I spent the rest of the day calibrating my RIG chip with the new software and preparing my suit for my first log-in. Setting up a back-up for my current RIG configuration I downloaded the update and watched rapidly opening and closing windows fill my vision for a solid minute. Logging into the Dark Spiral net portal I set up a profile for my beta gameplay. The portal was suitably gothic with a backdrop of floating hunks of earth spiraling downward toward a gathering sphere of light.
By the time the evening start time rolled around I was surprised that I had not had a drink all afternoon. I went up into the house and took a shower before returning to suit up properly. Descending the stairs in my robe, I walked over to hang it up before starting to pull on the sleek black suit.
Looking up toward the ceiling, I pulled the zippers closed as I said, “Lyd, drop the lights.” The room went dark except the glow of the monitors and the lights above the dive chair itself which cast the all black room in a rich blood red.
Pulling the zippers on my forearms I grabbed the connectors cables and started clipping them in, “Alright, minimize interruptions Lydia.”
She answered softly, “Of course darling.”
Sliding into the dive chair I felt the connectors along my back click in place, adjusting to get the last couple in place. Snuggling down into the padded and reclined seat I connected the last of the cables before I started to pull my gloves on, “Boot the beta.”
The screens flickered and a window maximized. One showed my empty blue desktop and the other the telltale luminescent white spiral on the dark star background. The name of the game was emblazoned above it in stylized golden text.
Dark Spiral
Catacomb Entertainment
Log - In
I reached out and clicked the log-in button and watched Lydia instantly apply my access key. I was met with a prompt:
Character Creation
Name:
“Alright, see you on the other side Lyd,” I pulled the helmet on only to be met by a very similar scene.
Floating in the void before the prompt, I raised translucent blue hands and flexed them before reaching out and flicking open a holographic blue keyboard. I considered the prompt. The first option that sprung to mind was my old character. I had named every character Voss since I started streaming years ago.
That was a terrible idea.
Studying the letters for a moment a memory sprung to mind. My uncle had done his best to help us out after my father left us when I was six. My gram, and by extension most of the rest of the family essentially excommunicated him from all family dealings. The rumor was that he was pretty heavily involved in organized crime in the old country.
I obviously sympathized with him. He had ultimately been a father figure for me when my own vanished. He spent his whole life trying to climb back out of the shadows only to…
Sighing I tried to banish the uncomfortable thought, typing out my uncle’s name.
Florin
Hitting the enter key, I felt a lurch through my haptic suit. I watched the name and prompts vanishing into mist as I was pulled downward over the very same spiral from the title screen. I felt myself being pulled toward the outer edge of the upper spiral dropping toward a craggy piece of rock in a sea of stars. Lights dotted the asteroid-like mass of land. Some were fires, others were bluish unidentifiable glows.
I felt… cold. Was this the effect of Catacomb’s new RIG interface?
I was drawn into a maelstrom of translucent blue humanoids floating around the center of what appeared to be a combination of an ancient city of ruined spires and buildings and a gothic graveyard. Far distant, at the edge of the dark and ruined city I could just make out a sprawl of white tents surrounding the ancient structures. Beyond that; plains, valleys and even mountains formed the edge of the asteroid that seemed to be my destination.
As I hurtled downward I noted a figure amidst the gathered masses below. They stood forward in a tattered robe raising a stave toward the sky and chanting in a ragged feminine voice. Others gathered around the periphery of the ritual behind the leader looking upward with eyes that glowed red, orange, green, and blue.
“Interesting character creation you got here.”
I felt myself drawn downward sharply toward the figure with the stave. It was a skeleton wearing mud stained and burned white robes. They were completely absorbed by their constant chanting. As I neared I saw that one side of the priest’s face were the pale sharp features of an older woman and the other was a fleshless skull, its eye socket filled with a pulsing ruby light.
She spoke to me with a hiss, “The bodies of the worthy are below us Remnant. Go forth and claim a body, and if you find your way back to us, mayhaps you will be worthy!”
Behind them the motley group of onlookers, all partially decayed or skeletal undead, watched with interest.
The female priestess finished by saying, “If you do not… then enjoy the company of the damned.”
Intense pressure dropped onto my chest as the priestess raised her hand and then dropped it with harsh finality. I was thrown downward toward the darkened stones, swearing I felt a lurch in my stomach from the sudden movement. Rather than colliding with the ground I burst through the stone, soil, and rocks and into a massive vaulted circular chamber below.
The great circular vault was hundreds of feet across and only lit by the glow of the other spirits like myself flowing through its columns. There were many levels lined by elaborate gray columns that blurred past me as I was forced to descend. Each of them was filled with hundreds of plinths and darkened shuffling figures. When I tried to focus to get a sense of the denizens of this great chamber I was already hurtling past and further downward. My momentum did not slow.
Slowing, I found myself floating amidst other silent blue spirits. I couldn’t make out much detail of the other ghosts who surrounded me beyond the fact that some were slight and others large and imposing.
Gesturing toward one of the alcoves I felt myself float in that direction and drifted into a chamber filled with stone platforms adorned with corpses left to the open environment.
I scanned the different bodies and found that I could differentiate male, female, zombie and skeleton. Those seemed to be the basic choices I was being offered. Floating over to a male zombie I reached out a hand, my vision filled with prompts and images.
As I touched the body with my ghostly hand the entire level of corpses began to glow. I was treated to a series of options and I began to get a sense of what this game’s character creation was like:
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Male / Female / Ungendered
When I chose male from the options a number of the plinths darkened. I surveyed the next options with more of an analytical eye.
