1.26

An Account of the Tutorial Part I by Adhemar Logos, Chronologos of the Rastafi

To whom it may concern,

The Tutorial is a place of wonder. No, really! It is a place where unimaginable powers are bequeathed unto the most deserving of combatants. That is, if you forget the luck involved.

Nevertheless, luck is a form of skill, and as such, the ablest and greatest champions among a planet’s denizens will ascend by way of the Tutorial, to kill and be killed for the ‘levels’ given by the System.

Yet there is great discrepancy in the Tutorials given to the various, now starfaring, nations and empires of our galaxy. Based upon random chance, cultural understanding, and outside circumstance, a planet may find its population either utterly devastated by the Tutorial, or it may find its people nigh unharmed. Such is the fickle nature of the System that we live under.

I speak here at length on the factors that determine the nature of a planet’s Tutorial. For the purposes of this record, a planet’s population will be referred to as a ‘people’, despite possible cultural and physical differences, for the sake of this writing’s brevity and ease of readability.

A people’s Tutorial is primarily determined by chance alone. All other factors notwithstanding, luck is the only variable which always makes its presence known. It determines the biome, the types of monsters found, even the availability of natural resources within the test is determined primarily by chance.

It is, however, by no means the only variable that one must consider. The second is cultural understanding. Many cultures, either in their infancy, or indeed well into their maturity, will find stories of monsters and demons within their collective cultural mind.

This near universal acknowledgement of a monster’s existence may often manifest itself, in some way, shape, or form, within the monsters found within the Tutorial.

For the Rastafi peoples however, we discovered that there is yet another variable that now influences the monsters found within a people’s Tutorial: Wildlife.

Many cultures need not develop stories of monsters to frighten their newborns or create a cultural unity. For many peoples, the natural order on their home planets provide that horror in spades.

For our Rastafi, it was the ever-present, enormous lizards that roamed the dense jungles of our homeworld, crushing any brave warrior strong enough to even consider challenging one. There is a reason our nation’s founding myth was based around the death of one such lizard, beings who shall not be named, at the hands of our warrior king.

All of this is to say, when our people were placed in the Tutorial, it was those lizards that greeted us. But now, they were empowered with the strength of the system. Levels giving them a chance to become ever stronger through their own, twisted, monster evolutions.

But I digress. As you can see, the non-sentient animal races of a planet can very well become threats to the players entering the Tutorial, empowered by the System and given new, powerful genetic abilities.

To a people without levels aplenty to stop these beasts at the outset, it is only by hiding and clever maneuvering that the sentient races in the Tutorial may gain the advantage.

The third and final variable is the shakiest: It is the influence of outside forces.

Contrary to the belief of some of the myriad races that walk the stars with System granted blueprints, and who do battle with System given skills, the System itself is not an infallible machine.

Instead, it is what its name suggests it to be: a system, a program that serves as a means to an end. Though, admittedly, it is a program that has yet to be wholly unveiled, its history mired in the bog of time and memory.

Yet it is the firm belief of this Rastafi that the System is not some unknowable deity. It is perhaps one possible explanation. But why, then, can the System be affected by the races within it? The existential threat of, say, an artificial meteor may increase the difficulty of a Tutorial, while the provision of new technologies to a fledgling race may ease their transition into the System. All this and more, points to a fallible System, however overpowering it may be in practice.

It is experience and fact that drives my opinion, rather than feeling or emotion. One need only look at the several classifications of the Tutorial to understand the validity of these words.

The four types of Tutorial are as follows: Natural, Survival, Battle, and Hyper, though the nature of Tutorials across even a single classification is, by design, diverse, lest it be impossible to classify the many millions of worlds brought into the fold.

The first, are ‘Natural’ Tutorials. They are, by many accounts, the easiest tutorials for a fledgling race to get through, often incurring the smallest percentage of casualties among the planet’s population.

They are so called for the fact that they reflect the nature of the people’s home planet, typically being set in the most inhabitable biome available. Whether that be a jungle, an ocean, or any number of other setting is dependent upon the fledgling race.

The monsters found in these Natural Tutorials are weaker. Not because of a qualitative difference between the beasts at the beginning of the tutorial. No, the monsters will spawn with the same levels as beasts within the ‘Survival’ or ‘Battle’ Tutorials.

Instead, the beasts will be uncoordinated in the extreme, living in randomized areas, and refusing any herd mentality, no matter how much it might aid them, allowing for ease of levelling on the part of the fledgling race.

Noting however, that the first generation of System users from these races tend towards peaceful skills and weaker domains, as a result of their lack of conflict early on.

‘Survival’ Tutorials are exactly what they sound like. They place the fledgling race in a survival position, in which the race must adapt with new skills, or die in the attempt. Some among the starfaring races claim that these are the most volatile of Tutorials, and this humble Rastafi would tend to agree.

Survival dungeons naturally include largely inhospitable climates and biomes for the fledgling race to survive in. Whether that be a desert for an aquatic peoples, or a tundra for a tundra-roaming peoples, it is clear that in many cases, should the biome provided be too extreme, that the fledgling race’s population may dwindle to a mere handful, never to recover.

The monsters in these Tutorials often do ascribe to herd mentality, and are capable of working with one another to a degree, though they are almost never the primary focus of the Tutorial in question.

Survivors of such ordeals typically emerge as hardened veteran, the survivors of a thousand life threatening situations. They can be very powerful, having to battle their own race, in addition to monsters in order to secure resources for survival. Their skills are typically defensively focused, with as much emphasis on food, water, and resource preservation as possible.

The third manner of Tutorial is the ‘Battle’ Tutorial. As the name may suggest, these Tutorials focus very heavily upon the combat ability of the fledgling race. Though monsters spawn at the same levels as they do in Natural and Survival dungeons, they often do not level at the same rate.

A heightened sense of herd mentality, augmented biological strengths, and an unending need to hunt prey, makes monsters in Battle Tutorials far more dangerous than in Natural or Survival Tutorials.

In the next section, I will cover ‘Hyper’ Tutorials, a topic so vast as to require its own part in this record.

Yours,

Adhemar Logos, Chronologos of the Rastafi