Authors Note: Plot bunny the first, a 3.5 D&D/Pillars of Eternity crossover with myself as an SI (feel the gratuity)
Waking up in the middle of a field wearing nothing but a pair of trousers and some boots would be weird but understandable if I'd spent the night before drinking heavily, or at a larp event. Given that I'd gone to bed in my flat last night, it was instead panic inducing. Adrenaline is a hell of a way to wake up, and I shot to my feet, shaking the dew off of my back as I looked around. Grassy field, some scattered trees, and a large floating grey box, almost 2 dimensional. Right. Another look around didn't show me anything I was hoping for, no people or buildings, and checking my pockets revealed my lack of a phone, ratcheting up my panic even more.
Great, amazing, ok. Looking around again didn't magically reveal more information, and there didn't appear to be anyone around. I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm down my rising heart rate. Panicking wasn't going to be much help, although, I thought to myself, panicking isn't much help in any situation, that doesn't really stop it.
Still, after a couple of minutes I'd calmed myself down enough to start thinking, which drew my attention to the floating box. Maybe a metre tall, half a metre wide, and floating with the middle of it around my own eye height, it didn't appear to actually be supported by anything. I stepped to the side to see if there was something behind it holding it up, and the entire thing just pivoted in place, keeping the same large side facing me.
Stepping forwards, cursing my lack of glasses, the blurry greyness of the box resolved itself into text. The large "PICK A CLASS" at the top gave me an inkling of what was going on, and a look at the list just below it solidified the thought. I wasn't exactly complaining, I'd read my fair share of gamer fics, although I wasn't a big fan of the whole being dumped into a field thing. Still, there wasn't an awful lot I could do about that right now, and this box was here. Chances are, it's probably some kind of large practical joke, but that didn't stop me from playing along now, and I could always figure out what I was going to do afterwards.
Another look at the list of classes showed me what appeared to be standard classes, Fighter, Rogue and Bard being the visible ones, each with a description box underneath them, letting me know what they were (as if I needed to know that a fighter specialised in weapons and armour, physically attacking enemies). Reaching out, the box appeared to be a touchscreen of some kind (another point towards practical joke, I noted), allowing for scrolling up and down. Scrolling through, the classes all appeared to be D&D based, giving me at least some idea of what I was dealing with, although there didn't appear to be anything letting me know what edition the classes were from. The fact that Bard was its own class ruled out 1st ed, but that was about it.
Scrolling down the list, I debated picking Wizard (not Magic User, which meant I was pretty sure I could rule out 2nd ed as well) the moment it appeared, but I stopped myself. As much as I wanted unlimited cosmic power, being a Wizard required a spellbook, and I had no idea if I was actually going to get one. Normally you can buy one fairly easily when making a character, but I was in a field, and quite noticeably sans spellbook or money. I might get one just from picking the class, but at the same time, if I didn't, then I was going to be up shit creek, especially as I didn't know where I was, or even if I was capable of getting my hands on, or making a spellbook.
With a slightly dejected sigh, I kept scrolling. I'd never been a religious person, which meant that I might have a problem being a cleric, but I wouldn't mind being a druid, if for no other reason than I wanted to do some spellcasting as a bear. I mean, who wouldn't? Unfortunately, I ran into a small problem when I scrolled down to the divine spellcasters, in that both of them were greyed out. Peering in slightly, there was an additional note in the description box. "You do not meet the minimum Wisdom requirement for this class". Wow, rude. Divine spellcasting required a Wis of 10, if I remembered correctly, which was human average, which implied that I had a below average Wisdom. I knew I wasn't that perceptive, and had a bad habit of making some foolish decisions, but it was one thing to know that, and another thing to have it spelt out for me.
There were another couple of classes that were greyed out, the Paladin and the Monk, which made sense to me, and was something that I was much less bitter about. Both of those classes required a lawful alignment, and I was never the kind of person who was very good at following orders or rules. I'd always been a bit too keen on pushing boundaries, messing with people, and encouraging certain amounts of chaos and mayhem to really be able to say I was a particularly lawful person.
Scrolling to the bottom of the list, I was surprised to see an "Advanced classes" option. Tapping that unfurled quite the list of different classes, and scrolling through that very much defined which edition of D&D I was dealing with. Only 3rd and 3.5 had this many classes available to them, as I scrolled past the Truenamer and the Dragon Shaman.
