After a brief sensation of falling, James and Sarah found themselves outside of their bodies, staring at themselves. Try as they might, they couldn't look anywhere other than at their own AVATAR's as their bodies struck a casual pose, occasionally looking around at things unseen or adjusting their gear. A dizzying list of attributes faded into existence right next to their oblivious avatars.

Sarah looked at herself. The attributes next to her told her story in cold, hard numbers.

Race: Human Gender: Female Height: 5' 8" Weight: 139 lbs Hair Color: Black Eye Color: Green/Hazel Skin Tone: Brown

The complete breakdown of her physical features continued down to the smallest details, like individual finger lengths. 'Brown?' she thought. She'd always heard her skin tone described as rich honey or toffee, never just brown. Tapping the attribute, she found a fully-featured color selector that would let her change her skin color on a whim, right there. Without a second thought, she banished the window.

Briefly, she played with her facial features, but every change just seemed to make her look inhuman. She briefly considered wiping her freckles off but decided against it. She did find a way to remove a couple of acne scars and other blemishes without compromising anything else. Other than that, she left her features alone.

Back on the main screen, she did play with her weight, just a touch, until she looked more like she had before a strict diet of cheap government food. Eating healthy wasn't something the terminally poor could afford.

Satisfied, she almost hit the CONFIRM button at the top of the attributes but wondered about the race option. Driven by curiosity, she opened Pandora's box.

James had a similar experience with his AVATAR. His attributes screen began with:

Race: Human Gender: Male Height: 5' 10" Weight: 162 lbs Hair Color: Light Brown Eye Color: Blue Skin Tone: Beige

He left most of his features alone after he realized that there wasn't a slider for muscle volume. 'Must be tied to the strength stat,' he thought. He'd always wanted to be taller, but, when presented with the possibility, he decided to leave it. Thoughts of elves and dwarves running through his mind, he excitedly opened the Race tab and mentally gaped. The list had to be a hundred entries long, if not more. Some, like dwarf, set a cap on his height, while others, like half-giant, set a minimum. He slowly tried every single race, mentally making a list of which ones to come back and choose between.

In the end, it was straight numbers that drove his choice. He'd read in the class notes that his primary stat was dexterity, so he looked for bonuses to that. Mobility was also important, he needed to be able to get close-ish to enemies to attack and away for safety, so he looked for those bonuses, too.

Some races had the innate ability to fly: fairies, aven (half-bird looking people), harpies, and about a half-dozen others. As James thought about his class, he realized there was a big problem: he relied on equipped weapons, and the flying races had massively reduced carrying capacity. He'd be crippling his potential with such a race. Briefly, he considered the oversized races like the half-giant, but they already had extended reach. Again, not the best use of his class abilities.

His final list of possibilities included the Half-Wyrm, a half-reptile race with a bonus to agility and a weakness to cold which had a mostly human torso and head, but a lizard's tail, legs, and arms; the Dark Elf, what he assumed was an overly-popular race that also had a bonus to agility and additional bonuses for being in the dark; and the Gargoyle, which gave an affinity to stone, an aversion to light, and great acrobatic abilities.

The dark elf looked cool, really cool, but James didn't want to be lost in a sea of other dark elves. He wanted to be just a little different. After a long moment of indecision, he clicked the Gargoyle and examined the changes.

His avatar's boots were unequipped as his feet elongated into the digitigrade form common in animals like birds and canids. His skin changed to a stone grey and his hair went black. A tail sprouted from the base of his spine, and a pair of horns adorned his brow. He almost missed the more claw-like fingernails. Exiting the race selection screen, James saw that new options had been added for the new features.

Not wanting to draw too much attention to himself, he changed the skin tone to a very light grey (as greyscale colors were all that were available), that could pass for human unless you examined him closely. Hair colors were similarly limited to black, silver, white, and greys. He chose a grey slightly darker than his skin.

After playing with horn options, he decided to go without, since that was available. Now, from the waist up, James could easily pass for human. Removing all ornamentation from the tail made it look too rat-like, so he added back a fin-shaped ridge down the top. Wings were an add-on option, but with their drawbacks, he left them off.

An obscene amount of time later, after nearly changing his mind dozens of times, James gathered his courage and hit CONFIRM. A flash of light later, he was back in the forest. An exasperated "Finally!" made him turn around.

"Felid?" James asked.

The new Sarah nodded. "I'm a cat!"

Honestly, she didn't look all that different, considering the options that were available. Cream-colored cat ears adorned the sides of her head, and she now had a fluffy tail of the same color with a stripe near the tip that matched the black curly hair she'd always had. The same cream-colored fur that covered her ears and tail ran down each side of her body starting from just beneath her ears.

"Nice, what were the racial bonuses?" James asked.

"Bonuses?" she replied, quirking her head at an angle.

"Yeah, like how my gargoyle gives me extra dexterity every level and a buff to some mobility skills. What does the felid give you?"

"Huh," Sarah shrugged. I didn't look. I mostly picked out a good fur color to go with my skin and got rid of the weird backward knees like you got." She hurriedly added, "They look good on you, though."

"It's not my knees, it's actually the ankle-nevermind. You picked a race without knowing how it would synergize with your class?"

"Yeah. I mean, I figured a big, beefy race might make more sense for a shield-toting class, but it's still gotta be me, right? It's not like we shut the game off and go back to our normal lives. I wanted to be comfortable and happy in my skin, so... kitty."

James couldn't argue with that.