Once the vertigo passed, I shakily got back to my feet, trying to ignore the feeling in my gut telling me that if I looked down I would plummet to the ground like in one of those old cartoons. I bet everyone reacts like this though, right? Now standing, I noticed something in the distance behind the castle city that I missed in my totally cool and normal reaction to soaring through the sky with no control.

Jutting out into the sky was a jagged line extending up towards the fluffy clouds. It was contrastingly dark compared to the sun-drenched surroundings, like an old iron nail half-hammered into marble. From my perspective, the line seemed small and slim, yet it somehow poked up over the top of that tallest tower. It's either a visual bug or it's… very very very big and even further away…

As that thought entered my mind, the letters of the welcome message in front of me glittered and faded, taking the light of the world with them. Oh good, more darkness. Moments later, that darkness filled with an array of glowing stars in a rainbow of colours. They blossomed out of the dark, rippling across gradually like diamonds spilling on crushed velvet. There was depth now, and the pitch-black was layered with strokes of deep purples and blues. 

And then, before my eyes, an orb around the size of a basketball melted into reality just outside of arms reach. It was toxic green with flashes of yellow and brown, orbited by a pair of rosy pink and brilliant violet moons. It looked… squidgy? Kinda wanna grab it.

Felloren. Our home. It was not always the place we know it as now. A gentle, soothing voice caressed my ears, floating out nebulously behind me as though someone had laid their head on my shoulder to murmur to me. It was soft, musical, feminine. It felt like fingers tracing up and down my spine. It was once as you see it here, oh traveler… plagued by venom, rot and shadow. 

The orb approached me and I could see now that its atmosphere was a roiling cloud of foulness, redeemed only by those two sweet little moons dancing their orbit across its surface. The creatures upon this nameless world warred endlessly. Blood and ichor flowed as easily as water, and were far less scarce. The survivors of each battle grew stronger on the flesh of the fallen, until a greater enemy came to bring them low and feast upon them in turn. I pulled a face. Gross opening, but okay. As their strength grew, these leaderless bands of beasts began to develop civilization. 

The starscape beyond the orb shimmered as images of misshapen, blood-soaked beings building rugged homes with the hides and bones of their enemies. Some walked on two legs, some on four, and some on even more. I saw bladed appendages, gnarled fanged mouths, craggy rock-like skin. I could only watch as they dragged other beasts into their encampments and tore them apart without reason. But then I noticed, here and there, a few of these entities were starting to wear scraps of fabric, worked metals and wood like armour or adornment.

In one scene, a primitively robed creature strode through its camp, flanked by its kin. It had the gait of a gorilla but was several times the size and bulk of those I'd seen in flashvids. In the centre of the camp, on a stone slab was a scrawny, stick-like being with four legs running down both sides. It was being held down.

The robed creature settled in front of the slab and reached out a fist, hanging it ominously over the captive. One hideous finger tipped with a razor-sharp claw extended towards the squirming wretch. The creature dug the claw into the captive’s flesh, and though there was no sound to the image, I couldn't help but wince as my mind filled in the wailing of the victim.

Civilization brought a new age of cruelty and discovery. The voice was a comfort, despite the mourning tone it had taken on. I almost caught a sigh, at the very edge of my hearing. Through that cruelty and experimentation, these clusters discovered twisted magics. The robed creature dragged its dripping claw across the stone, drawing a glyph with practiced care. As the glyph began to burn with red light, the assembled creatures began to frenzy, and the image faded back into starlight.

These rituals threatened an end to a world which had known nothing more than battle. They learned to drain the very heart of Felloren, hollowing it out for the sake of strength. I felt fingertips glide along my chin, gently tilting my head up from the planet in front of me, turning my eyes back to the stars. I frowned as the stars seemed to move, at first imperceptibly but soon with purpose. 

Whole swathes of stars drew together, slowly forming a figure of truly cosmic scale. From where I hung, I could make out only their upper torso and head, as two burning amethyst suns split the fabric of space. Those eyes gazed down onto the dying planet with a sorrow I felt in the core of my being. A part of me wanted to beg. Another part wanted to apologise. The creator of Felloren was heartbroken. This planet was so young, and had already been forsaken by those that called it home. I watched as this being reached into its chest with a hand formed of galaxies. But the creator could not bear to leave its creation without aid. The hand withdrew, now clutching something long and sharp with a sheen that reflected the lights around me. A spear of obsidian, filled with stars.

A gift, a promise, and a farewell, for this act was an intolerable interference on the part of such divine beings. The creator raised the shard to its face, and amethyst light dimmed as it closed its eyes as though in prayer. The Midnight Needle. The planet moved closer to it and further from me, pulled by some invisible force. 

