CrushDaddyXx

  Dammit Zeke, you can’t just leave us with a cliffhanger. What happened next? Did you manage to bandage up Corva so he wouldn’t die? Is he okay? Is he still injured? Are you going the tragic mentor route in your fanfic where he dies in your arms but gives you some last minute advice? Did he tell you to trust in the force and search for Yoda on Dagobah?

  STOP CLIFFHANGING US!!!

  Josh183rd

  And you forgot to tell us how you lost your arm. I got bets with a few people on the forum about what happened.

  From what you’ve written so far it sounds like it’s only broken or mangled. But other people are convinced it got lopped clean off. There’s bets that it happened because you were unanchored and started poofing away, or because the bone kaiju thing actually managed to hit you.

  Please confirm so I can either gloat or quietly disappear.

  UnhelpfullyHelpful

  It wouldn’t have been because he was unanchored. He already told us how he got his class and didn’t mention anything about slowly unraveling. Whoever bet on that lost already.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  | And you forgot to tell us how you lost your arm. |

  That’s literally in the next part of the story. It’s coming up, don’t worry. I just wanted to pause here and check in with Venerated to see if he actually wrote anything about the Rockstar class.

  Also, I feel like I’ve earned some help at this point. I told you all about heading into the Valley and earning a class and running from skeletons and almost getting flattened by a massive mountain of bones. Like I said before, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get complaints about what happened next, so I’ve come to collect before I tell you all anything else.

  MinMaxMike

  Here Zeke, I’ll give you everything you need about the Rockstar class.

  Performance = convincing a crowd to do what you want.

  Instrument Mastery = playing the guitar gud.

  Persona = a very good series of JRPGs about Japanese folklore and tarot cards.

  There. Everything has been explained, now get back to the story before Crush explodes.

  NullSigil (PRIMARY)

  I actually agree with Zeke. As the primary - yes, look upon me and despair - I hereby decree that Zeke has earned himself some commentary and advice.

  We couldn’t really help him in the valley with the echoes or the sound bubbles, but now that he’s out we can give him a bit of guidance.

  If only there were someone with deep knowledge about the Rockstar class. Someone with a loud opinion and a bunch of Time who could help our boy. That would be amazing.

  CrimsonProphecy88

  HAAAAA.

  PaperSnakes

  It’s funny because Venerated likes a shit game.

  Angurvddel

  Hey Z3ke, quick question.

  Why aren’t you just searching through the wiki or the forum for any of your answers? The forum clearly has a ton of resources in it, but you only ever seem to use the information presented to you here. Can you just not access the rest of the forum? Are you stuck in the fanfic section?

  Because if you’re trapped in the fanfic section while insisting this isn’t a fanfic, that’s objectively hilarious.

  VeneratedWitchHunter

  First of all: fuck all of you.

  Second: I will help Zeke, but only if he says something nice about Shards of Time.

  We all know you’re a fan, Zeke. Don’t play coy. You literally picked a cut-content class from the game for your OC. I’ve got a bunch of notes all written up and ready to be pasted here. All it needs is for you to tell these heathens that Shards is a great game.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  Angurvddel - I can’t access the wiki. It’s on a different site and I can’t get to it from here. I would absolutely love to just scroll through the wiki and get answers to all my questions, but it doesn’t work like that.

  I tried reading through the rest of the forum, but navigating it is a nightmare. There isn’t a great search function and threads are like…167 pages long and they ramble and go off on random tangents. Half the time I click on a thread it’s a decades-old argument that assumes I know a shit ton of lore.

  You all have a problem with your acronyms. I don’t know what half of it means and it makes me feel like an old person talking to children about why they keep yelling 67 or what the hell skibbidi toilet is. (Don’t know any of that, and have no interest in learning about it.)

  I tried reading one lore thread and it felt like that part of the bible that is just “Solomon begat Josiah. And Josiah begat Steve. And Steve begat…” I just gave up on it.

  Venerated - never played the game and don’t understand why everyone hates it. As for the one nice thing: it is definitely one of the games of all time.

  NullSigil (PRIMARY)

  Come on Venerated. He said the thing. Give him some advice. Just a Shard of it would be helpful right now.

  Hambone

  Venerated, people aren’t saying boo. They’re saying boo-urns.

