The sensation of waking up while already having been awake was an exceptionally strange one. One moment I’m laying in bed comfy as can be, pressing the on button on my helmet, and the next I’m waking up in a generic off-white room. The juncture between the walls and floor was too perfect. Atomically perfect even, and I had to look away before my brain wigged out any further. As if sensing my full return to conscious thought, an androgynous voice spoke to me from nowhere.

“Hello, and welcome to Pellan Rise! Before you begin, are you aware that this game has a faster time scale than the real world? One hour in real life is equal to three inside the game. Do you acknowledge?

“Sure, I guess.” I told the voice.

“Thankyou, are you ready to begin your journey? You will be thrust into a world rife with change and conflict. Whether you sow chaos or fight to help the ordinary folk, the universe needs you. Once you begin, you will embark on adventure with more purpose than ever before… for if you and your ilk fail, there will be dire consequences.”

“Uh, wow. That’s ominous, but yeah I’m ready to go smash some goblins or whatever,” I said, trying to surreptitiously pinpoint the location of the voice.

“One moment, taking you to character creation.” the voice intoned emotionlessly.

“Taking” wasn’t the right word, as I went nowhere. Instead, floating holographic menus appeared before me. The words, ‘Please choose your race’ headed the screens, with ‘100 Character Points Remaining’ beside it. Wow, just like that it was time to start huh? With excitement building I began to scroll through the choices before me. Human was at the top, followed by all your standard fantasy races, Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Orc and more. The list was huge. Next to each selection was a number that denoted how many character creation points it was worth.

Seeing a race that was named ‘Darkling’ I let my edgier side have the steering wheel for a second and expanded the menu. Suddenly two figures appeared in the room, they stood stock still and wore generic and modest underwear. They looked like Tieflings from dnd with spiralling horns, skin that was several shades redder than normal and long tapering tails. Before I got too caught up in inspecting all the races I reminded myself, I needed to figure out what my overall goal was for my character. The group wanted me as a tank, so I guess I better take a look at the more robust races.

Browsing through the types of dwarf, I quickly decided against playing as one. Having a beard was something I really did not wan. I hated my own budding facial hair enough as it was, no need to torture myself. Scrolling further through the races, I found another one that looked like it could take some damage. They were big giant like figures with protrusions on their bodies like hunks of stone. My mind instantly told me that I would under no circumstances be playing as these ‘Gorthon’ people. They looked like Korg from that old thor movie, which is fine I guess but I’d like to at least be 95% flesh thank you very much. I didn’t even bother to glance at the orcs, I had no intention of playing as them either.

Searching further through the seemingly endless list of races, my pace began to slow as I became less and less enthusiastic. I really did not want to play a tank, like, at all. Especially not in a full immersion game where pain, however dulled, was a feature. So why did I have to play a tank? Jeremy had just up and decided he was going to play some kind of caster DPS, even though it was definitely his turn to play healer. Actually, they had all chosen DPS, so why the hell couldn’t I choose my class too?

The group needed a healer though... I could play a healer right? I liked the idea of fixing up my friends after they got hurt a whole lot more than taking blows for them directly. Only problem would be that tanks are generally harder to find that healers in mmos. They were still harder to find than dps though, everyone wanted to be a dps. I could claim the moral high ground here at least.

My new intended role resurrected my excitement, and I rapidly paged through the races that sounded like they would have a bonus to casting or healing. Elves obviously had an affinity to magic, and humans were passable at everything. Some of the Beastmen and Undead subraces had bonuses to magic as well, but I wanted to explore the whole list first. That’s what I told myself, but when I found the subrace of Fae called ‘Eilion’, I was intrigued.

I selected the Eilion for a preview, and was greeted by a male and female of the petite species of Fae. Their eyes were larger than normal, but not childishly or comically large. Their ears were long and pointed, arching slightly down as they travelled back like some sort of aerodynamic control mechanism. Everything about their figures spoke of a quiet grace, and I loved it.

