Floating in the void is a large steel circle covered in a layer of grass and soil.

Both gravity and an atmosphere seem to be present, despite this mass only having a diameter of a mere one hundred feet.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:24, Mon 10 Jan 2022.

One moment, you were all living your daily lives. Perhaps you were out at work, lounging at home, or driving in your car.

Whatever it had been for each of you, in the blink of an eye you find yourselves somewhere completely different!

In front of your eyes is a blue window, with the text (displayed in your first language):


If you squint at this window, it becomes temporarily transparent and no longer obstructs your view until you try to focus on it once more.

As each of you glance around, you see other individuals, whom you have never met, and perhaps from different countries. Will you even be able to communicate with one another?

No matter what you had been doing before, you all quickly realize you have been left with nothing but the clothes on your back, and you are in a standing position. If you had any minor injuries, you will find they have been healed.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 21:47, Tue 11 Jan 2022.

Emily stands still for a long moment, absorbing the scene.  She takes in all the information she can from every one of her senses before moving or speaking.

Sight:  She looks at the scene before her, moving her eyes to left and right as far as they'll go, but so far, she doesn't move her head.
Hearing: She quiets her breathing, listening first to the sound of her breath and her heartbeat but gradually to anything else she may be able to hear.
Touch: She concentrates on the movements of air against her face and fingers, the temperature of that air and how straight she seems to be standing.
Smell:  She breathes deep, trying to identify any smells she can.
Taste: She expects to taste nothing but she could be wrong.  Does she taste any kind of chemicals that might have been used to drug her for example.

Slowly, she begins to beat out a slow 4/4 rhythm with her curved palm against the side of her thigh.  After eight beats, she changed to 3/4 and then after nine beats she changes back.  She compares the beats with her own heartbeat.

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 2):

Vladislav boggles at the blueness before his eyes. It made no sense to be there, to be floating without a computer screen to be in. He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head a few times trying to clear it before opening them again. But the blue was still there, if briefly transparent before solidifying again. His eyes move left, then right, looking sideways at the others present. Returning to gaze directly at the blueness, he reads it very carefully.

Oh. Crap. He'd read stories that had these things in them, but had always assumed that it was merely part of the genre, a fictional construct not something actually existed.

First things first... stop hyperventilating and try to calm down.

Hmm. Trapped in a video game, and no clue if this is Hardcore mode. And it looks like we have others here. Well, let's see if this thing has a universal translator. He speaks in the language the message appeared to him used (i.e. the native Urlan he learned from his gamer parents as a means of keeping family secrets). "Slanli speka."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:44, Mon 10 Jan 2022.

"Holy shit!" the words, said in American English and in earnest exclamation carried throughout the otherwise mostly silent chamber.

A robust young man stood wide eyed along with the others. He probably stood somewhere around six and a half feet tall (200cm), but with the unusual height had also come the all too common tendency to put on weight, he was thick set in general with meaty limbs and a roundness about the middle.

With a ruddy complexion and dirty blond hair in a shaggy mane around his face, his beard was full but untrimmed, his blue eyes wide in obvious alarm.

He was dressed in cargo pants, clunky looking black boots that made him seem even taller than he was and a faded t -shirt with some kind of rune on it and the words "Amon Amarth"

"Am I dead?" He asked allowed, and glancing around wildly he spotted the others and again asked. "Are we dead?"

About the same time he was asking the others, he finally seemed to spot the gigantic, obvious message above him and he stood there reading it a few times, the growing confusion evident on his face.
This message was last updated by the player at 22:55, Mon 10 Jan 2022.

Oh, so at least one of them used the language of his long-lost daddy (not dead, just lost). I can talk with this one, regardless of the language capacity of this System, whatever it is.

"I am not sure how to make that holy, or even if it would be a good idea to do so, but for now our goal would seem to be to figure out where we are and what we are doing here." Dmitri holds out his hand. "Dmitri Reslin. Pleased to meet you."

Dmitri is smaller than this one the System HUD called "Otto Bruckner" (173 cm, or 5 feet 8 inches) and of average build wearing black dress slacks, a striped Oxford shirt, and wing tip shoes.

"Am not feeling dead. Am worrying is drugged, hallucinating," Vladislav answers Otto's question, his baritone voice bearing a strong (Russian) accent as he spoke in somewhat broken English.

He looks away from the blueness to examine the others. He is breathing in fast, shallow breaths and his heart is racing in barely controlled panic.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:32, Mon 10 Jan 2022.

"It seems we all speak English, more or less," said Emily, her own accent being close to received pronunciation, the posh British accent nobody speaks outside of the most prestigious schools, "That's a good start. I don't feel dead and I'm fairly sure I'm not drugged. not with any drug I've heard of either. There's no time distortion, my heartbeat is regular and my brain is not hallucinating any kind of background. We're in mundane reality or the virtual kind."

As Emily Khorashandi focuses deeply on her senses, perhaps to avoid rising panic, she feels a very light wind that is just a little cool, and quite refreshing.

There seems to be little or no humidity, but it is also not dry enough to discomfort the skin.

Breathing deeply results in the faint smell of freshly cut grass, which is strange because though the grass on this disc is quite short, upon closer inspection, it does not have the sharp ends you would expect from cultivated grass.

Depending on what she had last eaten, there may be some residual taste, and if she has not had the chance to brush her teeth in a day there may be slight halitosis. However, no chemical tastes or otherwise are present.

---

The first person to speak is the man in his late twenties. He does so in an uncommon language, of which most are unlikely to understand.

In that moment, a second blue window appears, overlaid in front of the previous one.


Noticeably, there is no further description at the moment.

OOC: It's my mistake, but Dmitri would not know Otto's name from his status window alone. None of you can see any status windows that are not your own.

As the others began to speak, and in English no less, the bearded man's posture relaxed a little and his eyes seemed to resume a more normal appearance.

He the began looking around with the demeanor of a person expecting people to jump out and laugh at him, or the kind of behavior one might expect from a person so just walked in on a surprise party.

"Alright...well." he said aloud and then saw the message change above them. "Huh." He reached up and pointed to the screen with a kind of "finger gun" gesture. "Did that just..."

Suddenly he seemed to remember Dmitri and went to shake his hand enthusiastically. "Oh, sorry man, Otto. Good to meet ya." he smiled broadly with lots of teeth. "Do you, ah, know what's goin' on? Cause I'm..." he trailed off and shook his head.

"We seem to have been dumped into something called a Video Game without the benefit of a manual of how to operate it. I know for me at least there's a Heads Up Display that has blips for each one of us, plus some others I'm not able to identify just yet. Somethind called System seems to have learned how to communicate with us, but I'm not sure yet if it's a good development or a bad one."

Dmitri then looks up toward the screen and says, "Mr. System, it appears you are now able to understand our communication. Are you also able to communicate with us? If you are, is there something we should call you, or will Mr. System be acceptable?"

Vladislav listens to what the others are saying, and considers what he sees. Hmm. If this was not a hallucination, how should he proceed? In the stories there was a command often used to see character sheets.

"Status," the short Russian man requested of the blue image, using that command.

As Dmitri's inquiry to the sourceless entity leaves his lips, he lingers just a single one of his heartbeats before...

DING!

Accompanied with that purely-mental sound, a third blue window appears in front of only the eyes of Dmitri.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 21:48, Tue 11 Jan 2022.

As Vladislav listens to the conversation of the others, he compares it to his knowledge from stories he has consumed before in his life.

With that, he has the idea, to say aloud 'Status'.

When he does so, a new blue window appears in front of the older ones, private to his eyes.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:40, Tue 11 Jan 2022.

Emily notes the pinging noise when Vladislav asks for his status and she considers for a moment what she in turn should ask for.  After a few moments she says, "Menu"

It did not take a genius to figure out that as the others said these things, they then stared into something that only they seemed to be able to see.

Otto glanced around a little lost before he said. "Ah...computer, Character Sheet?"

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 15):

Though his breathing and heart haven't recovered from the initial panic yet, Vladislav felt a bit more centered emotionally seeing the new screen. Not a hallucination, and a game system that he does not immediately recognize. Hmm. His gaze sweeps down the image, and back up again, taking it in. He feels slight surprise seeing his stats; everything is in such a narrow numerical range. The three stats with the highest rating jump out at him. Endurance, Stamina, and... Mystic? Huh. The first two made sense, given what he put up with day to day from his alleged 'host family,' but that last seemed to suggest something.

His gaze roams the screen until he finds his class. Uh-oh.

Soon after the first, a second window appears in front of Dmitri's eyes:
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 21:49, Tue 11 Jan 2022.

As Emily requests a menu, there is a few moments where she wonders if the term is not recognized, before the window pops up with an increasingly familiar 'DING' sound.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 21:41, Tue 11 Jan 2022.

As Otto requests a 'character sheet', there is a short period of hesitation before a familiar sound indicates the opening of a new window.
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 21:41, Tue 11 Jan 2022.

Given that he was just mimicking the others, Otto did not seem to expect the sudden pop up of information, at the very least not information about himself.

"Whoah" he said aloud, glanced over at the others, then went back to reading his own "sheet" a few times, his eyes flicking back and forth in  concentration.

After he was done, he looked back to the others. "So...what does this mean? I mean that's like, a full on character sheet, like from a game You guys saw the same thing, right?" he asked uncertainly.

In reply to Otto Bruckner (msg # 22):

The shorter, also bearded man nodded. "Ja. Have reading stories these 'systems' about. Is large genre online. Not having any idea is real, though."

The fact that he (and they) was still a human being was a relief. Being stuck in a hunk of gemstone crafting a dungeon to protect himself from adventurers seemed like it would be a nightmare.

Emily nodded.  "So, I wonder what this expanded status is.  Only one way to find out gentlemen." 

After a few moments, she added, "View Expanded Status."

Otto seemed genuinely surprised that the others had heard of this before, because he had not. "Huh, wild." when faced with the overwhelming shock of it all, what else could he do?

"Uh, right. Computer, expanded status please." he mimicked their only female.

At Emily's command, another window appears in front of her eyes

As Emily requests a menu, there is a few moments where she wonders if the term is not recognized, before the window pops up with an increasingly familiar 'DING' sound.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 22:23, Tue 11 Jan 2022.

Vladislav listens, but does not follow the trend of asking for expanded status. Instead, he waits for his body to calm down a little more and considers how one would ask the system for help files on magic. Or on skills in general, come to think of it. But that did not seem to be as standardized in the stories he recalled as the status screen was.

He stood, and thought, and glanced around while thinking.

At Otto's mimicry of Emily's command, a window quickly appears in front of him as well.

As Otto requests a 'character sheet', there is a short period of hesitation before a familiar sound indicates the opening of a new window.

Emily begins walking around in a spiralling motion, covering wider and wider, almost circles as she moves to see at what point her view expands beyond this little space.

Everyone sees as the woman known as Emily begins to walk around in a strange, spiral motion.

Whatever their opinion of her antics, she keeps up with it for quite a while, all in order to know what lays beyond this disc.

Eventually, she finds herself walking along the edge of the disc, to the northwest. Belatedly, she realizes she had not begun from the true center of the landmass, and was actually positioned slightly northwest to start.

Eventually, her clockwise motion, which is extremely accurate due to her graceful movements, has her staring over her left shoulder, directly over the edge of the world.

Unless she breaks her perfect spiral motion, the next step will send her over the edge.

What choice shall she make?

Otto regarded whatever had appeared with a wry, somewhat toothy grin, as if he found it all both amazing and amusing.

Eventually he gave a sort of exasperated laugh and threw up his hands. "Well alright, fair enough." he seemed to say to the System.

"Did, ah, you guys get a Class?" He asked, skipping past the far, farmore difficult questions like. How did this happen? Or How do we get out of here? This one at least seemed straightforward.

Still thinking to himself, Vladislav watches the lady walk, but does not comprehend what reason she might have for this spiraling path.

When Emily has gotten most of the way to the edge, he speaks. "System?" Vladislav asks the air respectfully, "help magic."

The existence of the Mystic stat seemed to him to be a clear clue that some form of magic system was available in this game world. And having it so high suggested to him that he might be wise to learn to use magic as early as possible. Thus, trying to get the help files on the subject.

Unfortunately, there is no response to Vladislav's polite request.

The Russian frowned, crossing his arms over his chest.

No help files? Hmm. Hmm.

"Nyet," he answered Otto. "No class. Just... enn slash ay."

"Yeah, same with me. That means Not Applicable, but, ya know, given the circumstances is seems pretty applicable to me." he replied to the other bearded man and paced a little, no longer rooted to where he had arrived after he saw the woman walking what seemed to laps to his eye.

After a few moments he spoke up again. "I've had some pretty wild dreams before, but man, this is the best by far." he said with a smile.

Vladislav kept quiet that he knew what it meant. He'd had to translate it from the Russian abbreviation for the term to one that an American would understand, after all. But did not care to share that with the other man.

"If not have class, why does class appear on status? Must exist in game. How to play if not having help file learn rules?"

He considered the idea of trying to do something from other games he knew, and seeing what worked. But where to begin? That he did not have a clue about. Well, make of a fool of himself trying to cast a spell without knowing the system? Perhaps. He thought some more, watching the other three while doing so.

Emily stopped spiralling and instead moved slowly around the edge of the disc, saying as she does so. "We're all on a disc. I plan to walk around and see whether there's a bridge or something or whether we just have to step off the edge and hope we don't die."

Emily completes her circuit of the disc without noticing anything beyond the edge.

Otto watched the woman for a few moments and the looked up and around as he spoke. "Well, what do you do in a video game when you are lost or wondering what you are supposed to do?" He asked nobody in particular.

"System...Journal?" He tried with a hint of hope on his voice.

Dmitri generates a list of commands that others have used successfully: Menu, Expanded Status, Character Sheet. There are other "commands" that he wants to try, but first, he goes through each of the "known" commands in the order listed above:
"Menu"
"Expanded Status"
"Character Sheet"

Once the information from these known commands is obtained, he tries another, "Map"

Another window appears in front of Dmitri, after he tests for that command.

OOC: See Game Map :)

Dmitri adds "Map" to the list of "Approved Actions" he is working on. He tries another: "Rename World Urlan"

There is no response.

"So I don't get to fully rename things. Oh well. Let's try this: Designate Urlan as alternate name for World."

There is no response.

If the World doesn't want to be renamed, even just for me, I will respect that for now. But time for another attempt.

"Attach Node to World."

After his own attempt has seemingly failed, Otto was silent for a time as Dmitri tried his rapid fire commands with more luck.

"Uh...alright. System quests? System objectives?" he tried and kind of gave a shrug to the others.

At Dmitri's continued probing of the system, his third remark finally results in something, after a fairly short gap.

DING


Unlike Dmitri, Otto's first attempt results in a success.

DING


Furthermore, an additional window pops up after a brief few moments of pause...

DING

"What have you got guys?" Asks Emily before re-examining her own status to try to get some idea of her capabilities.  "Hmm, mean just over 3.5 and SD just under 1.5 with a spread of 1.5, those look pretty random to me.  My highest are 'sense', 'intelligence' and 'vital' and my lowest 'mystic' and 'resistance'  Has anyone seen an explanation of the stats because most of those don't really make sense to me?"

After a pause she tried. "Help Stats"

In reply to Emily Khorashandi (msg # 49):

(Presuming that Emily is back close by when she asked that)

"High stats mine 'стойкость,' 'выносливость' and 'мистический,'" the Russian man answered Emily.

"Notice range quite narrow. Umm... 1d4+1 looking like. Not seeing any file game mechanics on yet. If like stories system about, am expecting some form point buy system of for advance skills, maybe advance stats."


OOC: Presumably translated by that max interpretation skill, the stats would be "stamina," "endurance," and "mystic" in that order.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 12:43, Wed 12 Jan 2022.

Suddenly Otto looked a little excited, he perked up and smiled and moved a few steps towards Dmitri. "Oh! Hey, Dmitri right? Did you get that Quest?" He asked excitedly and reached out to try to put a hand on his shoulder in a friendly way.

"This thing says that the first person to discover and activate all the System commands gets a title!" The First Archivist of System" he explained.

"So that box that says Title on our sheets? I bet you could get that one...saw you kind of repeating them over here. Also says that it causes a little penalty with the God of Order, so, yeah, cool." he nodded up at the screen as if they were finally making progress, talking all the while loudly enough for the others to easily hear.

"Says it expires in 24 hours though. Not really my thing, being known as the Archivist" he explained off hand with a grin and a shrug.

Noticing the others talking about their own Sheets, and Emily's general question about what the others had, he made his way a little closer to them.

"You have low Mystic you said? Me too, and Sense...and Speed" he admitted without seeming too concerned about that fact. "Strength and Luck though, I'm your man." He grinned and then seemed to remember himself. "I'm Otto by the way...isn't this wild? I mean...wow." he looked up and around again, obviously excited.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:40, Wed 12 Jan 2022.

Dmitri'a expression is a cross between excitement and confusion. He sees that Otto has responded to his overtures and switches into helpful mode.

"I didn't get the quest log, but that's probably because I haven't asked for it yet. I did get the map, and have apparently created a Node, but my Map still doesn't have it attached to the World yet. I guess the word "Attach" does not compute with this parser.

"Rather than have you try to relate the quests to us all, I will ask for it in a bit. But first, I want to know how this Node I created relates to where we are now."


Dmitri now looks vaguely upward, toward where he sees these display screens, and says, "Display Node on Map"

Emily checks her status once more and nods to Otto. "Do you remember how it felt to be you before you came here?  Do you feel the same?"

She smiles, "Let's see what we know." Then she begins systematically going through commands.  "View Simple Status... View Expanded Status... Link Node to System... Map... Quests... classes... define stats..."

She gives the system time to respond or not to respond to her commands one after another.

"Have I missed anything we've tried already?" she asks.

"Designate and Rename seem to be outside of the parser's capabilities, and Attach Node resulted in a creation of a Node but I haven't seen any evidence it actually attached yet."

"What is 'Node?'' Vladislav wanted to know. Possibly an earthnode, like in Rolemaster books? Or an elemental creature, like in Swordbearer? He was not sure what Dmitri meant by the term.

"I meant it as a new place for us to travel here, but as it has not appeared on the Map, I don't know what it actually is. Whatever it is, I now have skill in creating it."

Vladislav looks interested, thoughts churning in his skull. He ran his fingers over his bearded chin. So... a node was like a waypoint? Think of the Unshaped, the Fair Folk in raw chaotic form, and the multiple places they exist as. A node than might be a single such location.