Looking through the list, I was torn with regards to which class I wanted to pick. The Sorcerer was, on the surface, the sensible choice. Full arcane spellcasting, lots of power, no real drawbacks, it seemed like the perfect choice. The only problem with it was the fact that it was a Charisma based class. I seemed to meet the minimum requirements, although given that 3rd didn't have minimum requirements for classes, I assumed that was just there to prevent me from picking a class I couldn't actually cast any spells from. On the other hand, that only required me to have a Charisma of 10, for casting cantrips, and I've never been all that much of a charismatic person. If it turned out that I only had a Cha of 10, which was quite likely, then I wouldn't be able to cast much of anything at all, which defeated the point of being a Sorcerer in the first place.
On the other hand, Dragonfire Adept was an option, and that was tempting in its own right. Much like a Warlock, but without the additional splat support the Warlock got, it made up for it by being awesome. Instead of an eldritch blast, you got to breathe fire. What's not to love? No real stat requirements, invocations that range from growing wings to gaining a large boost to all interpersonal skills, it was one of my favourite classes based solely on how cool it was. It wasn't a massively powerful class, most of the builds involving it were based around obscure feat interactions to try and give it a cooldown, so that you can stack breath weapon feats that are normally only available for dragons, but it was still a cool class.
I argued with myself over the two options as I kept scrolling through the list, trying to decide between the potential for power over a confirmed, smaller amount of power (and also moving towards being a dragon, which was always a good option. Being the dragon is almost always the best idea), when I ran into something that threw me for a loop. There are a lot of splatbooks out there, and a lot of different classes, but the Teramach was a fan made class, and wasn't printed in anything at all.
The Teramach was an interesting class, part of the Mythos classes, the writers attempts to make melee classes in 3.5 approaching anything as good as the spellcasting classes could be. The Teramach was kind of a hybrid cross between a Monk and a Barbarian, connected to the mythos of the monster, becoming a creature of rage that just tried to tear everything around it down with their bare hands, more the Hulk than anything more human. It offered massive amounts of power in exchange for large losses of control, and it was normally something I wouldn't have considered.
But.
The class had no requirements. It was almost completely strength based, and while I had no idea how I'd go about training my Charisma, I at the very least had some idea of how I'd go about training my body to become stronger. It gave natural armour bonuses, and all of its attacks were either unarmed based or used improvised weapons, which, given I was in a field with no equipment, meant they were actually usable where most other kinds of attacks wouldn't be. It gave a d12 hit dice, which at first level meant that I could actually take an attack or two, which was important, as I wasn't a big fan of dying. (Part of me noted that I was taking this a lot more seriously than I would have if I was still convinced it was a joke or a prank, but I ignored that). And I could gain a rage ability. I wasn't a fan of the lack of control over myself that that would cause, never a fan of having to do something, but at the same time, I was keenly aware that I'd never been in life or death fight before, never had someone trying to kill me, and all the power in the world would be worthless if I couldn't actually use it when it mattered.
I wavered hard. If I had the Charisma, if I knew I had the Charisma, it wouldn't have been a decision. If I knew I'd get my hands on a spellbook, it wouldn't have been a decision. Full spellcasting is powerful enough to make the decision for me. But I couldn't be sure of either of those, which meant that I couldn't just rely on arcane spellcasting for power. If I'd been able to active gestalt classing, which was basically old 1st and 2nd edition multiclassing, having two classes at once, then that would have made the choice a lot easier, but I scrolled through the entire list and couldn't find an option to activate it anywhere. And of my other two choices, one was what I felt I'd enjoy being the most, at the cost of power, and the other was sheer usable power now.
It was thinking about that point that helped me make the decision. Taking Dragonfire Adept would be the cooler and the more enjoyable class, and taking Teramach would be the most useful class now. But nothing said that I had to keep levelling up in Teramach after I took level one in it. I could take my first level in Teramach, and then take Adept afterwards, giving me survival options while still not locking me into being some kind of rage monster.
Tapping the Teramach option, I got taken to a screen with a more in-depth description of the class, with a large confirmation button at the option. Tapping that brought me to yet another confirmation screen, which I quickly tapped though.
The screen then changed, taking itself away from the list of classes, and moved to the list of class options. At first level, the Teramach had access to two Mythos and one Excellency. The Mythos tended to be active class features, and were split into tiers, of which I had access to the first, the Exceptional Mythos. Excellencies were the more passive class features, and were just all grouped together.
Looking at the Mythos, I picked All-Consuming Rampage Release, which would allow me to Rage, adding 4 to both my Strength and Dexterity (which, given that as a Teramach, I'd get to add my Strength bonus to my armour class when not wearing armour, would make me significantly harder to hit) for either 5 rounds, 1 minute, or 1 hour. I couldn't cancel it, so picking the hour long option was probably a bad idea, but it would mean that my survival chances in a fight would go up quite a lot if I used it. I also selected the way it would develop if I took another level of Teramach (called an advanced manifestation), selecting Torn Muscle Ignorance. I doubted it'd come up, given that I wasn't planning on taking any more Teramach levels, but I needed to pick something.