Glancing at their stats I saw they had significant boosts to magic in general, while sporting strong affinities to illusion and healing magic. I decided right there, despite the large Character Point cost of 60 points, that I was going to play as an Eilion. Selecting the male option I went to press accept, but something in my gut wrenched. My eyes were drawn to the female Eilion like a forgotten earring to the wall of an MRI machine. Slowly, and deliberately I selected female instead and hit accept.

The female Eilion moved forward and the holographic screens were replaced by the most in-depth character customiser I had ever seen. A little dazed, I meandered through the options before me. Oh my gosh. This was insane. There was a slider the number of hairs on each portion of the body for crying out loud. Wow. It took me about 10 minutes to get my head around the sheer control I had over my avatar’s body, and some of the options caused me to blush what I assume was a rather intense shade of red.

Regardless, I dove in. I began to craft the default little character before me into something that deep deep inside my chest, far past conscious thought, my heart cried out for. I enjoyed myself tremendously as she took shape under my careful consideration. She was just a tad over 4 foot 10 inches, with butt length black hair that sparkled faintly with perceived starlight depending on the angle.

Her eyes were a mix of blue and green, the colours clashing as though the dye had been thrown in and only half heartedly mixed. Her skin was a few shades darker than plain white, which is to say I gave her rather fair skin. She may have been short, but everything was in proportion, just smaller. Her breasts sat relatively high and perky on her chest, simultaneously small and filling out her thin torso at the same time.

Her shoulders were narrow, her waist thin and her hips moderately wide, but not a potential navigation hazard. Her face took me a very very long time to craft. I wanted her to be some combination of cute, pretty and gorgeous, without seeming unrealistically so. It took me a long time, but in the end I settled on an oval shaped face, cute little nose and slightly pouting full lips.

It was a while before I even realised I’d finished, I was so enthralled by my creation and the strange feeling that had been faintly simmering in my chest. I stared at the ‘accept appearance’ button for a while, trying to divine its secrets.

Oh, it doesn’t have any, right. I punched the button. Suddenly I felt my perception of the room shift, and I became… her. I didn’t feel much different. Shorter definitely, my chest felt a bit larger, but it still felt like my real male chest to my brain. I guess that was what Dana was talking about with the system only being able to send signals to your existing nerves and such.

My reverie was jolted by the feeling of my exceedingly long hair tickling my lower back. Well, that was definitely new. Oh, and obviously there was something else I needed to check. Tentatively, bashfully, I lowered my now petite little hand down between my legs. My hand reported feeling the smooth fabric of my underwear, while my real life male equipment reported being touched in a way that defied active comprehension. I shuddered at the alien feeling. Lets not do that again.

The next order of business in character creation was to choose a name, which would lock me into using this character. I wonder why this step wasn't last. Oh well. What’s a good name? Damn usually I can google my favorite shows or lorem ipsum or something to help. Okay let's pick a letter. G! Wait no, I should keep with S like my real name. Sarah? No too normal. Sapphire? No too… something... I don't know. I’m a Fae girl so it needs to sound Faelike. Wait… what was that one little sprite’s name from that book? Uh… Syl! Let's see, that's too short though. People can call me that for short but the whole name needs to be longer. Sylanna. Yes, Sylanna it is. I entered my new name into the holoscreen and tapped the accept button.

Sylanna the healer was official! Woo hoo! The next thing I needed to decide was my stats. I won't bore you with endless stats tables unless you want me to, so I’ll just describe what I did here. I spent 15 character points in my stats, 5 in intelligence, 5 in wisdom and 5 in dexterity. The intelligence added to the potency of my spells, among many other things. The wisdom increased my mana pool and the duration of timed abilities, basically allowing me to increase how long a heal-over-time ability would run for. I put points in dexterity because a healer needs to be able to dodge an awful lot of nasty mechanics. Games have a tendency to target the healer in a boss battle. Being maimed and killed by a laser beam of death fired by a boss did not sound fun. I finalised my stats and hit accept.

