“The Rostori triumphed over this world as they had many others, draining the land dry for their magic. For magic is not endless... it is drawn from the earth itself, and when unnatural creatures like this dracolich drain it to sustain their undeath, the earth is dead within five hundred years.”
“Damn,” I said, more to myself than anything. “You'd think you'd learn after the first time.”
“You presume they have the desire,” the Narrator replied.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. I had not been expecting a reply.
“The Drachan and Rostori destroyed their home planet long ago, and are never satisfied by what they have. They do not learn from their mistakes. That is the nature of greed and narcissism. The greatest of the Elder Drachan sustain themselves by pillaging planets of their magic. They teach that mercy is weakness, and cruelty is strength.”
Just as I opened my mouth to speak, the undead dragon reared up and raised its foreclaws, posing them in a series of arcane gestures as it began a rumbling chant. Its voice was like boulders tumbling down a dry mountain. The Rostori continued the sacrifices, and soon, the thunderous volcano drowned out the victim’s screams.
“To move from one world to the next, the Drachan use the Dragon Gates, vast wells of mana, the stuff of magic,” the narrator continued on calmly. “They gathered the last of the magic of this world and used it to travel to the next. Our world... the world of Archemi.”
The volcano erupted with a column of white fire, and I nearly wrenched my neck following it as it shot into the sky, illuminating the massive dark army I hadn't seen in the valley below. The light drowned out sound and vision, throwing me around like a leaf. The indistinct sensation of floating was replaced by the swooping, giddy momentum of flight.
I broke out of the blinding light into a sweep of massive forested mountains. My stomach dropped out as the ground sped beneath me. I could feel everything. The wind, the hot sun on my back, the turbulence of the air. It was the freshest air I'd ever smelled. We'd long ago trashed Earth, even before the Total Wars and HEX and everything, and I'd ever only seen places like this in History class. It was brilliant and bright, tainted only by the knowledge of what I'd just seen before. It was almost too bright, like they'd turned the saturation up on the blue of the sky and the green of the forest. I crested a ridge, and came up over a huge walled city that faded off into farmland as the valley wound off between the mountain peaks.
“Archemi, however, is different to the worlds that the Drachan and their slaves conquered in the past for two powerful reasons,” my narrator said. “Archemi has dragons of its own, a wise and sophisticated race wholly different to the greedy Drachan. Not only does it have dragons, it has you, and people like you.”
“Because every world needs more angry, dyslexic Korean washouts,” I joked.
“Do not be so quick to disparage yourself, Hector. You are Starborn, one of the immortal Souls of Fate incarnated on Archemi in times of crisis. An age ago, when the ocean split and the Drachan entered our world, they brought monsters with them. The Starborn appeared, and with the help of the native dragons of our world, the invaders suffered their first defeat – but at great cost. The first races of Archemi were all but destroyed. Huge swathes of land were Stranged with magic, becoming twisted wastelands crawling with monsters where there were none before - but we did win. The Drachan were forced into an unquiet sleep, the Rostori bound to the frigid wastes of the far North. They are trapped there by the Caul of Ancestors, a powerful magical barrier called into beings by the sages of all Archemi's races. Archemi has known peace ever since... but the Rostori have not forgotten their mission, and they know that greed is infectious. It is only a matter of time before they find their way free. As that risk increases, more Starborn will appear… but it is up to them whether they help or hinder the threat to Archemi. Which brings us back to the now. You, Hector, are a Starborn: a soul waiting for a body. And you have a unique and difficult choice ahead of you.”
I startled from the story trance and turned to the narrator-ghost, who looked back at me with a face like liquid light.
“Hector, it is time for you to choose your place here. Will you remain a soldier, fighting for a king or nation? Will you give into your rebellious nature and become a criminal, or an assassin? Will you become a priest of your people, worshipping and working with the local gods? Will you become a dragon knight and fly the skies, or a hedge knight who wanders the land?”
My heart skipped. …A dragon knight? As in, a knight on an actual dragon?