“Alright Malcolm, this is what they are paying you for,” I thought as I dove into the statistics. It seemed that the game was focusing on a barebones build from the outset. Your character was what you made of it and defined by skill development. The two racial options were skeleton and zombie.
Skeletons had a resistance to piercing damage and a weakness to bludgeoning damage. Zombies, had the same resistance and weakness but for bludgeoning and slashing, respectively. In classic rpg fashion there were six statistics: strength, agility, vitality, reason, spirit, and charm. Skeletons had more agility and vitality but less spirit and charm. Zombies were more strong and spirited, but less agile and intelligent.
Each had two additional abilities. Skeletons could fall to the ground and confuse an enemy into believing they had been defeated and disassemble and rebuild themselves. It appeared, if the text of the ability was to be believed, that a skeleton character could be reduced to a skull and as long as they had hit points and found a way to rebuild themselves they remained functional.
There were some interesting ways the abilities might be used for gameplay, espionage and other chicanery, but I was drawn to the Zombie option, despite its negative statistics.
Zombie
Rarity: Common
Tier: F
Modifications: +4 Strength, +2 Spirit, -2 Agility, -1 Reason
Resistances
+5% resistance to bludgeoning damage
+5% weakness to slashing damage
Abilities
Flesh Graft
There is a rare chance you may take the parts of humanoid enemies and graft them onto your own body to modify your abilities. If you choose this option any loot that would have been gained is lost. Rarer and higher tier versions of the zombie race may be able graft more varied creature parts onto themselves.
Consume Flesh
You may consume the flesh of the living, or recently dead, to recover a small amount of hit points.
Both Zombie and Skeleton seemed equal in the options they offered but I got a sense that this game had requirements for later race evolutions and maybe even class requirements based on race. While seeing what variations of a skeleton Catacomb was able to devise was interesting, I kinda wanted this character to have a face. In addition I liked the idea of an early game heal when I planned to play a close range fighter. Skeleton would have to be for the next playthrough.
My inclination for close range bloodshed, of course, affected my choice between the two offered classes. The two options were Brute and Savant. I scanned Savant and saw just what you would expect for what was clearly intended to be a caster class. The initial skills were all knowledge based and the statistical bonuses were to reason, spirit, and charm. Given years playing Voss in Eternal Online I ignored the class, once again promising that if the game merited an alt, I would be a skeletal savant.
With that, I surveyed the glowing blue window that contained the information about the Brute class:
Brute
Rarity: Common
Tier: N/A
Requirements: None
You receive a +4 and a +2 to modify your statistics. Choose between Strength, Agility and Charm.
You receive a base +2 to Vitality
Choose two Novice skills from the list below:
Blades
Bows
Bludgeon
Athletics
Acrobatics
Shields
Unarmed
Abilities
None
Around me other spirits were moving to platforms around the chamber. There weren’t many. There seemed to be two other players in the vault going through the process of character generation near me.
When I locked in my choice of Zombie Brute many of the plinths around me darkened leaving only a few select choices remaining. Surveying the skill options, I cycled through them with a swipe of my ghostly fingers, before settling on three options:
Acrobatics
Rarity: Common
Requirements: None
Training Level: Novice 1
Key Ability: Agility
Description
Dodge, Remnant. Dodge!
Evade: Once per minute you may dodge one incoming attack you are aware of.
Bludgeoning
Rarity: Common
Requirements: None
Training Level: Novice 1
Key Ability: Agility or Strength
Description
Crush your enemies, daze them, and bring them to their knees.
Thump: Once per minute you may use your hammer to daze your opponent. This interrupts channeled actions and makes your target ‘off-guard’. Some creatures are immune to being dazed.
Blades
Rarity: Common
Requirements: None
Training Level: Novice 1
Key Ability: Agility or Strength
Description
Every blademaster starts somewhere.
Slice: Once per minute you may use your blade to cause a damage over time effect. This effect causes damage every second based on your key ability and the level of your Blades skill.
Choosing acrobatics, I locked it in. I knew what path I wanted to follow. An homage to Sydney, who never truly left my thoughts. I considered blades but imagining Thumping an annoying caster and disrupting their spells was too much to pass up. I switched my choice to bludgeoning.
Another dialogue box opened over my chosen character and it prompted me to choose three skills to begin the game at Novice Level 1. I scanned the list for quite a while, shocked at the sheer variety of starting abilities. After waffling between ten choices on my short list I chose my three, hoping that I could gain the others later through training.
Light Armor
Rarity: Common
Requirements: None
Training Level: Novice 1
Key Ability: Agility
Movement Penalty: None
Description
The least you can wear without bearing it all.
Lightfoot: You have +5 resistance to all ranged attacks.
Unarmed Attacks
Rarity: Common
Requirements: None
Training Level: Novice 1
Key Ability: Agility
Description
Put’em up Remnant. Who needs a stinking weapon?
Mixed Martial Arts: Grappling, disarming and shoving at the most rudimentary level.
Stealth
Rarity: Common
Requirements: None
Training Level: Novice 1
Key Ability: Agility
Description
You sneaky little rat.
Exclamation: Once per hour you will be warned that you are about to be seen and have a chance to retreat into the shadows.
I finalized my final three skill choices.
Finally, after skill choices were made I looked over my statistical array. After the bonuses and negatives of my initial racial and class choices my stats were as follows: Strength 9, Agility 7, Vitality 7, Reason 4, Spirit 7, Charm 7.
After briefly considering the route I hoped to take this character I swiftly threw my class bonuses into Agility and Vitality. Agility seemed that it would be a powerful choice for a rogue type character, and Vitality would likely mean I had a few extra health to weather the early levels.
With those stats locked in another prompt opened, causing me to raise an eyebrow in surprise.
