The necromancer nodded his head at Tialyn's questioning of the outfit, even as she inspected it on her body.<strong> "Yes, take it and good luck on your quest adventurer." </strong>The NPC said in a way that again made her think that it was being controlled by a person.  The two exited the basement and just before she left his shop he reached out and gripped her wrist.  Turning to look at him he said,<strong>"Game Pause.  You've gained quite a bit of attention Callie, and you've already secured a top three position out of all the contestants in point values.  While we game masters try not to get too involved in the game I have a bit of advice for you.  The quest to defeat the pharoh could easily secure you a massive point lead, I can see you're thinking about doing that right away.  But you're not strong enough yet to take him on solo.  At least not strong enough to take him on and win, at least not unless you got very lucky.  But being defeated and losing half your points isn't the worst thing, if you lose in a way that pleases our viewers, that could lead to a greater point gain down the road.  Still you might want to consider teaming up with at least one other before attempting it if you want to win."</strong>He hesitated for a moment and let go of her wrist and then added,<strong>"There are other things that could help you though if you want to try taking him on yourself, unfortunately I can't give you that information."</strong><br/><br/>He smiled and moved to open the door for her and said,<strong>"But I hope you do well, I've got money riding on you."</strong>Then he opened the door and softly said,<strong>"resume normal recording mode, end GM mode."</strong>With that word the NPC seemed to stiffen and straighten back into a very rigid form.  The tone of voice of the necromancer felt just a little bit flatter as it looked at Tialyn and said,<strong>"Good evening adventurer."</strong>It was clear that whoever had been pioliting the NPC was now gone.  But how long had they been controlling the NPC?  Before she'd walked in?  Since the ritual?  Did it matter?<br/><br/>She exited out into the night, the city sleepy and quiet even though the purple sky above told her that dawn was not far off.  She'd spent a long time in that ritual after all if it was closing on morning of her second game day.  But she was in the top three point values of all contestants, and probably stronger than most players in the game thanks to her ritual.  That had to count for something, right?  Still the necromancer's words did give her pause.  Should she head straight off for the deserts to the north to seek out the pharoh's tomb, or should she seek to team up with others, or maybe hunt down more information?  It was an important decision, especially considering her rank in the point values.  She hadn't visited the inn yet, she could always set this as her home city for now, because if she died, she'd respawn at the default elven starting area, a location that would likely be very easy for her, and also afford her very few points.  Then again, she'd also wasted a lot of time in that ritual, and that had to be taken into account.<br/><br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Character sheet</div><div class="spoiler_body"><div class="floatright"><div align="center"><em>(https://i.imgur.com/6gdNjsW.jpg)<br/>Tialyn Luxora</em></div></div><strong>Character:</strong> Tialyn Luxora<br/>RL Name: Callie Liddle<br/>RL Age: 20<br/><br/><strong>Score:</strong> 232<br/><strong>Heat:</strong> 39<br/><strong>Hero/Whore:</strong> 0/7 <br/><br/><strong>Mental Strength:</strong> 5<br/><strong>Mental Agility:</strong> 5<br/><strong>Mental Discipline:</strong> 3<br/><strong>Mana (current / max):</strong> 3/3<br/><strong>Class Ability:</strong> Draw essence = When Tialyn fucks a living creature, she can choose to draw forth it's life force and create a 'essence shard.'  This draw will weaken most people or kill weaker beings or creatures.  While she has an essence shard bound to her soul, she can resist death once.  She can also burn the shard to empower a spell or an attack.<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Spells</div><div class="spoiler_body"><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Spells</strong></td><td> - </td><td>Mana</td><td> - </td><td>Effect</td></tr><tr><td>Spike of Disease</td><td> - </td><td> 1 </td><td> - </td><td>Release a bolt of necromatic energy at range that causes minor damage to a living target</td></tr><tr><td>Invisibility to undead </td><td> - </td><td> 1 </td><td> - </td><td>Allows the caster to become invisible to any undead creatures for a very short time</td></tr><tr><td>Disease Cloud</td><td> - </td><td> 2 </td><td> - </td><td>Release a cloud of necromatic energy at range that causes minor damage to any living creatures caught in the area of effect</td></tr><tr><td>Siphon Strength</td><td> - </td><td> 2 </td><td> - </td><td>Temporarily steal a small fraction of a target's strength to bolster your own</td></tr><tr><td>Leering Corpse</td><td> - </td><td> 3 </td><td> - </td><td>Summon a mindless skeletal minion<br/>(Requires one bone chip to cast) </td></tr><tr><td>Lifetap</td><td> - </td><td> 1 </td><td> - </td><td>Drain a small portion of health from a target, healing your own wounds in the process.