I thought I saw the narrator smile. “Your destiny is in your own hands, Hector, and you have complete freedom to decide your path... but choose wisely, because your decisions may not just affect you, but the course of history.”
Chapter 4
The valley and city faded out, and I found myself standing in a neutrally lit room surrounded by a ring of enormous, fancy mirrors. My reflection looked like me. I was medium-height, with a stocky build that had leaned towards fat before the Army and was now mostly muscle. I had a crewcut, a hard jaw, wide cheekbones, dark eyes that blinked when I blinked. They'd even included my acne scars, but fortunately, not the deathly, rashy skin or hollow cheeks caused by HEX. I looked down at myself, and saw I had all five appendages intact. Curious, I reached out and touched the glass in front of me. It was cold, smooth... whatever the hell tech they were using to generate this level of neural feedback, I was seriously impressed.
“As you've guessed already, this is the character creation room,” the ghostly narrator said. She sounded happier now. “First things first. Due to the emergency repurposing of the game, you have the option of creating an adventure-ready player character suitable for combat quest roles, or defaulting to a simplified creation process which draws on your natural strengths and experience. We recommend that people who wish to participate in civilian Life Skill paths - such as craftsmen, farmers, merchants or other non-combative occupations - select the simplified character creation stream.”
“No thanks,” I said. “I want adventurer creation.”
A detailed HUD scrawled into view. It was ornate, in a subtle, elegant way, but otherwise a pretty standard UI... all the meaty RPG stats, inventories, skill trees, and suchlike.
“Archemi’s menu system is underpinned by an encyclopedic archive. Navigate the menus and archives by thought. It doesn't matter if you decide to use voice or gesture at first - as time goes on, you'll train the menu to react with your intentions and needs,” the narrator said. “The first thing you’ll want to do it to choose your race and sub-race. Archemi is large and diverse, with civilizations and nations with distinct cultures. Try thinking 'show race menu'.”
Open race menu. I changed her words in my head, interested to see how it responded.
A tab popped up, spooling into a short list of playable races, each one with a sub-menu:
+Artanese
+Meewfolk
+Mercurion
+Dauntan
Only four races? That was a bit of a letdown. Frowning, I opened the +Artanese sub-category, and suddenly faced another list of options:
++Dakhari
++Vlachian
++Sharet
++Sathbari Plainsman
++Hercynian
++Khago
++Okinevan
++Jeunan
Artanese humans - they were humans - were tall and vaguely elf-like. They didn’t have pointed ears, but they had large, expressive eyes, no matter their skin color or other features. The Dakhari were dark-skinned, the warm ochre-brown you saw in India and the Middle East; the Sathbari were even darker. The sample Hercynian characters looked mostly Caucasian or Mediterranean, and the Jeun were the most elf-like: tall, lithe, elegant, and Asiatic.
When I thought 'Dakhari', a much longer list and a short description opened:
Dakhari (Artanese, Race)
“The Dakhari are the dominant human people in Dakhdir, a large nation in The Shalid, a region in the South o
f Artana, which is the largest continent of Archemi. They have a caste-based culture divided into nobility, merchants, warriors, and peasantry (or the townsman ancestors of peasantry). In addition, there are two 'outcaste' groups: sorcerers and untouchables, who are both known as ‘Shallatu’, or Fireblooded.”
Huh. I whistled as the complexity of the character creation really began to dawn on me. If I went Dakhari, I could choose my general social starting position, whether or not I was urban or rural, and a bunch of other variables. Each one had their pros and cons, stacking into a complete character picture. If you played a higher caste, you didn’t get any special physical perks, but you got the perks of that caste. Shallatu started off with fantastic physical stats, but steep social and economic impediments. There was a lot of reading to do, but I wanted to get a general idea of the main race options before I started drilling down too far. The Fireblooded had me curious, though. My curiosity was obviously enough of a prompt, because I got an explanation:
Fireblooded (Dakhari)
Dakhari Fireblooded are so called because of their coloration and unique relationship to magic. They are universally tall, strong and good-looking, with vivid red or orange hair and gold or red eyes. Fireblood always runs true – every child who has one Fireblooded parent will themselves be Fireblooded. However, rates of fertility are very low, with only one in every ten adults able to have children. Men and women are of equal height and near-equal strength.
