Firstly, this guide is NOT about changing the game to Classic Risk. This guide will help direct players on how to modify the content in Risk Legacy in order to play one-time normal games with the juicy legacy content. Players may wish to do so due after completing ~15 rounds of the legacy set and wish to move on to a more sustainable alternative. Also, maybe because their friends have commitment issues or because of the unbalance the legacy variant can bring to the factions and the game board itself after many rounds.
IMPORTENT NOTE: If you have not properly tried playing Risk Legacy and are unfamiliar with the main content and the unlockable content, I strongly recommend you attempt a game with friends if its viable for you. Afterall, its how the game is meant to be played. This guide is more tailored to people who already played and know the actual content. Also, major SPOILERS ahead.
STEP 1: Get yourself a new game set of Risk Legacy. Open it up, and unseal all 4 packet envelopes and the sealed alien (alien collaborator event) and mutant factions (nuclear war event). Open the default starting package with resource cards and starting powers too obviously.
STEP 2: Now, you need to sort the relevant cards from each packet into their categories. The first category is Scar cards. There are 5 types of scars in the game:
3 ammo shortage scars (given at start of game)
3 bunker scars (given at start of game)
3 mercenary scars (acquired from 'first time player is eliminated' envelope)
3 biohazard scars (acquired from '9th minor city founded' envelope)
1 fallout scar (acquired from the nuclear waunlock mutants event)
Some of the scars come with reference stickers that need to be placed in the top right slots of the board game.
Second is all the faction power stickers: There are 5 categories:
Green starting powers (given at start of game)
Blue comeback powers (acquired from 'first time player is eliminated' envelope)
Yellow weakness powers (acquired from unlock aliens event)
Brown missile powers (acquired from the nuclear waunlock mutants event)
Red private mission powers (acquired from World capital placement envelope)
Third are the event and mission cards. You acquire various sets from each packet and need to group them all together in sperate categories. There's 2 specific mission cards you want to put aside which are World Capital and Explore the World, which will place stickers on the board. There's also the Alien island event sticker.
STEP 3: Customize your faction's powers. So this part ideally requires you to have some experience with the game. Each category of powers has one power that's notably stronger or weaker then the rest. I'll provide a list of my customizations for each faction as a good reference:

Saharans:

Green - pick the maneuvering at any point in your turn.
Blue - Mobile: Move HQ.
Brown - Bad Intel: deny opponent continent bonus.
Yellow - Unpopular: lose 1 extra troop when taking city.
Red - Advanced training: turn in 10+ resources for troops.

Bear Enclave:

Green - either starting power for each specific faction provided is fine
Blue - Stealthy: place troops anywhere in an occupied territory.
Brown - Rally: Place 2 troops in each HQ.
Yellow - Alien Collaborator: +1 total when trading resources, lose 2 troops when going into empty cities.
Red - Guerilla Warefare: Control all bunker and merc territories.

Balkania:

Green - Pick the one which grants resource card after expanding into 4+ territories.
Blue - Well armed: +1 to attack die against HQ OR you can give them Convincing: Get +1 troop in mercenary scar locations (there will be 1 blue power left over basically).
Brown - Recon: draw any territory card instead of coin card.
Yellow - Purist: Can't have more then 2 coin cards.
Red - Advanced tactics: turn in 2 territory cards with 4+ resources.

Khan:

Green - either starting power for each specific faction provided is fine
Blue - Resourceful: when you go into a city, draw a resource card.
Brown - EMP: stop die roll modifications.
Yellow - Short sighted: only maneuver into neighboring territories.
Red - Urban Troop Surge: control capital and 3 major cities.

Mechaniker:

Green - either starting power for each specific faction provided is fine
Blue - Well-supplied: unaffected by ammo scars.
Brown - Interference: Stop opponents from drawing chosen resource card.
Yellow - Cautious: Cannot deploy recruited troops in more then 2 territories.
Red - Wide border: Control 2 continents.

Mutants:

Give them the 'Primitive' yellow power, it is the worst weakness in the game; you cannot count population when recruiting troops. However, mutants can make up for it by scratching and using all or some of their hidden evolution powers on their faction card.

Aliens:

I gave them the 'bringer of nuclear fire' faction sticker, which means they get +2 missiles if they vs mutants in a game.
STEP 4: Using either spare red star token points provided in the game, or poker chips, or even cut out card-board, stick all the scar stickers you separated earlier. These will be randomly placed on the game board for each of your standard games by revealing the top cards of the territory resource deck. Also, do the same to the 3 alien ruin event stickers (acquired from alien collaborator event) since in the actual game, they are meant to destroy and replace cities.
STEP 5: Customize the game board. Take the starting sticker sheet with cities, the world capital sticker mission card, explore the world sticker mission card and the alien island sticker card and place all the stickers in good ratios around the world map. Aim to have 1 major and minor city on each continent, or if a continent has less cities, you could compensate it by giving its territories more resource card value(more on that in a sec). You can also put down energy shields on some cities if you wish.
STEP 6: Customize the resource cards. On your starting sticker sheet, use up all the coin stickers to modify the values of any territories in the game. One important thing is to make around 7-8 resource cards have a value of 4 or more in order for the Balkanians to utilize their Advanced tactics red power. Again, aim for a fair ratio across all continents in line with city distribution for a more balanced game.
And finally STEP 7: Choose if you wish to play with the drafting cards provided from the 9th minor city envelope. If so, replace the gamebook rules with stickers provided from the envelope, if not, leave them aside. You can put all the other rulebook stickers in if you wish.
How to play and start the game: Each player starts with 2-3 missile tokens. Before players draft or deploy in starting territories, reveal the top 3 cards of the resource deck, those 3 revealed territory names become placements for the 1st set of scars (i.e mercenary, bunker) or for the alien ruins. Repeat this process until all scar tokens are placed on the board. If you feel there would be too many scars on the board, you can remove 2-3 at random by rolling dice.
Also NOTE - The nuclear fallout token and alien ruins go over and block any city that is on the territory for each game. The territory that has the fallout token also loses its resource card for that game instance only. You could also, to help alien players out more, keep drawing resource cards until you hit territories with cities on them to place your 3 alien ruins over. Form 2 decks of the leftover event and mission cards. Then play the game as per legacy rules. There is no homeland or lead faction in this game now, unless you wish to play a marathon of 3+ games with friends, then you can use rules surrounding those.
EDIT: You can add the 'Do not open ever' content to your event deck for these standard games if you wish.

Inspiration can be an often overlooked tool in your handy-dandy DM kit of many things. I think Inspiration is a neat game mechanic in theory, but I have never been 100% satisfied when actually using it in games. Thankfully, like pretty much everything else at the table, it can be modified to better suit your playing preferences.

• What is Inspiration?
• Why I don't like Inspiration
• My Alternative: POWERBANDS

(here's all the text, but it was taken from an article if you're interested)

What is Inspiration?

In D&D 5e, inspiration is a tool for the Dungeon Master to reward players with Advantage (roll twice, take the higher value) for a variety of reasons. With inspiration you either have it or you don’t; this is not something that players are able to stockpile. I like to think of inspiration as a “token” that the players can expend in order to gain Advantage on a d20 roll of their choice.
Inspiration can be a great way to nudge players towards your preferred style of play for the table and condition their behavior a la Pavlov’s Dice. This could include excellent roleplaying, staying true to character, clever thinking, or hilarious antics. At its core, I think Inspiration is a solid mechanic for D&D 5e – especially to help guide newer players – however I have always struggled with implementing it properly.

Why I don’t like Inspiration

My two biggest issues with 5e’s Inspiration pretty much boil down to

1. DM Forgetfulness
2. Relationship Bias

DM Forgetfulness

As the Dungeon Master, you are already wearing a bunch of different hats: managing NPCs and their different personalities and motives, balancing and running combat encounters, establishing plots, etc. I think it’s a bit much to also be constantly monitoring player choices in regards to their character’s background and your preferred playstyle. Essentially what I’m getting at is that I always forget to award Inspiration but don’t want my players to miss out on the experience.

Relationship Bias

Not every player is the same, and – likewise – your relationship with each of these players will not be the same. Some players are super into roleplaying and character backgrounds, while others might simply be wanting to hang out and kill some baddies. You may strongly share a sense of humor with one or two people at the table, but not the others. With some players you might have a long history and deep connection with, and others you may have only just met. On top of constantly forgetting to hand out Inspiration, I also feel somewhat guilty about any subconscious biases towards players in one way or another. The last thing I want to do is make it seem as though I’m favoring certain players over others and granting them mechanical bonuses.

My Alternative: POWERBANDS

Rather than hand out Inspiration, in my games I use a homebrew system which I’ve settled on calling “Powerbands”. This system gets its name from originally having a large bag of different colored rubber-bands that the players blindly picked from.
Essentially, at the start of every session each player randomly selects 3 rubber-bands which can be used to apply various bonuses to dice rolls. There are three different tiers of powerbands – as determined by the color of the rubber-band – blue, red, and yellow. Yellow is the most common, with red being more rare, and blue being the rarest.

• Blue = Advantage
• Red = Add a d6
• Yellow = Add 1

Powerbands can be applied to any roll (except for HP rolls upon leveling up) as long as the Dungeon Master has not stated any outcomes. Additionally, Powerbands can be traded/passed among players and multiple Powerbands can be used on a single roll.
Example of an exchange between players and the DM involving Powerbands:

DM: Please roll me a Persuasion check to see if the Guard obliges your request to search the castle grounds. Player 1: Okay…. Damn I only got a 5. Hold on I’m gonna use of my blue bands for this. DM: . . . Player 1: Motherff-. Okay well now it’s an 8. DM: Alright, 8 is your final answer? Player 2: This seems pretty important, here take one of my reds. . . go ahead and add 5 to that. Player 3: You can have two of my yellows too, let’s get in there! Player 1: Awesome!, 15, final answer.

One important thing to note about Powerbands is they absolutely do not carry over between sessions, so players have to either use-it or lose-it! Additionally you certainly don’t have to use colored rubber-bands, that’s just what I started with. In theory you can really use anything (poker chips, playing cards), as long as they cannot be differentiated by touch (such as coins). Fun fact: the ability to discern objects via touch alone is called stereognosis!
After switching to playing 100% remotely due to stupidbitchass Covid, I now have my players roll a d6 three times at the start of each session to determine which colors they get. A 1-3 represents yellow, 4-5 represents red, and a 6 is blue. In real life it’s easy to keep track of how many Powerbands players have left, but during online play I just trust that my players are being honest with me. If you think players are lying about which colors they got or how many bands they’ve spent, then you have much larger issues than trying to improve the inspiration system.
Here are some of my favorite things about using the Powerbands system:

• Encourages teamwork and discussion. Yes it’s kind of metagamey so if that bothers you then maybe don’t use this system.
• Gives players the ability to “nudge fate” and tips the scale in their favor. Which, to me, means I can throw harder stuff at them and not feel bad.
• Awards bonuses blindly and evenly and you never have to think about it mid-session
• Most importantly… the players seem to really enjoy it!

Please feel free to take this system and modify it as you see fit! If giving away 3 Powerbands each session seems like too much to you, considering allowing Powerbands to roll over but they are only awarded upon leveling up. If you don’t like the meta aspect of discussing things between players mid-roll, then don’t allow them to freely trade bands between each other.
Thanks for reading! What modifications do you guys do (if any) for inspiration?

Inspiration can be an often overlooked tool in your handy-dandy DM kit of many things. I think Inspiration is a neat game mechanic in theory, but I have never been 100% satisfied when actually using it in games. Thankfully, like pretty much everything else at the table, it can be modified to better suit your playing preferences.

• What is Inspiration?
• Why I don't like Inspiration
• My Alternative: POWERBANDS

(here's all the text, but it was taken from an article if you're interested)

What is Inspiration?

In D&D 5e, inspiration is a tool for the Dungeon Master to reward players with Advantage (roll twice, take the higher value) for a variety of reasons. With inspiration you either have it or you don’t; this is not something that players are able to stockpile. I like to think of inspiration as a “token” that the players can expend in order to gain Advantage on a d20 roll of their choice.
Inspiration can be a great way to nudge players towards your preferred style of play for the table and condition their behavior a la Pavlov’s Dice. This could include excellent roleplaying, staying true to character, clever thinking, or hilarious antics. At its core, I think Inspiration is a solid mechanic for D&D 5e – especially to help guide newer players – however I have always struggled with implementing it properly.