The second Mythos I grabbed was God-Smashing Blow, which would allow me to trip things that I hit. Not exactly amazing, but given that it was a free trip attempt every round with no downsides, it'd allow me to get away from things and out of fights much more easily. I selected Godplate-Piercing strike as my manifestation.
Looking at the Excellencies, I considered Casting Off Restraint, as that gave me Power Attack for free, but Heroes' Misfortune was probably the more useful one, as that gave me what was essentially advantage from 5th edition on Teramach skills, which included Survival, a skill that would no doubt come in useful in a field with no equipment (the part of my mind arguing about how seriously I was taking things got a little bit louder, but I pushed it back).
Confirming my choices took me to the skills list, with the class skills all nicely at the top, making things easier. I couldn't remember how many skill point the Teramach got, but according to the little counter at the top of the box I had 28 to spend, which was quite nice, letting me max out 7 skills. Survival was the obvious first one, which I followed with Intimidate (as the only one of the persuasion style skills that the Teramach had) and Sense Motive. Tumble was a powerful skill in its own right, and having advantage on rolls with it made it more so, which made maxing that some out make sense. Autohypnosis wasn't a class skill, but it was available, and I recalled that being quite a useful skill, so I sunk 4 points into that. Heal wasn't a class skill either, but being on my own in the middle of nowhere made it seem like a decent investment. My last four points went into Diplomacy, giving me a form of interpersonal interaction that didn't involve scaring the shit out of people.
I wasn't sure how skills were going to work, would putting the ranks in Tumble magically make me better at doing a handstand? Would putting points into Survival suddenly let me know which plants were safe to eat? (Assuming they do anything at all, and you aren't just wasting your time making stupid choices on your own in the middle of a field, my brain whispered).
The next slide, or page, or whatever these things were was the feats page. I had access to two, my humanness proving a nice bonus. Looking at the list of feats, the first one that stood out to me was, weirdly enough, Endurance. It has a (not undeserved) reputation as a terrible feat, but it stood out to me for two reasons. One was the fact that it was a prerequisite for Diehard, which was an amazing feat for the purposes of not dying, especially at low levels. The other was the fact that most of the bonuses only applied to things that most DM's didn't really track. A bonus to avoiding starving to death doesn't really matter when most DM's don't track food, and Everlasting Rations and the like are easy to purchase. A bonus to avoid freezing to death doesn't matter when most DM's won't consider environmental nonlethal damage. But given that I was in a field in only trousers and boots with no equipment, it might actually be quite relevant to me. (The arguments in the back of my brain continued, split between the parts insisting that this wasn't real and the parts pointing out that I'd been at this thing for about half an hour now, and no one had turned up or was visible anywhere.) Selecting Endurance and Diehard, I confirmed my choices.
Any thoughts I had about whether or not this was some kind of prank, or something not real, disappeared when I finalised my choices, and the box disappeared. The skills and feats weren't a physical change, they were more of an remembering, a sudden realisation that I already knew how to do those things, and it had only just occurred to me to think about it. The class features, though? I could feel my muscles stretch, feel the reinforcement of my skin. Most of all, though, I felt angry. I'd forgotten about the fluff of Mythos that I'd picked, ignoring it in favour of the crunch. But I could feel it now. Anger at myself, for not considering it relevant. Anger at the situation, for being alone in a field. Anger at the ground, and anger at the sky. Everything was infuriating, everything was one more annoyance when I was already struggling with the situation. I wanted to reach out and rend the world, punch its fucking face in, and keep punching until it and everything in it was nothing more than a greasy smear under my fists.
Control took a while. The desire to destroy, to stop thinking and just move, lashing out at everything in my path, was nearly overwhelming. The fact that I was used to supressing things, to trying my hardest to disassociate and not focus on what I was feeling, was the only thing that gave me a modicum of control. I pushed myself to my feet, from where I'd collapsed to my hands and knees and I'd struggled with the sudden rush of hatred and rage, and looked around.
Making a skill check was an interesting feeling. I could feel myself analyse the situation around me with new eyes. It wasn't an active thing that I did, wasn't a mental command or the like, I simply looked around and knew things that I didn't before. I used the relative warmth on my skin to judge the time of day (mid-morning), which I then used with the location of the sun to judge which way was north, and I knew almost immediately that none of the trees would have anything on them that would make for good eating. I knew that the nearest river was likely to be to the east, and that without equipment, hunting would be difficult. And I knew those things like I knew how to use a mobile phone, or how to cross a road safely. As if I'd been doing them my entire life, so that now I didn't even need to think about doing it, it was just reflex and muscle memory.
