Full Immersion [for what it's worth]

> Get there already.

With a few slightly more violent bumps, the carriage comes to a halt. "Ah, it seems we are here," says the lady. The bodyguard, a woman with hooved feet and horns and wearing light armor over too much of the rest of her body to tell much else, comes to Miss Rigsby's side to help her get out. Jarod decides to just hop out his side on his own.

Outside is the front door of a grand stone castle, very ancient-looking. People of all sorts seem to be among both the guards and the guests; many of the latter are in more elaborate or fancy-looking clothes than Jarod's host.

The bodyguard stays with the carriage. Following the woman in, he says, "I feel..sort of underdressed."
"Oh, don't worry too much. You are not presently involved in political posturing, so nobody really cares how you look, least of all the queen. She wears very practical clothing most of the time herself, actually. Quite sensible."
Through the doors is a large hallway with various large banners hung along the way. Most of them look like standard family crests, but every once in a while is a curious nearly all-black banner with a rather simple symbol in one solid color, such as a green Ω. At the end is another pair of big doors, with a fully-armored knight standing before each.

"Lady Rigsby. Good to see you," says one of them.
"Her Majesty is expecting you and your guest," says the other, apparently a woman, "but..she was contacted by an important ally unexpectedly." She sounds slightly disappointed.
"She said it shouldn't take long," says the first again, in a more hopeful tone. "You may wait in the royal court if you wish."
"Of course," says the lady, nodding. "Thank you."

The knights open up the doors and the pair of visitors step through. The royal court has two large thrones across from the door, and a lot of chairs at varying heights all along the side of the carpet leading up to the thrones. Behind the larger of the two thrones is another curious banner, all black except for a blue symbol that looks like a circle with a diagonal line through it. "Those platforms," says Jennifer, "are actually built to go up and down at the command of a device somewhere back in the royal chambers. Each one is reserved for a member of the royal court. You'd be surprised just how happy the queen can make a person by raising their chair a third of an inch."
She starts off toward one particular chair. "Did..was that something the old king built?" asks Jarod.
"Of course," responds Miss Rigsby over her shoulder, "Our current ruler would never spend all the time and money required to build something this silly." She takes a seat. "Hmm...I think you can hear her voice from here, if you listen carefully."

There is a moment of silence before Jarod notices that Miss Rigsby's ears are pointed in a certain direction, and that his own can actually do that, too. He tries to listen as hard as he can, and they slowly turn toward the direction of a female voice somewhere deeper in the castle.
"Okay, let's go over this again. The law here is stupid. If I declare a law alone, which I had to to make trespassing on your land illegal at all, then people can't be punished for not following it unless they know about it. I made sure that all of my citizens know about it, but those two who wrecked your skeletons are not my citizens, so there's a pretty good chance they don't know about it. Whenever my people find them, I can't legally do anything except warn them not to go back. And I will do that, okay? I'm sorry they broke some of your skeletons, but at least they only ran away from the experiment, right?"
"..."
"Exactly! And there is no way you're actually worried about running out of intact bodies."
"..."
"Look, why don't you just start putting up some signs? Like, carve into the trees on the east border 'No Trespassing, violators will either by used as experiments or arrested. Or both.'"
"Well--"
"Yeah--"
".......Okay! Okay. Yeah, yeah. I can get some people on it. I'm sure there's some bums around the capital city that'll want the pay. Just, you know, don't chase them off, it'll start a bunch of awful rumors and then nobody will want to do it anymore. It'll get more and more expensive, people will start asking questions, et cetera et cetera."
"..."
"I'll give them a badge or something, okay? Look, I'm keeping someone waiting, I'll get back to you about this later, alright? Great."

After a little longer, a small door off to one side opens and a young woman steps through. She has gray skin, as advertised; very long, straight black hair; and is wearing a fairly simple, long gown in black and dark blue. She isn't wearing a crown at the moment, but the way that Miss Rigsby stands up and bows when she enters the room makes it rather obvious that this is indeed the queen.

She gives Jarod a friendly wave. "Hi there."
Jarod notices something that prevents him from immediately responding. Namely, a very particular trait that has long since been encoded in his mind as something to fear and run from at first opportunity. It's the girl's sclera; they're bright yellow instead of white.

>

>Tell her that you are not from here, you know that she is not from here, and that there is a feeling in your head telling you that there a bunch of other people not from here that came from the same place as the both of you, but not quite her place.

> Does she have any kind of horns? And do you think you'd have a good opportunity to quickly snap her neck if you wanted to?

"Ah--uhm..." Jarod sputters in an effort to respond.
The queen strides a bit closer. Her hair is rather voluminous toward the top; when she moves enough, the tip of something orange and spiked can be seen behind it on the sides. "What's the matter? Cat your tongue?"
When he still can't seem to respond, she turns toward the noblewoman. "Miss Rigsby, would you mind if we spoke alone for a bit? I promise I'll get back to you."
"Certainly, your majesty."

Once Jennifer has left, the queen says, "This place is really way too huge and formal for a one-on-one meeting anyway. There's a smaller meeting room back this way."
"Uh..s-sure," responds the wolf-man, finally having enough composure to speak. He follows her back to the small door she came from and through it.
On their way through some halls, she says, "So, I'm Zettai. What's your name?"
"Jarod. Um, you're, uh..you're not really from here. Right?"
"Sure. And you, Jarred?" She pronounces his name a bit differently, but he decides not to argue.
"No..I-I mean, I'm, I'm not sure where this is but, I usually don't, uh..I don't look entirely like myself."

"I imagine so." They reach a small room with a few tables, two chairs to each. Zettai sits down at one of the tables. "Take a seat if you want. Did you pick a class already?"

>

SHE KNOWS TOO MUCH! PUNCH HER THROUGH THE HEAD! DO IT NOW!

Oh hey, she's a troll isn't she? How did I miss this until now?

> Activate your strength-boosting ability
> KILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILL

Jarod has to pause and hold his head. "Rgh.."
She leans forward a bit, looking concerned. "Are you okay?"
Jarod lets go of his head, draws back his right arm and runs toward her, attempting to punch; his fist seems to hit some kind of wall a little ahead of her face. Then some force with no visible source gets a hold of his hand, pries it open and places it neatly at his side. More of the same force seems to restrain him in place from trying again, but doesn't restrict his breathing or talking.

"I'm sorry. I had an un, un. Uncontrollable urge to punch you."
She waves dismissively "Oh, that's okay. I think I should have enough control for both of us. At least I know you're not minus-flirting. Do you feel any better now?"
"A little? I think I still k-kind of want to kill you somehow." He is visibly uncomfortable with the idea, despite expressing it himself.

"Anyway, my class was Psion."
"You m-mean you have psychic powers?"
"Yeah, basically, and a lot more than any one person can really have at once. I have no idea how they managed to simulate all of it."
"Please don't tr, try to read my mind. Trust me, it won't end w-well."
The gray girl shrugs. "All right. I don't like to invade people's privacy unless I have to. Wish real psychics had that kind of restraint." The force restraining Jarod eases off. "You wanna answer my question now?"

>

> Go ahead and answer her question.

> Answer the question.

Jarod decides to sit down, an almost-collapse onto the chair. "Uh, W-worldbrink Mage."
"I don't think I've heard of that one."
"It's kind of t-terrifying and I don't understand it. It made the screen th-thing screw up at first, and all the skills cost, uh, a percent of 'san'. Whatever that is."
"Does it seem powerful at least?"
"Uh..." Jarod pulls up his screen, which naturally appears flat on the table, and has a look at the skill tree for a moment, "Eventually. I-I mean, all I have right now is a strength boosting thing. B-but a lot of the higher skills l-looked kind of overpowered."
"Hmm. Well, maybe we can help each other out here."
"Uh, how do you mean?"

Zettai leans forward a bit, elbows onto the table. "There are a few matters in the kingdom that need some practical action. I can't send any guards or soldiers because they're not officially problems--yet--and I can't go myself because I'm tied up in a bunch of political bulls***. Anyway, I'd rather keep the whole 'queen has ridiculous psychic powers' thing as a distant rumor in the citizens' minds. For you, it's a good way for you to get experience for better spells, and I can give you better equipment than you can afford on your own, without anyone even batting an eye."

>

Ask if you can still spread spread chaos.

We don't need to ask some highblood for permission to spread the chaos.

>Accept the mission. Seek power.
> Also, ask what color her blood is. Is she a Fuschia blood?

>Ask what the things she needs you to do are first.

"W-well, uh, I mean, that sounds great! But, uh, what kind of..p-problems do you need me to solve?"
"Let's see.." she leans back and waves a hand behind her, and a small stack of papers comes in from a nearby door, onto the table. "There are definitely a few I'm sure you could handle right now," she says, taking the paper, straightening them against the table and then filing through them. She finds one and brings it to the front. "There are..rumors of a bunch of bandits holed up in a cave near a certain town, but nothing officially confirmed. I mean, the presence of bandits is fairly obvious, but their hideout may be nowhere near there. I'd just need you to, without being seen, confirm whether or not they're there. If they are there, I wouldn't expect you to attack them--in fact, that would be bad, because they'd just pack up and leave. Rather, I need to know exactly where they are to send soldiers or whatever. And then..."

She shuffles through the papers again, before coming to another one. "...Some ranchers are reporting seeing a big..thing eating their livestock. But they all claim to have forgotten exactly what it looks like, or really anything other than that it's 'big', which makes it sound to most people like they're just creating a scapegoat for livestock missing for other reasons. On the off chance said 'thing' is actually there and has some kind of memory-altering powers, I figure you could write down a description or at least confirm its existence. On the other hand, if something else is happening to the animals..well, that's pretty important to know too. Now, what else..?"

She eventually finds the one she's looking for, and continues. "...Right. Rumors of graverobbing in the capital. Mainly we have criminals claiming to have seen someone digging up graves, but there's no evidence of tampering in the morning, and once we even exhumed a corpse they claimed had been taken to find it undisturbed. It's all local to a certain region, but..well, if I order soldiers to guard the bodies whoever's doing it will probably get suspicious and move elsewhere, and I'll wind up looking silly. If you did find anything, I'd strongly prefer a capture to a kill. There are inexpensive proper channels to go through to get bodies for necromancy, which is perfectly legal here, so I'm very curious what this person would need bodies for and not want anyone to know about."

Zettai puts down the papers again. "That's the sort of thing I'd want you doing at first. A lot of my more combat-intensive leads involve things too dangerous for someone who's just picked a class, but I'm sure you'd be able to handle them after a bit."

