The light was still too bright when I woke up. Kobolds were nocturnal, but I was not… there were more hours of light in most days than darkness, and after 7 hours I was usually ready to start the day, or night I guess. It was late afternoon, and the sun was hidden by the trees, but I was wondering if I could find some way to make sunglasses, or even if sunglasses would work with my eyes.

Everything was pretty much dry now, even the extra roll of leather, although if I wanted to make anything with it I’d probably have to dowse it again. Both my armor and the roll needed a lanolin or saddle soap treatment, although I’d settle for a not-so-stinky grease if that’s all I could find.

The firs and beeches had been replaced on this side of the river with maples and cottonwoods, although the occasional pale shredded trunk still appeared through the foliage. I snuck out of the brambles and was moving towards the water to collect my trap when I noticed arrowhead plants. I quickly sunk my hands into the water to collect the edible tubers and pulled them from the muddy bottom. Eating them uncooked was possible, but I was going to risk a fire.

I checked the fish trap and discovered that an absolutely enormous largemouth bass, longer than the basket itself, had managed to wedge itself into the opening and was stuck. It was truly a windfall, and even the fact that it would take a lot of repairs to get the crisscrossed reeds back into shape to use as a trap again did not dull my enthusiasm. I was missing salt and pepper, but not badly, as I bet this body did not tend to eat a lot of salt regularly.

I was already all packed up, and while my hideaway was useful, it wouldn’t be a good place to have a cookfire, so I headed south again. Two hours and dozens of forageable weeds later, I found a perfect spot to start a fire, a large rock and bare patch of dirt near the edge of the water I could use as a cookfire base. There was even a fallen log laying conveniently close, and after a few moments, I realized that there were old hatchet marks on one side of the log… This had been used as a campsite before, quite some time ago.

Starting a fire when you have a flexible branch and a piece of yarn to use as a bow, shredded bark, and shavings, and nice, dry sticks and a few chunks of dried-out driftwood to use as a base is much easier than trying to spin the stick with your hands. Within minutes I was on my knees on the rock blowing the sparks in the tinder to life, and only a few minutes later I had the cleaned fish suspended over the fire on a makeshift spit, and wrapped the tubers and vegetables up in the fish skin for roasting when I had some coals.

Once I completed the active part of preparing food that could last more than a few hours, wishing that I had something to wrap the fish and tubers in to slow roast it, I realized that I had another message from Mnemosyne that I had not noticed. I think I was going to have to find a way to make them more visible when I was concentrating, but not so visible that they would distract me or obscure my vision.

Attribute investigation is complete.

Would you like to continue manually or allow Mnemosyne to assemble and maintain your attribute map?

This decision is irreversible!

*Okay, that was a joke. You can give or take away permissions as you like if you talk to me. I have just never assembled an attribute map in anything like this tank before, and don’t know how to get started*

Oi, she had worried me for a moment there. Games like this often had ‘decision is irreversible’ blurbs for important character decisions, and I thought I had tripped one of those.

After fiddling with it for a bit, I managed to set up [observe] so I could keep an eye on the fish and surroundings while I dove into my soul space. This was an important step, so I hope I got it right… losing track of the outside world, even as quickly as I could act in the soul space, could get me killed, especially in the exposed position I was in.

I also wanted to keep cooking the fish and add the vegetables when I got a chance. The sun had just gone down, which was the perfect time to have a fire since the smoke could not be seen for any distance, and the light fought with the disappearing sun. Everyone hated fighting at Dusk because visibility sucked. Unless you happened to be a kobold that preferred the daylight whose vision finally sharpened at dusk.

I dropped into my soulspace and noticed that Mnemosyne had used a bare speck of essence to draw 3d sketches in the soul display. Flowers, bees, unicorns, and butterflies were swept away by her hand as she noticed me watching.

“What?” I asked curiously, “You just did the very first thing anyone does when they open up an art program or an etch-a-sketch. This is kind of like a cross between a touchpad on a display screen and one of those 3d hologram tanks, and is a really neat simulation.”

“Well, while it might not be exactly the same thing as your screen, it certainly is not a simulation. It’s your map. Right now, I cannot tell you when you increase your skills, gain essence, or anything because it’s pretty much blank, except for this.” she played her hand through the image of the observe cluster right in the middle. “You have some advanced skills and they have been working in ways we could have been using essence to improve, as well as with your innate gifts. I keep seeing them flare up as you use them, but we haven’t had a chance to quantify them yet.” She said, smiling as she drew another butterfly in the display and then set it to fluttering. Wow.

“So what do we need to do?” I asked her curiously, “I mean, to make this stuff more useful? Should you do it, or do I need to? I noticed that when I started to look for natural things to eat or use, they started almost jumping out at me, even some of the things I didn’t recognize.” I was not particularly keen on letting someone else mess with it, mostly because I didn’t like others in my business, but I was sort of getting used to Mnemosyne as time went by. I didn’t really know what qualified someone to be a ‘friend’. Was it a certain amount of time you spent together? Like, 12%, or one evening a week? Or was it the number of favors you traded or owed?