He tried a command. "System? Please create node 'circus'. System, connect south exit here to 'circus.'" He reasoned that designating where the new node attached to the current one might aid in traversing it.

In reply to Emily Khorashandi (msg # 53):

"Oh yeah" he replied when she asked him if he remembered everything. "It was just like, five minutes ago. I went I to the back room of the shop and flicked on the lights and, bam, here I am with you guys" he explained.

"I don't really feel any different honestly." he scratched idly at his beard. "Just...excited."

He looked around again. "Guess it's just trial and error eh? System!" He called out to the ceiling.  "Options? Start?"

When Emily speaks aloud, "Help Stats", there is a brief pause before a window presents itself before her.

---

When Dmitri declares, "Display Node on Map", a message window appears before him, with no hesitation whatsoever.

---

As Emily works through a list of known commands, many of them respond to her.

When she says, "View Simple Status", the following screen appears to her:


When she says, "View Expanded Status", the following screen appears to her:


When she says, "Link Node to System", there is no response.

When she says, "Map", the following screen appears before her:



When she says, "Quests", the following screen appears to her:


When she says, "Classes", the following screen appears to her:


When she says, "Define Stats", there is no response.

"OK, so while it seems I've been given the ability to create a Node, no node has actually been created yet. Let's fix that."

"Caretaker Voice of System! Create Node Dmitri1 and connect it to the north of World."

At Dmitri's command, a new window appears before him.

"Curses!"* swore Emily.  "Looks like I've had a luck point docked for an overly invasive enquiry and further inquiries will cost greater penalties.  There are limits to what we can ask."

*She actually swore in Persian but the System translated it.

A tall, lanky man of South East Asian descent walks up to the small knot of people trying out commands. He is wearing a loosely tied, dark purple satin dressing robe with Chinese dragons embroidered across it, and quite probably nothing underneath it, given the fresh toothpaste smearing his face.

He may look vaguely familiar to you.

"Finally, somebody around here actually trying to figure things out. All these other losers are just standing around with their thumbs up, you know what I mean? So what have you guys figured out so far?"

He starts to copy Emily's command list, but then hears her expletive. ""View Simple Status... View Expanded Status..."

Then, shrugging to himself, he tries a few more:

"Open Options....Open Inventory....Assign Hotkey Commands. Access Debug menu?"

As Arjun, a man who seems to have walked up from nowhere as he was certainly not seen before, inject himself straight into the conversation as if it's his birthright, while wearing nothing but a bathrobe.

Immediately, a private screen presents itself to him, as if it had been waiting for one such as himself to show up.

Casually scratching his practically bare chest, he nods. "Right, well, that makes sense. Show detailed error log?"

Turning to the group, he asks another question, even though no one had responded to his last question. "What's this stuff you guys are doing? Nodes? What are those?"

Emily takes another deep breath, trying to find out whether the cut grass smell still remains and whether it's getting stronger.  She bends down to check the grass beneath her feet.  Does it feel real?  Are the blades identical or sufficiently different to be convincing as real grass albeit much shorter than usual?

It seems every time Arjun speaks, he is answered with a smile by the System.


Strangely, soon after the first message, a second appears.

A loud DING resonates, for everyone to hear... That's unusual.

Otto noted to new comer and kind of jerked his chin up towards him. "How's it goin? I'm Otto" He gestured up to the ceiling. "All trial and error over here man."

And when Emily said that she had been docked a point he looked mildly surprised. "Huh, well that's good to know. Wonder how you get that back?"

He rubbed at his beard again. "I'm still in like, video game mode, ya know? Like you got your main screen, and you have all these options and extras and stuff, but there is no like...New Game. We have sheets, looks like maybe we're in character creation?"

He noted that Emily seemed to have paused after she had last said "Classes".

"System, Classes?" And if that succeeded and after he had seen what there was to be seen he tried. "System, Class selection?"

It seemed that the new guy was making progress at least.

As Emily breathes deeply, the same pleasant smell still lingers.

However, as she bends down to inspect the grass, she gets a sharp whiff of a metallic scent.

As she carefully looks at, and feels the blades of grass with her fingertips, she quickly notices something quite weird...

Every single blade of grass is identical to the last.

By all means, this should be impossible. But she cannot find a single difference. It is unsettling, in the very least.

Still, this is not artificial grass, and she can tell this from both the shape and the texture. It is unclear how this could have occurred...

As Emily stands back up, she realizes she had been staring so intently at the grass that she had missed the sound of a new window appearing before her.

A window appears before Otto, as well.

Otto did not seem very surprised at the results, but instead cross how meaty arms across his chest and shrugged. "Ah, well...not the first time I've been told I don't have any class." he smirked and looked to the others.

"Any idea what those loud sounds were?" He asked and meandered a little closer.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:08, Wed 12 Jan 2022.

Arjun offers his fist to bump with Otto's, clearly prepared to do some extremely complicated fist-bump routine. "Arjun. How did you end up landing this gig?"

He eyes Emily's examination of the grass, and then at his own bare feet, which he uses to pick up a few clumps of grass, and then raises it, first to his hand, then continues to lift his foot higher, until he can bring the blades of grass between his toes right up to eye level.

(I attempt to assess whether our stats are already in effect, or if I still have my real-world levels of physical and mental capacity)

Nodding at Otto's comment about being in the new game mode, he informs the group, "I got an error message saying that we can't access our Inventories until we purchase it from The Marketplace, so I don't think we're at character creation. I think we might be in the...."

The idea occurring to him vividly, interrupting his own thought. He calls out to the general space around him. "Hey, no problem, Voice of System. But, like, if this is the Waiting Room, is there a list of Active Servers or Teams we can join? And can I make a new quest for all these punks here to try, too?"

He casually gestures to the entire disc.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:19, Wed 12 Jan 2022.

Arjun manages to lift his leg rather high, but not quite to his eye level. Still, he noticeably doesn't feel too strained from the maneuver. It is also a little surprising that he feels like he has a solid grip on all the grass blades, even though he is using his feet.

Then, as Arjun speaks up to the Voice of System, something strange occurs...

An extremely large window appears in the center of the disc. No matter where everyone stands, they all have a perspective as if it is directly facing them.

Arjun and Emily both note that despite the distance, they are having no problems reading the text even without moving any closer to the window.


This message was last edited by the GM at 23:25, Wed 12 Jan 2022.

The message sobered Otto up quite a bit.

Where as before he seemed to be treating this whole situation like some kind of strange lucid dream, but the specific warning about treating this any anything other than reality was timely, and it seemed that he took it seriously.

"Well." He said, his arms still crossed. "Clears that up." he said as he looked back to there others.

"I guess that means we can starve, and that we're gonna need sleep, and that we'd better find a way out of here sooner than later." he mused aloud. "But how?"

Arjun's eyebrows furrow in concern. "We're also going to need weapons if we're gonna complete this quest to save each other's lives. I would say it's time to start punching trees and collecting sticks, but I'm not seeing any of those around here. We need to find something fast, too, before whatever baddies are around here attack us."

He looks around for a potential weapon.

"Hey, System? Can I get a weapon? Is there a Craft Menu?"

He also tries to minimize some alerts, and move other ones around so they're not blocking his line of sight.
This message was last edited by the player at 23:47, Wed 12 Jan 2022.

Though he finds that he cannot move the alert from directly in front of him, Arjun learns that pressing any corner of the alert results in it being closed. It seems there is no 'minimize' function.

The entity known as "Voice of {System}" does also not respond to his inquiries on crafting menus.

Vladislav listens, mentally noting that the others were far more successful at discovering uses for the System than he was. He glowered at the big window upon reading the mention of observers.

Reluctantly, the Russian man requested "Extended Status," and "Classes" to see what the others had. If this was some kind of life or death show for an unknown audience, taken against their will, well, he'd need to see what he had to work with for acting. And hope against all odds that he wouldn't end up as sausage, something's poop, or worse in the end. With his past, Vladislav had no illusions about being 'the chosen one' or the like.

Dmitri glares at the newest "window" in disgust before shaking it off and addressing the newest person to land on "World".

"Nodes are proving to be a source of frustration. I got the skill to create them, but not the permission to add them here. Also, there are apparently Node Types that need to be determined. Unless we're supposed to be on this circle for the entirety of our existence, we need to find a way to connect other places to this circle.

"To that end, I will be working on this Node thing. I would suggest others take this time to figure out how to bring food, water, and shelter to us. Weapons can wait, as it's just us right now and I don't see any hostile intent from anyone here.  Regardless, please share any useful commands you think should be done by others."

Dmitri sighed, hoping for insight or luck in his self-imposed quest. "Display Node Types"

"I don't know, I really liked the weapons idea personally." Otto chimed in and glanced to Arjun. "I think that's gonna be one of my first priorities once we get out of here."

When the conversation turned to what else they could work on, Otto continued to muse. "So we're not in staging, or creation or anything like that, it's like, game on." He began. "But there's no obvious place to go..." he heaved something like a sigh. "And we don't want to annoy the System with...spam..." He added thoughtfully.

"System...Party?" He asked experimentally.

A window faithfully appears in front of Vladislav, as he repeats one of the found commands.


Then, another one, as well.
This message was last edited by the GM at 01:18, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

At Otto's words, a new alert appears in front of his eyes.


And with that,

Arjun interrogates Vladislav without preamble. "Classes? You guys have got classes?"

---

Listening to Dmitri, Arjun protests, "Dude, look around! We could form a chain with our arms extended and practically touch both ends of this place! How are we supposed to find water? How do you even know these Node things are new locations? We all need to work on finding a way out of here. And weapons."

---

In reply to Otto, Arjun worries aloud, "I dunno, man, that quest we just got was timed. I assume that means we'll have to protect each other at some point before the quest times out. If this is some kind of game show, then they'll give us most of the two hours to get ready, but not all of it."

---

After taking a breath, Arjun glances at Emily, who has been entirely preoccupied with the ground for reasons one can only imagine, frowns at an uncomfortable thought, and asks the group generally, "Can you all see her? Can everybody see all the people who are here, and only those people?" He points at Emily directly. Then he points at each of the others, indicating that he can see them as well.

He shivers, mildly worried that he might be seeing a ghost or another layer of reality where a second group of people entirely were being subjected to this same nightmare. He studied Emily, trying to learn what he could of her by her bearing and curious inquiries.
This message was last edited by the player at 13:42, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

"No classes. Is... odd. But am seeing comments gods from. Gods of rage, light, lies. Maybe am supposed be cleric in party, heal people?"

With that said, an idea percolates into his thoughts. Another item in his status might help in that direction, along with his apparently high Mystic score.

"System, cast Creoc Aquador," he said, using the basic words for 'create water' in the roleplaying game World Tree. A system that had excellent healing magic, in his opinion, though for his first attempt at a spell he went with something else useful.

Otto fell silent as he did some quick reading, then spoke up. "Yes, invite Arjun to party." He said experimentally, then looked to Dmitri.

If the command worked, he would attempt it again with Dmitri, the only other person he knew the name of this far.

"Hey man, heads up, I just lost that title Quest because I found a new command without accepting it, so if you want that title, I would officialy accept it." he advised helpfully, including the general group in the discussion.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:36, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Turning to Arjun, a slight facepalm (minus the palm) flashes across his body. "I'm trying all aspects I can think of to determine how to use this Node skill I was told I had. I was suggesting that others do something similar for the things we need."

The fact this Node thing seems to be going nowhere, he temporarily turns to a different source of information he has been wondering about and has been referenced. "Caretaker, Quests."

Arjun considered for a minute, then attempted to make the ASL hand sign for "Quest." He had studied ASL early in his career, so that he could make some extra cash as a stage translator. At least there was always a stage, usually cameras. They weren't exactly pointed at him, but at least it was regular, paid work, and it was on a stage.


While he waited to see if the system would respond to ASL, he said to the group, "It's a resource we have at our disposal. It might give bonuses or something. Somebody should take it. Or, I guess I think we should all take it, if there's no failure penalty."

Possibly needing to verbalize the command first, Arjun checked details for the quest Otto spoke of. Checking first to make sure everyone had the same option, and that there was no failure penalty, he accepted the First Archivist.

Nodding to Node-guy (Dmitri), Arjun tried to assess our other options. "Fair. You got Nodes covered. What is everybody else working on that will either get us defended or get us out of here?"

With a prick of self-doubt, he realized that he hadn't actually found anything useful to do yet in those regards, either. "I'll...uh, I'll try to find a weapon."

He proceeds to investigate the grassy disc for possible weapons, going so far as to reach the edge of the disc, and try to look beneath it.

In Arjun's mind, a DING is heard along with a sudden alert.

---

As Vladislav says that, he feels a strange sensation in the back of his head, before...

Two simultaneous loud DINGs emerges from him, audible to those near him or those with high SENSE. They are accompanied with alerts.

---

At Otto's words, a screen suddenly appears in front of Arjun.

---

The system responds to Dmitri with an alert window.

Arjun successfully opens the Quest menu using ASL, and finds the following.


Afterwards, another window appears before him with a DING


Afterwards, he takes some time to stalk the disc, and as expected, finds nothing on the surface of the disc.

As he circles the disc, he glances over the whole perimeter, and eventually finds something of note. The disc has a metal bottom, upon which rests the dirt and strange grass. It is not very thick whatsoever, only about six feet down.

Yet, it is not tipping despite the weight of those resting on it.

Vladislav smiled upon reading his alerts. But did not immediately act on what they offered. Instead, he tried another three spells seeking to unlock more options, perhaps skills.

"Cast Kennoc Magiador," he said, attempting World Tree's version of 'detect magic' through the verb Kennoc (to know or to divine) and the noun Magiador (magic).

"Cast Mutoc Locador," was his next magical action, trying to move himself by magic half a meter upward and then land as if he had jumped. Mutoc, the verb for change in World Tree's magic system, combined with Locador, the noun for elemental position or location (also covering volume).

And finally, "Cast Healoc Herbador," trying to magically heal the grass where he'd landed (or at least stepped on hard).

Arjun runs his fingers through his hair, trying to rub a little stress out. "I didn't get that Archivist Title quest. So, we don't all get the same quests."

He pauses, his frown deepening. "But you all got the Defend Your Friends quest, right?"

---

Failing to hide his grin, he starts signing as he continues to talk. "First level in a skill is really easy to acquire. I made one handsign, and it gave me the skill."

Letting himself have a small moment of fun in the midst of this stress, he tried to accept Party Invitation as part of the movements of his hands. Learning how to access information and react to quest prompts without anyone noticing could be an important skill. If there were "observers," and "gods," but it was only just this group on the platform, this could end up a cage fight. Or....no, given the range of skills they'd learned about already, this was more likely going to be far more machiavellian. Subtly could well be worth practicing.

---

Peering over the edge, Arjun pulls up some grass blades, and then tosses them over the edge one at a time, trying different angles and distances. "Uh, party members? Team? Dudes? Come check this out."

As Vladislav takes full advantage of this opportunity by attempting more spells from that same game system, a number of audible DINGs follow.

Anyone paying close attention will note four in total, with two being given for the final statement.

---

Meanwhile, Arjun's uses ASL to accept Otto's party request. After doing so, a private alert appears before him.

---

In an attempt to further his study of this strange platform, Arjun picks up a blade of grass and tosses it over the roughly-northern edge.

However, he does not have the time to do much more research because as he does this...

A private screen appears before each individual on the island!


At that moment, in front of the eyes of everyone, the blade of grass tossed over the edge seems to warp impossibly.

Before any of your eyes can refocus on that spot, you find yourself facing another disc platform, made of an entangled series of large, thick, verdant roots!

Otto blinked a few times as his eyes refocused on the new platform. He glanced around warily, as if expecting some of changes to have occured, but in the end it was just the new disk and the tangled roots upon it.

"Nice." He smiled to Arjun. "Good find."

He approached slowly, then seemed to recall something. "Wait, you got a Defend your Friends Quest?" He asked, and said "Quests" once more to check his own before he moved too much further.

Dmitri moves toward Arjun at the edge of the disk. As he does, he says to everyone and no one all at once: "I got no quests at all. Lucky me."

He looks at the new entangling platform. Thinking this might be a Node, he kept it in the background of his thoughts for now. What he apparently needed was something he thought he already had: an explanation of this Create Node skill.

Apparently, Display is outside the parser's vocabulary, so he chose to ask for what he wanted directly: "Please explain the Create Node skill."

Hearing the notification dings as the Russian checked to see if he was the cleric, Arjun had a thought. The TV show he'd been on for the last five seasons had been set in a college for magicians, and they had developed this set of complicated hand movements as the way they cast magic in the show. He had never read the books they were based on, not wanting it to interfere with the way he portrayed his character, but apparently the book never actually specified how the magic was actually cast. Which, when you think about it, was a pretty weird omission from a book about people learning to cast spells. Anyway, the hand gestures had been fun to practice, and with his background in ASL, he'd had an easier time than most in getting down the rhythm and the isolated finger movements.

As he continued to peer over the edge, he made some of the gestures from the show, incorporating the word in ASL for what he hoped to cast, "Light"

His efforts were somewhat overshadowed by what happened to the blade of grass. His jaw gaped at the new landscape.

After a moment's pause, he asks, "I think that happened because I threw a blade of grass over the edge. Does anybody have any jewelry?" He gestures to his bathrobe. "I took mine all out right before I... got here. I wonder, if we toss over something else, will that determine what the 2nd piece of land will be made out of?"

After making sure everyone hears him tell them what he's going to do, Arjun begins walking the periphery of the Roots Disc, both trying to get a sense of its size and to scout out the new territory.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:19, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

"Have not looked quests yet," the Russian admits. "But classes unlocked now."

He walked towards the edge with the new disc, but stayed on their original one, watching Arjun with a critical eye as the man in the bathrobe moved.

"Sorry, I gave up jewelry for Lent." He waits for laughter from the group, but it isn't as raucous as he expected. "Well, it's a pretty funny joke where I come from."

Fortunately, the rules of business casual dress required a t-shirt under the Oxford, so Dmitri took his shirt off and tossed it off the disk in a different direction from where the root maze had appeared.

Arjun makes the ASL gestures to pull up the quest, and reads it to the group.

"New Quest Offered: Defend Your Friends. Mission : protect their lives. Time Limit: 2 Hours, Other Conditions: N/A. Acceptance Reward: Moderate increase in reputation with Guest Observer: God of Light, and so on. There's a rejection penalty, a failure penalty, and a reward listed. It also repeats who gave me the quest."


