CD Chapter Eight (Patreon)

Ava blinked. “Are you… awake now?”

Emily tilted her head, very slightly. Her smile grew a little more vapid. “Of course, Traveler. I am here to assist you in creating your character.” She looked to the side, catching sight of AlphaOmegadon, and for a moment, her edges seemed to… fizz. She never faded away, but it was like she made a thousand small movements all at once. Like she’d been fast-forwarded, in fact.

“Now that you have selected your character name and race, we’re ready to start allocating your initial stats. All Travelers start with ten stat points at character creat-” She broke off, and fizzed again. When she spoke, she had a look of feigned sympathy plastered on her face. Ava had heard that Veritas Corp had intentionally made Emily slightly unlikeable, since players had been becoming a little too attached to her initial design. Ava hadn’t really seen it before, but now? Yes, now she saw what they meant.

“We’re so sorry that your initial character build resulted in a sub-optimal experience. As you have filed several complaints, we will allow a single appearance adjustment. Remember, your own choices create your path!” Translation: This was your own stupid fault, so stop whining, here’s a lollipop.

Turning to AlphaOmegadon, Emily waved her hand, resetting the character back to Ava’s actual appearance. It was like looking in a mirror, or, really, looking at a realistic wax doll of herself. “Now,” Emily continued, “as you have selected or.. err.. g- li… hmn… Vampire as your race, your appearance will be affected by the default race characteristics.” This time, it was only Emily’s mouth that flickered, but Ava winced, something in her brain starting to hurt.

Emily motioned to her left, and a new figure appeared. It was tall, pale, thin to the point of emaciation, with wispy white hair, burning red eyes, and four elongated canines that pushed against its bloodless lips. It crouched slightly as it stood, and its clawed hands hung loose at its sides. It had no particular gender characteristics that Ava could see, which was standard for VO default avatars.

“You must have fangs,” Emily said, tapping Alpha’s mouth. Small, delicate fangs dimpled her lips. When Emily separated her fingers, the fangs grew until they were almost touching the avatar’s chin. “You may have two, on either top or bottom, or four, with two on each. Please feel free to manipulate them as needed.”

Two ‘FANGS’ sliders appeared in the air beside Alpha. Ava knew from experience that she could either touch the character directly, as Emily had, molding her like clay, or she could use the sliders, which was usually easier.

Emily looked at her expectantly, and Ava shrugged. “I’ll do it all at the end. Finish telling me the rest.”

Nodding, Emily snapped her fingers, and a row of sliders appeared beneath the first two. Ava stepped forward to examine them.

‘SKIN TONE’ stopped at a light shade of pale, which made sense. If Ava had had dark skin herself, it would have allowed for a much darker tone, though it probably would have edged more into charcoal than brown. Ava's skin, however, could put blanched paper in sunlight to shame, it was so pale. At least some of the shades were grayish, instead of pure white or sickly yellow.

‘EYE COLOR’ was likewise capped, though the right eye could shade into a noticeably more vibrant red than the left.

‘HAIR COLOR’ was white, bright white, or ivory, and Ava sighed. She had so enjoyed having Alpha-the-orc’s dark hair. All orcs had dark brown or black hair, so Ava had briefly been able to stop looking like she fell into a vat of bleach. On the up side, there was a much wider range of hair styles, and Ava might, possibly, have actually been looking forward to looking through them all.

‘HEIGHT’ was another one that had a very narrow range. Ava was tall, vampires were tall, Alpha was going to be tall. There was a slider for everything from fingernails to foot size, hovering next to the applicable body part, and Ava took her time examining them all. Character design was one of her favorite parts of the game, and she wasn’t alone. Several third-party apps had been created to mimic the process, but without immersion, it was never the same.

Using her forefinger, Ava touched the sliders, pushing them back and forth. Most were fairly narrow, since apparently Ava already looked a lot like a vampire to whoever had designed the vamp preset. Some had broad ranges, making large differences in appearance, such as the fangs, and, apparently, toe length and shape, which had never really been a thing with any of Ava’s previous characters. Toes were proportional to the foot. Choose foot size, and the toes were set. Then she found the toenail slider, and everything made sense.

Ava heaved a deep sigh.

“Is there anything wrong, Traveler?” Emily asked, tone completely devoid of actual concern.

“I just…” Ava bit her lip. “I don’t want to look this much like myself. People will recognize me.”

Emily’s expression flattened even more, and she began to recite part of Veritas Corp’s standard rhetoric that almost everyone heard at some point. “Because fully immersive virtual reality is an extremely realistic experience, Veritas Corporation, under the counsel of their legal team, has limited the changes a player can make to their avatar. Full details of these limitations can be found in the EULA; Section one, paragraph eight, sub-section-”

Ava cut her off, biting out her words angrily. “Yes, I know. But the whole point of my previous build was to use the racial characteristics to make me relatively anonymous!” Looking around, she raised her voice. “Amythyst!” There was no response, so Ava just started chanting the name over and over, hoping the GM had an app running that would currently be flooding her with notifications.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ava caught movement. Nothing major, but she thought the sliders had shifted somehow. Walking over, she peered at them more closely, then whistled. Yep, definitely different. Ava started bumping sliders.

