The boat was a flurry of activity as they entered open water. Sails were dropped and caught the wind in such a way that Dylan could feel the enormous ship accelerating. It made him feel useless, though. He didn’t have any obvious skills to help - or any skills at all, as far as he knew - and nobody seemed to be looking for assistance. The crew had things under control. He didn’t really have anything to throw himself into to distract himself like he usually did. No work to do, no games to play, nothing. He knew he had to figure things out about the world and the system, but he had to make that last for two entire weeks. If he started right now he was going to regret it when he ran out of menu options to poke around on.

He wasn’t feeling instant regret about his choice to jump into the game.

Not instant.

But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d made a life change this enormous literally overnight. This was like if he suddenly moved in with a long-distance partner the night after meeting them. And they lived on a different planet. And moving there turned you blue.

With a tail.

Then again, this wasn’t even his real life. He wasn’t actually experiencing anything. He was floating in goo in a capsule back in the Monsoon office building. Or just lying on a table covered in wires, whichever. This was all a simulation.

Despite knowing that, it felt entirely too real. He had expected it to have an artificial quality to it, like the textures not being right, or just receiving no sensory input from his sense of smell. Or communication being delivered in floating text bubbles. But it was all super real.

Flawlessly.

He could smell the sea air. He could feel the wood crate under his butt. The way his tail cramped uncomfortable from being shoved aside incorrectly. How did that even work?

Thinking of his tail brought it into hyperfocus. He became aware of the way his tail - accessing parts of his nervous system he didn’t know he had - rocked back and forth as well, maintaining his balance as the boat swayed in the waves.

Dylan leaned to the side, looking down at the ocean that was slicing past the hull of the ship. The water moved realistically, in a way he hadn’t seen in big-budget CG films, let alone a videogame. He felt the water spray on his face, and when he licked his lips he tasted the saltwater. Even the simple fact that his equilibrium could sense the ship accelerating, curving slowly to the right. Whichever right was in ship terms. Starboard?

He had to admit that the technology was world-altering. It felt like he had been literally physically transported to a new body. He could feel his fingers rubbing together as he wiggled them. He watched his indigo-hued hand as he turned it over and over. Many VR systems suffered from some input lag, but this was one-to-one. He reached over to grab the railing of the ship and squeezed. It felt normal. Nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, he hadn’t felt the slightest sense of vertigo or confusion since he got into the proper body. It was a testament to this technology that nothing felt extraordinary. Dylan wondered if anyone was appreciating this as much as they should have been. From a technical standpoint, he wasn’t even sure he had the backgr-

“Hey, new guy,” someone said from nearby.

Dylan blinked and looked up, slightly aggravated at the interruption. He shook the irritation away quickly. They probably weren’t here to rob or bully him. They would have signed the same paperwork as he did for Monsoon’s no-tolerance policies. Or they were NPCs and Monsoon would have a vested interest in keeping their behavior friendly and helpful.

Right?

There were two of them. The taller of the pair was one of those lizard people. A talsar, he thought they were called. They were nearly nine feet tall with a crown of backswept horn nubs across their pate, approximating hair. Scales the color of red dirt glimmered slightly in the sun where they poked out at the ends of their long sleeves. The coloration of the scales around their neck and face was slightly browner, more closely matching their dark eyes. The shorter figure was the one who had spoken, though. She was one of the kender/orcs - a suyon? She was barely four feet tall, but obviously had spent a lot of time in the character creator carefully sculpting a face and body that was more orc berserker than curious kender. She looked like the fiercest warrior of Mordor scaled down to match Frodo’s height, with lime-green skin bordering on the very edge of yellow.

“How can you tell I’m new?” Dylan asked, trying to keep the surly from his tone.

“The clothes,” the suyon gestured at his attire. “Everyone else put their shit on first thing. Balrim here thinks you must have spawned in on the boat after we left.”

“Nah,” Dylan waved a hand dismissively, “I spawned in town. I just had to sprint to make it here. No time to dally with getting dressed. And a good thing, too. Apparently people in full armor were getting shoved off the side of the dock and sinking.”

The talsar - Balrim? - laughed at that, and the suyon elbowed them. Dylan hadn’t noticed at first, but her hair did look a little damp. Luckily, her outfit looked like boiled leather rather than heavy plate. The talsar looked dry, but they would have been fine, with their garb being almost entirely flowing cloth.

