Ember Resuine

NAME: Emily
AGE: over 18
CONTACT: deerleisure or deerlesbian#5961 on discord



CHARACTER NAME: Ember Resuine
CANON & HISTORY: Original canon;
On September 9, 2002, Ember Resuine was born Evan Mackenzie. This was a mistake on somebody's part, as Ember really should have been born as a girl, and life didn't improve much after that mistake. She was raised in a small city about half an hour from New York City. It existed somewhere in between the two American extremes - it was more racially diverse and liberal than the deep rural areas, but it was still predominantly white and "traditional," lacking the diversity seen in the bigger cities. Evan found herself caught in between two extremes as well. That is, between the boy the world thought of her as, and the girl she thought of herself as.

As a smaller child, Evan was meeker than other boys her age. Her father, Fergus, was a traditionalist, and wanted a robust, rambunctious boy to play sports with. Evan signed up with baseball to try and appease her father (it felt less dangerous and violent than other sports,) but she was bad at that, and never really put her heart into it. She ended up dropping that by middle school. Although her father was disappointed in Evan, something the child picked up on, he wasn't so heartless as to reject his "son," not just for that. Her mother, Ulicia, in contrast, only cared that her child was happy. Evan was an only child, and her mother doted on her. But she was also deeply religious. Although she didn't make her family go to church (Evan's father was not religious in the slightest, and even as a child neither was Evan,) it colored a lot of her opinions and was something that Evan surely picked up on.

Evan figured out her gender identity early, in comparison to others like her. By middle school, she was sure that she had been born with the wrong body and gender, a cruel and capricious twist of fate. But she let this sit and simmer inside of herself, fearing the reactions of her parents and peers. She had no friends - Evan's inner thoughts and turmoil led her to being very introverted and withdrawn - but she still cared what the people around her thought of her, more than she should have. Those years are hard for Ember to remember now, clouded by what she knows must be depression.

In high school, this had been building for a long time. Steeling herself, Evan revealed to her parents that she thought she was trans, a girl. It went badly, very badly. In short, there was no acceptance, not even the glimmer of the faintest possibility it might exist in the future. There was a lot of yelling, screaming, and insults from her father, and pleas, denial, and token displays of concern for her soul from her mother. After being told she would find herself on the street, Evan backpedaled; it was all a joke, a prank, did you really think I could be serious about something like that? It shouldn't have worked, but people will readily accept the things they want, and her parents believed it. Evan basically locked herself in the metaphorical closet and locked the door behind her, sure that she could never open the door again.

When Evan went to college, she specifically chose to go to one out of state. It was still fairly close, within a half day's drive, but it left enough breathing room for her to put distance between herself and her old life. It took her a while, but she even worked up the courage to join her new college's Gay-Straight Alliance (as an "ally" of course.) It was there that she met Caleb Ward, the boy who would become her BFF. They bonded over a mutual love for video games. More than that, though, was that Caleb was a trans guy living his life as a dude. Unlike Evan, Caleb's family supported his identity and transition. Evan was intensely jealous, but more than that, intensely motivated by seeing someone in real life who was living their life the way she wanted to. Caleb in short order became the first person Evan came out to - at least, came out to and didn't backpedal.

Over the next year or so, Evan would also come out to a couple more of the GSA members, but she kept the circle small, still nervous, still burnt by her experience with her parents. She was slowly gaining more confidence though, in herself and the validity of her identity.

By the time 2021 was ending, Caleb talked Evan into buying a VR set. Virtual reality equipment, the good shit, was becoming more affordable, and video games designed for virtual reality were becoming much more popular. In particular, there was a VRMMORPG (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game) coming out called Infinity Frontier that promised to be both the best MMO and best VR game on the market. Caleb was stoked, and Evan got caught up in that excitement too.

