Mark of Matir: May convey special abilities at higher levels. When Mark is activated, drain health from enemies on a critical hit. HP regained is equal to remaining AP + Will bonus. 300 second cooldown. You are immune to undead fear effects. – 500 Infamy in places hostile to worship of Matir.
=Dragonforged Abilities=
Mana Tolerance: You have great resistance to Stranging and Mana Sickness, and may consume magical potions without permanent ill effects. Your toxicity threshold is now equal to your HP. See the Mana Tolerance ability entry for details and related skill and ability trees. Exceeding your Mana Threshold brings on symptoms of Mana Sickness and drains HP.
Eagle Eyes: 20/5 eyesight with enhanced spectrum, 340-degree visual field.
G-force resistance 1: You can remain conscious at up to 5 g of horizontal or vertical pressure.
Stone Bones 1: +10 resistance to crushing damage, 5 damage reduction.
Deep Breather: 1.5x lung capacity.
Iron Body 1: You are largely immune to extremes of heat and cold. You can safely weather extremes between -20 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
Gyroscopic orientation: You cannot be disabled by extremes of motion. You are immune to disorientation and vertigo, and suffer no penalty to vision or concentration while spinning, falling, or while upside down.
Blood Pact: By undergoing the Rite of Marantha, you have become dependent on dragon blood to sustain your metabolism. Every week, you must consume at least one Dragon Blood Elixir to maintain your abilities. Failure to consume the potion will trigger the Starvation and Withdrawal statuses. All abilities gained through the Rite will become unavailable, and AP will regenerate 50% slower.
Stranged: The Rite has resulted in permanent mutations to your body which are visible and identifiable by some creatures. In places (or with people) where Stranged or magical beings have pariah status, you suffer a Severe penalty to all social interactions.
==Combat Abilities==
Basic Weapons Training: Passive -You are trained in the art of war, and fight unarmed and use all simple and martial hand-to-hand weapons without penalty. Does not include exotic weapons.
Armor Mobility: Passive - You are used to wearing armor and bearing heavy loads. +10 Defense in armor (L,M or H), no penalty to carrying.
(New) Weapon Specialist: Polearms: You have trained extensively in the use of polearms. You may use exotic polearms at no penalty; +10% damage with polearms.
=Path Abilities=
Blood Sprint IV
Hit up to 10 targets, deal +250 bleeding damage over ten seconds, boost attack speed +20 for 10 seconds. Chains with Blood Storm.
> Blood Storm III
Strike up to 10 targets. 35 HP recovered on good hits. Can only be used after Blood Sprint.
>> Death by a Thousand Cuts II
Mark Targets with a curse that lowers their attack power by 4% per skill level, and increases your attack by 4% and Damage reduction by 10%. Percentages rise as you level the skill. Max 1 enemy target per skill level. Chained with Blood Storm.
Jump III
Spring 30ft into the air in any direction and deal x4 damage on landing.
> Obscuring Veil III
Chain combo from Jump. Deal a further x3 damage with a very high chance of dealing the Blindness debuff.
Umbra Burst III
Draw Dark energy from the air and emit a chilling burst of enervation that deals elemental damage and has a 25% chance to inflict the Frozen debuff.
Shattering Darkness III
An attack that freezes and cracks an enemy’s natural or man-made armor. Reduces enemy DR by 15%.
Whirlwind Butcher II
Hit up to 12 targets and recover 10 AP on every good hit.
Shadow Dance II
Basic Evasive Dash reduces damage by 80% at the cost of HP (10 HP per dash).
Mantle of Night I
Boost movement speed and special attack power 20% for 10 seconds.
Plunge III
Your acquired resistance to g-forces has increased beyond the threshold granted by the Rite of Marantha, even if your head is above your feet. You are able to withstand 15 negative G’s (5 per skill level).
Leap of Faith III
You gain the ability to better control your direction in the air if you fall off your mount, even when flying at high speeds. You experience time dilation of 3 seconds (1 second per skill level) while falling.
