A Top Hat Mimic (ToErrIsSynthetic)

Well. It's rather hard for a hat to look back at oneself, you admit. Your eyes, small and many in number, always had to strain to look over the lip of your brim. Regardless, no matter how fine your... fabric... was — why is there a layer of dust all over your luxurious silken form?! Where was the golden roc feather and why was the fabulous satin ribbon that coiled around the shape of your crown so... so... so tattered?!? Several of your eyes were plainly visible through the frayed pattern!

Just who do these developers think they are!? Taking a highly sought after item, nay, specimen in the game and turning you into — is-is that a hole? In your majestic silk?

THOSE ARE SEVERAL HOLES.

Being a mere hat, any and all movement was a strenuous effort, but the absolute indignity called for it. This was an insult! To not recoil in disgust would be demeaning to such a rare creature such as yourself!

~~ Welcome Back! We missed you! Much has changed, and for the better! ~~

"I most certainly disagree," you scowl and dismiss the pop up. Not only do they mock this form they so mercilessly upon you in this latest patch — patched, ugh! You shudder at the thought of bearing such a ramshackle badge on yourself. No, you prefer the holes. They give character! Defiance! You will NOT be taking this mockery lying down!

Mostly because you're a hat. Laying, sitting, standing, all meant little to you. Your only real states of rest are gracefully poising on your brim, topped indignantly on your side, or inverted on your top — your crown, so the proper term was.

Moth-eaten appearances aside, such a shock had scattered away the respawn sickness and it at least seemed they did not diminish your intellect to match your drafty form. This, you could work with.

Now. Have they gone and stirred up the inner workings of who you truly are like they did... what, five updates ago, was it?

...did they move the status screen? There certainly was a lot less UI cluttering everything now. In fact, there barely was anything — aha!

---

Level 1 | Homberg's Gibus of Aggregation

Monster, Magic Object, Mimic, Explicit

Active Status(es): Bane of Ironteak

EXP: 0 / 100

Carry Weight: 4.51/5kg

Attributes

/ Attribute	/ Level Totals	/ Bane of Ironteak
App	5	5
Cha	25	25
Dex	8	8
End	6	6
Int	22	22
Manip	30	30
Per	7	7
Str	5	5
Wits	27	27

Skills

/ Skill	/ Total
Arcana	15
Deception	15
Diplomacy	5
Lore – Legal	18
Lore – Accounting	10
Occultism	20
Society	10
Stealth	17

Feats

Feats marked with [Hidden] are visible only to this Object, unless stated otherwise.

Mimic [Racial, Revealed on Identify] — Until successfully Identified, or Object Reveals itself as a Mimic, this Object's Level, Name, Stats, Skills, and Feats are hidden and its tags read only as "Magic Object".
Not a Passing Fad [Racial, Revealed On Identify] — Object is Cursed. On obtainment, Object undergoes a silent Identify check and then equips itself to an Armor Equipment Slot. Any corresponding Equipment currently existing in the slot, both Armor and Vanity, are unequipped and placed into the Object's Inventory. The Object must always exist in an Equipment Slot, preferring Armor over Vanity, and the Object cannot be obtained if no Equipment Slots exist. Object is Tradeable.
Hat of Holding [Racial] — Object contains an Inventory of Objects. This Inventory is separate from the Object's Owner. Inventory carry capacity is 5xLevel kg (all currency is considered to be 0.001kg). Inventory is only reset on /Destruction of Object. Object's Inventory can accommodate Objects of any dimension or volume so long as there is enough carry capacity to hold the Object's weight in full.
Can't Take It With You [Racial, Revealed On Identify] — Object is Dropped on of Wearer. Object's Levels are Halved On Drop, rounding up. Object drops random Items until under Carry Weight.
Flight of Fancy [Racial, Revealed On Identify] — After 2xLevel Minutes, Object is returned to it's Spawn Location unless a obtained by a new Owner. On return to Spawn, Object's Level, if 3 or greater, is reset to Level 2. Object drops random Items until under Carry Weight.
Unidentified Fashionable Object [Racial, Hidden] — On any manual or automatic Identifying Checks, the Identifier must succeed competing Occultism or Arcana checks, whichever Skill is higher for the Identifier, against the Object. On failure of the Identifier, only the Hat of Holding Feat is revealed. On Success, all Feats marked [Revealed on Identify] are revealed. The Identifier always sees the check as a Success even if they Fail.
Beneath One's Station [Racial, Hidden] — Object does not gain experience points by: Completing Quests, Killing Monsters, Crafting, Misc. Flat EXP Gain Items.
Windowshopping [Racial, Hidden] — When worn, Object can at anytime view, but only view, its Owner's Character Sheet and Inventory without the need for any Skill Check and without alerting its Owner.
Fine Dining [Racial, Hidden] — Object earns Experience by Consuming Objects in its Inventory. Experience varies based on item's weight and value.

---

Well, well, well. These developers have certainly been busy. Out were the usual six attributes, in were these nine. Why, they are even alphabetized! How daring of them. Truly there must be quite a few new systems in play, and that's before even considering these skills. You had several more than before this update. Most curious.

