The first things I remembered were voices. I couldn’t understand them at first. That followed after by sights. I was sleepy, and hungry, but I saw a few things. Big, hairy men with large muscles wearing furs. The women were also strong-looking. Not female body builder, but definitely more Xena: Warrior Princess than Sex in the City. Couldn’t really think too much. So tired. I remember eating, and then sleep. Yeah, newborns aren’t really known for their witty dialogue.

Luskari Tribeswoman

You have been born into a tribe of Luskari. These wanderers of the northern tundras are fiercely independent individuals who take pride in their personal honor, though they care little for the laws of ‘civilized’ lands. Most warriors of the tribe follow the call of Tempus, the God of Battles, and bear a deep distrust of arcane magic.

Automatic Language added: Luskari

Twice-Souled

You are one who remembers the events of their prior life in another world. You retain your intellect and awareness despite being newborn. You are more aware than normal children, and learn languages faster. Speak Language always costs 1 Skill point for you, despite whether it is a class skill or not.

Winterborn

You are an Unseelie Fey who was born in the midst of Winter. As such, you gain the seasonal power Winter’s Chill.

Winter’s Chill (Su) – You possess an ethereal beauty that is discomfiting to those not of fey blood. All living nonfey within 5’ of you take a morale penalty on all saves equal to your CHA (min 1).

Those were my first real, conscious memories. They were actual screens, like the old man showed me in the strange between place where I’d been given this second chance. Unfortunately, this wasn’t some kind of light novel. If there was any way to call up the menu screen for a review, like with a hand gesture or secret phrase, I hadn’t found it.

I was in a large tent. The Tribe of the Elk, my new tribe, were nomads. Well, semi-nomadic, at least. They followed the herds on the tundra, usually going to a few set locations throughout the year. But that meant they had very few permanent buildings. When it came time to move, they would pack up the village, and move the whole thing with them.

Being able to understand the world as a newborn infant was frustrating. I was a teenager trapped in a body that could barely move, had trouble keeping awake, and couldn’t speak. But I knew things. My name was Melinda Eriksdaughter, and I was special. Somehow, the people knew that I was a Transfer… no, they called them Twice-Souled here. They knew that, and that I was blessed by Auril. Don’t know how. Maybe I would find out more when I got older.

I knew other things. My mother was a druid, someone that used a kind of divine magic that derived from nature itself. I wasn’t sure how it worked, but it was different from the ‘arcane’ stuff that the tribe worried about. I had trouble focusing on faces, but she looked pretty. And she had… well, let’s just say that if I was a boy in my old life, I would have had some weird feelings about being so intimately aware of a bust like that, attached to a blood relative. Her name was Sig Nalfdaughter.

My father, though, was an important man in the tribe. Erik Olrikson was not the chief, or one of the elders, but a strong warrior, one of the strongest. Respected, that is the word. When he spoke, people listened, even if they didn’t agree. He was big, and strong, like others of the tribe. He carried around a massive twin-bladed axe all the time. Probably what he used in battle. They didn’t talk much about that, not while I was awake.

That was another thing I noticed. People tried to keep their voices down around me, when they realized I was awake. They knew I was Twice-Souled, somehow. They knew I could hear them, and understand them. I think that frightened them, even more than the fact that my aura made them uncomfortable when they were near.

One made the mistake of saying they should… do something to me. Kill me, maybe? Father did not like that at all. He yelled loudly, and they tried yelling back. They touched their sword, and Father pulled his axe. They were noisy, and I couldn’t see much, bundled up as I was, but I saw the rude man’s head fly past me, so it is safe to say that the issue was handled. That was the first time I saw someone die in this world.

It was annoying being able to understand what was going on, but not being able to communicate because I had yet to develop enough to do so physically, let alone verbally. Well, not in any meaningful way of communicating. Letting someone know I was pleased, or upset, or hungry, or whatever was all simple enough. Anything more complicated than that was simply not in the cards.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t learning, though. Since I was a Twice-Souled, Mother and Father decided to start teaching me about this world whenever I was awake. They would tell me stories about their youth, about how they met, about how Father survived his first hunt as a man… And they would tell me about how this world worked. The Voice of the World was what people called the blue screens that showed up now and then. The Voice connected all things, even animals and magical beasts, in the System which guided the world. Most could only see the Voice when it wished to speak.

To look at one’s information otherwise required a special talisman bound to your blood. It would allow you to see how the Voice of the World rated you. The Tribe made sure any member of the tribe that passed their coming of age was given a talisman, but they rarely checked theirs, unless the Voice told them they had leveled up. They did not care for the way the Voice reduced a person to a bunch of numbers. It went against their sensibilities to think of the strength of your arm as a simple number, and those numbers took no account for a warrior’s spirit, or other such things. Battles were won or lost by the weapon in one’s hand, not numbers on a screen that wasn’t there most of the time.

