The Power of Ten, Book Three : The Human Race

The Human Race

The next book of the Power of Ten, as requested by the readers, will be ‘urban fantasy’-mode.

Urban fantasy varies from one author to another. My particular inspirations center on Shadowrun (without the cyberpunk super-science aspect), Monster Hunters International, the Dresden Files, the Vampire/Masquerade world, and naturally enough, d20 Modern.

In my experience, Urban Fantasy has several particular features:

Guns against spells, science against magic.

Vampires and werewolves a must. Fey and other supernatural creatures frequent.

“Mystery History” unknown to non-magical creatures.

Frequently ignores real world history and ‘lives within’ the context of its own world.

Ancient cabals, guilds, organizations, and suchlike vying with one another.

Into this mix of features, I’m going to be mixing the Power of Ten ‘reality’.

The Alignments are real. So moral grey is moral grey, and you know it. There really is Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, and it’s not just from someone’s perspective.

Among other things, Undead are always Evil. They may not be cloud cuckoo, but they are negative energy life forms, and they are not nice people.

Likewise, Werefolk are not ‘better-than-humans’. Their power stems from a Curse, and it bends and twists their personalities. Shapechangers in general rapidly lose their humanity.

The phenomenon of Leveling is known and understood. The engineers and scientists have gone to town on it, and know what it is, if not exactly everything it does. The concept of ‘Classes’ is also known, understood, and obvious for the differences between them.

What is known of magic can often be found on the internet (if not actual spell formulae). People aren’t dumb, and will try to find patterns to everything.

To the shock of humanity, its hereditary gods are NOT the real gods. The gods of Power of Ten are the real ones here, regardless what people think. If they are getting spells from elsewhere, it’s not from who they think it is... or it’s something out of Mythos.

This will largely be an E6 world. With magic around, it’s not hard to reach Six, but without it, you’ll be lucky to make Three. Like before, if you don’t have the Stats, you can’t reach a Level (i.e. Stat-10 = Level you can reach. You need a 13 to make Three in the Stat for a Class.)

There are differences between Racial Levels (possessed by most monsters) and Class Levels (= training, and used by humans). In short, monsters are tough, and people are lucky.

There are ‘demi-human’ races, revealed by the exposure of magic. Their existence has forced a lot of changes in society, particularly with their longevity being able to amass immense wealth and power given enough time.

Magic is openly known, people are aware of it, and while magic items are not common, they are understood and not some horrible supernatural surprising thing going to get you hung for blasphemy.

The history of the world has naturally deviated since the revelation of magic, and its blossoming use.

While dropping a prose bomb of a history lesson is certainly possible, I’ll try very, very hard to keep such things fairly short. Making up alternate histories can be fun, and also tiresome.

Meeting with real-world famous people will be highly unlikely. Unlike most alternate realities, this world has changed so much that the disruption of lives makes it unlikely for the same people to receive the same opportunities... and the Powered have many gifts the Primos do not.

Like most such novels, there’s normal folk with guns and tech, and the magical people.

Magical people tend not to be technological savvy, but this is not a universal rule. They are trying to make a technomage Class, of course...

No super-science. Far Future did that. While technomagic can make some rules, tech will be at modern levels.

Sama’s gonna be here, so no time travel shenanigans.

I tend to write intelligent protagonists, who fight smart. If they can curb-stomp someone and it’s the best way to do things, they’ll do it. If there’s too much risk, they’ll play it as smart as you or I would if we were thrown into a lethal situation.

With an E6 world, Resurrection magic is almost unknown, but curing diseases and healing magic is well-known, although it’s not cheap.

As making magic burns precious metals and gemstones, magic items are incredibly expensive, and so broad, low magic is not in place. It will likely take hundreds of years to reach that level. Someone who is geared out like a Level 10 D&D hero is wearing literally tens of millions of dollars worth of Gear. A legendary-class Sword like Excalibur would be priced in the BILLIONS.

I don’t write Good characters and organizations as facetious. If they are Good, they are Good... it’s not something they can use as a cover for nefariousness. They can be misguided, mis-informed, and foolish, but they will not be bad guys using a good rep for cover. The Alignments are real here, so moral grey is readily apparent. ‘Good’ people who are total cads are Neutral in some way or another, not Good.

Good doesn’t mean Nice. Perhaps the thing that defines Good people the most is that they are prepared to sacrifice to help other Good people to varying degrees.

Neutral doesn’t mean uninvolved. It generally means selfish, or uncaring outside of an increasingly close circle. Friends and family are generally the defining circles for Neutrals. Everyone else, pays.

Evil doesn’t mean a butcher, or a murderer. It does mean you’re willing to use people and let them suffer the consequences without really caring about it, even if they die. The more Evil you are, the greater the amount of harm you are willing to let others suffer to get what you want, and the fewer and fewer the people you won’t harm to do it.

I will be reposting the glossary from Power of Ten: Sama Rantha.

