move silently, rapid shot, ride, spot, and stealth. All of these skills were useful and mostly focused on things that he considered typical for a Ranger. In most games, Rangers were decent melee fighters because they could wield a sword or other up-close weapon, but generally they lacked the hit points, or health points in this game, of a dedicated tank or the ability to use heavy armor. His only armor ability was light armor, so he was not a suitable tank.
Taloc looked at his abilities last. He had been given the ability heightened senses, probably since he had chosen a random scout-style class, and this would help him with skills and actions that required any of the senses to perform. He also had the ability see invisible. This was a bit disappointing, since there was probably a spell that did the same thing. He focused on the ability to get more information. See invisible: You are able to see objects or creatures that are either actively or passively trying not to be seen. Taloc had hoped for more information than that, but the description was in line with what he had expected. At least it didn’t restrict the ability to invisible objects only.
Isla came back from scouting a couple of minutes after Taloc had finished looking through his character information. “Is everyone done?” he asked. After receiving confirmation from everyone, he started. “My skills and abilities are set up for me to be the scout. I can track, spot, and listen, and I have an ability called heightened senses to help with all of those. I can also see invisible or stealthy objects and creatures, so it should be very difficult for anything to sneak up on me. I randomized my stats, so all of them are at 12 or 14 except for Strength, which is at 20 for some reason. Also, I have 140 hit points… er, health points, and 120 mana points. I don’t have any spells to use the points on, but that’s my pool for when I learn some. Why don’t you go next, Vult?”
Vultressant nodded. “We already talked about my language sense ability, and my other ability is called enhanced power regeneration, which makes my mana point regeneration twice as fast as normal and gives me the ability to instantly fill up my mana pool. The cooldown on the fill-up is two hours, though.”
“It’s mana in this game, huh?” Maroftis asked with a smile, or maybe it was a grimace, as it was difficult to tell now that he was a lizard. Also, his eyes were off-putting; they looked more like marbles than they did eyes. They were mostly turquoise blue with green in the center, but they each had a vertical slit as an iris.
Vultressant rolled his eyes at his friend. “Spell points, spell power, magic power, magic points, mana, whatever. I have 250 of them as well as 130 health. My Intellect is 25, and the rest of my stats are no higher than 15. I have the skills fire magic and wind magic with three spells: bolt of fire, fire resistance, and personal shield. My other skills that are useful to the party are decipher script and cartography. Looking at the titles of all of your classes, I’m the only blaster in the group, so you guys make sure to keep the baddies off of the little Gnome Wizard.”
Ewtain went next. “My Dex is 25, and the rest of the stats were randomized and no higher than 15. My HP and MP are both 150. My skills are mostly attuned to an Assassin-type class, and as a Night Stalker, I received the skills for short blades and brew poison. The other skills useful to the party are detect traps and disarm traps. One of my abilities is mental wall, which protects me from things like scrying and mental attacks that target me. The other ability is called prescient reflexes. It looks like I’ll get some advanced warning of attacks, and it should help my dodge skill as well as help me generally defensively.”
He looked at Isla next to him, and as they had been going in a clockwise manner, she went next.
“The Skirmisher class seems to be a cross between a fighter and something like a rogue or a thief,” Isla said. “It sounds like Taloc’s Ranger is more like a fighter-hunter, so a bit of an overlap in classes, but hopefully different enough to not cause a problem.”
“Remember that we can design our characters to do things that would be restricted to us by our class in other games,” Taloc reminded her.
She nodded. “Yeah, I suppose, but I’ll have to get used to that. In so many games, our class defines everything that we can do. Well, I was looking to play a Bard, so I have 20 points in Charisma and Dexterity, and the rest of my attributes are pretty low, and I only have 110 HP and 120 MP. I also have detect traps and a few social skills. Let me see.” She appeared to access her HUD for a moment. “Bluff, perform, and persuasion are the skills. Oh, and my abilities are adeptness and born leader.”
Taloc thought that Isla had a character that was certainly different from his, and most of what she had discussed did fit the description of what he had come to know as a Bard-type class. Bards were characters that usually played an instrument to buff the party with some beneficial enhancements, but they could also be used to debuff the monsters with negative effects. Bards also had social skills in line with the ones that she possessed for social interaction, so Isla might need to do the talking for the group. Even her born leader ability was probably a social ability, but adeptness could mean a lot of things. “What’s the description of the adeptness ability?”
