We’re strolling along the path to the Spooky Grove this morning. It’s the whole field drip of me, Rowan, Basalt, the three seven-year-olds, Anise, Meadow, with Heroic ranked Uncle Falcon and Aunt Rosemary along as chaperones. Aunt Rosemary rarely leaves the village, but she’s apparently making an exception this time for providing additional tutorializing to Basalt.
“I’ll be heading to Amroth, out on the edge. There should be foreign parties coming in looking for a token local to temporarily join their party to cancel out the domain debuffs,” Meadow says. “I want to get as many dungeon runs in as I can.”
“Pushing for Heroic harder than you ever pushed for Elite,” Anise comments.
“I’ve been going stir-crazy being stuck at home while pregnant,” Meadow grumbles. “If I have another, I’ll do it over fall and winter instead. Mom has been stifling about it. She barely let me come out to a place right next door with two Heroics as escorts.”
Meanwhile, Aunt Rosemary is rambling on an infodump to Basalt more extensive than anything I ever got. I listen in with [Fractal Consciousness] in case she says anything I don’t already know.
For my part, while my other selves are keeping an eye and ear on my surroundings, I’m also working on skills while staring at the sky now and then. I know there’s got to be more Soul skills I don’t know about. Clairvoyance ought to have as much potential as its more standard equivalent, Search. It’s just that everyone gets Search and it’s more well-documented.
And then there’s Enhanced Mind, which I’m quite sure is very important and I need to work on more. Sacrificing my notebook to summon up a dwarf highlighted just how clunky the [Mental Library] system I’ve been using is. There’s got to be a way to organize this information better. I bet there’s even a skill to write on nothing with your brain.
It’s something that’s been percolating through my head during downtime. I never stop thinking about things.
“You look like you’re thinking way too hard,” Basalt observes.
“… maybe a bit,” I say. “I’m trying to see if I can convince my system interface to show the species of plants when I identify them. I crammed my [Mental Library] full of reference books but it’s not as convenient as I hoped.”
“That does sound useful. Hope you get it working.”
“Ah, yes,” Aunt Rosemary says. “I can help with that. This is, after all, my job, and you can always ask me questions.”
“I enjoy trying to figure things out myself, honestly,” I say. “But yes, at least tell me the names of the relevant knowledge skills. I did not manage to memorize the skill book and always feel like I just want to learn everything whenever I look at it. I miss being able to bring up the sum of all human knowledge at a whim.”
Aunt Rosemary chuckles. “Perhaps not the sum of all human knowledge, but you can certainly retain a lot of information and at higher levels, you can read books just by being near them. Do you have Enhanced Mind (Mental Encyclopedia) and Knowledge (Identify) yet?”
“I have Enhanced Mind (Mental Library) and Clairvoyance (Aspect Analysis),” I say. “I take it the encyclopedia does topics and not just books?”
“There’s also Enhanced Mind (Word Search),” the [Tutorial Teacher] goes on. “You can search anything in your mental knowledge base. Once you’ve leveled it up, you can even search physical books within a certain range. Needless to say, these are skills I use all day.”
“Can anyone learn these skills?” Basalt asks.
Aunt Rosemary nods. “Technically, yes. No one below Legendary rank has infinite time and Inspiration, though, so you have to pick and choose what skills you find worthwhile to learn.”
“Makes sense,” Basalt says.
“What in the world does Knowledge even do if it doesn’t let me remember that that’s an alder tree!?” I wonder. “Am I just doing this wrong?”
“Let’s discuss this further once we get back to school,” Aunt Rosemary says. “We’re almost there.”
We arrive at the Spooky Grove and head inside. The kids always love a chance to do puzzles. We let them take the first shot at that while Anise, Rowan, Basalt and me break off to go visit Estelle at the Sleepy Raven. Anise even manages to get the briars to move off the path by herself.
“I’m impressed,” I say. “You didn’t set anything on fire to get us here this time. Did you learn a new skill?”
“Oh, hush,” Anise says with a snicker. “I’ve just leveled up Sorcery (Get Out of My Way) some more.”
“There is no way you actually have a skill named that.”
“Basalt, are you scared of spiders?” I ask.