"Um..if you don't mind my a-asking," says Jarod, "What is your, uhm, blood color? I-if it's not too personal."
She looks slightly bemused. "That's not personal at all. I thought you'd have guessed it by now, with the banners all over the place. You know someone's symbol is always in their color, right?"
"Well, um--uh. Yes," he says, quite nervously. Then he hastily adds, "But there's, uh..m- muh- more than one symbol banner around."
"Oh. Well, mine's the one that looks like a circle with a line through it. It means nothing."
"It doesn't mean anything?"
She sighs. "No, it means something, and that something is nothing. Emptiness. A set without any elements. My last name is Tipota."
"S-sorry."
"It's fine. I used to get asked about it all the time, it's almost refreshing. No one in this kingdom wonders what any symbol means at all. The other banners are..friends of mine, from back home. You know?"

>

Normally not but she's the queen! She has resources necessary to stop us. Also try to convince her that a little chaos with some guards "fighting you off" occasionally will cement her rule in the eyes of the citizens as they become more reliant on her.

>Ask her if there's anything that she wants to ask you

OK, so she's blue blooded. Not troll royalty, but Nobility at least.
> Let's check out the grave-robbers first.

I am totally okay with that.

I'd rather go monster hunting. We can catch it and ride it around causing a bit of chaos before punching it to death.

Necromancers make powerful allies.

Hmm this history seems interesting, you gain a new reader X3 and I agree with the others, to the graveyard! >_</

"Um..y, yeah. I uh..I think it would make sense to start with the last job you mentioned. S-since it's kind of, nearby."
Zettai nods. "That's pretty sensible."
"I think..uh, do you think it would ma-make sense if I tried to look like I wasn't working for you, though? I mean, if whoever t-thinks I'm just curious and doesn't know I'm working for anyone in the uh, the government..."
"Sure, of course. In fact, it might be better if you look like someone the town guard wouldn't believe if you told them something."
"I, um. Have an idea. For how to do that. Maybe I c-could act a little bit..crazy?"
"Right. I can fix you up with the right kind of disguise for that, I think. Have some palace guards throw you out as if you barely got two steps in the door. I'll let them in on that you're working for me so you don't have to carry around a badge or anything that someone could find on you."

The gray-skinned girl stands up again. "Okay, so we have a deal? Find some good information on what's going on, and I'll make sure you're rewarded pretty well for it. Fail, and.." She gives a shrug, "Well, there's always next time." She offers him a hand.
The wolf-man shakes Zettai's hand. His shake is a little rapid, while hers is a calculated level of firm--not squeezing, but not limp.

A couple of hours later, a gray-skinned wolf-man wearing some tattered brown clothes is physically thrown out of another end of the castle by some guards.
"And stay out!"
"Heh, heheheheh," he laughs nervously, and then a little louder, "HAAAAheheheheh HAA--ow."
He is cut off by a light thump to the head by an armored glove. "Pipe down!"
"Uh, s-sure. Sure." He nods twice, takes a step, turns around fully and then nods again, before turning back around and starting a weaving walk away from the castle.

---

Two people run through a tunnel, deep below ground. The one with green skin speaks between taking breaths to keep up the pace.
"By the way--
--I ought mention--
--if you hear music when see the enemy--
--be prepared for a hard fight.
It means--
--the game has decided--
--a fateful encounter."

"Good to know."

"It is always fateful--
--when two players fight--
against each other.
One good way--
--to learn another is player--
--if other ways--
--do not work."

---

[<|<|]

The priest of chaos and his orcish friend walk out of the bakery, the latter carrying a sword quite satisfactorily covered in mustard and admiring it.
"You know, I get the impression you're not nearly as crazy as I am, and that's fine with me. Really, after a fashion, though, even if you turn out to start playing hero, I think Liremskra would still be a little bit proud of you for this. Making a good five or six people's day nice and surreal for once. Knock them out of their boredom and all. Heehee, I'm more than glad to donate to a cause like that. I say--whoops!" Jacob trips over apparently nothing and completely faceplants.

The orc lets the weapon go into the nebulous inventory space and offers him a hand, which he takes to get up. Then she signs, "Did you break anything?"
"Hmm.." He takes stock of his beard and horns in particular. "Nope, nope, all accounted for. Funny, I feel a bit lighter, though."
She spots a small green-scaled sphere rolling around, and picks that up. "You dropped this."
"Oh, yes. I nearly forgot I had that." He rolls it around in his hand a bit. "Yoouu were a real pain, weren't you? I wonder if you'll behave now. I'd perfectly rather if you didn't."

With a casual shrug, the satyr tosses the little sphere forward, and it lands on the road a few feet away with a sound not unlike an egg cracking. The ball of scales glows green, apparently turning back into energy before growing back into the shape of a giant snake. However, it doesn't stop at its original shape, instead growing to be about twice as big, before the glow fades off, leaving an impossibly giant reptile in the middle of the cavern.

"Well, that's unexpected," mutters Magether. Neyla jumps backwards as the snake's tail comes toward both of them, catching him in the stomach and knocking him a good several feet away into the 'wall' of a nearby shop.

She draws the mustard-covered sword and runs at the snake. It strikes its head toward her, she swings the sword and manages to hit it straight in the teeth, with the unfortunate result of the weapon being knocked out of her hands and a long way backwards by the snake head's momentum.

By now a lot of the regular people around have taken notice of the giant animal in the room, and are running away in a panic. A few armored guardsmen run up to the snake, trying to attack it with the spear; the snake's tail sweeps around it, catching most of them, picking up one and throwing her away. She lands right next to the priest.

Jacob slowly sits up while the snake grabs another guardsperson in its jaws and shakes him around before letting go, sending him flying off. He turns and plucks the woman's helmet and spear, one to each hand, and then lets go of both with a palm-up gesture. They float in the air slightly above his hands. "Hey hero. Catch!" He swings his hands forward, throwing both at Neyla, who is currently looking for the sword that got knocked away.

The orc catches both neatly, putting on the helmet. "Hello? Jera! Jera, come in!" says a voice seemingly from the helmet. "What is going on--is anyone there?"

Neyla runs up toward the snake, which is currently half-turned away from her, and quickly pokes it in the side before backing up again as the snake's tail comes at her. Then, noticing it hasn't contacted anything, the giant creature turns its body around so its head is facing her and gives a remarkably loud hiss.

>

SpoilerShow

No music as this fight begins. That is intentional.

SpoilerShow

I know I know, E=MC^2 suggests it should be significantly easier to create mass than energy, but in a matter like that magic has a tendency to follow with what you intuitively "think" makes sense rather than what's scientifically true.

Actually, you have it right in the story. 3.75 potatoes would weigh about a kilogram, requiring 8.99x10¹⁹ Joules to produce out of energy, according to E=mc². The Tsar Bomba was 2.1x10¹⁷ J. This means half a kilogram of antimatter is a 21.5 gigaton bomb! *backs away slowly*

((It actually did occur to me while re-reading+posting that I had it backwards in my commentary, but I left it in for historical purposes. Derp.))

Cast the leaf storm spell while running for your sword.

>Quickly grab your sword, only the mustard can save you!

Neyla attempts to use the spell she used before, with the leaves and sparks. She finds herself twirling the spear around in an odd way and then sort of stabbing the air, upon which said spell bursts from the weapon's tip at the snake. It draws its head back slightly, as if it had been hit by a spray of very small rocks or something. Then it strikes at her.

By now the big orc has fully turned around and started running. When the initial strike doesn't work, the snake's body uncurls as it starts chasing after her.

Nearby, a male voice yells. "Cap! An orc woman grabbed Jera's spear an' helmet and got that thing's attention. She's leading it away from the temple!"

She keeps running, looking around for a particular yellow-encrusted blade. It isn't visible yet. The voice on the radio yells some more.
"Hey! Orc woman! What's your name?"

Starting to get tired, Neyla feigns moving to one side before going to the other, turning halfway toward the snake's head and stabbing at its eye. The snake is fooled into ramming its head gently into a nearby wall, but the spear misses the eye.
"Answer, d*** it!"

The snake turns toward the orc and bites at her. She dives to the side, rolls, stands up using the spear as a support.
"Uh, Cap. It don't look like she's gonna answer." Another voice, female, nearby.

Next, Neyla runs up to the snake's neck and uses the spear to practically pole-vault up onto it. The creature's head darts back and forth, confused.
"Why in La Lune's name not?!"

She stabs it in the neck, but can't actaully get the spear very far in because it reflexively flexes its neck upwards, throwing Neyla backwards and into the air.
"Looks kinda busy to me!"

The orc manages to roll when she lands several feet backwards, to one side of the snake's body, and stand up in time to hold her spear in front of her when its head comes looking.
"Fine. Look, whoever you are, if you can hear me, don't do anything too bold. Just, keep it busy. Help is on the way."
The snake hisses loudly again. The rest of its body is starting to make a circle around her.

>

> Do something bold.

Neyla isn't completely unaware of the rest of the snake, but there's just one trick she hasn't tried yet.

She does as before, pointing at the ground in front of her--between herself and the snake's head, and thereby summoning a large shadowy tentacle. It's the same size as before, large enough that when the snake tries to bite it, it can wrap itself almost fully around the animal's neck. The snake starts thrashing, the rest of its body thrown into disorganized convulsions while the head is busy trying to free itself.

Rather than just staring, Neyla takes careful aim, and then jumps forward, throwing her momentum and strength into a hard stab at the snake's eye.

The snake screams. It's a high, rumbling screech that shakes that shakes the cave and renders anyone too close nearly deaf.

The orc lands and stumbles backwards, barely managing to hold on to the spear while holding her hands over her ears. Of course, the tentacle chooses this moment to disappear. Her eyes still quite open, Neyla awkwardly takes several steps backwards as the snake snaps its jaws around where it thinks she is.

The giant snake keeps snapping at air in a blind rage, giving Neyla time to regain her balance and look for a way out. She turns toward the direction the sword flew in and runs toward the snake's body, placing the flat part of the spear on the ground and vaulting with it to get a higher jump, just barely clearing the giant scaly tube.

When the snake notices what's happened, it gets a good sense of where Neyla is and again starts chasing her. There isn't very much of this cavern left in this direction, but the blade is still nowhere to be found.

>

SpoilerShow

I'm sorry but this was the only usable command right now since everything else is addressing people not yet present or requires items not currently in hand.