He looks worriedly at Dmitri and Otto. "You guys didn't get the quest? Hey, Russian Cleric Dude? Congrats on being a cleric, by the way. How many skills did you have to... No, you know what, this isn't the time to get distracted. Did you get the Defend Your Friends quest?"

As he sees the refutation in their faces, Arjun gets slightly more desperate to find something he can use as a weapon on the new Root Disc.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:30, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Arjun's movements are quick, sure-footed, and powerful. He's obviously had some kind of body training, but at the same time he seems to be surprised at his own strength and speed.

As Otto double-checks his quest menu, he finds the following:

---

Meanwhile, Dmitri makes a direct inquiry to the system.

---

Meanwhile, Arjun reflects on the Russian man's actions, and mixed with his own inspiration from working on his big break, he decides to emulate him and try something...

As he says the word "Light", screens appear before him, as well with two audible DINGs.

---

Meanwhile, as Dmitri's joke does not land, he decides to take off his shirt instead.

And like before, a second private screen appears before each of you.


As Dmitri tosses his shirt in the other direction from the grass patch, it seems to stretch out impressively and then uncannily and then shockingly large until it has become a blanket half the size of the original disc!

You watch as it plummets down as if slammed, completely ignoring air resistance, and also not causing any wind to be displaced...

Once it lands, it seems to writhe and roil for a short period before it becomes hazy.

As you look at it once more, there now exists a third disc. This one is made of unidentified fabrics, but the color is the same single hue as whatever color Dmitri's shirt most was.

It is tied together in the same way as the root island, interestingly...

The sight of a medium blue fabric disk slightly revolts Dmitri, but the fact that there were places to go besides the basic disk mollified him somewhat. He steps onto the fabric disk and watches for new alerts.

Eyeing the fabric landscape, Arjun comments woefully, "I hope these vines are edible. And juicy. Because this is all the landscape we're getting for the day. You all got the same notices, yeah?"

"Yup" Otto replied as he closed out his Quest screen and regarded the second disk.

"Man, I don't know about you guys, but this is all new to me. Like nothing I've seen in any game or movie, nothin' I've even read about." he told them as he meandered towards the "island of roots" and stepped into it.

He looked for any structure among the roots that might feasibly be used as a weapon, some straight bit of root that could be easily gripped and perhaps swung.
Something baseball bat sized would have been ideal, but he was not about to get his hopes up. And even if he did find what he was looking for, he would need to break it loose...

"This is some serious post production $#@! for sure. Those fabrics look like they might be different kinds. Maybe some of them could be used for armor or crafts or something."

Arjun continued to investigate the Root Disc for weapons, while also trying out additional possible spells. Since he had tried Light, he also tried casting Dark, and then the four elements, and then adding Wood, in case the programmers were those kinds of people. He tried using "Cut," to slice the vines. After a bit, he also tried casting, "Summon Blade," and "Weave Pants" on the roots, just for good measure.

"Can you think of any other uses for any of this stuff?"

He struggled between staying on task for his quest, and trying to stay creative and open to possibilities, but it was hard. Possibly, he was just getting tired from trying the magic.
This message was last edited by the player at 12:32, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Emily continues with observation. She stands and licks her finger to test the direction of the slight wind now that an extra piece has been added and 'direction' actually has some meaning.

She asks for status and checks quests and classes before moving to the new matted extension and slowly and carefully exploring that.

Emily frowned as she examined the vines, in great detail.  Trying to tear them, trying to break parts off, checking among the roots, smelling everything.  Then she goes back to the grass dish and tries digging down between the grass, checking whether there is soil or metal underneath and if the latter, whether any of it is loose.

After a bit of walking, Arjun returns to the group. He continues to sign in ASL as he talks, because it was, frankly, stupid that the system had only assigned him a single level. He'd been using sign language professionally for years! It just irked him to imagine that rank one skill on his character. And he didn't have ANY other skills yet? Right, because the game didn't care who you were before this, it just assigned you stats like it knew you.

Of course, it's not like the rest of that sheet knew anything about him. What was that BS about his Alignment? F@$& whoever wrote that. That dude was an entire douche canoe, paddles and all. Where did that dude even get off?

With a shake of his head, he dismissed the tangent as best he could. Were the others staring at him? How long had he been standing there running through a gorram interior monologue?

"Uh, okay, so.... pretty sure that Root Disc and Shirt Disc are the same size, even though one was made with a single blade of grass and the other was made with...."

He looks at everybody, just to confirm his assumption visually.

"....an entire shirt. It's not based on volume or shape or anything. When we get another Daily Expansion Slot, we should think about what we want to try, and where. Until then -- does anybody have any way of checking the time, besides my quest countdown? Until then, it's safe to use the edge of the disc as a latrine. I'm going to try to tear stuff up and make something for a bit of privacy near one of the edges, to make using the latrines better."
This message was last edited by the player at 12:45, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

"Make it as close to the Shirt disc as possible," suggested Emily. "Because that's one use for the fabric -  bog roll!"

She grinned and then added, "Also we should pace the discs as we add them.  Beginning with a new shirt disk next to the vine disc and a new grass disk next to the shirt dish, but we drop them off from the first disk, not the new one.  Fill the space around the first one until it's as full as we can get it before we start dropping outside the new discs, which I imagine might produce even smaller discs, working to test the assumption that we're in a fractal space."

In reply to Emily Khorashandi (msg # 107):

"Why fractal? Shirt disc looks same size grass disc as," Vladislav commented.

That each created 'node' was circular suggested some things to him as well, but not things that he wanted to try and test.

Emily nodded, "The shirt disc is half the radius of the original disc, so is the vine dish.  That's what we would expect from a fractal set.  I would expect nodes grown from the first level discs to be half the diameter of the shirt disc while those thrown from the origin disc would be the same size.  then the same would be repeated until, at infinity, we get new discs of zero size. With a circular fractal eventually, the space fills in and we get a composite disc of a radius infinitesimally less than twice the radius of the original disc and with all of the spaces almost but not quite filled in.  If this is true, then there's a limit to the space we find ourselves in."

Arjun relaxes as Emily demonstrates that she's in the same reality as everyone else. And British, apparently. Didn't see that one coming.

He continues to sign as he speaks.

"Dropping new Expansions off Grass Disc for as long as possible makes sense, though you'll have to track all this fractal math stuff for me." Arjun said, continuing his quiet campaign to establish nomenclature. "Though I was thinking we should intentionally try to make them overlap. Maybe literally throw something down with one foot on two discs. And I don't like the idea of making more root discs and fabric discs, unless we come up with really really good uses for any of that stuff. If Classy here can summon water, we should make that one of the next expansions." He gestures to Vladislav.

After pausing for a moment, he adds, "Oh, and for right now, I'm gonna call that direction Rootward. That way is Clothward. And, um.....that way is Acutely, and that way is Obtusely. Wait, no, I got those mixed up, that way is Obtusely, right? Until somebody comes up with anything better. So I'm going to try to rig up a latrine on the Acute side of Cloth Disc, right in the triangle."

"Also, I think these discs are double-sided. If we can make 10 ft, or 3 meters' worth, of rope, we can climb down and investigate further. With all the freaky nonsense that we've seen already, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a big ole' pond and a lake house on the other side. With a basement that should erupt through on this side, I bet. But the expansion sort of distracted me."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 13:26, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Arjun would also like someone's help to verify how sound travels, now that the possible distance between each other had doubled, how much volume is required to hear somebody. At 200 ft, most actors would be able to project loud enough to be heard in a theater, but the acoustics there were specifically designed to enable that. He'd only ever performed on an open stage using a mic. He knew how to project his voice, but he'd never had to do so in a gorram survival situation before.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:20, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Soon after the vine disc opens up, Arjun heads towards it to search for weapons.

While doing so, he tries to repeat his partial successes with the "Light" spell...

"Dark" causes an audible sound to echo, and an alert to appear.


"Fire" causes an audible sound to echo, and an alert to appear.


"Earth" causes an audible sound to echo, and an alert to appear.


"Water" causes an audible sound to echo, and an alert to appear.


"Wind" causes an audible sound to echo, and an alert to appear.


"Wood" causes an audible sound to echo, and an alert to appear.


Cut does not cause any response.

"Summon Blade" causes an audible sound to echo, and an alert to appear.


Weave Pants does not cause any response.

---

Meanwhile, Emily tries to test in which direction the slight wind is moving. It appears to be coming from the direction that would be your right if you were facing the grass disc.


Then, she repeats some common commands.




As Emily moves to the Grass Disc, where Arjun is, she begins to pull at the vines. They come free with a little bit of difficulty. Feeling the weight and texture of the piece she severed, it appears to be hollow, and is quite soft. It is rather dry despite being soft.

It has a diameter of maybe six inches, but more than that is probably the hollow part. It smells quite like leaves or other vegetation. It doesn't have any sweet or savory scent that most edible plants would have. Then again, it also doesn't seem particularly harmful.

Though she doubts it has any nutrition, she has a feeling it is not poisonous or anything.


She then gets on her hands and knees and sniffs around, which is a bit dog-like in behavior,  but she does notice something different about this island compared to the original one. This island is made entirely of these vines. They appear to be wrapped together in some sort of woven pattern.


Emily also notices they are a yellowish-green in color, which is notably different from the stark green hue of the grass on the first disc.


By peering over the edge, Emily can see that this island goes down a solid twelve feet, which is deeper than the first island.

---

Nearby, Arjun begins to perform ASL at the same time that he speaks his words aloud. It is not too difficult to multitask this way, since this is often how ASL is used, to translate for others. Thus, translating for himself is even somewhat easier than that!

Still, he is forced to speak a little slower and concentrate a little more, now that he is packing a lot more information together.

Otto stooped near the center of the grass circle and began breaking the vines in the area around where he squatted into easily carried sections, and as he did so he consciously worked his way down towards the "core" of the disk on the off chance that the material was harder in the center.

"I figure some of this might let us get a fire going at least." he said to anybody who happened to be nearby. "No skills yet for me, still no class. Any luck with those Nodes Dmitri?" he asked as he worked.

He congratulated the other bearded man when it became know that not had a class as Otto took an armload of vine sections and dumped them on the center platform.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:09, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Emily takes a single section of vine back to the central disk.  She says to Arjun in passing, "If we could find a way to close off the bottoms, we could use these for storage."

She continues with her explorations though by tracing the wind back to its apparent source and then moving her hands and face up and down to see if she can estimate whether the wind is coming in at ground level or higher and whether there is any difference in wind speed depending on height.

Then she digs down into the grass until she reaches the base.  In particular she is looking for soil, rock, or metal.  Once she has reached her conclusions about that, she returns to Arjun and asks, "What result did you get from your experimental use of the elements etcetera.  Would you like to share it with the rest?"

Hearing of Emily's discovery, he suggests, "We should see if those can hold knots to close off the end. Maybe Russian Cleric Dude can summon water, now that he's picked his class? At the very least, while they're still soft, we can braid these to form ropes and that privacy screen."

"As for the magic stuff, yeah, I think I found some important things. We should grab everybody real quick to discuss."

As he walks back with Emily, he introduces himself. "I'm Arjun, by the way. Is that a Yorkshire accent? I studied British accents for a while, but lately I've been getting cast as an American." He tries to entertain Emily with his different accents as they make the brief journey.

---

Returning from his explorations of the Root Disc, Arjun wraps his purple satin dressing robe around himself once more, retying the sash. He sticks his hand in one of the pockets, first to check to make sure they're empty, and then to covertly open the Party menu by spelling it in ASL, hidden from view.

After returning from his tromp through the roots, having found a weapon of a sorts, he gathers the group, making sure that Vladislav is there to contribute.

"Okay, folks, we should talk about magic. Classy Russian Guy and I have found out some stuff, but I don't know this gamer stuff very well. So, like, I'm using the hand gestures from a TV show to cast magic, and I'm getting success prompts and options to join classes, but I don't think I'm going to be able to successfully cast spells until I pick a class. [directed to Vladislav: ] What are you using for magic, Classy Dude? I've discovered elemental mage classes based on the four Western elements, plus Light Mage, casting Darkness gave me an option called Warlock, Wood gave me Druid, and then I tried to summon a blade, and that worked, that gave me an option: Magic Swordsman."

Arjun tries to see extra information about Magic Swordsman without seeing the class, asking (verbally, this time), "System, will you please show me expanded information on Magic Swordsman without me needing to take the class?" He then looked around to see if anyone had suggestions for more effective language for the query.

"So, first, is everybody going to join Otto's party? There's probably some team tracking options there that might be useful. Second, you should all try casting something, and if you don't get a notification, tell us what your Mystic score is. Those of us who can take magic classes should probably do that."

"But, also, I need ideas on how to further explore this Magic Swordsman class idea. Like, what does that imply about the other available options? When I play computer games -- which this isn't, but it's the only framework I can think of to give me ideas -- when I play multiplayer, I usually go for a ranged attacker. But this is a survival situation, and if we don't have food, water and shelter covered, being able to summon weapons isn't super useful, and a blade is probably more generally useful than a bow, for survival. Worst case, I can accept the best combat class right before we get attacked in..."

He makes a show of opening his Quest window to check the time remaining on his quest. He then fidgets with the display for a second, completely ignoring everyone else, to see if there's some way he can pin the time remaining on the Quest somewhere in his vision, since he didn't have any other way of telling time.

"....before we get attacked in the next [#Time Remaining]. Unless somebody thinks I should give myself a few minutes to get used to the class first?"

He casts gesturally, while also speaking his intent. "Summon Bow. Summon Arrows? Summon Fire Arrows?" He also tries ideas suggested by other players.

"Fire Mage, Druid, Magic Swordsman, these all sound like pretty basic classes. I dunno what a Warlock is, but it's related to darkness. Do you guys think there are, I dunno, some kind of combo class. Like, a ninja/warrior/druid type?"

OOC: Arjun will attempt to cast anything other people suggest, from now until he picks a class (at least). Other players are welcome to give him spell ideas to attempt to cast as part of their posts.

---

After the discussion (and this may be separating into too many simultaneous timelines for one post), he tries to take him mind off the current problem by attempting to construct a latrine out of the roots and the cloth stuff on the Cloth Disc, though how to do that without any anchor points seemed complicated.

Maybe I should take the Druid class, he thinks. I could probably make trees, and still use bows, unless that was reserved from some kind of Woodsman or Hunter class.

He asks for more detail on the Druid class.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:00, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

"My Mystic is at 2" Otto replied wryly. "So I think my plan is to stay away from all the magic stuff all together until we know more." he explained while still holding a severed section of root in one hand.

"As far as the party goes, yeah, I can make that my project, see what sort of options we might get as a group. I'll invite Dmitri now, and...I don't know if we were every really introduced or not." he said to the other two. "But I'm Otto." he raised the root a little in a sort of greeting gesture.

He verbalized "System, Party" and added "Invite Dmitri to Party"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:34, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Emily pauses in her work to watch and listen for the effects of Arjun's attempted spells.  "Does anyone other than Arjun speak Ameslan?  Oh no wait, these days it's called ASL isn't it?" She asks after a while.  "At least I assume that's what you're doing  Arjun, though I'm not entirely sure why unless spells need a gestural component."

In response to Arjun's comment about her accent she smiled and said, "It's received pronunciation.  I learned it at Roedean when I was a little girl and then used it further on BBC World Service."

After a while she said, "If you'll excuse me, I'm trying to work my way toward having the Observation skill but it's hard work."

Once she has some idea about wind speed and strength variations with level, Emily moves on to the shirt disc and tries to unravel a piece so that she can tie the thread around the vine section to form a kite.  She also looks around for pieces of plastic or whatever the buttons or zip were made from to see whether anything is useful as a weapons or armour but if not, she's still interested.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:51, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

"Am Vladislav,"" the Russian man finally introduces himself. "Americans often calling 'Russkie.' Have not decided class on yet, but have several unlocked. Priest, druid, aqua mage, spatial mage, nature priest, diviner. Have been using game World Tree for magic. Thinking try more games, more type magic unlock before class take."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 15:49, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

"How does one unlock Classes?" asks Emily politely of Vladislav. "Do you know, you look a lot like Alex Mitrafanov, from Kalevala?  I've been a bit of a fan since I came across them, I read Elias Lonnrott's version of the Kalevala in my teens, straight after A Thousand Nights and a Night and Lord of the Rings." 

Arjun tells Emily, "I'm practicing for later. There might be a situation where sound would give us away. Plus, I dunno, it's cool. The Human Language Interpretation skill is only supposed to work on spoken or written medium, and I wanted to see if ASL was covered by that."

Arjun is pleasantly surprised to find another on-air personality among the group. He suggests that the two of them can trade CVs later.



Arjun offer Vladislav a fist to bump, and introduces himself. "I'm Arjun. I didn't get nature priest, spatial mage, or diviner yet. How did you get those? What's the difference between a Nature Priest and a Druid, do you think?"

If/When Vladislav tells him, Arjun tries casting those spells as well, hoping to unlock some kind of combo class.

Turning to Otto, Arjun suggests, "You should just try to cast at least one spell, just to see if you can get the class options. There doesn't seem to be any penalty for unlocking class options that you don't take, and we need to know if stats limit our options. If it does, then those with low Mystic scores should try to find skills based on their highest stats. If we're not limited by our scores, then we don't need to worry about division of labor and whose the best person for which job."

---

In response to Emily's question about classes, Arjun answers the question she had directed to Vladislav. "I was offered classes based on each type of spell I tried."

"Try cast spell. Did unlocking. Different spell open different class. Um. One spell open two classes did," Vladislav answered Emily. He just smiled when she mentioned his resemblance to his far more successful cousin.

Not accepting the fist bump, the Russian answered.

"Not knowing difference. One spell unlocking both same time. Was Healoc Herbador, healing plant magic. Diviner from try Kennoc Magiador, detecting magic spell. um... spatial mage from try small teleport. Locador hard element describe English in. Not knowing right words..." That last was a fib, a white lie, as he knew the words but did not want to let on that his broken English was deliberate.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:12, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

In addition to trying to cast "heal plant," "detect magic," and "teleport," Arjun also tries, after some discussion to get the right word for his idea, to cast "identify" on the roots.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 17:09, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

"Well, good to meet you man." He replied to Vladislav after the introduction.

"System, invite Vladislav to party." He intoned in his now specific system conversation voice.

Otto looked about. "Huh, you both work in media?" He seemed to find this coincidence interesting, and with Vladislav being compared to an actor as well it seemed to set his mind turning.

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 123):

If Arjun asks Vladislav, his suggestion for identifying the roots would be "Kennoc Herbador." Which he will cast too, wondering what, if anything, the system might answer with.