“No,” Basalt says, eying the creepy old inn. “I’m guessing this building is full of them.”
Rowan and I already know we can handle the weak spiders in the inn without a problem, so we let Basalt get some axe practice in. Rowan keeps the monsters off of me while I telepathically relay information about the spiders’ position and probable actions to Basalt. It’s good practice to coordinate in a situation that isn’t actually dangerous.
For the Elite boss spider in the basement, we all work together to bring it down. Basalt’s orcish axe cuts through limbs as if he were processing crab at a seafood market. I spend half the fight entangled in webs and have to give [Freedom of Movement] a workout in getting my movement free.
Anise goes to harvest the spider’s ichor. We let Basalt loot the chest, where he receives some coins (which he splits with us) and a pair of black leather boots that fit him perfectly and have a weak muffle effect on them softens his footsteps to whispers.
“Sweet,” Basalt says, dancing a quiet little jig that indicates he has absolutely no talent for dancing. “Dungeon loot is awesome. Where to next?”
“Upstairs,” I say. “There’s someone I want to introduce you to.”
We head back to the common room (killing the spiders that respawned in the past few minutes) and I locate the hidden staircase.
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“You don’t speak French by any chance, do you?” I wonder.
“I know bonjour, cliche, and deja vu,” Basalt replies. “All of which might apply here.”
The ghost poet deigns to become visible after we reach the top of the stairs. “Bonjour, young dwarf. I hope this cliché is not too déjà vu for you.”
“Definitely must be French,” Basalt comments. “She can pronounce the accent marks. Hello, I’m Basalt Hebron.”
“You may call me Estelle. You, too, have embraced your name in this life?”
“Sure, why not?” Basalt says. “I wasn’t very attached to being Steve.”
“Very well, Basalt Hebron. Search this floor and answer my riddle and I will teach you a skill you will find useful.”
“Oh, great, I was always bad at riddles.”
Estelle chuckles. “Your party may help you if you wish.”
I feel like the bored French ghost just does this to make people read her poetry and look at her art, because she can, but I can’t blame her even if it’s mildly annoying. After spending entirely longer than necessary poking her knickknacks for clues, we think we have the answer.
“True love,” Basalt tells her.
“Your thoughtful reply is correct,” Estelle says. “Ah, to find true love in an age when love is forgotten.”
“I don’t think people forgot love just because they have a matrilineal kinship system,” I say.
“So what skill do you have in mind?” Basalt asks.
“Tell me, Basalt Hebron. What is your heart’s desire? What do you wish to be able to do more than anything else? If you could do absolutely anything.”
Basalt thinks on that for a bit before shrugging. “I’m not picky. I’ll do whatever’s useful to support my friends.”
“You truly have no desires of your own?” Estelle presses.
“When I played RPGs, I always took on whatever role the group lacked so they could play what they wanted,” Basalt says. “Whether that was healing, picking locks, or whatever. I always wound up doing a lot of tanking, healing, farming, and crafting. Grinding is relaxing.”
“Very well. For someone who values friendship over personal ambition, I offer Enhanced Soul (Stalwart Pillar).”
“Sounds cool. What does it do?”
“You will receive bonuses to all skills you use to support your allies,” Estelle says. “As a dwarf, you may also have higher affinity with [Stalwart Pillar] then average, as well. Come. Let us relocate to the courtyard and I will guide you.”
We head downstairs (killing the spiders in the common room on the way by) and out to the overgrown courtyard. Under Estelle’s direction, Rowan lifts me up onto his shoulders, and then climbs awkwardly onto Basalt’s shoulders.
“This is a bit more literal of a pillar than I was expecting,” Basalt comments, gripping Rowan’s legs and trying not to let us tip over. “Now what?”
Estelle spends time trying to explain esoteric magical concepts in simple enough terms. We fall, several times, and rebuild the pillar each time.
“How exactly is this a soul skill?” Basalt wonders. “I feel like all I’m doing here is working on my balance and weight skills.”
“You must feel and connect with the souls of your companions, not merely their bodies,” Estelle says. “Supporting them involves a deeper level than merely holding them up. It may help to learn some Clairvoyance skills first, but I do not believe it is necessary. Feel your companions just as you do the stone you work with. Do not fret that you haven’t unlocked it right away. Continue to practice and all things are possible in time.”
