A World Called Memory

by M J Sweeney

  One thing of note that occurred in this time was that Drognad packed up and headed north. I was sad to see him go, and we promised to stay in touch; he gave me complicated directions to his Clan-Home, but my map updated that, so I was sure I could find it. He was first heading to a larger town called Belola-Vale, then to Geras Anandiel after that.

  Over the next couple of weeks, I trained with Allih and his men (and female scouts and warriors too), went on patrols, and worked as a medic at the Titus. As a result, I was able to afford the high elf leather armour. The staff-spear I couldn’t afford until later.

  The weapon-training with Allih was also really helpful, as he ironed out a few misunderstandings I had and gave me a lot of stuff to work on. The first thing he pointed out was how to use the length and speed of the weapon more effectively. I had been loaned a staff-spear by the quartermaster while I waited for my own from Alhain.

  “Now, the first thing I’ll say is that although I have skill with the staff, my real love is the blade,” the sergeant confessed. He usually carried a longsword and a small shield; the other sergeants specialised in bow and crossbow, and knife and grappling. “However, the first thing you need to know with pole-fighting is to use it as a thrusting weapon. Occasionally, you might sweep the thing around to clear foes and keep them back, but that’s defensive only. There are some exceptions to that, but no need to confuse you now. But don’t”—he glared at me a moment—“swing the thing like a club.”

  He paused and glared some more at me to emphasise his point. “If you make big sweeps, it’s easy to see it coming and dodge or block. And it has less power and control that way. Here; I’ll demonstrate.”

  He took a deep stance, both hands evenly on the staff. One hand was back and down slightly, near his rear hip, the other up at chest level. He shuffle-skipped forward and thrust the weapon in a snapping circle, aimed at an imaginary foe “Hai!”

  The end of the staff wobbled slightly. “Here, you try.”

  I imitated his stance and snapped it forward.

  “Good, again.”

  I repeated the move a couple of times. “Also good,” he said. “Your stance and form are nice and you move well; clearly you’ve had some good training. But you’re trying to use the front hand too much to connect and add power. The front hand aims, guides, but the back hand is the beast! It’s got all the power! All right, I’ll show you again, this time with the dummy.”

  There were dummy-bodies set up, stuffed with straw and drying clay. Apparently, that gave it flesh-like consistency.

  “Hai!”

  This time, I could see that his rear hand did a small circle and sudden stop, while the front hand was guiding the tip through the target. The dummy’s middle split open satisfyingly.

  I repeated the strike a few times. The clay was awkward and sucked on the spearhead, making it hard to pull out. My legs and arms were also starting to burn, quadriceps, deltoids and biceps all complaining fiercely. Wielding a two-handed weapon was no joke, even though the staff-spear was one of the lighter and faster ones. Both arms worked hard, plus holding my legs in a deep stance and carrying my weight through proper posture, as Allih required, was a strain.

  “Good. Now, the hard part obviously comes when you’re facing someone moving rather than a static dummy. The circular action of the thrust is key attack and defence. You can use it to deflect or even disarm, and both the head and haft of the weapon are interchangeable. The thrust is hard and fast; it’s really hard to defend because of the range and power with two hands. It’s what makes the quarterstaff and staff-spear so effective—two lethal ends that can be used for both attack and defence, and allows you almost three-sixty degrees of coverage.”

  He waved a hand in caution. “But remember this: it’s not easy for formation fighting, and it’s certainly not good for short range—better short-sword, knife, and grappling for that.” I nodded agreement there; that had definitely been my experience so far.

  “Now, as a healer and adventurer, I don’t imagine you’ll be doing much formation fighting, but getting more experience with knife work and grappling is definitely to your advantage. Sergeant Perachion can definitely help you there.”

  Over the next week, I gained more skill with those weapons and was able to add knife-throwing to my repertoire. I had no real talent or desire for the bow and crossbow, but knife-throwing was a blast. It was fun to learn and, with my agility, not so hard to pick it up. Despite that, it was still really hard to hit a moving target; and it had poor range compared to a bow, though it was still useful. Throwing knives were different from regular knives, so I had a set of these made, as well as ones that could double for melee fighting.

