Trouble With Horns

We spent the rest of afternoon poring over information about the game and coming up with ideas and builds for my new character. Taylor was part of a raid guild that was looking to push the boundaries of the PVE content in the game, but everyone was still currently in the leveling and gearing process so I still had time to catch up. Not to mention the PvP they’d gotten bogged down in. I was so proud of my sister for being such a total badass. I needed to figure out how to step out of her shadow, even if it was pretty damn comfy there.

When it was finally time to let my sister into my bombsite of a bedroom, she couldn’t help but laugh at me. Then she saw my wardrobe, which was currently scattered across the floor, and accused me of leaning too hard into the ginger lumberjack stereotype. She kind of had a point, there was a lot of suspenders and plaid everywhere. Lumberjacks hadn’t existed for a very long time, but their fashion continued to come in and out of style. It was very much not in style right now.

The next morning we went to my VR pod, which was in it’s own room, but Taylor stopped me immediately when she saw it.

“Oh gross! You’re still using a Samtil Dive? That thing is fucking ancient!” she said, her voice a mix of disgust and wonder, “This thing quite literally belongs in a museum dude. Oh my god you taped the nutrient tubes into the outlet?”

“They kept falling out and the pod was ejecting me when it realised I wasn’t being fed,” I said defensively.

“That could kill you! What if the pod didn’t realise you weren’t being kept alive?” she asked angrily.

Shrugging sheepishly I said, “Um… I guess I’d be dead?”

“Yeah! What the fuck bro! Take care of yourself, oh my god!” she huffed, grabbing my face by either cheek.

“I can’t afford anything more than this Taylor, so it’s kind of a moot point,” I said, tapping the coffin shaped device with a foot.

“Nah. No. Nope. This is where I draw the line. I’m buying you a new one right now,” she said, pulling out her phone.

“No! Stop! I’ll save up for a better one!” I complained, trying to get her phone out of her hands.

She placed a single finger in the middle of my forehead and raised an eyebrow. I sighed and pulled back. She was impossible to argue with.

“I’ll use my sponsorship with Kermant to get you a cheap high end one. That shitty thing you have right now isn’t even full immersion, did you know that?” she asked as she tapped away on her phone, then let out an excited sound as she saw something on her screen, “This one! The Kermant Epoch Ten! They just released it, and it has everything you need. Full immersion, a backup nutrient store in case you get cut off and need to finish a raid or something. Oh and muscle stimulation so you don’t have to work out in your off time to maintain muscle mass. Even has Artemis Module support if you want to customise it or something.”

“You’re spoiling me,” I said with a groan of defeat.

She pinned me with another one of those glares of hers, then went back to her phone, “Yup. I am. You’re my brother and I love you. I’m staying here until the new pod arrives and we have it set up. The distribution center isn’t that far away so it should only be a few hours.”

We waited no more than fifty minutes before the new pod arrived. The doorbell politely dinged when the robot arrived, and a pleasant voice announced, “Your delivery from Kermant Inc has arrived.”

Taylor rushed to the front door, kicking anything that was on the floor out of the way so the robot could wheel the pod into the room while I disconnected the old one and leaned it against a wall in the living room. I’d dispose of the thing later. It was recycler fodder now. No one would want to buy it off me.

The robot walked in with the new VR pod in a big plastic crate, Taylor walking behind it giving directions. Once the pod was out of the box and in place, the robot collected the crate for reuse and left the house. My sister and I stood and stared at the shiny new pod and I felt a mixture of apprehension and excitement. I’d never actually used a full immersion pod before. There was always something missing from the experience in those cheaper pods, but this one was intense.

“Thanks sis,” I said softly, pulling her into a one armed hug.

“Least I can do to help you deal with the break up Terry. You’re important to me,” she said, laying her head on my shoulder.

“You’re pretty great,” I grinned, then clapped my hands, “So I guess we get an account ready for me?”

“Yup! Let’s go to… where’s your holo projector?” she said, narrowing her eyes at me with a little grin.

“Um, in the living room like a normal person?” I asked, a little offended at what she might be thinking.

“Good, at least you have to get out of bed to watch shit,” she said playfully nudging my shoulder.

We made our way into the living room, where I activated the holo projector with the voice command. A holo projector is a kind of all in one computer and TV setup that lets you surf the internet or watch videos from different channels. Some people liked to joke that it was one of the most important inventions of this century because so many people had and used them.

