A void. That's the only way I could describe where I found myself. I could look down and see my body, floating about in empty space. Really the only thing I could compare it to. I wasn't warm, or cold, it wasn't humid or dry, just.... Nothing. No wind or air to feel against my skin, even though I could still breathe. Black in all directions. Disorientating, if I knew where up or down was. How did I get here? Was this a dream? Where was I? Not college, not back home. I'd never dreamt anything like this. The last thing I could remember was sleeping after a late night at fencing practice. I'd gotten back to my car, driven home listening to Metric, and other than that, nothing particularly special. Showered, and went to sleep in bed at my dorm. When I woke up, I found myself here.

  Blip

  Then, a panel popped up in front of my face, maybe three feet away. Or, more like a screen. White, rectangular, and shed light, given how I instinctually squinted my eyes. I peered at it, brows furrowing and sharpening my gaze a little.

  Greetings, and good tidings.

  Is all it read. Greetings and good tidings?

  "What?"

  I mumbled out loud.

  Please create a character.

  The text on the screen changed after I spoke, and then it broadened and expanded, three pages set out in front of me, one of which had the symbol of a lock over it, partially greyed out. The other two had me pause for a second. They were familiar. The pages had multiple blank spaces and categories, stats, and skills. A spot for a name, a race, a class, an alignment, an experience total, attacks, weapons, inventory, level, features and traits, bonds, ideals, personality traits...wait.

  This was one odd dream.

  I was making a Dungeons and Dragons character. This was the exact sheet. I'd filled these out dozens, no, hundreds of times in the different campaigns, one-shots, and adventure's league games I'd played over the years. Whatever was... talking? Typing. Texting? Whatever was texting me through these screens had asked me to make a character.

  There was a small 'finished' button by the bottom right of the page furthest to the right, the one partially grayed out. A second glance showed me this was a spell sheet. Looking over the rest of the sheet in finer detail, I'd be stuck at level 1. Figured. I looked over them to find other values or things that had already been chosen for me but I couldn't find anything. I had a lot of freedom, if that was the case, given the nature of D&D. What would I make though?

  I was under the impression this was still a dream. It felt insanely lucid for a dream, which I could only recall having once, but I suppose they appear every blue moon for people.

  Would I be playing this character? Would I become them? Would I be watching their story?

  "Um... hm."

  I planted my hands on my sides in the void to focus myself. I couldn't assume anything. The best I could do was make them as strong as possible. D&D had a multitude of character and race combos, with feats and backgrounds, proficiencies and tools, scrolls, magic items, and all manner of boons and blessings to make use of. If I wanted to live, assuming I'd be this character, I'd need to be strong and durable to handle danger while I got my bearings.

  Barbarian was my first thought. High hitpoints, rage for damage resistance, and at some later levels things like danger sense and feral senses. Valuable, and paired with Druid could be incredibly tough to take down.

  But, really, casters were the epitomes of strength in D&D. In my experience, the most durable casters were clerics. I couldn't truly know where I'd begin, but I knew as a cleric, regardless of my domain, I'd be able to keep myself afloat with flexible spell lists and divine magic. I'd at the bare minimum have someone on my side.

  Class selected: Cleric

  Clerics were considered full casters like wizards, sorcerers, warlocks, bards, and Druids, but in some cases could wear armor and even wield martial weapons, which could drastically boost their combat prowess. Combine that with getting their subclass, essentially a specialty for their class, as early as level 1, they were strong to start with. They still had access to extremely high-level spells and were able to gain access to the most potent of healing magic. Clerics were versatile because of this, but could just as easily specialize into damaging miracles or healing ones, different curses and punishments to evil, and more. Some were very literal biblical feats, such as creating food from nothing, or diverting oceans and conjuring great wrathful storms. A great start.

  Race. Race in D&D wasn't skin color, it would be more accurate to call it a species. Centaurs, Minotaurs, dwarves, elves, gnomes, dragonborn, the variety of races was insane, and scrolling through the options available on the drop-down menu, I wasn't limited to classic planes. Vedalken, Simic Hybrids, Leonin, and other races from crossovers to different planes within the Wizards of the Coast ownership were available.