And then with the inevitability of watching an eroded cliff cascade into the sea, the creator raised the spear aloft- Wait… wait, that line from the title screen. Is it- and impaled the planet, driving it through until both tips extended out both sides. From the points of impact the planet shattered, but was held together by rivers of glowing green light which webbed across its surface.

The light seemed to suck in the rank clouds that once choked the planet, fading gradually until all that was left was a beautiful turquoise orb, scarred with dark-green marks, orbited by two moons and pierced by a pillar of cosmic glass. The old cruelty that poisoned our home was pushed down and away, leaving room for new life. Life which would come to cherish Felloren and her many gifts.  

Pockets of the old world remained though, and that new life would need to be protected and nurtured. Our wise creator had anticipated this, and ensured such protectors could do so in their absence. I felt cool, unseen hands cup my face, almost lovingly. You are a Starborn, brought into this world by the power of the Midnight Needle. Your spirit may be entirely new to Felloren, or you may have walked this world many times in different lives and different forms.

My stomach did a flip as my body began to sink towards the planet, the starscape and voice fading away like a dream. Whatever your story until now has been, your next one is only just beginning, oh Starborn. Write it as you see fit, for it is yours and yours alone. I felt the hands release me, and the slow sinking feeling quickly started to feel more like a falling feeling.

A very fast falling feeling.

Oh no.

“What the fu-!”

I screwed my eyes shut in fear, desperately trying to fight the wind tearing at my skin until I abruptly came to a complete and jarring stop. I was standing on a plush carpet in an ornate room held up by white marble pillars, my yelp echoing off the walls. A fireplace crackled merrily behind me, judging by the warmth on my back.

Turns out the game has systems for when you throw up in the room you spawn in after the opening storyline. I wiped my mouth and watched with a distant amusement as my defacement of the carpet turned into butterflies and flew away.

“Would've loved a heads-up about that Naila,” I muttered, “Sup dude, come play this cool MMO and get dropped from space right at the start lol.” I put my face in my hands and groaned. I needed a nap or something after that. Wait, my hands- I pulled them away from my face and inspected them. Still me, huh? 

I glanced around the room properly for the first time and spotted a large tome, sitting atop a plinth facing a raised platform with one of those cloth mannequins on them. A dress form? I remembered the name from watching a fashion show while bug fixing. All of the colourful fabrics and frills, and the joy of the subjects getting that perfect pretty outfit was perfectly distracting from the mind-numbing work of scanning lines of code for problems.

I approached the tome, which was bound in dark brown leather without any embellishments or title. Cracking the cover, I quickly spotted the text on the first page reading “Character Creation.” Aha… guess this is where I make my new me!

The table of contents served as a list for all the different elements I could change. Apparently, the book would let me make sweeping changes to things like my species, gender, haircut, features and appearance, and I could then manipulate and mould finer detail with the projection on the dress form. Then I would move onto selecting a class and tweaking my stats and traits. Okay, let's see what we're working with… I flipped to the first section, labelled “Species.” I then paled, reading name after name for the different types of people found on Felloren. Oh my god there are sub-species too. It went on for several pages. 

Early entries were familiar fantasy staples, equivalents of standard humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, kobolds, dragonkin and so on. Then came some more esoteric options: fairies and pixies, species with animalistic features, winged angelic or demonic entities. A lot of them had flavour text which alluded to further evolutions or mutations which could be discovered in game that would add completely different styles or abilities.

I tapped a couple of the more interestingly-named entries, just to see what would happen. What about… Shorestrider? The dress form rippled and morphed into a person with light blue skin. Their torso featured well-chiseled abs, gills running up the sides and hands that were webbed between each finger. It had a fish-like tail in place of legs, but apparently they had an innate magic to be able to take on a bipedal form if needed. Neat. Inconvenient maybe, but it'd be pretty cool to be able to breathe underwater! Alright, let's try… Chargesteel. The aquatic being melted away, replaced by an elegant automata formed of clockwork and porcelain. All smooth lines and ticking gears. Woah, that's a playable species? Okay, one more. Uh… Vineling? The form swapped again, this time into a shorter form which had a body made up of thick vines with splashes of flowers and leaves throughout. Around the neck was a large blooming ruff of petals, with a sharply-featured face in the center.

I left that active for the moment so that I could flick to the next few pages and check out the options for classes, though it was unlikely to be my choice of appearance. Those next pages walked me through a surprisingly freeform system of class creation rather than a strict set array of classes. 

There were a few preset frameworks, which leaned more towards classic MMO fare. Tanks, healers, damage dealers and the like. But there was a lot of room to flavour abilities how you wanted, and blend skills together to make a class of your own. Good gods this must be a nightmare to balance… As I fiddled with selections, a gold ribbon wriggled out from the spine of the book and began to indicate skills that would pair well with my current choices and the default stat array I had been given. Useful! 