Isla stared straight ahead again. “It says, ‘Your ability to learn and advance skills is unparalleled. You will learn new skills in a fraction of the time it takes most others to learn them, and the triggers that are needed for you to advance your skills are generally lower than normal. There are no restrictions on the skills that you can learn, even if you lack the race or class requirement to learn them. However, you are still bound by any prerequisites necessary to use a skill.’ Do you want me to read anything else?”
“No, that should be fine for now,” Taloc replied. “I know that it isn’t the jack-of-all-trades Bard ability.” He trailed off, thinking for a moment. “At any rate, your ability, adeptness, sounds like it might be analogous to that D&D Bard ability. The skill system here clearly works differently, but it looks like you rolled a bard. You have a sword, a shield, and a bow, so I assume that you have the skills to use them.” Isla nodded. “Good deal, you have more tanky armor. Neither of us is really tank material, but we can help out our main fighter, which is likely to be our resident lizard. It looks like the next up is Vanya.”
Vanya looked as if she were accessing her HUD for a moment before going over her character. “My attributes were done randomly, and they range from 12 to 16; I didn’t get lucky like Taloc with my rolls. My race provided me with the Intuition attribute, as you all should have seen if you looked at the descriptions of the basic races. Well, Maroftis might not know, but I assume that the rest of you do. I have 160 health points and 190 mana points. I have the Elf racial ability of night vision, and the other two are locate ore and commune with nature. The skills of note are appraise, herb lore, and potions. I also have anatomy, which could be helpful. The spells that I have are neutralize poison, blessing, and warding of undead.”
“Too bad that you don’t have any healing spells.” Taloc said. “Your skills like potions, anatomy, and herb lore should be helpful with healing until we can get to a city and find some healing spells for you to learn. The locate ore ability is intriguing. We might be able to use that to find some precious metals to sell. And you got an extra ability for being an Elf, that’s cool. My Human race has no racial abilities. What does appraise do?”
“It lets me know the monetary value of items,” Vanya replied.
“That should be useful.” Taloc then looked at Maroftis with a smile and a shake of his head. “Take it away, man.” Maroftis began using his guttural language that Taloc could not understand. “English, man! Well, I guess ‘man’ may not be correct any longer.”
Maroftis switched to English. “I have 20 Brawn, Fate and Vitality. I have 300 health points and 110 mana points. I can use my claws to attack, and my hide is like armor. As for abilities, I got immune to fire, and the description says that heat can actually help me heal. Regenerate is another ability, and I also have slow metabolism; my tail can attack according to my prehensile tail ability; and I have the heat sense ability. I have double the health points of everyone in the group except for the healer, and I’m very hard to kill.”
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“All right, tough guy, you get to tank,” Vultressant said. “Do you have any skills that we should know about?” he asked.
Maroftis did not say anything for a minute, so he was probably accessing his character information, but it was difficult to tell since his reptile eyes were hard to read. “Most of the skills are things like climb, jump, and swim, so things that either keep me alive or allow me to maneuver... endurance is another one like that. Well, maybe wilderness lore and animal empathy could be useful, and I also got intimidate and assess other, which lets me know the relative strength of an opponent.”
Taloc nodded in approval. “Your race looks like it is very strong indeed; hopefully if we meet any more of your kind, they won’t be evil.”
“Have you ever known of a huge lizard race to be good?” Ewtain asked.
“No,” Taloc conceded. “But remember that we don’t know very much about this world. I was playing with the help feature, but it gave very little information, and most of that was pretty general. It’s weird that it has very specific descriptions of my skills and abilities and all that, but on general stuff it’s vague. It did say that as we encounter things the help feature would provide more information for us, so it might be a log of the things that we do or see in this world.” He looked back to Maroftis. “How did you get 20 points in three attributes, and what is ‘Brawn’?”
“I put ten points in Fate, and I rolled five points in each of Brawn and Vitality. My race, Korak, added an additional five points to each of these. Brawn adds to health points, and it’s another modifier that does things similar to Strength. It also helps with some resistances, and I get a free point in it each level and can add to it with my other five points like I can with the other attributes. Otherwise, I have a 10 Charisma, 12 Dex, 11 Intellect, 15 Psyche, and 14 Strength.”
“Well, you sound like a very solid tank,” Taloc said approvingly. “It doesn’t sound like you have any ability that taunts, though. I guess that you should just try to keep things in front of you, and if they try to get by you, hopefully there is something like an attack of opportunity in this game, or world, or whatever. There might not be an agro system like most games have, so there might not be a need for a taunting skill.”
“I’ll just swat them with my tail!”
Nodding, Taloc said, “That’ll be fine.” He turned to Isla. “Isla, is there anything that you found while scouting?”