Why I don’t like Inspiration

My two biggest issues with 5e’s Inspiration pretty much boil down to

1. DM Forgetfulness
2. Relationship Bias

DM Forgetfulness

As the Dungeon Master, you are already wearing a bunch of different hats: managing NPCs and their different personalities and motives, balancing and running combat encounters, establishing plots, etc. I think it’s a bit much to also be constantly monitoring player choices in regards to their character’s background and your preferred playstyle. Essentially what I’m getting at is that I always forget to award Inspiration but don’t want my players to miss out on the experience.

Relationship Bias

Not every player is the same, and – likewise – your relationship with each of these players will not be the same. Some players are super into roleplaying and character backgrounds, while others might simply be wanting to hang out and kill some baddies. You may strongly share a sense of humor with one or two people at the table, but not the others. With some players you might have a long history and deep connection with, and others you may have only just met. On top of constantly forgetting to hand out Inspiration, I also feel somewhat guilty about any subconscious biases towards players in one way or another. The last thing I want to do is make it seem as though I’m favoring certain players over others and granting them mechanical bonuses.

My Alternative: POWERBANDS

Rather than hand out Inspiration, in my games I use a homebrew system which I’ve settled on calling “Powerbands”. This system gets its name from originally having a large bag of different colored rubber-bands that the players blindly picked from.
Essentially, at the start of every session each player randomly selects 3 rubber-bands which can be used to apply various bonuses to dice rolls. There are three different tiers of powerbands – as determined by the color of the rubber-band – blue, red, and yellow. Yellow is the most common, with red being more rare, and blue being the rarest.

• Blue = Advantage
• Red = Add a d6
• Yellow = Add 1

Powerbands can be applied to any roll (except for HP rolls upon leveling up) as long as the Dungeon Master has not stated any outcomes. Additionally, Powerbands can be traded/passed among players and multiple Powerbands can be used on a single roll.
Example of an exchange between players and the DM involving Powerbands:

DM: Please roll me a Persuasion check to see if the Guard obliges your request to search the castle grounds. Player 1: Okay…. Damn I only got a 5. Hold on I’m gonna use of my blue bands for this. DM: . . . Player 1: Motherff-. Okay well now it’s an 8. DM: Alright, 8 is your final answer? Player 2: This seems pretty important, here take one of my reds. . . go ahead and add 5 to that. Player 3: You can have two of my yellows too, let’s get in there! Player 1: Awesome!, 15, final answer.

One important thing to note about Powerbands is they absolutely do not carry over between sessions, so players have to either use-it or lose-it! Additionally you certainly don’t have to use colored rubber-bands, that’s just what I started with. In theory you can really use anything (poker chips, playing cards), as long as they cannot be differentiated by touch (such as coins). Fun fact: the ability to discern objects via touch alone is called stereognosis!
After switching to playing 100% remotely due to stupidbitchass Covid, I now have my players roll a d6 three times at the start of each session to determine which colors they get. A 1-3 represents yellow, 4-5 represents red, and a 6 is blue. In real life it’s easy to keep track of how many Powerbands players have left, but during online play I just trust that my players are being honest with me. If you think players are lying about which colors they got or how many bands they’ve spent, then you have much larger issues than trying to improve the inspiration system.
Here are some of my favorite things about using the Powerbands system:

• Encourages teamwork and discussion. Yes it’s kind of metagamey so if that bothers you then maybe don’t use this system.
• Gives players the ability to “nudge fate” and tips the scale in their favor. Which, to me, means I can throw harder stuff at them and not feel bad.
• Awards bonuses blindly and evenly and you never have to think about it mid-session
• Most importantly… the players seem to really enjoy it!

Please feel free to take this system and modify it as you see fit! If giving away 3 Powerbands each session seems like too much to you, considering allowing Powerbands to roll over but they are only awarded upon leveling up. If you don’t like the meta aspect of discussing things between players mid-roll, then don’t allow them to freely trade bands between each other.
Thanks for reading! What modifications do you guys do (if any) for inspiration?

There you are. Staring puzzled at your screen. It looks like you’ve come past my first barrier. What drove you to click this? Curiosity? Disbelief? Maybe you’re just one of those people that shoves all in on a sub-par hand in poker. Watching those chips fly with 7-4 just to see the flames, or the fury if you somehow pull it off. Whatever your reason for being here you should know I’m deadly serious. You should know that by continuing to scan down this page you’re putting yourself in danger, you’re putting your family in danger, your neighbourhood, maybe the whole world. I’m going to do my best to scare you off, to keep you from the worst of it, but I want people to know what happened in my small town.
Are you ready to begin? First I’d like to define two terms. Philosophy professor Nick Bostrom defines “information hazards” as information which, by knowing it or knowing about, can cause or facilitate direct harm to yourself or others. The simplest example might be the dissemination of the bomb-making instructions, information which, when utilised, can bring others to great harm by its mere transmission from one person to another. But there are more strange and powerful things than these, where once the words enter your mind not a single nail or screw need be affixed for them to have explosive consequences. The mere act of knowing is more destructive than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The second notion I would like to make you aware of is “innoculation”. We all know a little about this from getting shots and vaccines as children. A little dose of something can help protect from its bigger badder equivalent. I will now try to scare you off once more. Please heed this little needle.
Few people have heard of “Roko’s Basilisk” and, given the ramifications from some who have entertained the concept, this may be for the best. To give you a rough summary, this thought experiment supposes that the already rapid development of artificial intelligence will eventually result in the production of a super-intelligent AI with computational complexity and capacity far beyond what we can currently imagine. At a certain point this being of unfathomable computational power will logically come to be an intrinsic and guiding force in our society as it far outstrips petty humans and our primitive programming. Given the ability to direct a society in such a fashion, and able to simulate all human consciousness that has ever existed with a click of its binary fingers, it will logically view all those conscience humans that were aware of its possible development but did nothing to assist it as a kind of moral hazard. Why, if you were aware such a thing was possible, would you not actively work to create such a superior form of life to guide our own? For that the reward of your reconstructed consciousness may be eternal torture akin to Hell. And now, by merely knowing about the Basilisk, you risk incurring its wrath for not bringing it into to existence.
Steps have now been taken to innoculate you against the hazard. If the thought of the information you just learned bringing an eternity of unimaginable torment has just unnerved you then hopefully that will be enough to get you to click away to safety. Go ahead. Stream a nice sitcom with bright colours and flawed but lovable characters. Watch a gif of a raccoon eating candy floss. You know you want to. I’m begging you. I really am.
To tell this story in its totality I will have to begin with the Hardimans. When I saw their cute little semi-detached house taped off with a police cordon it sent a shiver up my spine. They had always kept to themselves but I would frequently see the father, gin-blossomed and warm, on his way to work in the morning and we’d make neighbourly small talk. It was only when I looked more closely at the tape and noticed it did not have the symbol of any police or civil defence force but rather bore the words “City Office of Cogito Hazards-DO NOT CROSS OR COMMUNICATE WITH RESIDENTS INSIDE” that I felt a strange wave of unease in my stomach. I had never heard of the office or the concept and the thought the family was holed up in there, disallowed from communicating with the outside world at all, made me sick with worry.
The situation developed as questions to my wife and conversations with neighbours and, at one point, a local policeman, proved fruitless. Here are there the yellow cordons blossomed like daffodils. The traffic out of the housing estate in the morning thinned, until soon enough I was gliding to work in no time at all. I had even been a little thankful for that then, in a kind of darkly humorous way. Once I spotted the yellow tape across the wrought iron fence of the gated community I passed on my morning commute the articles in local news popped up.
Bottom of page 9 in our little town chronicle. It seemed so ignoble and unimportant but now I understand the reason for their discretion. “Outbreak of Strange Flu Forces Quarantine of Several Homes and Communities”. Little information was provided except that the head of the City Office of Cogito Hazards, a newly formed task force of sorts, assured that it was little to worry about and that people ought to go on living their lives as normal. Eat in restaurants, meet your friends and leave us to our work. Work, live, love and don’t ask questions. Allergic to any interruptions to my comfortable domesticity I did as I was told, even as local social media buzzed with terror and conspiracy.
Of that whole period of time I can’t tell you much. We existed in an almost normality for a while. The reputable sources did not blare frightened warning and those that seemed most on edge were the same that concocted criminal conspiracies out of every local happening , believing curtain twitching to be highest investigative effort. I was distracted in any case, working for a promotion in the little law office I had defaulted into after a college career obsessed with the classics. As it turned out one was better off chasing ambulances than Odysseus. My boss smiled at me whenever I got into work 20 minutes early, sailing smoothly past the town and its cobwebs of bright yellow tape.
The promotion came eventually, as much from effort and impression as from the fact that at least 2 of my colleagues were uncertain of a return to work, cooped up in their houses as they were. I rushed home on empty streets to tell my wife the wonderful news but when I got inside she was nowhere to be found. I spent some time, heart-hammering and skin perspiring, shouting around the house for her and blowing up her phone with frantic calls. That must have been why it took so long for the City Office of Cogito Hazards to get through to me and tell me she was gone. I ate celebratory streak alone in the living room with that hideous little lamp on and cried into a number of glasses of wine.
World media was barren of any mention and the scraped through enough national headlines to tell you in intimate detail about the travails of beef prices and artisan cobblers in the Western province at length but found no story of cordons and quarantines. Some of the local papers were at least braving more explicit warnings now but they always ran the risk that some, foolish like you, would only take it as enticement. I think that’s why the schools were the next to shut and the adolescent holding facility erected. When you say “do not think of a pink elephant” to most people they won’t be able to get the pastel creature out of their head. If you say it to an impulsive and defiant teenager they will model their whole identity on pink elephants; wallpaper their rooms in pink elephants and fill notebooks will elegant drawings of their trunks.
And so life went on, slipping back into an odd mixture of terror and mortality. I received periodic updates from the mysterious City Office that left me none the wiser but assured me my wife was safe and cared for and would be returning home to me at some undetermined point in the future. One day they advised me to return home and meet a pair of their officers immediately. I strolled into my bosses’ office with a little trepidation as we were now the only two left in the building and I didn’t want to leave him in the lurch. He sat at his desk, furiously scribbling or doodling or somesuch on a piece of paper. He didn’t even look up or mutter when he asked him several times if it was okay if I went home. Eventually I just walked out to the car, never to see the man again. When I arrived the two men in uniform wearing dark sunglasses and silent earbuds stood at my doorway to greet me.
It was not what I imagined or hoped for. I had been looking forward to some news about my wife, some indication that things would soon move back to some imitation of normality. Instead I got another in an unceasing tide of strange change. I was informed my home was being “hazard-proofed” and I would be compensated for the removal of any items of value I watched in silence as two men played a low, humming drone on their little black earbuds and went to work. Notebooks, printer paper, old cds, phones, computers; all of it thrust unceremoniously into rustling black rubbish bags. All of it hauled away in a van without any identifying markers. I did not even have the television to cover the noise of my soft sobs as I sat in the bare living room that night.
Is it starting to unnerve you now? Are you wise enough to not fall for the distraction and placation that kept me plodding through life as though all was largely normal? I certainly hope so. I have given you every opportunity to avoid my fate and protect yourself and everyone you love. I have fought the compulsion that itches beneath my skin at every turn and thrown up my own verbose cordon for you. Will you simply continue to scan downwards like a man slipping with a grin beneath those words: “DO NOT CROSS OR COMMUNICATE WITH RESIDENTS INSIDE”?
Treading up the carpeted stairs one night I felt glum and frustrated. I was not going outside much then as there wasn’t much to see. From time to time I would take a walk but the yellow tape and empty streets became too much for me. Occasionally one of those unassuming vans would trundle by and I would swear I heard someone scream in the back. Finding the little old phone in a junk drawer that the officials had neglected was a god send. The thing was janky and died at random but it allowed me some glimpse of entertainment in the house besides stewing in the fever of my own confusion and fear. If it can be called entertainment to scan the world and national headlines and be told that life goes on as normal outside your ruined world. I was absorbed in some such piece, on a transnational climate accord gone bad, and so did not at first notice the flakes of wallpaper falling on my head.
Upwards, my eyes scanned, and found the offending patch of wall at last. The wallpaper, a calming lilac affair my wife had picked out, was peeling away. No...not peeling...but peeled. This wasn’t some chance act of time or wear but the last gasp of communication from my missing love. My darling. They didn’t realise just how lo-fi you were. I had to stand on the stair banister and steady myself with my hands against the wall to read what you’d scratched there clearly, flakes of pink nail polish flecked around your words. How I wish now my balance had wavered and I had fallen. How I wish I had taken a great blow to the head and been rendered unconscious. Death too, might have been preferable to reading that damned phrase.
Softly now, leave me. Navigate away. Just glide that little cursor or tap that little button and leave me to be in my feverish pit. Seal yourself up in unknowing like a warm cocoon and live there the rest of your days if you can. I am truly pleading with your from the bottom of my heart. Do not let this thing into your life. There is no forgetting it. You have one last chance. I beg you not to read the first word of each paragraph.