  "Heh. Imagine me as a Loxodon. Having a big ol' trunk."

  I chuckled as I looked over some of the goofy-er races. Oozes, tabaxi (cat people) and grung (frog people). I made interesting characters with those, but the pinnacle of what I knew was a simple choice.

  Race chosen: Winged Tiefling

  Tieflings were a humanoid race born of really any other race, with a mix of demonic or devilish blood. Be it a direct parent or someone in their lineage, or even a child cursed by one. That was another thing- demons and devils were different creatures, and I could tell given the options in the sub-race categories. Sub-races were the differences between the individual species. Gnomes could be categorized into rock gnomes or wood gnomes, or hill dwarves and mountain dwarves, for example. They came with all sorts of different bonuses and possible downsides, and some could even get access to racial feats. Tieflings had the most diversity for these sub-races since they could descend from any demon or devilish blood, which had thousands of possible outcomes. Winged Tiefling was straightforward. Would give this character wings, and therefore, flight. I wouldn't be able to wear heavy armor and still fly, but I could wear medium armor and even wield a shield, theoretically, with it. Pair that with native resistance to fire, the ability to see in the dark for 60ft in what was essentially night vision goggles, and getting to have a pretty interesting appearance, they were near complete upgrades over a human. They came with a few downsides though. Namely, extremely poor reputation. A spawn of a demon of devil in any way is rarely a good omen, if ever. That, and their appearance is generally considered ugly or outright revolting to people, even if on the internet they probably have the most... concerning of art depictions of them. Tieflings can have spikes on their bodies, smell like sulfur, have odd-looking eyes, or glow in certain parts of their body, it could vary, and no Tiefling ever looked the same as another. This made it difficult to disguise one's self as well, as such features could be easily distinguishable. I hoped the latter negative trait wouldn't ever need to come up.

  Next was languages. Straightforward, common and under-common, the two most common.

  "Heh. Common."

  Shitty puns aside, common was the 'common' language. Nearly all creatures could speak it, or at least understand it. Under-common was the next most often, as aside from civilizations on the material plane using common, everything in the Underdark, the next closest plane to the material, used under-common. How fitting.

  The panel beeped whenever I'd make selections, it felt straight out of a video game. I'd seen the D&D and watched dozens of anime and cartoons that had similar plots or concepts to this, but being in one was surreal. It made me smile.

  Next came skills from the class. I'd get some from my background too, but the pick was clear. D&D had them organized into categories that would be associated with each core stat. The core stats themselves were strength, dexterity, constitution, wisdom, intelligence, and charisma. Races would give natural bonuses to these core stats, and sometimes proficiencies in languages or skills as well. Tiefling included, and I already knew where I'd put the stat bonuses from that race. But cleric gave me a selection of skills to be better, or 'proficient' at. Some classes like rogue or bard could get 'expertise' in some skills and tools, which made them exceptional at those things. Valuable, sure, but I didn't see it as necessary. Magic was strong enough to overcome most of those gaps. Still. Skill-wise, I chose History and Religion. I'd need to know about where I was and determine information on everything around me, and being better at history would help with that. Religion was for a similar reason- knowing about gods, deities, pantheons, and otherworldly forces, some of the deadliest things imaginable in D&D, could save my life. I knew I had my own game knowledge from years of reading the source books, but I would have no way of knowing exactly what type of world I was going into.

  The circles next to the skills turned black with my selection before I looked at the sheet again. The spell sheet on the third page was unlocked, and no longer grayed out. Some classes like barbarians or monks had almost no access to any magic, save for a few subclasses, so it made sense to block access to that off until I'd chosen a class.

