K-k-k-k-karacter Kreation!_Wrong Hero

Suddenly the white space was filled with thousands of different creatures. Most were easily identifiable to Colton from decades of absorbing fantasy media. At just a glance he spotted dwarves, elves, trolls, goblins, centaurs, and multiple other easily identifiable races. There were also some races that were much more difficult to identity. At first, he thought he saw a wooden chest sitting among the crowd, when suddenly a long, red tongue darted out of the lid and licked its lips (boards?). Was that a mimic? Was he being asked to choose a race, and a mimic was among the options? Who would possibly choose a mimic as their race. Even if the faux-chest was particularly large, how powerful and interesting could a large chest possibly be.

Answering his question, the voice spoke again: “Choose an avatar to sculpt, hero.”

Okay, Colton was definitely being asked to choose a race. Not only were their dozens of races, but every race had dozens of variations. Male/female/androgynous, tall/short/in-between, fat/muscular/lean, and numerous other characteristics that the developers had apparently programmed into the character creation.

He could probably spend hours choosing a character, but honestly, he would probably only play for 2-3 hours, until he turned it back over to his roommate. Even if he planned to play through the entire game, in the past when he had played games like Skyrim or others that allowed you to create your own character, he put minimal thought into it, and usually chose something that would make him laugh rather than be a heroic avatar in the fantasy world the game allowed him to move through.

Looking through the races available, he spotted a cluster of brutish looking humanoids. Green skin, large teeth that could probably also double as tusks jutting over their bottom lips. Most of them covered in scars or tattoos that looked applied with a stone needle and hammer. Every indicator told Colton that these were your classic fantasy orcs. In summary, they managed to look both surprisingly badass, but also incredibly funny to his sensibilities. Visually sifting through them, he found one that looked particularly humorous to him. About the middle range of height, he would probably guess around this orc stood about 6’4”; assuming the default humans in the collection were of average heights. While some of the orcs were relatively androgynous, this particular orc definitely presented as female, Unless the developers of this game had decided that male orcs could grow large breasts. Although he supposed most modern developers approached character creation from a more gender fluid viewpoint, viewing sex as strictly binary male/female, Colton decided this orc was definitely female.

Colton chuckled to himself: “Death…by snu snu!”

While not having any particular giantess fetish, the basic idea of guiding a giant, big-boobed orc through a fantasy world made Colton laugh, and that was more than enough for Colton to decide on that avatar.

While he could not be sure what particular input was provided that moved along the game, the voice spoke up once again:

“Interesting choice. Orcs are one of the races that most frequently find themselves as champions in Fineous’ ranks. Usually savage and warlike, they are among those races that regularly live close to the deadlands, sometimes in preparation to become a champion of death, but more often to vent their brutality on the hordes of dead pushing against their boundaries.

“They have few strong allies among the other races, and while few view them with outright hostility, their proximity to the deadlands as well tendency to create empowered champions of death mean most will view them with severe distrust. You have made it easier for yourself to approach the final stretches of the deadlands, but will definitely make gaining support as you travel there much more difficult; however, as the chosen hero you should be more than able to overcome those early hurdles. If you are happy with your choice, we can continue.”

Colton did not think much about how difficult he may or may not have made the game for himself, as he doubted he would make it past whatever the staring village was. Winston would simply start over with a new character when he finally got a chance to play, and no doubt would be able to pick the perfect race to optimize his gameplay.

As if reacting to some more unidentified input Colton had provide, the voice proceeded. “The next gift comes from Themius. From what little Themius’ acolytes were able to study your world across the divide, they saw numerous systems for measuring the strength of fantasy champions. Naturally, this orderly series of numbers and characteristics appealed to the god of order, so you have been blessed with the ability to power yourself using one of the systems pulled from your world.”

‘Did they just world-build a reason for character statistics into the narrative?’ Colton wondered to himself. ‘I do not know if that is the cleverest thing I have ever seen, or the dumbest. It could go either way.’