=Gifts of Matir=
(New) Shadow Lance: Your weapon transforms into solid darkness. In a single strike, you deal bonus Dark damage equal to 75 x half your Will score. Your opponent gains the Blinded status (unless immune). Current damage: 2137.
Blessing of the Raven: You call on your power and gain increased insight into knowledge and skills. +10% Skill EXP for 45 min.
Life for Life: Channel a blast of damaging dark energy into your enemy and drain their lifeforce to replenish your own. Inflicts Corruption debuff.
Spider Climb: You gain the ability to climb and travel vertical surfaces, crawl across ceilings, and hang on walls. Level this ability to extend duration. Duration: 20 seconds.
[You have unlocked a new combat ability: Master of Blades]
[You have unlocked a new combat ability: Rain of Glass]
[You have 6 unspent Combat Ability Points!]
[You may choose one Gift of Matir]
“Oh shit bro!” Excited, I navigated to the Ability menu to review my Combat Ability options first:
Master of Blades
Chain combo from Jump. Before you hit the ground, leap backwards into the air and manifest a rain of shadow lances onto your foes, dealing massive damage to enemies (1088 per lance, 2 lances per level, maximum two lances per enemy).
Rain of Glass
Chained from Hall of Mirrors. Twist acrobatically mid-air, unleashing a second blast of Dark energy shards down on a group of enemies. 1050 damage to 5 enemies. Damage and number of affected enemies increases when you level this skill.
I’d been saving my Ability Points during the grind so that I could spend them just before we went to Myszno, and now I was glad I’d waited. I did a rough calculation on the damage that Jump, Master of Blades III, and Rain of Glass I would do together. Times four from Jump on one target, then 2176 per two lances per target, then another 1050 each on the same target and four others… that came out to almost 4000 damage leveled on a single enemy at Level 17.
“Hooollly fuck.” I rubbed my eyes and did the math again. Yup: 3966 damage to a single target, with damage in the thousands to everything else. And, if the critter I was smacking around was weak to Darkness, they’d take double on Rain of Glass. That was insane. Like… completely overpowered.
Naturally, I was tempted to dump all the points into those two new abilities, because with a little more math, I worked out that by Level VII – attainable at Level 35 – I’d be dealing five-digit damage. IN. SANE.
However, there were other abilities that were just as tempting. Umbra Blast was already awesome, and at Level IV it could effectively entangle, freeze, and damage ten enemies to the tune of 1500 Dark damage. Blood Storm, my old faithful, went up to 250% damage with 45 HP regained on good hits. If I hit between 10 and 15 targets – say, on a crowded battlefield – that was up to 675 HP regained from that one combo: about half my Max HP.
Of course, these abilities all had a cost: all those Darkness abilities were hungry for Adrenaline. The total cost for Master of Blades III to Rain of Glass I was 88 AP, which meant I didn’t have enough Adrenaline Points to use the combo twice unless I somehow recharged those points. You could recharge AP by taking damage or by using moves that recharged AP. Whirlwind Butcher could recover 120 AP if I landed all twelve hits.
“How is Jump even legal?” I muttered, selecting my options. At Level 17, I could level my abilities to a maximum of four, so I spread my points out to select Jump IV, Whirlwind III, then Master of Blades III and Rain of Glass I. The Dark Dragoon class was basically AoE DPS – building it as a crowd control
ler played to its strengths.
Next up were the Mark of Matir abilities. I only ever got two choices for these, and they were never the same abilities. I couldn’t just go back and select one of the ones previously offered to me, and I couldn’t change the abilities once I’d selected them.
I felt a twinge in my gut as I opened that menu and reviewed Matir’s offerings:
Purify (Life)
Cure or inoculate one target of your choice against any communicable disease. Does not work on diseases caused by curses.
Plague Lord (Entropy)
Infect any target of your choice with Filth Fever, a virulent Choleric disease which instantly debilitates and weakens targets with fever, muscle weakness, shaking and eventual death. Does not work on enemies resistant to disease. Inflicts Corruption debuff.