❦ ❦ ❦

It was hard to tell how much time had actually passed in the Character Creation space. There were no external cues, such as the sun moving through the sky, and Emily never shifted or showed any signs of boredom or impatience. Ava only knew it took her almost two hours to finalize her creation because she pulled up the in-game clock when she was done.

Stepping back, she nodded in satisfaction. Half-orc Alpha was gone, but some hints of her had crept back in. Ava had squared Vampire Alpha’s jaw, brought out her cheekbones in sharp relief, and chosen the two lower fangs option, making them thick but short. She had to admit that her orc fangs had been a hassle, though they had done an excellent job at disguising the shape of her mouth and adding a slur to her voice. These fangs still widened and pushed at Alpha’s lips, but would hopefully lead to less drooling.

Alpha’s hair was now deep crimson, sleek, and hung to her waist, but, like her orc version, it was braided, with pieces of bone, beads, and metal tubes mingling throughout. Ava had just left her real height alone, since she couldn’t be much shorter, and with her low Dexterity, she’d sometimes struggled with being almost seven feet tall.

She’d gone with the only skin tone that wasn’t white or ivory. It had only shown up after she harassed Amythyst, and it was a much paler version of orc-Alpha’s gray-with-a-hint-of-green color. To be honest, it might look a little bit like decomposition, but she was supposed to be undead, so who cared?

Her nails were practically claws; short, sharp, and thick, though no matter what she did, she couldn’t get them to look right without also turning black. Her toenails were also black, but she refused to have taloned feet, because she wore boots, and having to buy new ones every time they were destroyed by her own poor character-building choices would annoy the hell out of her.

Slowly, she walked around the new Alpha, trying to decide if there was anything else she needed to change, or if this was it. The arms were still oddly proportioned, and the elbow joint was faintly wrong, but there was no slider that affected that. Mostly, she was satisfied. The final character was a little bit primal, and someone looking at her couldn’t be sure if she’d use her dark lips and fangs to bite them, or her ferocious talons to rip their head off, but either way, she looked a little threatening, even just standing there without a shred of life.

There was only one thing that still bothered Ava, and no matter how much she called Amythyst’s name, the sliders didn’t change. The eyes insisted on being two different colors. There was overlap in the available range, so she should have been able to just set them both to the same shade, but whenever she did, the one she wasn’t touching would jump. Not just a little, either. No, it would go from deep purple to pale pink, or maroon to candy apple red. There was even an option for Amythyst’s favorite neon pink, but both eyes wouldn’t even stay that shade. Finally, she settled on the right eye being a dark plum color, while the left was undeniably a sort of fuchsia. She and Amythyst were definitely going to have words about it, though.

At last, she stood back and looked at Emily. “All right, I’m done,” she sighed, defeated.

Completely ignoring Ava’s obvious dissatisfaction, Emily smiled brightly. “Wonderful! Now, let’s distribute your stats.”

Ava frowned. “I thought I got to keep my stats?”

Emily nodded, face shifting back to Serious but Reassuring. “Of course, Traveler, but there are some differences between stat distribution in your former race and your current one. For instance, half-orcs have Wisdom capped at 30, while Intelligence reaches its maximum at 50.  In exchange, their health points are calculated at four times their Vitality, instead of the human base three times, or full orc base at five times.”

Puffing out a frustrated breath, Ava said slowly, “Yes, but my stats are my stats. Sure, the secondary stats and regeneration rates might be different, but the base stats shouldn’t change.”

Emily nodded amiably. “Yes, but hun- fo… el- Vampires get an extra two stat points per level. That means you now have one hundred and sixty-six points to allocate.”

Ava’s jaw dropped. That was a blatant cheat. Whoever - presumably Amythyst - had created this race had flat-out cheated. Every single race in VO got the same ten stat points to distribute every time they leveled. It was one of the things that kept people playing all the races. Obviously, if there was a race with extra stat points, everyone would choose it. No wonder Emily kept going on the fritz. This race was bugged as hell!

“Uhhhhh,” Ava struggled to process this information, feeling like her own brain would be fizzing if she could see it. “I guess, I can-” Hard stop. Nope. Not being railroaded into anything. “You know what? I’m just going to keep those points, um, free. I mean, my character is complete, right? I’ll decide what I want to do with the extra hundred stats-”

“One hundred and sixty-six,” Emily corrected primly.

“Yeah, whatever. Later. Just… put me in the game for now.” Ava folded her arms, glaring at Emily.

Emily smiled placidly. “As you wish.” She fizzled around the edges one more time. “As your initial ten stat points have been distributed, you may now enter the game, Traveler! Make peace or war, but remember, the choice is yours!” And that was straight out of the initial character creation script. Whatever was making Emily’s app go berserk seemed to have settled back into ‘newbie’ mode.

Emily waved her hand, and the floor dropped out from under Ava. The ALPI leaned forward and waved cheerfully as Ava fell. And fell. And fell.