Chapter 2: Cute Ass

I awoke to the soft notes of the Dreammaker desktop’s orchestral boot up jingle and found myself disembodied amidst a grassy field.

“No scan detected, please wait as a scan is performed,” came a feminine voice from all around me. Call it sexism, but you had to question what had caused everyone to trust female voiced programs and AI over male voiced ones. I had my own answer of course.

Slowly, beginning first with my toes, my body materialized into being as if it was coming out of an early 21st century 3D printer. Above my feet came my ankles and the rest of my hairless pale freckled legs. I quickly looked away as the scan closed on the top of my thighs and wished not only that I had worn at least something in the pod, but that I could have worn something baggy.

I keep my gaze away from myself and on the grassy field as the scan travelled up my waist to my flabby chest.

Seconds later I had a face and eyes and a moment later red bangs covering them. My hair seemed longer than I remembered but I figured the scan mustn’t have picked up the persistent grease that kept it matted up.

The scan completed with a gentle chime, but rather than exploring the pod’s desktop hub in my birthday suit.

“Play Cora!” I commanded, remembering the pod manual I had downloaded off DRMhub.

Nothing? Crap, Pod operating systems weren’t standardised, though it was possible to change them in the settings.

“Run program Cora!” I said louder this time.

The grass swayed as a lazy simulated breeze blew past, almost as if the pod desktop was trying to rub in the fact that it had me standing butt naked in its virtual desktop, stuck without the right commands to operate it.

“Activate, Run, Play, Cora,” I spat, working my way through a mental list of possible start commands. Start?

“Start Cora? Please?” I tentatively asked.

“Starting program Cora,” the feminine voice replied and once again I was thrown into blackness.

Stars appeared like tiny blinking lights amongst the dark, followed by streamers of ethereal light in blues, reds and greens. What’cha call them again? 

An Aurora.

Large fantasy font letters that read ‘Welcome to the Cauldron of Realms Ascended,’ spawned into being as the opening cinematic started.

I’d read the game’s forums on an illicit old web mirror and knew to expect the cinematic and some of the options in character creation, but aside from that and the promotional materials that caused me to lust over this game, I was going in moderately spoiler free. 

That said already I’d seen the cinematic previously recorded in 2D, after hearing it only mentioned tidbits of the geopolitics and creation lore already released in the promo material. Not that it had any effect on my building restless excitement. 

I need to move, I needed to do something! My feet were tapping thin air and already my fingers were wriggling in anticipation of manipulating the character creation interface.

As thrilling as it was, the opening cinematic couldn’t have finished any sooner and I immediately started jumping for joy before suddenly stopping because jumping when there is no visible ground beneath is freaky. Aside from the sudden onset vertigo, something more important had popped up, a prompt.

[Would you like to begin character creation? It should be noted that you will only be given a single character that cannot be rerolled or deleted. Character rerolls can be purchased from the website for $5000. Do you wish to continue?]

Well it’s not like I had any UNC currency, let alone that much. If I wanted to reroll I was going to need not just a new account, but a new FTLN access algorithm to get another free character. So I needed to make this first character count.

“Let’s do this!”

The character creation room formed around me, filled with all the target dummies and random objects that one would need to test their character. In the center of the room stood a clay mannequin surrounded by holographic options windows. I walked over and took a look at the options windows, finding everything you’d expect. There was an appearance window, with more sliders than you could shake a stick at, there was a window to select Ability Trees, and more.

Now I just needed to ask, what type of character did I want to make? This was always the hard part, because there was just too many options, and only having one character slot really put the pressure on to get it right.

I’ve played a lot of rpgs, mmorpgs, even a couple pseudo-vr rpgs and none of them had anything on Cora’s character creator. It was choice overload, not only was there a generous selection of races and subraces to choose from, but you also had an immense customisation both of your avatar and constructing their abilities. It would have been daunting if not for the AI assistance, the ability to randomise certain parameters like location and the DNA sync. Pointing at the option in the creator interface, I asked the AI for an explanation. 

On command a new prompt appeared.

[DNA Sync: Recommended for players new to CORA. Using your scan, advanced algorithms and phenotypic predictive software, CORA is able to customise any race using your genetics to guide the construction of a personalised avatar. This feature is used by default by the Random Character tool.]

Random character options in most games resulted in an avatar you didn’t like, with an unintelligible name and a class you probably didn’t want to play. Cora had broken the mold and made a randomiser that was both intelligent and rewarding enough to tempt you into using it. Not only did it use the game’s patented DNA Sync, reward you with unique traits like special sub-classes, abilities, backstories or gear, but it seemed to have the uncanny ability to pick things that you personally would enjoy.

I’d read enough on mirrored forums to possibly be tempted myself, but first I wanted to explore what my options were. Dismissing the previous prompt, I tapped the mannequin and pulled forward the race select menu.

