Fell Champions

There was an endless expanse of white. An absolute void of nothingness and purity. A blank slate.

 

Honestly, as far as character generation went, it was pretty boring. Even kind of cliché. It was a giant sign that screamed, ‘Hey, we want to symbolize that there is infinite potential here, and a big endless, white room was the best idea we could rip off from The Matrix.’

 

No one had ever accused Ashes² of being particularly original. Their golden boy CEO claimed to have pioneered the field of Virtual Reality Gaming, but that was just a big lie that anyone with a basic knowledge of gaming or three seconds of Googling could disprove. His fanboys still ate it up. And this giant white room was about as basic as it got.

 

Thankfully, it extended beyond that. 

 

A black silhouette of a man appeared, a featureless shadow pacing about, hands in non-existant pockets, pelvis thrust out a little bit. That could only be one man.

 

“Hello,” it said. “I am Ingram Holt, founder of Ashes², and director of Fel Champions. Welcome to my game.”

 

The silhouette’s voice was about as devoid of personality and detail as the shadow itself was. Which made sense. Matched reality.

 

“In Fell Champions, you’ll have total freedom. Free to be who you want to be, and do whatever you want. This is a world bound only by your own imagination. Do you want to be nine feet tall, and try to be an athlete in this fantasy world of your dreams? Shoot for it. Want to be an Elven warrior who likes to dance, and conquer your way to a ballet armageddon? Dance, my children. Live a cottage-core lifestyle, be a trash witch in the woods, a troll under a bridge, a Zen warrior who cultivates a sand garden decorated with the skulls of their enemies… don’t be bound by the class systems of our predecessors. Be what you want, how you want.

 

“As beta testers, you are the first to step into my world. Pioneers into the unknown. You’ll be free to stream your experiences via approved platforms, such as Spasm, ViewToob, Punch, and Clockwork. And we encourage it. We know those chosen all have a career in that venue, and we want you to spread the beauty of Ashes² to the world. Free advertising, am I right?

 

“A couple of quick rules and advice. The first, and foremost. Advance, and advance quickly. Those who fall behind will find themselves… at a disadvantage. Do whatever you will do, but do it quickly, and with style. You will be graded.

 

“Have fun. Enjoy yourself. Remember that this is a game. Defy authority, unless you seek to become authority. Make a little chaos.

 

“Every once in a while, I will issue a world quest. They will be the only official quests in the game. By virtue of wherever you spawn, you may or may not be eligible. Whosoever completes one of these quests will be handsomely rewarded.

 

“Don’t worry about the time. Days, weeks, months, maybe even years can pass in the game. You’ll eat, sleep, and piss, and discover no time at all has passed in the real world. Ashes² dilates your brain’s perception of time, so don’t worry about logging out manually.

 

“And most importantly. Don’t die. Any beta testers who die will be logged out of the game, and won’t be able to come back until the game launches, one year from now. But if you want out at any point, you’ll know how to do it. Just fall on your sword.”

 

He gave a snorting laugh at that, as if he’d made the most clever joke in the world. The shadow of Ingram Holt turned, as if staring directly at someone not there, at the person who was playing but whose body had not been manifested yet, and said, “Gather your tenacious self and push your will into the world.”

 

If the shadow had a face, it would be smiling as it began to stretch and pull, the figure becoming even more indistinct as it elongated into… a plain, black rectangle. It flickered, and rippled, like water standing upright in the air, water made from inky shadow. There was a sense of pulling, and then the black turned to gray, save a new silhouette, featureless and formless, but still a person, standing in the middle.

 

A reflection. A reflection of what?

 

Her. 

 

She gasped, as if just taking her first breath, and the silhouette in the inky surface shifted, taking on her features, mirroring her. Still indistinct, still lacking detail, but now having her height, her curves. She moved, and it moved, reflecting her. She looked down to her hands, and saw they were made of the same shadowy substance as what was in the mirror. No detail, nothing, but if she just focused… there. Her hands now took on fingers, long and slender, like a piano player’s. She flexed them experimentally. They were so real, nothing like she’d experienced before in virtual reality. 

