Beastborne

by James T Callum

  Bone Armor's cost is dependent upon the complexity and time taken to create the armor. Its defensive parameters are based on your INT, CHR, and aberration attunement. Only one piece of equipment can be made at once. Temporary Bone Armor can be conjured at a steeper cost with less complexity.

  At any time while wearing an ossified piece of armor you may sacrifice MP or HP to restore its durability.

  Monstrous Resistance

  Aberrations are remarkably adept at resisting magic, being creatures of undead corruption they possess the ability to shrug off some of the worst magic has to offer. While using Monstrous Resistance you have 15% Resistance to every element and its associated status effects.

  Sturdy Hide

  Unnatural life has given Aberrations the ability to take a hit and keep moving. Adapting their unique Essence to your own will increase your HP by 15%.

  Eldritch

  Elder Prowess

  Eldritch creatures are deeply attuned to the ebb and flow of mana, making them unparalleled practitioners of the darkest magicks. All magic is 10% more potent.

  Lv1: +10% Magic Potency

  Lv2: +20% Magic Potency

  Lv3: +30% Magic Potency

  Lv4: +40% Magic Potency

  Lv5: +50% Magic Potency

  Goblin

  Friends

  Goblin-kin are among the friendliest of all monster races. While the may not take particularly well to humanoids, they are among the most sociable monsters. Attuning to Goblins on a deeper level will allow you to adopt that same level of affability that other monsters cannot resist. Goblinspeak optional.

  Kludge

  Goblins are well known for their ability to make seemingly impossible things work. By attuning more deeply to their essence, you become able to bend the laws of reality slightly to make even the most ridiculous creation somehow work.

  Lv.1: Crafted goods can be made with up to 25% non-standard parts and will function just as well as a properly made piece.

  Shadow

  Shadowy Presence

  Become partially immaterial, making it difficult for physical attacks to land upon you. Chance increases in lower light.

  Lv.1: -7% Chance attacks land. Effect increases up to double in complete darkness.

  Shadesight

  Replaces and augments Darkvision, illuminating shadows in shining starlight and utter blackness in dim light.

  Treant

  Barkskin

  Cover your skin in a thick layer of regenerative bark.

  Lv1: +5% Temporary HP (tHP), regenerates 1% per minute.

  Lv2: +7.5% tHP, 2% per minute.

  Oathforger

  No man is an island. This, the most basic tenet of an Oathforger, you have learned and taken to heart. In the ages before the Founders brought sanctioned order to the world, this responsibility fell to the ancient Oathforgers. Their Oaths held insurmountable power to break and reforge the bonds of the natural order for the better of all. With an Oath, they could inspire the cowardly to action, give succor to the wounded, and even loosen the iron-cold grip of Death itself.

  Regal Bearing

  +35% Base Charisma.

  +25% Base Persuasion, Intimidation, and Deception Success.

  Alliances

  Oathforgers are the beating heart of cooperation and camaraderie. As a result, they are among the few that can organize an alliance, a group of 3 separate parties into a singular whole. Creating an alliance requires you to be a leader of one party and the consent from 2 other party leaders.

  No Man is an Island

  Adds a counter to Oaths, indicating the number of people currently bound and affected by it. Additionally, as the amount of people bound to an Oath increases, the Oath grows in strength without acquiring further Axioms.

  Oath

  The beating heart of the Oathforgers, an Oath is a solemn vow that exists between the Oathforger and a given entity. Be it the natural order of the elements themselves, a powerful king, or a lowly beggar. Many Oaths will be presented to you by fulfilling specific conditions. Others can be created willingly between yourself and other parties. Oaths are sacred above all else and though they provide access to great power, like all things in life they are fragile.

  Breaking an Oath once temporarily restricts that Oath from being enacted, limiting any spells, perks, and powers associated with the Oath. Breaking the same Oath a second time permanently destroys it. If three Oaths are broken over the lifetime of an Oathforger, they have proven themselves incapable of bearing the burden of its powers and they are an Oathforger no more.