  But subclass was next. Clerics had a plethora of 'divine domains' to choose from, which were really just the gods they could choose to devote themselves to. Some people in the community compared it to warlocks, who make a pact with a certain magical being in exchange for power. Clerics weren't toooo different, but instead of pacts and contracts, they offered worship, offerings, sometimes sacrifices, or certain behaviors and patterns, like fasting or abstaining from sex. These gods would then grant special abilities to the clerics based on the domain, which could range from increasing the potency of healing to the radiance of certain miracles. Very diverse.

  I chose the Peace Domain. This was strong for a variety of reasons at later levels, but at level 1, it had a niche ability. Emboldening bond would let me subtly increase the chance for myself and my allies to succeed at an ability check, a saving throw, or an attack roll, once per their turn for 10 minutes. I could target people equal to my proficiency bonus, and I could use it the same number of times as I could target, per day. Offered a lot of utility, and a great boost in combat given it required no concentration. The domain also gave me proficiency in another small pool of skills, of which I would choose insight- lying would become pointless later with spells like zone of truth, but even that had workarounds. Being able to simply be better at detecting lies and true intentions was essentially the same as boosting a 'gut feeling' stat, so to speak. Lastly, the domain would let me have some helpful spells like Heroism and Sanctuary prepared at all times, which was nice.

  Speaking of spells, I may as well make my list now. Clerics again were versatile for the fact they could choose spells from the cleric spell list at the end of their long rests every day. This meant I could change my abilities and access to resources on the daily, but I was limited to how many I could prepare.

  There were various tiers to spells. Cantrips, which were generally weak and scaled only with level- and then the 1st through 9th level spells. Supposedly there were spells up to 12th level and higher, but these were rarely ever obtained unless the dungeon master knew what he was doing with world-building and scale. For reference, level in D&D is usually exponential. A 2nd level character is arguably doubly or even triple as strong as a level 1 character. Spells were usually the same way. Ninth-level spells included things like Wish or Power Word Kill, which were self-explanatory.

  I got a few cantrips to choose from as a level 1 cleric and a few spells I could prepare.

  Cantrips: guidance, mending, toll the dead

  1rst level spells: bless, healing word, heroism, sanctuary

  I'd be able to prepare more spells later, but that was my selection for now. I went back to the front page, looking it over again. Stats were a huge deal, and more often than not were just as important in defining a character as the personality traits and backstory. I didn't have the point-buy system, where you could manually change your stats in exchange for lowering others: I had the rolling stats system.

  When I clocked up to open the options, it faded away the sheets for a moment into the nothingness of the void, and pulled up a black metallic dice tray, and a set of four six-sided dice, colored as though they came out of an old monopoly set.

  I glanced around to see where they'd even come from, but sighed as again, it was just void.

  Stats were a huge deal. Increasing them only happened rarely without extensive training during downtime, or with magical booklets, feats, or every few levels. Even then, the limit of a stat for a mortal was 20- and these were harder to scale for purposes of actually accomplishing things. A person with 20 strength for example could contend with a hill giant, huge people who could eat horses like lambchops and throw carriage-sized boulders hundreds of feet. Of course, no regular person would be as big, but someone with 20 strength would match them in an arm wrestling contest. A person with 20 intelligence, for example, could memorize entire times after reading them maybe once, and solve a rubics cube in seconds.

  The mental stats scared me. I'd be able to buff any of my stats given enough time, but having my mental stats possibly lower than what they were with my real self scared me. I didn't know how it would work. Would I just not be able to read something? Would I get a headache from spending too long pondering if I had a low enough intelligence? Would I suck at talking to people and making deals if I had a low enough charisma?

  I gripped the dice in my hand. Like everything else, they had no temperature. Stat rolling in D&D by this method was a little odd, but I hadn't played other tabletop games much to know if other systems did it differently. I'd roll the four die, drop the lowest roll, and add up the remainder to get a stat. I'd do this until I had a pool of the six totals, and I could assign each total to a stat of my choosing. The question was, could I fudge these dice?