Hello! This is my first post. For the past four months, I've been working on this novel called "Piano Player." I've never been confident enough to share my writing. I would highly appreciate it if any of you would take the time to give me some feedback. Especially in the transition tense transition right at the beginning.
The novel explores the following question:
Technology will replace white-collar and blue-collar jobs, but what happens when technology replaces the artist?
​
∆
January snow falls like brilliant crystals against the dejected hue of solar-powered streetlights. It blows a veil of silver and settles down on Berlin’s streets in a drab glaze of myriad footprints. And it is late, far too late for any decent individual to wander. I hear them, drones and robots, a constant hum that never sleeps, never stops. I walk south through Kreuzberg and into Neukölln. Drunken steps hit the ground, and they echo on derelict buildings redolent of conflict and uncertainty. Curtains veil wary eyes, two fingers curl the edge, they peek into the night. The houses disperse into the frost-covered fields of Tempelhofer Feld. I cut through to the other side, turn one last corner, and stand at the prison’s gate. One bleach-blonde guard scrutinizes my presence, seating behind his fish tank office flooded with light. My breath leaves me in white puffs of whiskey-ridden smell, twirling up, fading into the dull gray. I wait in penitence. Winter winds lash down. I shudder, tuck my hands into my jacket, and stare at the soviet like façade – purposeful, devoid of warmth – shining a few faint lights. I fix my eyes on one of the countless windows, hoping one concrete canvas reveals Julian’s face.
Midnight strikes. A handful of lights remain. Guards change shift. Robots patrol and drone like oversized steel cicadas. The new guard dozes on and off behind the glare of security screens. The city sleeps, and my hope drowns with the uneventfulness. I trudge back home. Wet footsteps beat hard against the sidewalk and break the eerie silence. The new year weighs heavy on the shoulders of my conscience. It has arrived with the foul aftertaste akin to frequent hangovers and bad decisions.
I enter my apartment, and in darkness, walk down to the living room. Julian’s metronome sits on the table. I flick it. Tick Tack. Tick Tack. Tick Tack. Eighty beats per minute trace my steps onto the couch. I plunge down and place my hands over my face. A hum develops into a crescendo of anxiety. I reach for an open flask. My lips wrap around its mouth, expectant of a liquid embrace, but it fuels the paintbrush of my memory. I stare at the ceiling and reminisce about the diamond fleck of recondite skies. A piano echoes in the dusty corners of my mind. Julian’s face rises out of the melody of the years. It was Mother who introduced him for the first time:
​
∆
“Alex,” Mother said walking into my room and toward my bed. “Maria will bring her son today; he is out on summer vacations,” she brought her face closer to mine, fixed my pillow, and stepped away. Her perfume of lavender remained. “You ought to be nice to him. Understood?” I nodded with exasperation and sank back to nineteenth-century France with Dumas. Mother closed the door behind her. Twenty pages later, I shut my eyes and let my pubescent imagination wander desirously. The words froth, an image rises, and it holds against time: hair black as jet, velvet eyes, her skin brown, like bronze that soaks up the sun, a pure and full shape… Heavy footsteps, quick and unfamiliar, impinged upon the wooden floor. Their echo spilled through the door.
Puzzled, I opened my eyes. Being a curious child and bedridden at twelve years of age, I learned that one could differentiate a person’s gait – many times I wondered if loudness and frequency were directly proportional to someone’s personality. I raised my eyes above the worn-out pages and saw with disbelief the cherubic face of a boy peeking out of the door’s edge. It was late in the afternoon, the golden hour poured in through the window and cast a hazel hue on his almond-shaped eyes and curls falling on his forehead. We made eye contact. He stepped inside.
“Hey, I’m Julian,” he said. “Your mother told me I could have a look at your book collection.”
I flung my head to make him turn to the shelves on the wall.
“Wow… you must be filthy rich,” he said.
I sighed and let the book fall on my chest. Dumas would have to wait, I thought.
Julian walked to the shelves and ran his hand over their spines. “How did you get all of these?” he asked.
“They belonged to my family,” I answered. Julian kept his eyes on the shelves. “Have you read any?”
“A few.” He took a book out of the shelf, flicked through its pages, and sniffed into it. “All of them on a screen though,” he said.
“Look up to the right corner,” I pointed with my finger, “you can find the first editions there.”
Julian tilted his head back. “Impressive,” he said.
“You can find a ladder behind the door, but I don’t have the key to open the glass.”
Julian propped the ladder against the shelves, climbed up, and had a closer look at the gilded books. “Do you get any offers from collectors or museums?” He asked.
“I do.”
“What is the most valuable book?”
“In terms of what?”
“Value?” Julian climbed down the ladder and looked inquiringly from the bottom of the bed.
“Father acquired a Gutenberg bible once, I guess that’d be the most expensive. But to me, the most valuable one is Alice in Wonderland first edition, or actually, Grandpa bought The Tales of Beedle The Bard. He was from the Harry Potter generation and was a huge fan.”
“You’re lucky.”
“Is that so?” I looked down at my body covered with a dark-blue quilt. Julian’s eyes followed.
“Oh, man,” he walked to the side of the bed, “I’m sorry about what happened,” he said without a hint of the condescending pity adults often used and which I hated so much.
“It’s alright, it already sank in. At least I’ll get one of those new prostheses.”
“And any cool scars?”
“Nah, not really.”
“Can I see?” He lifted the bedsheets before I could answer. “SHIT,” he said out loud in fascination instead of fright of the stump of leg cut short above the knee.
“Yep.”
“How did it happen? My mom didn’t want to tell me.” He let go of the quilt.
“Drunk driver.”
“No way.”
“I blame the government. It should be compulsory to have the automatic driver on.”
He shrugged his shoulders and said: “At least you survived.”
“Father didn’t.”
“Damn,” he placed a hand on my shoulder. “What were you doing on the street?” He asked.
“We were driving our road bikes; we didn’t hear the car coming. I guess that’s the only con about electric cars – at least if people are still allowed to drive them – they are extremely silent.”
Julian pursed his lips and moved them to one side. He walked around the bed and stopped in front of the window. “That’s a nice garden you have there. What did your father do?”
“Both Mother and Father were entrepreneurs, they founded a couple of companies together.” Julian kept his eyes on the window. “Your mom is my therapist,” I continued, “but what about your dad, what does he do?”
“He used to be an architect.”
“Used to?”
“He died about three, four years ago, can’t really remember,” he turned and explored the rest of the room with his eyes.
“Oh, what happened?”
“Suicide,” he said without any burden in the word.
“I’m so sorry,” I said with the same condescending air I hated so much. An awkward silence grew between us and I stumbled for words and questions to break it.
Julian sat down on the side of my bed, leaned forward to my nightstand, and opened it. “He lost his job,” he mumbled with his face buried in the drawer, “he hung himself after a few years of an unsuccessful search to find something else to do.”
“Oh,” I repeated idiotically, but other thoughts crossed my mind: articles, reports, statistics. Suicide is a normality nowadays, I wanted to say, just like diabetes. Suicide and diabetes had recently been declared a world-wide crisis. I did my research many days later and found out that Julian’s dad had been a successful and rather passionate architect. To his misfortune, architecture was one of the first fine arts to lose ground to technology. 3D printing, government’s prohibition of using real wood and other raw materials, robot labor, and cheap access to splendorous AI-created designs were a few factors that contributed to an oversupply of ready-to-work flesh and bone architects. And it was those who belonged to the fine arts that had a more grandiose downfall, unlike those who didn’t. For instance, the drunk driver that ran over me was a has-been FX trader. There was no grandiose downfall for him, just the slow descent into pitiful chemical numbness.
“What happened to the drunk driver?” Julian asked. He took out an unsolved Rubik’s cube and began working on it.
“Prison,” I answered, put a bookmark in my book, and closed it. “Can you believe that he only got sentenced to fifteen years?”
“Only?” The tip of his tongue stuck out of the corner of his lips.
“His lawyer got a good deal by claiming the unfit psychological state in which his client found himself. He was depressed about losing his job, living under universal income and all of that.”
The Rubik’s cube clanked furiously. “Depressed, huh?”
“Mother didn’t let me follow the trial, but I still read it all. The defenders cited a recent study. It correlated suicide occurrences and depression to a certain wage loss against the universal income set in place by the government. The bigger the difference, the stronger the depression. He was in finance, the bastard made shitloads every year just in bonuses.”
Julian stopped, inspected the cube’s faces, and asked, “How long do you have to be in bed?” He turned the corners.
“Your mother said I have about nine more months before they can put the prosthesis.”
“Really?”
“Fractured spine and pelvis and many nerves were shattered.”
“Can’t they cure that easily now?”
“It takes a while for the body to – what word did they use? – connect to the new system.”
“There,” he placed the solved Rubik’s cube on the top of the nightstand.
“It took you a while,” I said competitively and smiled, “I can do it in less than two minutes.”
“Show me?”
“It’s not fair now, I can’t move my arms and hands with the same speed as before.”
Julian grabbed the book on my chest. “What are you reading?” He asked not to diverge the conversation because it distressed him but because the topic had already bored him.
“The Count of Montecristo,” I answered. “It’s the second time I read it.”
“In French? Fancy.”
“Have you read it?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like it?”
“Loved it.”
“Good.”
Julian stood up, opened the closet, and stepped inside.
“Do you inspect a stranger’s room like that all the time?”
“I believe someone’s room tells everything about that person.” He yelled from the inside while lifting an explanatory hand in the air. “I am just trying to see who you really are.”
“Couldn’t you ask?”
My clothes rustled. “So, you read a lot?” Julian asked without minding my comment.
“I do.”
He stepped out and asked: “Do you write as well?”
“Nah, no one reads anymore, at least no new fiction. There is no point in bothering.”
He grimaced the same way an adult would at a naïve child.
“You know it’s true,” I said to break his silence, “everyone is in a hurry, downloading five-minute condensed reads and claim they’ve read the whole thing. No author deserves that. Well, maybe only the self-help book authors.”
He kept his grimace.
“What do you like to do?” I asked defensively.
“Music. I’m a piano player,” he said proudly.
“Have you seen the grand piano in our studio?”
“No, I haven’t,” he said, his eyes fully open.
“Steinway & Sons made in the nineteenth century. It’s in great conditions though, someone–”
“–you have a Steinway & Sons?” He asked almost screaming.
“Third door to your left, double oak doors. Leave the doors open, I want to hear you play.”
“Yeah!” He hurried to the door.
“I’m Alex by the way.”
“I know,” he replied and walked out of the room. I made a short attempt to go back to Dumas. The studio’s doors flung open. The piano’s stool screeched against the wooden floor. Julian played: the grand piano’s strings vibrated, its sound distinct and real, traveled through the air, burst in through the door, flowed around me, percolated through my skin, dug deep into the most primitive facet of my brain, and ebbed away. And through a shiver, the music aroused my benumbed soul after numerous surgeries and months in the hospital. The words jumped out of the pages. Overwhelmed and close to tears, I shut my eyes. The song took me on a voyage far away from home, to places which literature could only describe in whispers. The song ended, I opened my eyes and composed myself.
Julian walked into my room, placed his hands on the bed, and leaned toward me. “Did you like it?” He asked.
“It was alright,” I said, trying to keep my cool.
“I made it.”
“Are you serious?”
“I composed it when my Pa died.”
“Oh,” a deep regret choked my pride, “it’s magnificent, I’m sure he would’ve loved it.”
“Do you play?” He asked and leaned against the wall.
“Mother played when she was younger. I took some classes, but it was not really my thing. I also had a terrible teacher when I was very young – Greta – she was one hundred kilos of pure evil.”
“What’s your thing then?”
“I love reading and being outdoors. Lately, I’ve been reading more as you can guess.”
He pursed his lips to the corner of his mouth and thought for a second. “I don’t see the point of reading so much if you’re not going to write anything,” he said.
“Well I do,” I answered truculently. It was one of my biggest problems, some sort of competitive personality grounded on insecurity or a desire to prove myself, to prove that I was not incomplete. I thought of life as a poker game where one could bluff or play behind a real hand. With Julian, I often felt I was the one bluffing, the one that put the chips on the table with a knot inside the throat and a thick drop of sweat rolling down my temple. Julian was a rare child that lived a straightforward life and with a clear goal in mind. His dreams provided the solid footing upon which virtue an action took root. He didn’t have many friends, not because he was misanthropic, but because like me, he found most people uninteresting. Also, by nature or habit, his words escaped him without a filter.
“I’m sorry,” he said without any sign of negativity and slapped my shoulder, “it’s just that I knew I wanted to play music from the first moment I saw my dad play the piano.”
His easiness embarrassed me, but I was too proud to say sorry. “Are you studying at a conservatory or something?” I asked.
“No, they are way too expensive,” he leaned against the wall next to my bed and crossed his arms, “especially with only one income in the house. I have an old digital piano at home and occasionally one music theory professor comes to my house. My dad taught me the basics when I was young, that’s all I needed.”
“Wouldn’t you prefer to practice on a real piano?”
“Of course, I would.”
“Why don’t you come here to practice?”
“Shouldn’t your mom have a say on that?”
“It will be alright; she worries I don’t hang out with kids my age anymore because of the whole situation going on,” I waved my arm over my body, “besides, the rooms in the house are soundproof, she won’t even notice you’re here.”
“Julian?” Someone called from the door; it was Maria, his mom. He stood straight at the sound of her voice. “You’re a guest, you cannot walk around the house without permission. Did you ask if you could use the piano?”
“Yes, mom, Alex said I could play it.”
“It’s alright, Maria,” Mother said standing next to her, “Julian is a very talented kid, I wish I could play like that when I was his age.”
“Mother,” I said, “I told Julian he could come every day to practice in our piano.”
“Oh?” Mother answered. “Did you like the piano, Julian?”
“I did, Mrs. Winterstein.”
“Well?” Mother glanced at Maria. “We’d be happy to have you practicing here whenever you want.”
“No, no,” Maria said. My heart sunk. “He’d be bothering you all day; he has a piano at home already.”
“But mom! It’s not nearly the same as a real piano.”
“I think it is a good idea,” Mother said, “it will be good for Alex to have some company.”
I looked at Maria anxiously waiting for her response. Julian walked up to Maria, grabbed her arm, threw a desperate glance and begged childishly: “pleeeeaaassse.”
“Mm…” Maria pursed her lips and looked at Julian. “I guess it’s fine if you’re okay with it,” she said to Mother and then turned to Julian. “But you’ll have to listen to Claire every second that you are here, okay Julian?”
“Yes! I promise!”
I was ecstatic.
“We are already late with our therapy,” Maria addressed me, “it’s better if you leave the room, Julian, we have a lot of work to do today. You can play some other time.”
“Could you play while I do my therapy, Julian?” I asked. “It would help a lot.”
Julian looked at Mother. “Is that okay with you Mrs. Winterstein?”
Mother smiled. “Of course,” she answered, “I’d love to hear you play again.”
Maria grimaced.
“What do you want me to play, Alex?”
“What can you play?”
Julian shrugged his shoulders. “Anything you want really,” he said, “just name it.”
“Something that would help me through the therapy.”
“Is it that bad?” Julian asked. “Does it hurt?”
“Dude…” I said and stared at him. He raised his eyebrows. “It’s a bitch.”
“Alexander!” Mother screamed, glanced at me with her liquid-blue eyes, and flared her nostrils.
Julian guffawed. Maria snorted a restrained laugh.
“I know exactly what to play,” Julian interrupted before Mother could say anything else.
Mother sighed. “I think these two are going to get along quite well,” she said and lifted a finger at me, “don’t you dare say another bad word in front of Maria, Alexander. Understood?”
“Sorry.”
Mother led Julian to the studio, and I could hear her muffled whispers showing Julian around the house. The door remained open. Maria and I were left alone and worked on my mobility. She used her confident hands and a few tools to guide my limbs up and down. It felt as if my joints were filled with razor edge gears that tore at the very fabric of my soul. My face reddened, my eyes brimmed with tears, and I drowned my screams.
“It’s okay if you want to cry, Alex,” Maria said, “you are brave enough as it is.” But I walled all signs of weakness against Maria’s awe-inspiring beauty – an Aztec Cleopatra, a queen, a goddess to my mythical El Dorado. I had a massive crush on her, a fact I would later confess to Julian. A fact he replied to with a quick punch to my gut, leaving me grounded in the floor sore several minutes. And the truth was that I did write in those days: mediocre poetry, seen by no one, expressing my passion for Maria, for her creamed coffee-colored skin, cascading black hair, dark eyebrows, full lips, a pinch of a nose, brown eyes, and svelte figure. Julian was on the fairer side of the spectrum like his dad, but he had gotten her eyes and nose.
Finally, the piano’s strings rang once more and inundated the house with its music. I let the notes carry me away throughout the excruciating yet delightful therapy. The songs were courageous, hopeful: cooling water to the agony in my nervous system and sparks that kindled my soul anew. A crescendo of syncopating notes, flight or fight response, a shiver down my spine. Maria stretched my leg, its hair bristling in the air. I screamed.
​
∆
That was the beginning of our symbiotic relationship. I had my bed moved to the studio. Julian played every day, writing on empty music sheets, crafting Rosetta Stones to the language of the soul. The piano was a complete extension of his hands, his tongue, his mind. He was one of those kids that nourished the fool’s idea that genius lay not in hard work but in an unseen touch of the divine reserved only for a few. And his music did not only stimulate the path to my physical recovery, but it also sparked literature to life. I read thousands of words while he rang innumerable notes. He played Debussy when I read Flaubert, Bach, when I read Goethe, and at eleven years of age, he played as good as Gonzalo fucking Rubalcaba jamming out his caravan from Cuba to the streets of Cartagena when I read Marquez.
I was lucky to be born in a wealthy household and with a family who loved books. Unlike most people nowadays, I had access to a tangible library where I would spend hours discovering their hidden secrets – ideas, fusing with the musty smell emanating from their worn-out yellow pages, turning into bitter-sweet poison, and seeping in through my eyes. I cursed and loved those books, for they had made a romantic out of me. A Don Quixote doomed to live with a thirst that could only be slaked through everything that ebbed away with time and faded into modernity. I yearned for the beauty of old and the extraordinary. And at the epicenter of it all, there was Julian: the quintessential ineffability that, like a whisper of wind, preserved the ember of life burning, burning, burning.
The pursuit of beauty became the implicit crucible of our friendship. Yes, I was a romantic, and Julian too – him by nature, I by conviction. At heart, I grew up to be a sensualist, a Lord Byron minus poetry, revolution, syphilis, and gonorrhea but with far more excesses than his eighteenth-century lust could visualize; Julian a stoic, a Marcus Aurelius minus all his wealth, a surplus of solemnity, building empires in the air. All our lives, I was the spectator, Julian, the artist – a dying breed.
Through Julian, I learned that artists are madmen walking a pathway of insanity, distilling chaos into the purest form of beauty through pen, brush, or keys. It is them that satiate the hunger for forbidden fruit: meaning. Their pathway goes through the madhouse and often culminates there. I longed for the madness, madness I could only live vicariously, so I held on to Julian as he went down the rabbit hole. Perhaps I should’ve stopped him, perhaps it was my fault, but by selfishness or instinct of self-preservation, I let him fall deeper into the abyss, waiting for his star to burst against the bottom and splash me with the dust and plasma that stars are made of, all so I could have a glimpse, a taste of wonder.

