Ethria- the Pioneer

by Aaron Holloway

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be okay. We just have to get your body temperature back to normal.” I said as I touched her back to see if she had begun to warm. Her temperature was rising, but very slowly. She nodded, sighed, and began to go back to sleep. “No no, stay awake if you can.” I said “I don’t know about fairies, but for humans, if we get hypothermia it's very dangerous for us to fall asleep. Stay awake okay? At least until you stop shivering.”

  “I… It's hard.” She said blurrily. “I am so tired…”

  “I know. Finish telling me about the Pervolins. You promised you would when we stopped and we had time. Well, we’re stopped and we have time.”

  “O-okay,” she said weakly. She began telling me the story of the Pervolins from the very beginning. A few times she almost drifted off, but I woke her back up with a gentle shake and promoting. The fact that she could stay awake, and had enough of her wits about her to tell me a story was a very good sign.

  Eventually, the two elves returned with the honey and bread, and I interrupted Ailsa’s telling to have her eat tiny pieces of bread and honey. “You don’t want a full belly, you want your body to start producing its own heat, not fill you up to the point where you get tired,” I instructed her as I brought the offering up to her and she took it. She nibbled on the food in between parts of the story. By the time Tol’geth returned a few minutes later she was back to where she had left off earlier. The two elves, Riggil, and Tol’geth all sat around the fire as the sun slowly faded into night listening to her tale.

  It was sad, happy, triumphant at times, and at times dark and tragic. The pure and high Pervolins had fallen, somehow, and their fall from grace into lasciviousness, idleness, and wonton violence brought them to the attention of other powers. Eventually, it weakened the protections their world had and they were invaded by those forces.

  What was left of the Pervolins, and the few races they lived with on their homeworld, which as I suspected included the original courts of the Fae, fled here to Ethria. “My people, the Faie courts, fled our original home on Pervolin in two groups. The majority followed the few remaining Pervolins here to Ethria where they built a massive civilization. Until the wars of purity that banished the courts from Ethria, and lead to the extinction of the pure-blooded Pervolin race.

  “The second group left too, another place. There they inflicted great harm as the people had no protection save their faith in their Gods, against them. Eventually, they were banished from there as well.” She must have been talking about Earth, but I would ask her more about that later.

  “Eventually, all of the Fae Courts reunited in the Fae Wild. A pocket domain of Ethria, that Ethria itself banished my kind too.” She said. She stretched and yawned wide as Tol’geth put another log on the fire, and the two elves who I suspected of having drifted off to sleep leaning against one another, opened their eyes blearily.

  The sun had gone down only about fifteen minutes prior, and darkness had not fully engulfed us yet, but I could understand their exhaustion from the excitement of the battle, and the fear they must have felt at being kidnapped.

  “Come, children, let us too bed.” Tol’geth instructed them, they protested only a little as he “helped” them to their feet and walked them to the bedrolls he had laid out for them as Ailsa said her story. The two children had been far to enrapt with the story to attend to their own needs.

  After they had walked away I asked: “So, If your people are banished, why are you allowed onto Ethria?” She was quiet for a few seconds before responding.

  “I am a special case. Those of us who have been “banished” by Ethria, the Fae are not the only such race, honestly have nowhere else to go. In keeping with its duties, Ethria attempts to provide us a safe haven to survive from extinction, and offers us the chance to do so in a pocket dimension that is made specifically for us, and populated by only us. It's a compromise.

  “Fae like me, the least dangerous and powerful, the most inclined to get along with mortals, are allowed to come into the service of greater beings who are trusted by Ethria. We do so in an attempt to earn the freedom of our race, to show Ethria that we have changed, and can be trusted now.

  “If the Fae Courts hadn’t accepted exile to a pocket dimension, well” She paused. “Ethria would have either sent us back to our homeworld where we would have been enslaved, tortured, and killed by whatever hellscape exists there now, or we would have issued a call for a purity crusade against us.”

  I asked the obvious question “What's a purity crusade?”

  She laughed sadly. “It's the reason you’re here really. Ethria thought that the Pervolins were far too dangerous to continue living here. They, the Fae Courts, and a few others threatened the very fabric of its existence, which threatened its primary purpose. The Fae less so, but as we were from the same world, we were all categorized as too dangerous.

  “A Purity Crusade, or a War of Purity, or whatever you want to call it, is where Ethria issues a worldwide quest to every being to kill the group the crusade is issued against, with the incentive that If you kill someone from that group you get an automatic level up. The quest is available even to members of the same group. Ethria does this all in an attempt to purify itself of whatever is endangering it.”

  I let out a long breath at the concept. Levels for lower-level individuals in games were always easy to get. Kill a few wolves or bandits as I had just done, and you were bound to level up once or twice before you reached level twenty or so. Above that? Things usually got a lot harder, with experience gain getting progressively more difficult with each level. In some of the more realistic games, as I suspected it was in Ethria, the experience requirements to level up were exponential.