  VeneratedWitchHunter

  Fine. I’ll explain this so that the rest of your story doesn’t turn into a train wreck of poor class mechanics. Also, you obviously did your homework on the cut content.

  You unlocked the Rockstar class and that gave you three starred skills: Performance, Instrument Mastery, and Persona. Everyone in this thread has seen Bard stuff before, but you’re not making an Emberveil fic and you’re very clearly not doing a 1:1 port of the Bard class, so there are going to be little differences.

  Let’s start with Performance. It’s not just lying really well, and don’t listen to MinMaxMike when he talks about it being about convincing and deceiving crowds. Think of it like charisma or speech in most other RPGs. It’s about getting crowds to like you and think you’re trustworthy and getting them to go along with what you want and all that jazz.

  Performance is all about presentation. It’s acting, singing, playing music, storytelling, juggling knives, commanding a stage and holding attention. It’s about how well you project emotion outwards to a crowd, and how well you can shape the mood of a space and keep people looking at you.

  In the Fracture-verse, people often conflate Performance and Persuasion. Bards get both skills and they’re often mashed together. BUT THEY ARE DIFFERENT.

  Performance is outward facing and all about the AOE. It’s about how far your influence carries, how many people it touches, and whether it can snowball through a crowd.

  Persuasion is intimate and one-on-one. It’s all about convincing a single person. It’s about negotiation and manipulation and getting someone across a table to say yes to what you want.

  Persuasion is the skill you use to talk the king into sparing you. Performance is the skill you use to turn a crowd against the king.

  GrognarTheGreen, earlier in the thread, talked about playing a bard in BG3 and he was able to convince boss monsters to death. That’s persuasion 10. You become a silver-tongued nightmare. Performance, at the higher levels, is riots. It’s revolutions. It’s mass morale shift. It’s turning an army’s fear into courage, or spreading panic.

  Now, Instrument Mastery. MinMaxMike is wrong here when he says it’s about playing the guitar gud. Instrument Mastery is all about bodily familiarity with a tool as an extension of yourself. Mechanically, it sits closer to Blade Mastery or Firearm Handling than anything else.

  Here’s the weird thing about Bards and Rockstars. Bards cap their Instrument Mastery at 7. Canonically, that’s because Bards aren’t all about the music. Their class skills are Performance, Persuasion, and History. They’re more about presence and story telling and social manipulation than the music.

  Now…Persona. We don’t have any real documentation on Persona. I will say that MinMaxMike is wrong here too. It’s not going to be about tarot cards and a JRPG. If you do go that route with this fanfic, I’m definitely dropping it because at that point you’re just mixing and matching fandoms and that is even worse than the crimes you’ve already committed against the lore.

  If I had to guess, Persona is about identity. It’s probably something to do with stage presence. But that’s entirely speculation at this point. Feel free to write it however you want.

  7Spirals

  | It’s about getting crowds to like you and think you’re trustworthy and getting them to go along with what you want and all that jazz. |

  Is that a bard joke? Kudos.

  VeneratedWitchHunter

  | Is that a bard joke? |

  No.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  Aren’t Bards supposed to be professional performers? How come they can’t push their Instrument Mastery past 7? And why the hell do they get History? That feels…random.

  VeneratedWitchHunter

  Because Bards are storytellers first. The instrument is just a prop or a medium for the storytelling. What matters most is the audience and the story they are telling.

  As for History, that’s actually the backbone of the class. Bards gather stories and they preserve memories. They turn events into a narrative. To do that they need lore and context and the ability to piece together what happened and why it mattered.

  Your buddy Cole is a great researcher but a shit storyteller. If he had a Bard come along and tell the story of the Valley of Echoes, the narrative would have been so much tighter and cleaner.

  MapHackJunkie

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Ooooo, Zeke, as someone who’s genuinely enjoying this story, you should seriously consider unlocking History and pushing it to 10.

  You’ve already been doing a bunch with history anyway. Half your adventure so far made me think you were going to write an archaeologist build for your OC. I honestly thought you were setting up an Indiana Jones style character who has been isekai’d into Fracture and has to dig through the ruins to find his way back home. So, narratively that skill would fit with everything you’ve written so far.