“Wow.” My heart screamed ‘Purify!’, but my head said ‘Plague Lord’. On the one hand, the ability to cure disease – any disease – was on my Top Five Magical Powers list. Being sick was the worst thing I could think of… which is why the idea of cursing Lucien with Filth Fever was seriously tempting. There was no cited level restriction, so resistance would be based on stamina. There was a problem, though. I still didn’t know what the Corruption debuff was, because in all the times I’d used Life for Life, I’d never seen any meter or timer appear. I’d never felt anything.
I rubbed my chin, leaning back into the steaming hot water of the bathtub. But as I stared frowning at the menu hovering in front of me, I realized something. I called my character sheet to a second window, and reviewed the Gifts of Matir panel again:
=Gifts of Matir=
(New) Shadow Lance: Your weapon transforms into a lance of solid darkness. In a single strike, you deal bonus Dark damage equal to 150 x half your Will score. Your opponent gains the Blinded status (unless immune). Consumes AP. Current damage: 2775. Cooldown: 60 seconds.
Blessing of the Raven: You call on your power and gain increased insight into knowledge and skills. +10% Skill EXP for 45 min.
Life for Life: Channel a blast of damaging dark energy into your enemy and drain their lifeforce to replenish your own. Inflicts Corruption debuff.
Spider Climb: You gain the ability to climb and travel vertical surfaces, crawl across ceilings, and hang on walls. Level this ability to extend duration. Duration: 20 seconds.
“Umm.” I blinked a couple of times. “What happened to Fury Drain?”
Fury Drain had been my first Mark ability. It was a relatively weak ability compared to Life for Life, draining 10 HP per second or minute of contact. I couldn’t actually remember. But I knew I’d had it… but it was gone, and now, I had Shadow Lance. It was a sweet move, don’t get me wrong… but I hadn’t selected it.
A shiver ran through the muscles of my back. I had lost Fury Drain at some point… but when? When I’d last died, maybe? I’d had some weird, but temporary memory loss the last time I’d croaked it, forgetting Karalti’s name, forgetting stuff about the quest I was doing. Had I forgotten a move, and had it replaced?
I stood up out of the water, letting it rush down my body, and waded out to get a towel and take a look at myself in the mirror. Same old Hector. The Trial of Marantha had given me literal eagle eyes, with no whites and oversized storm-blue pupils. Otherwise, I was looking pretty good for a dead guy. I only had three marks of any significance: a knotty scar inside my elbow, where the drugs given to mutate me were administered; the Mark of Matir, a nine-pointed chaos star-like symbol burned onto the back of my right hand; and an enduring legacy of my glitchy start to Archemi – a triangular patch of black nothingness on my left shoulder. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t feel like skin… I couldn’t feel anything with my fingertips when I touched it, but my fingers also couldn’t go through it. Sometimes – like now – my mind tricked me into thinking it had gotten bigger.
“Fuck, man.” I jerked my shoulders, suddenly creeped out. Then I went back into my HUD and selected Purify as my new ability. “Ugh. No Corruption anything, thanks.”
With a towel wrapped around my waist, I went back out into my bedroom and plopped down cross-legged in front of the fire. The Spear lay on my bed alongside my pack, glimmering in the firelight. I turned to watch the flames dance and sighed. The warmth seemed to soak into my bones. It felt… nice.
[Warning: You have reached the limit of your Endurance!]
“Eh? Oh… first time that’s everurrrgh-” The fact I was slurring by the time I reached the end of that sentence was the last thought I had before gravity pulled me down like a hand reaching up from the earth.
Chapter 8
I woke up to a solid pounding. On the door to my suite, that is.
“Hector!” Suri was on the other side, beating the door hard enough to rattle the solid oak in its frame. “Wake up, lover boy! It’s time to go see the King!”
I whined against the rug under my face. “I don’t wanna see the King.”
“Too bad! Are you okay in there?”
“Uhhh…” I was flat on my back, stark naked, and lying on a damp towel. Irritable and slightly alarmed, I patted over myself, then sat up and swiped in my HUD. Yep, there was the Unto Death quest alert, which I’d slept through. It was after ten PM. “That’s debatable. Is passing out naked and waking up five hours later ‘okay’?”