  10 experience points or so to get to level 2. 20 experience to get to level 3, 40 to get to level 4, and 80 to get to level 5, Etcetera Ad Nauseum Infinitum. Thresholds doubling, tripping, or even quadrupling with every new level. For a lowly mortal human, the allure of such a boon would be nearly irresistible.

  For the more powerful and ancient beings on Ethria that Ailsa had warned me about? My mind summoned images of ancient vampires, immortal liches, ageless krakens, and even draconic worms. Beings who had probably slept the last centuries away, and who I imagined during the last epoch had not leveled once before the crusade.

  Such beings, already powerful, could double, or even triple their level by attacking a single city depending on the scale of the slaughter they could enact. To these beings, the ones I was to fear and hide from, the prize would act like a drug. Who could resist when by killing a single Pervolin, wiping out a town, or a city you could equal or even outstrip the labor of your entire life up till that point. It was an effective strategy to get every ancient power, every slumbering monster to engage in the behavior you wanted.

  But for Ethria to provide the quest to Pervolins themselves? That must have been far too tempting for the evil among them. Why not cull the weak, infirm, the useless? But, why stop there? Why not breed as prolifically as possible so you could profit off of the deaths of even the very young? The justifications for truly evil acts were as easy to spot as the sun at midday.

  I could see it even corrupting the good. Leaders, noble and true who only sought to protect and serve their people. Committing such atrocities might have provided the levels, the power needed to protect the rest of their species. The idea was insidious, as much as it seemed to have been effective.

  “The temptation must have been, unimaginable, near the end.” I said quietly. She only nodded. “And this, species-wide genocide, was all to protect the primary purpose of Ethria’s creation. The primary purpose that you can’t tell me about?” She nodded again. Something I felt on my chest more than saw. “Why didn’t the Pervolins take the same arrangement as the Fae?”

  “Even after several generations of exile and reformation, the Pervolins were very, very prideful.” She sighed and yawned again. “It's not like they were fools though. They thought they were powerful enough to su
rvive long enough to prove to Ethria that they could reform properly, that they could change. For such long-lived beings as them, the needed species-wide behavioral change, philosophical contemplation, and religious atonement was to take centuries, not months or even years as with the shorter-lived races.”

  Her voice was exhausted when she continued, fighting back another yawn. At this point, it was clear that she was warm and out of danger. “The really sad thing is, they did it. The very last city, at the heartland of their once-powerful empire, maybe a hundred souls of the third generation in all, were good enough. They had changed their behavior enough, they had changed their biology, their society, and their laws, institutions, and religions enough that Ethria lifted the Crusade.”

  “And still, they died off?” I asked.

  “And still humans, elves, dwarves, deep ones, centaurs and all other manner of creatures from every corner of Ethria, butchered them. Can’t be too safe, right? If they were that dangerous once, the Pervolins could become so again. Or at least that was the justification for the last butchery of a once-great people.” The conversation drifted off into silence as the coals of the fire slowly burned deep in the pit that Tol’geth had dug. “Though, they did find their Gods again, before the end.”

  “One more question, before we go to bed to melancholy dreams,” I said, half quoting a phrase my mother used to tell me to warn me against reading or watching sad things before I went to sleep. Ailsa laughed a little causing me to smile as I asked “What did they do? The Pervolins I mean? Was it one person who screwed everything up? Or, their government? What happened?”

  “That is not a story I can tell you without revealing things I can’t tell you,” Ailsa said exhausted. She wiggled out of the cloth that wrapped her up, and then out of my shirt, and began to hover in front of the fire. She was sluggish compared to her normal exuberance, but I knew she would be fine. “Though I can still feel and be made uncomfortable by them, I am immune to the natural elements negative effects. So you don’t have to worry about natural cold making me worse off. But…” She said hesitantly as I stood up from the fire and began laying out the bed role that I had been sitting on.

  “Could I, could I sleep with you? Like, in your bed role, not the other way…” She said as her aura flashed a slight bit more towards red. Her aura was subdued in general, which is probably the only reason I caught the subtle change.

  Is that how Faie blush? I thought amusedly. “Sure you can, no problem. I mean, your a fairy. I don't think the other thing is even possible.”

  “Oh, don’t be so sure.” She said teasing me. I raised an eyebrow skeptically before she burst into soft, tired, giggles.

  I rolled my eyes. “Bedtime, little fairy.” I squeezed into my bedroll, and she followed after me. We were both asleep before we could think of anything else.

  -----

  The next morning I woke up early, a few hours before the sun. I walked over to Tol’geth who was keeping watch and relieved him. “I’ll keep watch till everyone else wakes up,” I said. “It’ll only be a few hours.” When he began to protest I said “You’ll be less effective if you don’t. Better to get a few hours of sleep at least. I’ll wake you if I hear or see anything suspicious.” After a few seconds of thought, he nodded and then headed over to where the fire had died and laid down, a log for his pillow.

  I sat down on the same rock he had just vacated and began to look through the multiple prompts I had received from the battle that I had auto-minimized. After examining my Force Bolt 1’s new overcharge special ability more closely, I moved on excited to see what leveling was like on Ethria.