She pointed to her right. “There’s a stream about 50 yards or so that way. The rest of the area is much like it is here.”
Something chimed in Taloc’s ears, and by the reactions of everyone else, they too heard the noise. His HUD activated on its own, and a large notification filled the screen. Welcome to Faltoral! Your adventure now begins. Your default language is common, unless you do not speak Common; then it will be your racial language. When you learn another language, it will begin at rank 1, and if you wish to speak in another language, just will your speech filter to switch to the desired language. Note: You will be able to understand any known language at your current rank in that language, regardless of your chosen speech filter.
This is your current respawn point; to change your respawn point, simply access your bind point and activate it. Note: It takes five minutes to set your bind point. Enjoy your journey!
“So, I guess we’ve officially started,” Ewtain said.
Vanya smiled. “It sure looks like it.”
“Where you speech?” Maroftis said, and while Taloc understood it as Common, it sounded like someone speaking a language foreign to them.
“You sound like an immigrant,” Isla said, looking at Maroftis. “Are you messing with us?”
Maroftis accessed his HUD and held up one sharp finger of his right claw. “Common 1.” He shook his head in disgust.
Vultressant face-palmed and said in annoyance, “His Common is only rank one, that’s great. I can communicate with him using Koraken, but my ability in that is only rank three, so until I rank that up, this could be a problem. Odd… when I learned Koraken, I started at rank three and not rank one, like the instructions just said—oh, wait! That’s my language sense ability kicking in. It makes me start a new language at rank three.” He switched to Koraken. “I’m going to have to translate for you until you learn Common.”
The Korak considered for a second, then seemed to understand what Vultressant had meant, even if he hadn’t said it correctly due to his low rank in the lizard language. Finally, Maroftis nodded in agreement.
“Well, Vult, don’t knock the fact that you get bonus ranks. Get your skill in his language up as quickly as you can,” Taloc said. He turned to the rest of the party. “I think that we should follow that stream for now,” he said. “Isla and Ewtain, take the flanks. I’ll lead. Maroftis, protect the healer and caster. Vult, translate that for him.”
While Vultressant spoke to Maroftis, Isla interjected, “This is ridiculous; we can’t even speak our own language here! Is that sort of tech on Earth? Have we actually been transported or abducted?”
“I think that we speak in our own language, and it gets translated into whatever language we currently know in the game,” Vultressant said, “or at least in the one that we specify.”
“You know what I mean!” Isla said in nearly a yell. She waved a hand at Maroftis. “We can’t understand him! And this display…” She gestured to the air in front of her face. “This looks like a gaming display. I’ve seen something like this using a VR headset, but nothing is attached to my head.”
Isla was growing more agitated by the moment, and Vultressant cut her off. “Isla,” he said, trying to use a calm voice. “I can’t be sure of where we are, but there are not many options that I can think of. We could be still on Earth, hooked up to some sort of VR world, but I don’t know how that could’ve happened unless they knocked us out and changed our memories. There might be sufficient tech around for that sort of thing. The other main possibility is that we are indeed somewhere else, be it another dimension or planet. It certainly felt like we were transported somewhere else, and have you ever seen graphics this good?” He motioned to the surrounding area, which looked completely natural. “Vanya can walk now, but that could point to either possibility since a VR world could be manipulated to have her walk. But if they have the tech to teleport us, then they likely have the tech for the healing as well.” Vultressant struggled to think of anything else to say to calm her down.
“I have feeling in my legs,” Vanya said, tapping one of her knees for emphasis. “I’ve used VR, and it can’t do that.”
“This is bullshit!” Isla exclaimed. “If they can control us like this either by screwing with our minds or sending us somewhere else in the universe, then what do we do?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Vultressant said, “but I think that we need to do the same thing regardless of which scenario is correct, and that is to play the game. We’re all gamers, and they’ve given us a gaming system. We need to do our best to explore this world, gain levels, and increase our skills. We aren’t a bunch of noobs who’ve never played a game before. Sure, this is new to us, and maybe we are noobs to this world, but we won’t be for long. Maybe there’s a way out, but we need to learn more in order to find out.”
That seemed to mollify most of them, but Isla still had some issues. “What about the death thing?” she asked in a slightly less agitated tone. “We get three lives, and then we die in the real world, right? I didn’t sign up for that.”
“Well, we might have actually signed up for that,” Ewtain said. “Did anyone read the stuff that we signed while registering before we got slurped into the cosmos?”
Taloc barked a laugh. “No, but they couldn’t have possibly put that in there. Eventually someone would read the thing.”
