by G. D. Penman
Endurance: +2 Willpower: -2 Sin: 0
Scent of Blood – Damage dealt increased by 15% when you are below 25% health.
Cullthe Weak – Damage increased by 5% when facing only a single enemy.
Thick Fur – 10% resistance to cold damage, 10% increased vulnerability to waterlogged status.
Next came a flood of statistics that grew more and more complicated the longer Martin stared at them. Strength, Agility, Endurance and Willpower all seemed straightforward enough, and both Health and Stamina were determined from a combination of those stats and the chosen class, but everything that came afterwards meant practically nothing.
There were rows upon rows of status effect resistances that Martin couldn’t even begin to grasp, as well as something called Sin, which seemed to start off in the double-digit negatives for the exorcist class. And it could take him forever to puzzle through all the intricacies of how willpower related to both spell damage and magic resistance.
It was too much. He didn’t have the time to work through it all right now; he was just going to trust to the racial bonuses to decide it. After all, he could always reroll if Lindsay somehow managed to convince him to keep the game. Which she wouldn’t, because he was definitely returning it.
Looming to his immediate right was the lizard-person, which the game helpfully informed him was called a Sythvan. They were resistant to fire damage, susceptible to cold, could breathe underwater and could choose to play dead when their health dipped under 10%. All helpful traits, but nothing mind-blowing.
The bird-person, the Corvan, was up next. The Corvan’s racial traits were a lot more flavorful. Shiny Things made it easier to spot treasure, Hollow Bones gave a 50% reduction in falling speed in exchange for a 1% increased susceptibility to all other damage, and Bird Brain gave them a 50/50 chance to resist stun effects. They had a natural bonus to Perception too, which sent Martin flicking down through the swathes of stats in search of more information on what Perception covered.
He tried to wet his lips when he found it nestled amongst Throwing Weapon Proficiency and Alchemy only to discover he had neither the lips nor tongue required. Being disembodied was really confusing, but it did nothing to detract from his excitement.
There was just so much hidden away in this game already. He could spend days and days just puzzling through it all and he hadn’t even started playing yet.
He should have chosen quickly, but the completionist in him wouldn’t let him move on without at least considering all the options, so he turned to the last one: a rather miserable-looking rat-man.
The Wulvan were imposing, the Sythvan and Corvan had special traits that could change the gameplay experience, but this thing felt like it was going to be a joke. Moving closer, the racial traits rolled down into his field of vision.
The timid Murovan were the first to discover the Dungeon of Strata and the first to succumb to the temptations that the darkness within it breeds. Making their dwellings mostly in the sewers of the cities built by greater races, the Murovan have been carried along with the tide of the Crusade unwillingly.
Strength: -2 Agility: +3
Endurance: +1 Sin: 20
Cowardice – You move 20% faster when your health is reduced below 30%.
That wasn’t a great start. With descriptions like that, it was as if the developers didn’t want people to play as Murovan.
Night Vision – Your Perception is not reduced by low-light conditions.
Not much to write home about there either. It seemed like the game was going to be taking place mainly in this “Dungeon of Strata,” but it wasn’t like all the other players were just going to be left to stumble about in the dark; there would be torches or lanterns for sale. The Night Vision trait would only be useful for knaves, and being a sneaky rat-man kind of felt like stereotyping.
Greasy Fur – 10% resistance to water damage and waterlogged status, 10% increased vulnerability to burning status.
All in all, the Murovan seemed like the obvious worst choice. They were underpowered when it came to racial traits, and the statistical bonuses that came with selecting them were marginally lower than for the other races.
When Martin dug down into the sheets of stats a little bit, he discovered that being a rat-man actually negated some of the benefits of choosing an exorcist, resetting the Sin score to 0. Not that he knew what that even meant. With a sigh, he stepped away from the rat-man to turn his attention back to his viable options.
He was burrowing through the miniscule stat differences between the Corvan and the Sythvan races when a niggling doubt at the back of his mind made him turn back around. He looked from the looming Wulvan to the other three and paused. He had immediately discounted the Wulvan; head-on attacks weren’t his style, and the bulk of the thing had put him off. But there was a flip side to that.
This wasn’t just an MMO; it was a VRMMO, so the attacks that monsters and players made on each other would hit or miss based on the actual movements made, not on some random number generation. That meant that something big was easier to hit, and something small would be harder.
The Murovan might not look like much, but the scrawny, stunted species would be twice as hard to hit compared to the Wulvan. He zipped in closer to examine the actual proportions of the character models.
The Wulvan and Sythvan had a big advantage when it came to reach compared to the other two, but Strata was set in a dungeon, which meant tunnel fighting. Being bigger could actually be a disadvantage when you were in close quarters. That extra reach might mean not being able to take a full swing with the sword.
Martin couldn’t work out why the Murovan seemed so underpowered compared to the other three, but with the hidden advantages that came with the way VRMMOs were played, they might actually be the best choice.