The Rules of Power of Ten are in effect for the story:

Spoiler

The Glossary

Some History: I freely borrow from Pathfinder and D&D 3E and 3.5E as I do this, as well as AD&D, BECMI, and even Warhammer FRPG and some of the video games I’ve played in the past. Since I’m being authorial, I can add all this in to liven up the world and show the underlying mechanics of what is at play. Of course, playing with all of the stuff I use without a computer doing all the stuff behind the scenes might be very slooooooow... especially with Deep Tens getting access to all sorts of stuff!

===================================================

The Players! Powered, Primos, Forsaken, Nulls, Voids, Sources, Karma

Spoiler: Spoiler

----------------

THE LIMITS!: Ten, Valence, First and Second Ceilings, Gaining Levels/Feats/Skill Points, Primary and Secondary Classing, Prestige Classes, Renewals

Spoiler: Spoiler

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

FEATS AND MASTERIES: Explanations of what they are

Spoiler: Spoiler

-----------------

The Stats! Strength (Str), Intellect (Int), Wisdom (Wis), Dexterity (Dex), Constitution (Con), Charisma (Cha), Health, Soak (Hit points), and what they mean in real terms.

Spoiler: Spoiler

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

COMBAT TERMS: TH, MAB and RAB, d4/d6/d10 etc, Hit Dice, Crits, AC, DR, MAB, Energy Res, Saving Throws, etc.

Spoiler: Spoiler

-----------------

Other fighting terms: Finesse fighting, Sneak Attack, Lightfoot, Heavyfoot

Spoiler: Spoiler

++++++++++++++++++++

MAGIC, WEAPONS AND ARMOR:

On Magic Weapons and Armor: Quality Level (QL), Goldweight, Naming Karma, Requirements, Spellcraft, Costs, Arsenal, Slaughter.

Spoiler: Spoiler

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

OTHER STUFF: Vivic Energy, Thaumaspectrum, Valences, Vajra, Alignments

Spoiler: Spoiler

Alignments: Good, Evil, Law, Chaos, and Neutrality.

Spoiler

====================================================

Prelude 1: – Cast Off Karma

From Be Gone, Power of Ten, Year Ten:

He was raging, tearing through astral space as the power of the death giant demilich’s Death Curse drove him away from home.

Be Gone. Be Gone. Be Gone...

It was echoing in his mind and soul, and was trying its damnedest to get rid of him.

Yeah, it had been pretty potent. A Thirty Caster, maybe, and a Death Curse was effectively something like +10 Levels, when fueling it with your soul. The Save against it had probably been in the 50-60 range.

Unfortunately for the bony bastard, his Moment of Perfect Clarity could easily hit an 80, and his Scarab of Protection made sure he got a Save against spells that normally allowed none.

It was supposed to obliterate him, remove him from reality, and even memory, washed away by the dreadful Fate-bending of the Curse...

Fuck that. He was Beyond Law and Chaos for damn Good reasons, and this was only one of them!

He had made the Save, and the Curse wasn’t able to wipe him. It was still a tenacious and dangerous thing. It was now hurling his body as far away as it might, and since it couldn’t obliterate his mind and soul, it was trying to wipe them clean.

A Concentration modifier of +70 allows one to do some totally zany things, and playing the copy/paste game with a necromantic Curse virus was part of it.

He couldn’t do much about where he was going, but shoving the Curse into one of his thoughtstreams, and copying memories away from it, and then pasting them back into the thoughtstream after the raging Curse moved along basically put the damn thing onto a loop that would slowly and eventually run the Curse out of power... in several decades.

Too easy to disturb his Concentration and let this get away from him. He had to gut it and get rid of it, and that meant somehow Dispelling it.

A Death Curse at Forty... Maybe if he could run into a Celestial Phoenix...

Copy, pasting of memories...

He had an Intellect of 40, totally beyond human, and considered many options in a very brief period of time.

He was effectively assigning and re-assigning sections of his mind and soul. Was this not an incredible opportunity?

Like most people, he had acquired most of his Levels later in his career, paying premium prices for them. Even paying Nine prices was incredible, vs. Level One.

So... what if he reorganized the Karmic Loads using this opportunity? What if, instead of all those Levels he acquired at Nine, he allocated them at the earliest possible Levels?

He would free up gargantuan amounts of Karma, yet keep ALL his Levels. It would not be excessive to say eighty to eighty-five percent of his Karma could be removed.

His Karma was effectively his soul. That meant he could remove that much of his soul, without actually impacting anything. His remaining soul would be ‘smaller’, but just as hard, or even harder, without all the wasted space.

He’d just have to cut off big chunks of his soul... which, once he cut them free, wouldn’t be him anymore, and the Curse would instantly lose most of its power.

He didn’t have anything better to do, so he got started on the process.

So many base Classes, NPC, Primos, Powered, Advanced, Prestige, Theurgic, Arch...

Yeah, that was a lot of Class Levels he’d taken. Rank M had been no joke, and all that Macroing to get that far...

His other thoughtstreams got to work rearranging things, sending memories into the path of the Curse to tempt it, lifting them off, and as it swept past, painting them into the cleared area... with considerably less Karmic Cost, drawing links to other Classes and memories for mutual support.

