For I say unto you, children of the dream, that all knowledge comes from Me. For I am God, the Father- that is my name. -- The Creations, Chapter 1 Verses 1-2

‘We must get you out of here immediately! We cannot wait for you to get stronger and recover. If the Tauron government knew you were here- well, I can’t protect you, I am only a Priest class. Oh God, Your blessing is upon us!’ Teacher Grimshaw said, starting to pace.

‘Is that good, being a Nomenclaturist? And what does that even mean?’ I was curious and wanted him to calm down so he could explain more.

‘I suppose we have to start with what a Teacher is. That is, what we really are, not what they seem. To start off, what do you think teachers are?’ He started calming down and focused on the path of educating me.

‘I don’t know. Teachers. I mean, they travel around and stay a decade or two in a location and then move on somewhere else. They are freed Gar’shan and have been taught the scriptures and what they mean. Their job is to protect our culture and keep us alive during The Torment.’ This all seemed obvious to me.

Teacher Grimshaw nodded. ‘We are more, much more. Teachers are blessed by God, and can never die- well, until we die of old age. Other than that, you cannot kill us. If you do, we just die and reappear somewhere else, someplace random but nearby. We do not age or get sick. We look as young as maybe 25 and stay that way until they die. Our lifespan is usually 80 to 100 years. We are so rare that the Tauron government does not really know about us. We are always freed from slavery, so our masters do not realize our unique status. We travel around from city to city in the Tauron nation, to wherever our people are. People never realize we do not age since we leave before too long.’

I looked at Teacher Grimshaw with amazement. ‘You mean, I cannot die? I get to live to be 100 and stay young that whole time? I am unkillable, well, somewhat so?’

He nodded. ‘And each of us are assigned a role, a class if you will. There are dozens. Crusaders, Inquisitors, Priests, Clerics, Freedom Fighters, Monks, Pastors, Philosophers, Alchemists, Scribes, Healers. The list goes on. But the rarest of all are Nomenclaturists. Nomenclaturists study the words of God and the names of things.

‘For instance, they will study rocks. They will look in the scriptures for everything said about rocks. They think about rocks. Smell them, taste them, look at the word ‘rock’ in our language. Once they internalize everything they can about a rock, they can then create rocks from nothing. They can destroy rocks. They can liquify or harden rocks. They have power over everything encompassing a rock. Then they study something else- maybe flowers, or animals, or humans. They are some of our most powerful Zeal wielders. Their specialty will determine what they can study. There are many specialties, and Nomenclaturists themselves are rare, but not impossibly so.

‘You, my boy, are something different. Instead of being able to study objects or animals or people or forces, you can study God Himself. More than that, you can study His names. Only the oldest hero in The Creations scripture was a Deific Nomenclaturist, or so we think. She was able to call upon Him directly, and through knowledge of His 42 names, wield wild and powerful, but also subtle and very exact powers.’

‘You mean, Hazit was… what I am?’ I said with amazement. She was one of the first heroes of The Creations. She was super powerful. She helped God separate the sky from the earth. She battled numerous evil denizens of the world, including killing off the entirety of the creatures with the curious name of Goblins. She was also the first one to warn the Gar’shan people of the existence of The Dark One. One of her powers was to simply call upon God and He would awaken from His slumber and appear before her!

‘How do I do that, what name should I study first, which one is the most powerful? Maybe I will kill all the Taurons, like Hazit killed the Goblins!’ I started thinking of the names of God.

‘I suppose you should start with the first, Tal’Lat, but you must first learn other things though. All those words on your… lets call it CS for short for now, not Character Sheet,’ he said wiping away the invisible chart from his eyes as if it were a bug. I nodded, and he continued. ‘And those words all have scores that matter. We need to go through them, so they make sense. Soon you will get the chance to change them… add to them.’

I nodded, ready to learn. Teacher Grimshaw gathered his breath and sat down on a chair near the head of the bed. He leaned forward. ‘First on your CS you see some data about you. Your name, your nationality, your philosophy, class and your faction. That has likely just changed from Enslaved Gar’shan to the Teachers, as we have bought your freedom while you were in your coma and I am inducting you into our faction as we speak.