As I’m going to talk about some game content and mechanics, tread lightly for spoilers. This’ll also be quite long, so feel free to skip ahead to whichever section(s) you’re interested in.
The version of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night I’m playing is its Steam version and I do not have any experience playing on other platforms. The following suggestions are written based on the game version on Steam available at the moment. I try to compile feedbacks from several sources based on issues that I personally agree on and seem to be commonly encountered by the community. I’ll break them into several segments and try to order them by importance.
Just in case it is somehow relevant, I am not a Kickstarter backer for this game.
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1) On the topic of glitches, game stability, and performance issues
This seems like it should be on the top priority for the devs to address, especially with how frequently the Switch port issues are reported/complained by their player base. As of now, it’s been a little over a month after the game’s launch, and a patch to fix these issues still doesn’t seem to have a concrete release date. Moreover, the concerning thing is the fact that their latest update post seems to detail more of arbitrary “balance” changes instead of game performance issue fixes (more about this later below).
While the PC (Steam) version is far more stable than the very broken Switch port, it is not completely free from random crashes nor performance drops either. Though the frequency of these issues on PC seem to vary greatly between players, it is still something that the devs should prioritize looking into.
I’ve experienced random crashes of the game at around the time I reach the “Tower of Twin Dragons” and “Bridge of Evil” area (when my total playtime clocked in at around the 10-hour mark), seemingly without any clear cause (once while accessing a bookshelf, other times while just attacking random enemy mobs). Yet afterwards, I never encounter these crashes again, even during my second playthrough in NG+ through these areas. There have also been a few instances of performance (framerate) drops that I’ve experienced, but again, these are seemingly happening at random.
Hopefully, the devs can patch up these issues on all platforms as soon as possible.
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2) Obscure progression mechanics and hints
One of the threads I’ve read that details this issue is this one, and I pretty much agree with the suggestions/solutions the topic creator made there.
Progression in this game can be somewhat obscure/unclear as to which ability, item, or equipment is needed to get through certain parts of the game. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in my opinion though, since this does encourage exploration. Some of the “offenders” mentioned on the linked thread are arguably the ones that most people will get stuck on at some point during a blind playthrough.
While I agree on the devs philosophy to not make every single thing obvious in order to progress, the fact that so many people are getting stuck over these “roadblocks” suggests that some of them needs to be conveyed more clearly to first-time players, so that they don’t need to resort to trial-and-error. Let’s talk about the three points addressed on the linked thread above.

• Bridge of Evil Train ID: this one luckily did not give me too much trouble, but I can see why people may get stuck at this point in the game. The hints to obtain the photograph and getting the identification are mentioned quite clearly by the NPCs, though it can be overlooked if the player wasn’t paying attention – or just plain forgot after leaving the game for a while. The gripe I have with this hint system is that the hint dialogue is only accessible ONCE during specific points of the playthrough. It wouldn’t be nearly as bad if these hints are recorded in the journal, so that players can review them later on.
• Aqua Stream Shard: being a shard that is REQUIRED to progress through the game, it is better to have the first drop guaranteed, such as the first Cerulean Splash shard and the first Flame Cannon shard in the Galleon Minerva. The quest given by Lindsay is already a good clue in obtaining this shard, as it points to the right enemy, but given that the shard drop is 10%, there is still a chance that players can miss this.
• Aegis Plate: most likely the worst offender for obscure “upgrade” in this game, due to its very hidden and hard to reach location, in addition to it being placed inside an “inconspicuous” regular chest. For one, it is placed in the Tower of Twin Dragons, which is an area that players have gone through by that point. Secondly, due to how the map can sometimes display/not display unopened chests, this out-of-reach chest becomes more likely to be overlooked. Thirdly, the map for this particular area can be a bit wonky, since the tower exterior wraps around in a spiral fashion, and it doesn’t always translate well into the 2D map. I don’t even think any of the NPCs hint about the Aegis Plate’s existence. At the very least, make the chest containing the Aegis Plate a different texture, like the one containing Silver Bromide, so that players can tell that it contains an important item.