  It felt like a dream, after all. Was this real? Would this matter when I woke up? I'd spent easily 20 minutes already just pondering what to make, but I felt like I was present the whole time, not like my other dreams where I'd blip back and forth between different scenes and various plots with no sense to them.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  I rolled and didn't fudge the dice. They came and went as follows:

  1, 5, 3, 5

  1, 2, 3, 1

  6, 6, 3, 6

  1, 6, 3, 6

  2, 5, 3, 5

  3, 1, 3, 6

  Overall: 85, not including the dropped numbers. If you took the average of a six-sided die, roughly four, and did the same addition, you'd get 96. Removing those dropped numbers, I had a different pool, as well as my stats. Arranging them in the order of each stat, and assigning them for the build I was going for, it looked like this:

  Strength: 6

  Dexterity: 13

  Constitution: 15

  Intelligence: 18

  Wisdom: 13

  Charisma: 12

  Total stats: 77

  Compared to the average of 72, or the regular person of 60, this wasn't bad, but it wasn't spectacular. That 6 in strength meant I'd have an absolutely terrible carry capacity, and be near useless with strength-based weapons. The intelligence and constitution would be my saving grace, as I'd have the brains and toughness to last until I'd level up.

  Hopefully.

  As a cleric, the wisdom stat determined a LOT of spellcasting prowess, as well as skills like insight and perception. These were all important, but I didn't plan on staying a cleric for very long. The arguably strongest spellcasters were wizards, given they could gather spells from spell scrolls and spell books, and had access to some of the strongest magical features, subclasses, and spells in the entire game. The only issue was at low levels they could get very easily one-shot by a lucky goblin. Simply put- it wasn't safe to start as one.

  But, that high intelligence would be great for when my spellcasting as a wizard would really begin to matter.

  My racial stats boosted my dexterity by one and intelligence by two, as per my selection, which meant I'd be able to get the full benefit from medium armor and thankfully have maxed intelligence for a mortal from the get-go. How this would change myself and my behavior was beyond me, but I was a bit excited.

  Some sections had filled themselves out already. My speed, for example. 30ft flight and 30ft walk/run. It was a bit ambiguous in D&D, but it was how far you could move within 6 seconds in D&D while fighting, casting spells, and so on. Focusing on movement doubled it. Extended 'dashing' or this doubling of movement speed meant risking exhaustion, and enough of that would kill me. That rarely happened, but not really important to worry about during character creation. All the skills I didn't have proficiency in were just based on my stats and the correlating modifiers, and adjusted accordingly. The saving throws were the same way, which determined how good I'd be at resisting certain effects, like control magic or curses, or dodging traps and the like. As a cleric, I got wisdom and charisma, which were common enough. The sheet also filled out my hit dice, which was how much health I could restore per short rest, as well as my health, which was how much damage I could take. This could also be interpreted as how far I could push my luck in combat before I took a seriously debilitating wound, and I wasn't sure how this game I was in would run it. I had 10 hp, which was standard. If I'd played a wizard I'd have 8. That two extra could very well save my life.

  Onto background. Backgrounds are what your character did before they started adventuring, which is what D&D was all about. Some characters were acolytes, some were soldiers, some sages, and so on. There were dozens and dozens of backgrounds, but I wanted to go with something that would give me the most benefit.

  Custom backgrounds were delicious for this. I could carve multiple things from multiple sources to boost my survival chances. I could take the skill proficiencies from any background, tool proficiencies from any background, features from any background, and thanks to other sourcebooks, even an extended spell list.

  Skill-wise, I took arcana and stealth. Stealth was straightforward, arcana would give me knowledge of various things magical. Tool's wise, I took cobbler's and smith's tools. I could take the Izzet Engineer's extended spell list for some additional flexibility when I got access to larger spell slots, and I took the Ruined background's feature for a free feature selected from a certain pool. The Alert feat gave me a natural bonus to my initiative, or how quickly I responded to danger, and also made me immune to ambush if I was conscious. Most importantly, if I couldn't see a creature, it still wouldn't have any better odds of attacking me than if it were visible, which would be extremely helpful in avoiding nastier monsters. This combo would be a bit odd for my character's traits though.