The races were split amongst six categories and some races having additional sub categories for their available subtypes. Immediately I discarded humans as an option, I had plenty of experience as one and I was here for escapism. Working down the list there were several options that caught my eye, such as the cool looking but edgy Darklings or the more adorable animalistic Alrec race choices. It was pretty hard to choose.

I was about to give up and see what the Random Character had to offer when I spotted an option slotted between Fairies and Dryads in the Fae category, Aes Sifv. Selecting it brought forth yet another pop up.

[Aes Sifv:

 

• A type of Fae from the Isle of Mists. They are said to have arrived in Cauldron long ago when a piece of their realm crashed into the sea, forming an island. While the Aes Sifv were mostly content to stay within the bounds of their island home, their dark kin the Dökkaalvar were not and shortly after their arrival left the new Island seeking prey.

 

 

 

•  Aes Sifv are beings of Illusion, luck and the arcane that take many guises and forms ranging from utterly alien to ones that resemble humans or Alrec as seen through an otherworldly lens. Aes Sifv are distinguishable from other races by their unnatural colourings, proportions and forms, including fur that is purple or mirrors the starry sky, additional tails, or mixed traits. While able to disguise themselves when amongst other races, their true forms can be glimpsed through running water and under the light of a full moon or especially starlight night sky.
  

 

• Aes Sifv love many things, they love the telling and hearing of tales, they love tricks and pranks, they love nature, they love how light plays across different surfaces or through water and glass, they have a love of sunlight, moonlight and starlight. They are fascinated by the social interactions and displays of emotion by other races, often blessing those they favor with good luck. That said they can be quick to aggression where they feel someone is deliberately spoiling their fun, resulting in vicious tricks, pranks and curses of unshakeable bad luck.

  Naturally flighty and aloof, some Aes Sifv parents through the use of illusion foster their children out to parents of other races who have just lost a child, hoping that the experiences in the outside world will benefit them. These children are known as Changelings.

  Common varieties include:

• Cait Sifv

• Tod Sifv

• Cu Sifv

• Péist Sifv

• Selkies

• Aoi Sidhe]

After seeing this, none other choices mattered anymore. Aside from the altered names and lore, the Aes Sifv were the Aos Sí from stories my Mamaí told me growing up. The folklore of her homeland. 

My Mamaí Aine had been an aid worker from Ireland, who met my mom Rachel while on mission here and fell in love. I don’t know who my father is, or even if I have one and growing up I didn’t care, I had my Mom and Mamaí, that was all I needed.

There were further descriptions for each of the subraces and reading them I figured it was really a choice between fae cats, foxes, dogs, draconics, were-seals and a type of elf. 

The game devs had obviously taken some liberties with the Aos Fi folklore when creating these subraces, as the Cait Sifv were not shapeshifting black witch cats like Cait Sith, but a race of magical cat people who could shapeshift back into cats and had more fur colour options than colours in the rainbow.

Cats are cute right? Everyone likes cats right?

I… I want that!

Selecting Cait Sifv, I pressed on into character customisation and selected the option for DNA sync.

The mannequin began to shimmer with light and when the glow finally died down, in the mannequin's place was an androgynous midnight blue furred cat boy with my face. It was like looking at myself in the mirror, except I had blue hair, blue cat ears a top my head, a blue tail lazily waving behind me and beryl coloured eyes that had slitted pupils like a cat.

It was almost perfect. 

It. Just. Needed. One. More. Thing...

Reopening the customisation options, I set the character to female. Glowing again the Cait Sifv’s form shifted. 

Perfect.

What!? I just like playing girl characters, I don’t know why? Maybe I just prefer staring at a girls ass instead of a guys as a play, girls are pretty and hot. I know I won’t see my characters ass as I play in a VR mmo! Well I guess I will where mirrors are involved. 

Spinning the preview around, I inspected ‘the goods’. It was tight, with pleasing lines and hints of athletic muscle underneath its gentle soft curves. The hips they supported were great too, full enough that they were unmistakable, but sleek enough that they weren’t the sole focus of the area. Basically, really damn nice hips. They’d be nice to hold for whoever got to do so. 

“Yup, I have a cute ass,” I said proudly before breaking out into giggles.

Happy with my characters appearance, I hit the next button bringing up a new window. 

Stats!

Amongst all the rpgs I’d played in the past there were two types, ones there the stats were automatically assigned by race, class and equipment with minimal customisation and ones where the player was allowed greater control of how stats were assigned. CORA was the latter, stats were assigned and abilities were created by the player with minimal interference.

 “Time to see what we have to work with here,” I murmured, turning my attention back to the stat window.