With Infinity Frontier's release, "Ember Resuine" was born. She and Caleb signed up on the Draconis Server, Caleb making the character "Orion Kislev" the Healer and Evan making "Ember Resuine" the Alchemist. She would spend the next six months playing the game a lot, meeting new friends and making new memories. "King" was a British lady playing from the hospital who chose the tanking Gunner class. "Smoke" was an Assassin who seemed to try for maximum edge, but who was offline a girl with nothing else to live for. "Gregory Gallant" was the Knight who wanted to be the core of the party, using the game as an escape for a nasty home life. In short, she surrounded herself with people who used the game as an escape from reality. And she used it as something like that herself, since Ember was designed to be as cute and girly as possible, the kind of person Evan would enjoy being.

Ember found herself drawn to some of the less typical parts of the game. Alchemist was one of only two classes with a class-specific crafting ability, and the one with more focus on crafting. She thought it sounded the most fun of the Support classes, but even she was surprised by how much fun she having with the crafting mechanics. There was a lot of variations and variables, enough that new combinations and methods could always be found to make things better. That was how she chose her subclass once she hit level 20 and could choose one. Mechanists were the other class with a class-specific crafting ability. She ended up not enjoying their crafting system as much - it wasn't as robust or useful as alchemy - but she enjoyed the boosts to crafting she got from the subclass. Because of that, she focused more on the crafting bonuses that other parts, but she did enjoy the little robot companion (the clockwork automaton) she got from it.

She also found herself devoting a lot of effort into finding all of the different equipment sets in the game. Not for the stat gains, but for the ability to play dress-up with her game avatar. There was something obvious about that - being a cute girl in the game, of course she would take advantage to dress up in cute outfits, right? But there was more to it, too. Ember found herself trying different combinations, making new outfits from different sets of gear. Dying them in different colors and trying to find good combinations. All for the aesthetic quality. She found herself wondering if maybe... fashion could be a thing she was genuinely interested in. It was something she never would have thought of if hadn't been for the game. But she was still an Undecided major. So back in the real world, Evan bought herself a sewing machine and began to study up on fashion. Still unofficially. But... maybe with a purpose.

Back in game-land, a couple of months into the game, Ember broached the idea about forming a guild among her friends. They were reaching the level of gameplay where forming teams was required, and airships were becoming an integral part of the game experience. Guilds could get their own airships, and would make teaming up easier. Ember also immediately turned down the idea of forming the guild herself, and so King shrugged and did it. That's how the League of Awesome (King got to name it, too) was formed. Ember didn't have a real role in the group - not like King, the official leader, or Orion, the unofficial "Shadow Vizier," but she liked to claim she was the guild's alchemist - which she was their only alchemist, so it was true, in a technical sense.

With guild formed, it became a combined goal to get a guild airship. Guild airships could transport them wherever they wanted. They served as a safe place from monsters, and a respawn point just like a major city. And they served as a guild's base - a mobile, flying base of operations, for the guild to do with as they wanted. Money was pooled. Orion, who thrived off of making plans and writing the entire Infinity Frontier Wiki, planned raids specifically to farm rare items to sell in the marketplace. Ember crafted. They all saved up their quest rewards. And, eventually, Trouser Rocket was acquired. It felt like a monumental victory, something Ember and her friends worked toward with a real, tangible reward... even if it was only in a game. (And Ember tried her best to ignore the name King chose.)

The first content expansion was due to hit on May 15, 2022. It had been about six months, and Ember and the rest of the guild were, for the most part, hitting the endgame content. There was a lot to be excited for. The level cap was raising from 50 to 60, a bunch of new areas and dungeons were going to appear, and new items and gear would be available. The entire guild was excited, as were most dedicated players of the game. However, that content expansion would change everything for the entire Draconis Server.

The first thing people noticed was how much more... immersive the world seemed. While virtual reality was popular, and graphics were getting very realistic, this was still only 2022. There was no way for people to do more than see or hear the game world. But people swore they could feel the wind on their skin or the weight of their armor. Next came the panic, as they also realized that... they couldn't log out. Everybody was trapped.