  Equipment nearly filled itself out as well. I took a mace, scale Mail armor, a light crossbow with 20 bolts, an explorer's pack, and an emblem for my spells. My background gave me a cracked hourglass, rusty manacles, a half-empty bottle of water, a hunting trap, a set of smith's tools, a set of traveler's clothes, and a pouch containing... 13 gold pieces.

  The Ruined background feature paired with the Izzet Scientist bit would determine the character's more defining traits, as well as their backstory. Some of this was under the influence of the character, but the backstory was commonly worked in with the Dungeon Master to better flesh into the world. The Ruined background usually meant something absolutely terrible had happened to the character that forced them to adapt and change to better survive through their suffering before they became an adventurer. Hence, they got a feat starting off the bat, which usually dramatically boosted viability.

  My personality traits, bonds, flaws, ideals, and backstory, began to fill themselves out before my very eyes. The way was a bit funny- typed out and sometimes edited part-way through, as if I was watching this system write it out in real-time.

  Personality traits: I must make up for so much time I've already lost. Great ideas are fine, but great results are what count.

  Bonds: I'm convinced it was sabotage that destroyed my first laboratory and killed many of my friends, and I seek out whoever did it.

  Ideals: Someday I'll find or create the magic that will make me the most powerful being in the land, if not the planes. Every experiment, test, and question has the ability to reveal more about our world.

  Flaws: I tend to ignore sleep for days when conducting research or constructing things, much at the cost of my own safety and health.

  I looked over these and laughed. Was this Tiefling some sort of power-hungry munchkin? They were hardworking, it seemed, but possibly prideful and vengeful. That, and likely a bit of an ass. A scrawny one too, given that pathetic strength...

  The backstory began to fill itself out as well, on the second page of the character sheet. Skimming over the lengthy beast of a history that had been made for me, it looked like he was born out of wedlock when an important noblewoman slept with an incubus who seduced her. Stinks I didn't get any special demons as my lineage, but may have been a good thing in disguise. The noblewoman raised me with her husband, saying the child was cursed by evil forces. I was shunned in high society and heavily abused by my father, who despised me, and my mother, who was disgusted by her own mistake. The caretakers in the manor I was raised in looked down upon me, 'forgetting' my meals or being particularly tortuous in lessons. I'd still learned plenty regardless of this and my struggles, before eventually fleeing at age 12 via a trade cart to a town far away. I managed to find a fellow Tiefling, a strong smith who taught me his trade, and in exchange, I worked for him for a few years. I'd managed to get a decent place for myself eventually, getting a small lab and a spot to live on the edge of town, where I could study away as I liked. I'd joined the church out of a means to try and get closer to the townspeople, regardless of my species, hoping they may have been different from my parents. They, of course, were not. While the priests and those in the temple made me a cleric with enough years of devotion, the townsfolk themselves saw it as blasphemous a Tiefling could 'seek redemption'. My home, my research, and nearly everything I owned was burned. I don't know which townsfolk had done it, or if it was something from my noble life coming to haunt me- I'd only made it so far away from the manor as a kid, after all.

  ".....I didn't expect them to work out those background features like that, but, no that works."

  I mumbled.

  Everything seemed about done. Class, subclass, race, background, skills, proficiencies, languages, weapons and armor, spells, the feat, and extended spellcasting list. It was all set. I looked at my work and realized I'd forgotten to give him a name. That, and the height, weight, colors, and other physical descriptions hadn't been laid out.

  "Right... there's a reason why they look so funky."

  Feral tieflings, or the variation that winged tieflings fell under, had special extra attributes that made them stand out more than the standard red skin, horns, glowing eyes, and tail(s). Of course, I would need to roll for all of these.

  The dice tray appeared yet again, and the pool offered to me this time was a few four-sided dice, six-sided dice, and even eight-sided dice. How fun. I grabbed a fistful and tossed them around, unsure of exactly how these tables were back in the books. From what I could recall, the base height for tieflings was 4'9", ranging from that to a smidge over 6'. Weight would range about the same amount to equate for height.