  Oath of the Brightking

  You give hope to those around you, and they, in turn, bolster your resolve to carry on. Those bound to you by this Oath perceive you as the leader you could be, the ruler that all goodly people yearn for. The kindly king those of dark intent fear.

  Oath of the Brightking Boons

  [Self]

  +5 Leadership.

  +5 CHR.

  [Allies]

  HP +5% | SP +5% | MP +5%

  Oath of the Brightking Axioms

  Never intentionally harm an ally.

  Protect an incapacitated ally above all else.

  Oath of Compassion

  You have sworn to aid in rescuing Ashera from the darkness she found herself within, at whatever personal cost.

  Oath of Compassion Axioms

  No matter the cost, you must find a way to reconnect Ashera’s magic or otherwise give her new magic in place of what she lost without incurring an Experience Penalty from acquiring a 4th Class.

  Warding

  School: Oath

  MP: 50

  Range: 100ft

  Shield an ally with layered protective runes. Each layer provides a stacking 10 Resistance to a given entity, resulting in a total of 50 Resistance against the first hit from that entity.

  Each layer of protective runes vanishes from a single attack of the specified entity. Attacks from other creatures do not affect the spell. Additional casts refresh the effect.

  Stealth

  Sneak Attack II

  While sneaking, attacking an unaware enemy will incur bonus damage influenced by your DEX and Stealth skill.

  Sneak Attack damage: 312.5%

  Titles

  Coffin Closer

  Awarded for successful completion of the Coffin Contract.

  Less likely to be attacked by undead your Level or lower.

  Dramatically increases the aggressiveness of undead more than 10 Levels above you.

  Squallbreaker

  +10% Manastorm Loot | +40% Crystalline Manastorm Loot

  Manastorm Enmity +120%

  Pyresouls Preview Chapters

  I recently released a new LitRPG fantasy series called Pyresouls Apocalypse: Rewind.

  If you haven’t managed to check it out yet, I’ve put a few sample chapters in the back of this book in case you wanted to give it a trial run.

  You can check it out the full book by clicking HERE.

  Pyresouls Chapter 01

  May 7th, 2045 – 10 Years Post-Collapse.

  The air rang with the sound of Jacob’s deflection. He raised his cracked lucidian brass shield just in time to fend off a second blow from the wheezing undead. As he did, he drew his notched and battered sword from its sheath.

  Jacob stepped forward and swept his sword beneath the angle of his raised shield using the Sword Form, Wind Parts the Grass, to strike into his opponent’s gaping ribcage.

  His blade split the bone of the decaying creature and swept clear through its spine, blasting the brittle bone and desiccated flesh into the dry hot wind. Another lost soul took its place, providing only a moment for Jacob to recover his Stamina.

  The [Vacant Human] takes 470 damage from Wind Parts the Grass.

  You consume 20 Stamina.

  You defeat the [Vacant Human].

  Awarded 50 Souls.

  A wisp of white mist lifted from the fallen creature and into Jacob’s chest. A chill spread through h
is chest and his Souls went up by 50, bringing his total in the bottom right quadrant of his vision to 97,120.

  The number didn’t matter. Without the Pyres, Souls were useless.

  Jacob focused on the upper left quadrant of his vision, taking a step back up the dusty mountain trail as he did. Stamina management was one of the most important aspects of fighting the hellish creatures that all but destroyed the world.

  His green Stamina bar filled slowly as he kept his shield up, but he didn’t dare drop his guard. There were too many. And he had been fighting for too long. With less than a quarter of his Health remaining, he couldn’t afford to take any risks.

  Down below, clad in tattered black robes hemmed in bright blue thread, Caleb held up a hand and called down fire into his palm. Jacob was less than fifty feet from the man but couldn’t get to him through the narrow switchback that descended into the clearing the sorcerer was in.