​
3) New Game+ Mechanic
I like the idea that players can choose to replay the game in New Game+ mode, carrying over what they have from the previous save. However, as of now, New Game+ transfers everything (with only a few exceptions) from the selected save file as is – from level, items, equipment, shards, bestiary, etc. While it is fun to have end-game stuff right from the start of a fresh run, it also removes any sort of challenge the game throws at the player, even when playing on a higher difficulty (including Nightmare).
What I’d like to propose is that on future updates to the game, the players are given the choice to select exactly which aspects of the game they would like to get carried over. They can choose to do a NG+ as it is right now, carrying over everything, or choose to only carry over specific things, such as bestiary data.
The different aspects that players should be able to choose, in my opinion, are best separated as the following:

• Level and EXP (if unselected, Miriam starts at level 1 again with 0 EXP)
• Stat bonus from food (if unselected, all stat boost from first-time food consumption is removed, and players will need to feed Miriam the corresponding food item again to gain the stat boost back)
• Max HP/MP/Capacity Ups (if unselected, every point of HP/MP/Capacity bonus found from these items on the map is reset, and these must be recollected to regain the stat bonus)
• Money (the amount to be carried over can be selected, up to a maximum of the amount of G left on the selected save file)
• Items and ingredients/materials (this includes supplies, all food items, cooking ingredients, and alchemy materials)
• Shop/Alchemy items data (record of which items have been transmuted/dismantled via Johannes and available for purchase in the shop)
• Equipment (weapons, ammunition, head armor, body armor, accessories, scarves)
• Key items (shop discount card, alchemy recipe books, hair apparents)
• Conjure (Red) shards*
• Manipulative (Blue) shards*
• Directional (Purple) shards*
• Passive (Yellow) shards*
• Familiars (Green) shards*
• Demons bestiary data (if unselected, clears all entries for the demon bestiary, except for total amount killed, and the data only reappears after the corresponding demon is defeated again in the NG+ playthrough)
• Techniques mastery (maintains the amount of mastery for each learned technique if selected)
• Map data (if unselected, the NG+ starts with a blank map, just like a first playthrough)
• Kill count (if unselected, the total amount of enemies defeated is reset to zero, as does the kill count for each demon in the bestiary)
• [Optional] Personal data (resets recorded stats in the personal data panel, with possible exception of total play time)
• [Optional] Shortcut shard data (resets total amount of Shortcut shard to zero and clears recorded shortcuts)

*Note: If players choose to reset any of the shard categories, then all shards from that category will be reset (the game acts as if Miriam had never collected that shard before). When the shard is recollected, it starts at Rank 1 and Grade 1 again.
**Several special items, such as Gebel’s Glasses and the Boss medals, should likely be persistently available in your inventory once obtained.
This degree of customization for NG+ should give players a higher replay value for the game, while also allowing players to basically play NG+ in whichever way they’d prefer.
​
4) Visual/Auditory Effects Toggles
This is mostly personal preference, and likely not high priority for most people. I’d like an option to toggle some of these aspects of the game on or off:

• Cosmetic effects of equipment on Miriam’s character model (separate toggle for head armor, accessories, and scarves). Let’s face it, most of the time, players will choose which gear to equip based on their stats/combat properties rather than unique aesthetics or gimmicks. As fun as it is to dress up Miriam with the various available gear, most of the time, I prefer Miriam’s default look compared to most of the accessories or head armors. Plus, they can look a bit ridiculous during dialogue sequences and cutscenes. Toggling this off will negate any visual changes to Miriam’s character model when equipping that category of equipment.
• Visual effect of several passive shards, such as Detective’s Eye or Money Is Power. I like the utility/bonus these shards provide, but I can do without the persistent golden icon above my head from Money Is Power and the circle from Detective’s Eye. Toggling this off only disables the visual effect of the shards, but still enable their bonuses.
• Character dialogue voiceover. Apart from selecting English/Japanese voice acting, an extra option to turn those off would be nice. I don’t personally have any issues with the voice acting, but sometimes the repeated dialogue (especially when crafting items/shards or shopping) can become annoying.

I am aware that some of the visual effects mentioned above can be removed by using mods, but it would be even better if the game allows toggling them on/off directly from the options menu. And no, I do not want these options to only be available via a paid “cosmetic DLC”.
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5) Miscellaneous and Quality of Life Suggestions
a) Map improvements. I think the map should only highlight the subarea that Miriam is in at the moment of opening it, instead of the entire castle section. As of now, the map is simply divided into the Galleon Minerva section, main castle section, and the Bridge of Evil and beyond areas. It’ll look better and easier to focus on if each subarea gets the same map treatment as the Galleon Minerva. Alternatively, different subareas can also be distinguished with a different color. The map should also properly display unopened chests in an already discovered map area.
b) Make Sacred Shade and Shadow Tracer shards toggle-use, just like the Bunnymorphosis shard.
c) Increase drop rate of certain items. As the next update note suggests, it seems that the drop rate of Monster Fur from Simians is going to be increased, and deservingly so. In my opinion, the drop rate of Emerald is also in desperate need of increase, since right now it only drops from one type of enemy with a low drop rate (5.0% from Thunder Elementals), compared to the more commonly found Ruby and Sapphire, especially since these three “elemental gems” are often used in transmuting various items/equipment. Another item that should have a slightly better drop rate in my opinion is the Dark Matter.
d) HP cap for Valefar after using his Plunder ability. I’m not sure whether this is already in the game or not, but if it is, the cap seems to still be too high. Fighting Valefar with hundreds of thousands of gold is a bit tedious. It is manageable, but takes just a bit too long (especially since him using the “poker chip stack” attack tends to cause framerate drops). I guess giving him an HP cap of around 30k to 50k after using Plunder is reasonable enough.
e) Techniques are fun, but some weapon classes are lacking in terms of technique variety. The worst case of this are whips and firearms, which only have one technique accessible for each. This is contrasted heavily by the katana, which has 6 techniques accessible (and arguably, some of the better techniques as well). It would be nice if more (and better) techniques are available in the future for the weapon classes other than swords and katana.
f) Kunekune is a neat enemy, but farming them is rather time consuming due to how it is spawned. It is probably better if Kunekune is made to spawn faster.
Again, it would be nice if these improvements aren’t locked behind a “paid DLC” in the future, should the devs decide to implement any of these suggestions.
​
6) On the subject of nerf plans and “priorities”
According to the devs’ latest update post on their Kickstarter page, the changes they are pushing to the upcoming patch for consoles will include performance and a few bug fixes, some map interface improvements, and quite a number of “balance” changes (most of these in the form of nerfs). That, and the notion that they are tackling these issues while “prioritizing more important fixes and improvements for now”.
While many seem to comment on these nerfing decisions, stating that singleplayer games have no need for balancing – hence no need for nerfs to abilities/weapons/etc., I don’t necessarily agree. If these nerfs result in a more even play experience across the different weapons and shards, they’re alright in my book. Besides, we still don’t know the extent of these nerfs, they could be very minor that they’ll barely be noticeable.
However, several things stated within that update note can understandably raise concerns as to whether the devs truly have been prioritizing the more crucial fixes and improvements, instead of just throwing together an update plan to cover up the fact that there hasn’t been a solid patch/update that definitively fixes the performance issues on the Switch, despite already being over a month since its release date (Switch users can correct me on this if I’m wrong).
I think people would accept the balance changes better had the performance issues (and more serious bugs/glitches) across all platforms have been addressed. At least that way, we can more confidently trust the devs’ statement that they really are prioritizing the improvements properly.
What really calls the devs’ decision from this post into question, in my opinion, is the list of shards being nerfed. Most of them are early game shards that are admittedly more on the stronger side. However, you may notice that among them, Craftwork is apparently also about to be nerfed.
I’m sorry, what? In what way is Craftwork overpowered? Out of all the shards in the game, why nerf Craftwork? Keep in mind that me saying this does not mean that I’d rather have more nerfs for other things in the game.
Well, whatever. I just really hope that when the patch eventually does come out, all these worrying concerns are proven to be false, and the devs truly managed to address the more critical performance issues alongside tweaking the game’s balance in a positive way.
​
That's about it for now. I know it has been a very long post, but I'm sharing these thoughts to the community to know what others think about them. And hopefully, some of these ideas can be a source of constructive feedback to the developers.

I remember playing with these sets of chips (now that I thought about it, they really resembled poker chips) a while back when I was a small kid. The chips were magnetic and each had a character from a Marvel franchise on it. I don't remember if they also came with a blaster or something used to fire them. I remember that they were pretty colorful (red,yellow, green, blue) and that each character had sort of a value of power like from 50-200. I am 20 now and I have no idea how they are even called, tried googling, this was my second option. Also, just remembered, you purchased them in sets that had 6 of them or something like that.