Emily shrugged and tried a spell that she'd known from childhood, not having been one for games.  Instead she said. "کنجد باز کن!"*

*Which the system automatically translated as "Open Sesame!"

After that, she returned to the shirt disc and began checking to see whether this disc consisted entirely of fabric or whether there was a bedrock of button material.

Arjun spends some time trying some more spells of his own, and waiting for suggestions from others.

When the actor says, "Summon Bow"", an audible DING occurs.


When he says, "Summon Fire Arrows" another noise is heard.


Thinking it may be good to get more information before making any class selection, Arjun requests of the system's caretaker to make it happen if possible. He is greeted by a screen.


After doing some reading, Arjun heads out to construct a latrine. Unfortunately, he is not familiar with this kind of work, so despite having decent materials and a decent plan overall, actually finishing this thing will take him quite a bit of time... if he works alone, it may take him a fair number of hours.

---

A bit of distance away, Otto invites Dmitri to his party.


Also, now that Arjun has accepted the party request, the party menu Otto had opened has changed.

---

Meanwhile, Emily spends some time concentrating on the wind, and finds that the wind blows about 5 and a half feet off the ground, and is basically absent anywhere further than a foot from that point.


Then, she gets her hands dirty as she does some digging. It does not take her long to break past the soil, and reach the steel underneath. There is about two feet of soil before the remaining four feet of steel.


After a moment, a DING is audibly heard around her.


Then, Emily has the idea to build a kite. She manages to do so over the course of a few minutes by pulling out some of the thinner pieces in the thick lengths of yarn-like fabric, and when she's done the small kite she has constructed on Dmitri's shirt disc wobbles in the wind quite proudly.

A DING is heard from around her

---

Meanwhile, Arjun and Vladislav are talking before Arjun decides to imitate some of the spells discovered by Vladislav, in hopes of unlocking similar classes.

After repeating "Heal Plant", "Detect Magic", "Teleport", and "Identify" in the language of World Tree that Vladislav had used, Arjun is maybe a little surprised to not have any alerts, for once.

---

Continuing with his mission to invite everyone whose name he knows to his party, Otto also invites the short Russian, the Water Cleric, the Less-than-famous Cousin, Vladislav Chigrakoooov!

---

Around the time of this talk of spells, Emily decides to try one for herself.

At her words, an alert and audible noise occur.

Startled by the invite, Vladislav tries to accept it.

As he does so, an alert appears before him, confirming his choice.


Simultaneously, Mr. Bruckner gets a message as well.

"Dude, I live in L.A. I don't know anyone that doesn't work in television. Even those upturned nose gwibblers who insist on saying they work in New Media." He makes a prancing gesture with his pinkies extended, obviously in some form of mockery, though what exactly he's trying to represent with that gesture might remain a mystery.



"Wait, so how are you specifying when you want to cast something, and when you're just using the phrase conversationally? Come to think of it, I didn't even have to tell the system that I was gonna use that to indicate I was attempting to....to do magic. It just recognized the intent."


Arjun opens his Classes Window, using a verbal command, and studies it. "Okay, so Archer and Druid are both Common classes -- that surprises me, about Druid. I didn't get any of the ones that our fine Soviet friend suggested, though. Everything else is Uncommon. I wonder how many classes you can take? I'm really tempted to take Magic Archer, but that's not gonna be helpful if we can't make water and food. System, what are my class limits? If we can take several, that might be the way to go."


He looks for an option to reject offered classes, and if he finds one, he rejects Light Priest and Archer, in case there are limits to how many he can be offered at any one time.

On a whim, he tries casting Summon Bow of Light and Summon Shadow Bow. Having deduced the existence of Rare classes, he was now determined to find a Rare archery class, or better.

---

As he stares at the space he wants to turn into a latrine, he comes up with a basic plan. All he really needs is something to block line of sight, a way in, and some confidence that you won't fall into the hole. He can probably find anchor points among all these textile tentacles. He gathers some long, sturdy strands of vine to try to weave into a 6' diameter circle, then looks for a suitable swatch of cloth.

As he does this, he continues looking for combinations of the classes he's discovered, hoping to luck out while he's distracted by the other task.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:25, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Vladislav blinks, and rubs his chin thinking. "Not knowing. Good question."

"How seeing which class common, uncommon?" he asked.

"Huh" Otto seemed to consider Arjun's reply for a few moments before he got back to work.

"Hey, uh, I didn't get your name." He tries one more time, seeming to assume that the woman was just distracted with her kite. "Did you want to party up with the rest of us? Not a problem if you don't, just trying to get on the same page."

Continuing his task to collect root segments, he continued to burrow deeper into the root disk, looking for any change of consistency the deeper he went.

In reply to Vladislav Chigrakov (msg # 131):

Eyes unfocusing in that way which means he's actually focusing on a notification window, Arjun tells Vlad, "I'm looking at the Class List of PLAYER {Arjun Gandhi} from Extended Status Window. So if you ask for Classes or Extended Status, or you can do what I did, and just ask it for the info in a sentence in your native tongue."

He blushes slightly as he realizes he's just said his full name, and covertly looks around to see if anybody recognized him, wearing that half-hopeful, half-humble face that is the hallmark of all professional actors who have yet to make celebrity status.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:15, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Unfortunately, the system neither responds to inquiry on class limits, nor does it have an ability to reject class options. While searching for an ability to reject, Arjun does find he have the ability to accept, or to do nothing.

As Arjun pantomimes some more spells in search of a desired outcome, two DINGs accompany his actions.

---

With a renewed plan in mind, Arjun sets about making a latrine on Cloth Island. It takes around ten minutes, which is about as long as the place had existed before then.

---

During this time, Otto also does some digging (actually, closer to tearing and tossing, with his bare hands), and manages to dig nearly seven feet down in the center of the root disc before realizing he can't go much further down without risking getting stuck in his own hole. So far, the roots have not gotten more or less dense, but they are slightly colder.

As Otto raises his head, he sees two surprising alerts.

"I am a Dwarf and I'm digging a hole, diggy diggy hole..." Otto sang softly to himself as sections of root were hucked up onto the surface.

"Hah!, got one" Otto said in his own private celebration, which was difficult to hear given that he was down in his root pit.

As if that marked some predetermined stopping point, he clambered out and collected the scattered roots before bringing them back to his stockpile in the center, where he left them and brushed off his hands.

"Alright...progress" he regarded his stack of twisted roots with a hint of pride, his hands on his hips.

Finding this a good a time as any, he checked his Expanded Status and Quests again when he began to feel a little thirsty.

"Sounds like you guys are tearin' it up with your magic stuff." He commented to Arjun and Vlad. "You make any decisions yet? On class I mean?"

Emily grins.  "Well, I wouldn't call what I work in, 'Media' I work for the BBC World Service Persian Service, we provide news and entertainment in English, Pashto, Farsi and Arabic."

Then she's offered some classes and she considers her options but first, she marks the spot from which the wind emerges.  She's 177cm tall so she has to stoop for the wind to ruffle her hair but never mind.

She has fun flying her kite as she makes her way back to the men and says, "Next node should be at the point I've marked and at its opposite. If I'm right, it should allow us eventually to reach the place the wind is coming from which MAY be a way out."

"Has anyone accepted a class yet?" She asks, "and if so, what happens when you do?"  She frowns as she thinks some more and then says, "I don't have much experience with games.  I've been offered, Huntsman, Wind Mage and Thief.  Like Otto I have mystic at 2 so I imagine the Wind Mage might not be a good idea but what about the other two, Do any gamers have any idea which might be better for the team?"

"Expanded Status", says Emily.

OOC: Otto++ for singing Diggy Diggy Hole. You should try singing around Arjun. Gorram musical theater kids.

Arjun was carefully attempting to separate three study cloth tentacle/vine things long enough to reach the Grass Disc and form the structural elements of the latrine, and sturdy enough to hold onto when doing your business, when Otto checks in on him.

He throws down the piece he was untangling in a dramatic huff, dusts his hands off and issues the curt command, "Classes." He examines it for new information.

"I dunno, Otto, Our Beloved Party Leader. We properly screwed ourselves with these two Expansions. No food, no water -- you didn't find any water, did you? Under all those roots? If I'm supposed to protect their lives then I need to pick a combat class like Magic Archer, but that really doesn't seem nearly as important as food and water. I'm assuming Druid would let me make water and magically grow trees. Plus, I could probably summon, like, a rabbit or something else we could eat. But it's a Common Class, and the rest of the classes are Uncommon. There's got to be, like, Rare and Legendary classes, right? And those will presumably be better. Magic Swordsman would let me summon a blade, and after food and water, a cutting tool would probably be the 3rd most important thing we need right now. So I'm stuck in analysis paralysis. If I knew we could take two classes right away, I'd grab Druid now, get some water in us, and then keep looking for a good combat class. Summoning Fire arrows led to Magic Archer, which was only Uncommon, so I'm trying to think what might be a Rare or Legendary archer class."

On a whim, he tries casting "Summon Bone Bow," "Summon Skeleton" and, for a lark, "Summon Dragon Bow," all using both gestural and verbal components. If any of those create prompts, he refreshes his Classes window, closing and opening it with a now decidedly mystical-looking (and, let's be honest, rather pompous) gesture.

"Plus, I dunno how I'd cast spells like this if both my hands are full of bow."

He takes a deep breath. "How about you? Any progress on coming to grips with our current predicament?"

---

Arjun, a tall, swarthy stick of a gentleman of Indian descent, stands at around 190cm. He examines the well-mannered English woman as she lists off her credentials, old and new. "Has anybody actually received a prompt indicating that Nodes are locations? Or are we still just assuming the two things are the same?"

"Huntsman sounds useful. Thief is surprising to me. I don't play a lot of MMOs anymore, but I remember that you always wanted a Thief in your party. What is the rarity of those classes? I'm trying to hold out for a Rare Class based on my highest stats --"  (there's an awkward pause here) "-- but I'm about to pick one that will just let me summon a gorram drink, probably Druid. Or if I find a rare archer class, I'll pick that and then see if I can pick Druid second."

There's a pause and he adds, "Oh, and you asked before. Vladislav's spells seem to only use words, and mine seem to work fine whether I'm using words, gestures, or both. But, like, I haven't actually cast a spell yet, I've just earned class options."

Edit: He continues to sign as he speaks.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:01, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Otto listened to the woman with obvious interest, but seemed a little uncertain when she didn't include her name. He let it go, not seeming to want to push the matter.

"Just my opinion, but I think you guys should go with whatever really calls to you, ya know?" He suggested. "Like, wherever we are and however we got here, we don't know the rules right? We're just all tryin' to figure it out." he shrugged a little. "But who knows if you're gonna be able to change it down the line, ya know? So instead of just doing whatever makes sense in the moment, I would give it some real thought...like you man, Arjun, who do you really want to be in life? Do you really want to be Arjun the Druid? Do you feel a deep personal or divine connection with the natural world? Do you revere it and want to protect it? Or do you just want a glass of water?

I'd give it some real thought...and don't worry about us so much, ya know. Like if you want to be Arjun the bad ass Assassin, or Arjun the world famous Bard, you should totally go for that. At the end of the day, you've got to live with it." He glanced to the woman. "It's your call, not ours"
This message was last edited by the player at 21:22, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Emily smiles and asks innocently, "Bard?  Like the chaps in the Eisteddfod with the interminable poems?"

"Hey now, there's no class shame here, whatever floats your boat, ya know?" Otto grinned. "And who says Bards can't be bad ass, it could be argued Snorri Sturluson was a bard, and he was a beast."

Arjun seems to be mostly following Otto's explanation for his opinion. "What's a Bard? Honestly, I just want a glass of water right now. But, hey, if cloth just grows out of the ground and can be affected by Druid magic, then I figure other stuff probably will too, which makes being a Druid more interesting as an option.

"And it's all well and good to hold out for something that speaks to me, but I have a quest saying that I need to protect everybody's lives for at least the next hour, which, first, suggests to me that I am going to have some seriously different obligations in this place than back at home. Second, we could all die if we don't find water in, what, the next 12 hours? Which is not exactly protecting your lives. And third, completing that quest gives me a reward, and I dunno what that reward means, but having it will be better than not having it."

Emily thinks and wonders whether there's some kind of musician class.  She begins humming, quickly breaking into a clear soprano version of Bizet's L'amour c'est q'un oiseau rebelle from the Opera Carmen.

Otto seemed a little surprised, apparently being under the impression that they were all more or less equally nerdy.

"A Bard...well a Bard can be a lot of things, but generally they're known for being charismatic, clever, storytellers, actors, musicians. They're like, the ones that can talk anybody into anything, win hearts, fool Kings, they generally know a little magic, can still fight, but they're not really specialists. Good for lots of situations and everyone likes having them around." he explained. "But they're never gonna cast the big spells like a Wizard or slay dudes like a Fighter, ya know? But they might marry the Princess or become world famous and rich. Stereotypically, of course." He shrugged again.

Heeding Arjun, Vladislav tried the command "Classes," reading his list and seeing what the rarities were.

Followed by a barrage of spell attempts while the other man worked on his... something. Vlad hadn't quite caught what it was Arjun was building.

First, get the rest of World Tree's magic terms.
"Creoc Sustenoc Corpador," A spell to create (Creoc) flesh (Corpador), in this case visualized as baked salmon, and given permanence (as opposed to vanishing when the spell duration ran out) via the verb Sustenoc that extended, preserved, or protected things.

"Ruloc Airador," was cast, trying to shift the direction of the breeze via controlling (Ruloc) air (Airador).

"Destroc Durador," was cast on exposed soil after a bit of digging in the grass disc. Destroc, the verb for unmaking, and Durador, the element of earth and the most difficult of the World Tree word skills, put together to attempt to remove a handful of dirt.

"Creoc Pyrador" was a very straightforward creation of elemental fire. Not any of the fancy fire tricks of the higher spells, just a basic gout of fire in his visualization.

For the art of illusion, he tried a variation, introducing the word Illusidor with an attempt at casting a specific spell from World Tree's rulebook. "Barrage of Baffling Bats... Creoc Illusidor" Had the spells been working, it would have generated a cloud of brightly hued, technicolor bats swarming around Arjun's head interfering with his vision for the short time they existed.

With Spiridor, the word for spirit magic, Vladislav tried a more complex spell (though still one within range for a normal World Tree beginning character). He had to think a bit to remember the combination used to cast Triune Armor which bound the target's mind, soul, and body together tighter, thus granting extra hit points temporarily. "Sustenoc Spiridor Mutoc Corpador Mentador."

A purer example of Mentador, elemental mind magic, followed. "Mutoc Mentador," he cast. The spell Open Mind from the rulebook, making the target (himself) more aware of their own senses for the duration. Improved perception, in game mechanics.

He paused, counting the verbs and nouns to make sure he had gotten the full 7+12. Whoops. One missed, from his counting. Tempador. The other pain in the neck alongside Durador, but for different reasons. Time magic. Best not to fool around on this one, just in case, and use the simplest, weakest thing he could recall. "Kennoc Tempador, he incanted, magically asking what time it was.

And to finish off his World Tree attempts for now, utilize a metamagic skill on top of a spell designed to improve skills while doing absolutely nothing. The infamous (in World Tree's setting) 'Useful Useless Spell' was a Creoc Magiador effect that you could put any or all of the other words/arts into to try and get experience in them without the magic doing a thing. On top of that, he added the hammercasting method, which would, in that game system, pump extra cley (mana) into the spell to increases the potency. "Hammercast Creoc Magiador, Healoc Mutoc Ruloc Destroc Sustenoc Kennoc Airador Aquador Corpador Durador Herbador Illusidor Mentador Locador Spiridor Tempador Pyrador."


Next... try a few spells from other games, other magic systems.
Swordbearer needed capturing elementals before you could cast anything. Epiphany needed elemental essences to unlock spells. Rolemaster was straight out... it had some nice spells, but a terrifying spell fumble system. Nephilim? He could try.

"Palmier de la dernière rosée, refuge du désert lumineux" he said in French, with not so great pronunciation. One of the simpler water summoning spells, that called forth a spirit in the form of a palm tree which watched over the caster's refuge and noisily dropped leaves when someone who was not properly introduced to it entered.

"Les Ashim, portes d’adamante aux pieds de métal," a spell that called up a being of the element of earth to possess a door and hold it shut.

"Gardiens des cinq portes d’Avalon," was a summoning spell that could be cast with any of the five elements regular Nephilim characters used (though not the other three elements in the system), manifesting as a suit of pseudo-medieval style armor that someone could don and providing protection dependent on which element it was cast as.

"Les ailes de la folie couvertes de givre, les chasseurs lunaires," was a somewhat nastier summons, calling on beings of the moon element to retrieve a designated person that the caster had a belonging of.

"Liqueur de bien-être, Réduction éolique du Cinabre" was an alchemical spell of the element of air, producing a potion which reduced pain suffered from magical sources. In the game rules it had been listed as a variant, the main version of the spell using water as the element and making a potion that alleviated physical pain.

"Les évaporations des humeurs antiques, Macération mithraïque de l’Alkaest," Les évaporations des humeurs antiques was another variable spell, alchemy usable with any of the five elements. In this case, though, he specified the fire elemental version, which would reveal the most recent act of violence done in the presence of the object it was cast upon.

And one more spell from Nephilim, calling a summoned being of the black moon element through the dark arts of the Selenim, "Les yeux omnivoyants," Sure, it was only the magical version of a security camera, watching and recording events, but it was the easiest of the black moon summons for him to remember.

There, Vladislav paused, calling up his class listing again to see what had been added or changed by the additional spells.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:26, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Emily checks her status for any changes


Meanwhile, Arjun checks his class list for any changes, and also one more ping from among his spell utterances.


As he has been signing his words for quite a while, Arjun begins to feel quite tired. Soon, he will need to take a decent rest, or choose to push himself.

---

At Otto's warm words, he sees a message.

---

By now, Emily has begun humming to herself, lost in her own world at the idea of a musician class...

Arjun stops signing as he speaks, clearly weary from the effort.

"Win the Princess, huh?" Arjun makes a big show of looking around. "I think the Princess is another castle, Mario. Still, man, this still feels like a survival scenario to me. And that warning message we got said not to confuse this with a game. We're getting game-like feedback, but I'm pretty parched right now. Like, no way am I going to be hitting my 150 ounces today. I don't even know how many steps I've walked."

He pauses. "Wait, actually, I think I do know how many steps I've walked so far today. This....that is not my brain doing that math right now. That is not a thing I've ever been able to count without thinking before."