Believed to be the descendants of demons, they are pariahs within their country and culture - though not necessarily outside of it. They start with a -10 social penalty (-15 with Caste-loyal Dakhari) and severely reduced resources, but they are immune to Stranging and take reduced damage from all magic.
“What’s Stranging?” I'd barely formed the question when a tooltip opened.
Stranging
When living creatures are exposed to raw mana, the toxic effects of liquid magic will mutate and/or harm them. Stranging is a phenomenon which ranges from radiation burns to dementia, infertility, sickness, and in extreme cases, mutation and division into monsters. All Starborn (player characters) have limited resistance to Stranging, but not complete immunity.
Infertility? That implied fertility as well, which meant… I could father babies here? Jeez. Hopefully they had condoms as well. Stranging definitely sounded like something I wanted to avoid... it made me wonder how mages didn't curl up and die with their first spells. And dementia? Given this was a beta, who the hell knew what would happen if you got dementia in a video game?
The Sathbari were basically dino-riding plains warriors, proud Afro-Asian people who dressed in buckskins, furs, and hard leather armor tanned from hookwings, dinosaurs that looked pretty much like oviraptors with feathers. The Hercynians were European-esque, divided into nationals who ranged from swarthy Grecian people to moon-cheese-marshmallow white. As my tooltips helpfully informed me, Hercynia comprised a region of six unique, economically powerful nations on a peninsula on the far West point of Artana.
I found I was able to bookmark things of interest while I waded through the database and learned more about the world and its cultures. The Jeun Empire was cool - kind of like ancient Korea plus magitech as far as I could tell - but mostly orientated toward magic users and artificers. Not really my bag. I respected magic classes, but I wasn’t any good with them.
“Show me the Dauntans.” I spoke aloud before remembering I was supposed to be thinking my way around the menu.
The menu faithfully appeared. There were only two sub-races of Dauntan: Tungaant and Lysidian. The Lysidian WERE elves: gracile, urbane, orientated towards ranged combat and magic, with long pointed ears and a skin color palette that ranged from coal black (in the equatorial nations) to an interesting pale blue-gray. Judging by what I read, the city I'd seen in the intro was one of theirs. Elves weren’t really my schtick - I preferred races that were a bit rougher around the edges, and that’s what I got with the Tuun.
The Tuun were basically Tibetan Vikings. They were craggy humans who wore dark colors and crossover jackets, heavy fleece, leather, and cleated boots. They had a Eurasian look about them, with the tanned skin and the rosy cheeks of people constantly exposed to the wind and sun. They were tall and strong featured, with clear, piercing eyes and unusual square pupils.
Tuun (Daun, Race)
The Tuun are the rugged, independent people of the Nima Plateau, from the north of Daun. Tough, resourceful and stoic, they live a semi-nomadic lifestyle with their dinosaur herds and circulate through several ancient mountain cities. The nation is loosely ruled by a council of three abbots, the Chitahbach (Songmaster or 'Disciple of the Tongue'), the Dragahbach (Skymaster, 'Disciple of Sky') and Kanachba (Stonemaster, 'Disciple of the Ground'). They each head one of the three main orders within the Tuun religious tradition, which is known as Ruhebah (The Way, literally 'Path-finding'). As one of the oldest contiguous civilizations in Archemi, they have a unique relationship with dragonkind, and dragons were once an important bridge between their far-flung communities.
Dragons? Hell yes. As I read through the options, I began to feel that stirring excitement you get when you've hit on the right character. Tuun were tough, a bit anti-social, and they basically grew up on horseback - well, dino-back. They had some heavy resistances to disease and bonuses to mobility and riding, but no protection from magic. They had some features that would make a good dragon knight character, if that was a real class. I bookmarked them as well.