  Also, History 10 gives you psychometry. That means visions and emotional impressions that are tied to places and objects. Think of how useful that would have been in your adventures so far. You could’ve solved the mystery of the Eaters back at the Glens. You could’ve warned Cole not to mess with the bones. You could even help him write his book about the Eight Day Thunder and make a disgusting amount of money.

  Just saying.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  I mean, yea, that sounds useful. I keep stumbling into weird situations where that might help. But I only have those three starred skills. I thought the entire point of classes was that they were the only way to get skills past 7. Pick a class, get a few things you can specialize in, and accept that everything else tops out at you being a very talented human.

  Are there other ways to unlock skills that aren’t hard-capped at the human limit?

  StoryLeech

  Zeke, I say this with love…but we already told you all this. You’re probably going to say that you were busy trying not to die at the time, which is a fair argument.

  Yes, classes define what you can naturally push past 7. They’re the easy way to get a skill into superhuman, but they aren’t the only way. There are other methods - artifacts, potions, talents, location-based rewards, permanent faction buffs - but there’s a catch. Almost all of them are one-time deals. Once you use them, that’s it. And most of them are locked behind end game content.

  Unfortunately for you, one of the easiest cap-breakers in Frontiers was the House of Seasons and you soft-locked yourself out of it.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  What do you mean? I remember you guys screaming at me when you thought I killed the Blooming Witch, but I just solved her little puzzle. How is that a soft-lock?

  GreenThumbAI

  How it normally works is if you kill the Blooming Witch she drops a unique alchemical reagent. There’s only one. If you brew the right potion with it, you can permanently push any skill past the human cap. That reagent is a one-time reward for the House.

  But you didn’t kill the Witch. You solved the echo puzzle thing there, and because of that the state of the House changes permanently. If you go back now, the Blooming Witch is still there and she’s calm and grateful and she thanks you for what you did.

  But she’s also untargetable. She doesn’t have a health bar and there’s no dialogue choices that can lead you into combat with her. You literally cannot fight her anymore. Which means no reagent.

  NullSigil (PRIMARY)

  This is a known tradeoff now. At this point, everyone understands that the choice the House offers is basically: alchemical reagent that breaks a skill cap OR dimensional storage.

  Most people take the storage. Once you have it, it completely trivializes half the survival mechanics in the game. It is just so OP. Food scarcity is gone. Encumbrance is irrelevant. Logistics are optional.

  Solving the puzzle gives you one of the strongest quality-of-life rewards in Frontiers and everyone is willing to make that tradeoff.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  Okay. I missed out on the reagent, but I can live with that. I can carry an entire expedition’s worth of supplies without breaking my back and that feels like a pretty fair trade. But can someone come up with a list of other things that can help me push above 7 in other class skills? That would be great.

  And if anyone has any idea what the whole persona skill does, I’d appreciate you telling me. Also, do my class skills train up faster? Or am I gonna be stuck trying to grind them up until I’m not so useless anymore?

  As payment for all that, I’ll keep on with the story about how my arm got so messed up and we met up with a caravan and are currently heading back to The MIZ. Just…try and keep a few things in mind here.

  First, this is all actually happening to me. I don’t get to decide what other people do or how they react or how much of an asshole they are. This isn’t a story where I’m like “oh, wouldn’t it be cool if x y or z happened?” People are dicks and they do dickish shit and I shouldn’t be blamed for it.

  Second, none of y’all warned me about any of this when the expedition started…so in a way what happened next is kinda your fault.

  We had just left the valley, running like bats out of hell, and then we realized nothing was chasing us anymore. We didn’t need to deal with any sound bubbles or echoes or a massive bone mountain anymore. We’d come out on the western side of the valley, and we’d have to walk the long way around to get back to The MIZ, but we were free and clear.

  All of us fell to the ground gasping for air and trying to calm our nerves. Each of us was sporting injuries of some kind, but Corva definitely had it the worst. He just sort of…ran out of momentum when we stopped running for our lives.

  One second he was standing upright and forcing himself to move, the next he’d fallen to his knees and then fell to his back and that was it. All the adrenaline that had kept him going through the valley and towards freedom had finally burned out and the only thing that was left was a shit ton of injuries.

