The next morning, I logged in almost ten minutes early so as to ensure I wasn’t late again. This did mean, however, that I had about half an hour to kill before Artemis showed up, and I spent that time looking at the benefits of my racial baptism.
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[Shadow Elf Baptism] - Uncommon Additional effects: Grants limited darkvision Increases stealth and stealth-related abilities Increase to Bowfaire (Slight) Grants spells: Remarks: “This baptism was given by a particularly busty subgroup of Shadow Elves, but that shouldn’t change anything, right?” |
“Yeah, that’s better than I was hoping for. If I’d gotten the Tier 2 like I’d been expecting, I would’ve missed out on Dark Arrow and Shadow Arrow Barrage, and the Daggerfaire increase would’ve been miniscule, not slight. Now, what else unlocked? New racial evolution options?”
Starting from when I hit level 20, I was able to look at my racial evolution options, and could’ve evolved whenever I wanted to, but I knew from reading the forums that if I tried I would’ve gotten a warning about only being able to do so once, and that my options would improve with each racial baptism. Prior to my first baptism - or rather, when I hit level 20, the only time I bothered checking - the fifteen options were pretty much all slight variants of the base Human, like Strong Man and Swift Man. Now I should only have twelve, but there should be more variety.
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Swift Man (69%) - Common Strong Man (43%) - Common Primal Human (58%) - Uncommon Shadow Elf (73%) - Uncommon Dark Elf (27%) - Rare Drow (12%) - Rare Star Elf (5%) - Epic Shadow Human (34%) - Rare Astral Fae (8%) - Rare Death Knight (10%) - Rare Skeletal Sniper (31%) - Uncommon Wraith (16%) - Uncommon |
Huh. Why do I have so many undead options? One is already pretty unusual for anyone other than a necromancer or shaman. But the most interesting of the bunch is the Star Elf, followed by the Death Knight. I know I want the Moon Elf baptism, so that’s two of my four baptisms. Do I want to try to find a group of Star Elves and get a baptism from them? Or maybe I might go for an undead race? The Deadeye class was named after the undead of the same name, spectral monsters with specs that lean hard towards archery.
Ah, well. I’ll think about that after I get my Moon Elf baptism. At that point, my options will shrink to nine, two of which would be Shadow Elf and Moon Elf, and I could try to improve the compatibility with the other options I’m interested in with the last two baptisms. Or last three, if I decide to go for one of the baptizing races as my final evolution.
“Hey Gaia, whatcha thinking about?”
“Oh, uh, evolution options. How long have you been there?”
“Eh, less than a minute. So, shall we go?”
“Remind me, where are we going?”
“Uh... no clue. I figured you’d know”
“Nope. Lemme see if I can remember anything”
With my chin on my hand and my elbow on my knee, I made myself look like a very fittingly-named statue as I tried to remember anything relevant. Unfortunately, after a few minutes, all I could remember was an unrelated news headline I’d wanted to share with Artemis.
“No luck, but I remembered something else I’d wanted to talk to you about. After you told me about your eye issues, I tried looking it up. I learned that it’s an issue with the cones in the eyes, right? There’s a new treatment for that, from-”
“Yeah, Golden Technology, I know about it better than you do. My father is a large investor in that project, to the point you could say it was developed for my sake. I’m flattered that you cared enough to dig that up”
“Hey, if there’s someone I’m sticking around for a while, I make an effort to get to know them. If they’ve got a problem, I want to understand it as best as I reasonably can, it’s just basic courtesy”
“Well forgive me if I don’t follow the same ideas of what’s basic courtesy. To me, that’s either unusually caring or borderline stalker behavior”
Ooh... uh-oh.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not upset. It’s pretty clear you’re respectful of my boundaries, and I volunteered that information of my own free will. It’s not like you tried to dig up my IRL identity or anything - though, speaking of, Stahl - er, Stalwart - asked me to relay a message to you. He wants to talk with you about Aspirations doing an offline meetup to pay their respects to your brother, and visit his grave if possible”
“I think he’d like that. In that case, I think I know what we’re doing today - meeting up with Stalwart to discuss this idea. And if you want to come, I wouldn’t be opposed to that either”
She looked taken aback at the offer, though I didn’t get the feeling she was immediately opposed to the idea. She just contemplated it for a moment before she frowned a bit and declined.
“I’ll pass on that, I’d rather Stahl not be feeling like he needs to be guarding me while he’s visiting his friend’s grave”
“Fair point. Some other time, then?”
“If my father will allow it, perhaps. I’m not too sure what we’d do when we meet up though”
“We could always talk about and listen to music, or we could meet up to go to a concert if someone you like comes to town”
Artemis clapped her hands softly as a smile bloomed on her face, causing me to grin a bit in kind.
