Dylan came to in near darkness. He was groggy and couldn’t remember where he was. Thankfully, that was answered for him quickly. “Welcome to Baimer,” a dramatic voice announced, snapping him to full consciousness. “Capital city of the Kingdom of Zara.”

His vision was flooded with light, and he found himself about a mile above a city. There was a terrified moment where he thought he was falling, but his motion was in a gentle arc, swooping down over the rooftops dramatically.

The city itself was made of simple stone and wood, with cobblestone streets. That meant that this was a fantasy setting, and Dylan adjusted his expectations. The city looked huge from this perspective. It stretched for what looked like miles, more like a real life city than something out of a game. He could see hundreds - maybe thousands - of people walking the streets, and in addition to the normal human-looking people, grey-skinned elf knockoffs, and green-skinned gnomelike folk, there were huge rat-ogre things, some extremely tall lizardfolk, and another group that looked like blue tiefling recolors.

There was some lore being dumped on him, as the dramatic narrator voice described an ancient war. Dylan parsed it down to the human kingdoms being expansionist dickheads and trying to invade everywhere at once, uniting the other races against them and leading to their own downfall. The Council of Zara was formed when the rest united and crushed the human kingdom. There were details that seemed important - like things he would need his character to know - but Dylan couldn’t forget that he was in a terrible rush here. His swooping flight over the city passed over the docks, and while he was stunned by the beauty of the blue-green ocean that stretched out to his left, the docks below him held a spectacle that reminded him of his ultimate goal.

There was a boat there, and Mae had been right. It was impossible to miss. The ship looked like a wooden three-mast frigate, but it was the size of a modern cruise liner, with room enough for hundreds of passengers. The dock around it was flooded with people packed like a convention hall at opening. That was the boat. The boat he couldn’t afford to miss. He hadn’t thought it would be that bad to get to the boat from wherever he randomly spawned, but as the cutscene flew him back over the city, he saw again how huge it was. If he spawned at the far end from the docks, he would never make it on foot, especially not if he wasted any more time. He had to skip the rest of the dramatic narration.

He went to reach for his mouse and keyboard, but nothing happened. At first, that was normal as he reminded himself he was in a VR game, and there was no mouse and keyboard. Then it was abruptly not normal as he realized that he had no hands to reach with. He had no body. He tried to flail, but there was no tactile response. He had no body. Dylan realized that he was effectively a brain in a jar, and without any way to interact with literally anything, he felt suddenly very small and cold and frightened.

He tried to speak, but, of course, he had no mouth. No lips, tongue, throat, or lungs. Fear clutched at him, but as he looked back at the docks and saw the mob of people start to swarm up the ramps onto the giant ship, he shook it off. This was his first struggle, and he would overcome it.

Skip cutscene? he thought, trying to make it a command as best he could. Skip tutorial?.

A pop-up window filled his vision and Dylan tried to blink in surprise - which he found impossible without eyelids. Or eyes.

Please confirm skipping this cinematic. Yes/No

Yes? Dylan thought.

The world spun. Well, it didn’t spin so much as suddenly vanished around him, instantly replaced by different surroundings. Dylan suddenly had a body. He was standing in what seemed to be a medieval inn room, and he struggled to reconcile the abrupt change in scenery. It was especially disorienting as the body was suddenly providing tactile input to his brain that he’d never experienced before. He looked down and found he had been practically poured into brown leather armor with a bandolier of daggers strapped across his ample breasts.

“Those aren’t mi-” Dylan felt a wave of dysphoric vertigo at his voice coming out silvery and feminine. He was suddenly intensely uncomfortable with the sensations coming through his mind. Beyond the feeling of wrongness of this body, he felt like an invader. This was someone else’s body. Their parts were their business, and he had no right in… sensing them.

Blessedly another pop-up appeared. Please confirm skipping this tutorial. Yes/no

Apparently you could buffer inputs in this simulation. Yes, he thought, wondering if he would have to speak the prompt aloud.

The inn room dematerialized around him, thankfully taking the strange body with it. He found himself as a brain in a proverbial jar again, but now he was in a formless void with a floating mirror and a solid spot in front of him. There was a row of text filling the upper left of his vision, and it took a moment to recognize that this was the character creator.

How much time do I have? he thought, directing his inner monologue as a command. How long until that boat leaves?

A pop-up appeared in the middle of the screen in answer.

Event! The New World. The Adventurers League is venturing forth towards untamed lands! Join them? Yes/No

Yes?

The pop-up vanished, and a quest appeared on the right side of his vision.

The Whole New World

Board the Adventurers League vessel 0/1

00:28:02

Dylan watched in horror as the timer ticked down. That wasn’t the hour that Mae had promised. Or even the thirty minute bottom end of her prediction. He didn’t have time to play around in the character creator for as long as he usually did. Not even if the random spawn location dropped him literally on the dock.

It was time to get serious.

The first choice was class, and that was the easiest. There were only three provided: Administer, Bodyguard, and Slugger, and hovering over Bodyguard confirmed that it was the tank class. He didn’t need any more detail than that. Next choice was race, which was a bit more challenging. Dylan didn’t know anything about the races or this world, and so he gave them each a quick look.

A real quick look.

The list was alphabetical, and each race was represented by a small display with general appearance, lore, and quotes from famous members of that race. Dylan didn’t have time for the quotes, but the lore proved quite interesting.

Bhogad were the obvious tank race, and so Dylan immediately balked, but not because of their appearance. They were enormous rat-ogre things, hirsute and muscular, with a ratlike snout full of sharp teeth. They were for either the hypermasculine players, or those looking to subvert expectations and be gentle giants.