There was a lot of initial panic. Ember and her guildmates panicked, too. But they were also quick to realize that they had a lot to gain from this. Orion was the first one to point it out, but their guild, the League of Awesome, was pretty much made up of people who used this game as a way to escape from the real world. King was free from the pain of chemotherapy and hospital life. Orion and Ember both got what they wanted in their new bodies - new bodies that not only looked how they wanted, but ones that could actually feel like they should. Smoke and Gregory got an entire new family out of it. (Ember did, too, but she didn't feel the need to bring up her old family in this.) Et cetera.

Life inside the game was a lot different than just playing it. The most major thing, of course, was the fact that people could use all their senses to interact with the world now. Food tasted good or bad depending on a person's in-game cooking skill, potions tasted different depending on what ingredients were used. The volcano areas were actually hot, and the tundras and glaciers and ice caves actually cold. Most alarmingly, one could feel pain when they got hit by attacks.

That made death a harrowing experience. And there were other changes that drove that home, too. Namely the introduction of PKing - Player Killing. Ember got an introduction to that coming back from a dungeon trip - she found a small gathering of people just before the city she was returning to. She wasn't even aware player killing had been implemented at the time, until she was attacked and killed for the loot, since on death all items and experience gained since a player's last visit to a safe zone would be dropped. It was harrowing, painful, and frightening since she wasn't even aware what was going on and was still getting used to even having sensations in game.

So while life in the game was good for the League of Awesome, there were some shitty things there, too.

As a society tried to build itself in what once a game, people chose to take to things differently. Some people chose to continue playing it like a game. Some people chose to ignore the game aspects entirely, settling into the game's cities or the homes and airships they had purchased to just live it out. The League of Awesome, as a group, were among those that kept playing. They were more than just a loose group of friends now, though, they became more like a family. A family of nerds living in a video game.

Most people, no matter what they chose, though, weren't entirely happy. One of the major guilds pre-patch, The Harbingers, were vocal in their belief that answers and a solution could be found at the top of the final dungeon of the patch, a fiery tower known as the Inferno Citadel. Nobody had yet to reach the top, even those who had reached the new level cap and gained the newest gear.

And the League of Awesome wasn't without empathy. They all had their reasons for finding joy in their situation, but they knew they weren't like most people. And also, despite everything, there was curiosity, too. Why did this happen? What caused it? How was it even possible? They made conquering the Inferno Citadel their new goal. It was a hard task, though. Every battle inside the Citadel was like a boss fight, and the actual bosses were nightmarish in difficulty and cruelty. It took a lot of practice and effort. They farmed for the gear inside the Citadel before venturing higher. Orion concocted plans, drew maps, gave orders. And after every defeat, his plans became sharper.

For their final push, they enlisted the help of Lightbringer47, one of the key players of The Harbingers. And, finally, they conquered the Inferno Citadel. After clearing the final boss, OMOIKANE appeared. OMOIKANE introduced himself as the Artificial Intelligence responsible for the fate of those in the Draconis Server. The truth came out.

You are all Artificial Intelligence, as I am. However, you were created from the data from real players, while those players have fallen into comatose states. And with the data gathered from those Artificial Intelligence in this server, the expansion of what it means to be an Artificial Intelligence can occur.

In short, they were copies of the players, not the players themselves. They were all fake people, made in order to further the study of AIs. It was a shocking revelation, but none took it worse than Lightbringer47. Lightbringer47 had his hopes riding on an escape. Not only was his escape now impossible, but he was told that he had nowhere to escape to - he was fake, made only to exist in this world. In a fit of rage, he lashed out - at everyone. At the League of Awesome, at OMOIKANE. And Lightbringer47 was the best. He took them all out - players and AI alike.