 

She looked at her reflection, and willed herself into existence. Dark, sun-browned skin replaced the shadowy form, hair formed and spilled from her scalp. She could almost feel it growing out as it did. It was raven black, and curly. It stopped at her shoulders, and she ran her fingers through it, and it lengthened again, falling to her mid-back. 

 

This was her, how she looked outside of virtual reality. She’d always been a beautyr, known more for her looks than her skill at gaming, despite being one of the best in her genre. 

 

Problem was, hot or not, she was still human, with all the little flaws that entailed. She’d always had a little forehead wrinkle that she hated, but looking at it in the mirror, she willed it away. Her brown eyes always came off as kind of boring, and she’d longed for something a little more exotic to go with her skin tone. The color bled to a dark blue, then waned lighter until they were a blue so pale it verged on gray. She added a little light to it, making them almost glow. A little oomph, so you could make them out, even in the dark if you looked hard enough. She had a tiny scar on her lower lip, from when the only man who’d ever dared to hit her had split her lip. The lesson was important, but the mark itself was meaningless, and disappeared alongside a mole on her arm, various body hair she decided she’d never need again, and a pale discoloration on her arm. 

 

Focusing on other things yielded results. She could pull up a character status page, which listed her stats – Strength, Agility, Tenacity, Allure, Will, Fortune, and Awareness – all of which were at a 10. Probably the baseline. Through the status page, she found a way to log into a streaming platform – maybe later, she didn’t want to do that with her tits out – and a who's online list. Almost all of the names listed came up as ‘Unknown’, including a highlighted one which she assumed was herself. The only names displayed were Slavomir Risko, and Everett Brown, both with their handles TheRiskSlave and Sediment showing. A second later, Yamamoto Samashii came up. SamiRai.  

 

Her eyes narrowed at that. Sami was already in the game. Already a step ahead.

 

She held out a hand, palm down, fingers extended. There was a little tremor. That just figured. She tapped on the name panel for herself, and it immediately filled in her real name and handle. She immediately deleted it. 

 

What to call herself now? She had to go incognito. Who knew who else would be playing. People wouldn’t be expecting her. She was out, retired. A career that had been a beautiful fireworks display, burning brightly, dazzling everyone who looked upon it, but then gone.

 

No. No more fire, not this time. This time, she’d be water. Go with the flow, stay hidden and deep, have her fun, and stay the hell away from SamiRai.

 

She looked at the mirror, and willed her face to change. It stayed the same for the most part, but there were enough tweaks to make it unrecognizable. Her mouth a little wider, more of a pixie nose than before, her eyes spaced a little bit further apart, her earlobes a touch smaller. She molded her jawline a little, carefully sculpting it a touch narrower, and then made her skin tone just a touch lighter. Her black hair turned cotton candy pink. She kept her eyebrows dark. Make it look like a dye job, even if it was a good one. 

 

When she was done, she entered in a name, something innocuous to keep people from looking at it too closely. Let them think she was some lucky unknown who’d managed to snag an invite, maybe a nepo baby or something. 

 

Otter Kaos, GrandTheftOtter. 

 

More names started popping up, some familiar, some not. JackBeQuick, LoneRunMan, NightmareWasTaken, Digimane, Brian Michael Bilker, Masked Baguette, PewPewGuy, CyberEdge, Dev Vision… One in particular caught Otter’s attention. The one she least expected to see.

 

Kwan Il-Su, Silence.

 

Before Otter knew what she was doing, she tapped his name, and a window came up for a video call with an image of a green phone ringing over top. It lasted a few seconds before it was answered, and the familiar face of Il-Su came up.

 

“Hey,” she said, and then realized she was still naked.

 

He looked away, his normally unflappable exterior thoroughly flapped. She didn’t really care. It’s not like he hadn’t seen her naked before, even if the two of them had never been intimate. But then, he didn’t know it was her. In theory. Time to test her disguise.

 

“Uh, hi,” he said, very carefully not looking at her.