The structure of his powers was already artificial, filled in with later Karma. He started mucking with the structure of his own mind and powers, making sure not to endanger his own ability to Concentrate and Cast, learning the tricks of balancing all of this, while at the same time drawing up a pretty big mental spreadsheet of what he had to allocate, where those memories were, how to link them post-move, where to send the Curse on its gallivanting course of destruction, and how to rebuild himself...

-------

Using Concentration to slice off a portion of his own Karma was like slowly sawing off his arm. He allocated all the pain to two of his thoughtstreams to spread the load, four focused on the cutting, and with a murderous effort of willpower, he chopped free the first ten Levels of Karma he’d saved up by allocating those Levels at One and Two... after the Curse rampaged into that section of his soul, looking to wipe everything.

With a mental snick, a section of his soul, brimming with Death Curse magic, was severed from him and went spinning away into the astral void. He only saw the frozen reaction of the Curse as suddenly it wasn’t affecting its target anymore, and then he was hurtling on, starting to work on the next fraction of his Karma, while his two agonized thoughtstreams gibbered at him no, no, please don’t, that hurt way too fucking much...

The voices of angels whispered in his soul from the glowing golden Runes scribed upon it, and there was no fear of what was certainly going to come...

Prelude 2 – A Hagchild is Born

Birth was a very unpleasant process. It’s not made any better when you are self-aware and conscious when you are born.

The squeezing, the pressure, the sudden violence and force and cold, the shock of getting your lungs to breathe...

She was naturally extremely disoriented during this process, her perspective, the voices around her, a brain that wasn’t fully developed...

{Hi there! Curse to start this recording!}

What the fuck?!

{Curse accepted! Good morning to your new life! You are a brand new freshly born Rantha Hagchild, imprinted with the memories of a game-created character called Sama Rantha. Curse again to continue!}

I... wait, I was Sama Rantha? I wasn’t Sama Rantha? Created memories? What the fuck?

{The Rantha Curseline has managed to alter the course of the Hag Curse. Instead of being applied to Evil souls as a punishment to them, the Rantha Curse is applied to souls who die rather horribly at the hands of Evil. You have been reincarnated into a new life, and are now a Rantha Hagchild. When you hit maturity, your Curse will activate, and you will become a Rantha Hag, which is basically a VERY evolved Human Racial Class you are going to alternately love for the benefits, and curse for how long it takes to pay for them.

{You are not Sama Rantha, but you have the same memories of her we all do. Feel free to use the name, or not, as circumstances dictate.

{For all intents and purposes, you are a Null Human until your Curseline activates, at which time you will be a Rantha Hag, which is a Null Hag.

{When your Charisma reaches 30, you can do an Incarnation Dive and find out who your soul used to belong to. Until then, put up with you being you. After that, I’m sure you’ll know what to do.}

I am a reincarnated soul killed horribly by something Evil? Fuck yes, I know what to do to the bastards!

{I don’t know the circumstances that you will be reborn in, but if you are being born, you’re just a newborn human, and your advantage is that you are self-aware and have Sama’s experiences to draw on.

{If this comes as part of a Hag Awakening because of very, very bad circumstances, run and live!

{When you go through your Hag Awakening, it will totally suck fighting the Hag Curse off, but when you win, you get all that sweet Hag Karma for yourself, and the Rantha Evolution. You will come out of it a Rantha/3, Expert and Melee/3, Null Psion/2, Psi-Warrior/2 (Bladebelle), Null Soulshaper/2. You will have enough Karma to take one Level in any Class you want. If for some reason any of those Classes cannot be taken, you will get the Karma back, but you will have to allocate them at the normal pace on your own.}

So, a Hag Awakening basically came at puberty. At that time, she was going to become this Rantha race, physical changes, and gain multiple Levels of Karma. Any way she wanted to look at it, that was a huge bonus in life, if she got anything resembling the natural Stat bonuses of any of the main types of Hags. The fact she got Levels instead of becoming a Rantha Hag monster-type meant this really was a case of taking Evolved Levels... and for some reason, she had the distinct impression that this spiritual recording being transmitted down the Curseline wasn’t going to lie to someone starting out at the same point she had.

{Your Marks are there, but have no Karma. You’ve got to earn them yourself, apologies! Survive first, revenge later, and know that you just saved someone’s soul from Hagdom by being born! Live, girl!}

Oh, fuck yes, she was going to do that!... What were Marks?...

{Good luck from Grandmother Rantha, and take care.}

Wait, that’s it?

{This Curseline message is now ended. Beep!}

Uh, sure?

She couldn’t see or concentrate too well, but the memories of being Sama Rantha were Right There, and she knew she wouldn’t forget them, even as she added memories of her own. She was just a newborn baby and would have to go through all the early years of childhood like anyone else... except she had the memories of an ass-kicking Null swordswoman with tons of Secondary Class potential to build on, and none of the typical learning curve most kids had to go through.

Oh well, time to go to sleep and act like a baby for a good long time. It was a good thing she had a hunter’s sense of patience, as growing up was literally going to take one year at a time...