‘Next are your attributes. We start with your Brains attribute. Underneath your Brains is your Intelligence, Wits and Wisdom. Intelligence is the raw power of your Brains, how smart you are. With more intelligence, you know more things and can know more skills and the like. Wits is how fast you can use your intelligence. You react more quickly to surprises, can remember more things with ease. Intelligence might allow you to memorize the scriptures, for instance, but Wits helps you call up the correct verses. Finally, we have your Wisdom. This is how durable your mind is. Wisdom helps you stop mental attacks, helps keep you alert and active after a tiring day. What is your score for Brains?’

I looked, and saw they were all at a 1, and told him so.

‘I see, so your Brains is your second strongest category starting off. A 0 is the utter average for all peoples in all attributes. With a 1, you are smarter than the average. The most you can have is a 5, and the least you can have is a -5. You average in Brains determines your expendable stat- Willpower. Willpower can be used to accomplish major mental tasks, withstand mental attacks totally, concentrate when you are in deep pain and focus to temporarily increase your other attributes. All expendable powers start with a 5 and add your average, rounded up to the full number, for the total. Since your Brains average is 1, your Willpower is 6. Get to 0 Willpower and you will faint. Since you are smarter than the average human, I trust you are understanding what I am saying?’ He looked at me and chuckled. Amazingly enough, I did understand what he was saying.

Part of my duties was to help Master Palion and be his scribe. I would work his numbers and keep his logs. I knew basic mathematics.

‘Moving on to Brawn. This might be the simplest to understand. Your strength is your raw physical power. It can help you carry things and help you to punch harder. Agility is how flexible and fast your body is. It can help you dodge attacks, keep your balance, and land flat on your feet in a fall. Stamina is how long you can exert yourself and how well you withstand poisons and how much you can deal with pains and avoid wounds. The expendable for Brawn is Health. If your health drops to 0 you will drop unconscious. If it goes to -1 you will die. At least, temporarily. What is your score in Brawn?’

I told him -1. He winced. ‘We will have to work on getting that up, as its your worst set of attributes. Luckily, it is one of the easiest groups to increase naturally, all you got to do is exercise.’ I rolled my eyes. I was meant to be a thinker, not a fighter. I took after my mom like that.

‘Moving on to Beauty- this is all about how others will see you and how you interact with the world. Appearance simply measures how memorable you are. A -1 would be totally unmemorable. Or perhaps very memorable, and just plain ugly. Its not an exact science. Manipulation is how well you control others- this might sound bad, but it does not necessarily mean it has to be. It might be how well you care for a grieving widow, or how well you can teach children. It can also mean how well you can lie and bluff. Composure is how well you can control your emotions- or at least how well you can display them. It can quantify how much you can withstand social embarrassment or how well you respond to a tough situation. The expendable for this is Social Graces. It can be used to deliver great speeches or withstand a horrible public shame; it can be used to get a good deal when buying something. When you get to 0 Social Graces, you are mocked and disliked by everyone you see, you cannot communicate effectively, and even animals will challenge you. Now what is your score for Beauty?’ I told him it was a 0 and he just shrugged his shoulders, until he thought of something.

‘Hey that must mean your Blessings are at a 2! Its your highest and most natural stat. You are truly blessed- it is rare to be so strong in it so young. Blessings determines your Zeal potential. Faith is the power of your belief, your utter strength of your trust in yourself, God, your mission and your philosophy. Devotion is how well you can use your faith and convince others of your own faith. Conviction is how strongly you can stick to your faith in times of trouble. For instance, when I told you about the two worlds, I saw you despair, but it did not seem to waiver your faith in God. That was your Conviction showing. Zeal is your expendable power for Blessings. It is used to cast miracles in God’s name. Your miracles have a specific name since you are a Nomenclaturist- they are called revelations. My miracles are called spells, different names, but both use zeal.