Ah, now he understood. The armor in his inventory had been labelled as cosmetic, and so what you wore - especially the starting gear - was about appearances. And their appearances marked them as a healer and a DPS. He supposed that with his thick build and strong jaw, even outside of armor it was clear that he was the missing piece - the tank they needed to start building an adventuring party.

“I’m Myrin, by the way,” the suyon extended her hand, shaking Dylan’s. “This is Balrim, like I said.”

“Good morning,” the talsar said with a toothy smile.

“I’m Dyl-” he stopped, coughing. “Kaldyl- Dyldal- um. Sorry.” He shook his head. “Like I said, I just got here. I’m still a little turned around.”

“It gets easier,” Balrim confirmed. “We’ve had some time to get used to it.”

“The trick,” Myrin said, leaning in conspiratorially, “is to forget that this is a game and that you’re a human in a jar. I was a hardcore RPer in Colossus, so that makes it a bit easier. Be a method actor. Just become your character.”

Dylan took a deep breath and tried again. “I’m Kaldalis.”

“Good, good,” Balrim said. “Now, say it again like you mean it.”

Myrin elbowed the lizard man again, and he let out a croak-like cackle.

“But, uh, heads up. You might also want to try and avoid talking about the real world,” Myrin warned. “The NPCs are smart enough to understand and remember that we’re different. If they realize what we are, they’ll look at you like you’re a threat, and treat you as such. He and I are PCs, so you’re still safe for now.”

“Most of the discrimination is behind us,” Balrim added, “the government in Zara has sanctions against PCs working in and for the government, among other laws. But we’re with the adventurers league now. They have no rules on the books against us.”

“The discrimination written on paper isn’t all of it,” Myrin said, looking over Dylan’s shoulder and glaring at the continent behind the boat. “It reinforces and justifies the way people act. They think they’re allowed to throw bricks through our windows just because the government doesn’t recognize us as people.”

“Whoa.” Dyl- Kaldalis blinked, taken aback. “Who threw a brick through your window?”

“Someone very far away,” Myrin said with a grimace. “In another world, you might say.”

Kaldalis winced. “Sorry.”

“It’s all behind us now.” She gestured dismissively. “The sooner I can stop thinking about Monsoon’s lazy topical parallels, the better.”

“So, from two seasoned veterans,” Balrim cut in, changing the subject, “who have been around the block a few hours longer than you have, is there anything we can help you figure out?”

“I mean, for one thing,” Kaldalis asked, “why is everyone wearing their armor? The tooltip says that it’s cosmetic.” He paused. “For another, if armor is cosmetic, where do stats come from?”

“I can’t speak for everyone,” Myrin said, tapping the leather chest of her armor, “but I think I look ridiculously good in this.”

“The real gear is these,” Balrim said, tapping the little bits of decorated jewelry dangling from various places around his clothing. “They’re called charms. And they mean that you can wear anything you like to look the way you like. Though most things change slightly to represent your role.” He tugged on the hem of his shirt. “Have to maintain the class silhouette.”

“So did you skip the entire tutorial?” Myrin asked. “Or did you just spam click and read nothing?”

This time Balrim nudged Myrin, though it was with his knee and not his elbow, given the difference in their heights.

“I had to skip the whole thing,” Kaldalis said. He ran his hands over his chest anxiously, as if wiping his palms off. They weren’t actually sweaty, but the motion felt right. “Even if I had time to go through it, being in that other body felt so wrong.”

Balrim grimaced - as much as the lizard face could grimace - though Myrin looked back and forth between the two of them, slightly confused. Kaldalis got the impression that this was a conversation she was curious to start, but hesitant to follow through on.

“Regardless,” she said at last, breaking the silence, “we both went through it, and your journal will still have all of the text prompts. Let’s head up towards the middle of the deck, we can walk you through some things, and maybe get you there on game information.”

Dylan hopped up off of the crate he was sitting on and joined the pair as they started around the cabin and onto the open area beneath the middle mast of the ship. They were joking around with each other as they went, and Dylan felt right at home.

He had almost forgotten about being depressed barely a minute ago.