It probably was something intangible like a feeling that I simply didn’t understand. Or maybe a willingness to throw yourself into traffic or something. I was not a total selfish jackass, I risked my life many times to save others, or to do my duty, or to try and protect the interests of my country, but I never had anyone that I would just flat-out state that I would willingly trade lives with, sacrificing my own for theirs in a straight exchange.

I was not sure friendship was something like that, though. I would willingly inconvenience myself for some people and was starting to suspect I would do so for Mnemosyne too, and not because of her appearance. I didn’t know what the rules for existence for sprites were, but she seemed more than willing to trade her time and convenience for mine. Did she consider me her friend?

If so, that put a lot of extra pressure on me. How do you treat someone you consider your friend? I didn’t begrudge the effort, perhaps I should offer to do something for her? Or was that too cold-blooded a trade? I should probably find out something she desired and then go out of my way to offer it to her, or offer her some means of reducing her labor. Did she enjoy what she was doing? Would offering a favor be taken badly?

I knew one thing, though, I would be fine with doing things for her If I could figure out what she wanted if it came up, but I was not going to beg for friendship. Mnemosyne was still a stranger with motivations I did not understand. Her sponsor, someone named ‘Flame’, was also a big bag of unknown. Information was paramount, as usual, and I simply didn’t have any.

She shook her head, “You need to do it. But I can help you figure out how I think. This is just not a conceptualization I have seen before, but once you get things organized, I might be able to help you maintain it.” She looked around and then pointed towards something in the mist. “We should probably start with your identity. It’s important, but it’s going to be a little tough because the you you normally are is subdued by the you that is here.”

She was right. When I looked at the clusters she pointed out, There was a huge one that determined the ‘me’ but it was labeled simply with my name, but one near it, and tied by associations to it, was a lot simpler, and labeled as kobold. It had a bunch of its own associations, but they flitted all over the place, this was going to be a lot of work. I did have an idea, though.

“You are used to looking at things simply, in a flat display rather than a full 3 dimensions, right? Well, I think I can make it display both. Would it be easier for you if I could make a flat representation of our links for you?”

Mnemosyne nodded, “Yes, I think it would be.” and she began directing me towards the drifting colors that seemed to have the most links, and grouping them. The funny thing was, that the globs seemed to stick together if they had enough associative links, allowing me to make the listing much smaller than it would be. For instance, the globs that defined tracking, fire-starting, makeshift shelters, and a number of other skills were easily grouped into something called ‘survival’, and their individual glows seemed to average out once we collected them together and moved them into the tank.

“This is where it gets really strange though,” Mnemosyne warned me, “kobolds have several gifts that are already essence-linked. You need to link quintessence to the overall skill, notice how bright survival is? And then you can move scrounging, improvisation, and traps into it.”

The survival skill, once Mnemosyne had labeled it, came out to expert good. “You can link your quintessence into any skill that is apprentice or better, but it takes mana to maintain or get a real benefit from it, so it’s generally better not to bother until you get at least Journeyman with the skill,” she said, as we kept brushing the drifting bands into the tank and clarifying them.

By the time my breakfast was crisped around the edges in the outside world, I felt like I had a basic presentation that would work as a definition. It was a lot like creating a PowerPoint flowchart for something like traffic patterns inside of a building, but it seemed to work, and Mnemosyne seemed to be happy with the end result, especially since it allowed her to let me know skills that could assist clusters, but had no place in this world.

Driving, for instance, was utterly useless in this place without cars, but a lot of the skills involved helped with ‘piloting’, which was the skill group used for running a water-going vessel, wagon, or, according to Mnemosyne, flying.

Apparently having larger or less defined skill groups increased the difficulty of improving them, but also increased their utility and application to marginal situations. This supposedly applied to physical and mental definitions as well, but until I unlocked… Auramancy? I couldn’t get anything related to values on it. The really fun part was that while I kind of had to ‘think’ the globs around in my soul space, once they were in the soul display I could push them around, rearrange them, and connect them with my hands and fingers. This was especially useful when I was linking Quintessence, as the strands, once they entered the display, just sort of coiled around my fingers and threaded through the skills like they already knew the pattern they needed to take.

I left Mnemosyne looking tickled as I went to go deal with breakfast. Apparently, once we got all of the disorganized mess into the space, she could mess around with the labels or rearrange the flat representation. She still couldn’t touch or modify the clusters or skills themselves other than moving them closer or farther from their associated links, but this felt like a fine compromise to me.