“Yeah, I think I’d like that. I’ll bring it up at dinner tonight, I guess”
“Huh. I don’t know why, I just didn’t think about you having dinner with your parents every night. I guess I figured they’d be busy”
“Well, Daddy died when I was six, so I can only have dinner with my father, but they’re generally not too busy”
“Wait, hold on... your Daddy died, but you have dinner with your fa- huh?”
“Long story - well, no it’s not, just a couple of sentences. It’s just a personal thing, so I might tell you at some point, but not now. I’ll just say that they’re two different people and leave it at that for now”
The conversation kinda stalled at that, neither of us knowing where to go from there, so I took the opportunity to send a message to Stalwart and White Powder - RDAS still had her messages blocked to strangers, and hadn’t added me as a friend - asking if we could meet up to discuss when we’d meet up offline. Just a few minutes later, I got a response, and moved towards the suggested location, which was literally across the street from the arena we’d been to the night before. Artemis tagged along for lack of anything else to do, but she split off along the way to look at an alley we passed that was filled with workshops of all kinds.
“So, to be clear, I’m going to be streaming this conversation to the Aspirations guild channel, if that’s okay”
“Yeah, sure. Not like I have anything I don’t want them to know about but I’m willing to show you... well, my tits”
As I said the last bit, both RDAS, who was the one streaming, and White Powder had the most peculiar facial expression, like they were cringing while holding in laughter.
“Ooh, bad timing”
“Yeah that’s... that’s unfortunately out of context”
“To those who caught that, the words said right before the stream turned on were ‘Not like I have anything I don’t want them to know about’ so don’t get the wrong idea. Also, for those who’re unaware: This is Gaia. HE is Momo’s little brother, the Gaia in Momo-n-Gaia. And for those who’ve been living under a rock for the last week or so but somehow are seeing this, Momo lost the fight against cancer. But hey, Gaia’s here to fill in that role”
“Stop, no. I haven’t said I’m willing to join. I’ll think about it. And even if I did join, I’m nowhere near Momo’s level - neither literally nor figuratively. Uh, is the stream audio-only or does it have visuals too?”
“Visual too, so yes, they can see the aforementioned tits”
Lovely. I was hoping it’d be a voice chat, or like something where our words would be transcribed into a text channel. But I guess it is a full livestream, and I may have to explain what happened during my avatar creation.
“Ashley, be more ladylike. At least call them boobs”
“They’re too titanic to be just called boobs, Cain”
“Are yours...”
“I happily call mine tits too, thank you very much”
“But I’ve seen y-”
“Cain, if you say another word you’re going to die, capiche?”
White Powder shrank down as RDAS threatened him with a raised fist and a strained smile. I wouldn’t blame him, the bloodthirst she was putting off felt like it was just barely short of being visible to the naked eye.
“So, if we could move on to the subject at hand: I heard y’all wanted to visit Momo’s grave? I’m okay with that, I think he’d like that given how much he’d talked about you and called you his friends. So, if you’d like to come over, say, next weekend, I can take you to visit him, and then show you some of his favorite spots, exchange stories, and... yeah...”
“Next weekend? Does that work for everyone?”
A few seconds after Stahl asked that question, first White Powder, then the rest of the Aspirations members present, did a spittake - or the equivalent with whatever they did or didn’t have in their mouths - before RDAS spluttered, at a clear loss for words.
“Uhh... Gaia? Does... does tomorrow work?”
“Why?”
“Because Nerys - sorry, Nerd 404 - is a bit impatient and has offered to pay the transportation costs for every member who wants to come on such short notice. Nerys, are you sure about that? That’s at least three grand per person”
“Wait, that’s not a plane trip... Nerd 404 is sponsoring a frog trip? If they’re going that far, yeah, sure, tomorrow works. Y’all know the place, right? RDAS at least has visited, so she should know”
Frog is what some people call the RBITS, since that kinda sounds like what a frog says. RBITS stands for Reusable Ballistic Intercontinental Transit System, in other words, get on a rocket ship, send it out of the atmosphere, and have it come down safely, in a matter of about an hour at most regardless of destination.
“Yeah, I’ll have everyone meet up at the train station, ‘kay?”
“Sounds good, I’ll get ready for you then. If that’s all, I’ll be heading back to log out, I’m gonna be pretty busy the next few hours at least”
“I think we’re good, any questions can be asked in person, after all”
“True. See you tomorrow, I look like this but no tits, shouldn’t be hard to recognize me”
“I’ll be there as well, so you won’t have to worry about not being able to spot the shrimp”
“I’m not that short, Stalwart”
“Sorry, can you speak up? I can’t hear you from this far away”
Thanks a lot for the story! It's awesome
Good luck with your meds.