We browsed our way to the game’s website and signed me up for an account there. I instantly set my privacy settings to only being allowed into a publicly streamed video if I was in the background. I didn’t want to be a main character in any of their damn tv series, only in Taylor’s streams where my sister was curating the content. The rest would be done ingame for now. Once that was all done, it was time for Taylor to go home and get into her own pod.

I had the whole week to play the game, since this was my off week at uni. I’d be in the pod for a long while and I was very much looking forward to it. The real world could wait.

Before she left, Taylor turned and made sure I remembered some things with a stern look, “Alright remember to choose Jingan as your starting country okay? I’ll be able to find you from there if you add me. My ingame name is LipsAndShades like normal. Got it?”

“Yeah! I’m actually really excited now,” I smiled, pulling her in for a quick hug.

“Me too,” she grinned back, “See you soon!”

Then she was out the door and it was time for me to get into the VR pod. I went back into the apartment and got into the spandex underwear most people wore when they were in VR, then went to the pod. It was made of sleek white plastic where my other one was all metal and aged plastic. I gingerly pressed the button to pop the lid, and it opened with a hiss and the smell of new plastic to give me access.

I awkwardly maneuvered my way into the thing and just lay there for a moment to let my excitement have some space. This was going to be a whole new experience for me. Once I was ready, I pressed the button on the inside and the hatch slowly closed. The hatch itself was made of an incredibly transparent material that was an attempt by the manufacturers to help those with claustrophobia feel at ease.

The VR link crown attached itself to my head and the chip within it like I was a princess asleep in a tower. A not so princess-like mask snaked out from somewhere and gently fixed itself over my mouth and nose. The tubes that were used to feed and water my body would come out of the mask and go down my throat once I was in VR and very thankfully not aware of it. It still gave me the creeps even now.

Once all the equipment was in place, I was pulled into the virtual world and no longer aware of anything around my real body.

****

When I arrived in the virtual space that was what really old people would call my desktop, I found myself staring down at my body. Or rather, my body from about five months ago when I had gotten it scanned for this purpose. What surprised me was the level of realism this pod provided. Taylor had been right, this was the good shit. I felt like I was in the real world. I did a few stretches, just to see how my body dealt with strain and movement. Pretty damn well.

“Play Cora,” I said aloud, and a pleasant voice replied with, “Beginning Application, Cora.”

My vision faded slowly to black, replaced by a dark void of starlight and shimmering aurora. It was beautiful, and I had to stop for a moment and just admire it. Unfortunately, my gawking was rudely interrupted.

Big bold letters announced, Welcome to the Cauldron of Realms Ascended.

Wow. No wonder everyone called it Cora. What a lame name. A black void surrounded me, dim stars blinking happily around me. Oh, a cutscene!

This is the realm known as the Cauldron, the plane of the lost. The Cauldron collects stray pieces of the many other realms when they are lost. New strangeness comes into being regularly, and will keep those that take up the profession of adventurer ever busy.

Several orbs with many different colours stuttered into being around me, with one a pure grey in the middle. Little wisps of colour detached from the coloured orbs and swirled aimlessly, but always being drawn inexorably towards the grey orb in the middle, where they collided and were absorbed. I felt myself being drawn in towards the grey orb at great speed, the sphere expanding until it enveloped me, taking over as the backdrop from the starry night sky I had seen before.

You will find yourself on Tellum, a region that surrounds the twin seas of Antvo and Derev. This place is home to many warring empires, kingdoms, republics and more. In the center, controlling movement and trade between the twin seas is the Empire of Pagutum. Their expansionist ways have kept the surrounding countries in a state of perpetual infighting and war.

A map spun itself into existence out of strings of light, showing me the world I was going to be playing in soon. It was a huge map just judging by the scale, and I realised that I would probably never see even a small fraction of it. That excited me to no end. A place to explore? I was damn excited. I’d never reach the end of the list of places and people to meet!

The map faded again, and a prompt came up.

Would you like to begin character creation? It should be noted that you will only be given a single character that cannot be rerolled or deleted for free. Character rerolls can be purchased from the website for $5000. Do you wish to continue?

“Uh yeah. Let’s go,” I said awkwardly into the air.

The scene around me shifted a little, and suddenly huge chunks of stone were phasing into existence around me, moving and shifting like a symphony of motion to create… a room. Within the room a series of objects began to take shape in a similar manner. Tables, chairs, a bed and more. Practice dummies and archery targets formed out of thin air until the room was equipped with everything someone would need to test their character.