  “You have leveled up! Current level, 2. As you are less than level 10 you gain 3 free characteristic points to distribute. Distribute these within the next 48 hours, or they will be randomly redistributed for you.”

  “You have leveled up! Current level, 3. As you are less than level 10 you gain 3 free characteristic points to distribute. Distribute these within the next 48 hours, or they will be randomly redistributed for you.”

  The feminine voice began reading the green prompts as soon as I opened them, I thought about a mute button, and one appeared just under the prompt. Interesting, I thought the word Mute, and the mute button clicked on, stopping the voice mid rendition of the first leveling prompt. I want to make sure I could hear if something started sneaking up on us. Better leave these muted for now. I thought about it a little more, and when I decided I needed a break-down of my notification settings, a screen appeared with several options. I changed combat notifications to auto-minimize non-critical ones while in combat. I also selected the option for a more streamlined math display. After a few minutes, and setting the Mute to turn back off after I slept, I turned my attention towards the rest of my character.

  I had six free characteristic points to distribute how I wanted. My physical characteristics are abysmal, I thought as I looked over my character sheet again. I considered putting a few into Dexterity or Constitution, or perhaps increasing my Attraction which I assumed was similar to how Charisma worked in old fashioned Dungeons and Dragons games. But if I want to min-max as a magic-user, I’m going to have to nearly entirely invest in Immaterial Characteristics.

  I thought about the distribution for some time, before finally deciding on a good mix. I put one point into Intelligence as I didn’t feel like I had reached my intellectual limit yet, so expanding it was not really a priority. This brought it up to 18. I put 2 points into emotional Stability making it 20 because it fed into a number of immediately useful things and I hoped would help me deal with the stress I was under. I put 1 point into Perception making that 14 because perception was always useful in any game for any class, and I put 1 point into Luck for the same reason.

  The last point I put into Physical Attraction. At least now I don’t have a negative modifier there. I won’t be having to beat women off with a stick, but at least I don’t repulse them, I thought sardonically.

  My characteristic points allocated, I reviewed the fundamentals of my character sheet.

  “Name: Rayid (Daniel) Tear

  Race: Human

  Heritage: Unknown (Earth, Western, Pioneer)

  Class: Pre-10th Level (3)

  Religion: Unknown (LDS/Mormon)

  Alignment: Unknown (Lawful, Moral)

  Age: 26

  Hair: Brown

  Skin Color: White

  Height: 6'1

  Material Characteristics

  TOTALS

  MODIFIERS

  GENERAL

  10.5

  0.25

  Strength

  12

  1

  Dexterity

  10

  0

  Constitution

  10

  0

  Physical Attraction

  10

  0

  Immaterial Characteristics

  TOTALS

  MODIFIERS

  GENERAL

  15.8

  2.9

  Intelligence

  18

  4

  Emotional Stability

  20

  5

  Sensitivity

  15

  2.5

  Perception

  14

  2

  Luck

  12

  1

  Defense Bonus

  4

  Health Points

  30

  Melee (ST+Dex+Perc+Luck)

  Ranged (Dex, Gen Im, Perc, Luck)

  General Attack Bonus

  4

  5.9

  Traits

  Human Adaptability: Humans are by far one of the most adaptable species on all Ethria. As such, every level they gain 3 characteristic points until 10th lvl. Upon taking a class at 10th level they gain 1 free characteristic point, and 2 characteristic points in the primary class characteristic of their chosen class, and 1 point distributed randomly.

  Unlucky / Lucky (Agent of Change): Your life i
s filled with moments of extremes. You are both very unlucky, and very lucky in that strange and usually bad things tend to happen to you, but they usually work out in the end. Random events generated at +1.5x. Other effects to be discovered.

  Eldritch Knowledge: Having come from another plane of existence, and having been considered highly educated among your people, you have been blessed by the celestial being (s) of that foreign realm with the ability to perfectly recall any information you had learned on your old world. Be careful, however, as those who have any trait or affiliation that ties them strongly to this plane of existence will not take kindly to outsiders such as yourself. Your knowledge is power, hide it well. Other effects to be discovered.

  Gift of Tongues: You have been blessed by the cosmic being (s) of your home plane to be able to speak or read any language that you might encounter at the level of Proficient as if you were a native speaker with no accent. For this ability to activate you must first encounter the language twice. Other effects to be discovered.

  Mysterious Stranger: As you are from another place, certain aspects of yourself are permanently hidden from denizens of this new realm you now call home unless you personally reveal it to them. These aspects are listed as Unknown on your character sheet and will be seen by others as such until you learn more about yourself and claim a new place in the world. You will always have the hidden labels from your past home, but the new labels will be revealed for all to see. Find a new home, forge a new heritage for yourself, and claim Ethria as your own. In addition, this means that you have a natural resistance to mental manipulation, as your experiences and thought patterns are alien. 15%+current level chance of mental manipulation failure, magical/non-magical. Other effects to be discovered.