The Imagineer's Bloodline: Ascendant Earth Chronicles – Book 1

by J. J. Lorden

  Charisma: -1

  Dark Elves are a wise and powerful race of stealthy warriors and ranged dealers of destruction. They reside in low swampy lands where they cultivate and live among a species of giant cypress, which can grow to more than 600 feet and live for millennia.

  They are well received by all other Elven species and are accepted by Humans, Enderial, and Oread.

  Dark Elves are stealthy, beyond using any skill in stealth they are naturally more difficult to detect at all times. This affinity boosts all related skills and abilities by 50%. Dark Elves receive +1 to Agility and +1 Intellect for each level as well as 4 additional freely allocable attribute points.

  Racial Ability (Typical): Night Walker—Dark Elves are equally bound to nature and darkness. Through this, they can draw upon the power of a natural place to enhance themselves. However, their ability to harness this connection is only available in darkness. At night, this ability is magnified.

  Effect: Cloaks a Dark Elf in the essence of the surrounding natural environment. This grants them a portion of the environment’s strength, and boosts some or all attributes based upon the inherent power and type of natural environment for 10 minutes. Effects are doubled at night and canceled in the presence of sunlight. Cooldown: 1 hour

  “Ink, does the Enveloped racial ability of Dark Elves work underground?”

  “Yes.” Ink replied.

  Austin waited for him to say more, but the monk just looked at him.

  “Okay. Can you elaborate a bit?”

  “No.”

  Austin pursed his lips. They materialized so he could. It felt strange and distracting. They dematerialized. So weird. He shook it off and refocused on Ink–the QI was being frustratingly unhelpful.

  “Why not, Ink?”

  “I can only respond to the questions you ask. I cannot provide any information you do not directly request.”

  That’s good, no handholding. He nodded to himself. We can’t have Ink making things easy for people in a boundless world. Let creativity reign baby.

  “So, players have to think critically and ask well-structured questions? Better thinking will be rewarded with better answers?”

  “Yes, precisely. Up to a point, as we’ve already discussed.”

  “Okay, Ink, what is the mechanism that determines if Night Walker will be cast at full strength or reduced?”

  “The position of the sun in the sky at the player’s location.”

  “So, underground, when it’s daytime on the surface, it’ll be reduced strength?”

  “Yes.”

  “Huh, Good to know.”

  He looked fondly at the Dark Elf Austin avatar standing there. The character felt like an old friend he hadn’t seen in a long while. Even so, although he’d loved playing the race, he knew they were generally associated with assassins and had negative social stigmas.

  Kuora, his world, was far vaster than any game he’d ever played, with magnitudes more possibilities than even his real life. His avatar wasn’t the same meaningless throw away character for escaping or living out some curious idea of what it would be like to live in the shadows.

  Austin decided to press on.

  His eyes drifted to the bottom of the racial selection list. What’s this? Blended Race?

  Austin mentally hit the button next to the Blended Race option. Three blanks appeared with percentage sliders. Below the blanks was a system note.

  Note: Racial blends can include as many as seven races; however inherent racial conflicts typically generate severe limitations in characters created with a mix of more than three.

  In his mind, the implications of this feature rolled out in a cascade. Far more than just granting incredible flexibility during character creation, what it truly represented was a massively diverse virtual world. He figured a blend of seven races would signify at least a dozen generations of inter-race procreation.

  It meant that the NPCs populating the world had personalities. A QI Dwarf without a real personality would never fall in love and have children with a Dramogan unless it was specifically programed to.

  And one of her children certainly wouldn’t date humans or gnomes, possibly having a child with one of them. And this kind of interracial mixing wouldn’t happen if all the virtual citizens of Kuora saw themselves as being defined by their race.

  Since this was happening, the Kuorans were probably unique beings. Some of them would be boring, some outsiders, some misfits, some heroes, and others embittered villainous thugs. Wait, is this a player-only option?

