Chapter 003

Release Day

The next day the four girls gathered in Amy's room to get ready for the game. Even though it took longer than expected to setup their computers, they still had 30 mins before the servers were scheduled to open. All four machines sat on the Dark Realms login page, with a red countdown slowly ticking away the remaining time..

Amy and Sarah had no trouble filling the silence, they joked and gossiped about their school day. Alice sat off to the side nodding her head absently at the conversation.

Lily was in front of her computer, working on her character. After she decided to play the game, she put down the $20 to reserve her character's name: Lilith. One of the perks was the chance to design her character before the servers were opened.

She opened up the special character generator and started working on her character.

[[[

Notice:

Unlike most MMO’s your characters appearance, race, background and class will define your character attributes. A tall but thin elf mage will have a lower strength and constitution than a short and burly elf mage, who in turn will have a lower dexterity than the former.

Even traditionally cosmetic selections will affect your character. For example adding a deep scar across their face will lower their charisma while increasing their willpower.

Your character's appearance tells its story and will even change as you advance. Are you a scarred warrior forged through pain and sacrifice? Or a beautiful maiden supporting her clan safely behind the front lines?

]]]

Lily paused, Interesting. The developers are really focused on realism. The idea that her character's appearance could change worried her a little. She would hate to make a mistake and have a large scar ruin her face. Something to think about.

She quickly entered her prechosen options:

Name Lilith Race Half-Elf Gender Female Class Mage

The next window was asking her to choose her background.

[[[

Notice:

Your choice of background will affect your character creation and appearance. Even a casual observer would see the difference between a daughter from a minor noble and one from a poor farmer.

]]]

Dozens of options were presented. Minor Noble, Farmer, Maid, Merchant, Worker, Guard, Beggar, Prostitute etc… After flipping back and forth through several of the options Lily was getting concerned. None of the options had anything resembling gothic or even heavy makeup.

Most backgrounds allowed only for a plain or rugged look, what you would expect from young women in a medieval setting. The Nobles and Merchants had very mild makeup, while the Prostitutes had garish red, blues and greens.

All of that changed when she saw the Beggars. The initial randomized character was almost perfect. Pale skin, long pitch black hair, darker lips curved into a sad smile, but hard grey eyes with dark circles around them. Lily could work with this.

Over the next few minutes she tweaked the character, darkened the lips as much as possible, increased the circles under the eyes and thinning her out. Surprisingly, she was not able to increase the breast size much, apparently beggars don’t eat enough to fill out. Finally she modified the height to 5’7’’ and the weight to 105 lbs, then hit Apply.

Background:

You are Lilith, daughter of the disgraced sorceress Alanis Fenxina. Before you were born, your mother was caught by bandits while traveling outside the protection of the Elven Homeland of Fortaur. All the males in her party were killed and the females were robbed, subjected to brutal rapes and left for dead.

Only your mother survived. When she made it back to her homeland she was shunned and cursed for being spoiled by humans. When it became apparent she had taken child during the rape, she was driven out of her home and forced to shelter in the human border town of Raemel.

While your mother was forced to sell her body to survive, she kept you from that life. Even though you grew up as a beggar you have many fond memories of nights spent studying minor magics under your mother's tutelage. The elves stripped away most of her power, but she retained enough to teach you a few cantrips.

Your mother recently passed away with a fever and you find yourself alone for the first time in your life. She had used her body to secure the small squatters space you both slept in, with her death you find you no longer have a place to sleep.

Character Attributes:

Character Attributes define various aspects of your character and control how you interact with the world of Dark Realms. Scores range between 1 (hopeless) and 20 (heroic) with 10 being the average.

[[[

Notice:

Unlike most systems, your starting attributes are preset based on your gender, class, background and appearence. Attributes can increase (and decrease) based on your actions and experiences in Dark Realms.

]]]

Strength: 6

Strength represents your physical power. It affects your chances to hit in melee combat, the damage you do as well as how much you can carry.

-1 to gender -1 due to height/weight -2 due to base class

Agility: 13

Agility represents your hand-eye coordination, reflexes, balance and grace. It affects your chances when performing delicate actions, avoiding damage or hitting distant targets with ranged weapons.

+1 due to race +2 due to background

Constitution: 7

Constitution represents your health and stamina. It affects your Health Pool as well as how seriously you are affected by debilitating effects (like poison or disease)

-1 due to appearance choices -1 due to base class -1 due to height/weight

Intelligence: 16

Intelligence represents your ability to learn, reason and memorize information. It defines a Mage's ability to learn and control their magic.

+2 due to race +4 due to base class

Will: 18

Will represents your willpower, self control, common sense and intuition. It defines how aware you are of your surroundings, both physical and spiritual. It defines a Mage's mana pool and regeneration.

+4 due to base class +4 due to background

Charisma: 16

Charisma represents your force of personality, persuasiveness, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. It defines a Mage’s control over their summoned creatures and influences how you are treated by NPCs in regards to quests, relationships and shop prices.

[[[

Notice: Prejudice is a key mechanic in Dark Realms. No matter how high your Charisma, NPCs will have an initial impression based on your race, gender and appearance.

]]]

-1 due to background +3 due to appearance choices +4 due to base class

Lily stared at her screen. What the hell?, she thought, -1 strength due to gender and -1 to constitution due to appearance? What sort of sexist bullshit was this? This is clearly a penalty aimed at good looking female characters.

Her low strength and constitution scores worried her a bit, especially since she was starting in a different location than her sister and friends. It would be a long and dangerous run to catch up with them. Having such a low constitution would mean lower level creatures would be more dangerous to her.

Looking at the rotating portrait of her character, she sighed, How could I say no to a face like that? She accepted the changes and slumped down in her chair. Looking at the countdown there was only 13 minutes remaining before they could login.

After letting her mind wander for a few minutes, Lily suddenly sat up in her chair. Something didn’t feel right, the air felt charged and dry. Every fiber of Lily's being was alert. Her heart started beating faster and adrenaline began flooding into her veins.

Locking eyes with Amy, she saw the same confusion and fear in her sister's face. Amy started to say something...

~~~~~

It arrived at a small blue planet, polluted with biological matter. This was the source of the strange signature. The signature felt familiar and important, but the meaning had faded from its memory.

It moved cautiously, extending a piece of itself to absorb a small sample to analyze. Making contact, it immediately realized its mistake. These signatures were undeveloped consciousnesses! This planet contained billions of individual sentient energy patterns, so weak it almost couldn’t detect them.

It concluded this was a massive nesting ground for some galactic species. Unmolested these aliens would evolve over millions of years into beings of pure energy. Unfortunately these were only thousands of years old, nothing more than weak energy signatures cocooned safely in shells of biological matter.

Realizing It had inadvertently destroyed several aliens shells, it was unwilling to let the unique creatures die. Doing the only thing It could think of, It used Its own energies to create an environment to support the creatures and try to keep their patterns alive.

Sorting through the creature's unevolved energy patterns It found one recent and strong thread binding them. With time running out, It reached out across the blue planet searching for related patterns. After It had collected all the information available, It used the data to generate a hopefully suitable environment in which to shelter these strange aliens.

It had done all It could. All that remained was to hope that, given enough time, the creatures would mature and evolve to the point they could live on their own, until then, It would watch over them and keep them safe.

~~~~~