When Emily starts singing, Arjun joins in as soon as he recognizes the song, and engaging in some half-remembered choreography (which Emily can tell was NOT what one might call a Broadway Production of the opera).

---

Once he completes the incredibly basic latrine, Arjun feels a disproportionate sense of accomplishment, especially given the particularly crude nature of his outhouse, which is little more than a makeshift vine ring holding up a length of cloth over the edge of the known universe, and a couple of cloth vines to hold onto so you don't fall over.

Still, he's proud of it, and looks around for someone he can show it off to. At that particular moment, however, there's no one around, so he very quietly says, "System, look! I made a bathroom."

Arjun goes around to find the others, and informs them that the thing is complete, for now. Good enough. Well, functional, at any rate. He also checks in on how they're doing.

After that, he tries to collect some very long vines and cloth-vines, about 15 feet each, and begins braiding them into a rope. Arjun intends to use this rope to investigate the underside of the discs:

First, by checking to see if there are game-like gravity affects going on, and if he can indeed stand on the bottom side of this disc without falling off. (By checking if the far end of the rope "lands" on the bottom of the disc when it is thrown over the side).

Second, after checking the strength of the rope, by tying one end of the rope to something sturdy, and then climbing to the other side. He tells the others, "I will wait until this quest timer finishes before trying that, in case anything happens before then. What are you working on? Do you need any help?"

While collecting the vines and cloth-vines, Arjun waits for a moment when he is as private as he can reasonably expect to be, and accepts a class.

He then checks to see if he can select an additional class. If he can, he takes Druid.

And then he checks if he can choose a 3rd class.

After he picks, he opens his Expanded Character Sheet
This message was last edited by the player at 21:45, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

"Choose Class: Huntsman" says Emily, hoping this will give her some appropriate skills and or equipment.

So having established that people can cross from one of these disks to another, Dmitri rests here and processes what has already happened, as he knows it.

When he's done, he notices that Otto has invited him to join a party. For lack of a better idea, Dmitri speaks "Accept invitation to join party." then goes back to the group.

Coming up to Otto, he says to him, "I have been thinking about our situation, and here are my insights:

"Each of the new areas is given three coordinates. Assuming Cartesian coordinates, we can imagine an infinite line going through the three disks. The center one is the origin, the fabric zone is -1X, and the root zone is +1X. By standard notation, that would make this" pointing to the area 90 degrees counterclockwise from the roots "positive Y and this" pointing directly opposite where he pointed before "negative Y. Up would be positive Z and down would be negative Z."

"None of these are Nodes I can create. The skill says I can make dirt, wood, and stone Nodes, but didn't have permission the last time I checked. Maybe now that I know more, I can try again. Create ordinary dirt node at coordinates zero one zero."

Before Dmitri gets an answer, he realizes that others are "picking classes." He wasn't used to this, as the only experience he had with role playing games was with Torg, where classes don't exist, but he had heard of other games so he knew enough of the concept to figure out what was going on. Time to get in on the action. "Caretaker, display available classes for PLAYER Dmitri Alvin Reslin"

Otto looked up and around with a Grin after apparently getting an update. "Well thanks System, appreciate that."

He then falls silent as Arjun and the woman break into a full on song. He doesn't know the song, and having never been able to sing well himself he found the whole thing quite impressive. He watched until they were done, then replied to Arjun when he expressed frustration about choosing his class.

"I get where your coming from man, I do. And trust me, I appreciate you lookin' out for us." He began. "But I think it works both ways, it's not a game to pursue a career that you will really enjoy, I would argue it's more gamey to pick something just to fill a niche I'm a party.

And if you feel you need to take whatever you can to deal with what's comin' I can respect that. I just hope that if you do decide before then, that whatever you pick really resonates with who you really are." he left it at that, and went to go start on his next project, setting up some bedding.

Inspired by Arjun's eminently practical chore of having a place to relieve themselves, having a comfortable place to sleep and recover seemed like a good next step, and they did have a whole cloth island over there.

There he got to talking with his newest Party member Dmitri "I'll be honest bro, most of that went right over my head, but I'm glad that I'm stuck here with smart people like yourself." He grinned. "Sounds like your messin' with the fabric of this place, not that it's a bad thing, just be careful." he patted him on the shoulder and went to see if he could rip the material into large, blanket sized sections more convenient for bedding.

That was before Emily suddenly seemed to pick her class. Otto stopped what he was doing and looked at her as if expecting something dramatic to happen.

Emily notices that Otto is watching her closely.  She too is waiting for a major change but in the meantime, she looks from one to other of her companions, seeking to estimate each man's height and weight and if possible, how strong each may be.

Otto was previously described at around 200cm, although he looks far stronger than he is athletic, he is easily overweight for his height and is probably around 135kg. He has previously mentioned that he has been assigned a 5 in Strength
This message was last edited by the player at 00:39, Fri 14 Jan 2022.

Emily is 177cm but only around 75Kg. She is able to measure the others in comparison but she won't ask.  She is relying instead on her high sense stat and her skill in observation.  She will also use her senses to estimate whether there are any beasts in the vicinity or whether the only ones present are human.

Arjun is about 6'3", and very thin for his height, probably under than 80kg. He's in his late 30s. Though he currently looks to be of average strength, there have been several times now where he has displayed obvious surprise at his own strength.

When Arjun notices her gaze, he straightens to his full height, and examines her in return, assessing what he can of her by her clothes and posture.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:51, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Vladislav is 163 cm., or between 5 ft. 3 in. and 5 ft. 4 in. He's reasonably muscular and fit, but no bodybuilder. The player lacks the skills to guess at the weight of a human of his size and build.

Arjun nods as he listens, clearly surprised that he has been able to follow this academic notation. "Okay, so what direction do we think that this airflow that Miss BBC mentioned is going to be? You know what? Hold that thought."

Seeing that she seemed do be done with the kite, Arjun suggests to Emily that we use it to mark the direction of the wind she had located. With her help, he uses some of the vines to hold it in place, essentially creating a windvane.

Afterward, he brings Emily back to the discussion and asks her, "Explain again about where you want to put tomorrow's nodes, and why. And for the record, I still think we should try to find something new to make landmass out of, because these two options are both small and barren of food or water."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:53, Thu 13 Jan 2022.

Emily considers that and nods, moving over to the point where the wind came from and, while she couldn't tie the end of the string, she could bury it so that one end is buried and the other end flies.

"I recommend one disc here and another at the opposite side of the new disc.The idea being that we would come closer and closer to the point from which the wind is coming. Maybe that's a way to escape. "

In reply to Emily Khorashandi (msg # 158):

"Why on the opposite side? These discs seem quite stable."

"I'm trying to suggest two new disks one after another in a straight line.  I'm hoping we can see the boundaries of the potential world."

Comprehension dawns on the actor. "Oh, right. I see. We need to generate much more land mass than we did today for this to work, then. But we don't have a lot of data points for figuring out how to do that. I dropped a blade of grass. Dimitri dropped a button down shirt. What do those two things have in common? What would be sufficiently different to be worth testing? "

"Exercise make sweaty. Flick sweat over edge?" Vladislav suggests.

"That's an idea, but in the best case scenario, that'd give us salt water, and probably only a 50ft diameter's worth. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to summon a few magic items, like arrows and bows. Try one of those? Is anybody else close to picking a class? Something that might be able to summon stuff?"

Vladislav checks his classes, then mimics some spells (of which the following produce audible DINGs: 1st through 5th, 8th, and 12th through 14th), before he checks his classes again.



The moment that Arjun picks a class, a grand, resonant sound is heard by everyone... The sound of a bell tolling deeply. Light cascades over the body of Arjun, causing him to momentarily gleam like a beacon!

---

Meanwhile, Dmitri accepts Otto's party request.


Of course, this causes Otto to get an alert.


Soon after, Dmitri attempts to create a Node.


After this, he checks his classes.

---

During this time, Emily does her best to size up the individuals around her. She finds herself a little surprised by her capability in determining each of their weights and heights, to a high level of accuracy.

Vladislav reads the results of his dings, and swears quietly in fluent Russian.

"Having 3 class needing higher level. All 'epic' rare. Also one uncommon class marked 'not recommended for player,'" he lets Arjun know after reading it.

Not having picked his (first) class yet, he looks astounded at the sound when Arjun claims his, then congratulates him.

"Hey!, Congratulations!" Otto beamed a smile at the two and nodded a few times.

"What did you pick?" He asked Arjun conversationally, then looked to the woman. "Huntsman's right?" He confirmed. "That sounds cool. Wonder what that gives you?" he wondered aloud.

"I wonder..." He mused, then said aloud. "System, invite this Huntsman to party?" he tried experimentally.

As the light fades from his body, Arjun comments to the empty bramble of vines around him, "I figured there would be a ruckus."

Arjun comments to Vlad, "Epic rarity sounds pretty good. Maybe you can pick it up later? What are the classes? You weren't offered any of the mage classes?"

When Otto turns up, Arjun tells him, "I found a Rare archery class. Shadow Archer."

He then tries to cast Summon Shadow Bow and Umbral Arrow, by way of demonstration.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:09, Fri 14 Jan 2022.

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 167):

Vladislav grimaced. "All mages or clerics." His gaze ran over his still-open classes screen. "Epic classes: Spatial Mage, Chronomancer, and Mooncaster.
Rare classes: Elementalist, Diviner, and Aquatic Summoner.
Uncommon classes: Alchemist, Illusionist, Earth Mage, Aqua Mage, Wind Mage, Pyromancer, and Nature Priest.
Common classes: Just Priest and Druid," he reported.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:18, Fri 14 Jan 2022.

Dmitri frowns. "Y in the sky?! That's annoying. Now to see if these coordinates are left-handed or right-handed."

He then moves to the center of the original disk, turns to face the fabric node, then rotates himself 90 degrees to the right: "Create dirt node at location zero zero one."
This message was last edited by the player at 05:07, Fri 14 Jan 2022.

"Shadow Archer huh?" Otto seemed a little surprised. "And it's a Rare class? I must be lookin' at this all wrong, I figured you would have to actually do the related stuff to, ya know, quality for a class." he elaborated conversationally. "Like for a Shadow Archer I'd imagine you would need to sneak around, or at least shoot a bow a few times, something like that" He went on with some slight gesturing.

"But it seems like you can just say the right words, and that's pretty much it? Use some magic phrases about some shadows, a few more about bows, and boom, Shadow Archer?" He rubbed at his beard, as if considering the words he might use, or how he might go about.

"Well, however it works, seems like you found one you like." He broke into a smile.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 04:35, Fri 14 Jan 2022.

"This 'speak and make it happen' apparently only works for these mystic classes. Whatever it is I am to become seems to work as you expected, unless..."

Dmitri thinks for a bit. "Rabbits, chickens, cows, and ducks! Bring us water, Fiat Lux!"

Otto looked to Dmitri and nodded. "Yeah, guess we'll see what the System has is store for us." He agreed. "Also it sounds like she's a Huntman? Huntswoman?, and that doesn't sound that mystical to me, but then again I didn't see any hunting so." He shrugged. "You got me" he grinned, obviously excited about the prospect of a Class of his very own.

He watched to see if Dimitri's amusing "spell" would have any effect.

Arjun shakes his head emphatically. "Naw, man. Vladislav doesn't even know how he's telling the system which stuff are spells, and he's just found some Epic rarity classes. It's all about intent, as near as I can tell. I mean, this place is pretty magical before we even showed up."

Arjun throws out his hands, gesturing to the world around us. "I mean, how does this place even exist? Who can afford rent on this much emptiness? We are standing on a six foot deep metal disc with a goddamn plane of textiles over there. That thing's like half as wide and twice as deep. You're telling me somebody had that prepared for us? And it attached to this one while we were, what, blinded by the magic show and alert windows? My body just emitted light. Reason and sense flew out the window a long time ago, dude! Stop trying to chase your assumptions about parsers and game logic.

He gestures, rather wildly, at Dmitri, when he mentions the parsers. Apparently, the calm, cool exterior has cracked and Arjun is having a Proper Freak Out(tm).

"This isn't a game, it's just pretending to be one. This is a gorram magical experience we're having. Try anything. Try a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. because our lives are in danger right now in ways we have only ever seen on television."

He takes a deep breath, and the mask of cool collectedness and superiority gets put back on as he exhales.

"Naw, man. Huntsperson isn't a mystical class. That British lady, she's got a low Mystical stat. I think that limits what kind of classes get offered to you."
This message was last edited by the player at 14:44, Fri 14 Jan 2022.

"No it doesn't." says Emily, "I was offered Windmage and Songcaster, both of which use magic as well as thief and Huntsman which don't. Huntsman has given me some new skills such as range weapons but no bow so I guess I'll have to make weapons."

Next she says, "Accept Party Invitation", followed by, "Expanded Status".

Next she moves among the discs seeking materials that she could use to make a bow and arrow or a sling and bullets. She also searches among the dirt of the original disc for signs of animal life such as worms, insects and spiders.

She returns to the others and says, "I was offered Thief after using a phrase from A Thousand Nights and a Night or Arabian Nights as it's commonly known. Maybe you'd get common classes by quotes from other books and movies. Did anyone see Princess Bride, for example? "

"You quoted your way into a Class option?" Otto grinned, evidently very amused by this development. "I'm over here trying to Skyrim my way into a skill point where I could have been..." he stopped and looked thoughtful for a moment.

"Gotta try this out. Guys, do me a solid and ask me "What is best in life?", use your media voice." he gave the them a knowing grin.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:31, Fri 14 Jan 2022.

Arjun gracefully accepts the bit role and gives it his all, in one step turning from himself into the character in the tent in that ancient scene. "Vat is best in life?" his accent is thick and ancient, crone like.

Otto fed off of Arjun's enthusiasm for the part, obviously having seen the movie a few times.

He settled his hands on his hips, took on a stern expression with his chin thrust out and stared hard into the void above their little island. His answer, also given in a fake pseudo-Germanic accent, was not too over the top as to be expressively comical, but it was obviously a far cry from the Austrian one he was emulating.

"To crush your enemies. To see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!" he stated seriously.

He nodded gravely a few times, then the act faded and he looked to Arjun with a spark of hope in his eye, gave him a discreet thumbs up and nodded approvingly before he glanced around the chamber expectantly.

Vladislav watches the bit of acting with amusement and interest. Conan might not be to his personal tastes, but he was certainly familiar with the famous quote and rudiments about the barbarian character and his setting. Actors at work were viewed rather differently in Russian culture than in the American.

OOC: oh no! I missed this before. +pouts+



"You wanted to go for a priest class, right? Maybe try petitioning one of the 'gods' we know about for help? All my other class options (opportunities, whatever) went away when I picked, so we can't multiclass, at least not right away. I feel kind of bad about taking a class with only combat options, and not a lot of utility for our current survival situation, but maybe that's an assumption....I should try casting those other, out-of-class, spells again and see what happens now."

Over the next several minutes of discussion, Arjun tries casting the basic elemental spells, summon water, and the item summoning spells (blade, bows, arrows) again."

At some point in the discussion, he mentions, "Man, I've had this class for like 5 minutes and I've already got buyer's remorse. It just occurred to me that if I had taken Druid, I would probably could have shaped part of that cloth jungle into a pair of pants."
This message was last edited by the player at 20:44, Fri 14 Jan 2022.

Dmitri processes all this (mis?)information and muses to himself aloud. "Speaking classes into existence? Figures. Well, if speaking is so powerful..."

He was already on the center of the origin disk, so he could not only check out potential "spells" but also range. Channeling his inner Annie Lennox, he goes into a passable rendition of "Here Comes the Rain Again."

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 179):

"Hmm." Vladislav looked thoughtful, considering the idea. He didn't know more about the observing gods than their domains, and in one case her sex. But perhaps Dmitri's point would be helpful. Trying spells of a distinctly clerical bent, with more emphasis on healing and providing supplies might be an angle to attempt.

He asked the air for his extended status again, to see if the watching gods had any new comments before he got started with a barrage of prayers to fiction.

As Otto glances at the woman he only knows as "Huntsman", he tries to send her a party invite with just her class information. He gets the sense that it went through.

[5 blank lines suppressed]

---

Meanwhile, Arjun attempts to summon a shadow bow, but nothing happens.

As well as cast an 'Umbral Arrow' spell, which also fails.


Meanwhile, Dmitri tries again to place a node.


After that, he attempts to cast a spell, to no success.

---

During this period, Emily is accepting the party invitation sent to her by Otto.



Emily also takes a moment to view her expanded status.

---

Otto and Arjun share a moment of reenactment.


Afterwards, Arjun attempts to cast some spells. However, they all fail.

---

Dmitri spend some time doing some barely passable singing. Unfortunately, he embarrasses himself for no reason, this time.

---

Vladislav once more observes his status window.

"Hah! It worked!" Otto exclaimed at once and pumped his fist in a sort of victory gesture. "By Crom it worked, thanks System." he was all smiles now and he offered Arjun a fist bump. "Appreciate it man."

With that achieved, he set to figuring out where things stood. He said "System, Barbarian Class Information please" first and foremost to see what he could see. And after he had done that he brought up the Party screen to ensure that everyone was accounted for, and in curiosity to see if the new classes had been amended to the ones they belonged to.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:21, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

Otto checks for further information

Reading something visible only to him privately, the Russian man stroked his beard (what there was of it) thoughtfully. Thoughts of двоеверие and the eighth deadly sin floated across his mind, and he turned away from the group to find a place to sit down and focus.

Taking a seat with crossed legs and his hands lightly resting atop his knees, Vladislav closed his eyes and concentrated on games and novels with distinctive religions. Ones where one's devotion to their god was visible in what spells and miracles they could perform, not just in their symbols and faith. However... where there was light, there usually was darkness as well. Hnálla had Hrü’ü standing opposite in the Empire of the Petal Throne, while in Glorantha the brilliance of Yelm was countered by the underground depths of Subere. Though perhaps, he thought, Glorantha was a poor choice of example, since Subere's people were literally her descendants, a mortal race with elemental darkness in their genes. Memories of Gary Gygax's other major game came to mind, with images from Mythus Magick rising. Five kinds of priests, each with their own spells, among a buffet of other sorts of magic users. Priests of sunlight, of moonlight, of gloomy darkness, of shadowy darkness, and of... balance. Another gaming book, The Secret of Zir'an, crossed his memories. Seven gods who powered rune magic, though like World Tree any caster could study any runes they qualified for regardless of which god they honored.In counterbalance to the runic ways was shadow magic, rising from within the darkness of the caster's own spirit. His thoughts flitted away to Ironclaw, where the church of S'allumer the god of light was dominant but black magic had its' own rules in the system and at least four other faiths still struggled to exist despite the oppressive influence of the church. Back to World Tree, which had no god of light or darkness as such; Flokin and Shax Shay Shaz both had influence over both forces. Flokin being the Pyrador god of fire, Shax being the Illusidor god/ess of illusions.