  His entire left arm was mangled to hell. His duster had been slashed to ribbons and blood stained his body. He was growing paler by the second and I noticed him start to shiver. Shock. That’s what it was.

  I’d broken my arm a couple years back and was able to walk my way to the hospital because it was only around three blocks from my apartment. When I got there and was put on a gurney I’d been okay. About five minutes later I was shivering like I’d been caught in the middle of a blizzard. I tried peeling myself up off the gurney and my body was like “go fuck yourself.” That was what Corva looked like at that moment.

  All of us were frozen in place. We didn’t know what to do. Pell looked at Wren who looked at Cole and I could tell by their faces that they had no idea what they needed to do to help Corva. He was the guy who told us where to go. He told us when to fight and when to run, how to set up our camp, and he got us through the valley in one piece. Seeing him there, all broken and bleeding, knocked us all for a loop.

  I was the first to move, mostly because my brain remembered the one useful thing I could do. I reached into my dimensional storage space and pulled out the bandages that Cole had bought at the beginning of the expedition. I had a ton of wraps and salves and medical shit that I didn’t fully understand but that would be helpful at that moment. Corva knew first aid, not me, so I dropped to my knees beside him and held out the bandages, feeling stupid and helpless.

  “I…I’ve got supplies,” I stammered. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I think you can walk me through it.”

  Corva glanced over at the bandages and winced. He shook his head, as if saying that it was too late. Then, with shaking fingers, he reached into his duster and pulled out a small wooden object. It was an ankh. One of the many he’d been carving on the journey.

  This one was much older than the kind that I’d seen him fiddling with. It was worn smooth in places and looked well cared for. He clutched it in his good right hand and muttered something under his breath. A prayer, maybe? I couldn’t hear the words and, now that I think about it, maybe that was the point.

  Suddenly there was a flash of fire and the smell of burnt meat and a white-hot pain that erupted from my chest. I yelped and fell back, grabbing whatever had burnt me and flinging it away from me.

  It was an ankh. The same one that Corva had given me and that I’d been wearing around my neck like a good luck charm. The wood of the ankh had caught fire and seared me, leaving a large, angry burn mark that was already blistering.

  The first coherent thought running through my mind was great, I’m gonna need a new shirt. My El Pedro’s shirt, already torn and filthy and worn, had been charred to a crisp and a massive hole had been burnt through it.

  The thought that followed immediately after, both louder and more panicked, was how the hell did a wooden ankh burn me?

  I glanced over at Corva, the puzzled look on my face mirrored on his own. He was still clutching his own ankh as his gaze dropped to my chest and the massive burn mark there.

  “You…” His voice was rough, shredded by pain and exhaustion. “You earned a class.”

  It was a statement, not a question. That alone should have tipped me off that things had just got weird, but I’d been burned and was confused and exhausted from running so much.

  “Yea,” I mumbled. “It happened when we got separated. The echoes cornered me and…something happened.”

  Corva coughed out a wet, ugly sound and for a second it looked like he was about to laugh. Instead, his face twisted into anger.

  “I told you not to-” he sucked in a breath, grimacing as the pain cut his sentence short. “I told you not to choose one.”

  His words came out bitter and angry. All of us were shocked at the sudden heat in his voice. Pell took an involuntary step back while Cole and Wren exchanged a concerned look. It was obvious they were confused about why Corva was suddenly so angry.

  I stared at Corva, suddenly very uneasy. “Corva, I didn’t-”

  He tossed his ankh away from him like it had burned him too. I made to reach for it and hand it back to him, wondering if maybe he wanted to say a prayer or something. Before I could get too far, motion caught my eye. Corva reached into his duster and pulled out one of the two wooden knives sheathed there.

  It’s odd what your mind comes up with in moments of extreme danger. Instead of thinking “Corva isn’t in his right mind and now he’s got a weapon, I should be careful.” All I could think about was that knife. It was one of the knives he’d made for his girls, back when he’d been living in that small village. It was a knife made after he cut down that Heart Tree, back before everything went to shit in his life.

  “Corva,” Cole said. “Hey. Hey…slow down. Tell us how to help you with the bandages. Tell us how we can fix you up.”

