With that in mind I turned to take a closer look at my future girlfriend who was just standing there in a relaxed pose, looking straight ahead. I still couldn't shake the feeling that I knew her....
So I wasn't just changing some stranger to suit my whims, but this girl would come into being once I was done. Well that was a relief! My extra-dimensional benefactor did promise it respected free will, after all.
With a murmured 'So. Let's see....', replacing the 'Name: Default' floating over the girls head with 'Name: Catharine' was the obvious first choice.
With that out of the way I prodded the menu labeled 'Visage' causing several sub-menus to appear. When working with an unfamiliar system, it was usually best to start with something simple. Eyes for example, I always liked pretty eyes, so I had plenty of practice toying around with them in a RPGs.
As it turned out the using the menus was pretty intuitive, even if the labels on some sliders were pretty odd. Seeing what changed when I adjusted them was a pretty easy way to get around that problem, though.
I had always been partial to green eyes so changing the brown iris to a deep mossy-green was an obvious first step. And an almond shape was a big improvement to the slightly sad impression the formerly downturned corners. Enlarging them a bit and surrounding them by thick black lashes definitely turned them into the girls most striking feature.
...Perfect!
With a light 'Ding' a floating "+1 Attractive" appeared over her head before fading slowly. At the same time a red "-1" dropped from a counter in the upper right corner.
Huh? It didn't just look like the character-customization from Phantasm Planet 2, but there were stat-points too? Heh! This entity really had my number. Sure, creating some kind of goddess without any restrictions whatsoever would have been nice from a wish-fulfillment perspective. But having a paragon of perfection as a significant other probably wasn't easy on your self-esteem in the long run anyway. Plus personally I really enjoy the challenge of creating the best possible character within the confines of the system.
Speaking of confines.... Yep there was a 'Flaws' menu.
I still had a lot of points left, but I always like to get the disadvantages out of the way first to know the real budget I am working with. I started with the "Mental" category because focusing on the personality first felt like a gentleman move but I was quickly disappointed: The section was pretty barren, with only a dozen or so choices available. It turned out that flaws added points to the total by lowering some stat, mostly 'Convenience'.
Unfortunately the descriptions seemed to be badly mangled in the translation from 'God-speak' to English, so I mostly skimmed the titles, skipping everything that didn't sound like my cup of tea, like 'Stutter'.
One quirks called 'Broken Mask' caught my eye, mostly because it was one of the few mental quirks with subsequent choices unlocked.
The description seemed to boil down to the system ensuring she would not feign love if there was none or vice versa. I could understand why it would net a few points for 'Inconvenience' but that kind of honesty could only be good for our relationship, and I figured she'd still be free to criticize me to my face so nothing was terribly wrong about it. Selecting it triggered a message essentially telling me to choose mental drawbacks 'with care and at my peril' before the next item down the tree turned from a greyed out box to a yellow question mark.
When I prodded it with my finger a small text appeared 'Alertness: Revealing future choice will turn past choice eternal as stone. Acceptance / Denial'. So revealing the next choice would make it impossible to get rid of "Loyal to a fault"? Meh, I could live with that.
Touching the box marked Acceptance revealed it to be "Enduring flame" mentioning the flames of love burning hot and bright for months on end once fanned unless snuffed by treachery. Well I doubt I'll ever meet a better woman than one I literally designed at a computer and ...holy moley was it worth a lot.
As always when seeing an option with low-investment and high payoff I choose it mostly by reflex. Well it basically removed casual flings from the list of romantic options, so I could understand why the flaw was considered a big inconvenience, but still: she was free to leave me if I treated her like shit or neglected her. Knowing any breakup would definitely be my fault was a big burden, but knowing I'd be spared the series of break-ups and getting-back-together some of my classmates were going through in return was definitely worth it.
The final drawback of the tree, called "Faithfull", was still worth a fair chunk of points but lacking any desire to cheat was apparently considered less of a drawback than taking your romantic commitments really serious. Well in all fairness it really wasn't that much of a change to its predecessor.
So the whole 'Loyalty-tree' as I'd dubbed it turned the whole relationship into something much more serious from her end, but didn't actually compel obedience? Nice! This tree had less of a love-slave vibe than I initially feared., and I could definitely live with the idea of the relationship being long-term! With that thought I checked "Faithfull" too.
With "Faithfull" and "Honored promise" I probably had more than enough points already, considering they were worth a dozen of first tier drawbacks. So I decided to leave it at that. I already felt a bit bad for curtailing her romantic options, because I was feeling insecure, and should definitely try to make it up by selecting some beneficent choices first.
That in mind I turned to the other available options.