I considered what to do. I could stay here, in the middle of nowhere, with no supplies, and hope that someone would find me. If there were people looking for me, it would make it much easier for them. But that required someone to be looking for me, and required me to be in a place where those people could get to me. If I was in some kind of D&D world, in Toril or Oerth (not an unreasonable guess, given the D&D class options), then the people who would be looking for me would probably never find me, unless whatever dropped me here dragged them along as well. The other option was to move out. East seemed like the best option, given that I was pretty sure there was water in that direction (I had to actively think about how I figured that out, recalling the movement of birds and presence of animal tracks that I'd just subconsciously noted and assigned), so I centred myself, pushing down the rage that had bubbled up over the thoughts of being stranded, and started walking.
Walking is an incredibly boring experience. There are people who enjoy it, people who will regularly go for walks or go hiking, but when you've been walking through grassy fields for a couple of hours, slowly starting to get hungry and thirsty, and knowing that there isn't much you can do about it other than keep walking and hope that you'll run into something useful at some point, it just becomes a tedious thing, to be endured rather than enjoyed.
After walking for a couple of hours (I found myself almost automatically tracking time based on how far the sun had moved) the sight of movement jolted me out of my thoughts. There'd been movement before, birds taking off, squirrels running around, but I found this movement almost dragged my attention towards it, forcing me to pay attention. A group of teenagers were slowly approaching me, having come out from between a couple of trees. There were maybe six or seven of them, and as they started moving closer, I stopped moving and turned to face them, taking a moment to examine them properly.
They looked young, with the youngest being maybe ten or eleven, and the oldest being fourteen odd. Filth covered them, mud and dirt layering over mud and dirt, to the point where I wasn't entirely sure if they were wearing clothing or if it was simply layered so deep that skin hadn't seen sunlight for a year. The parts of skin that I could see was a kind of blue-purple colour, covering fingers that stretched much further than any fingers should. I glanced up at their faces, with eyes glowing a pale purple and teeth that were far too large and far too sharp, and as I started to panic I found myself absently noting that they shared a uniform expression on their faces. Hunger.
I started to backpedal, slowly moving backwards as they advanced towards me, spreading out to flank around and encircle. Soothing words and sounds issued from my mouth, a desperate attempt to de-escalate a situation I already knew wasn't going to end well. They moved quickly, getting behind me and penning me in before I had figured out how to deal with what was going on, hell, before I had even finished processing it properly. The largest of them faced me head on, crouching on feet with toes too long and sharp to be normal, and pounced, covering the metres between us before I could react, dragging its claws along my chest as I threw myself out of the way (but far, far too slowly), tearing out a chunk of skin and flesh. I gasped, in shock and pain, and as it moved towards me again, moving in with the rest of them, I felt that anger and rage bubble to the surface again. This time, I let it. I stopped holding back, stopped pushing it down, and I saw red.
It wasn't a loss of control, I noted to myself as I buried my fist through a chest, sending a spray of viscera and bone through the space behind my first target. It wasn't disassociating, looking from the outside in, I thought as I planted my foot on a thigh so that I could tear off both arms of one of my targets at the same time. It was release. It was joy. This was finally what I was supposed to be doing, the meaning of life that I'd never found. This was what life was supposed to be, the never-ending rip and tear, a smiling whirlwind of blood.
When it ended, the first thing I did was vomit. There wasn't a lot in my stomach by that point, I hadn't eaten all day, but what remained joined the mess of fluids staining the ground around me. I hurled again and again, my stomach muscles convulsing uncontrollably, until all that hit the ground was bile and my throat was raw. I was covered in blood, arms stained an uniform red-brown, none of the skin below showing through. I looked down at my chest, worrying about the wound, thoughts of infection and blood-borne diseases going through my mind, to say nothing of the state of the hands of those things, but what was an open wound was now just a large scar, having scabbed over and healed far, far too quickly to be natural. Looking over myself, I noticed another couple of scars, places I'd been tagged and just ignored when the red took me.
I stumbled forwards, away from the pile of gore, shaking myself off and having bits of body drop off me as I moved. The thought made me dry heave again, but I pushed myself forwards. Finding water was more important now than it had been before, as I tried to scrape some of the slowly drying blood off of me.