Indeed, Father himself told me that while only a fool disregarded the numbers of the System entirely, it was a greater fool that relied on such things in the course of battle. He, himself, would not be here today if he simply followed what the numbers said. When I was a little over two months old, and able to keep awake for longer periods of time, he told me the story of his first hunt, where he became a man of the tribe.

It was a little over ten years ago, when he was a young warrior, barely into his fifteenth winter on the tundra, but he was no old enough to be called a man. And so, he and three other young hunters gathered under the lead of two of the veteran warriors of the tribe, and went to seek the herds so they could stock up on meat for the winter, before it became too bitterly cold to do much in the way of hunting. Together, the six of them ventured out, looking for the mighty tundra elk or perhaps the great northern bears. What they found was worse, far worse.

It was Feirr who stumbled upon the lair by accident, and disturbed the beast’s slumber. From beneath the snow erupted a terror of the tundra, a mighty monster known to the town-dwellers as a remorhaz. The tribes called its kind Flameshells, for the creatures were like the insects of warmer places, but heated with an inner fire the likes of which could only be magical. A blade of metal or a weapon of bone or wood, when striking a flameshell’s hide, risked being destroyed from that inner heat. A warrior who merely touched the thing by accident would receive grievous wounds as though burned!

Truly, here was a creature that was a worthy threat to the tribes, one that needed to be eliminated. By the Voice of the world, the two veterans were all Level 7, and Father and his friends were Level 3. By the numbers the Voice of the World had relayed from the System, they were in dire straits, with little chance of surviving the coming battle. But, in their hearts, they knew that they could not leave such a beast alone, not so close to the camp. And even if they could leave it here, they would sooner die than lead the creature back to the camp.

And so, they threw themselves into the fray against the giant insectoid creature with cries to Tempus upon their lips! They fought as warriors, but, one by one, they fell, the mighty creature’s inner fire burning those who touched it, and ruining weapons that had served faithfully for years, some even handed down from fathers to sons. In the end, Father was the last one standing, even though he was gravely wounded. With a final roar, he flung himself at the beast, and his axe bit deep, delivering the final blow and extinguishing the creature’s fire forever!

He cut off the story there, looking out into the distance at something only he could see. “I nearly perished from my wounds as the battle fire left me, and my blood stained the snowy tundra. I had used the very last of my strength to end the creature, but at that point, I knew my end was upon me. If I had taken out my talisman and looked at what the Voice of the World had to show me, I have no doubts that it would have said my death was inevitable, and only moments away.”

I cocked my head to the side, trying to indicate confusion. If he’d been mortally wounded, how was he still here? Father simply laughed, and said, “Yes, my girl, I had a similar reaction when I woke up. Remember, the Voice of the World and the System it serves are not the only powers in this world. The gods are another source of power in the world. No mortal truly knows their secrets, for they seem to us to be both within the System and outside of it, in ways we cannot understand. But it is known that, if you live your life in a way that impresses them, or do acts which draw their attention, they may, at times, intercede, and change the fate that the System imposes.”

I reached out for his beard, and made a play at grabbing it. “Yes, yes, the story. Well, I will not go into the secrets of the Gods, not now, and not until you have unlocked your path. You already know your path, your classes, I don’t doubt. That is what they say of Twice-Souled, after all. But you will not gain access to your abilities until you reach the proper age, and begin to take your steps as a woman of the tribe, like the others. On the day you become a woman of the tribe, I will tell you the full story, so you may look forward to it then.”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. Your pout won’t change my mind so easily. Anyway, when I awoke, I found my wounds healed, and so I took the head of the great beast as a trophy, while piling together the bodies of my tribesmen on the sled we had brought to haul our game back to the camp. Now, it was a grimmer duty that I put the sled to, but necessary. I would not leave the fallen to the ravages of the carrion feeders. That would be against all honor.”

“The tale of slaying the Fireshell grew quickly, since the young and the womenfolk have nothing better to do than gossip, save only your Mother, who I am sure is not behind me with her cooking pot. It was through this fame that I was able to gain the opportunity for new victories, and those victories eventually culminated in the greatest victory, my taking your mother as my mate. Or some would say that she took me. At any rate, it was because of that hunt that I met a woman who completes me in a way that I never knew was possible, and a little bundle of joy with a soul from another world to raise and shape in the way of the tribe. So that hunt made me into what I am today, and I am only here now because I never let the Voice’s numbers rule my life. Something to think on, little one.”