When we do focus on Auleoris' party again, commands addressed to her will be used. Whether or not they'll make any sense by then, I dunno.

>Neyla: the sword is covert in mustard, use your nose to track it down

Vault into its mouth. If you can avoid its teeth then you should be swallowed whole. About four feet down, the esophagus, lung, and heart are pressed together. If you stab the side of the passage with your spear you should be able to puncture the lung. Now a sword would be better for this part but a spear should work, cut a hole in the lung that you can squeeze through and find the side that's pulsing and stab it repeatedly wiggling the spear in each hole to increase damage to the heart. From then on the heart wounds neck wounds and bruises in its lung from romping around should kill it. At which point it should be fairly simple to escape through the mouth.

> Martial Arts + that tentacle spell = the way you're about to deal with the snake.

>Cause a physical plot hole to appear by managing to slay the snake.

Seconding both of these at once.

Or just get stuck in the snake corpse.

Whatever you do the captain's gonna call for help or something.

Get near a wall, let it come right at you, and move at the last second.

Boring and predictable, maybe, but it works.

The orc keeps running, getting all the way to the end of the cavern before abruptly stopping, turning around to get a view of what the snake is doing. The giant animal keeps on toward her; she waits as long as possible to dive out of the way, bringing the snake to slam itself into the wall. She rolls and stays kneeling, panting heavily.

One of the town guards comes up; he's a little on the short side, so standing up places his head at the same level as hers. "Are you hurt?"
She manages to hastily sign: "Need one rest moment. Please."
He nods. "Okay." Turning toward the giant stunned beast he says, "Draw its attention! Don't aim shots you can't land safely."

As the snake starts to get out of its daze, it starts looking around for Neyla. Instead it finds an arrow in its body from the opposite side, and immediately starts moving toward the direction it came from.

Neyla slowly stands up, sniffing the air, looking for the peculiar scent of mustard. It isn't here. She starts walking, still catching her breath, back in the other direction.

Of course the blade wouldn't have been thrown this far back. But there wasn't any way to turn around with the snake chasing her. She winces, hearing a woman's scream echo from nearby, but keeps going.

"Orc woman." The voice from the helmet again, same one as before. "You're not too busy now, right? Harold says you can Sigsong? The helmet's enchantment is tuned to pick that up."
"Hard while holding spear."
"Well, do you have a name?"
She sighs, and then slowly spells out N-E-Y-L-A with one hand. "Neyla."
"Great. I'm Captain Tor. What's your status?"
"Tired. Looking for sword."
"Why are you looking for it now? You have a spear!"
"Good use of rest time. It is very enchanted. Covered in mustard."
"Covered in..? Well, I'll have anyone in the area be on the lookout for that, alright? It shouldn't be hard to track down. Meantime, reports say you've done better with the monster in there than a whole troop of my guards. So, for their sakes, get back in as soon as you can, alright?"
"Yes."

Neyla takes a deep breath. Still no sign of the blade. The shouting and loud hissing has gotten much closer. She exhales, opening her menu and looking at the available skills. The cooldown on the giant shadowy tentacle is almost up.

Then she turns toward the noise of the fight, and takes off at a run.

---

>Auleoris: distracts the snake with a electricity spell

>Auleoris: ask what is happening with the snake and the orc, and where are they in the moment

The winged woman takes note of the passage starting to widen, a brighter light nearby. "Cap, I think we're getting close. What's going on now?"
"Well, the orc finally gave us a name. Neyla. She said she dropped her sword, it's 'very enchanted' and 'covered in mustard'."
"It's what?"
"Her words, not mine. A troop of archers got in and started distracting it, but they can't do much. Its hide is just too thick."

They make it to the tunnel's exit, the elf opening up a door. There are distant echoes of very loud hissing and various shouted orders. The pair look around, and Auleoris immediately notices something that is a very bright yellow. She goes and shifts around some debris before picking it up.
"That would be the sword he spoke of?" says Anansi.
"Guess so." She starts moving deeper into the cavern, turning the sword over. "You know, if you ignore that it's covered in mustard, this thing is kind of awesome. It's also way lighter than it looks somehow."

There is a loud noise, some rock being hit by something huge. "We should hurry."
"Uh--right!"

They pick up the pace, running toward the source of the sound. Auleoris almost instinctively pulls the blade apart into two swords, finding it much easier to run with the more balanced weight.

Before long they reach a part of the cavern made open by large chunks of it having been knocked over. There is a gigantic snake, as advertised, its tail curled twice in a large circle, obscuring whatever is inside. The snake's head is visible above that, rearing back to strike. It's missing an eye and bleeding quite a bit.

The creature strikes, and is interrupted by something huge and dark wrapping itself around its neck. And then an orc jumps and stabs it in the good eye. The snake gives a deafening scream at that.
"Jeez!" Auleoris covers her ears with her wrists. The snake starts thrashing back and forth, pulling its way up and over to a nearby building. Its tail uncurls and follows as it moves, soon making a kneeling orc woman with a spear visible.

The snake screams again, and this time there is a very clearly visible gout of fire from its mouth. Its tail seems to peel apart at the tip into five or six pieces. The inner part of each piece seems to be covered in either red scales, or scales stained with blood. The pieces move independently, mostly writhing and spasming randomly, as the split goes farther and farther up the tail until a good half of its length is taken up by the impossible anatomy.

When Auleoris' hearing returns, she hears two things. The first is a song seemingly from nowhere; the second is a quiet, high-pitched, giggling laugh from someone nearby she hadn't noticed before. "Hee hee hee hee..would you...would ya look at that? Hah, it evolved. Hee hee hee.." A...satyr? Just sitting around, grinning like an idiot.

The snake's head comes back down, the upper half of its body held up by the lower half, now spreading out to act like so many feet. It spouts some more fire into the air in front of it before sticking out its tongue a few times, sensing the air.
"Well, s***."
"I agree. Excrement."

>

SpoilerShow

I promise the attack from inside idea is now very much on Neyla's mind, but she couldn't make it work just yet.

Do it!

>Auleoris: use the electricity spell to paralyze the snake and give the orc a opportunity to attack

Seconded. With the mustard sword, now that you have it back.
> Mustard: Happen to be toxic to giant snakes.

>Auleoris: Fly over and give the Orc her sword. Maybe cast a spell or two at the snake-thing.

>Fly over and let the sword's gravity swing enchantment do some massive damage.

The orc moves slowly to her feet, looking around as if confused by something.
Well I don't have to fly to get to her, she's right over--

The snake's head dives toward Neyla, and Auleoris takes off at a run, Anansi following. "MOVE!"
The winged woman manages to push her out of the way of the snake's head just in time, and the elf follows this up by hitting the snake's head with a hammer.

She holds up the two blades as they stand up. "Hey. Is this yours?"
The orc puts her spear in one hand and quickly signs with the other, a voice coming forth from the air. "Yes but you use it. I have this," pointing to her spear.

Some of the monster's tentacles come toward them. Auleoris points both blades at them, and a shower of sparks fire out of the tips, stunning the limbs briefly.
"This has..some kind of gravity enchantment?"
"Yes. Heavier swinging down."
"Good. I can fly." She looks around, noticing the snake's head is busy chasing Anansi around, then back at Neyla. "There's not enough room to get a running start. Can you throw me? I'm probably lighter than a normal person."
"Can try."

The orc drops the spear, and after some thought on how to go about it gets her hands around Aueloris' waist from the front side, picks her up and places one hand on the front of her stomach, then throws her straight up.
She flaps hard once a couple of feet in the air, and casts a wind spell up and forward, riding the air a bit higher before starting to glide toward the upper body of the snake, using more wind spells to keep herself in the air.

Neyla takes her spear and moves toward Anansi, stabbing the snake in the body when she gets in range. Its head turns toward her and breathes fire straight at her, forcing her to dive to one side.

Aueloris puts the twin blades back together into a single heavy sword, folds her wings against a reflex to keep them spread out and not fall, and positions herself blade-first in a dive at the snake, as close to its neck as she can manage. The sword slices fairly deep into its hide, drawing another scream from the snake as she flaps to keep from hitting the ground too hard and then pulls up and backwards, picking the sword back up with her before staggering back a couple of steps.

Anansi runs up next to the winged woman and holds up a large green shield just in time to deflect the snake's fire breath, but a bunch of the snake's tentacle-limbs rise up from behind it, ready to strike down at them. Aueloris points the blade's tip at them and uses her own fire spell, forcing them back until the snake has to take a breath, allowing them to both turn around and run, the limbs hitting the ground where they were after.

The whole snake starts turning itself back around to stand on the extra limbs where they now are. Neyla runs to the other two, and pushes her spear at Anansi, who takes it. With both hands now free, she signs, "I have an idea, but it may be difficult. If someone can get in the snake its inside organs should be vulnerable. I can hold its mouth open with the spear. This would be easier if it did not breathe fire."
"It should not be able to breathe fire, biologically?" says Anansi.
"No. It could not before," she answers.
"Then it can only do it with, in game term, magic. As if it casts a spell from its mouth."
"You're saying I'm gonna have to crawl inside that thing, aren't you," says the winged woman.
"You have the resisting charm. And on the good side, you might learn fire breath from it."

She sighed, and nodded. "Hey Cap, you still there?"
"Yes. Archers have been keeping that monstrosity busy, but we lost another."
"Ask them to pull back, please. We're about to do something reckless and stupid."
"Will it work?"
"..Probably."
"Good enough. La Lune bless."

They turn toward the giant, tentacled fire-breathing snake. It's moved farther away, and considerably more of its body has arrows sticking out of it. "I will draw attention," says Anansi, forming his weapon into a bow, drawing and firing it. The arrow buries itself somewhere in the monster's upper neck, and it strikes out toward them.
Anansi fires another arrow, draws a third and stays in place as it approaches, the two women spreading out to either side of him. It opens its mouth and Neyla comes in from one side, shoving the spear's tip in between two of its teeth, and manually holding the other end down against another tooth. The snake stops its approach, confused at the sudden pain in its mouth. It first tries to bite down, which cracks the middle of the spear, but Neyla grabs that and holds it together. Then it starts belching more fire. Auleoris runs past the teeth, into the way of the fire, holding the sword as two separate blades again, and spreads her wings, blocking most of it and yelling in pain. As soon as it stops, she folds them up again and ducks, starting her way down its throat. Before long, she starts slashing and stabbing randomly at the sides of the fleshy passage.