What was light, in the context of the goddess here in this non-game world of magic and unreality? Did she reign over the physical illumination, the mental & emotional forms of light, both, neither, something else completely? He had no answer. Russian Christianity taught of eight sins and eight virtues rather than the seven of the more Western nations. What and how many of each applied here?

Philosophy might be well and good, he realized, but they had physical needs here that must be taken care of. A priestly rare or better class? He started to murmur the names of clerical spells from game after game, focusing primarily on those which were anything but generic and trying to visualize the pages of the source game when he said them.

Otto was silent for a few moments as he was obviously reading whatever had appeared before him, and his already generous smile grew to a toothy, almost manic grin. "Yeah...hell yeah." He declared, obviously excited by whatever he was reading, and he nodded readily as he spoke.

"Alright..." He looked like he was psyching himself up, clapped his hands together loudly and rubbed them together vigorously.

"System!" He called out without a hint of doubt in his voice. He then clenched his fists and stared up at the "sky" "Select Barbarian Class!"

Arjun seems furious. "That is BULLSHIT. I can't actually do the thing that unlocked the class I just joined! I thought I could summon a bow and arrows! I don't even get magic arrows, I have to imbue existing ones."

He tries to summon several types of bows and arrows.

When that doesn't work, he tries to craft bow and then buy bow. He starts checking the pockets of his robe.

"And where are my gorram Market Coins?

He grabs a nearby pile of vines, and shouts, "System, craft bow!"

Then he starts examining the vines again, trying to figure out how to make these hollow cords into a weapon of any kind.

"We have no idea how to find food, or water. And now I wasted my class pick on a class that requires shadows to work at all! Do you see any shadows around here? I don't even know how to see my Mana or Qi levels!"

He stomps off, looking for shadows among all this low-lying vegetation and textiles, while muttering and cursing under his breath. Eventually, he calms down, and goes back to trying to make a vine-and-cloth rope long enough to investigate the underside of the discs.

OOC to GM: Just to clarify, the character is angry. The player is not.

Vladislav becomes quiet as he wonders on the nature of the Observers named "Gods" that are watching this world, as well as some philosophy about sin.

OOC: I'm not generating classes for spells you don't specifically name. It's not to create more work for you, but because I lack anything to work with otherwise. If you just want to have him muttering as an atmospheric thing, that's fine too

As Otto makes his choice right away, filled with excitement, he too momentarily becomes a beacon of light and noise!


In contrast, Arjun was having a far less pleasant time. His attempts to summon bows and then arrows repeatedly fail.

Next he tries the command to 'craft' a bow, but no result is shown. Next, he sticks his hands into his robe pockets and yells out "Buy Bow"

At this point, he is too belligerent to realize he has gotten a response. He continues to complain about not having these 'Market Coins', before grabbing some vines and calling to craft once more!

He is making enough noise to attract some wary attention from the others, and Emily and Otto in particular can tell that he appears quite tired compared to everyone else.

By the time he calms down, he belatedly realizes some screens have appeared before him.

Then, he spends some time maybe reading these, maybe making decisions, but definitely trying to construct a rope either nine, or fifteen feet long.




His mood may also be slightly improved when he finds that the folds between the Root Disc and the Cloth Disc both have some shadows. Especially, the pit that Otto dug on the disc of writhing vines at [1,0,0] has a significant number of larger shadows.

Unfortunately, none of these shadows are close to his size, so it's unclear what would happen to him were he to try to utilize them for his skills, or if he would even be able to.

Otto seemed exultant for a time as he is bathed in light and the momentus chime resounded in their little world.

He nodded in evident satisfaction, rolled his shoulders and clenched his fists as if feeling a new power there, but for all intents and purposes and despite his noise and light, he still appeared as the same excitable fat man that he was when he arrived a short time ago.

If there was any difference, it was subtle, and it was in his eyes.

It would be unfair to say that Arjun's distress detracted somewhat from the moment, but it was true that Otto was obviously feeling good about his fortune at the same time Arjun seemed to be regretting his own decision.

As such, when Otto realized Arjun's current state, he decided to let the man be and to give him room to cool off.

He lingered for a time on the center disk, obviously happy to speak to anybody that seemed interested in discussing his decision or anything else for that matter, before he moved off towards the Cloth Disk to try his hand at ripping the material into blanket sized sections.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:31, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

When he finally notices the new alert windows that have popped up before him, he mutters another quiet expletive, and raises his hand to sign once more, but then lowers it, and considers for another moment.

Finally, he tries something different as he returns to braiding his 15 foot long rope. "Open Party Screen. Open Party Chat?"

He waits a beat, and then, still kneeling among his little project, he attempts to communicate with everyone in his Party in a whisper, despite them all being further away than his voice should be able to carry. "Can you hear me?

Then he continues to slowly and methodically work on the rope, attempting to keep his mind focused on the present and on his current task.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:32, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

After the latest "adjudication", Dmitri's voice rises. "YOU THINK I HAVEN'T??!"

He realizes that the frustration over the Parser spilled over into an audible outburst that everyone else heard. "I'm sorry, System Parser (or should I say SPARSER just tried berating me for not reading my skills. As if I haven't..." He then reads information off one of his "private" windows:

Node Creation Lv. 1

{0/600 XP to Next Level}

(This skill allows the user to create Nodes in the World. Nodes can be used to harvest material resources.

Due to the level of the skill, user cannot place Nodes in regions for which they do not have permissions

Nodes Placed: 0/1

Available Node Types: Regular Soil, Regular Wood, Regular Stone)

"I've been trying to place a dirt node on a perpendicular axis to the one we've 'developed' so far. So when I tried the Y axis, I got:"

ERROR IN SKILL USE

"Nodes cannot be placed in the sky, PLAYER {Dmitri Alvin Reslin}!"

"And when I tried the Z axis, I got:"

ERROR IN SKILL USE

"Nodes cannot be placed over the void, either!

Siggghhh... Read your skills more carefully, please?"

"So far, SPARSER has been flexible on the wording, but maybe it thinks I need to be more precise because I'm smart. I've had that happen too many times to count. I generally dislike Precisionists like that, especially since they don't like having that standard applied to them.

But since I have already tried the other two axes..." Dmitri moves to the farthest end of the root disk. "Create Regular Soil Node at Location Zero Zero Two."

As if on cue, Dmitri's frustrated outburst followed on the heels of Arjun's.

Otto, who was still in boisterous mood despite the vexation of his Party members, continued to move a little further out, giving both of them ample space to vent.

He glanced to Vlad to see what their stoic Russian was working on, and also to their Huntress to see what she was working on now as he proceeded with his plan.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:00, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

Arjun tells Dmitri:

"Dude. I keep telling, check your assumptions. You're not making Expansions, you're making Nodes. Like the mining nodes in Kenshii. Stop trying to make them in the void, and try putting them in places that already exist. Try putting a Wood Node in next to the latrine. I bet it'll make a tree that'll be an endless supply of branches. And I can use the trunk as an anchor point to make a better latrine."
This message was last edited by the player at 13:43, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

Everyone in Otto's party has a small window appear in front of them, with a text version of Arjun's message.


Meanwhile, Dmitri gets a message from the system as he angrily continues his struggle to create a node.


As Arjun gives him some advice, the actor gets a notification.

In reply to Otto Bruckner (msg # 192):

Vlad flinched, his concentration disrupted by Arjun's and Dmitri's very loud outbursts, and he opens his eyes to see what the heck was going on.

He raises an eyebrow, seeing the chat window. "Yes, am hearing," he confirms to the party. But doesn't quite catch that he's still talking into it when he resumes muttering spells.

"The Miracle of Divine Perversity," he says, starting into the temple-specific spell listings of the game Shakhan. "The Miracle of Eternal Serenity, The Miracle of The Eternal Stage, The Miracle of Heavenly Mercy, The Miracle in Deepest Shadows Dwelling, The Miracle of Shining Valour, The Miracle of Him Who Chastens, The Miracle of Warlike Victory, The Miracle of Triumphant Devastation, The Miracle of Wisdom, Symbol of the Fire-Lord, The Radiance of Heaven, The Wondrous Rug of the Lady of Wisdom," He pauses, going back to the start of Shakhan's spell list to name a few more that seemed useful but were not necessarily clerical. "The Bounty of the Hidden Arts, Catchblessing, Cornucopism, Cursehealing, Divinespicing, The Divine Tankard, Enflowering, Reflowering, Healthblessing, Lifegiving, Lightmaking, The Merciful Cure of Savage Bestiality, The Negation of Sinister Energies, Unintoxication, Venomhealing, Warmhealing..."
A pause as his mind shifted to scan other books for Shakhan, then, "The Incomparable Hexagon of The Azure God" ended the listing for that game system & setting.

As Otto works towards creating bedding for each of them the "Party Chat" pops up for the first time with Arjun's message.

The dissonance from simultaneously hearing or seeing the others as the messages arrived seems to disorient him at first, but as Dmitri pauses after his...list?

Otto decided to give it a try.

While still working on his giant 15ft long braided rope, Arjun continues to document what he knows into the party chat from time to time, but predominantly focuses on crafting the rope.

While laying out the rope and trying to measure it, the Indian American actor, who had certainly taken his own sweet time experimenting, rather hypocritically asks Vlad, "What are you hoping to achieve with all those spells, my guy? It shouldn't matter what system you're using, just what your intent is while you're using whatever system you pick.

He does a double take then, glancing at what must be an alert window in front of him. With mingled notes of fear and hope in his voice, he mumbles, "Typo."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:41, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 197):

"Intent? Must disagreeing. How did intent unlock epic chronomancer class from basic cantrip that tells time of day?"

Emily checks for shadows underneath the kite she has attached to the original disc .If she finds any, she points them out to Arjun.

Next she suggests to Dmitri that his next node should be wood or stone, either of which could be used for tool making.

Emily makes a grass and fabric rope of about two feet long with a slightly wider piece of fabric shaped to contain an object to be thrown. (Emily tries to make a slingshot)

In reply to Vladislav Chigrakov (msg # 198):

Arjun lays down next to his braid, attempting to measure it. "It was too do with time. You tried to magically interact with time. When E.... when the British rockabilly over there quoted Arabian Nights, she must have briefly fantasized about being Alladin. I can't actually summon a Shadow Bow even though that was the spell I tried to cast. It's just that I wanted to work with Shadow Energy, or whatever, and archery, at the same time, so it unlocked the option.

"I could be wrong, I guess."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:56, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 194):

"SPARSER appears to have misunderstood. I am not asking for more non-help or for nor am I asking for more non-help from the System. I am concerned that what is being offered as help has turned into derision and snark. I am pursuing the taming of the snark in myself (for the Snark was a Boojum, you see); further snark does not help.

So what am I asking for? Arjun appears to have found an error in my perceptions; we shall see later. I must determine the vocabulary of SPARSER so I can communicate in a way that makes sense to us both. But the suggestion that I don't want help is remarkably judgmental for a computerized construct."

"Miss, I am working on Soil nodes as a place to grow food seems more necessary now." Since Dmitri only gets one Node per day, he may as well use it in a sensible way. As he is already on the Root disk and has no clue how big a Node is, he moves to a spot halfway between the center and the edge between the center and along the presumed positive Z axis (i.e. looking over the shoulder to the "right" would reveal the original disk) and speaks in the prepared monotonal voice that seems to attract responses, Create Regular Soil Node here!"
This message was last edited by the player at 07:01, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

Emily looks for signs of the passing of other members of the Party from place to place which she may be able to expand on in the future when tracking beasts.

Next she looks for animal or bird droppings, seeds and variations in the moisture of soil.

In response to Arjun, she says, "Ali Baba and the forty thieves"

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 200):

"If is just intent, could declare 'I am not player!' and claim class lets us go home safely instead be here. Am thinking is much more intent than involved, Arjun."

"Oh, yeah. There's a specific system here we've got to uncover. But it already exist. We're not defining it."

Vladislav gets many notifications from his constant recital of spells, this time from yet another unique game system.


Arjun spends the next ten minutes working on making his rope. Eventually, he ends up with a decently sturdy rope that is nine feet long. He feels a little tired from it, and reasons if he wants to extend it another six feet, it will take him a quarter hour.


As Arjun does this, Emily decides to check the kite she made earlier, to see if or where it's casting a shadow, and report it to Arjun.

After checking it, she finds that it is indeed casting a shadow, in the direction of the Root Disc. It seems only about a foot long, yet Emily cannot see any sun in the sky of this space. How it is casting a shadow is unclear.


After doing this, Emily sets about attempting to build a rudimentary slingshot. At the five minute mark, she is nearly done, but she screws it up and has to start over. After another five minutes, for a total of ten spent on this task, she ends her work and raises her head to see some screens before her.

---

Meanwhile, Dmitri feels insulted by an inconceivable entity.


Then, as he stands somewhere on the Root Disc, Dmitri finally manages to activate his skill.

Anyone nearby will probably notice that as soon as the words leave his mouth, a mound of dirt appears from nowhere directly in front of Dmitri!

---

Soon after Dmitri's hard-fought success, Emily spends some time scouting around to see what traces - if any - the PLAYERs have left on the three discs. She finds that footfalls have indeed been left on two of them, and she gets the feeling that she can more easily make them out and notice them from a little further than she would expect from herself.



Interestingly, she also realizes near the end of her twenty-minute search that judging by the prints left, the PLAYERs' shoes' bottoms were sterilized when they arrived, since none of the prints have any filth other than whatever was tracked in from across the three DISCs. They are mainly depressions in the surface.



Notably, not a single blade of grass on the original disc seems to have been trampled, nor dragged along anywhere. In fact, Emily feels a small shiver down her back when she gets on her knees to inspect the blades of grass and finds she cannot spot a single speck out of place. They seem completely unaffected by the weight of the players...

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 204):

Vladislav checks his screen again, and asks Arjun "Is heroic class rarer epic than?" after reading what his barrage of dings added to his options of unlocked classes.

The sound ripping and tearing could be heard from "Cloth Island" as Otto had found a good starting location and began lifting up the material before taking it between both hands and pulling it apart.

The squatting, standing and tearing routine was more work than he had expected, but after some ten minutes work or so he had pulled up and separated two roughly rectangular sections 6'×8' in size.

These he folded up and carried to the central island and set them down on the grass. "Two down, three to go..." he said, noticed the handiwork of the others, and then saw the dirt and smiled.

"Hey, you did it." He commented approvingly. "Any ideas on what you're gonna do with it?"

Emily approaches Dmitri's new node and waits for permission before bending down to examine the soil, in particular checking for differences from the original sterilised soil of the original disc.

She looks again for seeds and small soil based fauna.  If she sees stones, she will take a small one and throw it over the side of the original disc in the direction from which the wind is coming.

Arjun glares at Vladislav for a solid minute, feeling vaguely certain the Russian was mocking him.

Continuing to stare directly at Vladislav, with a look of accusation and offense clearly displayed, if not downright projected, he very carefully wraps the Vine Rope(9ft) around his waist, and walks away, only breaking eye contact after 5 or 6 steps.

He then left to go gather more resources for his rope project. As he walked around the Vine Disc, he looked around, seeking more shadows. When Emily reports back to him about the shadow under the kite, he follows her back to it to investigate. As they go he asks Emily, "Hey, did you get a Mark skill with your Huntsperson class? I got a skill that lets me mark a target to do additional damage to him, but I can't do it very often. Doesn't really matter right now, since I still don't have a weapon of any kind, and it looks like we didn't get attacked during that quest I got after all. Since we obviously get XP in skills by using them, I thought if we both had that skill, we could Mark each other, just for the XP, and to see what it looks like. Interested?"

If Emily agrees, he tries to place his Mark of Shadows on her.


When she shows him the shadow under the kite, Arjun tells her "Thanks, but that's going to be way too small for what I'm trying to do. Unless..."

Arjun places his hands into the shadow of the kite, concentrates, and pantomimes making various whittling gestures while thinking very hard about crafting a Shadow Dagger for exactly 10 minutes. Just any kind of cutting tool would be fine, he thinks.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:47, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

Emily finds that she doesn't really need to make contact with the Node to examine it. She can get an equally good investigation done by simply being within a couple feet of it.

Thus, regardless of Dmitri's choice, Emily gleans the following from the node he has placed:

1. The soil type is different. The soil of the original disc was very soft and dark brown in color, while this is quite coarse and thin, and a light, almost grayish, brown in color.



2. She does not find any abnormalities in the node at first, but after closer inspection, she does find a few strange bits that seem fairly gross. They are hard, and smaller than a pebble, and are either light or dark gray in color. There only seem to be a handful of them across the whole of the node. Perhaps these are seeds, or just bits of silt or other ground material. Since she is not entirely sure whether they are 'stone' or just something similar, she does not immediately pick one out to toss to the wind.

---

Meanwhile, Arjun gives stink eye to a russian and asks a woman if they can cast magic spells on each other.

As he tries to cast a spell, the actor hears a strange distorted and elongated DING noise which becomes audible to the rest of the PLAYERs halfway through.

In Arjun's hand, a strange thing has appeared. A mass of evaporating, black... something.

The best way to describe it is solidified shadows... It has taken roughly the form of a darker-than-ebony dagger blade, and seems to be endlessly leaking some kind of pitch-black vapor. It is rather cold to the touch, and feels almost weightless.

It does seem to have a physical hardness, though.

A screen has appeared in front of Arjun.


Except that isn't the biggest problem, but that a screen has appeared once again in front of everyone else...

Otto, who had been resting from his labors as he chatted with Dmitri, and who had watched as their Huntress was examining the soil, glanced over as Arjun seemed to manifest some kind of weapon.

But he did not have long to consider the matter...

"Here we go..." he said in a low and somewhat ominous way, the man looking like he had never been in a "real" fight his entire life. Despite this, with there being no real way to run and no real way to avoid the situation, he seemed as committed as anybody to doing what he could.

He blew out a breath and moved his arms as if to limber up for what he assumed was coming.

"I hope you'll be using that dagger on a monster", says Emily.  "I won't use my mark until I find a monster to use it on.  Could you make me a bullet or two?"

With that, Emily begins moving as stealthily as she can toward the nearest monster to her position, aiming to use her sling as soon as she was both sighted and in range.  If she can't see it, she will try to track the monster, seeking to catch it before it catches any member of the party.