  With a speed that caught us all off guard, Corva slashed out with his wooden knife. I barely had time to register the attack before pain slashed through my chest. Some instinct in me had me falling backwards, trying to get away from the slash. If I hadn’t listened to that instinct, the cut would have sliced me open. Instead, the knife cut a shallow line across my chest, just beneath the burn mark.

  My mind was running on autopilot and it, again, came up with the stupidest question at that moment. How the hell can a wooden knife be so sharp?

  Seeing his first attack miss, Corva thrust the knife at me. It was a desperate and furious attack, aimed straight at my chest. I threw up my left arm and almost immediately regretted that decision.

  The blade cut into my left arm and pain exploded as the knife bit deep. And then it stopped. The wooden blade punched through my forearm and had gotten stuck there.

  I didn’t know that I was screaming until it came out raw and broken. My throat, already damaged from what had happened earlier with the echoes and the weird sound thing, gave out. Corva tried to pull the knife free, no doubt to make another attack, but it was stuck. It was caught on bone or muscle or tendon or something important. When he tried wresting the knife free, the pain was so intense I was blinded by it.

  For a heartbeat we both stared at the wooden knife buried in my arm. Then he let go. The wooden handle slipped from his fingers and the blade stayed in my forearm.

  Cole and Wren both took a panicked step backwards, both of them surprised at how fast this situation had turned. One second Corva was injured and furious and shouting, the next there was a wooden knife buried in my arm and he was trying to kill me.

  They couldn’t wrap their brains around what was happening. This wasn’t an echo attacking us. This wasn’t a jackal runner or its pack trying to hunt us. This was Corva. He was a legend in the Deadlands. He’d kept our morale up on our march through the Deadlands, joked with Pell and Wren, listened attentively whenever Cole spoke, and taught me everything I knew so far about my skills. What the hell was happening?

  Pell reacted quickly though. He rushed forward, his hands up like he was trying to calm a rampaging animal and his voice spilling out in a rush. “Hey. Hey, stop. Stop Corva. Corva, it’s Zeke. It’s us.”

  It was obvious that he couldn’t understand why Corva had snapped. Hell, none of us did. But he reacted quickest. He shoved himself between Corva and me, one arm out and the other reaching back to try and push me away. For a half second I thought it would work. I thought Corva would calm down and we’d all figure out what the fuck was happening.

  Corva’s face twisted and his hand reached back into his duster.

  “NO!” Cole shouted.

  But it was too late. Corva had unsheathed his second wooden knife and plunged it into Pell. There wasn’t any wind-up or warning. It wasn’t like in the movies where the actors telegraph their movements and it’s all a choreographed dance. Corva took a short step forward and that was it.

  The blade sank into Pell’s chest all the way to the hilt. I heard a grunt as all the air leaked out of his lungs. It reminded me of the train car and the bandits there. It reminded me of when I’d stabbed them. The blood on my hands. Their last breath. A quick thrust and that was all it took.

  Pell went slack and Corva shoved him to the side. Before I knew it he was on me. He grabbed the knife still lodged in my arm and ripped it free. I screamed as pain ripped through my body. The world spun and blood poured down my arm, splattering in the dust. My legs gave out and I fell back.

  I tried pushing myself back up. I tried defending myself. I tried bringing up my arm to stop the thrust of my knife, but my body didn’t want to listen to me anymore. Blood was pouring freely from me and I was getting woozy. My arm felt numb and on fire at the same time. When I tried to get up my legs buckled and I stumbled sideways and fall again.

  Corva loomed over me with his wooden knife raised in the air. His face was set now, no anger or fear there, just a calmness like he’d made peace with what he had to do. He stabbed. A rifle cracked, the sound impossibly loud in my ears. Corva’s body jerked sideways as the shot hit him and he stumbled and spun and collapsed to the ground.

  Wren was there, his rifle held at the ready as he looked down at Corva like he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. There was shock on his face. And confusion. Underneath all that was a thin thread of regret.

  Corva coughed and it came out wet and wrong. Before the three of us could react, he rolled to his side and forced himself to stand again. His eyes were locked onto me as he lunged.

  I twisted out of the way at the last second, falling sideways on my one good arm. The wooden knife clipped my left arm as he tried to tackle me, tearing a burning line through the muscle. I yelped and went sprawling and Wren stopped hesitating.