The snake starts to rise up, which tilts the passage down. "Whoas***!" She stabs one of the swords into the side and lets gravity pull it downward, cutting and stabbing at the other side with her free hand. At some point, a large amount of blood starts coming out from one of the cuts, and the snake starts flailing around violantly. Auleoris stabs the other blade into the neck as deep as she can and holds on for dear life. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

After a moment, the snake finally stops, the tunnel now sideways from its right-side-up position. She rights herself, pulls both swords out and puts them back together into one blade, and then pushes it through one side of the innards before pushing it down, cutting an opening in the snake and then pushing back and forth with the blade to make the hole wide enough to squeeze through.

The winged woman emerges, fairly burned and covered in the snake's blood and other inner body fluids, from a hole partway down its upper half. Her two green-skinned allies show up not long after. Still panting, she looks at them both. "Hhhh..hhh..Hokay, next time we do the attack-from-inside thing? Not. It." She promptly faints forward.

---

Choose next character:
-Louis/Jeannette
-Jarod
-New Player

>

SpoilerShow

I was initially conflicted about killing the thing off so soon after its horrifying mutation, but then it occurred to me that we had a really good plan for killing it quickly, so why shouldn't it work? Anyway, if mutated-snake's health is at the same percentage as pre-mutation it probably survives less hits than it would if it started out without both of its eyes stabbed out, eh?

There are more new people?

Yes, let's do that. I preemptively vote for Magebow.

Jarod! Our avatar of Chaos!

New Person: Be a kitsune anthro please. Nine tails means nine times the fun (and magicalness)!

>New Player!

> I'll never refuse a new player!

A Kitsune Magebow would be awesome, Seconding both of these.

I'm against pre-emptive class-voting. I'd rather do that when we begin. I'm hoping for a squid themed class this time. I'm OK with the Kitsune race though.

Another young man, rather on the short side, with a fairly dark skin tone but very bright red hair, is lying eyes closed, face down, and now finally wakes up.

He takes a deep breath and gets a noseful of dirt. The natural response to this is to push himself up with his arms and begin coughing profusely.
"Khh, khh!" What the h***? Khh-khh-khh, who put--?" Of course, he opens his eyes at this point and finds something unexpected.

Specifically, he's lying on dirt, and his head's about two inches from a sheer cliff, and a very tall one at that. "..me...here?" he tries to carry on his sentence as if there were someone who was waiting for the rest of it as he looks left and right, finding that the cliff extends in those directions, a the edge forming a wide arc that's farthest out in front of him.

He stumbles up and pushes his legs out so he's sitting up. "Khh..ugh..right. Right. Aliens. Tinfoil hat?" He reaches up to comically check his head (again, for an audience of none), and finds a different surprise when his hand brushes against a tall, fuzzy ear. "Not check. These ears?" He tries pulling at the right one. "Ow! Very real, very real. What am I dealing with here?"

"Okay, let's sort things. Question one: How did I get from a sleep pod thing to here?" The man pushes himself up to his feet. "Question two: How am I suddenly some kind of kemonomimi? Question..three..?" Standing up called attention to something behind him, which he looked back and down at: Three tails that each look similar to that of a red fox, if a bit longer. "..how am I doing that?" They are managing to move around each other and maintain his balance quite nicely, not getting tangled or running into each other at all.

This is interrupted by a screen popping up back in front of him with a small noise to get his attention. "What...?" It has a message on it.

Concepts: Think hard!
1. Power! Is it in one or many?
2. Life! Does it end with cessation of action or memory?
3. Pain! Is it worse to be wounded or depressed?

"No, I repeat. What the h***? Okay, wait, hang on." He notices the rest of the menu and looks through it randomly for a couple of seconds. "This? This is the game?" He looks back up and left and right, and turns around to find a lot of grass and trees around, the screen following his torso's rotation. "Holy s***. What kind of processors do these guys use? And..how?"

>

SpoilerShow

Class search time! He will search Magebow, obviously.

If anyone has a better suggestion for what onomatopoeia to use for coughing besides "cough" which doesn't sound like a real cough at all, let me know.

Also, I made danged sure that "kemonomimi" was gender-neutral, hopefully I'm not actually wrong about that.

> Search Magi-tech, Magecannon, and Magic Power Armor separately. Why settle for only a magic bow?

Classical class types:
> Archer
> Knight
> Rogue

Other:
> Scientist
> Atom
> Accelerator
> Squid (For Argenteus's sake)
> Docter
> Knitting
> Mortar & Pestle

Let's see what those turn up. Might be interesting. Still keeping my vote on Magebow though.

>Overlord
>Mastermind
>Reality Master

Search for dragon, librarian, gambler, and gardener.

Search for stand user. Doubt it's in there, or would get chosen if it was, but whatever

Also look up "kung-fu Jesus". Because I REALLY want to see what comes up from that.

+1 reader. Seconding kung-fu Jesus, and rogue. Also search dragon. Just because.

"Okay, what are some typical classes..."

Archer: 4 results found.

Fighter:
Hope you enjoy taking all of the hits for everyone else, and not having any magic.

Ranger:
Useless in cities and not much better in other cramped spaces.

Mage-bow:
Not as accurate or good at tracking as a Ranger; not as powerful as a proper Mage; slightly worse than both at close range.

Slayer Rogue:
You're nowhere near as good as a Taker Rogue at making a profit, and you still can't take a hit.

"Yeesh, this game has an attitude problem."

Knight: 3 results found.

Knight:
Like a Fighter who can't deal as much damage because he's much too busy wearing heavy armor and being a meat shield.

Paladin:
All the worst parts of a Knight and Cleric in one.

Fighter:
Hope you enjoy taking all of the hits for everyone else, and not having any magic.


Rogue: 6 results found.

Taker Rogue:
When you focus your energy on learning to make a profit, two things happen: (1) you can't take a hit; (2) you're only mildly okay at killing things.

Slayer Rogue:
You're nowhere near as good as a Taker Rogue at making a profit, and you still can't take a hit.

Swashbuckler:
Because picking just guns, swords, or stealth would give you too much focus and make things far too easy.

Entertainer:
Of course you can't be bothered to learn to fight, because a bored ally is an ally without any buffs.

Glamour Mage:
If you're willing to sacrifice battle and utility spells alike for the ability to convince anyone of anything, you really do deserve whatever it is you get.

Lore Caster:
You can only embody each legend briefly, once per week, and its power scales to its fame. It's too bad you don't actually know any legends yet.

"Huh, that's a lot of different interpretations. Just how many classes..can I be a dragon?"

Dragon: 4 results found.

Fire Mage:
No physical ability, weak to water of all things, and prone to burning down things you didn't really want burned down.

Ice Mage:
The thing about ice is that it's more fragile than glass, but not as good at hurting people once it's shattered.

Lightning Mage:
You can't really aim if your allies wear metal; you can't really hit if your enemies are insulated.

Poison Mage:
Let's face it. You take this class, and you are outright guaranteed to run into a bunch of golems or automata or something like that which your magic is useless against.

"How are any of those dragons? Okay..what would happen if I..?"

Squid: 2 results found.

Water Mage:
Good luck making that work out in the inevitable desert trip.

Worldbrink Mage: TAKEN
It's too late now, someone else already took it.

He shrugs. "At least that makes some kind of sense. What about this..?"

Magi-tech: 1 result found.

Gadget Enchanter:
Add magic to unreliable machines, and you get unreliable magic.


Magecannon: 1 result found.

Mage-gunner:
Combining unreliable technology with weak magic doesn't really help all that much.


Magic Power Armor: 2 results found.

Paladin:
All the worst parts of a Knight and Cleric in one.

Armor Enchanter:
You better hope someone else in your party actually uses armor.

"Hmm..let's try.."

Scientist: 3 results found.

Machinist:
Yes, that little steam-driven spider looked very impressive up until the moment where it got stepped on.

Gadgeteer:
Your tools are moderately less effective and only slightly more reliable than those of a Gunner, but considerbly more varied--which means about half of them will never be useful in the least.

Tech Noble:
And you thought those gadgets and constructs were unreliable when you were the one building them!


Doctor: 3 results found

Cleric of ________:
Here's the deal: You have to serve a god. The god you serve determines what abilities you get. Which god it is, is chosen for you personally--and not in a good way. If you don't please your god, you don't get any powers.

Medical Herbalist:
Can't heal as well as a Cleric can, and still isn't very good at fighting.

Paladin:
All the worst parts of a Knight and Cleric in one.

He scratches his head. "I think I'm just gonna keep searching words until I find one that it can't come up with a class for."

Atom: 1 result found.

Periodic Mage:
The king of stupid gimmick "theme" classes. Taking this class will not teach you anything useful about chemistry.


Accelerator: 5 results found.

Entertainer:
Of course you can't be bothered to learn to fight, because a bored ally is an ally without any buffs.

Spirit Enchanter:
Good luck collecting the resources. At least they only work for you, so you don't have to worry about being badgered to make everyone else's swords glow in the dark.

Weapon Enchanter:
Do you really want to be stuck upgrading everyone else's equipment?

Accessory Enchanter:
Trinkets are a lot harder to make useful enchantments for than, say, weapons or armor.

Armor Enchanter:
You better hope someone else in your party actually uses armor.


Knitting: 1 result found.

Civilian:
Literally the most useless class. The only purpose of including this class is to weed out the stupid early on and provide a challenge to those who feel the game is too easy. Also used for several non-combatant NPCs.


Mortar and Pestle: 3 results found.

Crafter:
For those who enjoy spending countless hours combining things with other things and only occasionally creating something useful.

Alchemist:
The results of matter alteration are not predictable in the least.

Medical Herbalist:
Can't heal as well as a Cleric can, and still isn't very good at fighting.


Overlord: 2 results found.

Inspirational Noble:
What good is a prince if there's no army to lead? The answer is none. None at all.

Tech Noble:
And you thought those gadgets and constructs were unreliable when you were the one building them!


Librarian: 2 results found.

Tome Mage:
You hit people with books. It's almost as dumb as it sounds. Almost.

Literamage:
For people who really enjoy the sound of their own voice. And puns. So many puns.


Gardener: 3 results found.

Civilian:
Literally the most useless class. The only purpose of including this class is to weed out the stupid early on and provide a challenge to those who feel the game is too easy. Also used for several non-combatant NPCs.

Nature Mage:
Useless in caves, deadlands, and pretty much anywhere else without enough plants.

