A MIDDLE-AGED MAN IS CHOSEN BY THE CELESTIAL FORGE AND FOUND HIMSELF ON RIFTS EARTH
Disclaimer: I own nothing in this story.
Warning!
Violence, War, Magic & the Supernatural
The fictional worlds of Riftsare violent, deadly, and filled with aliens, war, and supernatural monsters.
Other-dimensional beings often referred to as "demons," torment, stalk, and prey on humans. Alien life, monsters, vampires, ghosts, ancient gods and demigods, as well as magic, insanity, psychic powers, and combat are all elements of the setting. All of it is fiction.
Please note that I do not condone or encourage the occult, the practice of magic, the use of drugs, or violence.
Notes: This is a Self Insert. And an Action/Comedy fiction (read Harem Protagonist in an Isekai) in the setting of RIFTS from the Palladium RPG.
This is also a Celestial Forge fiction. I will gain one charge every 1000 words. Those charges can be exchanged for a random selection in the Celestial Forge (and yes, it will be random and not pre-selected), but only if my character needs it. For example, I need a perk able to repair a ground vehicle. Then I will make as many random draws in the appropriate section of the Celestial Forge (here most likely the Crafting: Technology branch) as needed until I found a perk able to help me, and especially one I, as an author, can properly understand and use.
However, this also gives me ALL the Celestial Forge perks and free stuff accessible via the Jumpchain documents within the Celestial Forge. Staying with my example, if I draw a perk coming from the Bubblegum Crisis Jumpchain document. I'll be able to also use ALL the Bubblegum Crisis perks within the Celestial Forge, including the free options… But only if needed or if the story requires it.
And, yes. There are no Points involved to buy a perk or more than one.
There is, however, no Cosmic Warehouse and no Essential Body Modification except those in the Celestial Forge.
Prologue
The sun through a forest canopy was the first thing I saw when I came back from an impromptu nap.
'WTF!' was my first thought.
Panic was my first action because I found myself naked and in an unknown forest. Well, almost as I still had my prescription glasses. But, no clothes, no shoes, and no cell phone.
I was a middle-aged man in a dire situation.
I examined myself and found the same body of 5 feet 3 inches with my appendicitis scar and slightly overweight belly. Using my glasses as a make-shift mirror, revealed my unchanged face with black hair and green eyes.
Yep, still the same old Baran Sunheart with all his goodies.
Searching through my memories drew a blank. Oh, I could remember everything except how I managed to found myself in this clusterfuck.
The ground was grass and showed no traces whatsoever apart from those left by my body. Hell, I couldn't see anything weird or strange on the trees around who were the sorts you could find in any temperate forests.
One good thing was the temperature that seemed to indicate it was either a hot day or the early Summer season.
"Okay… And now, what, champion?" Well, I wasn't an expert, but what was essential in a survival situation were water, food, and shelter. And shelter also covered something like protecting my soles.
I managed to find some large leaves and improvised some shoes with a layer of bark for better protection.
The sun was still ascending in the sky, showing that it was the morning, so I knew that drinking water was a priority now… And since I was without any container, that meant a consequent quantity of water, at least a stream or more.
After a few meters, I was lucky to find a small animal trail. They, contrary to me, knew where to find water. It also reassured me that I could find food in the near future.
I walked for some time before I heard the most delicious sound: Running water. I found, not a stream but a whole river. A very welcome sight.
The current wasn't strong enough to prevent me from reaching the center and quenched my thirst. Curiously the taste of the water was strange as it reminded me more of the water I could drink from a spring.
I looked around and saw that the river came around a mountain… Correction, around an extinguished volcano as the truncated summit was inimitable and…
Wasn't that a cave entry there..? Yes… Yes, it was a cave system! With multiple entries! The problem of a proper shelter and maintaining my body temperature was solved… unless they were animal lairs.
Still, my anxiety was growing as I didn't see any sign of civilization so far, not even the trail of a commercial plane. Where the hell was I?
I shook my head and using the light of the day, I prudently explored a few caves, looking especially for any sign of a current or previous owner.
One seemed almost perfect for my need: a ground relatively clean and dry, a hemispheric form with enough depth to protect me from the elements and flat rocks jutting here and there to serve for many purposes.
I suddenly felt… exhausted and sat on a flat rock and winced at the contact with my nude butt. My hands were shaking… Probably the shock of my situation being dealt with by my body… I cried like a child as the weight of what happened to me crushed my spirit.
I was going to die.
If I didn't find any kind of civilization soon, I had no illusions over my fate. I simply didn't have the skills necessary to survive more than a few weeks and that was mainly because I managed to find a water source and a shelter.
I stopped myself from thinking about everything that could go wrong or I would have begun to scream at the top of my lungs.
HOW!? Damn it, how I was going to survive!? I was a modern city-dweller. The most survival thing I did was camping with my parents… as in camping with running water and sanitary facilities… and a village nearby to buy food…
"I need help… Desperately… Dying of hunger or eaten by an animal..." My Stone Age ancestors would have been at home, almost literally. So, in brief, I needed to rediscover what my ancestors learned 15,000 to 50,000 years ago...