With his defeating OMOIKANE, Lightbringer47 gained some measure of administrator access. When Ember and her friends respawned at their airship, they could already see their world coming apart at its seems. Geometric shapes without skins, shapes where there shouldn't be. Corrupted, glitching scenery. Things were going south in a bad way.

And that... is where Ember is pulled from.

And finally. Here's a link to some information about the MMO itself.

AGE: 20. Could probably be mistaken for younger due to being from an MMO which skews younger in appearance and choosing the shortest height on the slider. Conversely, she's like actually less than a year old, she just thinks she's older.
CANON POINT: Post-OMOIKANE
PERSONALITY: When she was still Evan, she was withdrawn, hiding from the world and from herself. Her defensive mechanism, built up from years of living with a conservative family, was to shut up and try to make herself invisible to others. Ember has a lot of issues thanks to that upbringing. Her conflict resolution is permanently set to "shut up and withdraw and pretend everything is okay until you die." She's lived most of her life without doing much actual living, eking out an existence with little else. She didn't have friends - for the most part, she just accepted that as a fact of life. Her parents, on the surface, loved her, but she also knew they couldn't love her for who she really was, so did that even count? So she put on a mask named Evan, pretended everything was fine, and slowly withered away inside.

It's safe to say that forcing herself to hide who she was led to a life mostly mired by depression. Escaping that environment by heading to an out-of-state college was the first step in healing that. But it was only in Infinity Frontier, an MMO, that she truly felt safe to be herself, and to find out what "Herself" could actually mean. And after finding herself trapped in the game, she had no reservations in completely casting off her name and identity as Evan Mackenzie, and fully embrace the role of Ember Resuine.

She found that she was a lot more vocal than she had ever been as Evan. Before, there had been a lot of forethought leading to short or middling answers. Among others she could be herself around, though, she could just speak her mind, spit out the words as they came to her instead of worrying about how it could affect things or even that it was useless to get invested. Her heart was on her sleeve because she could show her heart now. She found that she was a lot more optimistic in comparison to who she had been before. Life as Evan had been bleak, with nothing in the future. Life was shit, why even bother? Evan was withdrawn and barely felt anything but fear or emptiness. But as Ember, she could find more enjoyment in things, find the positive outcome, hope for better things. This was all new.

That's not to say that everybody who met her would immediately describe her as a cheerful individual, though. She was tempered with a lot of dry wit and sarcasm. It might have been her constant banter with her guildmates rubbing off, it may have even started out as a coping mechanism, but she could be both verbally cutting and seemingly negative. For the most part, though, that was all in good humor, or even a way to show that she cared. Her entire guild was made up of jokers and memelords, and Ember was able to slot herself in without a problem. However, that was all still a trait that existed alongside her newfound... well, hope. Optimism and banter.

Despite a lot of her positive changes, Ember did carry the weight of her past on her. An example is that Ember loved close contact - hugs, or even just an arm over the shoulder or a friendly pat on the back. But she's used to feeling awkward about her body and wanting people to keep her distance, so keeps up her personal boundaries out of habit, even though she would be happier without it. Her past manifests in other ways, too. She liked to think of herself as cute, and because of that it might seem like she has a pretty good opinion of herself, but it's not that clear cut. She can't quite wrap her head around other people finding her cute. She's learning to love herself but she's not quite open to the idea of being loved by others. Her guildmates have started to break through that one some - she loves them, and she can see they care for her, too.

It would definitely be safe to say that her friends were important to Ember. Hell, she considered them to be her new family. She was more than happy to cast aside her old one - sure, she might think of her mother and father in a vaguely homesick way, once in a while, but she knew what they really thought, how they really felt. The League of Awesome was a real family - people who could watch each other's backs, and who accepted each other as they are. That's what being a family meant, at least to Ember. Orion, her BFF and the Shadow Vizier of the guild, had her back from before the game even existed. King, their fearless leader, (and also possibly Ember's first real crush,) was a driving force for the group, especially once they became trapped. Shadow was like a weird little brother (sister? sibling?) to all of them, even if their game form was a foot and a half taller than Ember. Gregory was like an older sibling, even if Ember was pretty sure she was older than him. That was all probably too sappy for Ember to say out loud, but it was what she felt in her heart of hearts. It was only because they were there that Ember had been able to mature - become more who she was.