‘That’s about it for attributes. Attributes can be increased naturally. For instance, the more you read and understand the scriptures, you will have a better attribute of faith. The longer you run, the better your stamina will increase. When you need to increase it manually- when you really need to increase strength while not working out, you can use experience points to increase your attribute- or your skills, which we will talk about later. From my understanding, experience points cannot be used for revelations, or to increase your expendables. Attributes cost 15 xp to go from -1 to 0. Afterwards it costs 10 xp to increase per the new level you are buying. For instance, if you want to go from 2 to 3 in Wits, you will need to spend 30 xp.’

I started to ask about how to get xp, but he cut me off, guessing correctly what I was going to ask. ‘And to get xp, you need to learn new things, defeat enemies, animals or monsters or fulfill quests or missions.’

‘Now skills measure your ability to handle different, more specific tasks. Skills range from 0, untrained, to 5 which means you are amongst the best in the world. Skills can be anything from athletics to linguistics. Skills cost 5 for the first level and then 5 times the new level. Going from a 2 to a 3 in Scribe work costs 15. And once again the highest you can go in any attribute or skill is 5.

‘When doing an action, God’s system measures your attribute and your skill, determines how difficult a task is, then determines your total score, or likelihood of succeeding in the task.’

My mind was reeling from this revelation. God’s world was slowly being revealed to me. Everything was manipulated by numbers behind the scenes. But I still had a question- what did the numbers mean? What did a 2 in the strength attribute and a 3 in brawl mean?

I asked him about that. He thought for a little bit and then said ‘The likelihood for success in whatever you are doing increases the higher your skill and attribute in something is. For instance, if you have a strength 5 and a melee skill of 4 and a sword that does +2 damage, then you have a 100% chance of doing damage to the wall, if it is vulnerable to such damage. In reality, nothing is ever 100% sure. You might trip on a rock as you swing, or a gust of wind might make you mess up your target. There is always some sort of chance in anything you do. Further, the wall might be made of wood, in which its health (or durability in objects) is low and damage is more likely. A different wall of, say, brick might have a higher durability and takes less damage. And that’s just with a stable wall.

‘Imagine you are going after someone who has an agility of 3 and a dodge of 4 (for a total of 7). You have a strength 5 and a brawl of 3 (for a total of 8), and your fists do 1 damage. The difference between your scores is 1, so you are 10% more likely to damage him than he is to dodge, before the random effects come into play. Then you can cheat the percentage even more. Maybe you use your Willpower to increase your wits to dodge the attack, or your Social Graces to insult the person who is dodging so he gets angry and slips up.

‘In some ways it is complicated, but once you learn the numbers, you can cheat the rules. God knows this and therefore He created Teachers, who can learn the numbers. Of course, you rarely know what attributes and skills your opponent has. Or how hard it is to translate a lost scroll, for example. And there is still mystery involved, and blind chance. Be a good servant, however, and God will bless you even more than He has.’

I nodded and said: ‘And this is why a Teacher is so important and can be so strong, because they know the hidden numbers of things. And the Taurons and Yeshuans have no idea about the numbers? Do any of the other peoples of the world?’

‘We have no proof that anyone else knows. In fact, we have some proof that they do not know. Can you guess what that proof is?’ Teacher Grimshaw asked. I thought about it. Absently, I though that the attribute I was using was wits and I was unsure as to the skill. After I got stuck thinking that way, I gave up. I had to stop doing that or it would drive me crazy.

‘No, I do not know.’

He shrugged and said, ‘The bleeding disease’.

Then it made sense. The Taurons would randomly have young adults between the ages of 18 to 23 or so start bleeding and convulsing and the afflicted person would die almost instantly. I had experienced it. The Test. They must have people who accidently set off the process of whatever I went through. They must have had children that could become Teachers, but because they did not know about The Test, so they just died.

‘And that is not all. It all relates to The Immortals,’ Teacher Grimshaw said, using the word carefully. I grimaced. The Immortals. They were a curse on humanity.