  “Ink, are there racially blended non-player characters in Kuora now?” He desperately hoped the answer was yes.

  “Yes, Kuora is an ethnically diverse world.”

  Austin inhaled sharply. “And, do the characters make all of their own choices?”

  “Yes.” Ink said, calm and easy. “Of course.”

  Austin’s chest flushed with heat as his heart leaped in triumph. They’d done it. Kuora closely mirrored the real world.

  He and Elle had created a universe of sapient beings who were completely unaware they existed within a digital construction. He’d been fairly certain of this after they found the active program log; aka, the real time Kuoran birth registry.

  But now he had proof, and his last lingering doubt flitted away. They’d actually created a real world.

  “What a trip.” Austin said to himself with a contented smile and looking into the forest. His mind jumped around, remembering all the work with Elle, the unknowns confronted and the drive that had gripped him. He was here, it had worked.

  A deep sense of relief settled on Austin. It worked.

  He had long ago accepted that the implications of achieving this goal were beyond his comprehension. So, instead of falling into that mind trap, he enjoyed the thrill of their success.

  Then, he started mixing races and mentally cataloging results.

  Humans and Goliaths made an excellent tank set-up with minimal impact on Charisma, but they were limited by an Intellect cap. Elves combined well with almost all the races except the bestial ones, which the system penalized by limiting total points per level to 5 instead of the standard 6.

  The Centaurian race was thought-provoking; he’d never seen a playable centaur in a game before. They had attribute bonuses to Agility, Strength, Constitution, and a 3x travel-speed racial bonus, but had penalties when they were underground or in buildings.

  He moved on, there was no clever workaround in Kuora to make a horse acceptable in a tavern or a hole in the ground.

  He considered the list of races for a few minutes, imagining integrations and visualizing how he intended to play. Slowly, a potential build came together in his head. He selected Dwarf, Dramogan, and Gnome and put all three sliders on 1/3 each.

  The result was a thick bodied, semi-reptilian creature, with a big nose and a ton of hair. Interestingly the avatar didn’t get any shorter. Maybe the Dramogan genes dominate the height?

  Moving on he checked racial modifiers. It had bonuses to Constitution, Strength, and Intellect, +25% to mining skill gains, +25% bonus to all crafting skill gains, and a 10% bonus to fire and earth elemental damage and resistance.

  He liked the result; there were two additional racial skills called Vault and Leave Me Be. Vault multiplied your maximum jump by 2.5x with a short two-minute cooldown. Leave me be put the character into a state of intense focus, granting a +20% bonus to both luck and all crafting skills until interrupted. It could only be used once per day.

  Austin chuckled at the Leave Me Be skill. He imagined a focused Dwarf, yelling “Leave me be!” at intruders to his forge, or maybe it was the Gnome at his workbench. Either way, it was a funny image and seemed true to the lore.

  The build also had a -3 penalty to Charisma, which wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t a deal breaker either. Other than being a bit strange in appearance, it only had one trait he couldn’t live with–Nomad.

  The Nomad trait had two seriously limiting effects. First, it restri
cted the player from owning property within towns and second, it generated a -3% debuff to moral, per day, for each day past ten a player stayed in one area.

  Both seemed like they could be problematic, and one reinforced the other. Who would want to own any home anywhere if staying in it for more than ten days generated a compounding depression debuff? Yeah, that’s not going to work.

  To his surprise, below the avatar characteristics, skills, and traits there was a quest notification. Huh. Never seen a quest in character creation before.

  Heal your Bloodline—The Dramogan race is the result of an improbable ancient love. Annestaria, the human sorceress queen of the Pergothian Empire, fell in love with her bonded Draconic protector, Stenarth. Wanting to feel his loving touch, she created a binding weave that imbued him with a portion of her soul and granted the ability to transform into human form.