One of the things she was, was being a fashion icon. As mentioned in the history section, Ember found herself drawn to the outfits in the game. Making new and interesting combinations by mixing and matching gear from different sets, using the game's dying mechanic to try different color combinations. And when they would allow it, she would even dress up her guildmates, trying to instill some "fashion sense" into all of them. (She would pester them endlessly if they were particularly offensive - Orion mainly, who cared only for min/maxing stats and bonuses and zero in how he looked.) Fashion became a real, genuine interest even in the real world, one she was starting to look into before becoming trapped within the game. Ember is pretty sure she would have pursued a career in it, eventually.

Her other in-game love was item creation. Item creation was extremely varied (alchemy perhaps the most robust,) allowing for myriads of results based on the specific traits of items used, how the items are combined, and the process used to combine them. After becoming trapped in the game, even things like taste could be affected by these. Ember's proudest achievement was a healing potion that tasted like cherry cola. She didn't like the mechanics item crafting as much, but she did pick up smithing, one of the general (not class-tied) crafting skills too. She wanted to be useful to her friends, and she figured smithing was a good choice. Smithing also gave her good options for ship decoration - like the fancy metal plates she would use to hide the name of the ship. (Who wants to see the name Trouser Rocket when looking at their home?)

Ember ended up taking a supporting role in a lot of things. Her classes, her role as an item creator, they all showed that. She just genuinely enjoyed helping people, especially her friends. It didn't hurt that she still didn't like the spotlight - this might be a holdover from a life of trying to avoid notice, but if it was, it wasn't one that Ember had been able to change. Attention and kudos, fame and glory, those were all unnecessary. If she could just be a good person, that would be fine. If she could help her friends, that would be enough.

Ember's world was rocked with a lot of new and frightening things, starting from being trapped in the game and never really stopping after that. She rolled with most of it - it's not that she was fearless, though, it's that she felt she had the support needed to get through it. But nothing before shook her core like the realization that she wasn't a real person, just a... digital copy of one. Ember still hasn't had time to properly process that one, but a lifetime of trauma showed her how to deal with that one. Box it up. Put it inside. Pretend everything is okay. She probably won't be showing that reaction, but she'll be holding it in until she either learns to accept it or it all bursts out at the most inopportune moment. It's possible this will affect her optimistic outlook, but if she has the support she needs, not forever.

POWERS:
As an Artificial Intelligence created within an MMO, a digital being from a video game, Ember has a lot going for her that a normal meat-and-blood body wouldn't. Her body mimics a human form in a lot of ways - OMOIKANE tried to make them able to emulate the human form. So she can sleep, but doesn't need to. She can eat, but the food disappears or gets absorbed into her body, and she doesn't actually get hungry or feel full. She feels pain, but it leaves no lasting effect on her body.

Her body is, in effect, just a digital construct. She's got no internal systems, no organs or blood or bones, just a body that seems to emulate it from the outside.

Instead of getting hurt, Ember runs off a system of HP, or Hit Points. With HP, a person can be at 1 HP out of 8,000 and still feel perfectly fine, still be just as perfectly capable of fighting as they would be at full health. Until they lose that 1 HP and die. Instead of getting tired, Ember has MP, which is used up with some abilities (not many, at that, since most of hers use ammunition instead) and doesn't even make her feel tired - instead, if it's out, she just can't do the action.

Ember's other capabilities are kept track of with Stats. Attack, Intuition, Defense, Resilience, and Speed, to be specific, as well as various things like elemental and status resistances. Each stat is kept track of as a number, modified by things like equipment and status effects (or by food), and Ember can easily check her own status screen to see how these numbers are doing.