“Hmm,” Ewtain said. “Well, maybe they thought that people would just dismiss it and think that it was just flavor text. I mean, if you read, ‘You agree to be teleported to Faltoral and receive three lives before actually dying’, do you think that anyone would have taken it seriously? And if they had and then reported it to the police or something, who would believe it? No one, that’s who. Now, let’s do our best to stay alive and follow that stream that Isla found.”
“We were just the first party here,” Vanya said. “We could wait for the next group that started after us. I think that the next scheduled group was 20 minutes after us.”
They decided that waiting was a good idea, and to pass the time, they tried out some of their skills and abilities. Taloc took out his sword and gave it a few swings. The weapon felt natural in his hands, as if he had been using it all his life. Ewtain squared off with the Ranger. He had a short sword in one hand and was twirling a dagger expertly in the other. “Let’s see what you got,” he said as he advanced on Taloc. The Ranger blocked the first few attacks and suddenly went on the offensive. He swung three times, but each strike met only empty air as Ewtain dodged the first two and did a backwards flip to avoid the final low-arcing swipe at his legs.
“What the hell?” Taloc said, and he sheathed his sword in a smooth-flowing motion. “You did that flip as if you knew I was going low.”
Realizing that play time was over, Ewtain put away his weapons. The short sword had a small scabbard at his waist, but Taloc did not see where he stashed the dagger. “I think that I did,” Ewtain said. “It was a sense of danger in that area, and I had a feeling that backwards was the best direction to go.”
“How could you know that?” Vanya asked. Her tone suggested a mix of wonderment and skepticism.
“Have you ever used a bow before?” Ewtain asked, pointing at the weapon slung over her shoulder.
“Once as a kid, when my family went to a Renaissance Faire.” She looked at her bow. “It was a toy compared to this one, though.”
Ewtain pointed to a small tree about 100 feet away. “Shoot at the tree.”
Vanya shrugged. She unshouldered her bow with one hand and drew an arrow from a quiver strapped to her back with the other. She nocked the arrow and paused to aim. “Huh,” she said, and let the arrow fly.
It struck the tree in the center of its trunk, and the party sounded their approval. Isla even clapped and cheered. “Way to go, girl!”
“See, you hit the mark in just one shot, and you looked like you had handle a bow regularly,” Ewtain said after the congratulations were finished.
She shouldered her bow. “Well, there was an aiming target.”
“What do you mean?” Ewtain asked as Isla, Vultressant, and Taloc all pulled out their bows and prepared to shoot the same tree that Vanya had.
“It looked like I was looking through a pair of binoculars or a telescope with a circle in the middle of it. My vision even zoomed in on the target.”
“I’m not getting any telescoping feature,” Vultressant said as he aimed his bow in the direction of the tree, “but there is a target reticle that moves as I move the bow and change the tension of the draw.” The Gnome’s bow was shorter than those of the other three in the group to match his stature. Vanya’s was the same size as the ones that the two Humans carried, even though she was not much taller than Vultressant was.
Taloc drew his bow, and a red target reticle appeared in his vision. He tried to focus his aim on the tree, and the reticle moved to where Vanya’s arrow was lodged in the tree. He willed his view to zoom, but nothing happened. “I have the target as well,” Taloc said, “but I can’t do the zoom. How’d you do that, Vanya?”
Vanya reached for her bow again, but stopped and stared at the target tree. “I just have to focus on a spot and think about seeing it. Then my sight zooms in on the area. I can’t see stuff around me when it happens, so I shouldn’t do it all the time.”
They all tried the trick, and they all failed. “Must be an Elf thing,” Taloc said. “Let’s test something. Keep looking that way and see if you can hear what I say next.” She nodded. “Maroftis looks good in green,” he continued in an almost inaudible whisper.
“He’s a bit scary, but the green will help him blend into many terrain types.” Her reply was in her normal voice.
“Did anyone else hear what I said?” He asked, looking around at the group.
Vultressant and Isla shook their heads, and Maroftis acted like he didn’t know what was even going on. Ewtain had a thoughtful expression on his partially hooded face. “I didn’t hear you, but I was able to read your lips,” he said.
“That is a totally sneaky ability,” Isla said. “So Vanya will be hard to sneak up on and can see things from afar, and Ewt will be able to do intel while hiding from behind long grass or something.”
“It looks like we were programmed with the abilities that we were given at character creation,” Taloc said, “so hopefully we’ll continue to fast-learn things as we level.”
They continued to practice with their weapons and try out some of their abilities as they waited. But after more than an hour without a single sighting of another creature, let alone another player, they finally gave up and headed for the stream.