He took another look through the stats and realized that the reduced strength and endurance were loosely proportional to the size difference. The Murovan was the best choice. He could feel it in his gut. Not that he currently had a gut. Without another thought he said, “Murovan.”
Darkness swooped back in and the other models fell away. Martin was surrounded instead with walls upon walls of customization options to change his avatar’s appearance. With no small amount of relief, he realized that he could finally reach out and touch them, despite anything like limbs still being hidden from his sight.
After a few slaps of the randomizer button, he went into fine detail, tweaking a few features to look a little less ridiculous before finally turning his attention to the empty box that demanded a name. He’d used so many names throughout his gaming career that he didn’t really have a “go-to”.
Besides, he wasn’t sure that the vaguely Norse-sounding names that he’d picked to fit in with the setting of Dracolich were going to suit Strata, or that they’d be a good fit for a grumpy little gray rat-man either. He dredged a name from the recesses of his memory.
“Skaife.”
That had been the name of his very first character back in Dracolich, so Lindsay would find it easier to recognize him. The fact that it sounded shady enough to suit a rat-man was just a bonus.
The moment he confirmed his choice, the rat-man avatar abruptly shed its fancy gear, leaving nothing but ragged clothes and a rusted dagger tucked through its belt. Then, with the irresistible drag of gravity, the Murovan he had just created came closer.
Martin wasn’t sure if he was moving or the rat-man was, but either way, they were being dragged together. His incorporeal self passed through the fur and flesh without any sensation. Then, suddenly, he could feel his body once more… or rather, a body.
He blinked. He breathed. He looked down at his furry little hands, each finger tipped with a pointed claw. A stranger’s voice, nasal and grating, came out of his mouth when he opened it.
“Wow.”
This was completely different from the VR games he had played before. He could feel things as if they were real. When he ran his fingers over his fur, it tickl
ed. When he nipped at his lip with the pointed Murovan teeth, it stung. He could feel the wind flowing past his character, hear the whistling of the air as it passed him by. Even the breeze had a faint taste of mildew.
The last sensation to arrive was a sick lurch in his belly that told him he was falling. Martin yelped as he tumbled end over end, his vision a dark blur as he fell towards a tiny circle of light beneath him.
The opening at the bottom of the shaft grew larger and larger, the spot of white becoming a gray expanse of torchlit cobblestones.
With a whimper, Martin closed his eyes.
Four
Ill Met in Beachhead
It didn’t hurt when Martin hit the stone floor but he still felt it – like he would feel a dentist digging around in his gums despite the novocaine.
The sensation was distant, but some animal part of his brain knew that it should be hurting. He struggled to draw in a breath, eyes out of focus, a red tint around the edges of his vision shading the blurry sight of stone right in front of his face.
If he didn’t move, the next character to spawn was going to land right on top of him, and if the game had knocked the air out of his lungs just from falling he really didn’t want to see how the physics engine would treat him if one of the much bigger races landed on his head.
His claws made little scrabbling noises as he tried to get them underneath him. It took a herculean effort to roll himself over, but when he did a whole new world passed by him in a kaleidoscope.
Martin was left staring up at water-smoothed stone above him, a single gaping hole the only thing breaking up its uniformity.
After a moment, he could breathe again and suddenly he was completely overwhelmed by all of the sensory input. Up close, he could hear the braziers of coals around him crackling, but beyond that there was a hubbub of voices.
But that was nothing compared to his shock when he realized that he could smell the distant damp of the cave, layered over with a sharp tang of wood, the sourness of sweat, spices and the iron tinge of blood.
In real life, he did his best to ignore everything that he smelled, but here even the sickly-sweet aroma of rot seemed rich and lush. The pain might have been distant, but now he could feel the grainy texture of the stone beneath his paws, the ridges and striations pressing into the soft pads on his fingers.
Pressing his eyes shut gave him the moment of respite that he needed. This all felt too real now that he had a body. Now, it was easy to understand why everyone was losing their mind over Strata. This didn’t feel like a game. It felt more real than reality.
Despite having his eyes closed, Martin was still being bombarded with information.
His health and stamina were displayed on the periphery of his vision when his eyes were shut. The impact on the floor had knocked a solid 50% off his health, but as he watched, it gradually ticked back towards a full red bar, one point at a time.
Health regenerated outside of combat; that was good to know. He’d have to check back in during a fight to see if the martyr class were the only ones whose health regenerated all the time.
Beyond the bars at the side, there was even more information to be found when he had his eyes closed.
The darkness here was like the darkness of the character generation sequence, filled with mist that would readily coil into words if he concentrated. No matter where he looked, his health and stamina followed, but at the bottom of his field of vision he realized that two words also persisted. Deep One.
He could worry about what that meant later. By thinking about it, he discovered he was able to pull up his sparse inventory, containing nothing more than Tattered Rags [0 armor] and a Rusty Knife [1-3 damage]. That was just depressing, so he let his attention lapse and found himself back in the dark.
