Our story stars Bethany or Beth as she starts to be known by. She lives an average life in middle age england, churning butter and dreaming of space. Her reality is much less stary though as her mother is cold and strict, her former best friend started a rumour and the mayor’s son hates her and has the whole village calling her Solarslut. She does however have a friend in the butcher’s son Steven.

Her whole world changes when she is attack by Lewis and while defending herself everybody is pulled into individual rifts. There Beth meets a being call Tem who explains about her situation before she is pulled into a series of tasks or Trials through which she gains unnatural abilities. They come however with a high level of risk. She survives this first series of challenges by the skin of her teeth however in doing so goes slightly into shock. As if things couldn’t get worse the phrase ‘Solarslut’ is awarded as a title and branded over her head for all to see. This does come with the side effect of granting her the cosmic mana type.

The mayor alarmed by this turn of events orders the whole town to ignore these changes and to do the bare minimum when forced to interact with them. Beth is then arrested for her so called assault on the mayor’s son. Luckily this can’t stop her from going on her next Trial. This one was different as it was sponsored meaning somebody had paid the system for her help. On this one she met some friendly faces meeting Stilwart, Guliveneir and Harri. These toad people or Grodiacs are extremely welcoming and Beth and Harri quickly become best friends. Eventually her time with them comes to an end, however by a shocking turn of events she was dragged straight into her next Trial unlocking the ability to enter Trials at will (admittedly in a limited fashion). None of this allowed her to escape from the fact that the town had moved on without her and without Beth being there to punish they had arrested her mother instead sending her to Newcastle to be imprisoned.

Beth rushed to head over there meeting a very chatty boy by the name of Pete. Together they explored a city they had never visited before. Beth found she could pay for her mother’s freedom but the price was much higher than she could pay. Fortunately for her the system through which she had continued to take Trials offered a possible solution and after taking advantage of how new the system was to the planet she and Pete unlocked the ability to hire people for Sponsored trials of their own. They hired a young breaking and entering expert by the name of Pearcival through who’s help they broke Beth’s mother out of prison and together Beth her mother and Pete fled to Pete’s home town of Leeds where the system was being embraced not rejected.

End of book 1

Some time passed in Leeds with Beth and Pete hanging out more or less all day every day. Eventually Beth felt like she was no longer the person she had been abandoning her skill in butter churning to metaphorically turn her back on that part of her life. Before fully disconnecting though she felt the need to visit Steven back in Livpul missing her friend. She attempted to convince him to run away with her sure that this was a bad place for bad people. Steven made it clear it was more complicated than that as well as making Beth come to terms with the fact she hadn’t been the best friend to Steven. Then she was pulled into another Trial, however this one was special. She had finally almost reached level 5 in a skill which corresponded to a more intense Trial. In this case being the trial of the three sisters.

She quickly found herself on a planet covered in trees where the three mountains had become divine figures with attached legends. There she was advised that climbing the three sisters was normally a task assigned to three village children as part of their process for becoming recognised as adults within the communities in the forest. As such she was put on a team with the confident explorer Nate and the mousy Pauline to conquer these three peaks. The first of which proved a challenge for Beth as it caused her to suffer from pretty extreme paranoia turning on her peers, who despite a rocky start she had grown close to. They did however make it through that challenge. Now having travelled to the next mountain they find that the landscape is constantly shifting in a way that more than slightly unnerves Pauline who is very particular about things being organised and categorised as much as possible. We rejoin the trio as they near the peak of this the second of three mountains/sisters...

Name

Bethany Oakfenny

Title(s)

Solarslut

Mana Type

Cosmic (rare)

Level

4

Trial Credits

84

Skills:

Walking (common)

4 (24 Trial Credits)

Trial Taking (ultra-rare)

1 (8 Trial Credits)

Half-staff (common)

1 (7 Trial Credits)

Communication (common)

1 (6 Trial Credits)

Bartering (common)

0 (2 Trial Credits)