“Oh, I see how it is. I go to the Festival all alone, while you whack off until you pass out from dehydration.” Suri called back. “Not even going to invite me in, are you?”
“Not until I have pants!” I was already getting dressed, hopping around with my breeches until I remembered that I could just equip the damn things.
“Yeah. You need pants to go see the King.”
I equipped some of my armor but left off the gauntlets and the visored helmet I used for flying. I slung the Spear over my back, shortened up the knotted cord that acted as a bandolier, and then I reached out to my dragon. “Karalti? Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She sounded - and felt - grumpy. “I suck at hunting.”
What’s giving you trouble?”
“Everything! I can’t do it!” she replied. “I’m black and shiny and don’t have any camouflage! I can’t hide in the sun, so the animals see me coming and go into the caves!”
“Okay. What about hunting them at night?”
“None of them are awake at night!”
I grimaced. Since gaining in size, Karalti had been ‘hunting’ by picking off herd beasts from the royal flocks. They were fenced in with nowhere to run, like a bovine smorgasbord. I was tempted to just tell her to go and pick off a cow or a ceratopsian, but it was important that she learned to hunt like an adult. “Try thinking strategically, then. You can’t change your scale color or the way your camouflage works. What about hunting just after sunset or just before dawn?”
“But that’s when I wanna sleep.”
“Karalti. You can’t change what you are, okay? You have to work with what you’ve got. That means timing your naps, hunting when it’s dark enough to hide, and working with the times your prey is out and about.”
“But...” Karalti sounded positively dejected. “I never had anyone to show me how to do this. Will you please come out with me and help?”
Oh boy. I took a deep breath to steel myself. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have to figure this out. You can figure this out.”
“But I don’t know how!”
“I just gave you some advice.”
“But you’re not a dragon. You don’t know unless you see what it’s like!” She was sounding increasingly like a surly teenager being told she had to do her math homework.
“No, I’m not. But I am your human, so here’s how I’m going to help you. Tell me what you want to eat.”
“Beef. The Volod’s farm guys feed them beer! They’re really tender and-”
“No. Tell me what game you want to eat.”
She thought for a moment. “Fine. I like sheep. Or goats. They’re a
good size. I’ll be flying a lot tomorrow... I don’t want to be too heavy.”
“There you go. Where do they live?”
“On the mountain.”
“Okay, you know where they are. What can you do to find them?”
“Smell them, I guess,” she muttered.
“Right. And they’re habitual critters, right? They make trails and graze in regular spots?”
“No. But they go to these salty rock-places to lick the rocks when they wake up.”
“And when do they wake up and come out of the caves? Dawn?”
She huffed. “Fiiine! I’ll camp near them! But they won’t come out if I’m there!”
“Try to stay downwind – that’ll help. I’ll see you after dawn tomorrow, okay?” I said, opening the door. Then I saw Suri, and nearly choked on my tongue.
She was still dressed for the festival. Her scarlet hair was styled like a 1950’s starlet, falling in waves over one eye. The other side was pinned up with a golden fan that kept it out of her face. Her dress poured down her curves like a river of amber scales from neck to ankles. It was slit all the way up to her hips, baring a long stretch of bare brown leg. When she saw my expression, her lips curled in a wicked smile.
“Okay.” Karalti sounded a little better now. “What’s the matter? Your thoughts just got all fuzzy.”
“Nothing. Just going to see Ignas.” I held up a hand to Suri, pointed at my head, and then made a little flappy-flappy dragon motion with my hands. Her grin widened. “You come back tomorrow with blood all over your face for me, okay?”
“I’ll try!”
She cut the link then, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Wow. Sorry... talking Karalti through some teenage angst.”
“Story of your life.” Suri motioned me with a finger. “Come on: Ignas is waiting.”
She turned, and my blood pressure went up a little more when I saw the back of the dress. The front was demure, but the back plunged all the way down to her tailbone. I moaned a little.
Kingdom Come Page 8