It's amazing what the human mind is capable of getting used to. Another couple of hours of walking had my brain filter out the smell of blood, to the point where it only registered when I actively paid attention to it. Unfortunately, that happened more often than I would like. It's a difficult thing to get your mind off of, and I found myself going over it again and again, thinking of things I should have done differently. I should have ran away immediately, I should have noticed earlier, I shouldn't have torn apart a group of monsters to the point where you could turn their remains into the worlds most difficult jigsaw puzzle! The anger didn't help, constantly there, just pressing against my mind, offering me a way out of thinking and doubt and pain if I just gave in. It was a relief in more than one way when I saw a castle in the distance. It looked like it had seen better days, the highest point looking like nothing but rubble, but the promise of the potential for food, or water, or useful equipment was enough to cause me to pick up speed.
A river flowed next to the keep, just outside of the walls. The castle was more extensive than I had thought from a distance, with walls and a grounds outside of the castle proper. I ignored that, though, moving to the bridge and then down the rocky sides of the bank, to the waters proper. The river was fairly fast flowing, and the bank was quite steep, so I held on to the sides as I dunked my head in, getting the taste of vomit out of my mouth before pulling my head back out. I repeated this a couple of times before sticking my arms in, trying to wash off as much blood as possible. My arms were significantly cleaner when I was done, but still bloody enough that I didn't want to bring water to my mouth in my cupped hands, so I dunked my head in and tried to drink like that. Inelegant, and probably not great for my throat or stomach, but I'd rather not drink the blood of whatever those things were.
Dripping wet, but slightly cleaner, I climbed back onto flat ground, and wandered into the keep. There was evidence of there having been a large gate, but all that remained was a tunnel into the grounds proper. The grounds themselves were trashed, the remains of buildings choked with rubble. Something niggled the back of my mind as I wandered past the remains of an amphitheatre, a weird sense of familiarity as I walked past a trapdoor choked with stone, but most of my attention was on the tracking the progress of the fight that had happened at some recent point. There was a weird purplish residue over a lot of the ground, chunks of earth having been lifted and thrown, scorch marks on the grounds and walls. It looked like a pitched fight had happened here, maybe as recently as an hour or two ago. I looked up, tagging the time as mid-afternoon, and moved towards the castle. If a fight had just happened, there'd probably be people. Hopefully there'd be some food in there they'd be willing to share, and worst case scenario I could always back out and hold up for the night in one of the ruined buildings.
The door opened more easily than I was expecting it to, based on the condition it was it. It stuck, slightly, but a little bit of effort had it swinging open, leading into what looked like a throne room of some kind. A couple of rotten tables and benches lined each side of the room, and where the throne itself would be, instead had a statue of a woman, shaped into a large seat. That gnawing sense of familiarity grew as I slowly walked forwards, past a couple of shattered vases and through the remains of another fight, that same purplish residue covering things.
The opening of a door on the other side of the room, just to the left of the statue throne, had me startle and move backwards, setting myself into a vague ready stance as four other people walked into the throne room, all of them looking battered and bruised. The largest of them was easily two metres tall, wearing what was maybe brigandine armour, carrying what I guessed was some kind of flintlock rifle. Orangey-yellow skin was topped by a green and orange hat, and their wide smile changed to a puzzled frown as they looked at me.
The second was a slender man with obvious pointed ears, carrying a large tome in one hand and a thick rod in the other, wearing sleeveless leather armour, and as they caught sight of me a look of revulsion flickered across their face, changing swiftly to a grimace.
The third was a heavyset blond man, his scale mail covered in scratches and dents, who looked up from the pipe he was in the process of lighting to take me in, glancing at me before deciding that the pipe was the more pressing matter for the moment.
The final person was a shorter woman, wearing a padded robe and carrying a pistol, who looked at me with a scowl across her face. She looked me over, taking in the thick layer of blood that had seeped in to my trousers, the bloody mud that stuck to my boots, the scars and bits of viscera that clung to my chest, and then seemed to look deeper, peering almost straight through me.
I looked between them, that sense of familiarity suddenly blossoming into understanding. I looked around the throne room of Caed Nua, took in the sentient throne that was the Steward, glanced between Kana, the large orange Aumaua that was this worlds equivalent of orcs (but that ranged from island tribals to a colonising empire), Aloth, the elven wizard who was dealing with his soul remembering his previous reincarnation, Eder, a war veteran who worshipped a god who had recently blown up, and then to the woman, who I could only assume was the Watcher, who could peer into someone's soul, and who was the main character of a game series that I quite enjoyed. I turned around, walked to a bench, and sat it on it quite heavily. I placed my head in my hands, and spoke the only words that could really sum up the situation for me.
"Well fuck."