 

“Sorry,” she said, trying to feign something like embarrassment, and holding an arm over her breasts. “Forgot I was naked.”

 

He was, too, but the window only showed his face and upper torso. 

 

“That you, Silence?” she asked.

 

“Uh, yeah. Do… I know you?”

 

It was funny seeing him flustered, even if the face wasn’t the one she was used to. He’d made himself look wildly different, more K-Pop star than the gamer nerd he’d been. Old Il-Su looked like he’d never touched grass in his life, even if he did manage to get the hottest girlfriend in all the gaming sphere. Y’know. Before he’d screwed it up, somehow. 

 

“Nope,” she said, giving him her best smile. She tried to look more friendly than flirty, but she’d always been bad at trying to make herself look approachable but not desirable to gamer dudes. Or just dudes in general. “Name’s Otter. GrandTheftOtter. Small streamer, just making my break. Got lucky and got an invite. Was wondering if the has-been wanted to clan up with the new kid.”

 

Il-Su’s eyes narrowed at that, and the cold look he normally affected came up like a wall. “Does Fell Champions even have a clan system?”

 

“No idea. But as a game marketed where you can ‘do anything’, I figure there has to be, right?”

 

He got that calculating look he did when he was trying to play mental chess against his opponents. Luckily, she knew all his moves already.

 

“And what are you bringing to the table? Do you even know how to play the game?”

 

“Game just came out, dummy. No one knows how to play. But we can figure it out together. As for what I bring… well, I bring the most valuable commodity of all in the streamer sphere.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“A clean slate. Neutrality. No existing drama with anyone. Unlike, say, you.”

 

Kwan Il-Su had always been the best, a cold killer in RPGs like Gallant Stand II and Immortalized. He’d evoked jealousy in his peers, and hadn’t made many friends with his attitude. And then he’d gone and burned what few bridges he had with his … retirement. 

 

“Point. Any experience with RPGs?”

 

“They’re my jam.” She had to hide a wince. That’s something the old her would’ve said.

 

“Hmm. Class choice?”

 

“Caster, long to medium range. Support and damage. No heals. So, don’t stand in fire.”

 

“Bad pairing,” he said, and she knew it was true before he said it. He was famous for close-range DPS, playing stealth characters. They’d both need a tank of some kind to handle aggro without getting overwhelmed, assuming Fell Champions played like other RPGs. “You have anything else?”

 

Otter almost made a comment about her perfect ass, but that was something he might catch onto. And she didn’t want him to think she was flirting. She scrambled, thinking, trying to grasp at any perceived advantage. But she only knew as much as he did about the game, which was a few screenshots, a bullshit trailer about a prisoner being marched to his doom, and what Ingram Holt had said. And it’s not like that man ever had anything important to say aside from his regular self-aggrandizing bullshit. ‘Tenacious will’, who said that kind of…

 

It clicked. She looked at her character sheet again, flipping through the few pages there were. Under stats…. there.

 

“Invest a few points in Tenacity and Will,” she said. 

 

“What?”

 

“Holt. He said some bullshit line about us having ‘tenacious will.’ I think he was trying to tell us something. Leak a hint, right at the beginning.”

 

Il-Su paused, considering. He nodded once, and then the call disconnected.

 

“Fucker,” Otter said. She should’ve known he’d take what he could and then leave her out to dry.

 

She looked at her stats. Ten in each, Strength, Agility, Tenacity, Allure, Will, Fortune, and Awareness, with a signifier she had ten points to spend. Well, she was going caster. It was what she was comfortable with, and if Il-fucking-Su didn’t like it, well, she didn’t need him anyway. She dumped four right away into Tenacity, and then another five into Will. As she did, two semi-transparent bars appeared in her field of vision, one red, the other blue. Health and mana, probably. No indication of how many points either had, or what she could do with them. Didn’t matter. Ingram Holt said they’d be important, so she wasn’t taking any chances.

 

Nine points down. Only one left. She could start taking away from other skills. Casters didn’t really need strength, but she also didn’t know how magic worked in this game, assuming she even had any. And Allure sounded like a soft skill, if there ever was one. Probably some kind of charisma stat for social challenges. She was already hot, why would she need points in that? 

