by Jez Cajiao
Templar: This is a rare class, not often offered. You will be able to call down Holy Wrath with one hand, and wield cold steel to smite your enemies with the other. Choosing this as your first-class evolution will grant you a one-off bonus of five points to Endurance and five points to Wisdom.
Unique:
Tomb Raider: You seem to have a knack for surviving in monster-infested remnants of an earlier civilization. Perhaps it is destiny? Choosing this as your first-class evolution will grant you a one-off bonus of five points to Constitution and five points to Perception.
Justicar: You yearn to dedicate your life to protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty. Choosing this as your first-class evolution will grant you a one-off bonus of five points to Perception and five points to Wisdom.
Lord: You have become ruler of a place of power, and leader of your people, but can you make it last? Choosing this as your first-class evolution will grant you a one-off bonus of five points to Luck and five points to Perception.
Name Jax
Class: Spellsword
Renown: Unknown
Level: 13
Progress: 101750/120000
Patron: Jenae, Goddess of Fire and Exploration
Points to Distribute: 40
Meridian Points to Invest: 1
Stat
Current points
Description
Effect
Progress to next level
Agility
16
Governs dodge and movement.
Average speed + 60%
98/100
Charisma
11
Governs likely success to charm, seduce, or threaten
Success chance +10%
74/100
Constitution
15
Governs health and health regeneration
HP+120, regen 6pts per 600s (+10% regen due to soul bond, -20hp, each point invested now worth 20hp)
10/100
Dexterity
16
Governs ability with weapons and crafting success
+ 60%
33/100
Endurance
18
Governs stamina and stamina regeneration
STM +80, regen 8pts per 30s
37/100
Intelligence
15
Governs base mana and number of spells able to be learned
+50 mana, spell capacity: 7 spells (-20mp due to soul bond)
88/100
Luck
17
Governs overall chance of bonuses
+70%
68/100
Perception
18
Governs ranged damage and chance to spot traps/hidden items
+80% ranged damage, +18% chance to spot traps/hidden items
72/100
Strength
19
Governs damage with melee weapons and carrying capacity
+9 damage with melee weapons, +90% carrying capacity
87/100
Wisdom
21 (15)
Governs mana regeneration and memory
+110% mana recovery, 2.1ppm, 110% more likely to remember things
34/100
I pulled up my character sheet and looked it over. In the course of the last two days, I’d also managed to raise my Constitution, Wisdom, and Endurance, as well as my progress to my next ‘earned’ increase in all of my attributes. Based on my current stats, I honestly had no idea where to allocate all the points. Well, wasn’t entirely true, actually. I wanted to put them everywhere! I wanted to select the class evolution to boost flagging areas like my charisma, but I didn’t want to waste it. I could also see the benefits of both spreading the points out evenly on one hand, and min/maxing on the other.
After all, I’d always wanted to ‘bullet-time,’ and putting a straight forty points into my Agility would probably allow that! Or I could go all ‘Hulk Smash,’ if I dumped them into Strength, or…
I could go on for hours. I knew that, and Oracle and Jenae were surprisingly little help. Despite their opinions on everything else, they just told me to trust myself and allocate as I wanted. I just know they’re going to tell me I’ve done it wrong later, though…
I thought about the fights I’d had since arriving, and how I’d basically survived by the skin of my teeth through a combination of sheer stubbornness and luck. I took a deep breath and selected my evolved class to be ‘Justicar,’ getting a bonus of five points to Perception and Wisdom. I then decided to play to my strengths, as my fighting style was both melee and magic based, so I put ten points into Constitution. God knew I’d been lucky to survive at all, so far. A further ten points went into Intelligence, giving my mana a serious boost from one hundred and thirty mana to two hundred and thirty. Thanks to losing twenty to Oracle, it also meant that when I healed up, I’d be able to learn more spells, or at least when Oracle let me anyway…
For the remaining twenty points, I still had the dilemma of deciding to min/max or spread them out? I knew my fighting style was heavy on the melee, but I could increase those stats from practice and training. My more esoteric attributes, like Intelligence and Wisdom, I really couldn’t. Alternatively, if I died fighting these assholes, it really wasn’t going to matter if I had the mana regeneration of a king.
I took deep breath and chose what I really didn’t want to, but I felt it was my only real option after talking to Jenae. I had to be fast; I had to be able to appear and disappear. I had to whittle their numbers down, as these guys were soldiers. They’d slaughter me in a stand-up fight. I put all twenty points into Agility, cursing myself as I did. I hated those stabby-stabby bastard rogues, but damn if it wasn’t what was needed now!
I now had a total of four hundred and eighty HP, two hundred and thirty mana, and moved like a snake on a hot griddle. I bit my tongue, tasting blood as the pain of the changes ripped through me. Muscle fibers and nerves altered at a molecular level to rebuild me as a faster, leaner, and far deadlier opponent.