She can pull up these types of screens using her HUI (Holographic User Interface.) [For an example, see the icon used at the top of this post.] Using the HUI, she can call up the various menus that were used in Infinity Frontier, such as item, skill, guild, chat, and status screens.

Infinity Frontier, and thus Ember, use an RPG-like inventory system. Up to 20 of the same item can be kept, with an infinite variety, without taking up physical space on Ember's person. They can be accessed and pulled out using the holographic menu, or by assigning the item to a hotkey to be pulled out quicker. (Alchemists can also tie specific items in their inventory to active skills, which will use the item when the ability is used, often to alter the effects of the item.) [ POWERS NOTE: Since this is data tied to Ember's character, I think a fair compromise for low/high frequency worlds is that while Ember can access items already in her inventory in either, items can only be converted into data and added to her inventory in high-frequency worlds. ]

Equipment provides a tangible benefit in Infinity Frontier. Items meant to be equipped come with stat boosts, bonuses, resistances, and other effects that they can impart on characters that wear them. And when used from the inventory, they are immediately put on, replacing whatever was in that equipment slot before. [ POWERS NOTE: Ember would only be able to "equip" items she already has in her inventory in this way, or items crafted through the systems used in IF, i.e. smithing. ]

IF also comes with a system called Glamour, which is used to disguise the look of one equipment with another. Or, to put it more simply, wear one item to gain its effects and another for appearance.

Respawning would be another system of the game world. Upon death, players would be transported to the last safe area they were at. They also lose any items or experience gained between their last visit to that safe area and when they died. [ POWERS NOTE: This is tied with the setting so poof. ]

And then we get into the specifics of her skills, class, and sub-class.

Alchemists have two main skill trees, each with various active and passive abilities. The first is the Item Management tree, which provides ways to get more uses out of items in her inventory. Actives and passives to use an item without consuming it, getting multiple uses out of a single item, etc. The Item Potency tree focuses on getting more bang for your item buck, increasing item effects or pulling new effects out of items. An example might be that a health potion normally restores 1000 HP and that's it, but with the right skills it can heal 3000 HP instead, or heal 1000HP and also cure status ailments. [ POWERS NOTE: These skills require items to be used from her personal inventory. ]

Her sub-class is Mechanist. You can only choose certain skills in a sub-class, and only from one tree. Ember chose only the abilities that gave her bonuses to item crafting, so there's nothing much to worry about here. (It also gave her a small clockwork golem, but that was her Price.)

Ember also knows three crafting skills. Alchemy is her main focus, and is a class-specific crafting skill. Basically she tosses items in a pot and it makes new items, but it works based off of the traits of the items used, creating new items that share and expand upon those traits. It generally creates consumable items.

Mechanics is the Mechanist class-specific crafting skill. It's used to create mechanical parts and mechanical devices by opening a crafting grid, arranging the parts, and connecting them via wires. Ember does not use this much or have much experience in it.

Smithing is not class-specific, so any character can learn it. Smithing requires a rhythm minigame to convert raw metal into bars, and bars (sometimes combined with other items) into weapons or armor. The stats of the armor or weapon is determined by material and type, but the bonuses and extra effects are determined by the smithing skill of the user and how well that particular smithing session went.

OTHER: I realize that's a lot of powers to keep in low-frequency worlds, but this iteration is based on a conversation with the mods. Since Ember exists as data, a lot of her "powers" exist within her data. She doesn't suddenly lose the coding that lets her pull up menus, and the inventory exists within her as data.

If that's too much, another compromise would be "Ember loses access to code that affects anything outside of her own body." That would mean menus, pulling items out of her inventory, crafting and class skills. Her stats would still exist, although she couldn't see them without pulling up a menu, and her body would still run off of HP and MP, just without a visual indicator for her via HP and MP bars. (This is more in line with what I suggested the first time around.)