Colton suddenly witnessed the other avatars disappear, and suddenly his character was directly in front of him, with a series of boxes, individually labelled dexterity, strength, constitution, intelligence, charisma, and wisdom. There was also an additional box. With the header reading “Points,” with the number 27 and “Point cost.” Below those were a series of numbers that apparently listed the costs of the different ability scores.

Points: 9

Point Cost

Score

Cost

Score

Cost

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Before he could start to guess for himself what the different statistics meant, the voice spoke up again:

“It should be kept in mind that these ability scores are not universal among races, and instead represent the baselines and your deviation of it from the different races. A score of 10 is considered completely average, while a score of 20 is considered the pinnacle that species can reach. Anything below 10 represents a weakness in that particular ability compared to the average. An orc with a score of 10 in strength, while average for their race, would be several times stronger than a gnome with a score of 20. Likewise, a high charisma score does not impact all equally. An elf with a high charisma score will probably be treating amicably by nearly all races upon first meeting, while an orc with a high charisma course will likely still be treated with distrust, although less than if they had a lower score.

“As you progress, your adventures will provide you experience that the gods can use to further empower you, and at each level you will gain another ability point to do with as you please. Eventually your power will hopefully increase so that you surpass the bounds of any others of your race, only in this way will you be able to face Fineous.”

Colton looked at the points he had available, and then looked at the scores. Based on what the voice had said, as an orc he (she?) would be treated with distrust, but will be less so with a high charisma score? In that case, lets use 9 of those points to bump Charisma up to 15.

Immediately Colton noticed a distinct change in his avatar’s appearance. While it would be stretching it to say that she became attractive by most human standards, her more orcish features definitely smoothed out. The face and body considerably less unpleasant to look out, while just staying outside of anything most would consider conventionally attractive. Features like the tusks remained, but rather than going all the way to her chin, they did not even make it past her lips. Furthermore, while he had not paid too much attention before, he was nearly 100% certain the already large breasts became slightly larger, and now sat higher and perkier on the chest. Likewise, her waist looked as if it had undergone a round of liposuction, and her butt seemed to undergo the sort of Brazilian butt lift that had remained popular until very recently.

‘Huh, well I just saved 30 thousands of dollars in plastic surgery bills.’ He thought with a smile. While not outright pornographic, he could definitely see his avatar being the subject of some very odd fan fiction.

Looking closer and focusing on the other characteristic, without being told he suddenly had an intuitive understanding of what each would do. Strength seemed pretty obvious. If orcs were naturally stronger than most other species, then why go out of his way to enhance it further. He decided to save some points and set strength to 8.

Constitution seemed to govern things like how vulnerable to disease his character would be, how much damage she could take during combat, and how much she could drink without becoming overly intoxicated. While the first two seemed uninteresting to him, the idea of a big-boobed orc going into bars and drinking the other patrons underneath the table made him laugh, so he dropped another 15 points into Constitution.

At this point, he honestly did not care too much, and just decided to use his last 9 points to put 11 each in dexterity, intelligence, and wisdom. While not a prodigy in any skill, that would make him just slightly above average in those categories. Not bad at all, he thought to himself.

The changes to ability scores also appeared to adjust his avatar's appearance as well. Dropping the strength to 8 seemed to change the orc from a heavily muscled bodybuilder to a devoted crossift athlete. Likewise, upping the constitution did not make the avatar fat by any stretch of the imagination, but it definitely added a small amount of padding, further softening the defintion. Now it was more like a devoted crossfit athlete with a severe sweet tooth.

Now that he finished added his points, a new statistic sheet popped up in front of him, displaying his name, level, race, and the scores he had just decided upon. While he decided all his decisions up to this point, there was one small change he wanted to make.

Name:

Winston

Level:

Dexterity

Race:

Orc

Strength

Constitution

Intelligence

Charisma

Wisdom

Focusing on the character sheet, he looked at the name and realized he could change it. Winston just did not make sense for the character. Thinking for a moment, he decided: ‘large, green, orc not an ogre, but that’s pretty close, going to run around a fantasy kingdom fighting things…I’ve got the perfect name.’