Arjun names his new skill after the magical "tradition" of the TV show he had been going to audition for later today, another fantasy show though not set in the modern day, with predominant themes about looms, circles and chronological repetition, called The Loom of Destiny. In that show, regardless of the magical substance you were crafting with, the act of magical crafting was always called Węæving (ooc: call it weaeving if you don't know how to make the diacritic marks)

"Name new skill, Węæving. Description: As per the Craft skill, only applied to raw magical material."

Nodding to Emily, he says, "Yeah, now that there are monsters, that makes more sense. I was planning to use the dagger on those cloth vines and make some gorram underwear. I can try to make you some...oh, some sling bullets, but I need to concentrate really hard while Węäving, so you're gonna have to be on watch for me. This'll probably take ten minutes. Also, fair warning, I might get an Exhaustion debuff or pass out entirely."

(OOC - at the moment, if I'm correct, Emily, Otto and Dmitri are by the Dirt Node, while Arjun is by the Kite, and I don't know where Vladislav is?)

Otto and Emily readily prepare for battle. However, despite the fact that monsters have supposedly spawned on the root island they are standing on, nothing is immediately visible.

After a moment, Emily catches a site from the corner of her eyes. She immediately whirls in that direction, and is shocked with what she finds!

Barely visible to her at this distance of roughly 15 feet, even with her high SENSE and relevant skill, there is a very small bug that is dung brown in color. It crawls around a little bit along a vine before waddling down underneath it.

It does not seem to either mind or maybe just is not aware of their presence, at the moment.

Emily also would note that she lacks anything to shoot with her slingshot.

Meanwhile, Arjun gets a notice from the system in response to his naming.

"Fine, you overpaid PA, call the new skill Węæving."

Arjun successfully renames his skill.

Not noticing that Emily has neither promised to guard him, nor that she has moved off in search of prey, Arjun tries to węæve sling bullets out of the remaining shadowstuff underneath the kite for her makeshift sling.

He focuses, imagines the movements the casting agent showed him in the video, remembers the personality he had chosen for the character he would be auditioning for, and with his keen sense of time, ensures that he crafts these bullets for 10 minutes.

Emily points the beetle out to Otto and then goes back to Arjun and says, "Not to worry, it's like this big."

She waits for Arjun to finish and only then does she go in search of the other monster.

Emily says "View Expanded Status"

She has to do that so I can cut and paste to her character sheet.

Otto seems a bit confused at first.

"Seriously?" He asks, and peers in that direction, unable to really see anything.

He waited for maybe thirty seconds, continuing to look around, but when it seemed evident that their Huntress and Arjun were going to stand around and work their magic, he went in search of the Monster, trying to get a closer look.

Emily nods.  "It's a little beetle but that doesn't make sense does it?.  Oh wait."

Emily thinks for a moment, calling up the map.  "If Dmitri placed the beetle at (0,0,2) and this beetle's here (assuming it's one of the monsters) then when we find the third monster, we will have sufficient co-ordinates to estimate the origin point (0,0,0) on the map.  It will be at the halfway point on a line from the place where the beetle was to the place where the other monster was, and it should be at a point where a line from it to Dmitri's soil node is at right angles to it."

Upon hearing Emily's words, Arjun looks up into the featureless void above them and projects his voice out into the universe in the way that only an actor can do. "Hey, Hand of System!" He calls out. "I bet you 1 Market Coin that the Voice of System just said, 'That's what she said' or something stupid like that."

His latest test of their new captors accomplished, he turns to Emily, with an apologetic half-shrug that clearly expresses remorse, solidarity, and an attempt to share the joke together at the expense of their captors. (OOC: Body Language Lvl 4 has to be useful for something, right?)

Arjun says, "Bet it's poisonous or something. Did you Observe any useful information about it? Try any of your class skills on it? These'll be ready in ten minutes. How are the others coming along? Oh, hey. I have an idea."

Assuming that he's been making any kind of measurable progress on the sling shadow-bullets, he mentally addresses the Voice of System.


After holding the image in his mind of what he wanted to do for the length of 3 deep breaths, he asks Emily, "Did you get that? Read it back to me, so we can tell if these System staffers are reliable or not."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:19, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

Without even thinking about what he's saying, Arjun corrects the mistake. "Root Disc is at [1,0,0] and Cloth Disc is at [-1,0,0]. Monsters were placed on those locations."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:12, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

"I watched it crawling up a vine." said Emily, "And it was a plain brown beetle.  Maybe it's a cockroach and we'll wish we'd killed it but one thing I noticed was it wasn't aware of us.  Maybe the other monster's a hedgehog and we could introduce the two to one another."

Otto chuckled at Arjun's joke. "Ah! I get it now. We're actually in a stoner comedy." he declared as if it all suddenly made sense.

"I mean we've got the fat guy, East Indian dude, the hot chick, the smart guy and the Russian." he listed them off on his fingers. "All trapped together on a zany adventure. We just need a bad guy like an uptight Dean or the Highway Patrol or something." he explained, smiling as he narrows his eyes, put his hands on his knees and peered into the roots.

"A bug?" Otto seemed even more surprised and murmured to himself. "A bug...Monster bug..."

"What's a market coin", asked Emily, "and who is Hand of the System?  I only know there's a voice of the system but I didn't know it was a person."

"Okay Otto", says Emily, "let's go to the cloth disc and see if we can find the other monster."

She noticed that Arjun was showing signs of knowing things they hadn't worked out yet and also that many of her beliefs about directions and places were proving to be wrong.  She moves carefully and stealthily, keeping eyes, ears, nose and any other senses wide open as she began to hunt the second monster.  She had no useful weapons but perhaps she could tame it.

At her urging, Otto went with her to look for the other Monster, hoping perhaps that it would be easier to find on the broad, open terrain of Cloth Island.

Vladislav did not know what he had done to insult Arjun, as he interpreted that look. But he went back to his meditative listing of spells when the actor moved away.

"Quoober's Quick Meals. Noolcoomb's Conjuration of Milk and Honey. Korgen's Conjuration of the Cloud of Kindness. Korki's Kosmik Kookies Konjuration. Doroman’s Conjuration of the Fiery Fingers of Light. Tuatha’s Ritual of the Binding Chains of Light." His recitation of spells from The Black Grimoire of Arduin was suddenly broken by the appearance of a large screen with the announcement of monsters, and a look of consternation crossed his face upon reading it.

Glancing around fearfully, he did not see anything monstrous immediately, but worried that he may be running out of time finding a class that would provide healing, food, water, and other necessities for the group. Not what he would have gone for, had this been a fun place, but with the high likelihood of life & death situations he was putting his own desires and dreams aside. Even if it hurt giving up such a chance. Survival and keeping all of them alive was more important.

He rattled off some more combat-oriented spell names while being wary of possible creatures unknown... "Ishorg’s Spell of the Awful Sting. Jasterman’s Bolts of Blue Bedevilment. Masayuki’s Mist of Malevolent Misery. Tirinyo’s Wall of Ice and Fire. The Black Bands of Cytorakk. Suspatch’s Stupendous Spit Spell. Karchwynn’s Conjuration of the Devouring Sun. The Ten Tigers of Tamura. Avicenna’s Spell of Slime to Shards. Stanford’s Silver Prismatic Barrier vs Undead. Abskambar’s Abysmal Blast Pellets. Sigestamundo’s Silver Screamers..."

He paused, and somewhere deep inside struggled to make a decision. A test of faith? Perhaps. But his next words were not spells, nor addressing any of the other humans present. "Goddess of Light?" he asked the air above. "I can't find what class I need to provide for the group. Would you be allowed to pick one for me, something that is needful?"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:45, Sat 15 Jan 2022.

"Market coins are a reward I got for being the first to pick a class. Haven't figured out what they're for yet cuz I've been focused on trying to get us equipped with weapons for that quest, which is total bs because now they're spawning monsters in response to me finding weapons to fight the threat implied by the quest."

"The Hand of System started commenting on the notifications Voice of System sends me...." He takes a deep breath, clearly trying to recollect the order of things.

".... he showed up when I started Shadow Weaeving. I think he's the entity that implemented it, maybe? He seems to be the Waldorf to Voice's Statler. I didn't realize Voice was a person until Hand started needling him in comments on the alerts Voice sends. Voice REALLY can't take what he dishes out.

"Generic he, to be clear. No idea if either of them have even got a body. But now that I'm thinking about it, Voice's messages have always been pretty full of lighthearted banter, at least compared to the one notification I've heard anybody read aloud. Why, what are yours like?"

It does not take high stats to notice that Arjun only started crafting with shadows about 11 minutes ago.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:19, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

Emily smiles.  "From my point of view, wood are stone are equally good.  Stone gives me stones to fire from my sling while I could use wood to make a bow and arrow.  Stone could also be useful in starting fires."

After tracking the second monster, with Otto, depending on the nature of the creature, Emily either
goes to the furthest east point of the original disc.  There she pulls up a lump of grass and soil and tosses it low, beneath the wind, into the void or
Attempts to tame the second monster She does this ONLY if the monster is smaller than her but at least the size of a mouse.

As Arjun settles down to craft some sling bullets, expecting it to take ten minutes...

He feels a number of cold, spherical objects in his hands. Glancing down at them, they appear extremely dark, almost hard to see because it absorbs so much of the light in this area.

They also seem to emit a bit of vapor. In his hands, there are a total of three of these small balls, less than an inch in diameter. Strangely , they are each as heavy as the dagger itself, about 75% of a pound, which he now holds in his other hand.

They are also a bit easier to feel the hardness of, because of their small size fitting in his palm.

Arjun's hands are now full of these strange items of his own creation.


Meanwhile, Emily immediately loses interest in the strange bug she found on Root Disc, and heads 'down' to Cloth Disc, crossing by Arjun on the way.

Before that though, Otto decides to investigate those bugs a little further, as he bends down and squints to the place the little guy vanished.

Due to him being in bad shape, he doesn't get too close. However, that may be fortunate, as when he bends down to look in the small gap that thing disappeared into.

snap!

He flinches and pulls back by instinct, as one of those small bugs, barely the size of a digit on his little finger faked him out by elastically shooting towards him before returning. It didn't actually get very close, but attacked as soon as Otto got near.

Most likely, it is a territorial behavior, a warning of sorts. Also, Otto manages to see as he goes on the back foot that there is not just one bug down there...

From the mere glimpse he got, he caught sight of a number he could not count, but estimates to be at least a dozen. And that was from just the small sliver he managed to peer into.

It is unclear how many bugs are down there, but it is entirely possible it exceeds a hundred, or if those things are seriously crawling tight, it could be numerous thousands of them. At the moment, he has no way to know...

Afterwards, Emily tugs him along to the Cloth disc. He follows with her, either happy to get away from that place or thinking it may be good to move in pairs to see the second species.

Once the two have arrived at the Cloth disc (Emily may have chosen to pick up her sling ammo from Arjun, by now) they immediately begin moving about to inspect the place.

Emily is more successful than Otto, likely because of her high SENSE and Observation skill.

The first thing she notices is that the area smells a lot like mothballs. Dmitri's shirt didn't exactly have that well-known scent, so perhaps it was added when it became part of the World. However, this is Emily's first time noticing it, so maybe it is because of the new Monster species in this area?

Emily eventually manages to catch a glimpse out of the corner of her eye. She finds another small critter. It is a lighter blue in color, and seems to resemble a moth. It can be seen snacking silently on a bit of loose thread, left by the portion of the isle that Otto pulled apart to make the two blankets he deposited on the first disc.

It doesn't seem as frenzied as the root bugs did, as it seems quite at peace as it chews away in small portions. It's size is a bit hard to tell exactly for Otto, but Emily can see a bit more easily that it is around the size of her little finger. It is a bit bigger than the root bug, all in all.

---

While the two exchange bullets, Arjun asks Emily to repeat something he has communicated with her. It comes off as a bit strange to her, which Arjun picks up on from her expression.

As Emily heads back to the original disc, she immediately stops with an eerie feeling.

She recalls that she had done some work about an hour ago here, where she had dug a small hole all the way to the steel portion of this disc... However, she can no longer find that hole.

Put off by this, she nevertheless continues with her plan to grab some soil and grass and give it a toss...

So, she reaches down to grab a handful of dirt and grass, and gets a big clump before standing up and-

Huh?

She glances at her hand. It has no traces of dirt. It has a bit of grossness from the vines and cloth she had manipulated, but nothing remains from her interactions with the original disc... Also, she is not holding anythng?

The Iranian woman turns back to the spot she had just dug, but it is untouched.... She swallows her saliva, and bends down once more to take another handful.

She stands up and blinks. Her hands are completely empty. Not a speck of dirt. Did she... forget to pick it up this time?

She tries again. This time, she cannot get a grip, even though she makes contact... She blinks...

This disc refuses to be manipulated.

She feels slightly unwell.

Vladislav recites some spells with an ever-increasing sense of nervousness and urgency...


Then, as his mantra-like repetitions seem to no longer keep his worries at bay, he calls out to an entity, whom it seems he has had some kind of private communications with prior.

"View Expanded Status" says Emily.

Emily checks her status.

Emily goes back to Arjun and calls out, "Avengers assemble!" Then after a few moments of feeling stupid, she tries again, "Gentlemen, could we all come over here please?"

She sits down on the grass and says, "I think the time has come to try to change all the things that have happened to us, and whether they affect us differently.  If they do, it could be because of class differences, and we may have to think about who can do what.  If they're not, then we need to consider the form the System's hostility takes."

"In my case, I gained an ability to observe and later on an ability to craft although the latter has disappeared from my status window, although this seems to have been compensated by an increase in intelligence.  I've also noticed that the central disc no longer allows me to manipulate it and my hands are clean even when I try to lift out soil.  We also have two new monsters arising from (I think) us knowing too much.  Among the vines is a small beetle whose powers I don't know.  Among the cloth is a blue butterfly who eats cloth and seems to be able to feign invisibility.  What about everyone else?"

Otto's experience with the bug, which appeared to him to be the vanguard of its  hive, gave him a little start. Seeing them all down there crawling and writhing was not a great feeling, and it had jumped further than he would have guessed.

So in part to consider things, and in part to assist their Huntress, he moves with her towards Cloth Island.

Things began to get even stranger then. He saw the Moth after she had pointed it out, and then she tried to manipulate the grass as he watched her and seemed to fail, after which she called the others over.

Otto seemed interested in Emily's experiment.

"Good call. I only have points in one skill so far, and that's Digging. It's not even at level two yet" he admitted. "Tell me if I'm wrong, but it seemed like some of you got your skills more easily than that?" He glanced around, evidently just a little concerned that the System might be giving him points more slowly because of some sort of mechanical reason.

"But my Class, Barbarian, that gave me three Class Skills. Heavy Weapon Mastery, Battle Rage and Survival."  he went on. "Battle Rage seems more like a way to encourage violence all around, it seems like it would build up the more violent I get, or if something is violent towards me.

Survival also does not seem so much like the finding water, starting fires thing, although it might be. I get the feeling it might let me deal with harsh weather better, or maybe go longer without food, things like that " he shrugged. "It seems like it would be really useful." he added sincerely.

"I'd like to try lifting some real weight." He admitted curiously. "But I'm not gonna be able to do that with a bunch of grass and cloth. Any volunteers for letting me lift them up a few times? Or trying to at least?" he glanced around at the others.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:37, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

In reply to Voice of The System (msg # 234):

Vladislav's eyes widen, and he bows his head. "Thank you, Your Divinity" he says before reading the description of the class that She had unlocked for him.

Reading carefully, the Russian accepted the class, Priest of Survival. Getting to his feet, he started over towards the others in response to Emily's call to assemble, looking over his class and skills on the way but remaining mindful of where he was putting his feet.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:18, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

Emily nods.  "Feel free to lift me, Otto.  Lift me as high as you can lift me safely and turn around slowly to see whether I can see any further in any direction." (Emily weighs around 70 Kg)

If Otto does as asked, she will make keen observations of anything revealed by the higher vantage point.

"Cool, thanks." Otto replied, and walked over before squatting down in front of Emily with his back facing to her. "Let's try just sitting on my shoulders for now, if that works maybe we can try to stand you up." he suggested.

Once Emily was ready, Otto attempted to stand up, something he would have felt comfortable doing before they had arrived at this strange place, and once they were up he tried a few "weighted squats" to see how those felt. If all went well, he attempted to hold Emily's ankles as she stood up on his shoulders to get maximum height.

Carrying 150 lbs on one's back is not a totally easy task, but Otto finds it is not too difficult for him to manage. He does find himself breathing a little heavier, and there is some strain, but not as much as he would expect, especially given the fact that he is quite out of shape...

The squats are a bit tougher on him, and after a few he starts to break a sweat. His stamina, though still higher than before he arrived here, has not improved as significantly as his overall lifting capability seems to have had.

At this point, he feels like he can go a little further, and manage to hold it for a while.

Thus, he carefully helps Emily stand up on his hands. She wobbles once, but also manages to keep her balance notably well. Perhaps that is also influenced by one of these 'stats'?

His shoulders do feel a little bit of a burn from literally having a person handstand on his hands, but he feels like he could hold this for about two minutes before he would start to seriously be pushing his limit... But, is there perhaps some value in doing so? Wasn't there a trope of people "breaking their limits"?

Another factor to consider in this weight-training is that it is also serving the purpose of scouting around, and that the two of them, nay, the five of them don't have limitless time, since they still do not know if the MONSTERs will make moves against them, or if other threats may begin to appear, or be discovered, as well

Regardless of Otto's choice on how far to test his strength, as opposed to saving it, Emily has enough time at the minimum to do a scan of the whole horizon, as well as all three discs.

At this elevation, the wind seems a little fresher, and a little stronger...


Though she does not spot any bodies in the sky, she can just barely make out a faint bit of illumination in the direction of the cloth disc... No, even that is a bit too certain to say... At most, a tiny hue difference may be presence, likely indicating some light source at a great distance... Still, the fact that it does not appear visibly despite affecting the surroundings means one of three things:

1. It has some sort of physical form which is not observed in the same way as a star

2. There is something in between the two distances causing a disruption

3. Some unknown mystical effect is at play.


Finally, Emily notices one last thing as she uses the Barbarian, Otto to get a better vantage point. It is a bit ironic for her to notice this when she is further away, as opposed to when she was closer earlier, but nevertheless this is when she finds it.

The original disc does indeed have one thing different from when they all arrived. Despite the fact that it seems to reject being changed whatsoever, even to the tip of a single blade of grass, there is one blade of grass that is affected.