Brantley Gallagher Winterborne

Ice Kobold

Body size: Tiny

Fitness: Poor

Health: 100%

Evolution: 88%

Mana: 100%

Mind: Good

Fatigue: 100%

Reflexes: Extreme

Unenhanced Skill Groups

Piloting: apprentice fair

Essence Manipulation: novice fair

Willpower: apprentice superb

Spellcrafting: novice mediocre

Security: apprentice mediocre

Socializing: apprentice poor

Stealth: apprentice great

Metalworking: novice good

Physical Fitness: novice fair

Acrobatics: novice good

Enhanced Skill Groups

Survival: expert fair

Martial arts: Journeyman fair

Ranged combat: adept superb

Improvised Fabrication: Journeyman poor

Evolutions

Ice Kobold

Unique soul

Kobolds innately gain trapmaking and scrounging at apprentice level, minor natural weapons, can swim at a trotting speed, darkvision, and minor regeneration.

Ice Kobolds in particular gain 75% cold resistance and 150% cold affinity.

All Kobolds are considered tiny creatures, difficult to target for larger creatures, but are much weaker and less resistant to damage.

Your unusual origins give you a unique soul for your species.

You gain combat meditation which includes mental time dilation, fear resistance, pain resistance, and the ability to access your soul space for mana manipulation and improvised spell creation.

Unfortunately, your special soul also gives you a minor penalty to social skills.

Gifts and Traits

Draconic Language

Rhydian Language

Quintessence

Aura Domain

Enhanced Verbs

[observe]

The point behind the skill groups was mostly for my edification, at least the unenhanced ones. The enhanced ones, however, allowed me to add mana to the entire group. In general, the group was an average of particular skills in an area, but if I had a skill that wasn’t so hot, like woodworking, linking it to survival allowed me to add mana to it even if it wouldn’t usually be good enough to do so.

But the groups were an average. I was very skilled at using a knife to whittle, but I had only a passing knowledge of assembling a log cabin. But by putting woodworking into the survival group as a whole, I could add the enhancements from adding mana to my cabin-making attempts.

Rhydian Language? I added the blob to my sheet, but looking closer at it I realized exactly what Kozmina’s Blessing was… It was assuredly a gift from travelers and was possibly the most important gift she could have given me.

In general, adding quintessence doesn’t accomplish much. Adding it to martial arts would allow me to strike things that might not be hurt by normal impacts. Also, if this were a normal game, I would probably split weapons and striking skills apart… but I had learned Kendo and Kenpo, and the way I fought combined melee weapons and strikes together, so they were very well associated.

The most important part though was that adding a strand of quintessence would allow me to add draconic words and patterns to the skills. I was still figuring out how that worked, but Mnemosyne assured me that eventually, I could create ‘techniques’ that would allow me to add mana to a strike to do special things, like break down walls in a single blow, or crush armor, or other stuff. Very cool.

Improvised fabrication would have normally been dumped into survival, by Mnemosyne convinced me to keep it separated because apparently, kobolds got a special gift for it. By keeping it apart, I could eventually improve it to the point where it would be more of a true fabrication, and it could be used for certain abilities I hadn’t learned yet, like magical assemblies, alchemy, and poison making.

I knew a few recipes for poisons and explosives, but in this world, getting chemicals was not as simple as going to the hardware store or farm suppliers and picking up a few things. You had to know what a plant or substance could do, distill or separate the important parts, mix complementary effects, and add magic to enhance the effects. Also a truly fascinating subject.

The weirdest thing was the gifts and evolutions. Apparently I was a subspecies of kobold called an ice kobold, which is why I didn’t get cold from swimming or running around naked in the sewers. This provided me some protection from low temperatures, and if I ever learned ice magic, it should help improve that. While my tail was considered a natural weapon, apparently my teeth and claws were just not enough.

My intellect came from me, coming to rest in this body, I had apparently forced an evolution of some sort. Zone was obvious, but something about the way I adapted had created something we decided to call an ‘aura wall’. It was what I hid my feelings behind, but it also had some kind of influence over my soul space… anyone could create a soul space if they had enough essence, but my wall seemed to focus it so that the natural process of creating and losing essence all creatures possessed had a different effect on me, we were not sure what.

While everyone gained essence from killing or consuming creatures, or, in the case of players with bands, they could trade essence by assigning quests, I was not able to just use that essence to enhance anything like a player could. Mostly because all available skills and things were contained in the bands, they sort of gained enhancements that included all the knowledges and techniques to improve a skill.

I could not level up.

However, monsters and creatures could grow from essence naturally, and those growths were defined as evolutions. In addition, special things such as gifts from the gods, blessings, curses, and special magical talents could also be unlocked with consumed essence, but it was very dependent on what sort of essence you captured.

According to Mnemosyne, there were some very common types of aspected essence, such as the four or five elements, and some that were associated with particular occupations, like seer, but the amount of stigma that could influence essence was nearly unlimited.

Also, by looking closely at skill groups, I could easily observe all the sub-skills in them, and break them up even farther if needed to look at their associative or essence links. This would become very important, especially if I chose to go into mana-enhanced crafting, such as enchanting or alchemy, or another kind of essence crafting she hadn’t heard of.

I could use the accumulated essence in evolutions, or add them to skill groups, but auramancy was still a mystery. For now, though, I popped out of my zone to have breakfast instead of contemplating the far future.