Where the hell am I?!? (solo)

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+BATTLE PERCEPTION -[BLIND] -[SOBER]

"Where the hell am I?!?"

Something was not right. Something was not right at all.

Tim tried desperately to replay the events of the last 5 minutes in his head.

(I was in my chair, I checked the USB connections, rebooted, tried to manually load the device drivers, the braille reader and the speakers still weren't working...)

(Win, tab, down*5, enter, right*2, down, enter...)

Tim lost his train of thought completely when he realized that aside from standing on a patch of dewy grass when he should be sitting at his desk at home, he could see!

No, "see" wasn't the right word, his eyes were still as useless as they had been for the last few months, rather it was like imagining a page one had glimpsed out of the corner of the eye and visualized so that they could read it back just afterwards...

He knelt down and ran his hands through the grass under his bare feet and moved quickly to touch the rock he knew to be just a few feet behind him.

(This can't be happening! Where am I! What the hell am I wearing?)

Tim quickly ran his hands over his clothes and face.

(This isn't my face!!! This isn't my body either...)

Tim's mind raced as he tried again to make some sense of what had happened but he was going nowhere. There was no explanation for any of this... until he "saw" the bunny. Perhaps 'a bunny' would be more precise, but as soon as he sensed it there was no mistake: <Frenmic Rabbit> (1), HP: 100%.

As he focused hard on those impossible words in his mind, a menu appeared startling him so much that it vanished, just as quickly as it had appeared. He was in Elder Tales.

Word Count: 299

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+[Battle Perception] -[BLIND] -[SOBER]

A few hours later, after dealing (at least in part) with the shock of the information and deciding that this could not be a dream, Tim set about determining which character he had logged in to.

Although this seems something of minor import compared to being sucked into a virtual realm, the situation proper was too big for a mind such as his to comprehend and so he set about gathering and organizing data trying to form a better picture of the nonsense which had suddenly become his life.

It seems that he had the same name and appearance of a "mule" that he had made four years ago in order to store additional inventory for his main characters.

Although the name and appearance were the same, this did not seem to be the same character; that character had been leveled to 20 in order to aquire a "bag of holding" and had a full inventory of crafting materials. This character, however, was level 1 and had no inventory at all except for the set of cloth armor that all monks begin the game with.

(Has everyone been reduced to level 1, or just me? Why?)

In one sense it would be a very good thing if everyone was reduced to level 1. He appeared to be logged into an low level alt but others on their mains might prove a significant threat if they were tens of levels above him and looking for a fight... He quickly set these thoughts aside as something in the character menu caught his attention: "Hair Colour: Black". Although this was certainly new information, (he hadn't remembered what color he'd made the alt's hair), it wasn't the color that startled him but how it was spelled--he was on a european server.


Tim, no, "tehm", as that was who he was now, started walking slowly through the light forest, he wasn't sure exactly where he was going but he had heard faint noises coming from this direction which lead him to believe there was either a village or farm there.

As he walked along he began considering what it meant to be a monk in this new "game world" rather than the unathlethic nerd he really was. He dropped into a quick run for a second before trying a front hand spring, one of the few things he had always been able to do. His hands never even touched the ground. He tried a standing front flip, no problem. He'd never been able to land one of those without a hill before! In his jubilation he quickly tried a backflip, panic set in just before he landed painfully on his head.

(So my body is athletic, but I have no technique...)

Tehm picked himself up, adopted a probably incorrect kickboxing stance and tried throwing a few punches--it felt no different than the real world; there was no power there. He tried a boxers stance and was able to punch properly, though he doubted much more effectively than he could have in his own body. Tehm felt fear begin to form in the pit of his stomach; he was defenseless. A blind, unarmed man with no knowledge of how to defend himself in a world populated by savage, aggressive monsters designed to provide a challenge for trained warriors.

(How am I to gain experience to level up? I have no idea how I would begin to fight a small animal with my fists and any humanoid will likely be armed...)

Suddenly none of that mattered, there was only pain.

Pain, and white.

Without thinking, tehm crouched to the ground, hands over eyes and the pain quickly vanished. He tried removing his hands, eyes shut and slowly opening his eyes. The pain was still there, but diminished. There was something else too though, like noise without sound. He passed his hands uselessly over his eyes. Although he could "sense" them perfectly, as he could the menu system, he couldn't see anything. But then what caused the white? The noise? Tehm tried cautiously to look up but the white and pain returned instantly.

(My eyes. This isn't my body. My eyes are fine. Just open your eyes and you can see.)

Tehm tried desperately to see his hands moving in front of his face but it was useless, he tried temporarily disabling "Battle Perception", the Pathfinder skill which afforded a +10' bonus to perception radius and allowed one to see the names and levels of monsters without having visibility on them--and his mind went blank. He still "knew" his hand was there, but he could no longer see it in his mind the way that he had been able to since entering the game; there was nothing.