Medical Herbalist:
Can't heal as well as a Cleric can, and still isn't very good at fighting.


Mastermind: 2 results found.

Mastermind:
The only class that gained power when efforts were made to rebalance the system. Those changes have since been rolled back. Let's be clear: You can't use magic, you can't really fight, and you gain no charisma.

Psion:
No magic or magic resistance, no particular physical ability, and you spend a lot of time listening to the thoughts of others, which are frequently stupid, useless, or things you really didn't need to know.

"...There is actually a class called 'Mastermind'." He looks at that result for a good few seconds with a bit of a frown on his face. "I was trying to come up with words that should not have classes for them, and I found the exact name of a class. Okay, I give up. What else you got?"

Reality Master: 4 results found.

Dimensional Mage:
You really are just looking to have as many opportunities as possible to screw yourself and your friends over, aren't you?

Rune Mage:
Every spell requires a meticulous drawing that disappears the instant it's cast. If you draw it wrong, either nothing or something bad for you happens. Sleep? Who needs sleep?

Zen Monk:
Really just a Fist Monk who doesn't understand how basic logic works. 'Mu', yourself!

Probability Mage:
By the very definition, results will definitely vary.


Gambler: 4 results found.

Probability Mage:
By the very definition, results will definitely vary.

Utzgarignjer: TAKEN
You probably thought you wouldn't get any results from banging randomly on the keyboard. Well, lucky you then!

Niche: TAKEN
Your skills are completely different from one minute to the next, and you have absolutely no control over these changes or their results.

Swashbuckler:
Because picking just guns, swords, or stealth would give you too much focus and make things far too easy.

"Yeesh, how late did I get in this game anyway? That's, what, three classes already taken by other people now?

"Hm..that's almost everything I can think of. Just..a couple more things.."

Stand User: 3 results found.

Medium:
Only slightly less physically capable and commonly popular than a Necromancer, and Necromancers hate you even more than they do Paladins.

Spirit Caster:
Don't expect to be able to rip souls out of bodies until long after all of your enemies are utterly immune to that sort of thing.

Music Mage:
Needing to "carry a tune to save your life" has never been more literal. Hopefully everyone likes whatever kind of music you like, or you might wake up dead one morning.

"Did they actually know what I was referring to? I get the feeling they just mean that a music mage uses a music stand for a weapon.."

Kung Fu Jesus: 7 results.

Zen Monk:
Really just a Fist Monk who doesn't understand how basic logic works. 'Mu', yourself!

White Monk:
Can't fight as well as a Fist Monk; can't heal as well as a Cleric; can't survive more than a few blows.

Cleric of ________:
Here's the deal: You have to serve a god. The god you serve determines what abilities you get. Which god it is, is chosen for you personally--and not in a good way. If you don't please your god, you don't get any powers.

Paladin:
All the worst parts of a Knight and Cleric in one.

Staff Monk:
Sort of like a more stylized Fighter with a somewhat less deadly, more breakable weapon of choice.

Fist Monk:
Fight with your fists! It's not like weapons were invented for a reason or anything.

Improv Monk:
For those who enjoy wielding tables and torches as weapons. Better keep some silverware handy on long trips.

There is a small 'ping' sound from the screen, and below the search results appears:
Achievement unlocked: Lucky 7--Find a search term with at least 7 results.

"What th--..this game has achievements? Where? I didn't see that on the menu anywhere..d***, now how do I get all of them if I don't even know what they are?"

>

SpoilerShow

I don't mind, but there isn't really a reason to second a search term. I pretty much use every single one I see.

Now here, in the class-choice voting, is where multiple people wanting the same class is gonna matter.

The fox-boy scratches his head and then goes back through the results of his searches. "Ah well, hmm.."

Yeah, I'm going to stick with Mage-bow.

Also, isn't Psion supposed to be taken? Because the Queen was a Psion.

I vote Crafter or Improv Monk. ^.^

I vote for Mastermind or Mage-bow.

Tome Mage!
Or Probability mage.

Well damn, now I'm curious what Mage-gunner is like.

But...Magebow.

Mage gunner!

(Useless vote is useless)

>Mastermind

{Meta: Vote Count Ranking:
Magebow: 3
Mastermind: 2
Crafter: 1
Improv Monk: 1
Tome Mage: 1
Probability Mage: 1
Mage-gunner: 1}

He fairly quickly settles on a class to go with.

You have selected:
Mage-bow
Confirm Selection?
[Yes] [No]

And he pushes yes, of course, and finds his screen pinging again.

Achievement unlocked: How Polite--Get all the way through choosing a class without any bad searches.

"Wow, another one? D*** I'm good at this. Huh?" And now he finally notices his clothes have changed quite a bit. He's wearing something kin to a green robe with some leather bits here and there, along with a conical mage type of hat, but green with a feather in it, and a quiver across his back. "Oh, cool. Wait, where's the--?" and before he can say 'bow', it appears in his hand. "--oh." He pretends to set an arrow and fire it out over the cliffside, and then shrugs and almost automatically places the weapon back behind him, into a special slot on the quiver.

"Okay..now what. How far does this cliff go?" He looks around, left and right of his section of cliff. "Pret-ty far, yes." So he turns around, back toward the forest. A motion up above catches his eye, and he looks up to see two gigantic birds flying along..no, on closer inspection with a hand over his forehead to see through the glare of the sun, he notices there's something off about their middle part, it doesn't really look properly birdlike.

"Are those..bird-people?"

>

SHOOT THEM DOWN! EVERYTHING THAT ISN'T YOU OR IN A VILLAGE MUST BE A MONSTER!

This. Just, Yes.

>Go see if they're friendly

Make friends!

Yell and wave at them and if they don't respond go ahead and check out your skill tree.

Seconding.

He tries clearly the most discreet course of action and starts yelling and waving with both arms. "HEY! ARE YOU PEOPLE UP THERE? IT'S HARD TO SEE FROM WAY DOWN HERE! AND I'M KIND OF LOOKING INTO THE SUN!"
They appear to respond by both diving, quickly getting below the treeline where he can't really see them anymore.
"Oh..well, that's cool I guess. Maybe they have to report to someone or..something. I'll just wait."
The fox-boy tries to get the menu thing to show up again, and the screen appears as soon as he thinks about it. So he pokes around, looking at his stats first. He gives a small whistle at one in particular. "Look at that charisma, man. That cannot be a normal level for that.."

Then he goes on to the class screen. "Hmm.." The skill tree looks like a big wheel; the very middle is Bow Mastery, which is pre-learned to level 2 and clearly has many more levels to go, and immediately connected to it at the bases of the "spokes" are mostly elemental skills, each of which appears to consist of simply firing an arrow imbued with the particular element. Each spoke continues on with that same element, as well as some skills that are "between" a pair of spokes here and there, and combine the two elements. Vertically up and down there are bow-related skills, starting with "Double Shot" going up and "Arrow Recovery", a passive, going down. Level 3 Bow Mastery is really expensive, but he has enough free skill points to take two of the "spoke" skills.

>

SpoilerShow

I don't feel like actually writing down just exactly what all of the elements are, so feel free to suggest any reasonable element if we're going down that road. Every one we've already seen, like lightning, sound, wind, poison, fire, etc., is perfectly valid. This is one of those cases where a class can either be a master of a few things or just sort of okay at a large number of different things.

Lightning. Arrows. Do it.

Wonder if there's eventually a skill for being able to shoot pure magic arrows.

Until then, Arrow Recovery and an elemental shot. Lightning is good.

Why not Time? Lets use Time as the element~

This. This is better.

>Pure magic/null-element (ignores defenses) arrows?

>If not, then Fire and Poison for hilarious DoT-ness

Couldn't Time do Damage over /Time/ but not be completely negated by a nonliving or nonflammable creature like poison or fire? I would assume we can spin the type of output spell before we fire, Time seems like the most versatile option. Cause we could instantly age a portion of something to dust. Or stasis it, or age it slowly, or other stuffs. Could get potentially gamebreaking~

Time arrow super-rusting armor?

Or Time Arrow that is really an arrow enveloped in a temporal bubble that speeds the aging of things rapidly to the point of near instantaneously inside the bubble so it literally ages a hole through the armor, and the person, and the person behind them, and the wall, and the person behind that.

Sooo basically we can shoot arrows that could fly the same speed as bullets~?

Or shoot a bunch, slow them, then suddenly WALL OF BULLET-ARROWS.

Prepare for extreme tactical shenanigans.

>So, Time arrows and Fire arrows because fires can also have tactical shenanigans.

I vote ice arrows and double shot or recovery.

What about a time/fire arrow?

I vote for Double Shot and Fire Arrows

EDIT: Actually, Forget the Fire Arrows. Arrow Recovery will be more useful I think.

{Meta: Vote Count Ranking:
Time: 3
Arrow Recovery: 2 1/2
Lightning: 1
Double Shot: 1 1/2
Fire: 1
Ice: 1}

His eyes pick up on a particular element. "Wha..time? I can shoot time arrows? Like, make things suddenly rot into nothing?" He pokes the skill to get its description. "Oh, wait, it just...hmm...but that's still pretty good." He buys that skill, and then looks at the one across from it: Space. This kind of arrow evidently can teleport a short distance one time mid-flight, but not to the inside of any object.

Shrugging, he goes down to Arrow Recovery. The description indicates that at higher levels, arrows that had a destructive element applied to them still have a chance of being recoverable. The first level just gives a decent chance of the regular arrows he fires not being broken beyond use. "Che..do I really have to do arrow management in this game?" Feeling rather practical at the moment, he chooses that skill.

Looking back up (and dismissing the menu for now), he notices another winged person diving down toward him; it's increasingly clear that it is indeed a winged person as they get closer, and furthermore that this is a lightly-armored man with what looks like a bow and quiver of his own stuck between the middle of his wings. What seems strangest to the fox-boy about his appearance is that he has arms separate from the wings, which doesn't make any evolutionary sense..right?