  We spent some time with just stance, form, and fluidity, then moved into some group work, sparring with one, two, and three at a time. It was fun, exhausting, and educational. He had me repeatedly practicing v-stepping—a way to circle or side-step an opponent, then use your new angle to strike a vulnerable spot. With the added advantage of being able to use both ends of the spear, I could strike from surprising positions that took an opponent off-guard.

  V-stepping amounted to either stepping or jump-pivoting from one angle and turning one foot forward or backward to then get my torso switched to an angle of about ninety degrees or so. It only really worked if I was attacking solo and had flat enough ground to manoeuvre. When fighting with a tightly-packed group in formation, or in rocky terrain or a closed-in room, it was much harder, and the advantages of the spear became a lot less. I liked the speed of this kind of combat, that was for sure. No more waiting around in doorways! It was fluid and chaotic, but satisfying to learn and get right. My arms and legs were continually burning now.

  “It’s not all about upper body strength,” Allih observed. “If your legs aren’t secure, strong, and quick, you’ll be tagged for sure, or worse. Don’t let anyone take away your base. Better to take a hit on your arm than a leg—you can run from a cut rib, but not if your ankle is broken.”

  With that sage advice, I learned to get my lead shin out of the way when he feinted and swung down and cracked me a few times, making me curl up in agony more than once.

  I also had to focus on one line of combat development for now—either agility-based weapons or strength-based. As most staffs and some small spears could be wielded as either strength or agility (increasing damage and minor accuracy, or attack speed and better accuracy respectively) I had to pick which way I was going.

  By my calculations, as a warrior/priest hybrid I didn’t really have an option to gain more strength later, so I also decided then and there to mostly ignore my strength attribute, and pretend like it didn’t exist. That was hard, considering I thought of myself as a fighter, and the typical strong-man stereotype that went with it. But I needed to min-max something, and as I wanted the other attributes, strength was lucky last. Needless to say, I was grateful for my ancestral heritage, which allowed me some small bonuses to strength anyway.

  Eventually, due to some fast learning, I was encouraged to start training with the first tier of warrior abilities and to pick one or two to focus on. Here was the main one that I was interested in:

  Warrior Tier I Active Abilities

  Frenzy +20/30/40% Attack Speed, 1/2/3/4 Minute Duration, 30 Second Fatigue, 20/15/10/5 minute cooldown, 100 Stamina to activate, plus 10 Stamina per round thereafter, Level 4: +20% Movement Speed (Agility class weapons only, while Frenzy is active, user is unable to increase attack or movement speed by other means, and user gains +50% Resistance to Interrupt and Slow)

  I was already focusing on the passive weapon and armour abilities, but getting some guidance on weapon and armour repair and care was helpful, as my skills were quite low there. I had to make better use of my equipment to gain increased dodge, deflection, and damage mitigation; knowing what kind of blow I could dodge and what I couldn’t was useful. I recognized that I had a long way to go to become an expert. We also focused on general weapon accuracy, as that aided in both lan
ding a blow in the first place and increasing my chance for a critical hit.

  After some discussion and practice with the trainers, we focused on building my attack speed. I was learning the basics of the Frenzy ability to eventually turn into a veritable whirling dervish kind of fighter. It was all about agility for me at this stage—in and out, be quick, keep moving, dodge, deflection, and lightning strikes. Initially, I didn’t want to bother with crowd control abilities like Taunt and Knockback, but rather simple speed and damage increase.

  We also began the first stages of practicing the abilities Stoic, Leap, and Charge—three important Tier II Abilities. The latter amounted to various forms of sprinting training, the second involved a number of gymnastic leaps, twists, and cartwheels, and the first, some basic strength and conditioning plus some added pain tolerance. Increasing my pain threshold by allowing someone to hit me was not my idea of fun, but Sergeant Connivaria assured me it would work. Eventually. Whether I took those abilities or not, it was still good training, helping to build my athletics and stamina.