 

Vanity was the only thing that kept her from subtracting from it. Vanity, and fear of the unknown. She didn’t know what kind of consequences min-maxing might have in a game she knew nothing about. Especially a game where she only had one shot. Die once, and you were out. What if putting her Allure below 10 made regular people hostile to her? What if she ended up in a starter village, and the NPCs all drew steel on her while she had her tits out? Otter much preferred her tits unstabbed, thank you very much.

 

Otter put the last point in Fortune. She figured she might need some.

 

Strength: 10

Agility: 10

Tenacity: 14

Allure: 10 

Will: 15

Fortune: 11

Awareness: 10

 

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready to start.”

 

A menu screen made of the same oily smoke as the mirror flashed in front of her, asking for her starting location. A list of places followed, with no information for context. 

 

Virtuere, Mikovia, the Salass Wastes, Deresh, the Silayan Islands, the Jiridion Belt, Nguaria, the Criobani Empire, and so many others… no information on any of them, not even a map to go with it. No chance to make an informed choice. She highlighted the Silayan Islands. They sounded pleasant, at least.

 

A final prompt came up. This one had three runes as options with symbols she didn’t recognize, followed by a standard green checkmark for confirmation. She pressed one, and nothing happened. Otter gave herself a quick pat down, and turned herself around, trying to look over every corner of her body. Nothing seemed to be different. She clicked the second rune. Suddenly, her whole body changed. The same, but… male. Wider shoulders, rougher features. Something distinctly distracting between her legs. Her insides felt wrong. And her throat. And for once in her godamn life her hands and feet felt warm. 

 

Still, she quickly hammered down on that third option. Novelty was fine, and the chance to use a dick and see what the type was about was tempting, but no. Not for her.

 

Otter’s body changed back to female. Everything was once more in its place. Except… she felt different. Something was changed, she could feel it inside, but she had no idea what. 

 

She pulled up the customization mirror, and gave herself a thorough examination. Her new body was the same, as far as she could remember. Her eyes had a certain sheen to them, an almost glow.. Had she made them that bright before? Was she imagining it? Was it a trick of the light? 

 

She hopped back and forth between the first and third prompts, and checked the difference. Yep. Definitely a very subtle glow in her eyes on that last prompt, and something in the lower pit of her belly felt different. Not good different. Not bad different. Just… kind of weird. 

 

Screw it, her eyes looked prettier with the glow. She hit the confirmation.

 

As she did, there was a flash, and she felt a weight come on her. She looked down, and let out a sigh of relief. She was wearing a gray smock now. She wouldn’t have to wander around with her ass hanging out after all. 

 

A window flashed, asking for confirmation of her choice. She was about to confirm when a call came through.

 

Il-Su, now wearing a gray smock of his own, was on the other side. 

 

“Did you ask anyone else to clan?” he asked.

 

“You kidding me? Have you seen the list of people online?” Time to push some of his buttons. “Slavomir Risko? That man is only loyal to RNGesus. Probably dumped all his stats into Fortune, randomized his appearance, and logged on. Masked Baguette? The man’s a walking ego, even if he’s earned it. CyberEdge is probably going to do nothing but look for orphans to dropkick right out the gate. Nightmare and LoneRunMan are probably going to try to speedrun this, and whichever one you pick, you make an enemy of the other. And SamiRai? Talk about drama.”

 

She had to keep the satisfied smirk off her face when something around his eyes tightened. 

 

“Where’s your spawn?” he said.

 

She told him, and he nodded and hung up again. That was probably as close to a commitment as she was going to get. Now she knew how Sami and Sediment felt. 

 

“All right,” Otter said. “Log me in, game. Let’s see what Fell Champions has to offer.”

 

A window asked her to confirm if she really was ready. She picked the only choice that mattered. The one that sealed her fate. The one that would get her to break her record of saying ‘fuck’ the most in one day. 

 

The white room disappeared, and GrandTheftOtter vanished from the Character Creation room, and onwards.