There was a thump that shook the ground beneath Martin’s head. His eyes snapped open and he startled to his feet. A massive golden-furred Wulvan had just fallen from the hole in the roof and was lying in the middle of the circle of braziers, groaning.
Martin backed away quickly. This other new player seemed just as overwhelmed as Martin had been. He lay face down, alternating between moaning and growling. As Martin stared with his mouth hanging open, words sprang into being above the Wulvan’s head, coalescing out of nothing the same way things had appeared in the darkness up above.
Dogmeat McBone Level 1 Wulvan Knight
The words reminded him that this was all just a game, and a switch in Martin’s head flicked from panic to observation. Now that his brain had stopped screaming, Martin looked around and took it all in.
Someone had built a town in this huge cavern, not all at once, but in stages, layering one heap of garbage on top of another until it started to take on the shape of a building. There were strewn pieces of masonry, dragged in from who knew where; planks of wood that all seemed to end in splinters; and raw green branches and logs that seemed likely to have been pulled straight from a tree’s roots.
Interspersed among those faintly logical pieces were other things that had no place being parts of buildings. Vines had been grown in place of mortar. A full suit of armor had been beaten flat and formed the roof of the nearest lean-to. There were even bright-colored animal hides stretched over the many holes in the walls, a consequence of this slapdash approach to construction. Not that they’d need to be watertight down in a cave with no rain.
The overall appearance was of a chaotic mess, but that was probably contributed to by the swarms of people moving just beyond the circle of flames.
While Martin had been spinning around, trying to take it all in, the knight had pulled himself up onto his hands and knees, a long line of drool trailing from his muzzle to the cold stone. He looked up at Martin with dull fury in his eyes. When he growled, it took Martin a moment to remember that this was only a game. That was when the Sythvan fell onto the Wulvan, head first.
By all rights it should have killed both of them, but Martin understood that you had to give game developers a little creative license to keep things fun. The new arrival survived. The Wulvan most certainly did not.
As the Sythvan moaned and flopped around, Martin decided that discretion was the better part of valor. He strolled away before the stunned serpent could start asking him questions he didn’t have the answers to.
Beyond the circle of torches, the crowd was like an ocean just waiting to sweep him off in the tide. He let it, slipping into the stream of traffic and letting the press of bodies carry him along to the marketplace.
The vast majority of the people around him were other players, and giving them a moment’s attention led to their names, classes and levels popping up above their heads. Doing the same to NPCs gave him their job title more often than an actual name. He turned his attention away from the nearest Marketplace Merchant to look at their actual wares.
From the brief glimpse at his inventory Martin knew he had no money to spend, but it was still fascinating to study all the objects spread out on the stalls and try to work out which ones would be useful and what was just pointless filler.
He found that if he stared at some items for long enough a little tooltip would pop up, but for others they just remained objects. He closed his eyes for a moment, pulling up his character sheet with a thought.
Skaife Murovan Exorcist
Strength: 4 Agility: 7
Endurance: 7 Willpower: 6
Health: 35 Stamina: 45
Level: 1 Sin: 0
Standard Attack Damage [Rusty Knife]: 5-7
The longer he looked, the more information presented itself: Carrying Weight, Lifting Weight, Throwing Range, Movement Speed, Jumping Distance, Poison Resistance, Disease Resistance, Curse Resistance. As he shuffled down through the endless complexities of the sheet he eventually found what he was looking for:
Appraise: 7
Appraise determines your ability to identify the function and value of items within Strata. It is calculated based on your class, level, exposure to materials and crafting skill leve
ls.
Grinning felt strange when his mouth was a completely different shape, but Martin couldn’t help it. He was a complexity addict; he loved this stuff. This game had stats tracking absolutely everything and they all interacted together.
He could spend months digging into it all before he would really understand everything. There was so much to see, and he hadn’t even gotten into the actual game yet, just the starting area. There was a bounce in his step when he spotted a barbecue pit set up in the middle of the market with a chubby Corvan hawking her wares. He wondered if Appraise or an as-yet undiscovered cooking skill would tell him about the benefits of food in-game.
An elbow caught Martin in the side of the head.
[Skaife suffers 1 bludgeoning damage]
That same strange lack of pain spread through his skull as he tumbled into the dirt.
“Out of my way, rat.”
Martin was up with his Rusty Knife in hand without even thinking, but whoever had hit him was already lost in the crowd. There were a few guards dotted around the marketplace, but if he had thought to appeal to them for help, he was badly mistaken. They glowered at him until he slipped the knife back into its sheath, but even once it was hidden he could still feel their glares on him.
Had they been staring at him like that the whole time? He glanced around furtively and noticed that the stall owners kept turning his way too.
There was no way they had programmed the NPCs to be racist against rat-men. That was just crazy.
Martin made his way to the nearest guard to help drive off his suspicions, but as he looked up at the sneer plastered beneath the Sythvan guard’s half-helm, he realized he had been right.