1.5 Procrastination.

I ended that day with another [Meditation] session. Although not a Class Skill, I was very happy at acquiring it. Most of my new Skills were based on Intellect, but [Meditation] was a Wisdom based Skill. Wisdom is the mental equivalent to Constitution. Where Stamina, Health,and Wound recovery are all based on Con; Mana, Sanity, and Psychosis recovery are based on Wisdom. [Meditation] is a Skill that not only helps boost mental recovery, but actual contributes to Attribute Experience.

All Skills contribute experience to either other Skills, Classes, or Attributes at Threshold Levels, basically every fifth level. Subskills contribute to their main Skill, Class Skills contribute to Class Levels, Personal Skills to General Experience, and Amateur Skills to Attributes. Each point of Skill Experience is roughly equivalent to one hour of training, or 90 minutes of practice. My Title bonus reduced that to 40 and 60 minutes per point. To progress from Level 2 to Level 3 would require 300 XP, or 300 total hours of [Meditation], assuming no Crits or additional Achievement bonuses.

I had found that after two hours my mind would wander, breaking the [Meditation], so I tried different visualisation techniques. Now that I had the System recognized Skill, these attempts changed. I was sitting on my Camp Chair, with my knee high leather boots removed( another RenFaire purchase), my feet resting on the green moss covered hill. The evening was cool, but not uncomfortable, and frankly my feet needed to breathe. I was focused on a relaxation technique where I imagined all the stress and anxiety slow draining out of my body, starting with the crown of my head, and flowing out of the bottom of my feet. Whether it was something special about the Altar’s Hill, or just the higher Essence of the Realm, I was startled out of my [Meditation], by a putrid smell. Oozing out of the pores in the soles of my feet was a reddish brown oily substance that smelled like rotten fish. The vibrant moss actually turned black and began to smoke where it came into contact with the toxic residue.

Up until then, the menhirs had just been crude granite stone pillars, but they started to glow, symbols appearing on their surfaces, reminding me of a cross between Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Electrical Engineering symbols. I watched as a platinum flame surrounded my feet. Surprisingly cool, it utterly consumed the product of my [Meditation].

Caution! Source of Corruption has been introduced to the Glade of Ascension!

Source Identified as Meditative Purgation, non-hostile.

Corruption active defenses engaged.

You have been subjected to [Holy Radiant Flames of Purity], -5 Health, -5 Sanity.

New [Meditation] Subskill/Feat acquired, [Purgation], implementing Otherworlder bonus, Level 2.

Achievement! Piedal Baptism of [Holy Radiant Flames of Purity]! You have survived the active Corruption defences of the Glade of Ascension, with only minimal damage. Domain Affinities Granted: +1 Affinity Holy, +1 Affinity Radiant, +1 Affinity Purity, +1 Affinity Travel (Feet are Symbolic of Domain:Travel).

Boom! Half of my current Stamina gone. The Flames only reached slightly above my ankles, and while they did hurt, it was a good pain, like stretching after falling asleep on the couch. The visualisation technique translated into an actual Feat, with physical consequences.

Abilities can largely be divided into Talents, Skills, Titles, Spells, and Feats. Talents are passive Abilities that require neither activation, nor resource points. One can benefit from Talents even when asleep or otherwise unconscious. Skills are Abilities that have an activation requirement and require conscious intent. Titles are a hybrid, with both active and passive components. Spells are a special type of Skill that always has a Mana and/or Sanity Cost. Feats are functionally like Spells, but cost Stamina and/or Health. Feats are philosophically internal powers that only directly affect/enhance the user while Spells are external powers that manipulate/reveal the wider world. Classes like Fighter, Rogue, Monk, Herald, and Barbarian, rely heavily on Feats. Mage, Cleric, Warlock, and Druid, are Spell focused Classes. Ranger, Paladin, and Bard, are hybrid Classes, and use both equally.

Because Stamina recovers an amount equal to one’s Con Score per Short Rest, and Mana recovers based on Wis Score per Medium Rest, Feats can be used more times per day, but are generally less effective than Spells of equal Rank.