1. A pair of chaps that make it impossible for dust or sand to get on the wearer.
2. A badge that makes anyone who sees you treat you as authority, for better or worse.
3. A cowboy hat that makes you invisible to insects, rodents, and other pests.
4. A revolver that smells of rum. The bullets "sway" towards the center of mass on a target to compensate for bad aim.
5. A cactus flower that never wilts and smells of prickly pear. Can be worn in one's hair for advantage on charisma checks.
6. Boot snakes - once per boot you can use a bonus action to say the command word and release 1d4+1 poisonous snakes. Boots recharge when you line dance for the rising sun.
7. Cigarillo: Smoking makes you cool. +1 to dex and char for 10 minutes following use. Chance of con damage and addiction that rises with excessive use.
8. A pair of boots with detachable heels, each of which is an extradimensional space. Each heel is enchanted to contain up to 20 pounds of material which does not exceed 2 cubic feet.
9. Canteen of Endless Sangria: An enchanted container that can switch between the sweet tasting alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage. Always cool and refreshing.
10. Harmonica: Receptive parties will be much more likely to hear and believe your story up to this point if delivered in a rambling bluesman type fashion.
11. Scroll of Bad'n'Ugly: Rare incantation with one use. Suggests the subject form rivalry against your enemy but NOT team up with you. Fair chance their aggression towards you also raises.
12. Sheriff's Holster- While it contains a firearm, you may draw and fire the weapon as a reaction, when an enemy you can see draws their weapon.
13. Handcar of travel: You have to pump it to make it go, but it generates its own temporary rails. A party of five and their gear can fit on it for sure. You can steer it, but doesn't work all that well on craggy terrain without paths.
14. Ass Hat: A wide-brimmed straw hat with a magic donkey inside. You can dump the donkey out with a word or put the hat on the donkey to suck it back in. The donkey heals up if left in the hat more than a day and revives and reconstitutes if killed in a week. It's always the same donkey in the hat and it will remember abuse. It has the traditional donkey temperament, but if treated right will still make sure your drunk ass gets back home safely.
15. Scroll of cliff house: Cast at a very large rock outcropping to create a camouflaged stone and adobe house in it. The house is very small, but it is fortified and will have a fire pit, bed rolls, and stone benches. If aimed at a cliff, you'll get a cliff dwelling with a ladder you can pull up. (Within reason.)
16. Instant cholla: A despined cholla segment harvested from hell-grown cactus. Tossed on the ground, it cracks open and a 10x10 foot area instantly sprouts a near solid, interlinked mass of the worst teddy-bear cholla you can imagine, about 10 feet high. It will grow from any organic, ground, or stone substrate, but metal and water are no-goes. The cholla grown is mundane and can be cut down or burned, but standard cholla hazards most definitely still apply.
17. Wand of dust devil: Kicks up a pretty nasty dust devil. Indoors, the devil affects a 5x5 area and all above it for 1 round, outdoors you can maximize it if you so choose to get a 10x10 devil that lasts 2 rounds. The wand's range is 120 feet. The dust devil remains in one place or travels along a 50 foot straight line path of your choosing. Anyone caught in it loses concentration, is blinded until your next turn, and is stripped of anything susceptible to strong winds. Small and light items nearby the area of effect, such as hats and papers, may be carried away even if the dust devil doesn't directly hit them.
18. Cards of compelled duel: If you flash the ace of spades to another person and they see the face of the card, they must make a wisdom/charisma save. If they fail, they inexplicably feel compelled to play a gambling card game with you. If you offer some sort of stakes (e.g. rights to Glitter gulch mine), they'll feel the compulsion to bet something they see as about equivalent in value. There's no guarantee the inherently dishonorable will stick to their word afterwards, so you'd best draw up some papers first and get a witness. The cards can't be used in combat situations to keep enemies from attacking you.
19. Protective fetish: A coin-sized set of soapstone fetishes vaguely resembling animals which are kept in a plain leather pouch filled with corn pollen. Each one can prevent one natural 1 or curse from taking hold, but it then breaks in half and becomes useless.
20. Horsebreaker Buckle: A silver and turquoise belt buckle which shows a bucking mustang. If you can get on the back of a regular unbroken or wild horse and stay on for 8 seconds, it will be tamed. You'll also take half damage from horses.
21. Hella's Oxen Yoke: If it's 1848, winter's coming, and you need speed, rig this yoke to your covered wagon. It summons in 18 spectral oxen (inedible to the usual predators!) allowing you to move 60 miles overland per day on nice roads, probably tripling to sextupling the time you were making before. One problem, the oxen belong to a divine who can't stand to see his herd yoked for too long. Using the yoke for more than 12 hours at a time or more than one day in a row increases the cumulative risk of the oxen rampaging and smashing the yoke into irreparable ruin.
22. Rocky Mountain Oyster Pearl: A magical pink pearl found in the last place you'd ever look for one, usually discovered when young bulls become steers. Fixing it into a weapon or armor adds the equivalent of a +1 to it (so a +1 knife becomes a +2 knife, etc.). Weapons and other articles cannot be improved beyond a +4 in this manner (or whatever is balanced for your group.)
23. Winter Count: A buffalo hide that records the history of a family or tribal band. The chosen record-keeper adds a single pictograph symbolizing the most memorable event of each year. Studying a winter count that has been kept for over a hundred years may reveal a new spell as the glyphs become animated by the lives and memories of those around them. Winter counts are invaluable record-keeping artifacts and "die" slowly over time if separated from their family. That doesn't stop unscrupulous academics and private collectors from targeting them.
24. Rainbow Sheep: A curious variety of double-coated sheep with thin bladed horns whose fleece can be any color of the rainbow, dependent on which sacred mountain they graze upon. Their wool makes magical garments. Coveted by many, they are frequent targets of rustling.
25. A +1 whip that gives you advantage to animal handling and the ability to attempt grapples from 10 feet away.
26. The Spittoon Of Justice - This squat, bronze container holds the juices of a thousand cowboys. The user can toss the spit at anyone within ten feet to entangle the target. An entangled creature takes a –2 penalty on attack rolls and a –4 penalty to Dexterity and must make a DC 15 Reflex save or be glued to the floor, unable to move. An evil creature must make a DC 25 Reflex save. In all other ways, treat as a tanglefoot bag. The Spittoon Of Justice automatically refills with cowboy juices after 1d10 rounds.
27. A badge that, when used by a cleric as a holy symbol, extends the effects of Turn Undead to criminals.
28. A train ticket with the word Deuce written on it. Will be treated as a valid train ticket on any train, regardless of time, company or number of uses.
29. A covered wagon, typical in appearance, but with a massive and roomy interior for storage and living.
30. Spurs of Intimidation: When the wearer first walks into town anybody who can hear these rattling spurs must make a Wisdom save or be frightened
31. Speculator's monocle: Allows you to know the approximate value of any non-magical item or trade good you have identified.
32. The Injuns' Cursed Axe, When a local tribes person curses a creature's name and lodges this tomahawk in a post, the cursed creature's HP regeneration is reduced by half until the tomahawk is removed.
33. Poncho of the desert, gives the wearer advantage on all exhaustion checks in a Hot environment.
34. Sherrif's Gold Star that gives the wearer a +2 to CHA rolls of Intimidation and Persuasion. Only works for creatures of Lawful alignment.
35. Bandito's Bandana that gives the wearer a +2 to CHA rolls of Intimidation and Deception. Only works for creatures of Chaotic or Neutral alignment.
36. Dusty's Trick Canteen: With atunement gives the user a never-ending stream of clean drinking water. Any un-attuned creature gets a mouthful of sand.
37. Horse reins that create a telepathic link between the rider and the horse.
38. Silver spurs that grant a bonus on charisma checks when meeting someone new.
39. Cowboy hat that grants advantage on animal handling checks when dealing with cattle.
40. Horseshoes that don't leave any tracks.
41. A canteen that is always barely full of water. It's an infinite source of water but it only comes out in dribbles.
42. An automatic typewriter. It writes whatever you dictate to it.
43. A poncho that can absorb the impact of one bullet a day.
44. A knife that causes inedible/poisonous/dead plants to become edible when they're cut.
45. A wide-brimmed sombrero that always seems to hide your face in shadow.
46. An acoustic guitar made from the wood of a gallows. It never sounds quite right.
47. Trick Whiskey Barrel: Holds 2 gallons of whiskey and has a functioning bung hole (heh). Behind the liquid compartment, it has a hidden chamber that can hold a small sized creature.
48. Lasso of Witch Hair: Range 15 feet. You can use the Lasso to make a grapple check with advantage against a foe that cast a spell this round.
49. A gold pan that absorbs any gold it touches. Speaking the command word will cause the pent up gold to be expelled in a large lump of pure gold.
50. A tin coffee pot that refills itself with black coffee every dawn. Is enough for 5 cups a day. This does not function for water rations.
51. Easy Pete - A sentient warpick with the soul of an old prospector. The spirit's guidance gives advantage on rolls related to mining. Pete is a laid-back, neutral good soul. His only desire is to see the people he cares for happy.
52. A collection of totem poles that give boons to those who attune to it. Anyone who is attuned to it may use Wildshape once, only using the animal that was depicted on the totem they prayed to. After using this ability, you must attune to the totem once again.
53. Potions of Healing that look, smell, and taste like whiskey. They don't actually contain any alcohol.
54. A horse blanket that makes the horse wearing it immune to any environmental hazards. Extreme heat, wind, and sand are powerless against the horse. This effect does not apply to the rider.
55. Agave that tastes like pure honey. Rehydrates and heals the consumer.
56. Seeds that grow into a colossal Saguaro cactus that seems to part the clouds. It's about the size of a redwood tree, with needles as thick as a human arm in some places and normal sized in others. I wonder what's at the top...
57. Homemade frybread. Functions like a goodberry. Is pretty bland on it's own.
58. A tobacco tin that refills itself with 3 pinches a day. Chewing the tobacco gives you +1 to charisma checks to an hour after consuming. There is also a pouch version of this, refilling at a rate of only 1 a day instead.
59. A wagon wheel that functions like a shield. The wheel is attached to a gauntlet, allowing it to spin. The spin deals 1d8 bludgeoning damage.
60. A spittoon that smells of aloe. The contents are no less gross, however.
61. Yellow Dragon's Eye - A necklace that gives its user a breath weapon. The breath weapon is a stream of scorching sand, dealing 2d6 fire damage and 2d6 slashing damage and knocking the target prone if they fail the saving throw. On a successful saving throw the target(s) are not knocked prone and take half damage. This damage increases to 3d6 each at level 16.
62. Flint - A sentient sixshooter. The soul possessing the weapon gives +5 to any initiative rolls while wielding the weapon, as if he's eager to get out of the holster. Flint is a lawful good human who died holding the revolver, living as a sheriff in his mortal life. He'll either insult you or praise you for your aim. He always addresses you as partner or ma'am, depending on your preference. His main goal is upholding the law, even in death.
63. A vial containing fine gravel. If someone manages to drink, or eat, the gravel, they gain a one time use breath weapon, blasting chunks of gravel and stomach acid at their opponent in a 15 foot cone. This deals 2d6 acid damage and 2d6 bludgeoning damage.
64. A 1 cubic foot box that contains a block of ice that never melts.
65. Cactus Needles - Function like normal darts, but deal half as much damage and can be thrown up to 5 at a time.
66. A poker chip of returning: if lost in a card game will disappear at midnight and reappear in the purse of the original owner.
67. A cowboy hat that is so fashionable and dashing you get a bonus to charisma checks against people you are friendly with.
68. Model steam train. Can be set up on a looped track around your camp and acts as the alarm spell, sounding its whistle if any threats perceived.
69. A bandana that's a dusty black. You may summon a friendly dust mephit for one hour if you speak the command word. The summoning takes one action and appears as you coughing up a cloud of dust.
70. Bomber's Bandoleer: A bandoleer containing room for 5 sticks of dynamite. Every 24 hours, the bandoleer spawns 1 stick of dynamite, stopping when the bandoleer is filled. If dynamite on your person is put into the bandoleer, it takes up space on it.
71. A bale of hay that slowly regenerates over time. It contains 10 rations for animals, regenerating one rations worth a day.
72. A tomahawk that always returns to the owner's hand after throwing it. Retrieving the axe with the command word takes a bonus action.
73. A saddle that will slowly fit to any mount up to huge size. Resizing takes place over a long rest.

Maybe the party thief just enjoys picking pockets of honest people. Maybe there is murderer on the run, leaving trail of dead bodies. Maybe you just found a dead body in dragon's lair. And maybe you just killed poor villager and are now rummaging his pockets. This way or another, everybody carries few petty things with them, be it keys, some change, or lucky talisman. So, now, let your imagination run wild, and fill those 100 empty pockets. I'll start.
After searching through the pockets, you found...