  When my results came through, I was a bit surprised. It felt like a more devilish-looking version of me.

  A mirror had formed out of the abyss beside me, and when I looked over I was at eye level with an alright-looking face. The man was a bit shorter than me, he looked 5'10", and based on what the sheet said, he was 188lbs. I would argue he was a bit overweight, given he lacked any visible muscle at all. He was 25 years old and looked like the peace domain had completely forgotten weapons training as a cleric. He had some love handles and was just a skinny fat man. If you looked at his face, you could see why he descended from a noblewoman and an incubus- he wasn't hard on the eyes, but the fact he wasn't super tall and had a good deal of pudge to his face didn't help. His hair was a black, almost obsidian color, with heavy curls that made it look alright even if unkept or styled in any way. His sludge yellow skin was not the worst color to get as a tiefling, but it was not the most attractive of colors either. Blue was kinda somber, red was usually more sexual or intense, and purples or indigos somewhere in between all that. Yellow? Usually a classification of a weaker source of evil blood. His was that sort of muddled yellow-ish clay you might see after digging around on a beach or underneath some dirt roads. Sediment would be another good way to describe it. His horns were hilariously unusual though. Sprouting from either side of his head they looked like moose horns, albeit a bit twisted. Heavy looking, his posture was worse because of it. The color of bone, the horn tips steadily reddened to crimson, to the point where it seemed like blood was already on each tip. Extravagant colors for sure, and a ring of what looked like another 16 smaller, dull, nubby horns resided around his head. In his mouth, visible when I got him to mimic me some, he had stupendously sharp teeth- like that of a shark.

  "For someone I imagined was living in poverty and skipping meals as a kid, you must've really made up for lost time."

  I said with a bit of a laugh, before continuing the physical examination.

  He had other things, such as a forked tongue, almost like he had tongue-splitting surgery from the real world. That, and it was oddly long, and a bioluminescent blue color as well. Surprisingly didn't make his mouth glow, but pushing his tongue to his cheek could make it look like he had an alien zit. Cat eyes colored a similar crimson to his horns looked puffy and almost exhausted. Six fingers on each hand for this particular tiefling meant he had an extra pointer finger, unlike what is normally seen with double pinkies. He had moose legs-they lacked any visible muscle and were stupidly hairy. Same color as his hair, but just thin-looking. It only further accentuated the skinny-fat of his body. Cloven hooves, that checked out-

  "HOLY SHIT! IS THAT A SNAKE?!"

  I shouted as I looked between his legs. Dangling there was a fucking tool. Flaccid the thing looked a bit over two feet long, it practically hit his knee. I knew people drew tieflings weirdly online, and I mean really weird, but this? This was insane! Incubus blood... I just had to remind myself this guy directly descended from an incubus. It looked equine? Not humanoid by any means, very much an infernal dick. It wasn't erect and I certainly didn't want it to get that way anytime soon, for fear of losing blood to the brain. It looked like it had a ring or a band around the center of it, with a flattened tip and a series of nubs at the base of it. I wish it came with a sheath or something, like a horse, but nope, that thing just..... god...

  I mean, more than anything it just looked inconvenient. I'd never been one to worry in any way about my size, but that looked like a pain in the ass to have to tuck in anywhere. Not to mention the family jewels hanging there too, sagging like a fucking bag of potatoes. Big as grapefruits for Pete's sake.

  Moving on. His tail was forked at the end, almost garden-spade-shaped. It was a thicker tail than others I'd seen on tieflings, like something Freiza from DBZ would have. Just, yellow and oddly scaled. That was the other thing. Along his forearms, his cheekbones (or whatever flab was there on his face) as well as his elbows, his tail, his shoulders and shoulder blades, the back of his neck, and parts of his torso, were scaled. They looked like ones you'd see on a lizard more than that of a snake or the grand scales of something draconic. They were small little scales, like hundreds of large freckles bundled together in round patches or blobs along his body. Again, it just added to his oddly pudgy yet lanky build, more roundness to him.