</td></tr><tr><td> </td><td>  </td><td> </td><td>  </td><td> </td></tr></tbody></table></div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Items</div><div class="spoiler_body"><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Item</strong></td><td> - </td><td>Amount</td><td> - </td><td>Effect</td></tr><tr><td>Speckled Red Mushrooms</td><td>  </td><td> 1 </td><td>  </td><td>Consume to immediately reroll any roll.<br/>Must take second roll result<br/>Comes with unknown side effect </td></tr><tr><td>Iron Rations</td><td>  </td><td> 5 </td><td>  </td><td>Consume to add +1 to your next combat roll.</td></tr><tr><td>Water Flask </td><td>  </td><td> 5 </td><td>  </td><td>Consume to restore 1 mana or grant a temporary point of mana. </td></tr><tr><td>Basic Lantern</td><td>  </td><td> 1 </td><td>  </td><td>Create light (obviously)</td></tr></tbody></table></div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Outfits</div><div class="spoiler_body"><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Starter Outfit</div><div class="spoiler_body"><div class="floatright"><div class="floatright"><div align="center"><em>(https://i.imgur.com/EiCJ46W.jpg)<br/>Starter</em></div></div><br/><br/>Tialyn's Starter Outfit consists of a white leather coat that reaches from shoulders to hips, with a high neck and full sleeves.  On her left side the coat ends at the top of the hip but slants downwards to the right to just barely cover her sex and then drop off to a 1/8th tail on the left side.  It barely closes in the front protecting her modesty in only the most minimal of fashion, and leaves most of her belly and chest exposed.  Lack of any undergarments with this coat mean that it is very easy to expose herself, either voluntarily or not.  Her weapon with her starter outfit is an elven blade known as a 'Da' which is a longsword with a long handle that lets it function as a spear or short polearm and can be wielded one handed or two handed.</div></div></div><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Shadow Knight Quest Outfit</div><div class="spoiler_body"><div class="floatright"><div class="floatright"><div align="center"><em>(https://i.imgur.com/6gdNjsW.jpg)<br/>Shadow Knight</em></div></div><br/><br/>Tialyn's Shadow Knight Quest Outfit composes primarily of black iron plate armor and black leather holding the armor in place.  Asymmetrical black iron gauntlets and greaves constitute the majority of the armor.  The metal of both are threaded through with golden symbols of death, and the greaves, shaped like grasping fingers coiling around her legs, ending in arched stiletto heels.  Her nethers are covered by skin tight black leather garments that might be described as aggressively small boy shorts, and her top matches with a classic bikini style top.  A black half cloak cascades down the back offering some sense of modesty from behind at least.  This outfit came with a weapon, a curved cleaving sword contained a pommel adorned with a grinning skull whose eyes glowed with a dim purple light.  The sword was perfectly balanced for her form and was meant to be used as a slashing weapon.</div></div></div></div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Advantages</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Advantages:</strong><br/>i) Intuition - Our heroine might not be book-smart, but she has a knack for figuring things out. ("This is the end that shoots bullets, right?") Beginners sometimes get lucky, after all...And sometimes, on the virtual battlefield, a good guess is better than all the knowledge in the world! <br/>ii) Attractive - No two ways about it...Our heroine's *hot*. She's not just a babe virtually, she's hot IRL too...Which makes her very popular indeed, on both fronts. (The fans seem to love it, and who can blame them?)<br/>iii) Minor Celebrity - Streamer - Callie already has built a decent following on her stream.nn page.  She's going to have a fan base that's going to cheer her on and try to help her in game as supporters instead of going in as an unknown.</div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Flaws</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Flaws:</strong><br/>i) Vain - It's hard to be a streamer without being just a *bit* of an attention whore. And our girl has it *bad*. She just loves the adulation of her fans...And she's oh-so-willing to do what it takes to keep them interesting. (This isn't just showing off - She's more likely to take risks, even when they'd work against her.)<br/>ii) Trouble Magnet - It happens. If there's a one-in-a-million chance that something could go wrong...It *will*, and she'll probably be right at the heart of it. Things just keep getting drawn to her, one way or another. <br/>iii) Livestreaming - The world is watching her, not just in game, but also her real life as she goes through this lewd quest.  Any failures to her heat rating are going to more severe, as people are seeing that failure on two fronts. </div></div><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Fetishes</div><div class="spoiler_body"><strong>Fetishes:</strong><br/>i) The Gross / Ugly<br/>ii) The Undead<br/>iii) Goblinoids</div></div></div></div>