d100	Quiet a few items	Single item
1	5 cp, about 5 inches of fine wire, pink rose pebble, 10 inches of string and needle	Pocket sand.
2	flask of booze, pocket knife, piece of smoked fish	A folded piece of leather containing several pieces of blank parchment (A wallet with a checkbook
3	5sp, vial of foul smelling liquid and intricately decorated dagger	An Aegis of Recovery; the NPC is unaware of its purpose/doesn't know it has to be worn to work
4	Some traveler's rations, a waterskin, 5 gold, and a traveler's any-tool.A flask with incredibly potent alcohol, and a note from a family member.	A diary/journal that goes in detail about the NPC's life. Further inspection reveals that there is one or two minor magic scrolls between some of the pages.
5	A couple buttons and a sewing needle.	A bag of various gems and jewelry equal to about 300 gold.
6	A comb, and a small tin full some type of wax.	A key, with no information of what it is used for. Turns out to be a key stolen from a guard that opens the keep.
7	An empty vial with a cork and paper with scientific stuff written on it.	A piece of cheese, half eaten.
8	An old-fashioned hoop of keys with 24 numbered keys on it; a box of chewing tobbacco.	A golden ring worth 100gp and a note 'today's the day!'
9	A small coin purse that's bigger on the inside-- it's a tiny handy haversack that has a mouth width of just 3in. Inside is the kind of detritus you'd find in a woman's purse: Half-used lipstick, old receipts, a small hand mirror, a pillbox (4 unidentified white pills), a crushed box of breath mints, and an clean unused sanitary napkin. The only thing worth money is a single ruby stud earring worth 30gp.	A few small pieces of wood, made to look like silver coins (same shape, size, markings), among some actual silver pieces.
10	A pilgrim's badge in the shape of a fish, a small prayer book, and a token from a nearby brothel.	A fishing hook, roll a DC 20 dex save to not have your fingers on it and yell out in pain with your hand still in the pocket.
11	A small notebook filled with outlandish conspiracy theories written in a small, cramped style. Most of the theories have to do with the government being controlled by lizardmen, though some of the entries have to do with banking fraud that actually makes sense the more you think about it.	A small masterwork hammer with a lightly glowing aquamarine gem embedded in the pommel.
12	A locket with the picture of a random (married) nobleman/woman, 1gp, and a foil packet with a circular bulge in it.	The transcript of an ancient prophecy, describing a heroic person looking a lot like one of the players.
13	10 cp and a drawing of one of the players, with a red X across his/her face	A brass signet ring given to members of a guild or cult. There is an engraving on the inside that says "Don't be a jerk," in dwarvish.
14	An empty pouch and a holy symbol of a random religion	Nothing. The pockets open to bare skin.
15	5cp and weird, foreign currency with a value of about 1 gold, if the players find a merchant that recognizes the coins	Warrant for Arrest: The warrant depicts an illustration of they who fell the villager, with a DEAD OR ALIVE bounty of 500gp.
16	A letter announcing the death of a soldier in a distant war and a locket with a gold dragon scale inside.	‎Keyring of Tools: This savvy farmer had a wizard shrink each of his farming tools (shovel, hoe, scythe, axe, plough, pitchfork, and rake) to the size of keys for easy transportation. Whenever he needed them, he simply popped them off the magical ring.
17	A necklace with a broken chain, a monocle with a cracked lens, and a corkscrew.	‎Coin Pouch Empath: A peculiar thing of leather and string, the coin pouch empath is sad and forlorned when empty, but overjoyed and greedy when full. These emotions pour into who so ever carries it.
18	A half used candle, a seal (think imperial seal), and a quill.	‎Take Me Back to Sea Shell: Seemingly innocent pocket fodder of the nostalgic seaman, this shell carries within it the sound of the nearest sea, including lively docks, bustling markets, all of sea-kind, and intelligent voices. More time spent listening delivers greater insight into actual discussions, known creature calls, and suggestions of tide and weather– but beware, some Take Me Back shells are known to maintain a fiesty crab!
19	A bag of nails, a vial of paste, and a piece of measuring tape.	‎Anti-Theft Stitching: Those quick to trifle will find their wrists stitched in this anti-theft pocket lining! The leather sack wraps tightly around the wrist with magical strength, rendering the hand useless like that in a bag. The pocket bag can only be opened by command of the pocket's owner or the tailor who set the trap. The leather is not so sure to be easily removed– the trap tightens at the wrist with any attempt.
20	1cp, 3 smooth rocks, and a postcard from their mother asking them to come home.	A curious knife in the shape of a skeletal dragon with 3 different folding blades that also doubles as brass knuckles. Looks impractical and made of cheap metal. (Treat as a -1 knife which deals any damage randomly between the target and the user's hand. No proficiencies apply to this weapon.)
21	A plump purse containing 10d10 gold 10d10 silver and 10d10 copper, several different types of identification and travel cards, and ready-to-be-used bank drafts in the purse owner's name. The drafts are very soon reported stolen by the owner or their relatives. Attempting to use the bankdrafts at the corresponding bank to withdraw money will result in the PC's arrest if they cannot convince the bank guards that they are a merchant duped into taking a stolen draft.	A small bone knife carved with runes and pulsing faintly with magic, this hobgoblin good luck charm allows one to reroll an attack roll or any skill check involving a melee or ranged weapon once per day.
22	A jade amulet, representing a coiled snake. Half of a copper key.	A palm-sized brass coin from a distant Fire Giant city. This Giant coin is equal to 1d4+1 Gold Pieces if you can find a money changer who will accept it.
23	A pouch containing 1gp, 5sp and a parchment with a detailed sketch of a child and a poorly drawn dog? Cat? smiling next to it with 'daddy'/'mummy' scribbled under it.	A shimmering ballgown of spun moonlight which fits within a single thimble, found within a thimble. The ballgown is ... very see through, but can be worn over another nice dress of plain material to good effect.
24	A folded up stack of papers. The top one is a shopping list, the others are just sheets of really bad love poems. Like really bad. You kinda feel bad for the guy.	A piece of chalk and a ripped parchment with Infernal runes and part of a magic circle drawn on it.
25	Several minor items touched by or discarded by the PC with the highest charisma, such as a napkin or spoon that PC used at the last tavern, a sock with holes they tossed, a spent vial from a potion they drunk, etc.	a crystal eye, always warm
26	Several different types of minor lucky charms, collected from churches, shrines, and traveling clerics.	a bag full of coins, each one from a different country
27	Bits and bobs from several different kits, such as lockpicks, a tinderbox, a pouch of ball bearings, a roll of twine, perfume, sealing wax, a bottle of fine ink, and an incense block.	a deck of unique cards and a booklet with instructions to play a game of war with them
28	Several bags of different strong drugs and narcotics and a collapsible set of scales.	a leather bag full of seeds
29	Advertisements for local attractions and restaurants, a compass, travel notes, identification papers, several local trinkets, and foreign paper currency you do not recognize.	a paper with the last thing a PC did or said to the NPC written on it
30	A number of purses, already emptied of everything valuable.	A strange cube with buttons on it and cogs
31	A handful of very hot fresh peppers, a small bottle of eyes-burning-from-the-smell-alone wretchedly spicy but delicious hot sauce (which will cause vomiting and incapacitate the non-spice tolerant), and a small vial of offwhite crystals marked as a lethal substance (very pure capsaicin).	A roughly scribbled map on a piece of parchment, folded up three times
32	A talisman made of a dozen dried ears from different sentient humanoids, threaded on a string. Several lollipops of varying flavors.	A feather
33	A single shoe in their back left pants pocket. A glove in their right front pants pocket. There is sausages in the fingers of the gloves. They are smoked and will keep for several days. The shoe is filled with dried fruits.	Shimmering dust in a vial which after some investigation appears to be the remains of a will o wisp
34	A single stone (of farspeech) and a set of sapphire earrings worth 50gp	An old love letter, neatly but repeated folded and worn from age.
35	A wrapped bar of chocolate, a handkerchief, and a vial of white viscous liquid.	A small, simple pen knife. The handle is old and the wood is worn so that the maker's mark is no longer visible.
36	Brass knuckles, a wooden bar that looks as though it has been gnawed on, a small hooked knife, a key, and a potato sack.	A poorly made rope doll with button eyes and frayed yellow cloth for hair.
37	A small pile of flax seeds, a partially burned children's toy and a drawing of a ball with notes on construction and dimensions.	A tiny nugget of fool's gold, worthless.
38	A mummified toe, an empty salt cellar and some spilled salt.	An empty tinder box, the insides are scortched black.
39	New lock, four loose keys and someone else's journal.	A sky blue baby's bow.
40	A small metal object of obvious craftsmanship with no immediately apparent use. It's a decorated circle with a couple of prongs sticking out one side and handful of marbles.	A folded piece of parchment warning citizens of pick pockets.
41	A yo-yo, a child's spinning top, a doll's head, and a small wooden figurine of a horse.	A coin purse with a message in thieves cant. The message warns the thief to return the purse or else.
42	A clod of dirt containing half-a-dozen large earthworms. Your target was either planning to go fishing, or has exotic taste in snack foods.	An invitation to join the local thieves guild.
43	8 toffees, 6 wrappers, a clean silk handkerchief, lip wax, a tiny empty clay pot which probably held some medicinal substance, 4 silver, 30 copper.	Used handkerchief.
44	A miniature flail with five heads that you can only wield with two fingers, a nickel token with the image of a mouse, a braid of blond human hair, and a purse with wheat markings containing 7 gold, 17 silver, 26 copper.	A bottle cork with a small blue star inked on the bottom.
45	An elegant drawstring charm bag that can be worn around the neck with a wooden charm embedded with a black onyx acting as the drawstring stopper. The bag contains a murex shell from a sea far away. A tin of very strong nasal-clearing throat lozenges. A plain snapbag with 56 silver and 31 copper.	A gold coin hidden in a loaf of bread.
46	A corkscrew, 7 corks, an eye patch, 2 playing cards, 23 gold, 2 copper.	Cold spaghetti and meatballs. Just put straight in the pocket.
47	A spyglass set with magic lenses that magnify very small things, a small corked bottle of pond scum, and a box of glass slides with fine cuts of preserved tissue.	Some crumpled handwritten receipts for goods and small change
48	Housecat jerky, 4 topaz, a raw chunk of limonite, an ingot of bismuth, and a masterwork beer stein. The craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encircled with bands of bronze and dog leather, studded with red spinel, and menaces with spikes of turtle shell and howlite. On the beer stein are images of unicorns prancing among slain goblins in enamel.	A spare pair of clean, but clearly old underwear. Turns out the pocket owner has incontinence and brings backups for accidents.
49	82 conkers than smell faintly of vinegar, an awl, and a ball of twine. Every pocket is packed full.	A magical anti-pickpocket snaptrap. It snaps on the thief's fingers loudly and painfully with needle-like teeth and turns the thief's hand bright purple as though indelibly dyed.
50	A pair of thin leather gloves, a bottle of sovereign glue and universal solvent. A tiny skull carved from rose quartz and 1 gold.	A half-eaten bread snack wrapped in leaves.
51	A pair of dragon-hide gloves, a pot of vivid blue warpaint, a tin containing a soaplike lozenge smelling slightly of sandalwood and spices labelled as an antiperspirant. No money or wallet.	A wrapped sandwich.
52	A pair of thin women's gloves, an ordinary peach pit, a bag of metallic glitter, and a magnifying glass. A rose-colored purse with 13 gold coins and a small mirror.	A book
53	A tea egg, a tin of exotic black tea, and a tiny tin with condensed milk. 50 silver coins cleverly wrapped in leaves instead of the usual paper.	A "Pocket" dimension the size of a pocket.
54	A paper fan, a taxidermied bat stuffed with nice-smelling herbs, several large orange pearls that have fallen off a necklace, lint, a receipt for soap and rat poison, and an old grocery shopping list. 8 copper.	A key to a secret lockbox kept under the NPC's bed.
55	503 copper within a sock that had been stuffed inside another sock. The sock is heavily crusted with blood. A tiny clasp knife not useful for combat but convenient for small tasks. 2 humanoid teeth. 6 tickets for an underground bear fighting ring.	A small knife in a deerskin wrap. The handle has another NPC's name carved on it, surrounded by little hearts.
56	6 losing betting tickets for a terrier ratkilling arena. A 3 month-old stub for an enter-to-win sweepstakes that ended 2 months ago. 15 losing betting tickets for gladiator matches. 1 ticket for a fishing challenge. 26 losing tickets for a local lottery accumulated over the last 3 months. An expensive receipt for a local restaurant that shows the pocket owner entered and lost in an eating contest. 13 losing stubs for a cockfighting arena. 2 losing betting tickets for chariot races. 1 copper.	A sealed scroll. Depicts an expertly drawn image of a rude gesture, captioned by the words "Fuck you, buddy." The text is magical and can be read in any language, so the scroll detects as magic before you open it.
57	3 tangerines, 1 plum, 2 small bananas, a bunch of champagne grapes, a pomegranate, an apple, and 6 dates spread across various pockets.	A half eaten ham sandwich.
58	One and a half pounds of smokey jerky made from an ancient dragon's tongue. A 4 inch plain pocket pen carved from giant's tooth enamel, tipped with a gold-vanadium nib, and silver cap. A non-descript bottle of pen ink from a kraken behemoth that has never seen sunlight. 3 electrum coins from an ancient civilization in a small tarrasque-skin wallet. An adamantium sewing needle 2 inches long. 8 six-foot-long hairs from an archangel. A small platinum thimble. An ordinary set of reading glasses made with very thin mithral frames and beholder small-eye lenses. An entirely spent yew-wood wand that held some variety of seventh level spell before it was used up.	The perfect skipping stone.
59	A large vial of human blood, a handmirror backed with aluminium rather than silver, 3 silver arrowheads, and a leather bag containing a long fang and tuft of black fur from an unknown creature.	A big turkey leg, like the size of a large man's hand.
60	An exotic perfume, a sachet of quick dissolving powder that induces forgetfulness, a receipt from a local tavern. 6 gold, 1 silver, 1 copper, no purse.	A tiny violin
61	30 milk teeth from many different humanoid children which have naturally fallen out. 18 silver coins which are especially new, shiny, and beautiful. Traces of dust of fae origin on the inside of the pocket.	Auto-high rolling dice
62	5 different pocket knives of various designs, 12 throwing stars, 4 throwing knives, and a garrote.	A closed thimble filled with cabbage soup
63	Several vials of holy water, powdered silver, salt, a crystal prism, and a rosary of agate beads.	A small, malleable ball of fluorescent green... something. Aside from molding it with your hands, you can exert your will onto it to make finer shapes.
64	A red checker that has been rubbed smooth, one black knight from a chess set, and a six-sided die that seems to land on six more often than it should.	A handkerchief, heavily used.
65	A collection of WANTED posters, each with the face of the owner of these pockets. Aside from that, you can find one copper piece hidden in the folding of the breast pocket.	A small pouch of nuts and dried meats.
66	A 4 silver pieces, brass knuckles, and a voucher for a free meal at the local tavern.	A vial containing something resembling soot. If identified, it is revealed to be a vial of ashes.
67	2 cp, a wooden carving of a duck and a compass wrapped in velvet bag.	A small hoard of sheets of paper, all seemingly collected from the corners of posted notices; none are larger than a square inch.
68	4 cp, 2sp, and a locket with a picture of the NPC's spouse inside.	Just a few clods of dirt and some pebbles.
69	A dagger and a note instructing the NPC to assassinate a prominent person.	A single metal needle bent into a perfect circle.
70	A bronze star for honor, a note from a soldier in the same squad as the NPC, and a pocketknife.	A wax seal of a prominent noble in the land who has recently gone missing.
71	Entry ticket to a poker tournament, a cheat sheet for poker, and four aces.	A scrap of paper with a script that you can't read (PC doesn't know it is written in illusory script).
72	Three links of chain, coin from a far away land, and a single earring.	A charm of obsidian antlers on a broken chain.
73	A wooden pipe that never needs to be relit, flask that never empties, and a glass eye that blinks.	A couple of pieces of chalk.
74	Piece of a twig, a river stone, feathetooth/egg of a rare magical creature.	A crumpled note that is damaged beyond legibility.
75	A hat that acts like a bag of holding, within it are dice with no pips, blank playing cards, and a handkerchief that teleports small items back into the hat when covered.	A scrap of parchment that has a map drawn on it. It seems to be of streets in a city, but you can’t tell where.
76	A vial of blood with a mysterious symbol on it, a small pouch of dirt that has flecks of sparkling crystal in it, and part of a root from a rare tree.	34 silver coins in a felt-lined purse that has been silenced so the coins don't clink within it.
77	An invisible object wrapped in cloth, a silver ring with hearts engraved along the outside, and a handful of poppies that never wilt.	A treasure map
78	A piece of parchment labeled "Map" with a "X" on it but no other markings, a compass with no needle, a key missing it's blade.	A love letter to the PC's mother, a scroll that reads, "I have prepared explosive runes." and a scroll that reads, "If you're reading this, I'm right behind you."
79		A popular novel published recently with an elven-made bookmark stuck inside.
80		A very small spellbook containing 3 cantrips and 2 first-level spells. There are also notes about the location of dungeons and the layout of magical ley lines in the area.
81		A cracked or flawed ioun stone in a felt-lined box.
82		An enchanted 10 foot pole that somehow fits in any ordinary pocket.
83		A half eaten piece of jerky
84		A folded note that reads "come to (x place) at dusk, thursday night, or you'll never see her again. come alone, and bring the money. Or else."
85		A broken pocket watch.
86		A canine tooth with a tiny metal dogtag next to it. It only has a very tiny paw print carved onto it.
87		An envelope with money and a small letter apologizing for the small amount, promising not to spend any on food next time so the kids will have more
88		An old, tarnished wedding ring obviously not worn in a while
89		A collector's set of very tiny letter openers
90		Very large clumps of tangled hair tied tightly together, holding a robin's egg inside.
91		A one year sober chip
92		Hedgehog in the cage, made out of spruce wood.
93		A certificate of adoption for a boy at a local orphanage
94		A letter to a loved one promising them they will see them soon after nearly a decade apart
95		Just a regular silver coin. There is nothing special about it. Nothing, really.
96		A wooden box filled with polished copper coins
97		An advertisement for the local tavern
98		A small loaf of bread filled with a spicy pepper sauce.
99		A small wooden figurine carved into the shape of an owlbear.
100		A well made doll. Odd... it looks like one of the players...