There was one Change I had left to make before they arrived, and I knew this was one I was either going to love or hate. Jenae had told me what the essence core was, and how the nobles had used them. They weren’t trophies; they were weapons. They were the secret to the Augmentations the Baron had referenced. Using them granted a portion of the power of the creature, but they were irrevocably part of you from then on. The SporeMother Essence Core would grant me some of her powers, but they’d take a terrible toll as well. Jenae explained that they needed to be balanced carefully. For an ability that required stamina, a second Essence Core was needed to provide that kind of boost, or the Core would feed on me. Do something that took too much mana, and I’d be brain dead; too much Stamina, and my heart would stop. It was all about balance, and the thing was, I didn’t have a second Meridian Point available, or a second Essence Core. I had one choice, really: risk it for a biscuit.
I pulled the Core out of my bag and examined it. It was the size of my thumbnail, round and hard like a marble, and it shone with an unhealthy internal light that shifted from green to grey, even becoming weirdly black at times, sucking all color from everything it touched.
I held it in my right hand and stared into its depths. I concentrated, focusing on the Meridian Point I had available. At first, nothing happened, but then I felt it. A stirring in my hand, and then pain as the Pearl’s tiny filaments in every part of my body slowly shifted. Blood swelled in my hand as tiny sections of my skin were sliced free, the filaments exposing themselves to air and reaching out to touch the SporeMother Essence Core. When they connected, the core flashed brightly, and a new notification appeared in my mind.
You have found a SporeMother Essence Core. You have the capacity to absorb this Core, gaining the following abilities:
Child of the Night: You can alter your body, becoming incorporeal at will. All items you are in contact with and wish to include will also gain this effect.
Cost: 10xHP per second when in darkness, 200xHP per second in direct sunlight.
Nightmare: You can inflict ‘fear’ on a target at will.
Cost: 5xHP per second for a 5% increase, builds with time. Once fear effect has risen to 100%, target can be commanded. Depends on target’s will and is cancelled by direct sunlight.
This Essence Core can be located in one of the following Nodes for the corresponding bonus:
Head: (Alongside Primary Node): Increase in Stealth abilities of 10%, anger increase of 25%.
Eyes: (Alongside Secondary Node): Increase in vision in darkness of 20ft, decrease in vision in sunlight of 90% of normal vision
Ears: No bonus, 20% decrease in range of sounds detected
Nose: Bloodsense will activate at will, allowing you to track living prey. You will be filled with an intense hunger for flesh.
Mouth: You can use ‘Voice of Fear’ on targets, feeding their fear of the dark and what lurks within it. Dead meat will no longer satisfy your hunger.
Heart: You will gain additional HP in proportion with that of any target that you drain of lifeblood.
Lungs: Your stamina will increase when in darkness, but decrease in light by 20%
Stomach: Living flesh will increase your stamina by 10% per meal you eat for up to six hours. This counter will be reset with each living meal you eat.
Legs: You will gain a boost of 10% to your speed in darkness. Speed in daylight will be decreased by 20%
Feet: You will be more silent when moving in darkness, but easier to detect in direct sunlight.
Arms: You gain a 20% increase in strength, but a 40% decrease in limb speed.
Hands: You will gain chitinous tips to your fingers, able to shred flesh far easier. These claws cannot be retracted and are permanent.
I looked over the abilities and their costs. I’d basically lose at least as much as I gained in darkness when I was in direct sunlight, if not worse, but goddamn it, I needed any advantage I could get! When Jenae explained this side of it, she stated that humans are essentially creatures of balance, and as such, she advised that all I needed was to absorb the core of a creature with an affinity to daylight to even things out in the future. Thankfully, with my increase in speed from my Agility attribute dump, I could afford to give up the twenty percent loss I’d have after selecting my legs as the Node location, and the ten percent increase in speed in Darkness would help as well.
With that done, I asked Seneschal to order my new security force to gather at the armory, so that I could talk to them before dispatching them to the two defensive positions we’d chosen, and headed there myself, Bob and Oracle accompanying me.
It took a little over an hour for us to reach the armory, and it was nearly two hours later when the last member of the security team staggered in, collapsing in exhaustion onto the floor. I stood up from the pile of rubble where I’d been snoozing and wandered over to stand over him as he gasped and wheezed for breath.
“You know, pushing yourself this hard isn’t healthy, Oren,” I said, observing the purple of his cheeks and the unhealthy blue tinge to his lips. Before I could say anything else, Oracle hit him with a healing spell, making his color return to normal, and he sagged back in relief. It took him a long moment to get his breath back fully, during which Barrett and several other members of his crew tried to get him upright. All were met with an explosion of dwarvish swearing and, in Barrett’s case, an ill-aimed punch.