In all games, Dylan much preferred to avoid playing the obvious tank race whenever he could, and so he kept going.

Finnian were interesting from their description. They were an asocial people, and their culture was built on nonverbal communication. By appearance, though, they were just goth elves, with angular features, pointed ears, and grey skin.

Dylan was no elf player. So he skipped right along.

Next were the expected Humans, the race for the prudish, boring, or gross racial purists. He’d never met a person who prefered humans in fantasy games that didn’t have some skeleton or nine in their closet.

Personally, Dylan considered himself open-minded and adventurous, so he skipped down to the next one. It helped him to make that choice when he remembered that the human kingdoms had been aggressive dickheads, and he didn’t want to be associated with and blamed for whatever casualties the war had inflicted.

Suyon were green-skinned with small tusks, and for a moment he thought they were orcs. Except that this orc-like race was barely over four feet tall, and their conical ears were different from his expectations. They were a smooth fusion of orcs and halflings, then, though one look at the text accompanying the appearance described them as being curious tricksters, and he amended that to a fusion of orcs and kender.

The last thing Dylan wanted was to be suspected of every missing item or petty prank. And even if he was going to get overlooked due to his size, he didn’t know how much the smaller frame would be unsuitable for tanking.

The Talsar were lizardfolk, and were presented as scholars and philosophers. The in-game description mentioned that they were the founding race of the Council of Zara. Thankfully, it seemed as if the feminine models didn’t have lizard boobs, which was a huge win in Dylan’s book.

But this was likely the race for people who were lore-savvy enough to know that they were the good guys. Dylan didn’t know how much racial choice affected stats, so he skipped over them. They were obviously the caster race from their description as scholarly, and he wasn’t going to be a caster. Or mistaken for a caster.

The last race alphabetically was the Vathon.

They were like blue tieflings, with demonic-like features, though theirs were softer and less angular, and their body shape was more adrogynous than Dylan’s usual associations when it came to horned humanoids. Their horns were swept-back and their spine continued down in a lithe tail. They were probably for people who had a specific affinity for otherworldly and strange characters, even though the description said they were one of the more numerous races, and the second race to join the Talsar in the Council of Zara.

Dylan didn’t want to go with the obvious tank race, but as unsure as he was of the impact racial traits and stats would have, he had to go with something that looked like it could be an all-rounder just in case. Especially since he didn’t know if he’d ever get a chance to reroll. Mae had said that appearance could be adjusted later, but he wasn’t sure if race choice could be as well.

He wasn’t about to play a mute elf or a wannabe colonizer human, so that left only the Vathon.

Selecting his race and moving on to customizing his character’s appearance presented a dizzying number of sliders. There were fifty different options just for the face.

Dylan looked at the timer on the right side of his vision. He realized that he didn’t have time to experiment. That meant he had to make his choices quickly.

The first choice was easy. After the brief sensation of being in a woman’s body, he didn’t want to suffer that feeling of discomfort for five years. The only hard part of the choice was the moment it took to realize that the base form he was looking at was already a male. He supposed the wider hips were just a racial trait for the vathon.

He flipped quickly through the different menu choices and went for the go-to options that he always liked. A mix of buff and fat got him the barrel-chested look he liked for tanking - though the vathon body type retained more of the hourglass shape than he expected. He spent a moment on the face menu, making the nose a bit larger than the default, and giving himself a strong chin. The hair options were intimidating, so he just went with close-cropped dark hair, focusing on getting the horns in a favorable configuration. All of the options were back-swept, and so he found one that was thick and more gently curved, and a little shorter, coming to a point just before they reached the back of his skull instead of curling around his pointed ears. The default skin tone was a pleasant blue, and Dylan tweaked it a tiny bit just so that he wasn’t a dead ringer for everyone else who blitzed character generation.

In the end, his skin tone was a little darker, edging towards indigo.

He wished he had more time. The comprehensive character creator seemed like it was enough for him to spend all five years right here, experimenting and perfecting just what he wanted. Unfortunately, The timer was ticking down past 26 minutes, and so he pushed onwards, getting to the end as fast as he could once he was certain he wasn’t going to be “RMT Bot Sameface” when he got into the world.

Please name your character, the final pop-up demanded.

Beneath the command was a brief description of Vathon naming conventions and a handful of sample names. Vathon names were fairly simple, and appeared to be two to four three-letter syllables strung together. They were things like Istant, Branettic, and Ertickishtom.

Dylan again lamented that he didn’t have more time. This was an interesting thing to know, and he wanted to spend time figuring out a fun way to use this name convention. However, he was pressed for time, and while the name convention was presented, there was no indication that it wouldn’t allow him to ignore it.

Dylan remembered that he was here with a purpose, and not just to play the game. Nakala would be joining at some point, and she had to be able to find him. That narrowed his options, and while it didn’t quite fit the convention, his character name from Colossus was close. Close enough, at least. He half-expected it to be taken, as he’d taken it from a minor character in another popular game.

Kaldalis, he thought.

The game accepted the name without issue, reminding him that he was one of the first people in this world. There weren’t enough people in the game yet to contest pop-culture reference names.

There was another strange transition and he found himself in the body he’d just designed. It was still unfamiliar and foreign as his brain received all manner of sensation from the new body, but he didn’t feel like an invader.

This was his body.

He’d designed it. He wasn’t thrust upon someone else’s autonomy.

Dylan, no, Kaldalis, looked down at the indigo-skinned hands, flexing the dexterous fingers. This was him now. And would be for the foreseeable future.