Having finished with my base stats, I moved on to choosing my abilities. The game let the players pick any combination of skills and abilities at character creation, and depending on how you developed those abilities it would offer you new ones that synergized when you levelled up. I knew I was going to play a healer, but there were about a million ways to set that up. This portion of creation was going to take an incredibly long time to work through.

I settled myself down on the floor with my legs under me and dragged the holoscreen down before I really got stuck in. There was many avenues I could take, nature healing, radiant healing, siphoning, some sort of combat alchemy and much more. I thought about my character. As a Fae she would be predisposed to nature magic, but I didn't feel like throwing mushrooms and weeds at people. I decided to go radiant style healing, although my main motivator was the idea of blasting people with heavenly fire.

Browsing through the abilities, spells and passives I felt myself becoming slightly overwhelmed. There was so much here. Deciding to start with the basics, I needed a good single target heal and a good group heal. I found a single target touch based healing spell, but I really needed something ranged. This tiny character was not going to last long in the general melee of combat. Moving past the touch spell I found a ranged one called Caring Pulse that would fit nicely. When cast, the spell fired a beam of light from my hand. If I managed to hit an ally, the beam would latch on and then pulse once with a burst of healing magic. It looked really cool so I bought it for 6 points. Looking at the indicator, I saw that I had 19 points left. Time to find that group heal ability, but I needed to keep some left over for other things.

Casually browsing through the abilities, I looked at and discarded several options, not being able to decide. I did however find a radiant damage spell that looked very fun. It was called Sunlight Shard. Basically, the caster holds out their hand and a shard of golden glowing light forms a few inches in the air. The caster can aim it and then release, causing it to fly in a direction at high speed. At any point the caster could cause the shard to explode, changing it from a single lance into a deadly hail of sharp golden light. It was like a shotgun where the wielder could choose buckshot or slugs while it was mid flight. It was so freaking cool. It also cost 9 points, but I got it anyway.

It wasn't until 15 minutes after finding Sunlight Shard that I realised I’d already found the group heal spell I wanted before, but I’d been in a trance and had dismissed it automatically. Circle of Dawn was an ability where the caster slams their foot on the ground as they activate the spell, which causes a ring of golden light to travel out from the point of impact. Every friendly creature it touches is given a small buff that heals them over time. The range on the spell was a radius of about 15 meters, so it was pretty good. What had caused my mind to dismiss it was the fact it caused the opposite effect in unfriendly creatures. Any enemy caught by the ring as it expanded began to burn with radiant fire. Another cool ability, but it cost another 9 points. Which meant I now had one point left over. I groaned. This one point was going to need to be spent, but on what I had no idea.

Almost 40 minutes of mindlessly trawling through all the abilities I was still nowhere near finding something that interested me to spend it on. I learned a lot about what was possible with the character creator, and I think I could have pulled off an okay tank character, but I still didn't want to. I had almost resigned myself to having a leftover point, when I found a little passive called Space Time Link. It described itself as giving a small boost to casting speed and character control. Sounded good so I picked it.

With everything done, I got up off the floor and grinned as I pressed Finalise Character. With a swirl of colour the room vanished, and instead I found myself in a forest. And what a forest it was! The trees were huge towering redwoods, ferns fighting for space below their huge trunks. Mushrooms grew in little clusters at the base of trees, and on top of fallen branches and logs. It was a wondrous sight to my teenaged city dwelling eyes. Of course, it was about this time I realised that I had no clothes on. I had no gear at all in fact. Just a modest sports bra and underwear. Why did I have no clothes??? Weren't we supposed to be able to buy some starter gear with our character points?

Oh wait… I spent them all. Oh Sam- oh Syl you fool. How did you forget? That one point could have at least been spent on a peasant smock or something! I was really cold now, the chill breeze that meandered through the forest cutting into me like the most powerful of blizzards. Wrapping my arms around my slight frame, I peered into the permanent twilight of the forest and tried to see any markers that could point me to civilization. I saw none, and with a shivering shrug I picked a random direction and walked.