He has a very stern expression on his face, and starts talking angrily. "You. How did you get here?"
"What do you mean? Is this a hard place to reach?"
His expression turns to confusion, and quickly back to anger. "Yes this is a hard place to reach, for you at least. The only way to walk up to the plateau is the stairway, and no Keinora have been up that in months. Did someone carry you?"
"Hmm..no. I'm pretty sure nobody carried me." He put up his hands in a nearly 'I-don't-know' gesture. "I guess I must have flown up here."
The confused expression returns, but maintains a lot of the sternness. "...How."
"I probably use my tails like a helicopter."
"A what?" His face tips still more toward confusion.
"Um..that is, I probably spun them around like woosh-woosh-woosh-woosh," he says, moving his right hand around on a wrist to demonstrate the motion in question. "It wouldn't generate enough lift with just one tail, but two or three? Probably good enough. Of course, I'm just guessing that, because I'm pretty sure I forgot."
"You for--you forgot--you forgot how you--...uuugh." The winged man puts a hand to his forehead and slides it down before putting it back at his side, and getting a somewhat calmer look on his face. "Look. Let's. Just. Start over. Who are you, first of all."

>

SpoilerShow

Preferably (character) name and more stuff for him to say or ask.

I am taking "or" to mean "split the vote between", hence the halves. And I understood froggy ninja to be revising his vote from lightning to time, hopefully this is correct.

By "destructive element", I mean things like: Fire arrows tend to burn up and stop being arrows.

Sorry for taking a while with this one. I'm back where I have lots of time-eating things to do again now. Hopefully I'll be able to keep a reasonable pace regardless, though.

> You are Link: Hero of pallet town.

We are Nervik Althulan.

Ustris Greyheart. That helicopter thing sounds awesome. Try that.

No you are a kitsune! Japanese name is a must!

Um....

Jin Uzuki. Its a character from a game you've played once.

Tell them your pretty sure some jerk teleported you up here actually.
Ask if you can get some help getting down.

> James Hatch

Tell them that you don't remember how exactly you got up here, you just barely woke up.

> Your name is Fox McCloud.

"Well, my full name's Jin Grayheart, but a lot of people call me Link for some reason," he answers, without skipping a beat.
"And...you forgot how you got here."
"Maybe? I mean, I don't have any information about things I can't remember, so it may be that I never even knew to begin with how I got here."
The man sighs. "That being the case, why did you lie the first time?"
"It might not be a lie! Any of those guesses could be right."
"Just. Answer, please."
"I couldn't help it. I mean, you just seemed so eager for an absolute answer that I felt compelled to give you one..even if I didn't know if it was right."
"I suppose that's understandable," says the winged man, calming down a little bit. "Just..follow me, please. I don't think you're in trouble, but we need to clear this up with my superiors. The stairs are that way if you want to get back down, anyway."
"Sure thing!"

The winged man starts walking toward the forest, and "Link" follows. He tries to work out in his head how the helicopter-tail would actually, physically work, and gives a few experimental spins with his tails once or twice, nearly falling over the second time. "Whoaoa!" Jin does manage to recover with some flailing.
The winged man stops, and says in a voice probably intended to be as patient as possible, "What are you doing."
"Umm, I think we can eliminate me flying here. How in the world does Mairusu do it? I'm sure I'd have some kind of muscle memory for it if I'd done it before. Hey! Maybe I was teleported here. Magic can do that, right? Like, some mage might have done that to me as a prank or something?"
He starts walking again, Link following. The forest doesn't seem to get particularly thick, just stay at an odd sort of semi-jungle state with perfectly clear, wide paths to walk through, as if the whole thing was carefully cultivated as some kind of..show forest. "That sounds...possible. But it would be a very expensive prank."
"I did just suddenly wake up lying face-down in the ground, though. No way I'd lie face-down like that on purpose--breathing dirt isn't any fun at all! But I don't personally know any mages who could do that. Oh, maybe one of my acquaintances is a secret mage?"
"Hmm. I've never known a mage to be secretive--especially one with a profitable power like instant transport. Even necromancers don't mind being publicly known these days."
"Oh man, I know, right?" says Jin, pretending to know what he's talking aout. "But hey, at least they're helping people meet their dead relatives."
"I think you're confused. That's what a medium does. Necromancers offer cheap labor--if you don't mind your ancestor's body building your shop, at least."

They keep walking. Jin doesn't talk for a bit, wondering if he should spare this poor man any more pestering, but just a little too curious about this game-world to stop altogether.

>

SpoilerShow

((How come this guy gets a much more cooperative menu than everyone else?))

I'm not sure what you mean. In terms of appearing/disappearing/movement tracking? They all do that, unless I forgot about it doing something weird/different for someone else...?

> "So what is this place anyway? Why is it so bad that I appeared up here?"

> Kill your guide.
> Also: I think I might know a way you could fly, albeit very slowly (And it's more like climbing, really). Fire an arrow, and stop it in time (Or slow it as much as you can). Stand on the arrow: It shouldn't fall, since time is stopped for it. Repeat until you're as high up as you need to be. Collect old arrows as you ascend.

>Lick the guide.
>... Lick everything.
>Lick a tree.

>Link: Don't kill your guide. Check how many arrows you have.

Sniff things instead of licking them

>Sniff /Everything/.

As you are walking please look again at your stats.

He starts sniffing. A fox-person should be better at smelling things than a normal human, right? Apparently yes, that is right. The trees smell like trees, but also like whatever animals left their marks at this or that particular tree. He can even identify a few of those animals. It's odd, he hasn't noticed any animals around yet...maybe because they avoid people. And he gets a very distinct sense of the winged man's scent. He gets the idea that he could probably identify this specific person's scent anywhere, anytime...at least for a while, until he forgets it.

Eventually bored of sniffing, he gets curious of how many arrows he has, and reaches back to touch the tips of them. The winged man, apparently familiar with the sound of someone putting their hand to a quiver, turns partially around. "What are you doing?"
"I'm checking how many arrows I have, because there's a period of time I don't remember and I could have gained or lost arrows in that time...and it'd suck to run out if an emergency happened later. Right?"
The winged man nods, but looks a little suspicious. Meanwhile, Jin has counted 24 arrows.

As they continue walking, an occasional building will show up in the middle of the trees, with no other buildings nearby. He pulls up the menu again, which apparently doesn't catch the winged man's attention. Good, that might be harder to explain. It has stats, skills, inventory, and the message box..which just has that one mysterious message from right after he woke up. What is that even supposed to mean?

He takes a closer look at his stats. As he noticed immediately before, his charisma is very high. Next-highest is intelligence, then dexterity and agility close after that, with fairly low endurance and strength the lowest. But apparently still high enough to draw back a bow, he guesses. Just how much better is a person's balance with three tails than it would be with one, anyway? The stat screen does not answer this question, but thinking about his balance does give him an amazing idea that he can't wait to try..except that he's going to have to wait a little while anyway. Oh well. Just wait till he finds some high "unclimbable" wall.

"So hey, besides a huge cliff that's only accessible from stairs for people without wings, I actually don't know where I am right now."
"This is Haranka. It's on a high plateau, so only Florians and people with the guts to climb all the way up the stairs live here."
"And...how many people have said guts?"
"Hmph, not many. Sometimes we have to rescue people who weren't tough enough and got tired halfway through, or were too dumb to bring enough provisions." His tone of voice very clearly looks down on such people. "It's like they just ignore the big warning sign down at the foot."
"Well you know, with some people, the more you tell 'em they're not able to do something, the more they want to try it just to prove you wrong."
The winged man shrugs. "I suppose."

Eventually they come upon a small cylindrical tower of stone, with a pair of armored Florians standing to either side of the door. "Janus," says one, "this our mystery visitor?"
"Yeah, he says he forgot how he got here."
The tower guards exchange glances, and then the one who hasn't spoken yet says, "You should fill in the captain."

Janus nods, opens the door and heads in, and Jin starts to follow, until the one who spoke first says, "Not you. Wait out here, please."
"Oh, sure, sorry," says the fox-boy, stepping back a bit as the door closes again.

>

SpoilerShow

((Actually never mind. I just forgot a detail. But no one else got achievements and their menu anly showed their skill tree.))

It's more like nobody else bothered to look at the rest of the menu, besides this guy and Auleoris (she took a look at various menu bits early on).

Out of character, the achievements are something I recently decided to "retroactively add", and..actually some other players got a couple earlier, but haven't had time to see it in their menus yet. In-character, it just so happens that nobody found an achievement before they did.

>Try to converse with the guards.

After a short awkward silence, Jin says, "So, uh..read any good books lately?"
"Yes." answers one of the guards. He does not elaborate.

Fiddle around with/Examine the menu some more.

Open messages. Se if you can message someone.

Dive into all sections of the menu and discover it's secrets.

He shrugs, and heads over to one side of the tower. "Well, I'll just be over here then, not going anywhere or doing anything weird, okay?"

"Sure," says the one who didn't respond before.

He spends some time looking around at the skills, poking a few of the much later ones that look neat to read their descriptions. He eventually notices a little triangular bit in the corner of the zoomed-in skill description, and pokes it. The entire path along the tree to the skill lights up slightly! When he pokes the bit again, the tree goes back to its original color. "Huh. A bookmark function? That's pretty neat." If he "bookmarks" two different skills along the same tree, it's highlighted brighter than just one "bookmark".

Poking the text saying the name of a particular stat brings up its description. They are all very standard, unremarkable descriptions, except for the last couple of sentences of each, which apparently indicate what sort of actions improve the stat in question. Charisma is improved by social interaction, more by successful than unsuccessful; dexterity is improved by dextrous acts or accomplishing a challenging balance; intelligence can be improved by spellcasting, but also by things like reading or meditating; strength by lifting heavy objects or holding onto average-weight objects for sufficiently long; so on, so forth. The stat screen also has what appears to be the total amount of SP ever gained down at the very bottom in tiny font.

Link takes yet another look at the messaging system, and decides to try and compose a message. A popup shows up which informs him that if he knows someone's e-mail, he can send a message out to them, and they can send messages back. It mentions that this is a "provisional feature" and "may be buggy". He thinks about sending a message to his parents--he isn't entirely sure whether they know about his "abduction" since it may not have been even long enough for him to be declared missing yet, but he's interrupted by Janus showing up again.

"Hey. Captain wants to speak with you."
"Oh, sure!" says Jin, grinning and quickly dismissing the menu again. He follows the winged man into the tower, thinking, I wouldn't really know how to explain this situation anyway...

They climb all the way up the tower stairs. Janus seems to be in much more of a hurry than he was on on the way to the tower, so Jin is panting a bit by the time they make it to the top. The captain is an extremely tall, strong-looking winged woman in studded leather, wearing a steel helmet that makes it very hard to see her eyes and a rather stern frown on her mouth.