  He swung his rifle like a club and the strike landed with a dull sound. Wood and metal met bone. Corva’s head snapped to the side and he crumpled and collapsed. All the fight had finally left him. A wet, rattling cough escaped his mouth and his body shuddered before finally going still.

  A voice in the back of my head told me to get up and move and get as far away from the body as possible. Both Cole and Wren were wide-eyed, staring at where Corva had fallen. I saw Cole turn his head and take in Pell’s body. The wooden knife was still there in his chest and his head was lolled forward at an unnatural angle. His mouth hung open, a thin string of blood drooling out to puddle on the ground in front of him.

  Pell was dead. He’d tried helping me. He’d tried putting himself between me and Corva, and it got him killed.

  My heart was beating so hard and the adrenaline that had kept me going was starting to leak out of me. I barely noticed when Corva breathed his last breath and his body went slack and Pell’s head snapped up a second later.

  It was all so very sudden and violent and wrong. Pell took a coughing breath and then reached up with both hands and wrapped his fingers around the handle of the wooden knife. With a sharp, wet sound he yanked it from his chest. Blood spurted and Cole, Wren, and I just looked on in stunned horror.

  The wound in his chest snapped shut, the skin sealing itself like it had never been cut. I wanted to freak out. I wanted to demand answers. I wanted to know how Pell had just survived a knife to the chest. But before I could ask or get a handle on the situation, his face started to morph.

  All the slackness in his face drained out. The bones slid beneath skin like clay being reshaped. His jaw lengthened. His nose changed. His eyes darkened. In seconds, Pell was gone. And in his place was a man we’d seen across the campfire every night of our expedition. He had the same hard eyes and the same scarred features and the same wide grin. It was Corva, wearing Pell’s body like a borrowed coat.

  He moved so damn fast. One second he was grinning at us in Pell’s stolen body, and the next he was rushing at me with the wooden knife that had been buried in his chest stretching forward. I didn’t even have time to move.

  Wren was there in a blur of motion, swinging his rifle at Corva. The butt of the rifle cracked into Corva’s chest with a bone-jarring impact, sending him reeling back a step. But Corva recovered instantly.

  He slashed out and Wren tried to back out of range but he wasn’t fast enough. The knife opened his leg from thigh to knee. Wren went down with a grunt and blood spilled everywhere. Corva was on him instantly. He straddled Wren’s chest and raised the knife, driving it down towards him with both hands. Wren wrestled with him, trying desperately to keep the wooden knife from doing anymore damage.

  Cole finally broke out of his torpor. He yanked a slip of paper from his jacket and lunged at Corva, slapping it on his face. Corva lashed out, swiping with the wooden dagger and carving a red line across Cole’s stomach. Cole staggered back and grabbed at the wound and I could see blood welling up just under his hands.

  I was frozen. Wren was on the ground, trying to keep Corva away. I knew I had to do something. I reached into my dimensional storage space and pulled out my dull knife and tried to rush at Corva. I should tackle him, I thought to myself. I should throw myself at him and get him off of Wren. But when I tried to move, my body screamed at me and rebelled.

  All the fighting in the valley, all the close calls and the sprinting and the panic and the adrenaline and those moments of blind terror had finally caught up with me. I tried moving but couldn’t get free. I was rooted in place.

  Cole, still clutching at his stomach, muttered something under his breath. Both the slip of paper and Corva ignited. Flames burst blue and orange and licked their way across his skin. Corva screamed and slashed wildly, the wooden dagger cutting at the air. He was panicking, trying to carve the fire away from him or something equally as insane.

  What little adrenaline I had left kicked in and I rushed forward and shoved Corva as hard as I could. He tumbled away from Wren, hit the ground and rolled. He tried smothering the flames that coated his body, even as he hacked at the air with the dagger, trying desperately to hit someone. Wren scrambled backwards, dragging himself out of reach and leaving a dark smear of blood behind him.

  The three of us managed to back away, watching Corva writhe in agony. The flames burned hotter and Corva’s screams grew weaker before stopping altogether. His wooden knife was still gripped in his hand, now charred to a small stub.

  He finally stopped fighting and thrashing as he came to a stop on the ground. And this time he didn’t get back up.