  Together they ruled for centuries, and the children of their union became the Dramogan. Over the long years of Annestaria and Stenarth’s rule, their Dramogan descendants left the capital, traveling the Empire in search of adventure, friendship, and love. They discovered all of this in the wilds, hamlets, and cities of the Empire. Most found new homes, becoming pillars of local communities, marrying, and proliferating, mixing their blood with that of all of the races.

  The Dramogan and their descendants were predisposed through their lineage to honor and strength. Because of this they were natural leaders and rose to positions of authority. They were widely regarded as fair adjudicators and, when needed, feared avengers of the wronged.

  As direct descendants of the king and queen, the Dramogan forged a connection between the sovereigns and the people of the Empire. Through them and the respect they earned from Pergothian citizenry the Empire became a proud and united people, fiercely loyal to their Sovereign rulers.

  Following a thousand years of prosperity, Annestaria contracted a mysterious illness. Stenarth was blessed with great power in life energies and he used these to support his beloved for many years while they searched for a cure. Eventually, even Stenarth’s power could not sustain her, and the queen succumbed and died.

  With her passing, Stenarth fell into deep sorrow. Not able to bear living in the place where he’d shared centuries of happiness with his queen, he commanded all to leave the city, barred the city gates, and magically sealed it against intrusion. The empire shattered without its seat of power. The ancient city was eventually forgotten, and even its location is now lost to memory.

  Until this ancient city is found and lost love healed, you are compelled to continue the search.

  Reward: Unknown

  “Woah, that’s a seriously badass quest.” Austin was blown away by the rich history and wanted the quest. He was also pragmatic; for him, the Nomad trait was a non-starter, he couldn’t play this avatar.

  Heal your Bloodline was definitely a legendary level quest–one with potentially worldwide impacts and Austin relished the long game. Now that he’d seen Heal your Bloodline, he had to have it. And so, Austin resolved not to leave character creation without it.

  He cycled through several other combinations and racial percentages, keeping Dramogan as the base. As he determinedly tinkered with the racial mix, he came to a disappointing conclusion; the Nomad trait was somehow linked to the Dramogan race.

  A trait he felt he couldn’t play was linked to the quest he absolutely had to have. Annoyed and frustrated, he stared at his latest mix of Dramogan, Dwarf, and Gnome.

  Then, ignoring the system warning, he added a 4th blank and filled it with Enderial, in itself a cross between the Oread and Entish.

  How exactly would an Ent cross breed with another race? he wondered. Maybe like the queen did it, with this soul energy? No, she did that in order to have children. Possibly like the Trauco were created, with this void energy? The thought distracted him only momentarily before he refocused.

  Austin knew in lore Ents were a wise, steady, and anti-nomadic race. The Enderial would probably be much the same. It seemed like a good counterbalance to negate the Nomad trait.

  He set Enderial and Dramogan to 1/3 each, and then split the remainder between Dwarf and Gnome.

  The avatar grew nearly a foot, it’s joints became knobby and its limbs elongated. Patches of dark scales appeared in various places, including the face, and it gained a 5% attribute reduction penalty when leaving the forest.

  The Nomad trait became the Restless trait, which removed the property ownership restriction, but not the morale penalty after 10 days. It was still unworkable. But it was also progress.

  He started adjusting the racial percentage sliders, tweaking, and reevaluating again and again. His manipulations became refined; keeping Enderial at least one percent above Dramogan deleted both the Nomad and Restless traits.

  However, moving Enderial above 29% added a solitary penalty, reducing all stats when in a town or a party. Whereas, if Dramogan dropped below 25%, the Heal your Bloodline quest disappeared. He slid to Enderial 29% and Dramogan to 28% and set to work making small adjustments to Dwarf and Gnome.

  In short order, Austin perfected the mix. The build was fantastic, except–his avatar was short 5% genetic material. The racial percentages only added to 95%.

  The game wouldn’t accept the build.

  Pondering the issue, he had an oddball thought.

  “Hey, Ink. In people there’s like 50% of genetic material that does basically nothing; junk DNA and recessive stuff we don’t need. I’d like to elect to leave five percent of that out and play this build.” He smiled expectantly at the QI.