"Your name is Jin Grayheart?"
"Yes. Uh..am I in trouble here?"
"No. But you're an archer, aren't you?"
"Sort of, I mean, I'm kind of an archer-mage hybrid."
"How good are you?"
"Decent, I think." He senses that her tone isn't actually harsh or angry at all. It's urgent. "What's going on?"
She sighs. "A dragon has been sighted for the first time in decades, and it looks like it's on a beeline for Haranka. We contacted the queen, and she promised to send help, but it'll probably arrive far too late. Would you be willing to help us out? I don't mean fighting a dragon by yourself, but every little bit helps. You'd be among the first carried out of here if we need to evacuate."

>

SpoilerShow

Do achievements do anything?

Tentative no. Meaning I can't think of anything they would logically do at the moment. If I think of something I guess we'll all find out then. Just thought it would be a neat thing to include. Maybe the aliens thought it would be a neat thing to include. But the achievements aren't "plot-based", in the sense that none of them say any particular thing like "insert the mystical sword into the particular stone and gain the power of Arnur"; they're all just little general things that could potentially happen in almost any game imaginable.

I say we agree and ask for a target range for practice. See if you can combine arrow types.

Getting in some practice might be a good idea.

>Explain that you have some sort of amnesia, and ask for further clarification on the dangers of a dragon and what you would be asked to do. Be the roleplayer!

> Practice

> Ask if you're Dovahkiin.
> Accept the quest, but ask if you can get in a bit of practice first.
> If you can, practice increasing the speed at which you can pull your bow back and accurately fire an arrow. This is more a matter of your personal skill than stats (Though it might help improve your Dex). Try to double the speed at which you can fire arrows. This is very critical to making good use of your time arrows!

Well, he could always use mongolian style archery techniques: nocking the arrow on the right side and angling the bow to the left to compensate if he's right handed, and the reverse of that if he's left handed. And yeah, he should probably practice with his bow. If for no other reason, just because no matter how good you are with a bow the first time you use it you will not be accurate. Unless you have a bow with sights on it, you are basically shooting off a reference point. The first time you shoot a bow you do not have a reference point, because each bow throws an arrow differently. Plus you have to learn how the arrows drop at a distance, because it's a ballistic arc and not a straight line, and that requires other points of reference for each milestone of distance.

You might be starting to see why we switched over to firearms, even when they were still much less accurate than bows. When the saying "To make a good archer start with his grandfather" is a thing, you generally want to switch to a much easier platform to teach.

"Well, I think I'm willing to help, but I've never personally seen a dragon myself. On a scale of one to screwed, how bad is this?"
"Well..intel suggests this particular dragon is on the latter side of your scale. Not all dragons are hostile, and not all are powerful, but this one is known to be both. He was put to sleep a long time ago, and it's unclear what woke him up now. But we aren't asking you to do anything crazy here, just some support fire."
"And..how long is it until this thing gets here?"
"About an hour, give or take. Long enough for us to mobilize, but too short for any reinforcements to arrive."
"Okay, cool, I'll help then. Do you mind if I use one of your target ranges to warm up a bit, though?"
She nods. "There's one behind this tower. Someone will come get you when it's getting close."

Jin heads back down the tower and out to the target range. Apparently it consists of a row of trees with bulls-eyes painted on them at various heights. He steps a good ways off from one of the trees and draws his bow and an arrow, thinking of trying to hit that spot. His arms move almost automatically to notch the bow and fire it in an arc, and it doesn't land in the exact center, but it does get inside of the circle. He tries a couple more shots, with similar results.
"Hmm.." He does some mental calculation, draws the arrow back automatically but tries to adjust his trajectory a bit. The effort pays off with an arrow placed exactly where he wanted it. Then he looks up at one of the higher bulls-eyes on the same tree. After all, the dragon is likely to be flying up in the sky, right? He takes a much higher aim and lands an arrow just barely inside of the circle this time. With some more concentration on the next shot, he gets closer to the center, but not quite there. He draws another arrow, keeping his focus on exactly where he wants it to hit and how it'll get there.
He nearly drops the bow when someone clears their throat from next to him, but manages to recover, carefully pulling the arrow back out of the bow without firing it before turning to the source of the sound, who happens to be Janus, crossed arms and all. "You're overcompensating." He points to the upper couple of shots, which are both on the right end of the circle. "Left-handed, but your shots wound up on the right side."
"Uh, oh, yeah. Look at that." Link scratches his head a bit. "I guess I'm more used shooting things with less of a height difference."
"Why would that matter?"
"Well, I'm aiming higher, so I'm trying to be more careful with the whole shot, but then I overdo it."
"Hm. I think at your level, you're better off not thinking about it too much. I wish you could fly," adds the winged man, "you'd have no time to think too hard about your aim in the middle of a dive."


An hour is a long time to narrate this sort of thing. Who should we look in on instead, for the time being?

>

SpoilerShow

Oh yeah, Elsword does the "achievement-title" thing too. Really should have remembered that. But somewhere in my conception of how this game works, in a way I can't quite articulate, I do think sudden SP bonuses for collectively having a certain number of achievements makes more sense than them individually behaving as stat-buffing titles. Eh..we'll see.

martialAcademic, I wasn't aware how much you lived up to your username till now. Your concerns are valid, I mean even for someone as ignorant as me it's obvious that it's harder to pick up a bow and start using it accurately than it is to grab a sword and start swinging it at things. However, the game's "passive weapon skills" generally incorporate all cognitive/muscle-memory needs for being able to use the weapon in question. The game also sort of "assumes" that your starting equipment is what you've been using for the last however-long-seems-reasonable, so there might be a need for adjustment for new equipment, but players are generally already decent with default equips. For example, we know how good Louis is with his starting weapon, but it's super light and doesn't seem to be all that great at dealing damage in a single strike. If Louis bought a heavier, more damaging sword that fits his class (i.e., has the same portal-cutting enchantment as his present one), he would take a little time to get used to its balance (less time the higher his passive swordsmanship skill is by then), and probably be a little clumsier during that time, but then he'd be back up to usual speed for the most part later.

All of that being said--there is benefit from practicing with one's weapon, especially around people who are better with it than one is.

> Let's go back to our portal samurai

How about world breaker guy?

This would be a tie for votes, so let's just do them in that order, then.

---

Louis wakes up in the morning feeling perfectly fine. He gets up and almost without thinking about it stretches himself backwards in a way that would definitely give less flexible people some kind of spinal injury.

Once back in town, it had already been night. The shopkeeper was in the process of closing up when they showed up, and he was happy with the results. They traded the bear-finding necklace for the money they had before and a magical compass; he even insisted on paying them back the price of the map they boughtearlier.

The boarding house had a couple of separate rooms, fortunately sparing him and Jeannette any need to work out sleeping arrangements. He heads out through the halls to the balcony and looks out at the sunrise through the trees. He hears someone else coming out nearby, and some combination of senses of hearing and smell inform him that it's Jeannette."...Yeesh."
"Can't think of anything to say?"
"I dunno. I just can't get over it. That s*** looks real. I mean, I got less experience with sunrises than a lot of other people my age, but I can't tell the difference."
"I do not think it should be surprising that looks real, considering the number of other real-looking things we have so far encountered," she says.
"Yeah, but.." he sighs. "I didn't have time to think about it, y'know? It's like, all my life I've played games, and they've got better and better at looking real. The latest systems have a problem where they look so real that they look fake again, like f***in' barbie dolls or whatever. I actually like games that don't even try to look real better, but seein' s*** like this? I just..I dunno.
"This is the dream of the people who keep talkin' about virtual reality and motion control like it's the next big thing. I always argue with 'em, say there's no way to make something feel real enough without gettin' rid of all the bulls*** inherent in those kinda devices, an' even if you do, you end up makin' a backdoor that lets someone else hack your brain or some s***. But d***."

They stay standing there for a good half-minute before the elf woman from before shows up near the base of the tree. "Louis, Archimedia. The elder would like a word, if you don't mind."

They look at each other for a second or two, and then Louis turns his head downard "No prob!"

The inside of the central tree of Haestros looks like a very busy alchemist's laboratory, with various vials, pots, and bottles scattered all over the place. The chief himself is like another, particularly elaborate fixture of the place, wandering around constantly in his ceremonial-looking garb, mixing this or tasting that every now and then. He manages to seem old, which isn't easy for a race that apparently never develops wrinkles; at least his hair seems to have mostly grayed out from having been the same color as the elf woman's. A bench carved out of the other end of the room from the entrance currently holds the priest and warrior from the day before.

"Bark," says the elf woman on entering, with the cat-man and human in tow. "Bark!"
"Eh?" The chief looks up from being bent over a couple of bottles, having been quite engrossed in the precise appearance of their contents, and says, "Oh! Sorry about that. Er..these two would be the young ones who helped our friends here, would they?"
"Yes."
He gets a rather wide grin. "Ah, yes! We're very lucky you two showed up yesterday when you did." He stands up fully, becoming quite obviously taller than anyone else in the room, and walks over to give each of them a very firm handshake. "Pleasure to meet you. M'name's Bark, if you didn't gather. I suppose you've already met Root?"
Louis loooks quizically at Jeannette, who says, "She had not yet given us the pleasure of her name, but yes."

The chief nods. "Well, ah, I'd love to say that thanking you was the whole reason for calling you over here, but honestly, we have a bit of a conundrum on our hands."
Root, who by now has found probably the only empty spot on the entire wall-space of the room and leaned against it, arms crossed, nods. "We here in Haestros are worshipers of Hale. If you don't know, Hale governs nature--plants, mostly--and is on very good terms with Solaris. As such, it would be wrong for us to send one of Solaris' priests out to Laerta, especially injured as he is now, without sufficient protection."

The silent warrior frowns, shaking his head. "She doesn't mean to say you can't handle it. It's a matter of courtesy," says the chief.
The priest says, "Yes, and while one protector was considered enough when we started, well, we didn't expect to encounter anything like that giant bear. It would help to have someone else to watch our backs, wouldn't it?"
The warrior gives a shrug, not agreeing but not arguing, either.
"Right. And I know Root could do the job; it would do her some good to see the outside world a bit, anyway. But she won't."
She sighs. "Someone has to keep Haestros safe, especially with beasts like that around. I'm the most competent fighter in the whole village, and I won't be away while it burns down."
"Personally, I'd rather it didn't burn down at all, me in it or not," says the chief, which she responds to with another, mildly-annoyed sigh.

"The point is, we'd like to hire you two to take care of them on the road to Laerta," says Root. "If you're not too busy...exploring, that is."

