Riven

I typed in a character name - Riven - and hit Accept.

“Within this room, you may customize your avatar in The Five Realms,” came a deep voice from all around me. “The choices you make here will alter your experience within the Five Realms. Choose wisely, for once you leave this room, you will never be able to return.”

That seemed overdramatic for character creation, but whatever.

A mirror appeared, reflecting… me.

How the hell did they know what I looked like? And why was I naked?

The reflection seemed to mimic my movements exactly.

This was definitely weird, but I figured I’d just go with it. This was a single-player game, and I just had to hope they weren’t going to use my naked body in promotional materials or anything.

I briefly wondered if I should go back and reread all the paperwork they’d sent me, along with the warnings that had popped up when the game loaded.

But there was a game to play. There’d be time to go through that crap later.

There were options for race, gender, and a few sliders to adjust my avatar. The limited number of customization options made the ominous warning the voice had given seem a little more justified.

Still, I could always restart if I didn’t like something.

There were only five races listed: Beastfolk, Dwarf, Elf, Human, and Riverfolk. Each, however, seemed to have several racial variants to choose from.

Each race came with attribute bonuses and a distinctive look.

The Beastfolk were basically anthropomorphic animals and came in cat, wolf, and bird variants. While the birds had both arms and wings - and flying seemed pretty damn cool - I wasn’t really thrilled with the beak. When I scrolled over to that option, it seemed to block the lower portion of my peripheral vision.

Dwarves were short, stocky, and hairy. I was fairly average in height and had always wanted to be taller, so I scrolled past them.

Elves were a little shorter than humans and fit the traditional thin and graceful look that was so common in fantasy. I wasn’t sold yet, so I scrolled past them with the intention of coming back if nothing else caught my eye.

Humans were… humans.

Their racial variants were plain old humans and “halves” of the other races: half-beastfolk, half-dwarf, half-elf, and half-riverfolk. Those seemed kind of like the best of both worlds.

I put a pin in it and kept going.

Finally came the Riverfolk. They were semi-aquatic, with big eyes, webbed fingers, and greenish or bluish skin. Other than that, they looked mostly human. I didn’t plan on doing a lot of swimming, so I put them firmly in the nope bucket.

That left me with elf or human.

An elf would make a pretty badass archer with their bonuses to Coordination and Perception, but humans had bonuses to Reasoning and Will, both of which influenced Mana.

I couldn’t turn down playing a wizard of some type, so I went with human and selected the half-elf variant to give myself a little Coordination and Empathy. Charisma had always been something I liked to put a little investment in.

Next came the starting region, and each one came with its own attribute and skill bonuses.

The Caelorian Empire was a human empire in the south and offered another bonus to Reasoning, as well as Will. The skills were Communication and Engineering. I didn’t care about Engineering, but the stats sold me. I didn’t even need to look any further.

I had five more discretionary points that I could put into Primary Attributes or over 40 Secondary Attributes. I wasn’t going to worry about all the Secondary Attribute crap, so I just put two more into Will, another two into Reasoning, and the last one into Empathy.

I had no idea what the scale for the attributes looked like, but considering the best I could min-max was a ten, a pair of sixes seemed pretty good.

The skill tree was a mess. Twenty-four base skills, a hundred and fifty skill focuses, and thousands of specializations. They were definitely going to need to do something to clean that up.

I only got to pick five skills, though it seemed that in addition to gaining skill points, the ones I picked here gave me extra experience, making them easier to learn.

I put two points into Magic Theory, giving myself a twenty percent XP bonus, then a point each into Influence, Melee Weapons, and Stealth for a ten percent bonus in each.

Finally came something called Methods, which seemed to be some kind of modifier based on how you approached something. There were six, and I could only pick two, so I chose Flexibility and Resolve.

That seemed like most of it, so I played around with the sliders for a little while, making myself taller, a little more handsome, my hair long enough for a ponytail, and improving my… self.

Once I was happy, I hit Confirm.

Several pop-ups immediately appeared.

I dismissed the pop-ups, and everything went black.