CHARACTER CREATION
NAME
GENDER
RACE
APPEARENCE
ADVANCED APPEARENCE
CLASS
PROFILE
SPECIALTIES
ITEMS
START IN: Epic City
Looking at the display floating in front of me, I began flipping through preset menus of races and classes with a touch from my fingers to see what was available. As each was highlighted, a text box with some information on that particular group would pop up, as well as some optional advanced selections such as subraces. I expected to find just another generic fantasy world, but after reading some of the descriptions I found that they'd done a fair job at making even the standard demi-human races a little unique for their game. And some of their unique races were completely different. Some even grayed out the gender box. I thought to myself that they must be sexless, or maybe even able to switch like frogs or something.
Feeling that the name really should come at the end after you get a feel for the character, I moved on to race and class. There were several that sounded interesting, but one in particular caught my eye. The Feyborn were a human subrace so I wasn't surprised that I hadn't heard about them. In such a complex sensory environment, most people probably didn't even bother looking at humans. The text beside their name as I hovered on it with my finger read:
"The Feyborn are not a race unto themselves, but are mysterious individuals who are born as natural vessels for magic. While they may not even necessarily be able to shape and control the forces of magic themselves, this rare capacity to draw magic into the self often leaves them with lingering magic-like abilities. The cause of this quality is not certain, but it is rumored that some Feyborn are the distant children of the ancient ones. While at a glance they may look like humans, telltale signs of being Feyborn may include details such as unusual eyes or features."
While this description was a little vague, I flipped through some guides on the net and found that creating one was a little risky because the powers you were given were randomized. However, there was also the potential to recieve very rare and usual abilities. I decided to go for the gamble and selected it. Next was class. All of the beginning classes were basic, and subclassing came later on through in-game guild initiation. Some classes were rare because their guilds were so hard to find, a secret kept by all of their members. Figuring that Suzie could cover most of the subtleties of ruin exploration and dungeon crawling, I decided to go for warrior. A little boring, but I was pretty sure we could use the muscle early on and hook up with a mage or priest later.
As I opened up the menu for appearence, a human figure appeared in front of me with a flash of sparks. I had forgotten that I was in a virtual environment, and the surpise sent me jumping suddenly. It was male by default, and I decided to leave it. I didn't want to weird out Suzie with my first character. Apparently, this model represented what my avatar would look like in the game, and allowed me to design it from the third person. Since it was clothed only in white shorts, I figured that clothing would come with my equipment. I didn't really want to make it resemble myself, but since Suzie had done so I figured that I probably should as well. After spending around an hour tailoring it to my specifications, I couldn't help but add a few of my own little touches. I paled the skin-tone to nearly white and began adding pale blue markings. Before I knew it, I had created spiral patterns on its cheeks, around its upper back and shoulders, and around its fingernails and on its hands. Likewise, I changed the eyes to bright red and bleached the hair to white. By this time, I had spent so much time on it that I decided to call it good. From what I'd heard, though you couldn't change any of your fundamental data, you could pay a fee to a kind of "fashion shop" and retool your avatar. Likewise, I forewent filling in a background, which could be viewed by anyone and changed at any time. For items, I used my points to purchase some basic garments and a short sword. After that, I converted the rest into money and figured I'd buy some more later after I said hello to Suzi. She'd have been waiting for nearly and hour and a half already, and I didn't want to piss her off by spending forever on my character. Under specialties I quickly chose some specialty weapon skills, and on an afterthought threw a bit into Obscure Knowledge and World Lore. Those might come in handy if we had to engage in some interactions with NPC's.
After I filled in all this info I clicked okay, and it highlighted my empty name slot. I had nearly forgotten. After a moment's thought I quickly typed in "Vaddi" and clicked okay. Rearranging the letters in my name was lame... but whatever. It asked for confirmation and I double-checked everything
I wondered whether I should hit okay or make a new character. Also, I wondered what my randomly generated powers would be when I entered the game...