  The clothier Menisme sewed some sheaths into my elven cloak, so I had an assortment of six knives placed there, with six spares in my backpack. I also had two new sets of clothes, so now I really looked the part of elven warrior. I have to admit I did strut around town a bit more than was warranted, showing off my matching dark-green and charcoal outfits. I think my posture reflected the change, I felt taller than usual, towering over the smaller high elves, and enjoying the vantage. Things were definitely shaping together.

  As a result of the training, I advanced to level 5 and received two nice surprises: at level 5, 10, 15, etc., you received four bonus stat points rather than one. I also received two bonus active and passive abilities, and would continue to do so every five levels.

  The first choice for my active abilities was easy—I chose Frenzy. More attack speed? Sign me up. As I couldn’t choose to upgrade any of my previous abilities from level 1 to level 2 until I achieved character level 10, I would reserve my second active ability point to use later. With a little procrastination, I wavered over my passive ability choices.

  I decided I would wait to decide about specialising in another weapon ability like knife-fighting, knife-throwing, and unarmed combat. For the passive ability choice, I liked the look of Accuracy, as I wanted better ‘to hit’ chance. This would also increase my critical hit chance slightly. I did have good agility, however, so I wasn’t convinced this was necessary right now. On the priest passives list, I liked the look of Meditate.

  Priest Tier I Passive Abilities

  Meditate +100% Mana Regeneration when resting/out of combat, +33/66/100% when in combat, Level 2/3 increases Stamina Regeneration by 33/66%, Level 4: +33% Health Regeneration, +100% Mana Regeneration out of combat

  Eventually, I decided that being able to increase my mana regeneration and later stamina and health regeneration would be great. The spell also stacked with mana regeneration items; this would mean many more heals. At the moment, I could only cast two or three Breath of Life (depending on the length of combat) before depleting my mana. This was also the speciality of my build—good regeneration from all sources, thus better survivability. Accept. I also reserved the second passive ability point for later allocation.

  As an experiment, I cast Breath of Life on myself, then practiced Meditation. I had no idea what I was doing, but it was basically automatic. Just thinking of taking my time, pacing myself, and taking a few deep breaths, and I could literally feel the mana flowing back into my body more rapidly than before. For now, it would be more effective out of combat than in combat, but still useful overall. From what I understood, most Tier I abilities could be learned on the fly, but most Tier II and Tier III abilities needed a teacher or trainer.

  With a little more reading I learned that I needed a minimum amount of agility and intellect to gain higher tier warrior or priest abilities. To gain the Tier I, II or III abilities of your class you needed 20, 40 or 60 in your primary statistic. I also knew from before that you could gain abilities from other classes, but you needed to find a willing trainer, plus the minimum stat requirements were harder.

  For off-class abilities you needed 40, 60 or 80 in the class stat for each tier. This meant a typical warrior (not a hybrid like me) would need really high intellect to get some cool spell abilities—which was really unlikely considering the usual warrior would not have that many spare points to put into intellect in the first place.

  Not only that, but in order to gain Tier II abilities you needed to have at least two Tier I abilities at level 2, and to gain Tier III abilities you needed at least two Tier II abilities at level 3. This prevented people from jumping around classes and more or less stealing random abilities. You could occasionally gain off-class abilities through epic quests, as long as the ability was deemed compatible.

  After this consideration, I decided to allocate two points to intellect, one point to agility, and one to vitality. Basically, it was always good to be smarter, I felt my lack of knowledge of the world could get me killed. Understanding how things worked was going to help in all ways—fighting, socially, magic…

  When that took of hold me, once more I felt my lungs expand, my muscles became a little more solid, the earth under my feet more tangible. But the big difference was in my brain, and my nervous system. My nerve-endings ignited, I had to get up from where I was sitting on the edge of my bed and start madly dancing around. Shit! It wasn’t unpleasant, just really intense—like a good sneeze that never came—building up from my fingers and toes and gathering in my brain. In the end, my head felt light, more open somehow, and ready. I don’t know if I was any smarter, but I certainly felt more confident and more sensitive. My mana and perception of that energy had also expanded; I really felt that too. Here were my stats:

  / Cordaen Sequoia / Level 5 Warrior-Priest /

  STR 20

  INT 24

  AGI 25

  VIT 23

  CHA 19

  LCK 16

  Health: 644 (23 x 20 + 40%)

  Mana: 552 (24 x 20 + 15%)

  Stamina: 470

  / Journeyman Reinforced High Elf Leather / Rare +10% Bonus

  [+3% Elemental Resistance (ER) per piece, +1% Damage Resistance (DR) per piece, +2% Movement Speed (MS) per piece]

  The armour looked nice, if a little new and glossy. It was a chocolate kind of brown, with neat green trimming, just a bit too pristine for my tastes. I’d have to muddy it up, but didn’t dare do that in front of Alhain. Firstly, I didn’t want to stand out as a newb, and secondly I worried it might reflect light and not be such good camouflage.

  When I tried it on, however, my qualms disappeared. It fit so well compared to the other crap I’d been wearing, it felt almost like normal clothing—with such minimal restriction, I actually moved a little better with the whole set on than with it off, due to the magical bonuses. I could imagine living in the thing from now on.

  With my Light Armour skill sitting at 33 (23 for the base skill, which had increased by eight points over the last weeks, and ten for specialising in Light Armour), that dropped all effectiveness of the armour’s implicit defences to 30%. This meant if I had 100 armour skill, I would get 100% of the value of 18% Elemental Resistance for the set, (six pieces at 3% each.) If I had 50 armour skill, it would grant only 9% Elemental Resistance for the set (six pieces at 1.5% each.) In addition the minimum values for wearing armour was 25%, so from 0 to 25 armour skill, nothing changed—it was always at 25% effectiveness.

  As Alhain had crafted Reinforced Leather for me, that added 10% bonus to all implicit attributes, and when wearing the whole set—including the head gear—this added a further 20% matching set bonus. This gave me a total of 60% effectiveness when wearing it right now. The total maximum bonus to armour could be 180%. The chest piece also gave an additional flat 2% ER bonus and 1% DR bonus. So this meant:

  +13% Elemental Resistance (18 x.6 +2 = 13%)

  +7% Movement Speed (12 x
.6 = 7%)

  +5% Damage Resistance (6 x.6 +1 = 5%)

  Through trial and error in training, I began to notice that with melee fighting, in any given moment, I could put more attention to accuracy, deflection, or damage. If I increased one factor, the others would drop accordingly. So if I tried to be more accurate, I would also do less damage and vice versa—if I tried to land a massive blow, it would be easier for my opponent to dodge it. But if the foe was stunned or distracted at the time, then a big hit was likely. As a general rule, all three of those combat choices remained equal unless I applied one. This seemed to apply particularly well to the staff-spear. It combined speed, accuracy, and damage in equal measure, unlike other weapons—a knife had greater speed but less damage; a two-handed hammer provided much greater damage, but a lot less speed and accuracy. Mine was a great balanced weapon.

  In combat, factors like terrain, line of sight, wind, and other external conditions were calculated first, then dodge chance, then hit chance success/failure, then deflection, then critical hit chance, and finally damage resistance, then final damage result with critical hit multipliers (if any). Even if I failed to dodge then deflect, the protagonist still had a chance to miss if they fucked it up. And even then, my armour would mitigate five percent of the damage. That wasn’t much, but better than nothing after all the rest.

  Chapter 8

  During the patrols of those first three weeks, I spent more time learning than offering any of my healing skills or fighting. Mostly we patrolled the southern and western borders, as there were known to be bandits from time to time, both human and orc bands that came over the border, and occasional depredations from groups of wargs and even werewolves. As it turned out, wolf-men, or lupus, were quite civilised, and were sometimes called gnolls, the hyena breed. Orcs were also called boar-men, the pig breed. A number of racial insults came with it—some of it deserved, I’m sure, but a lot of it not. I tried to keep an open mind.