Name: N/A
Race: Cait Sifv	Level:  1
Stats:
Physical	Magical
Strength: 20	Power: 20
Speed: 20 (+1)	Urgency: 20 (+1)
Endurance: 20	Capacity: 20
Constitution: 20 (+1)	Anamnesis: 20 (+1)
Toughness: 20	Intricacy: 20 (+1)
Points Available: 20
Elemental Affinities:  Arcane (Pick an additional Affinity)
Physical	Energy
Cold	Water
Earth	Wind
Dark	Light
Poison	Void ⚠

 

Selecting each of the stats in turn, gave me a short description of how they worked and how they differed from other systems. CORA divided its core stats into two categories, physical and magical. Strength and Power were largely the same, one measured physical strength the other the strength or power of magic abilities. It was the same story with speed/urgency, how fast you could do stuff and Endurance/Capacity, how long you could do stuff before you collapsed from exhaustion.

The pairing of stats ended there. In the Physical category you had Constitution, your resistance to status effects and Toughness, your ability to resist damage. In Magic you had Anamnesis, the number of spells/abilities you could have ready to cast at one time and Intricacy, the level of complexity of the spell/abilities you could construct and use.

Not only did Cora give new characters 20 points assigned to each of those stats by default and another 20 unassigned, but as long as you didn’t take any stat below 10 points you could also reassign the default stats.

Every race also received racial bonuses with the randomiser exclusive races gaining the most. As a Cait Sifv I gained bonus stats in speed, constitution, urgency, anamnesis and intricacy. As well as the ability to choose an extra elemental affinity in addition to the arcane affinity all Fae races received.

Elemental affinity scaled with your level and enhanced both your resistance to the element as well as the effectiveness/damage of spells/abilities using that element.

While I knew making and playing horribly broken glass cannons was both fun and challenging, I only had one shot. I’d known early on I would want to hedge my bets and spread my stats to create a, at least partially, balanced character.

Cora didn’t have classes, you could within reason and feasibility assign stats however you liked and create abilities, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t use established class archetypes as inspiration to guide your play style.

There wasn’t anything stopping me from making a rogue or warrior inspired character, but if I wanted to make best use of the racial bonuses, tiny though they may be, a magic class or caster would work best. 

Not that that narrowed my choices much…

Like even ignoring hybrids like spellblades, there were countless flavors of caster.

Time to fall back onto my two rules for rpgs, ‘Let the lore guide you,’ and ‘When in doubt follow the rule of cute.’

According to the lore, Aes Sifv are mischievous trickers who disguise themselves with illusions. It would be pretty cool to weaponise illusions and use them to fight and I knew a class of battle illusionist from a very old game that used explosive arcane based illusions. A Mesmer.

They had a pretty fighting style, full of bright lights, sparkles and explosions that resemble fireworks.

I was going to have a lot of fun and look cute doing it.

Picking Light as my extra Elemental Affinity, I began slotting points into stats.  Since I was going to play a caster, I was weighting it towards the magical side of things, but in the name of balance I saved a rough third of my 20 unassigned points for physical stats.

Next up was picking skill trees, I wasn’t going to need any of the close combat or weapon trees, but I was going to need the Ranged Cast Magic to start with, I also picked Arcane due to my affinity and for its utility. Well also because it looked bright and flashy.

I still needed to pick another Ability Tree for constructing spells and abilities though and I had lots of choices, did I want another casting tree like Self Cast Magic or something else entirely. 

Looking through the list of trees and their descriptions, I came close to picking the Light magic tree thinking it would help with illusions before I found it! An Illusions tree!

Weird, I swear that wasn’t there the first time I scrolled down the list…

All that was left was to set my starting location and pick a name. Location Schmocation… I set location to random, as long as the game doesn't spawn me somewhere that hates cat fairies, I’ll be fine.

Names… Names… Ok lets go full Rp here. Aes Sifv are from the isle of Mists, so mist. I’m an illusionist, maaaybe, mirror? Mistmirror? Ok that sounds like a surname, what about a first name…  It’s gotta be Irish, I knew a few Irish names from my Mamaí. What about Aisling? It means dream.

I typed the name into the waiting text box, and hit enter, then leaned back and took a look at my character sheet as a whole.

 

Name: Aisling Mistmirror
Race: Cait Sifv	Level:  1
Stats:
Physical	Magical
Strength: 20	Power: 24
Speed: 22 (+1)	Urgency: 23 (+1)
Endurance: 22	Capacity: 24
Constitution: 22 (+1)	Anamnesis: 22 (+1)
Toughness: 20	Intricacy: 21 (+1)
Points Available: 0
Elemental Affinities: Arcane, Light
Ability Trees: Ranged Cast magic, Arcane, Illusions

Yeah… yeah! I liked this!

Confirming the character, I felt a flash of vertigo as my perspective shifted and my vision black out.