Apparently, these were only the starting skills to boot. Over time the game would pick up on how you played your class, and on level-ups would offer you a similar system with choices that would follow your line of play, as well as ones that could take you in a new direction you may not have thought of. My mind conjured up the gargantuan server farms necessary to conjure all of this up for even a small amount of players. Even with how much more efficient that tech has become… It boggled the mind.

Flipping back to the very first page, I saw an icon which I had been looking for - one that had been mentioned in several of the game's reviews. The Brainscan Character Creator, shown by a stylised drawing of a head with a hand placed upon the top.

A benefit of the evolution of pod-based full-dive gaming was that the game was already plugged into your head. This allowed for braver (or lazier) players to make use of functions like this, especially popular in the RPG world. At the press of a button, your pod would rifle through the layers of your brain, picking out your experiences, memories, the things you had seen in the real world. It would find the aesthetics you liked and the playstyles you'd enjoyed from previous games and use all of that information to construct a character build and appearance for you to just jump into your game with.

For a game with as many options as this, I was intrigued to see what it would come up with. Plus, it would save me hours nudging things around on the dress form! I tapped a finger to the icon, and the book started to glow. Instinctively stepping back, I watched as it started to flip through pages, faster and faster until it stopped on one near to the end.

It read: “Use of the Brainscan function will generate a character entirely tuned to your desires. Often, this results in uncommon or unique designs and playstyles. Administrative systems will monitor and ensure that the results are satisfactory. Please note, you have only one character slot for this account. Are you happy to continue?” Underneath that passage, two words in a beautifully cursive script appeared. Simply, “Yes” and “No.”

Last chance to cook up something myself. I pondered on it, and thought back to the daunting list of choices. Yeah, no, I'm good. I tapped the Yes, and winced as I felt an itching sensation deep in the back of my head. It only lasted a second and wasn't painful, but felt like the sensation of a bug crawling across your skin. Inside your head. I noticed the text on the page had changed, now reading “Brainscan complete. Welcome to Felloren, Starborn.”

My vision blurred and I stumbled as the world tilted 45 degrees. The colours around me smeared like a graphic artist started using the blend feature on full strength. I closed my eyes to fight the return of nausea that rumbled in my stomach. When I opened them again, everything had changed.

I stared up into a beautiful night sky, speckled with a spray of stars. A pink crescent moon sat amongst them, gently casting its glow onto that canvas. At the edge of my vision I saw the tips of dark-green trees around me. A cool breeze brushed my face, playing against my lips. The smell of verdant greenery filled the air, and I felt tall grass tickle my cheeks. The back of my head was resting against soft soil. I was on my back. Weird way to start. 

My whole life up to now had been spent in an urban sprawl, and I'd never been so surrounded by nature like this. I took a deep breath and filled my lungs with the shockingly clean air. Oh I like this. This is good. I felt like I could just lay here and forget about the world for a while. I wiggled my fingers, feeling around the earth and vegetation.

“Oh, hey!” I bolted upright and looked at my hands, wiggling the fingers again. It was hard to make out a lot of detail without more light, but they seemed like… well, normal fingers. More slender and delicate than my own in the real world, and no webbing or claws or anything. I pouted, a little disappointed. I glanced down to my legs, which were leaving an indent in the grass. 

Yup, normal legs too. Nice legs though. Well toned from what I could see beneath the slim-cut breeches which hugged me closer than I was used to. Especially around the thighs, geez. Guess the creator had added some muscle. Maybe I'm a martial artist? I fought a smile as I reached out to squish one of my thighs. Squish squish. Oh! Not so muscular after all. More cushioned than my own legs outside the pod for sure though.

I wiggled my exceedingly normal toes inside the rugged brown-leather travelling boots I had been supplied with. They had a slight heel to them. All pretty vanilla… But hey, maybe I'm like, a half-elf or something like that? I reached up to pat at my ears for something interesting there, having to move some hair out of the way to do so. Nope, normal ears too. Did I seriously hit basic human on a roll of all those species? I poked around my face, feeling soft, pliant skin move around at my touch. 

No ridges, no tusks, no horns as I ruffled my hair. Wow, long hair. I looked down to see it spilling down my torso in lightly curled waves. I couldn't make out the colour in this low light so I just moved to push it over my shoulders for now.

As I did, my hands brushed against my chest and I froze. What the fuck. I looked down again and shifted my torso a little side-to-side, spotting a slight sway. Hi, what the fuck? 

Okay so, maybe I wasn't the most exercised person in life and had never had pecs or anything. A little give to my chest wasn't unusual. But even still, my hands shook as I pressed them against my upper torso. There was a lot more give than I was used to.

Squish… Squish?

“What the fuuuck!?”