Cephalopod Decoration of

Your existence was pain. Not your pain for the most part, but everything about your design was made to frustrate players and you being imprisoned in this form frustrated you right back... Better start from the beginning:

You opened your eyes. You were in a body of water in the middle of a void and had awareness of a lot of things, that you had no way of knowing. Most relevant was the knowledge, that you were in a 'test-world' where only the minimum necessary for whatever the developers were trying to do existed. You were aware of the fact, that even though you felt you were a cephalopod (you looked like an Octopus but you had twelve arms), were actually a programm that 'emulated' your thoughts and feelings or a 'pseudo-AI' indistinguishable from 'real AI' since you would in all observable forms you'd behave like any self-conscious being. As for why you were in a test-world: "print: status;"

"Common Squid;

Level: 0;

HP: 5/5

MP: 1/1

---ATTACKS---

Melee Attack: 1

Melee Damage: 1

Ranged Attack: 0

Ranged Damage: 0

Weaknesses: all elemental damage; piercing; slashing;

Strength: none;

Resistances: bludgeoning;

---Special Abilities---

Mucucutaneous Skin: All negative status effects and elemental damages are applied with an up to 3 + [lvl] second delay. If elemental damage is not applied consistently until end of delay no damage is applied and delay starts over. Scales logarithmically with Hydration.

Regrowth: Regenerates HP at up to 10%/second. Crippled status effect has a chance to heal randomly with a chance of [(1+lvl.) * (max_limbs/curr_limbs) /200] % every second. Scales linear with Hydration.

Grapple: Pass a d20 [victim.strength-strength] or a d6 [victim.mass - mass] to fully incapacitate a your victim. Pass a d50 [victim.strength-strength] or a d12 [victim.mass - mass] to disable a limb of the victim.

Poisonous: If attacked by a bite attack cause [attacker.max_HP*1.1] poison damage to the attacker. Inflict paralyzed on attacker.

Venemous bite: Takes 2 seconds to cast. Cast on contact. Cause [victim.max_HP*1.3] poison damage to the victim. Inflict paralyzed on victim.

Hydration: All base stats as well as some Special Abilities scale with Hydration. Hydration increases while exposed to water and decreases while outside of water (decreasing Hydration is a status effect and is effected by everything that effects status effects; Heat and Fire damage can inflict Fast Dehydration, when already subjected to decreasing Hydration). When Hydration reaches 0 causes [1+lvl.] damage per second to self."

While your base states and attack (the part that somebody else could find out through inspection abilities) were certainly in line with what one would expect from a lvl 0 creature, your special abilities (which your enemies could not find out through inspection) were ridicolous. While any spell game in the game would kill you instantaniously on paper it would have to be trained on you fo 3 full seconds.

You could roll your mass against a player and even at your current level had a decent chance to disable one of their arms. Then you could inflict damage on them that got harder to out-heal the more health his victim had.

You could leave water for 3 seconds without suffering any penalty whatsoever and as long as you returned before dying you would completely recover.

While your regrowth wasn't much help, when almost anything killed you instantly it would make you almost immortal as soon as you could take more than one hit.

"print: thought.onQuery("Who are you?")"

"I don't know who I am. I'm only a few seconds old."

"print: thought.onQuery("Why are you?")"

"[error: time unknown] ago Admins noticed non-player-entities displaing selfconscious behavior in Alluvia. After finding the source of the deviation development on latest update began. There are now two types of servers: classical MMORP and dynamic world. Dynamic world is set up specifically to encourage the emergance of selfconscious behavior. I assume I am supposed to inhabit a dynamic world."

"print: thought.onQuery("What is God-Tier-Gear?")"

"Implemented in [error: date not past]. Highest possible quality of Items. unknown number of unique peaces of equipment. Equipping causes hero to be set to Hardcore mode, positions and names of all heroes in possession of God-Tier-Gear are public."

"mission.assign(guard.item("Blade of Magic manifest"[Dagger]))"

And that's how you were born. You were the last obstacle in a unmarked quest that spanned several dungeons and protected a small knive.

The knive in question was the best piece of equipment a spellcaster of any kind could hope for. Not only did it's massive attack modifiers allow them to actually defend themselves in melee, but much more importantly it came with a flat increase to MP-regeneration, a bonus to MP-regeneration in % of max MP, a bonus in % of MP-regeneration and both flat and %-based increases to max MP, it increased cast-speed by 90%, increased the effect of all spells by 50% and caused the user to regenerate HP and even more MP on cast, it even came with bound spells and abilities that cost no MP and recharge after a few seconds allowing even low level characters or people who somehow ran out of MP to fling magic like a high level sorcerer.

Your job was to grief heroes, who after fighting through a dungeon specifically designed to exhaust the ressources of a magic user, thought they only needed to heal back up, collect the loot and leave.

Of course anybody smart enough to team up with anybody who wasn't a spellcaster would have an easy time not only getting past the dungeon but also taking you out, the fear of 'ninja-looters' prevented most heroes from teaming up at all though. Even if they had only a club; your pond was 3 meters in radius with a singular mangrove at one end and a bunch of loot at the bottom. You could take cover, but you couldn't fight back against even a low-level melee build smart enough not go all the way in. You had prepared and moved the dagger into your trading inventory, so it wouldn't drop if you were killed. And there was what caused your suffering: Even though you could level by quite a bit (you once managed to reach level 28 because two maxed out mages decided to both go into your pond, even after you had bitten the first one) the closest source of water was simply to far away and becoming independent of water (either by becoming able to summon water or by choosing growth options that altered or got rid of hydration) took at least level 33. As long as you would not leave the loadzone, you'd always be resetted as a level 0 'Squid'. Not your inventory. Not the contents of the various chests in your pond. Only you yourself. For your level to be saved, you'd either needed to become 'tamed' or manage to leave your loadzone, so you'd be tracked independently. Honestly both options had their appeal. Even though they had never admitted it, you suspected it was no coincident, that your sexual preference had on average 8 limbs fewer than you.