Re-enabling the skill, tehm quickly took off his shirt, remaining mindful to look only towards the ground, and carefully began tearing the cheap cloth into long strips. After finally getting one that seemed useable he quickly tied it around his closed eyes as a blindfold and tried tentatively looking up in the direction where his face felt warmest, the direction of what surely was the sun. Although it was unpleasant, it was manageable. Turning his head he found that there was no discomfort at all and leaving the tattered remnants of his shirt behind he began walking purposefully towards the sounds of what he was now sure must be a town. As he walked he pondered how he was to "adventure" as a blind, defenseless adventurer.

Word Count: 911

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception -[BLIND] -[SOBER]

How do you punch-out Cthulhu?

As he walked, Tehm pondered the meaning of "stats" in this new world. In an mmorpg like Elder Tales, stats are attributes such as Strength or Agility which define one's character, but in this new world his body seemed as flesh and blood as his real one.

Are stats now meaningless?

Does one's body grow muscle on gaining strength?

Are these bodies still avatars where physical appearance has nothing to do with one's strength or stamina?

All valid questions. Questions for which tehm had no answer.

Regardless of the answers to these questions, it seemed that this body had near supernatural levels of stamina. The knock which he had received earlier on attempting the back-flip had not even dented his health pool, and after the initial strike there was no pain whatsoever... He'd also been hiking for hours without rest or water yet felt as if he had more vigor than he ever had in the real world.

Tehm knew intuitively that he would need to level his character in order to have any chance of staying alive. There were simply too many aggressive monsters throughout the world, and if player-killing was still allowed then he was essentially on a clock versus any players who might seek to rob or exploit other players in this lawless land...

(How do I 'punch' a bunny?)

As a monk, tehm would likely be severely penalized by attempting to use weapons in combat, but the idea that he could just walk up to low level monsters and have them stand there while he whittled them down with punches and kicks seemed absurd to him. He wasn't sure exactly when the thought came to him, but the more he considered it, the more it made sense.

(This is not the real world. Assuming stats do anything at all, as we gain levels we will almost assuredly become super-human. The rules of "what is most effective in a combat sport" do not apply here as much of the combat will take place against non-humanoids; what one needs is raw athleticism--to be so much stronger, faster, and more agile than the opponent that being hit at all is out of the question.)

Tehm smiled as he realized exactly what he needed to do. In "the real world" the idea would be patently absurd, but then, this was an absurd situation.

Word Count: 403

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.

[tehm]

tehm HP: 100% MP: 100%

+Battle Perception -[BLIND] -[SOBER]

(I need to be Jackie Chan)

Tehm chuckled at the ridiculous idea, but he didn't completely discard it. The premise of almost every Jackie Chan film isn't that he is an amazing fighter, it is that he is so much more athletic than everyone around him that it is impossible for anyone to effectively fight him. Although this was impossible in the real world, these scenes required precision choreography, the premise was not so far-fetched in this world of super-humanly athletic adventurers.

Although he would never bring it up in ordinary conversation, Tehm's favorite movies, since early childhood were what were derisively referred to as "chop-socky flicks": Shaw Brothers Studios, Golden Harvest, these two companies alone had produced probably 40 of tehm's "top 50" films.

Though his vision made it impossible to "watch" these films any longer, he had seen many of them so many times that just by listening to the audio he could visualize the entire movie in his mind, every punch, kick, or flip as clear as if he could still see the screen. Not that this made tehm able to perform any of these moves, he would never have even thought to try out of sheer embarrassment, but in theory he should be able to learn the katas given time. But which ones?

Tehm rejected immediately any works choreographed by Yuen Woo Ping, Sammo Hung, or Jackie Chan. Although they were his favorite choreographers, he could not trust the katas performed as they were designed specifically for stage. His best bet was to focus on the films headed by men who were nationally renowned for their martial arts and famous for including only 'real' kata in their films. Although it would still be a poor excuse for having an actual teacher, presumably these kata would be more likely to be grounded in methods designed for actual combat.

This narrowed the list of options greatly: Lau Kar-Wing, Wilson Tong, Pomson Shi.

A broad smile creased tehm's face and he chuckled softly under his breath as he realized exactly what he needed to focus on--the style on which all of Jackie Chan's antics were originally based on: Tai Shing Pek Kwar. Monkey Fist.

He had a wealth of information to draw on. He knew that Pomson Shi, International GM of Monkey Fist, had written and performed all of his work from "Snake in the Monkey's Shadow". Lau Kar Wing's "Drunken Monkey" showed the entirety of the Lau Family's monkey system, and "Monkey Fist" and the original "Iron Monkey" were both performed and choreographed by GMs of the art. These were all films he knew very well. He should, they were his favorites.

As he neared town tehm wandered idly if he had been guided to pick the "drunken monkey" skill by his love for these films. The skill itself had nothing to do with the art of course, it was just a skill name, nonetheless, it seemed almost poetic that it would be the lone skill he would have access to during his coming training.

Word Count: 507

Made by Sifr of GS, Synesthesia and Adoxography.