  “I am sorry, Austin, inactive genetic material is still part of the genetic sequence. As is commonly said, Neglect not thy chain, for ‘tis the chain in the locker that holds the ship fast.” Ink delivered the quote with all seriousness, as if it was actually something that people said.

  Austin thought it was great. “What?” he said with a laugh. “Ink, nobody ever says that. Ever. Did you just make that up?”

  “Ahhh, yes. I see. You are correct, your culture has other sayings… perhaps this quote is more appropriate to your current dilemma. Mo money, mo problems… my–”

  “What the hell, Ink!” Austin cut in, eyes wide, shaking his head slowly and glaring at the QI. “NO! Just, no. You can not say that. It’s inflammatory and offensive, not to mention totally out of context.”

  Across the stone-paved grove, Ink looked at him, placid and at ease.

  Austin’s expression screwed up in disbelief. Does Ink really not get this? He began to wonder if Elle lacked the powerful emotional intelligence he had believed she had. Ultimately, Ink was Elle’s responsibility.

  Then the monk’s cheek twitched, and his eyes tightened. It was tiny, but Austin caught it. In that small shift, he picked up a clear hint of mischief.

  Is he screwing with me?

  “Perhaps a third try, then,” said Ink, tone edged with mirth.

  He is, he’s screwing with me.

  Ink continued, “A man of significant import in your culture is quoted as having said this of his own achievements: I am a great believer in luck. And I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” His relaxed gaze became intense, and Austin felt a normally hidden part of himself exposed by the look.

  It was a Thomas Jefferson quote he knew well–his father had it in large letters above the door inside his office.

  His outrage faded as the reminder stoked the determined passion he’d learned from Bendik. He looked with new eyes at Ink. “I know that quote.” Austin paused, remembering his father’s dogged pursuit of his goals and his passion for innovation.

  His reply was quiet, half lost in memory. “My father loved it… and lived by it.”

  At a young age, Austin had embraced the mindset. Through Bendik, he’d seen the value of the message–there was power in continuing in the face of failure. As he got older, he’d also discovered this was easier said than done.

  Still speaking quietly, he said, “There’s this amazing thing
about having an indomitable will… you’re never out of the game.”

  Ink turned his chin slightly and nodded once.

  A deep reverence settled upon Austin. With it came a darkness that felt like an old friend.

  “It’s no way to live, though.” His words were barely audible.

  After that, the silence stretched from moments into long minutes as Austin wrestled with the darkness. Horrible things hid in the darkness. Things that threatened to destroy who he was.

  Eventually, he remembered… he remembered the other thing, the idea that saved him from the desperation. As the relief of insight lifted his spirit, he decided to add his personal understanding to the quiet.

  “There was another man, a man whose insights provided the foundation for this new world. He has a quote that I like to pair with that one.” Ink looked expectantly at him–eyes bright. “He said, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’

  Smile lines creased about Ink’s eyes. “Ahh. Yes, I do like that one as well. Mr. Einstein, was it not?”

  Austin nodded. “For me, these two ideas–knowing luck is a byproduct of work and putting imagination above knowledge–form a potent blend. In my experience, practicing both makes it impossible to feel like a failure. I think that’s what Mr. Einstein was getting at.”

  His mind wandered back to his innumerable failures in training Elle; that time was the most exciting in his life. “When imagination is above knowledge and quitting isn’t an option, failure is really interesting. It reveals little things, hints at other paths, and excites innovation. Each mistake is filled with possibility–they instruct and improve who you are.”

  He looked back down at the virtual panel and with new eyes saw the 95% number hovering there. He reviewed the limits he was working against, at least the ones he’d discovered so far.

  Increasing Dwarf added a Jaded View trait. The system explained this meant growing up as an outcast, leaving the character with a distrustful nature. This created a Charisma penalty and added a permanent 20% penalty to goods prices.