  "It is going to take years to develop you into something that will actually be able to make use of that wanker down there, huh..."

  I said, looking at his face. It again, wasn't bad, but it didn't stand out. His eyebrows were nice and were probably his strongest feature. He had some chin flab so his jaw wasn't very defined, his cheekbones were puffed and the eyebags were very apparent. His pointed ears were rather big, I changed his race momentarily to elvish to compare, and the tiefling's were, in fact, bigger. Yet another odd piece to him that would make him stand out more than the huge moose horns that made him look tiny in comparison. His nose was alright, not particularly pointed or flattened, nor too big. Standard. Lips were fine too, although a bit droopy given the face fat. His charisma score was above average despite his terrible strength, and as such, his physique, so this checked out. The two weren't correlated directly, such as buffing your strength stat buffing your charisma stat, but in character creation, this could influence it. This was likely better than buffing strength over charisma, as not only was charisma arguably harder to improve, but it was also difficult to change facial features without constant magical assistance.

  Aside from that, he had some droopy, thin-looking shoulders, a bit of a potbelly, some love handles, thin arms, mangy moose legs, and hooves that could be the equivalent of shoes three sizes too big for him.

  "What would your parents have named you, upon seeing you? I doubt they'd name you after some sort of virtue or adjective, although they were probably educated enough to know about it. Your step-father hated you and your mother was ashamed of you. Damn. Karma for getting the jealousy of every other guy you come across huh?"

  I said, speaking into the void. I finished over the character's appearance and looked at the sheet again. Nothing else to fill in but the name. I wanted something that would fit him, for thematical purposes. I would still be playing in a story, given it was D&D. I was aware of that much. This dream had been beyond weird. Was it a dream though? I couldn't tell. How did people normally tell if they were in a dream? If I got hurt, I normally woke up. Would I need to test death to try? Maybe puncture myself or something? I didn't know for sure. Maybe use the restroom. Yeah. If I started life as this tiefling cleric, and used the restroom, then I'd know if I was in a dream. Back to naming him.

  "Mom made me read a thesaurus when I was younger. Dictionaries and all sorts of spelling bee competitions. You're lucky you won't be called 'victory' or 'kindness'. That would be horribly ironic. You'll be Chagrin, yeah. I know I'd need my phone to look that one up if I hadn't been raised like that."

  With his name punched into the sheet, the three pages seemed to glow a little, before it faded and saw a similar glow engulf my body. In an instant, I had grown nearly 7 inches shorter and the days I'd put into the gym had vanished. My vision was blurry too. Wait. Did this son of an incubus need glasses? Oh, you couldn't be serious. He was near-sighted too. I had to bring my face within eight inches of the character sheet to read the text on it. This was a bigger nerf than having a low strength score, crappy vision? Really?

  I let out an audible sigh, and when I took a breath in, I nearly threw up.

  Coughing and gagging for a moment as my nose adjusted, I realized that my body smelled like brimstone. My memory jogged and I realized feral tieflings had a chance to get that 'feature' when rolling the four-sided dice for their special characteristics. I think the dice I'd rolled got the max, so I ended up getting each feature possible. That would explain the absolutely horrible fucking smell of rotted eggs I exuded. I had a girlfriend in college thanks to the gym, decent looks, height, and knowing what deodorant was. As for this weird possible dream of living and adventuring as Chagrin? I could say goodbye to any hope of so much as getting within 5 feet of one.

  On the bright side, at least I was smart.

  I extended my hand and clicked the 'finish' button, and the sheet faded into nothing.

  There were a few moments of more nothing.

  Then some more.

  ...

  And some more.

  ...

  Alright, this was stupid. Was it possible for a dream to crash? Like a computer? I thought I had more imagination than this given I had played D&D for so long and took that marketing and design internship.

  ...

  After what could've been anywhere from one to ten minutes, the black abyss that surrounded me in Chagrin's body gradually became brighter and brighter, until I was completely engulfed in the light. When I was forced to close my eyes out of fear of going even more blind, I lost consciousness.