High Scholar’s Ability List, focused more on Feats than Spells, with [Speed Reading], [Memorisation], [Locate Book],[Copy Page], and [Scholarly Lore] being prominent. The only quasi useful Feat at Fifth Level was [Quietus]. [Quietus] was a Feat that simulated a [Silence] effect on the User. Good for Ninjas, Assassins, and Librarians.

That was enough of that. I drained my Canteen, donated 2 Mana to keep it refilling throughout the night, and went to bed, the ground being only slightly more comfortable than the surface of the Altar. As I was drifting off to sleep, I prayed. Not to Janus or any of the other Admins, but to the God of my childhood, the Eternal Parent, Creator, and Organiser of the Multiverse. It didn’t earn me any Skills. That wasn’t the point. I was trying to adapt to the weirdness I found myself in, and sometimes one returns back to the familiar, looking for hope.

The next morning I awoke with the birds, windsong whistling in the trees, the bright sun’s golden fingers playing with the dappled leaves. I drank my fill of Sweetwater, and then rushed to the edge of the glade to empty my bladder. There are so many details the story books leave out. Checking my Status I saw that my weight was down to 320 lbs, about 8 lbs less than when I last checked. The Sweetwater may have been supressing my hunger, but the calories had to come from somewhere. The plan was to spend the morning exercising, and the afternoon exploring.

I was procrastinating. The hilltop was safe, the woods surrounding were not.

I spent an hour in [Meditation], and then started running around the circle of menhirs. I say run, but what I mean is stumbling about barely managing to stay upright, with brief periods of sprinting at a pace almost equal to a brisk walk. Just before I reached total exhaustion, I would stop at a menhir and rest. Sometimes using [Meditation], sometimes doing vertical pushups against the granite pillar. I was never going to be a mighty thewed warrior, but an Agility of 3 was just pathetic, even for a Scholar.

It was nearing eleven when I finished my morning exercises and started preparing for the afternoon. My goals were threefold: (1) find addition food sources, (2) confirm my location, (3) find addition water. I really wasn’t worried about starvation, I still had plenty blubber to burn, but malnutrition. I would need more protein and micronutrients to make my daily exercise effective. While my Canteen would continue to refill, that was just barely meeting my minimal needs. I would had loved to wash, both myself and my clothes.

I had pretty much decided I was in the Briarwood. Given the ratio of daytime to nighttime, the mildness of the weather, the type of trees I could identify, I had a reasonable idea of the climate and latitude. It fit what I knew of Briarwood. The fact I acquired five levels of [Geography], supported the supposition. My fifth Scholar Skill to reach Level 5, and an addition Class Experience Achievement. I only needed 50 more points to reach Level 6. In about two days I had accumulated 550 hours equivalence in High Scholar experience. More importantly to my immediate needs, I also gained five levels of [Navigation]. [Navigation], unlike [Geography], was not a Scholar Class Skill. It represented practical ability, not theoretical knowledge. It was however based on the Wit Attribute, with which I had a lower modifier than with my Intellect Skills.

I suppose understanding exactly what an Ability Level represents might be useful to my readers. Whether called a Skill Level, Spell Level, Feat Level, etc, Ability Level represents the users mastery of the Ability in question, and directly affects the effective result. In a damage type Ability, it represents the Damage Range. In a Knowledge Skill it represents the amount of information one can access. It also represents the minimum difficulty with which one achieves an automatic success.

Let me be clear, the Realm of Triquetra is not a game, the System is not rolling dice to determine success or failure. However the Difficulty Levels used by my interface used a game to model difficulty. First I need to talk about probability distribution.

Imagine rolling a twenty sided die, or D20. There is a five percent chance to roll any given number. Thus a difficulty based on a D20, has 100% chance of success at Difficulty Level 1, 50% at 10, and 5% at 20.

Now imagine rolling two ten sided dice (2D10) and adding them, creating a bell curve. 2 and 20 each have a 1% chance with a much greater chance of rolling a 10. Rolling 3D6 creates an even steeper curve. Now imagine that on a natural roll of 20 one would add an additional d10, and keep adding D10s as long as the result was another ten. Difficulty 30 would represent a .1% chance of success, a 40 would equal .01% and so forth. Of course, a computer could generate a curve not limited by the physical restraints of rolling dice. The actual scale starts at Difficulty 1, which is 99% success, Level 9 equals 50%, Level 20 equals 1%, Level 30 equals .1%, and on up to infinity, without the weird hiccups physical dice generate between 20 and 21, 30 and 31, etc.