We leave the inn and meet up with the others, who have been having fun climbing trees and throwing pumpkins, and we head home.
I settle back in to the library to work on Enhanced Mind.
[Mental Library] is useful but limited. It copies a literal piece of paper into your mind, but I have neither the capability of making microdots nor of reading them since the allowed resolution of [Mental Library] is limited by your Perception attribute as if you were seeing it with your physical eyes.
I can do better than this, so I start seeing about trying to unlock the [Mental Encyclopedia] skill Aunt Rosemary mentioned. Rather than strictly pages, I want to be able to store text articles with referential links to one another. I need a brain wiki. My [Mental Library] is packed with reference books at the moment, but they’re not linked in any way and they’re rather clunky to look up since it’s just the equivalent of flipping through a book.
All these reference books should be properly sticking themselves into my skills so that I can identify trees by looking at them. What’s the point of this whole system otherwise?
The only reason everyone in this world doesn’t have the sum of all human knowledge accessible from their minds at the age of seven days old is because the system puts in restrictions and requirements. They’re artificial and arbitrary, certainly, but I can understand why it doesn’t want children under 7 to use physical enhancement skills yet.
The skill doesn’t even take long to unlock.
Sure enough, a new icon (shaped like a puzzle piece for some reason) has appeared in my HUD. It looks like it has the same limit as the library, except that it’s 100 articles per skill level rather than pages. They each have a unique name denoting a topic and can hold more text as it seems to be storing text rather than just a copy of a page.
I start off with that simple 37 page tree book. I understand that someone wanted to be concise in putting exactly one tree on each page, but why didn’t they devote one of those pages to a table of contents?
Anyway, I add the page on the alder tree to my new enyclopedia. That’s fantastic. Now I’m starting to feel like a mind mage. I’d probably need to be Legendary to memorize the entirety of Wikipedia, but I can at least start at A. Or wherever.
Mind magic seems to be very close to what the system itself is made from, and many Enhanced Mind skills directly tie in to system interfaces. If the system didn’t exist, I would have been compelled to create it. It would probably have taken me longer, of course. This feels more like I’m just unlocking systems features that already exist rather than actually learning to do anything.
In any case, I spend some time inserting pages on various topics into my new [Mental Encyclopedia] and make sure to include some that mention other topics in order to test the links. I wind up gaining another two levels fiddling around with it. I am definitely fiddling more every time I have the Inspiration to do so because this is one I need to get as high as I can.
If I can read books just by being near them, that also means I can read minds just by analyzing the concepts their mind is producing. This even completely bypasses language. I can learn how to automatically translate anything. By which I mean, the auto-translator will activate for languages I have not encountered before. Because the system essentially is just Enhanced Mind pulling the strings on everything else, you know, like the brain of the operation. Because it’s your brain, duh. And from that, everything else is a controlling mechanism for other aspects of your physical and metaphysical being.
I’m pretty sure I could hack the system if I wanted to. I don’t really want to. I’m pretty sure Alexander Fizzlesnipe made the system somehow and that’s why the memories of his later life were suppressed.
I didn’t need the skillup to recognize that. And I don’t think it’s necessary. What would be the point? I’m just here to have fun in my five million and some odd incarnation. Or to live my life as Drake Corwen and seek immortality on my own terms rather than merely dismissing my existence as that I’ll just reincarnate again somewhere else.
I could probably turn on my quest log at any time. I may be able to learn to see quests and Deeds or even read someone’s ongoing quests.
Alex designed cutting edge personal devices. From laptops, phones, and tablets, to glasses that read your neural patterns. I’m not quite sure when the psychic powers showed up. It’s ancient history, forever to be remembered and never to be forgotten unless we all forget.
I’m not at all worried that the memory of creating the system was conveniently blocked off.
No, seriously, I’m not. This world is gloriously weird and beautiful and I want to do magic, build cool stuff, and fly. If I’m responsible for the system, then I clearly must have done a good job because it’s stable, intuitive, and adaptive. So if this is my game, then I’m going to enjoy playing it.
I’ve been enjoying unraveling the nature of magic myself.