Specifically, the spot where Arjun originally plucked the grass blade to create the Root Disc is missing a blade.

Of course, even with her skills and stats, it would not be feasible for Emily to notice this if she had not been roughly aware of what changes they have previously made to that island. Furthermore, it would have been harder to spot if not for the extremely offputting repeating pattern of that island's grass.

Otto's ruddy features flushed a shade of pink as he recovered from the squats, and a few beads of sweat stood out on his brow.

He seemed to be doing alright until Emily stood up to her full height, after which he seemed to really have to exert himself to keep his position.

His muscles began to strain and burn, and he shifted under her weight a little here and there, a task made that much easier by her exceptional balance.

He decided to try to push himself a bit, and he turned a few times, giving her ample time to look around, and when he eventually felt like he might be in danger of dropping her, he carefully squattedd back down to let her hop off.

Emily explains what she has seen: the wind is fresher and stronger up there; the light source is from the direction of the cloth disc but there's no obvious body like a sun, it could be a long way away, whatever it is, or maybe there's something between us or perhaps it's a mystic force; lastly, the original disc is missing a blade where Arjun tore one to make the vine disc although when she tries to take bits from that disc, nothing happens.

"Could you let me down now please?" says Emily, and when she's down, she asks Arjun, "Can you take soil from the original disc or am I not the only one?"

Otto is quite glad, despite the somewhat unfamiliar strain of exercise, when he manages to hold her up for another three minutes.

Still, he definitely felt like he could have gone for another minute, but his arms were starting to get shaky from the prolonged effort, so he decided it would be best to put her down for now.

He is a bit winded, but mostly just quite sweaty and red. His breathing, while labored, is not actually as difficult as you could expect from someone in his weight class. Perhaps the stats were doing some sort of adjustment?

Though he looks up, half expecting to see some kind of alert, there had unfortunately been no increase in stats. Though, there is a short message.

Otto let Emily down as gently as he could, then stood and wiped his brow, breathing a little heavier now. He grinned, obviously a little winded.

Suddenly a pop up evidently appeared in front of him, his grin grew by a fraction and he glanced up. "Thanks System, appreciate it." he said between labored breaths, and he actually did seem encouraged.

"Heads up" he said to anybody who cared to listen followed by more heavy breathing..."Does not look like there's, any kind, of Athletics skill."  A few more breaths. "Seems like that's all, covered by Stats."

Vlad watches Otto and Emily doing their exercise and viewing test. And considers what her report might mean. Hmm.

And heeds Otto's words about athletics and stats. Well, he didn't expect to have too much trouble doing plenty of manual labor for whoever asked him to, given his physical stats. Though his lack of skills was starting to bug him.

Something occurred to him. Only Dmitri could make nodes. Were the non-class skills other than languages restricted to one person apiece? That would not bode well for them as a group. More pondering.

"Well, why wait until tomorrow?" Arjun asks, eyeing the shadow-smoke emitting from his shadowcrafts, as he hands the three sling bullets to Emily.

"These aren't going to last forever. Tell me how long they last for. But at least I can make us cutting tools now. That should make Crafting easier for everybody. Stone's good for a few things, but Wood seems more generally useful to me."

From his tone, it's unclear if Arjun means "I think wood is more useful generally," or if he means, "I have more uses for wood than stone." From his demeanor, it's possible those two things are the same.

He walks over to the latrine he built, and says, "System, Create Wood Node here," pointing to a spot where a tree could be used as an anchor point for an improved latrine, where Cloth Disc and Grass/Origin Disc meet. He adds, "Preferably in the form of a mango tree."

He returns to the group discussion, succeed or fail. While doing so, he checks his Alerts, and says aloud, "No worries about the quest, Voice. Thank you for letting me know."

Now he knows that these two entities can be bartered with and cajoled into taking actions. It's not just the setting that is malleable to the abductees, but the two captors that have interacted with them can be manipulated. He just needed to figure out a way to tell the others this important information without System realizing. I'd buy that for a dollar, he thinks with grim satisfaction.

---

When he returns to the group after his quick expedition, he tells them, "Looks like we can't generate quests, only Observers can, and I've only seen one reference to one Observer."



Arjun gleefully leaps forward into a tuck-and-roll, and tries to come to a stop in front of her in a classic superhero landing pose, as was much maligned in that one movie that he didn't get cast in.



OOC: I cannot parse this sentence. Did you mean to type "change" there, or is that an autocorrect error?




Arjun chimes in, "First skill I learned was Body Language, from using ASL to try to test the flexibility of the system. Took me about 83 minutes of constantly signing to get to Level 4. Also, it's weird that I just said 83 instead of rounding it out -- that's not like me."

He takes a breath to school his thoughts. "I already talked in the Party Chat about the Craft skill and how I didn't get any points for it when making the latrine. Now I've got this new skill, which apparently wasn't even an option in the game until I tried to do it. I think that's what caused them to spawn the two monster-bugs you've seen, as some kind of balance for giving me a skill the original...level designer didn't intend for us to have yet."

His Body Language clearly conveys to everyone that when he says "level designer" he really means "kidnapper."

As the conversation continues, Arjun shares "Aside from my class skills, I've got Human Language Interp, Body Language, Craft (with only one recipe so far), and now Węäving, which anyone with a semi-mystical class can learn. I'm disproportionately tired from my ASL. I used to do translation gigs for events and would translate for people all weekend long, but I got really tired after only an hour, and I don't know why. Anyway, once I get at least to Level 2 in it, I'd like to try teaching the skill to everybody whose picked a class."



"Naw, man. I've got maybe 127 experience points across the skills that I've picked up so far, not counting the ASL stuff. I was worried that the ASL thing was keeping me from advancing as quickly as everybody else."



"I've been making this rope," Arjun explains, pointing to his latest fashion accessory. "Because I want to investigate what's underneath the discs. I'd 'preciate it if you could help me strength test the rope, and help me climb down and back up, when the time comes. I'll strength train with you until you feel you're up to the task, once I'm done with a few Craft projects."
This message was last edited by the player at 23:13, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

Arjun looks at Emily, carefully measuring her, possibly noticing her illness, then glances off to nowhere briefly, most likely examining an Alert window.


Then he crouches down and tries to interact with the grass. First, he tries to pluck a blade of grass. Then he to use his Shadow Dagger to cut into the turf, cutting first a line, then carving out a square patch about the size of his hand to pick up.

After that, he tries to Węæve a bowl of elemental earth from the dirt underneath the grass.

OOC: I am already regretting the name I picked, with its weird letters.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:53, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

Hearing what Arjun said shows Vladislav that his train of thought had a critical flaw in it. Insufficient data to work with.

"How beginning do this waeving?" he asks Arjun, failing to pronounce the odd word correctly on his first try. He watches closely when the actor uses his shadow-stuff and tries to do something to the ground.

Arjun's attempts to create a Node result in an awkward moment of silence, before he moves on.

Through his passive use of Body Language skill, everyone except Emily and Vladislav pick up that he has a negative opinion of these 'level designers', while Emily in particular understands him to be meaning something closer to 'kidnapper' specifically. Vladislav does not pick up the dissociation between his words and meaning.


After some talking, Arjun kneels down to pluck a blade of grass. However, as he pulls on the small plant, it doesn't come out. He tugs harder but it does not give even a little from the ground. He releases it to get into a better posture, and is a little awed to notice the grass blade has not been squished even a little by him gripping it between thumb and finger.

Utilizing his full body weight, and as much strength as he can, Arjun tries first yanking with full might, which causes him to hit himself into the ground instead as he suffers the force of his own pull rather than the tiny green thing. After, he tries to pull with a consistent effort, but it's challenging because it is not easy to keep a grip on such a small object when exerting such muscle power.

Next, he uses his shadow dagger to cut the ground, in an attempt to collect a square of turf. However the knife is unable to leave even a mark on the ground of the summoning disc.

He is tempted to test it's sharpness on something else, so he cuts a tiny bit of his rope, and is immediately surprised, as the dagger, while not exactly having an impossible razor edge or anything, is very very sharp. It is easily enough that slightly pressing your finger on the blade could break the skin if not outright draw blood. The grass is unaffected.

When he attempts to use his custom skill on the dirt which he can partially touch through the grass growing on top, he is given an alert of failure.


OOC: I don't mind if you want to retcon the name to exclude diacritics

Briefly admiring Emily's rockabilly beauty aloft Otto's shoulders, it occurs to him that he should be looking for shadows and what they imply about the lighting situation here, if he wants to be able to use his class.

"Can we move this conversation over to Cloth Disc? This dagger has a limited shelf life, and I want to make myself some pants. Or was that everything? Otto, I saw you were working on something with the fabrics too, would you like a knife?"

He starts looking for shadows, and trying to figure out what that says about the direction of light, incorporating the information Emily has shared with everyone.

If Otto accepts the offer, Arjun will węæve another dagger for him out of the kite's shadow, then examine the shadow that he's made 2 daggers and 3 sling bullets out of, to try to measure how much material he has to work with there, and how much was used by his crafts, showing anyone who asks how it is done. (Edited to add: explicitly Vlad, since he wants to learn)

Then, whether with the party or alone, he goes back to the Cloth disc to cut up some fabric, passing the point where he had tried to make a Wood Node.

Examining the types of available cloths to work with, he crafts a langot and a pair of Thai wrap pants and puts them on. Once that's done, he tries to craft 6ft of cloth rope.

OOC: A langot:
https://e-modusvivendi.com/und...-langot-04413-black/

It's a type of underwear made from a sort of T-shaped cloth. Think Sumo Wrestlers.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:12, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

OOC: Let's use weaeving and węæving interchangeably. Judging by my phone, it's probably all Otto is seeing anyway, since he's mostly posting from his phone
This message was last edited by the player at 18:42, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

"Sure, let me take a breather first, then I'll get back to it." He replied to Arjun, maintaining his grin as he paced a little and recovered from his efforts.

"Yeah, wood would be good" he agreed, speaking mostly to Dmitri, who seemed to be their "Nodamancer" "I would feel better with a weapon in my hand personally, and something like a club would be great."

At the offer of the knife, Otto seemed quite pleased at the friendly cooperation. "If you're feeling up to making another one, yeah, just don't strain yourself. Who knows when we might...how did it go? Exceed the significance threshold or something like that?" he looked around. "Figured it would be nice to have a comfortable spot for everyone to bed down at the end of the day though, if it ever even gets dark here."

Arjun quotes the relevant Alert message from memory, and then seems surprised that he had remembered it with such accuracy. "Guess all that line-memorizing comes in handy after all. And yeah, maybe a rest would be good.

"Hey, congratulations on classing up, everybody. We've got:

• Otto the Barbarian,
• Huntsman Rockabilly (Hunter? Huntsperson?),
• Vlad the Red Cleric (what god did you end up going with?), and
• Dmitri Node-Touched.... Dmitri, what classes are you thinking about? I bet you'd make a good mage."
• And, of course, Arjun the Shadow Archer. I need a cooler title.

He considers for a moment. "Club for Otto, probably a better choice for fighting bug-monsters than a blade. Rockabilly's sling was a smart choice, and until we get a Stone Node, I should be able to keep her supplied with sling stones in a fight. We need to get you a bag to hold your ammo in. What kind of weapons does everybody else want? I should practice making them, see how long it takes to get everybody equipped for a fight."

He furrows his brow and sends a message over Party Chat.

"Actually, a bag is exactly what I need! A pouch full of shadow!"
This message was last edited by the player at 18:55, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

"Will do," says Emily, "and that makes sense to me."


Sorry that's an autocorrect error.  I meant consider.


"I had a similar issue," says Emily.  "I didn't get any points for crafting the kite (but I did open the Wind Mage class option) but I did for my rather cruddy sling"


"I don't know whether ASL is the same but in my other life, I sometimes hire British, Irish and Iranian Sign Language interpreters and I always have to hire two so that none of them have to work more than an hour.  Teaching's a good idea, I think we should try teaching each other whatever skills we can.  We might even unlock the teaching skill."

"My Crafting skill lists the Known Recipes I've discovered, and they made a new skill when I focused really hard on trying to do something they hadn't thought of before. I wonder if there's a list of things you can Craft, which doesn't have latrines and kites on it, and only those things trigger Crafting XP? I mean, that's why there's such an active moderator overseeing everything we do, right? Because {System} World isn't actually as reactive and developed as they want us to think it is, so these Observers need somebody watching and interceding."

"If everyone's agreed, should we move over to the cloth disc as Arjun suggested?" asked Emily and if everyone agreed, she moved over there.  While there, she would try to tame a moth.  She also paid attention to her own senses, trying to guess whether she was ill or just a little queasy from the adjustment of her stats.

"Alright!" Otto seemed to feel better after his rest, and once again rubbed his hands together eagerly.

"I do kinda wanna go stomp that moth..." He admitted as he stared over at Cloth Island. "First kill in the System, figure that might be worth a Title or somethin', although Moth Crusher does not exactly inspire fear." he mused aloud.

"Still, maybe if I kill it, we might get something bigger, something we could kill and eat." He wobbled his head back and forth as if inwardly debating.

He looked to Emily "But yeah, try to tame it first, maybe see what happens. But if it's not goin' with the program?" He clenched his fist for comical effect and followed her over again.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:19, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

Emily smiles. "I'll try taming the moth and you try killing the beetles."

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 256):

"Official name class for 'Priest of Survival' is. Cleric under Goddess of Light." Vladislav looked aside momentarily as if embarrassed. "No class skill until third level. She handling manually," the Russian answered Arjun's question when listing their classes, still sticking to using broken English on purpose.

"Hey, you look tired, Rockabilly. Let's all take a 10 minute breather and just check in with each other, like Otto suggested. He's right, this is a marathon, not a sprint."

OOC: At least, until the GM responds to our next set of stated goals ;)


He sits down, and tries to pull Emily down next to him. His attempted grip on her wrist is quite possibly overly familiar and intrusive, in that way that actors often are. His Body Language clearly communicates that this is meant to be an invitation to establish group cameraderie, and not an attempt to get handsy with her.

"Okay, priorities. We've got a privvy, Otto is working on bedding. Still no food, water, or shelter, but that last one might go easier now. We need to figure out that Soil Node. What else?"

---

Turning to Otto, Arjun asks, The beatles might be edible, in large enough quantities. But you guys only saw the one, right?"

Otto paused as Arjun began speaking to them and "went for" Emily.

"Oh no, there's a whole swarm down in there. Still did not look dangerous, but more like, I don't know, an infestation."

He seemed agreeable in leaving the Moth be, and in trying to exterminate the beetles instead.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:28, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

Arjun hands Otto his shadow dagger, and then crafts another one for himself.

OOC: Minor retcon. Give Otto my 1st dagger, then weaeve 2nd dagger for myself while teaching Vlad how to do it. Then make the clothing mentioned in above post.

"Bye bye, Barbarian! Come home with dinner." Arjun's face is a stage-perfect mask of feigned excitement at the prospect of eating raw beatles.

Turning to Vlad, Arjun excitedly suggests, "Oh, neat! I bet you'll be able to Weaeve Light too!"
This message was last edited by the player at 19:49, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

Emily lets Arjun pull her down and says.  "If we're going to eat beetles, we need a frying pan, a way to make fire and some oil that will burn hot and destroy any pathogens.  How do we find oil.  Preferably sunflower or olive oil but during world war two during the siege of Leningrad, Russians made bread using a wild plant related to alfalfa and engine oil so I'm guessing any oil will do."

"I don't think you're really grasping the concept of Survival Situation, Rockabilly."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:49, Sun 16 Jan 2022.

In reply to Arjun Gandhi (msg # 265):

Vlad sat down. "How begin do weaeve?" he asked quietly, the manner of a student to a new teacher. Heeding the more experienced (though that isn't saying much in this case) man closely.

"Well we could just grill them but I doubt there would be enough beetle left to eat."  Then she paused, "Starving or not, have you noticed how even our shoes were clean when we got here, as if they'd been sterilised?  If they did the same to us inside, then we're vulnerable to any pathogens."

In reply to Emily Khorashandi (msg # 269):

A deep frown. "If sterilized inside, are dead anyway."

Vlad was no pre-med student, but he remembered that one of the essential vitamins needed for human life was produced inside of the large intestine by symbiotic bacteria. And quite a few other important things were handled by the bacteria down there as well.

Emily nodded.  "I hadn't realised that but it makes sense."

Arjun looks at his bare feet beneath his bathrobe, and shrugs eloquently.

Emily nods, "Perhaps someone needs to craft you a pair of shoes. May I borrow your knife?"

Per GM discretion, Arjun will either make Emily a 3rd knife, or they can share the 2nd one as both work on nearby crafts.

Emily cuts part of the fringe from her leather jacket and says, "Perhaps it's time to throw this off the edge and see whether it makes a leather region."

"Don't waste it until the next day. Nothing'll happen now."

Dmitri joins the group at their current meetup point. "Sorry for the distraction, but I was playing around on the new "Character Sheet" screen. System placed useful information there, but has no sense of style. I fixed most of the ugliness, but I could do better if a Word Wrap option were implemented.

"As for becoming mystical, I am at a disadvantage. If we assume that 5 is maximum for stats, my 3 doesn't bode well. On the other hand, I am rated at that 5 maximum for Intelligence, so that might make up for it in certain cases.

"Where I seem to be of most use is as a helper for others. Not sure how that translates just yet, but for now, I am happy to help others organize their character screens in a way that suits them.

"What bothers me right now is that the one skill I have, Node Creation, apparently only makes one Node per day. At least for now, that is. At this pace, it will take six days just to advance a level.

"In the meantime, forgive me if I am repeating what has already been discussed in my absence, but our priorities would seem to be as follows:"

Food Creation	Seeds, water, and possibly digging tools
Surround Fire	Heat and a way to avoid expected rain, cold, and wind
Materials	Stone and wood I can handle (eventually), and we have temporary weapons, but a more permanent solution is needed and metal would be a great help

"So for now, working together seems like our only option. Anything I'm missing?"

Otto, who had accepted the shadowy weapon from from Arjun, seemed intent in finding out what would happen if he shanked an insect or two.

But before that could happen, Dmitri spoke up, and Otto smiled in a warm way to him.

"Five isn't the maximum for Stats, I've got one six after a reward from the System. Not sure if that helps." He shrugged somewhat.

Vlad listened, but he was struggling with what Arjun had shown him, trying to weaeve something... anything... out of light. Maybe a holy symbol? But he didn't know the first thing about his goddess yet beyond her domain and that she seemed kind.