>

SpoilerShow

I'm going to note here that if you want to accept the proposal, now is a perfect time to negotiate what the actual price of taking on this quest would be. It doesn't have to include money at all, of course.

mA, I definitely meant it as a compliment! I appreciate it, since I actually do concern myself at least some with stuff like that a bit, because when describing an action scene I generally want to balance a cool idea for a move with what can realistically (or at least imaginably) be done with the weapon in question. Sometimes I swing around an imaginary sword in a way I think a character would to try and get a handle on how to describe it, since if I can't even swing around an imaginary sword that way, there's no hope for it happening with a real one.

I doubt there's much precedent for using a bladed protractor and very sturdy compass as weapons, though.

>Right now you are low on resources. But luckily you have a service that you can provide and a person that wants to purchase said service. Now you just need to name a price. Ask the priests original bodyguard what the pay for his services were, if he considered it a fair wage, and if Bark would provide supplies for the journey before accepting any offers. Oh, and you should probably hear Bark's offer before you put out your own.

>Standard fares x 1.2

ONWARD TO GLORY!

> Accept the quest, on the condition that you get custom sets of weapons, armor and other items forged and imbued with magic to your specifications before you leave, and 10,000 gold on your safe return.

Be nice. Don't exploit him.
>Jeanette: Agree to do the thing on the condition that you get to shop for supplies for the journey and have Bark reimburse you. Use the opportunity for a small weapons/armor upgrade. Then ask the original warrior what he was paid. Both you and Louis should receive that.
>Louis: Practice fighting.

"Well, ah, I guess that might depend on what you're willin' to pay for it," says Louis.
"How much would you suggest?" asks Root.
"Uh..how much're you payin' him?" he says, pointing to the warrior, who immediately looks slightly insulted.
"I'm not paying him," says the priest. "He's taking this task as a religious pilgrimmage."
"One would think you could figure that out by his vow of silence, Louis," says Jeannette, glaring.

He gives a hands-up shrug, and she turns back to the rest of the tree. "As we are rather unfamiliar with this land, I'm certain it would be mutually beneficial to have a guide on the way to Laerta. However, we are low on supplies, if you could cover the costs for a few from around here?"
"Hmph. At least one of you can think straight," says Root.
"I can agree to that," adds Bark.
"Thank you. Additionally, it would seem you have a lot of these...potions?"
"Salves, tinctures, and such," says Bark, nodding a bit proudly.
"Yes. It would be helpful to take along a few, I believe. Obviously if they are needed to help our companions out we would be generous. If in addition to these things you feel it worth giving us some coin, all the better."

The two elves exchange a look, and then Root nods. "That's perfectly fine. I'll go with you to get the supplies, then we can return here when you're prepared."
"I should have a useful collection gathered for you by then," says Bark.

They head out of the tree, and Louis' stomach growls a bit. "Uh, I haven't had breakfast yet," he says.
"They have some food sitting out in the dining room at the boarding house. I'm surprised you didn't smell it or something," says Jeannette.
"Well, I'll just eat and catch up with ya latter. You know what we need better'n I do anyway, huh?"
"Of course."

After eating (and having an internal monologue arguing whether actually feeling hungry and then eating inside of a game is awesome or inconvenient), Louis heads a short ways out from the town, to one of the trees that isn't also someone's house.

He tries taking a few stances with his sword, slowly drawing it from each. He tries a draw-slash-sheath combination slowly a couple of times, then quickly, then opening a portal with the slash and hopping through. It all feels rather natural.

Next, Louis takes a moment to glance at his skill tree again, and notices that he can actually afford more things with the points from killing the giant bear. Specifically, in augmentations he could have two portals open at once, make portals last longer, or make them able to be larger. He can still get Whirling Strike, Defend-Disarm, or Dive Stab, even with the leftover points after taking an augmentation, or all three of them if he doesn't take one. The rest of the active skills require one or more of those three and are more expensive than his current skill points, and he doesn't seem to have enough for more than two augments.

"Hmm.."

>

SpoilerShow

You can also suggest to look for skills that do particular things farther up the tree, if you want. If I like them/think they make sense they might be added, maybe even favorited.

>Louis: Check out your stats, and see if any of the skills or augments you have get a particular bonus or penalty from them.

If he gets a bonus from his natural stats, he should probably build that skill. If he gets a penalty for his physical abilities we might want to focus on portals. Or it might not even matter, in which case I'd say larger portals and whirlwind strike. Because that might mean he can do whirlwind portals.

> Get Dive Stab and the ability to open two portals at once. I think I see a potentially devastating combination here.

> Check to make sure you're not gonna take ludicrous amounts of fall damage while performing Dive Stab before going with Arg's suggestion.

I just realized something. Louis can double jump using portals. He can jump, make a portal right above the ground, then jump off the ground through the portal before it closes. This may have been mentioned before, but it's still awesome. Also, is there a range on portals, or are they pretty much to anywhere you can think of? Or is that a more late game thing?

Now I kind of want to do double portal and dive stab. Because that would basically make Louis a Mario jumping, ground pounding, portal samurai. Suddenly I need this, and vote for it emphatically.

Depends if he can jump that high really.

> Look for something that gives you better reaction time/slows down time for you so you can portal better.

Louis decides to take Dive Stab and Multiple Portals (two, in this case; higher levels will add more). When he takes both of these skills, another skill seems to spontaneously fade into place in the empty space between the augments and active skills!

"Hm?" The skill is called "Loop Stab", and is pre-learned. It involves picking a target, then going through the first portal to get fairly high up into the air, falling through a loop made using the second portal until the first portal closes, and then opening the first portal again to Dive Stab with that momentum directly onto a targeted opponent. There is a higher risk of the attack missing than a normal Dive Stab, but the momentum (hence, the damage) is greater than a normal jump from most heights would allow. "Sweet."

He also takes a moment to glance at a few of the other skills a little farther up the tree. There is a slightly more expensive augment called "Dual Purpose" that makes it so he can attack something and open a portal behind it with the same sword swipe, and an extremely expensive one, "Repeat", requiring both that and Multiple Portals. Repeat is basically time travel through portals, allowing for up to the number of possible portals of him to be present simultaneously for exactly the portal duration. The skill description ends with some kind of warning about witness determinism. Over on the active sword skill side of the tree, there is one called "Chain" which requires all three of the first active skills, and allows one to chain up to 3 "movements" together (more for higher levels of the skill) and then perform them in quick succession as if the whole chain were a single skill. Chain goes on to give a very long description of what constitutes a single movement, but makes it clear that a single active skill (other than Chain itself) is always a single movement.

He heads back to the grand tree in the middle of Haestros, climbs up and heads inside. The priest and warrior have apparently left. "Oh, hello," says Bark, looking up from another concoction. "Where's your companion?"
"Ah, I let her an' Root handle the supplies. They ain't back yet?"
"Not yet. The priest and his escort went out to get something to eat; they must be at the village edge by now."
"Ain't thinkin' of leavin' without us, are they?"
The chief pauses, looking up thoughtfully. "Hmm. I certainly hope not. Would you mind taking the salves I've prepared and going on to meet them, just in case?"
"No prob."

The old elf gestures at a "table" made out of more tree trunk, on which is a small collection of little vials and bottles, along with a piece of paper. "Don't lose the paper, it contains instructions for how to use those. I don't use anything extreme enough to actually be poisonous, but all the same it would be a shame if you drank something topical."
"Yeah." Louis picks up the paper and glances at it for a second or two before putting it in his inventory (wherever that is), and then picks up the bottles one to three at a time, stowing them as well.

"Well, I'mona go see if they're gettin' antsy. Point J--ah, Archimedia my way whenever she shows up."
"Certainly. And, thank you."
Louis stops, halfway out of the door. "Oh, ah, welcome."

---

Jarod sits, in his odd tattered clothes, watching the graveyard a little before midnight. A coffee shop owner (because it seems this world has those) was kind enough to hand him something to drink on her way out of the store as it closed for the night.

For a good hour, he sits there sipping the little metal mug of hot drink carefully, occasionally shaking or jittering from the caffeine--he isn't really used to that sort of substance--but at least staying awake. Then he actually sees another figure, indistinct in the darkness, walking up to a grave with a shovel.

He gets up, putting the mug down carefully, and then moves slightly closer. The figure is more clearly a man in a cloak wearing some sort of big pouch on one side. He's started digging up the grave, which makes him almost certainly the one Jacob's looking for. It sounds like he's panting, maybe even wheezing a bit from the effort.

The question now is how best to approach him.

>

SpoilerShow

I think the question of portal range may have been brought up before, but I'm not sure. At any rate, Louis' portals are sight-range first, "reasonable"-range second. Essentially, he can't make a portal to somewhere he doesn't have a fairly exact positional sense of the location of, and he can't make portals to the moon or out of the atmosphere or anything crazy like that even if he somehow does have an exact internal idea of how far away that is in which direction. For specific instances he has encoded into the knowledge of portal making a kind of intuitive sense of how far away is too far, and will instinctively place a portal at "not quite too far away" if he's doing it for something like fast travel in a single direction.

> Yes, that's exactly the "devestating combo" I was hoping for. Let's save up for Repeat and it's dependencies, that seems awesome.
> Find something to use as a shovel, and help the man dig up the grave.

PUNCH HIM THROUGH THE HEAD!

No.

Lick him!

Kick him in the groin.

Wait a minute. Watch him a bit, see what exactly he's doing with the bodies.

Lets do this.

"Nnghk." The gray-skinned wolf-man has a brief but extremely vivid mental image of hitting the man between the his legs and then in the face with a shovel and then licking the resulting blood off of him, and shakes his head nervously, wondering where that could possibly have come from. The strangest thing is that the image was aborted first by the thought But there are no more shovels nearby, and then by more reasonable thoughts like What the..? No. No! No.

He moves a little closer, watching the man. After a bit of digging, he stops for a good several seconds, panting. Once he's regained his breath, he pulls a couple of metal sheets of some sort out of his bag and pushes them down into the dirt around the hole he's got so far, which is close to the "head" of the grave. Then he resumes digging, the sheets preventing most of the surrounding dirt from falling back into his hole. It doesn't seem to take him very long at all, this way, to reach where there is an actual body, at which point he removes from his bag a..well, some sort of modified saw with a very long handle. The cutting end reminds Jarod of saws he's seen used to cut bone.

It would appear that he's done this enough times to become rather efficient about it, and that he's interested in this person's head, to a rather extreme exclusion of the rest of their body.

>