My hud, which would appear when I mentally commanded it to, told me I’d been walking for an ingame hour before I found something other than forest. What I found was not very encouraging, it was a very old ruined stone road. The cobblestone one lane road had buckled under the not so tender ministrations of the nearby trees and their roots. Entire sections were buried beneath dirt and forest debris.

Stone markers rose from the side of the road at fifty meter intervals along its length. I was really really cold now, I had nothing to warm myself up with, and all the brush and wood of the forest was damp. On top of that I had no idea how to start a fire without matches or a lighter. I needed get moving and find help! I chose to walk to the right along the road, not that my decision mattered with how little I knew of the area. Wait, was there a map? I mentally called for a map, and suddenly my vision was filled with a map.

“Yus! Awesome!” my high, girly voice shattered the quiet peace around me.

“Whoa, that's really weird,” I said as I put a hand to my throat.

I didn’t know how to feel about how I sounded. That strange calm simmering feeling had taken root in my chest again. Strange.

Finally turning my attention to the map, I wilted a little. The map only showed areas I’d seen. That was going to be no help, and with a sigh I kept walking.

Another hour passed, and I could feel my body growing heavy, my eyelids drooping. Still I had found nothing other than tall trees and damp ground. Then it started to rain. I didn’t notice it at first, my mind was so lethargic from the cold. It wasn't until a big fat drop of water landed in the center of my head that I realised. Oh no. My first day in Pellan Rise and I was going to die of hypothermia and exposure. Great job Sam! Or Syl? Whatever.

The rain continued to filter through the canopy, coming down in huge fat drops that felt like something more solid than liquid. My mind was closed off from my surroundings, only interacting with my fake body enough to put one foot in front of the other. At least until a shadow crossed my vision. I looked up from the ground and peered blearily at whatever has blocked the light.

Before me stood a large tumbling ruin, its ancient stones clogged with moss and dirt. Somehow the place still exuded a calm welcoming presence, as though inviting me to come inside, despite its drab and lightless appearance. Careful of fallen masonry, I tentatively made my way through the arch of the main doorway. The large main hall of the ruin was impressive, soaring elegant pillars held up the ceiling. Or rather they had once held it up. The half of the hall closest to myself and the entrance was open to the sky. What I saw on the far side of the hall made my heart soar.

Sitting on a raised dais was a stone altar, and on that stone altar was a large corroded bronze brazier. Filled with wood. Dry wood. Wood that had been sitting in that brazier for so long it had forgotten the word for not being dry. As fast as my cold and abused legs could take me, I rushed to the altar and the brazier. Only to realise something. I still had no way to light it. I remembered something about rubbing sticks together, but I’d never been the survivalist type. I had no idea what to do.

I dropped to my knees at the base of the stairs leading to the altar and despaired. The ruined temple had lied to me. It had tempted me in with the promise of comfort and warmth, and then taunted me with my inability to do anything. I lay there, haphazardly sprawled on the floor before the steps and seethed in anger and sadness. This was more than I’d bargained for when I put that helmet on hours ago. I’d been expecting to have fun playing a new game, not this. Not dying of cold in a hateful temple.

I lurched drunkenly to my feet and yelled at the brazier in my tiny girlish voice, “Light you stupid thing. Burn! Be on fire!”

Nothing happened. It ignored me. A strangled groan escaped my pout and I stomped my foot in impotent anger. Only… the stomp wasn't so impotent. When my small battered foot impacted the ground, a golden shockwave rushed out. When it connected with the brazier it burst into glorious golden flame.

I stared in wonder as the flames grew higher. With slow steps, as though the fire could be scared away, I approached the now happily burning brazier. It was so warm! I got close enough to see water evaporating off my body as the warmth flowed through me. It felt wonderful, amazing. I had done it! I had accidentally lit the wood on fire. I guess all that teenaged angry tantruming at an inanimate object had paid off. The spell had identified the brazier as an enemy and set it on fire. Not just normal fire either, it was a gorgeous golden fire that was somehow as hot as a normal fire, but didn’t threaten to burn me. Curious, I quickly ran my hand through the golden light before me like I’d seen others do with candles.