In a game, bonuses would be added to the die roll totals, adjusting the final odds. One could just subtract modifiers from the Difficulty Level instead. In the game, Attributes higher than 10 generate bonuses, those lower than 10 generate penalties. Ability Levels don’t directly modify the difficulty one for one, but instead represent a minimum roll. My [Geography] Skill Level of 5, for instance, meant that the System would help me answer any [Geography] question with a Difficulty Level of 5 or less. There is an additional +1 bonus for every four Skill Levels up to Level 20, every five then up to Level 40, and every ten there after. So someone with 20 Skill Levels would have a +5 bonus, in addition to any others, for Tasks with a Difficulty greater than 20. That is why a +3 Spell Focus is so huge. Not only does it directly modify the difficulty, but it adds to the effective minimum roll as well. Class bonuses add to the affected Ability Level. Magic bonuses greater than +3 are limited to Legendary Items only.

How does all that play out in determining where I was? Well, I should mention a few other tools I haven’t detailed. Many items that accompanied my original summoning got intriguing enhancements, not always useful ones. My pocket watch is a great example.

Knowing the exact time is less helpful than you may think in the wilderness. I am not the type to purchase $500 precision German timepiece, and indeed normally wore a cheap digital watch. I am the type to pay $500 for a precision German timepiece modeled after the steampunk stylings of a British Time Traveller’s pocket watch. Guess which watch I wore in costume? It translated into a +5 Chronograph of the TimeLord, which beyond telling time, also allowed me to detect temporal anomalies, gave me a +5 Arcane Spell Focus for Chronomancy School Spells, and a +5 Spell Shield vs hostile Chronotemporal Abilities. The last provided a passive Spell Defense bonus, a passive bonus to Protection Value, and an active bonus to attempts to dispel, disrupt, or parry appropriate Abilities. It was perhaps the single most powerful item to accompany me, and maybe the most useless. When I played the game, I never encountered either players or monsters with Time based Abilities. Unless I were to find a source of Cronomantic Spells, it was just a watch.

Two other tools that were of more use, were the Basic Cartographer’s Kit and +3 Pathfinder’s Compass. As before mention, I had a messenger’s bag that had many gaming supplies that translated into an Arcanist’s Kit. Some of those supplies were maps, of various fantasy places, graph paper (both square and hex), colored pencils, straight edge and drawing compass. Perhaps it was a layover from experiences as an Orienteer, but I always preferred hand drawn maps, both as a player and a GM. I know there are plenty of websites capable of generating perfectly adequate maps, just a quirk. These supplies converted into a Basic Cartographer’s Kit, the fantasy maps translating into maps of the Realm, albeit 350-500 years out of date.

The compass on the other hand was an army green military model my grandfather brought back from Korea, and my father took with him to Vietnam. Dad gave it to me when encouraging me to be more physically active. I wasn’t interested in the common sports available so he tried Orienteering, which is a type of cross country racing as dependant on accuracy as speed. The compass was not just part of my costume, but a true heirloom. In addition to telling direction, and having sites to line up landmarks, the Compass could set Waypoints. As long as I was within seven leagues, about 21 miles, of a set Waypoint, the Compass would always find its way back. It also counted as a +3 Mystic Skill Focus for [Navigation], [Survival], and other direction dependant Abilities. I believe the passive bonus helped me acquire the [Navigation] Skill. It would certainly help me explore beyond the Stone Circle, and find my way back.

None of my clothes gained Mystic bonuses, though both my duster and boots were enhanced with Weatherproof and Tearproof, which protected them from certain types of damage and boosted the protection they provide versus those types of damage.

I gathered up the maps which lay spread on top of the Altar, and returned them to the bag. I was going to leave both the bag and my pack next to the Altar when I left the Circle. I was to keep my Canteen, Compass, and a folding knife found in my camping gear. I was planning on heading in a Northwesterly direction, toward where I hoped to find a stream or creek heading to the Auberon Gap, the exit of Briarwood.