I stared around myself in wonder until my attention was drawn to a floating mannequin made of a strange grey clay. Hovering next to it were a series of options menus and sliders. Character creation started now I guess. I knew what I was going to be doing, so I got to work.

My character would be a human male. Shorter than me by a few inches and less tanky, but far more wiry and quick. I gave him a clean shaven face, shaggy dark hair and darker eyes. I made his face just a little sunken in the cheeks and just a smidge gaunt around the rest of his body. I was going for that typical handsome rogue look. I know, cliche, but I was a sucker for that stereotype. I was halfway through when I noticed a button a little off to the side.

Random Character.

Using this option will randomise your character completely. All aspects will be random unless a game admin AI steps in, as well as being within parameters to keep the absolutely strange from occurring. Furthermore, those who select this option will be given a unique trait to their character that is only acquirable through this option. Several races, abilities, items and quests are within the pool of options.

Interesting. Not what I was after, but if I ever got the option or felt the need, it might be fun to choose that down the line. For now I was going to be stuck with one character, and I needed to make sure it was one that I would enjoy.

Once I had the appearance finished as much as I’d ever be happy with, I hit accept on it and moved to the next stage of character creation. I had never been able to get myself excited for how my character looked in a game before and this one was no exception.

Alright, onwards to choosing stats! This was something I was way more interested in than damn appearance. Although, I had no real idea of how this game worked except for what my sister had told me. I didn’t know how five points in strength actually felt.

Stats in Cora were a little different to those in more traditional games. You had two categories, Physical and Magical. The physical ones were separated into five, as were the magical. Strength and Speed were self explanatory, while Endurance had deviated from some interpretations and was not how much damage you could take but instead it was your stamina. How long you could move for. Constitution was your resistance to status effects, and Toughness was how much damage you could take. Your hit points.

The Magical side of things was a little less easy to read. Power was the magical counterpart to strength, while Urgency and Capacity were a match for Speed and Endurance. Anamnesis was the number of spells you could have slotted and ready to cast at any one time, and Intricacy was the level of complexity you could have in those spells.

I wasn’t going to be a mage, that was definitely not my thing, so I only invested enough in the magic stats to help me with my rogue aspirations.

There was a third set of stats for affinities to the elements. A high affinity for an element would increase both your damage and skill with abilities that used those elements, while also increasing your resistance to those abilities. Someone with a high affinity for Energy based spells like a fireball would take less damage from being hit with it, while also dealing more damage when they hit someone else with it.

Again, I knew what I was going to do here. As a human I had the ability to choose a single affinity instead of being roped into one or two if I had chosen one of the many races available. I chose the Dark affinity, because rogue. For the other stats, I threw most of my points into Strength, Speed and Endurance, with a few points into Urgency, Anamnesis and Power on the magical side. I was only going to be casting a few actual spells after all.

The next task was my starting abilities. This was something my sister had raved about to me ever since the game had launched. She loved getting right into the nuts and bolts of a complex system like this.

Abilities were pretty crazy, and where the true complexity lay. You would choose three trees out of a multitude of options, and that would be the equivalent of your class. Those trees contained hundreds of spell modifiers and options that allowed you to construct spells and abilities and then slot them. It was overwhelming, and I was very grateful that my sister had walked me through this ahead of time or I would have been lost.

The trees I ended up choosing were the Dextrous tree, the Short Blades tree and the Shadows tree. These trees would allow me to go down the roguish route that I was keen on. I selected a few key ability components for what I was going to do and then let the game generate some initial abilities based on my choices. I’d be able to customise them later.

All that was left to do once I was done was to test things out! I selected the option to assume the guise of my character, and got to work. The body felt strange at first, but everything was mostly where I figured it would be, so I ran around for a bit testing out all my choices. I was happy to note that I had kept my real body in almost as good shape as this one started out as. Nice going Terry.

Once I was satisfied with my choices, I walked back to the options menus and reached out to select Confirm Character. 

Character Randomisation Confirmed!
Wait what? No! Fuck!
What I had failed to notice, was that I had walked through the holographic menus. The moment before I hit confirm, something caught my foot, causing my other arm to pass through both the randomise character option, and the resulting confirmation box. Shit! What kind of wild character was it going to saddle me with? I was so screwed.

Everything I had done was gone!

I watched in horror as my body, my stats and everything else changed to something else. My body became shorter still, my hands turned lithe and slender. Long dark hair enveloped my vision and I felt some truly strange sensations through my chest and groin.

Almost like I had struck a gong, my newly altered hand hit the confirm button and everything faded to black with a confirmation box.

Character Confirmed.