Granted.
I jumped up in fright. It was a deep voice, a little like the voice actor for Optimus Prime in the last Transformers movie. A voice that seemed to come from everywhere at the same time.
I whirled around, trying to see who or what just talked to me. In vain, as there was nothing but rocks, trees, and other plants like…
I blinked, blinked again, and then cautiously approached a nearby patch of white flowers. I knew and yet, didn't know about those plants.
Daucus Carota, also called Queen Anne's Lace or Wild Carrot: An edible plant.
I could have passed the mere knowledge of that as a random reading, but I also knew how to use its seeds as a contraceptive and an abortifacient. The flowers could also be used as a dyestuff, giving a creamy, off-white color.
I grasped my head. How? How could I remember so much about a single plant that I could swear I never encountered it before.
I looked around anew and my eyes widened as I gasped. I could now identify ALL the trees and plants around me. I could name all their properties and how to extract their active principles, identify the edible ones, use some as medicine or extract poisons and toxins from others, with rough hand-made and minimal equipment.
I saw a cluster of hemp and my hands grasped at nothing as I knew how to render them into fibers and weave them to make clothes… I just needed to carve a crude loom from wood.
I abruptly sat down at the sheer size of the knowledge I realized I was, now, possessing. And it didn't stop.
I took a pebble at my feet and identified it as a flint pebble, but one that was unsuited to a proper knapping to make a good tool.
I knew how to properly knap flint to make all kinds of stone-age tools. "Holy shit..."
A thought made me, again, stand up in alarm. "Oh god..." I looked around in dismay. "What if I have just been… isekaied into the novel series of Jean M. Auel, Earth's Children..?!" Or one of the dozen of stories I knew about in a prehistoric setting...
I barely managed to retake control of myself. "After all, I now know how to survive and a bit about hunting and foraging… And kind of really want to meet Ayla..." Or Rahan...
I looked at my refuge with new eyes and perhaps a little hope. Huh… Plenty of potential here. A shelter that I could easily upgrade, a ready source of water, plenty of plant materials, and a score of traces here and there that pointed towards some small game to hunt either by traps or weapons… And, at least so far, no recent presence of any predators.
I then tried a few things that could be done in an Isekai setting, but no Status Screen whatsoever, no character sheet, no inventory, and no power or skill spontaneously explained within my mind. I wasn't even sure that the potential entity responsible for the Voice was still nearby.
The only thing I was sure of was that I just spent one charge to help myself in this precise situation and that other charges will be gained provided I helped the interests of someone or something… I was now almost sure a Random Omniscient Being or something was responsible for my situation.
I frowned. Nothing to do about that for now and I dearly hoped I wasn't under the attention of a Dimensional Double of myself writing a fan-fiction. I looked towards the sun. Still, plenty of light for the day and I needed a few things before I felt comfortable and safe enough for the night.
It was only much later that I looked, bewildered, at what I managed to do by myself. There was, clearly, a cheat-like skill/power at work here.
Before the sunset on the horizon, I had: Finished cleaning the cave floor; Found and harvested other edible plants apart from the wild carrots; Gathered acceptable flint pebbles and made, note it, MADE, a Hand Ax or Bi-face, a multi-function stone tool; Crafted a bed from leaves and wood-sticks; Jammed some sharpened wood branches at the mouth of the cave to discourage animals and wove a net of vines to prevent entry. And finally, harvested a provision of dry wood for the roaring fire inside the cave that dispersed the clinging shadows of the early night.
I looked at the 2 flintstones I used to start the fire. "Yep, definitively a cheat skill. Making fire so fast with flint, one of the longest and difficult methods instead of the fire drill technique…"
And for the first time since I appeared wherever I was, I smiled with hope as I watched the sunset.
"Okay… And now for the most difficult thing to do: Trying to sleep in an unknown place, on a bed of leaves and twigs, with no blanket and a fire nearby… Let us pray, there are no big predators in the area."
I slept like a baby… I was probably more exhausted than I thought.
I sighed as I watched the sunrise. "Alright, Baran, and now what..?" Well, I didn't that much of a choice. Without a minimum of tools and equipment, I was stuck here, especially without a mean of transport. So, I needed to craft everything… It was a very good thing I had those cheat skills.
In fact, making traps and hunting weapons was a priority as making protective clothes from fur was required. Oh, I could also make clothes woven from hemp fibers, but I needed the protein source.
"Well… Nothing to do but to take another step. All journeys are made of single steps… Wonder if I'm going to scream if or when I'll know where I am… Oh gods, I feel like Ryoga."
Author notes: It's been a while.
Okay, another story, and I'm using the Celestial Forge again. Hope it'll be better.
I have an overall goal: This will be a Harem Protagonist story. The end goal is to build a city-state in my favorite place of the setting for such a thing: Dinosaur Swamp and most precisely the magical site of the Ocmulgee Mound Complex.
I also intend to visit most of the entire Palladium game settings.
The Jumpchain document used in this chapter is Earth Girls.
And while I'll post the document in the notes, I'll try not to have a data dump in my story.