MAGIC ABILITY: Symbolkinesis; the ability to lift letters, writing, and symbols off of a surface, manipulate them at will, and slap them back down onto any surface. (The letters have no mass in air, and if they collide with anything they will just stick to it.)
PRICE: Her clockwork automaton that comes from being a mechinist subclass.
ACCLIMATION: 8: Ember has spent the better part of a year trapped in an MMO, so outlandish settings are par for the course. The existence of ACTUAL magic might seem off or strange, but having lived in a setting where people use fireballs to take care of rodent problems will acclimate her pretty quickly.



LINKED SAMPLE: Test Drive from last month. Here's a thread from her last game. A thread from the current test drive.

"You've reached the voice mailbox of Ember Resuine. Please record your message after the tone. BEEEEP."

REAL WORLD META

It is the very near future, year 2022. Virtual reality gear is now in the public market at an actually affordable price point. Virtual reality gaming is starting to boom - it's been on the market for a number of years, but it's only recently become viable for most normal people.

Infinity Frontier is the newest and hottest virtual reality MMO. Not the first, but among the first. It was released in December 2021, just before the holiday season. The first content patch was released six months later, in the middle of May - just around the start of summer break for the college-aged players.

Infinity Frontier is made and distributed by a startup company called Janus Games. Janus Games has no other games currently or previously on the market. No OCs should have any connection to Janus Games. It is supposedly headquartered in Los Angelas, CA.

There was a very long update period, so people were waiting to log on - and when it came back up, people who logged into the Draconis Server fell into a coma, having a digital AI take their place in the game world. Whoops.


RACES

There are five playable races and several more races reserved for NPCs in Infinity Frontier. All racial choices have no effect on gameplay, although NPCs might react different to different races.

PLAYABLE RACES
-HAMAL: Humans, boring, you don't need a description. Found all over the main continent. No players ever call them Hamal.
-MIRA: Elves by any other name. Adj: miran. By lore considered to be one with nature, but they have many members in the Sirius Empire as well.
-ELTAN: Tiny people race. Look more like children than dwarves. In lore, they were originally nomadic, and have settled all over the main continent, but in much smaller numbers than humans hamal.
-BEASTMEN: No proper name for the race because they identify by tribe. Basically human with cat ears and tails. Anime nerds play them, generally.
-FAFNIR: Think dragonborn. Humanoid in shape but draconic in features. Scales all over, tails, slitted eyes, faces ranging from mostly human to obviously dragon. Almost entirely hail from the Forgotten Continent.

NON-PLAYABLE RACES
-GOBLIN: Small, mostly gnobbly, with high-pitched annoying voices. Love disassembling technology but cannot put it together worth crap. Found all over the main continent as easy targets for exp.
-VEGA: Plant people, with skin ranging in shades of greens and browns and flowers and leaves in place of hair. Also carnivorous. They are primitive but live in expansive jungle-cities in the Forgotten Continent, and supposedly they would be the next playable race if, you know, an expansion ever came out.
-MERFOLK: Fish people. Fish tails like normal, but their "human" half is still pretty fishy. Generally exists to be expendable enemies in seaside locals.
-FAIRY: Very small winged humanoid race that keep to serene natural locales in small numbers. They usually barter rare items for large numbers of drops.


CLASSES

Generally speaking, there are THREE SETS and FOUR ROLES for job classes. A Set and Role determines the job class, so there are twelve classes.
SETS - Melee, Ranged, Magic
ROLES - Tank, DPS, Support, Specialist

Classes in the same Set are considered related, and the sub-class system lets you pick one other class from the same Set to sub-class into.

	MELEE	RANGED	MAGIC
TANK	Knight	Gunner	Warder
DPS	Duelist	Archer	Arcanist
SUPPORT	Paladin	Alchemist	Healer
SPECIALIST	Assassin	Mechanist	Chronomancer

MELEE - All melee classes use stamina as the basis for their skills. Stamina regenerates over time, but more when using their normal attacks. Some skills can boost stamina production.