The Meewfolk – that was their ‘common’ name, not the name they called themselves - were pretty much walking, talking Siamese cats. They weren't particularly anthropomorphized, looking more like cats than people, with elegant long digitigrade legs and long fingers with toe-bean pads. I was surprised to find that Meewfolk probably made for the best fast combat builds in the game. Female Meewfolk, anyway - they were intensely sex-segregated, with females taking on the warrior and lore-keeping duty in cities, and males leaning towards rogue and bard classes in nomadic gangs. If I wanted to play a Swordsman or Monk/Striker class, they’d be the one I’d go for.
Then it was time for the Mercurions. I opened them up, and my breath caught. I'd seen images of two of each race: male and female. There were six example Mercurions. They ranged from a short, muscular, very masculine guy through to a very tall androgynous person who was clearly neither male or female. But they were gorgeous. The Mercurions had smooth silver skin and swept back wings made of crystal in place of ears. Their hair looked like spun glass: translucent, but flexible. Their faces were exquisitely beautiful, the kind of heavy, sweet beauty I associated with angels and renaissance paintings.
Mercurions (Zaunt, Race)
Strange living constructs created to fight dragons, Mercurions painstakingly craft each new generation of their kind. The foundation of Mercurion society is the family. Their clans are called Tlaxican ('Lineages') which vary extensively in size and power. Tlaxican measure their wealth in the number of children they have, the quality of those children, and the reserves of mana they have to create them.
To reproduce, Mercurions sculpt their children with a mana-treated elastomer, glass, silicon-carbonite (which is relatively common in Zaunt, their island homeland) and specially treated metals. Their techniques are derived from the technological processes used by the Aesari and Drachan nearly 4000 years ago, and are one of the closest-kept secrets in Archemi. They are known for their haunting music, their expertise as Artificers and Assassins, and their level-headedness. Mercurions live in subterranean cities which are deadly to living beings due to the poison gases and raw mana in the air.
As constructs, Mercurions are sexless and genderless. Instead, there are six types of Mercurions made to fulfill certain social roles, such as combat, music or magic. They are also painfully short-lived, though this is not so much of a concern for the rare Starborn among them.
Their pages were pretty detailed: just as well, given how alien they were. I queried 'Aesari' out of curiosity, bu
t nothing came up. A mystery, then.
I was really tempted by the Joh build Mercurion - described as tall, muscular and masculine - but I wanted to play someone who was on good terms with dragonkind, not purpose-made to kill them. My eyes were drawn back to the Tuun. When I thought about the male avatar, he appeared in the mirror in front. I liked the compact, tough, confident look about him. He looked like someone who could build something for himself, make his own way in the world. He looked free.
My whole life had been spent in a cage of other people’s needs. My parents had pushed me and Steve both to the limit at school. He’d done well, while I had my first breakdown in late elementary school. My dad said I got bad grades were because I was a lazy sinner who played videogames instead of working. In reality, I just couldn’t read. My eyes would skip over the words, and I couldn’t concentrate on them unless I was moving. Neither of my parents believed me, because their son couldn’t have a learning disability. I was just supposed to pray more.
I got into VR games as an escape from the pressure and batshit religion, because games had text-to-speech options and the freedom of swinging a sword, riding a horse, owning a house. And I was good at it, just like I was good at riding. In the months before the war, I’d found freedom in motorcycles and had started auditioning for stunt work in Los Angeles. I rode Mona in stunt competitions, and had just made a friend in the racing business when the Second Total War broke out and they called the draft. Steve hadn’t had to serve, because he was working for Ryuko and the corp filed a petition for him.
I didn’t have anyone on my side with that kind of money. I was a dyslexic revhead who was good with bikes and games and not much else. It was the rank and file for me… and the brief taste of freedom I’d had vanished forever.
Dragon Seed: A LitRPG Dragonrider Adventure (The Archemi Online Chronicles Book 1) Page 4