“It has been a long time since this temple was reconsecrated. I had thought it abandoned long ago. Tell me child, who are you? Why have you reignited this distant flame?” a kind matronly voice spoke from the golden flame.

I screamed. It was a very girly scream, and then I choked on my tongue. I was not expecting the fire to start talking to me.

“I am sorry to frighten you little one, are you okay?” the kind voice spoke again.

Clearing my throat I looked at the fire apprehensively, “I was, I was just. I was lost, I needed warmth or I was going to die. It’s really cold,” I told the golden flame lady, my voice high and shaking.

“I see that, you are free to seek shelter in this crumbling temple of mine.” she said kindly.

“Um. Thank you. Uh, though can you, can you um. Who are you? Are you a goddess?” I asked, my voice gaining confidence as the cold was forced from my body.

“I am Feslia, and yes child, I am a goddess. Although I have fallen somewhat in stature since the time this temple was built,” she said.

“Uh, nice to meet you Feslia. I’m Sylanna, Syl for short. If you um, don’t mind me asking, is it normal for goddesses to speak to mortals like myself?” I asked. I was more than a bit intimidated by this being, even if she wasn’t actually real.

She laughed, the sound was beautiful, reminding me of glowing blue skies for some reason, “No it is not normal for a goddess to appear before mortals. But you are not mortal Sylanna. You are marked by a higher power than myself, immune to the permanency of death. The few followers I still have would call you an adventurer, but that word does little to describe your true nature.”

“My true nature?”

“Yes little one, you and your kind are so much more than an immortal completer of quests. Tell me Sylanna, would you like to become a priestess of mine? I am not a demanding goddess. All I ask is a prayer or two,” she said, and this time I could detect a faint hopefulness in her voice.

I stood there quietly for a moment, thinking. Maybe this was how the game was going to allow me to be some sort of cleric? Plop me down in the woods and let me wander until I’m saved by a kindly goddess? Possibly.

“What do I gain from being your priestess? Apart from thanking you for saving me from a nasty death,” I enquired.

“You would gain power similar to my own, if vastly decreased. I am a goddess of the sun and sky. I command the burning copper clouds at sunset and the bright blue sky of noon. I must warn you that I am not the only deity to hold sway in this realm, and certainly not the most powerful,” her flame flicked as she spoke now, and I heard the faintest of sighs.

“That’s fine by me, I already know radiant healing and damage spells, aligning with a goddess of the bright sky sounds like a natural thing to me,” I told her.

“Goddess of the Bright Sky. I like that title little one, I think I will use that. So do you accept then? Will you be my priestess? I hold my followers to a moral code, though not as strict as those gods and goddesses who reign over law and order. I ask that you do not kill without just provocation, that you heal those who are in need of it, and make an effort to be kind to the good people of this world... and yours.”

“And mine? What do you mean?” I was confused. Had the developers given the higher beings of the game world an awareness of the real world?

Ignoring me, she continued, “There is another thing. There is a dissonance in your soul Sylanna, something does not sit right. If you accept my offer, I would like to do what I can to fix this?”

“Yes, yes I accept. I would love to be your priestess,” I spoke to her in a calm confident voice.

“Then I will begin. When you wake, check the left wing of the temple, there may still be items that you can use on your journeys. See you soon my child, my beautiful priestess.”

And with that, the golden flame of her brazier leapt to me, leapt at me, leapt into me. It surged into my core, and I felt alarm as it went further than what I thought was my game body. It was a strange experience. My body erupted in a tingling warmth, followed by a searing cold to my bones. I felt things shift, as though my arms were changing and moving, but when I looked down at my form nothing moved. I could feel my body shifting and squirming though regardless. Then the fire reached my mind and I blanked out.