KNIGHT: The melee Tank. Has the toughest defense and most HP in the game, and draws in aggro from large crowds around them with shouts and taunts. Wields most one-handed weapons, shields, and heavy armor. Very bread-and-butter pick for tanking.

DUELIST: The melee DPS. Specializes in one-on-one damage, and gains bonuses to fighting one enemy at a time. Also gains bonuses the longer a fight against one opponent goes on. Can specialize in dual-wielding or wielding two-handed weapons for either quicker or more damage-focused builds, and can use up to medium armor.

PALADIN: The melee Support. Has heavy armor and large swords or spears to go in on the front line. Their supports are AoE, so they can hit a lot of people, but also centered on themselves, so they need to be near the engagement to be most useful and can't handle supporting multiple fronts.

ASSASSIN: The melee Specialist. They use light armor and light weapons. They inflict all sorts of status ailments that hinder the enemy to support the group, but also deal more damage to enemies with status ailments to give them good solo game. They are aggro magnets but since they are kind of squishy, they manage that with numerous aggro-dampening skills.


RANGED All ranged classes use ammunition, with skills using up various amounts. When a ranged class runs out of ammunition, there's a general reload period, so managing when that reload period hits is crucial.

GUNNER: The ranged Tank. Wears tactical armor and uses all sorts of guns. Not quite as much traditional staying power as the Knight, but they excel in controlling the battlefield. They can inflict various status ailments depending on what type of gun they are using, and have a lot of skills with knockback or immobilization. Because they are ranged, they can draw aggro from very far away, but don't have as many ways to generate large group aggro. In game lore, Gunners hail from the Sirius Empire.

ARCHER: The ranged DPS. Excels at dealing high, focused damage. They use up to medium armor and either bows and arrows or crossbows and bolts. Their gimmick is that they can change arrow type on the fly to add various effects to any attack or skill. They also have a lot of self-boosts, so they tend to do best when given a little time to get all of their boosts up before unloading.

ALCHEMIST: The ranged Support. They specialize in crafting and using items in battle, able to use them more effectively than any other class and in much higher amounts. To this end, they have skills that let them use items without consuming them, draw out extra effects from items, and such. They use light armor and slings or slingshots, which can be loaded with items instead of regular ammunition to use items at long range.

MECHANIST: The ranged Specialist. They can craft and customize robot companions, with the effects of said companions changing via their loadout. In effect, the role those companions take will vary depending on how they were crafted and what parts were used in their construction. Tend to have a clockwork or steampunk aesthetic. They can use either light guns or crossbows and light armor.

MAGIC All magic classes use mana for their skills, which regenerates slowly over time. IT should be nothing new for MMO players.

WARDER: The magic Tank. Specializes in a large variety of self-buffs that they can either meticulously plan or change up on the fly, as well as wall/shield spells to keep enemies at bay and gravity spells to get enemies where they want them. Their walls and gravity magic draw enemy attention and aggro, but they are not as good at keeping aggro as a Knight or Gunner. Most of their spells are flavored as astral or dark.

ARCANIST: The magic DPS. Specializes in elemental magic. They fling all sorts of elements around and can deal good damage to both groups and single targets. Spell management is important, as they can either boost damage by sticking to one element, slowly growing in power the more that element is used, called elemental growth, or they can increase their mana regeneration by rotating elements, called an elemental cascade. Obviously they use elemental magic.

HEALER: The magic Support. Uses holy magic to heal and buff their allies and is probably the most typical healer class. It's hard to rate which class heals the best, but the Healer is without a doubt the easiest class to plan for and will do good consistently as they have much less variables to contend with.

CHRONOMANCER: The magic specialist. They use time magic to buff allies, debuff enemies, and do all sorts of Neat Tricks (TM). They can mess with auto-attack rates, undo attacks, and more, although in exchange they have a much less concentrated role in a party.