  Even if he had more Health, taking the fast route down would be suicide. The fall alone would take most of his Health and the undead would be on him before he could recover from the impact.

  Jacob, with only a passing understanding of sorcery, didn’t understand what Caleb was doing. Surrounded by the undead – called Vacant, due to their empty unseeing gaze – he couldn’t see how Caleb would be able to extricate himself.

  But Alec understood.

  “Caleb, no!” Alec cried, his voice raw with emotion. Like Jacob, he was situated up the side of the same sheer cliff face. The narrow stony paths prevented them from getting rushed, forcing the Vacant to come at them single-file. It also prevented them from reaching any allies caught in the clearing below.

  That didn’t stop Alec. He didn’t understand the meaning of the word “can’t.”

  Clad in full medieval plate mail stolen from the Smithsonian well over four years ago, Alec raised his shield and charged down the switchback trail. His heavy greaves crunched the long-dead sere grass beneath his rust-splotched boots.

  It would have been comical, seeing all the Vacant thrown to their deaths, if Jacob didn’t know how close Alec was to joining them among the dead. All it took was one slip, one Vacant that got a lucky strike, and Alec would lose his footing. White wisps rose from their broken bodies and entered Alec’s charging form as he built up speed.

  Each of them had once been a brother, sister, mother, father, son, or daughter to somebody. Now they were empty. Vacant. Stripped of all humanity, they were nothing more than vicious beasts.

  Clapping his hands together, Caleb condensed the flame in his hand into three small beads. Jacob’s heart fell at the sight. He may not know much about sorcery but he knew that spell. Sorcerer’s Breath turned their body into one massive explosion of fire.

  In the game of Pyresouls Online, that wasn’t a big deal. It was a final spell that would kill you but also had an equally good chance to kill your opponents. You would simply respawn at the last Pyre you visited.

  But there were no Pyres on Earth. Death was final.

  “Get down!” Jacob cried out.

  Caleb’s dark eyes looked up at him, then drifted to the still-charging form of his brother, Alec. Amid the deepening sadness in the sorcerer’s eyes, he clapped his hands together for one final time, triggering the spell.

  Half a dozen heavily armored men and women in ancient hauberks, chainmail, and plate mail fell to the hard, dead earth just as the wave of white-hot fire flashed across the clearing. Dozens of the Vacant were incinerated in an instant.

  Jacob covered his head with his shield as he hit the rocky trail with a bone-rattling jolt. The wave of intense heat washed over him but he was high enough along the trail that it did little more than make him break out into an uncomfortable sweat.

  He was on his feet in a moment, ready to meet the attack he feared was coming. Instead, he stared at nothing but the half-dozen blazes Caleb had set off down below at the forest’s edge.

  There was nothing left of the man and nothing left of the raiding force of Vacant and other monstrosities.

  They were able to sniff out the last dregs of humanity no matter how far they ran or how deeply they hid in their holes. More monsters would pick up their trail.

  Up in the once-green Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, it had been safe for a while. Then they found them. They always did.

  Caleb was their best sorcerer, and through his sacrifice, dozens of horrendous monsters were defeated. White wisps, Souls, flew in every direction, split evenly among the survivors. But other abominations would find them before long. And when that happened, they would be one man down.

  It was a war of attrition played out again and again in scattered pockets across the dying world. It was one war the human race couldn’t hope to win.

  Miraculously, Alec had thrown himself down at the last moment and managed to avoid the brunt of the sorcerous explosion. His surcoat was turned to ash, bits of the ragged cloth still burning. And his armor was blackened in several spots.

  “Form up, and fall back!” Alec called, rising to his feet. Jacob shook his head at his resiliency. Not for the first time, he wished he was as strong as him. Or that he at least stayed in the game long enough to level up some more.

  Without the Pyres, no matter how many Souls he got, he couldn’t level up on Earth. Still, he couldn’t complain too much. Skills could still be increased and upgraded through extensive use and intensive training.