Barrett laughed and dodged easily. While he’d appeared thin as a rail when I’d met him earlier, it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t down to a lack of strength. If anything, the crew of Oren’s ship had muscle to spare. What they didn’t have was any fat on them. Two of the former slaves were hunters who had fallen on hard times, and between them, they’d managed to knock up a few snares and traps that had started providing us all a little meat with our meals. The supplies that we could use from the ship were dwindling, and I’d been told that winter was fast approaching, so we were hoping the military airship would have plenty of provisions. If not, we might starve before the winter was out, with so many mouths to feed.
I shook my head, dismissing the thoughts, and clapped Barrett on the shoulder, grinning at him.
We got along well. Oren was his captain, and probably always would be, but the dwarf was a crap fighter and had no idea about tactics. Barrett, on the other hand, was a great fighter, and the rest of his former crew looked to him as much as they did Oren. The giant Ewok guy had turned out to be an engineer, rather than a fighter, which was a shame, as a hit from him would have done serious damage. But he was also a pacifist, and a vegetarian, so he had enough going wrong in his life without adding to it by putting a spear in his hands.
I’d enlisted Oren as titular leader of Squad One, with Barrett as his second. They had conscripted both the Dwarves from the ship crew, each over thirty despite the lack of beards, who turned out to be brother and sister. Trin was the eldest, and she was also undoubtedly the stronger of the two, but Rikka had shown himself to be skilled with a crossbow that had survived the crash, and both of them were fierce in their desire to fight for their new home. I nodded to both as they each caught my eye, Trin prodding Oren none too gently with one thick boot until he got to his feet. The last member of their little team was a human from the group of slaves. Short and dark skinned, with black hair that had been cut into a mohawk, Jian was a real spitfire of a man. He’d asked which team was more likely to see heavy fighting, and had chosen that one to join, getting a few points from me in the balls department, even if he lost more in the brains. He had picked two short swords that he seemed barely able to lift. As I looked over the team, I had to admit to myself that they were the best I had.
The members of Squad Two sat off to the left, talking quietly, ignoring the more boisterous ribbing that Squad One gave their leader.
The second team was made up entirely of former slaves, and I suspected that they’d be the better fighters once they’d recovered. For now, they had little armor and rusty weapons, and two days of admittedly better (but still not good) food wasn’t enough to make them into all they could be. They were led by Lydia, the woman that’d been the most outspoken and aggressive of the slaves when I’d shown up. She was tall, as rail thin as the rest of them, and had an almost permanent scowl painted across her face. However, I’d also seen her watching over the kids, making sure they had all they needed and sharing her food with them. I’d healed them all, even those that had insisted they were fine, and as a result, they were at least recovering from the physical damage. The mental damage would take longer, but I hoped that gutting some of the people that had enslaved them would help towards that.
Teaming up with Lydia was the tall elven man that had wanted to kill Toka. His name was Makin, and he’d been a farmer before, but he could swing an axe. Driven by his festering hatred, he’d been quick to sign up to fight. He concerned me, but I needed all the help I could get. A dwarf, An’na, had also joined her. His name kinda freaked me out, as he (I thought it was a he, anyway?) spoke with the deepest voice I’d ever heard. I couldn’t help imagining him in a dress, singing along to a Disney song, but I hadn’t been able to explain why I was grinning when he’d asked me. An’na fought with a pair of maces, and when I watched him practicing, I didn’t mind admitting he scared the shit out of me. The damn things seemed to blur in his hands, and he laughed the entire time, and I mean Laughed. The. Entire. Time. He was clearly batshit crazy, but I was going to take whatever I could get.
Last were two humans, Arrin and Rol. Arrin was determined to learn magic, and I’d given him a Firebolt spellbook. The man had fallen to his knees crying, and had taken to the spell like a duck to water. Rol… well, Rol was kinda crap at everything, as near as I could tell. He meant well, he really did. He was always the first to volunteer, happy to help, and all that, but whatever he touched seemed to go wrong. I’d eventually given him a spear and told him to stab the bad guys with the pointy end, but that was about al
l I felt he could maybe manage.
Oracle and I had debated giving out more spellbooks, and even a few of the precious skill memories, but in the end we’d decided not to. We were going to rely on surprise as much as possible, and between Bob, Oracle, and myself, we were going to do the lion’s share of the fighting. The two squads had spent a lot of the intervening time building choke points on the stairs, starting three floors above and below where we planned to draw the enemies in. All they had to do was keep them bottled up, and not die. I’d give out more books and memories to people once they proved themselves.
I gathered the two squads together with a whistle and looked them both over in the light of the afternoon sun. We were standing just inside the main hall, with the rear of Oren’s ship poking out onto the marshalling yard, as though it had crashed into the Tower. We’d deliberately left a lot of space for them to land their ship safely, making it as attractive a location as possible, even going so far as to pile loot up outside as though it was being sorted.