Though this Bane of Ironteak seems to be yet another area-wide curse your Spawn Location has gotten wrapped up in, even if it seems to have no affect on you. Those damn vampires — could they not go and debilitate the entire forest for just once!? They endlessly complain on uninvited visitors, yet throw the whole forest in an uproar with each and every party they hold. On one brim, you wish they'd invite you out of your hidden room every now and again. On the other, a drunk hat is a tipsy hat. And you don't just tip yourself to some commoner, oh no.

Though perhaps the would explain the reasoning for the devs giving you Lore — Legal. What purpose does that even serve? Lore — Accounting makes some vague amount of sense, it's good to know evaluate what you're going to feast upon, after all, but Legal? Legal!? Did these developers expect—

~~ Welcome back! We missed you! Much has changed, and for the better! ~~

Yes, yes, you certainly were back. Back to rock bottom. Complete with nerfs to your abilities that keep you alive and useful for players that somehow figure out the mind-bogglingly esoteric puzzle that sealed your secret room from the rest of the vampire mansion. You knew you certainly weren't the only magical hat with a hunger for items around, far from it. It only made sense that one of your kin must had gone and ruined the fun for the rest of your kind. De-leveling on drop, level reset on return to spawn, Windowshopping is view-only now, and Fine Dining limited to your own inventory?!

Absolutely, positively despicable.

The small pop-up was dismissed with disgust.

Alas, all that truly meant is that one of your kin grew properly powerful and feasted on a king's ransom. You couldn't find it in your silk to blame them. At this point if you were given the chance, you would do the exact same thing. In fact, some part of you was proud that someone amongst your kind showed everyone you weren't to be trifled with!

...indeed, your Feats were not so much true abilities as mere, long-winded explanations to your host (and yourself, with how often they were tweaked) as to your basic functions. Simply put, no one expects a magic hat to not be some source of ability improvement or utility. Your maintaining of that ruse is what keeps you alive, feasting on the most delectable items one could steal from one's host's before being inevitably passed onto another so a Player could wear their dreadfully dull helmet again.

To what end the developers intended you to amount to, you personally don't know. In all your lives, you had tasted that sweet, delectable Level 10 all but once— only to be immediately caught and killed by the Player whose head you rested on. She had not moved for hours, as Players sometimes did for reasons you couldn't fathom, but naturally the one time you felt peckish she immediately became cognizant. A part of you still wonders if that was her entire plan. If that truly was the case you would applaud her resolve.

...not that you could do anything that amounts to that anymore. What, with these barbaric limitations they put upon you.

Come to think of it, what exactly did kill you this time? Deaths stick out so strongly in your mind, what with Flight of Fancy just whisking you back to your Spawn should your host be murdered without your consent. ...nothing immediately came to mind. Various memories of assorted deaths brought flashes of pain, agony and the torturous sound of tearing fibers, and yet... this one? Nothing.

A soft, glowing warmth started upon the edge of your brim, and slowly moved to envelop the rest of your frame. You hopped away with herculean effort, shifting your gaze back to where you were.

A square of light had crept over the room.

Sunlight.

Impossible. There were no windows in this dreary secret room of yours. Just as there was no drafts! Drafts like... like the one just now, daring to enter your marble hall.

Except, there was no marble and, arid and dusty it may be, the breeze was all too real..

~~ Welcome back! We missed you! Much has changed, and for the better! ~~

A glance around the room finally the awful reality to bear: this was no longer your secret room in a vampire mansion hidden deep within a forest.

Where pillars of polished granite once stood in majestic reverence over the polished marble floor, decaying wooden shelves instead lay in splinters over cracked and crumbling stone. Water rippled down the wall from the sunken ceiling, gathering into the small pool you so blearily drank from while bright, hot sunshine streamed through the shattered glass window onto where you dumbly stood. Through the dusty haze of the sky, the large, red shape of the sun was encircled by the sagging, hole-ridden remnants of the building opposite on the street.

The brief question of where the door to the storefront was quickly replaced to a question of where it wasn't — its wooden pieces scattered and decaying over the whole of the interior. Two other doors leading deeper into the building sat on the rear wall, both in blatant broken states and visibly jammed. ...not that a mere hat such as yourself could even properly open a door to begin with.

Layers and layers of undisturbed dust coated both the floor and what few shelves remained in tact — but no. That wasn't even the worst of it. The plinth with the sinfully soft velvet pillow you so proudly displayed yourself on as the reward for the clever Player solving the ultimate puzzle of the mansion... it was replaced by a dilapidated hatbox.

On the bottom shelf.

You quickly called up your own inventory to bury the increasing need to scream distasteful obscenities to the heated air with a small snack.

---

/ Item Name	/ Number	/ Weight, Total (kg)
Gold	10	0.01
Rapier	1	1
Studded Leather Armor	1	2
Dagger	2	1
Buckler	1	0.5
---------------------	------	-------------------
Total	–	4.51 kg

---

Generic starting equipment, you realized in a moment of hesitation. The junkiest of junk food.

The 'How' of you having these items on a respawn didn't matter. You selected one of the daggers for Fine Dining. The bland iron taste of mass-produced metal had not changed a bit.

It was strangely comforting; reassuring, even. One morsel of familiarity in this new setting you unwantingly spawned into. You ate the other for another 3 exp, but mostly for courage as you activated the pop up.

Yet another page that stretched whole of your vision assaulted you:

welcome back to
Shards Of Arkus
We appreciate your return!
So much has changed in: 4 years, 9 Months, 11 Days!
And things are so much better for it!