  Even the weakest of surviving Pyresouls players were better off than those who never played. They were perpetually stuck at Level 0 without any hope of increasing their stats beyond the average human’s.

  Alec crossed the narrow ledge to Jacob’s position, lifting the visor to his helm as he did. His face was tight with barely-held grief. Caleb was his brother and the big man had a habit of putting the fate of the world on his shoulders. Jacob had known him for years now, there was no way Alec wouldn’t blame himself for his brother’s death.

  Jacob lifted the visor on his helm and looked into Alec’s bright blue eyes. He didn’t say anything. They had both seen death often enough to know that no words could suffice. He placed a comforting hand on the bigger man’s pauldrons in a gesture of solidarity.

  Alec nodded to him in thanks, then turned his gaze north and hurried off up the trail, his equipment making its customary racket.

  A couple heavily armored – now blackened – forms didn’t get up. Jacob sighed. They would be down more than just a single man when the monsters returned. He turned to look up at Alec’s back.

  He wasn’t about to ask him to clear the dead.

  Jacob raised a gauntleted hand to the woman in a crimson surcoat and a beak-faced bascinet that was coming up the path. “Kat, you’re with me.”

  She was among the most gifted among them. Despite being stuck at Level 2, she took to the training well and showed great promise. Only her weak stats held her back. Like Jacob, Kat had quit Pyresouls early.

  Many people had underestimated the psychological weight of a Full-Immersion Virtual Reality (FIVR for short) game with no pain dampeners, no memory inhibitors for death, and horrific fiends straight out of H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos. Few stayed logged in past their first death.

  While the others followed Alec up the trail to the caves that housed one of the last bastions of humanity, Jacob and Kat picked their way down the smoldering trails to their fallen comrades.

  If they were dead, Jacob needed to be sure they stayed that way. And if they weren’t, they needed to be brought inside.

  Kat lifted her visor, her face was streaked with grime and sweat. Her blue eyes met Jacob’s green. “I’ll get Daniel and Melissa.”

  With a nod, Jacob split off and went to the first lifeless form. Sal never did like being crammed into a suit of armor. Nothing they ever found fit the man’s rotund frame. And yet, when the enemy was at the gate, he was the first one to squeeze into that uncomfortable armor.

  Unlike modern, comfortable fabrics, and flexible nanoweave, the suits of medieval armor they w
ore were bulky and difficult to move in. But they were the only armaments that offered true protection against the horde of creatures that now dominated the world after the Collapse.

  Without Guilt, a force imbued into equipment by its previous wearers over many long years, even the sturdiest steel plates were little better than tissue paper. Replicas didn’t work, even melting down the ancient metal failed to produced decent armor. It had been one of Jacob and Kim’s first real discoveries.

  Raiding local museums and collectors was the only reason their group - diminished though it was - still survived. Guns were useless. Tactical armor a joke. But dress up like you were going to a jousting match, and you could weather blows that would take down a tank.

  With Sal’s body facedown in the smoldering dirt, Jacob nudged the man with the toe of his metal boot. When he didn’t respond, he rolled him over and crouched at his side. Placing his sword to the side, he drew a thin-bladed dagger from his hip and carefully lifted the man’s visor.

  His stomach churned at the sight of the grouchy, fatherly figure burned to a crisp. With a practiced motion, Jacob tilted back the man’s head and drove the thin tip of the dagger from the man’s chin into his brain.

  The Vacant liked to come back wearing the faces of friends and loved ones. Damaging the brain prevented that from happening. Once they were Vacant, they were much harder to put down.

  It was hard work, emotionally and physically taxing. But it was a necessity after the Collapse changed all the rules.

  After cleaning the dagger, Jacob picked up his sword and waited. A moment later, a glowing fiery sphere of sapphire light drifted off the man’s chest and floated in the air. He reached his hand out and touched it, willing the wisp into himself.