EDIT: Originaly I searched for sets of items, as most people carry multiple things with them (I'm pretty sure you carry a cellphone, keys, some change on you all the time), but many people gave lists of individual items or just single item and..I wasn't sure if those lists were meant to be a collection, or not, so I made another list of individual items, for anybody using it to roll up unique mix of items (also, some of the items descriptions were too good to omit).
EDIT No.2: Guys, gals, whoever reads this: We filled out our single item frame. But we are still severly lacking the grouped items. So please, if you are going to participate, make some fun, or interesting mix of objects.
EDIT No.3:Removed a few duplicates.
Contributors: Anysnackwilldo, Woomy_Goomy, Madman5110, Popperman_Quakes, pdgeorge, ken_NT, EvilVargon, Frostborn1990, dapidge, Pestillent_dog_2, Just_the_pizza_guy, VoltasPistol, unitedshoes, Aladayle, narizroja, CLoNeOS, dishesfortunechats, Kaiyoto, Qozux, CheesyPotatoHead, VoxDraconae, CountofAccount, jacksaphone, hahaplop, dndspeak, CliffyTheRed, MysticMeow, Faris_Beshma, Atrulyoriginalname, buddychrist627, Jixilix, palad, ken_NT, Splaterpus7, HistoricalSubstance, EonicDrifter

I made my way to the Principal's office trying to figure out what i had done wrong this time. there was no way anyone knew i was the one who glued tommy shipero's rear to his chair in geometry class, he was a bully anyways so no jury would convict me. the art class stink bomb was "gas and go" so i was nowhere near the room by the time the effects would have been noticed. I didn't have a doctor's appointment. I was at a loss. hoping this wasn't some family emergency, i made my way into the office.
"Hello, Sean. Mr. Jameson is in his office waiting for you... your parents are in there as well as another gentleman."
"What's going on? what did i do this time?"
"That you will find out soon enough. Go on in. Stupid question, but I'd be amiss if i didn't ask. Do you need any help?"
"No, I know the way."
"I know you do. I see you more often than i see my grand kids."
With that i made my way into the principals office. mentally preparing myself for whatever fresh hell awaited me in there.
"Ah, Sean. We have been waiting for you. Hello, Mr. Jameson. Am I in trouble or is it something else?"
"Straight to the point. Good man."
This voice i didn't recognize. i turned my head to the man that had just spoken. Interesting.
"Sean, hunny,This is Mr. Costus. He has a special program that might benefit you more than this school."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! I told you i don't want to go to a blind school. I can still see, you know! Well, mostly... kinda."
"This isn't a school for the blind. We Specialize in kids with slight disabilities but very special abilities. I hear that you used to train in martial arts and have some weapons training. and that since the accident you haven't been able to take lessons, more accurately, you don't have a trainer who knows how to work with you. We have trainers who could teach you, and well. We also have programs that provide top notch education, not to mention other high value opportunities."
"Why?"
"Why what sweetie?"
My mother could be dense sometimes but i wanted answers.
"Why should I go? I mean the chance to get back into martial arts would be awesome, but we don't make much money and this sounds expensive."
My dad chimed in at this point, he has been disappointed in his son ever since the accident. his dream of having a football start was shattered. It's not my fault i got knocked off my bike. if he could see what i see, he would probably piss himself. granted im regularly in trouble for something or other almost weekly, but still. im his son. shouldn't i be his pride and joy no matter what? doesn't matter. they're stupid anyways.
"Son, with your record of trouble making, poor and worsening grades, and overall general bad attitude, any price would be fine if it could straighten you out."
"Wait so I'm going to some kind of boot camp?"
Here Costus decided to chip in.
"It's not actually a boot camp. It is government, but it is a new program. You will be helping us perfect this venture. we offer a lot of incentives and your parents won't pay a dime. In fact, your parents will be receiving a good bit of cash for letting us use you. You will live on campus and will receive a regular allowance for personal spending. supplies will be provided, on site doctors will handle your medical needs. we even offer therapists for your PTSD and various other therapies."
So far, Mr. Costus made this seem like some kind of rich kids private school. almost too good to be true. But, this means that i get to get away from my self entitled mom and dad. that right there would be enough for me to say yes. Plus martial arts.
"Ok, I'm in. When do i leave?"
"Excellent, Mr. Mendez. You will be picked up in one week at your house. I believe that should give you enough time to finish what you need to here and say your good byes. Monday, 0800. See you then."
And with that he stood up, shook the hands of my mom and dad and then the principal and turned around and left. I watched as his aura disappeared around the corner. i might never know what he looks like but this aura is unforgettable.
Just to give you a little back story, Last year i was riding my bike down an ally way. when i was knocked off and attacked by something i couldn't see. My face was the target, my eyes took a lot of damage as what ever it was tried to suck them out of my skull, or at least that's what it felt like it was doing. luckily someone screamed and ran to help me. I heard something growl and then leap off me and run off. the pain was so bad i finally passed out. i awoke the next day with bandages around my head and a lot of questions. questions i never got answers to, like What happened, what attacked me, will i be blind? that last one i got but didn't get. When the bandages were taken off i could see fuzz. just blobs of color. the thing is that the blobs of color were ringed by bright lights. i think they are auras. cause every living thing has one. people have them animals have them, plants have them... things have them. things that i have no idea what they are, and other people cant see. i thought it was an effect of the accident and the damage to my eyes but one time, i saw one of these things. i was sitting in the driveway mid self pity and depression. i was rolling my basketball in my hands cause i couldn't see it except for the orange blob. i saw the aura and rolled the ball towards it. the ball came to a stop right next to it. then the ball rolled back to my hand.
"Who is there?"
i said a little scared. at first i heard nothing except the distant singing of birds. then just when i thought i was imagining things...
"You can sees me?"
i was stunned.
"Who are you? one of the neighbor kids?"
"No. I am Mahgwan. I am a scout. How is it that this one sees me? Scout can not be seen. Scout is Scout."
Confused I ask,
"What is a Mahgwan?"
"Mahgwan is Guardian, Judge, Executioner. destroyers of sinners and servants of the old ones and loyalists of the Earth Mother and Sky Father. You are an innocent still. You should not see me."
"I see your aura. I can't actually see you."
"You have been attacked by a goblin. You are lucky to be alive."
"If Mahgwan are what you say they are, then why are there so many bad people?"
i was curious and since i was an "Innocent", figured why not take advantage of this opportunity.
"They take only societies, cities, armies. They only act when the sin has spread too far."
"They? Didn't you say you were one?"
"I am scout and am small. They are Sentinels. They are big and mean, and dangerous. I report, they destroy. I go now. very busy, very busy."
Its squeaky voice faded away as it talked and made its way through the bushes into my neighbors yard. i was left to consider what this meant. things exist that can't be seen. things that only i can see. dangerous things. after that i made notes about the aura colors and what they belonged to.
People ranged between white to dark yellow, almost orange. Animals ranged between light blue to purple. Plants had a light green glow edged with black. and the unseen were many different colors. brown, black, green, orange, red etc.
Fast forward to a week after Mr. Costus met me at school. i had just turned 18 the previous Saturday and was feeling excited to finally get away from my parents. my dad ignored me and my mom bounced between excited for me to have such an opportunity, not happy about me going and didn't want me to go so she unpacked my bags, going to have such a good education so she packed my bags, worried i will have trouble making new friends so she unpacked my bags, i'll get to take martial arts again so she packed my bags again.
Luckily by the time Mr. Costus came to pick me up in the black SUV, my mom was in the "You're going" frame of mind and my bags were packed. i kissed my mom my dad just gave me a furtive glance and i was off.
As we rode down the road "Mr." Costus gave me the run down of what was really going on.
"Finally. I am Agent Costus and would prefer you address me as such. You are joining a group of very specialized individuals. We have recruited you because you have, For lack of a better term, the sight. Now i was not lying when i said you would be continuing your education and receiving the best. you will also be trained by the best in martial arts and weapons. you will have access to technology that can give you regular sight again, and before you get too excited, it's not perfected yet but should allow you to see. its just a prototype, our tech guy can work and improve it as we go, but the concept is solid. You will be taking part in missions and will be paid very well for it. you will only receive a percentage of it for spending as i said but the rest will be put into a savings account and when you graduate from high school courses, you will have full access to it all. you may then take college courses in what ever you wish. Your team are good people and will have your back, you won't be in much danger, your safety will their first priority. Any questions?"
I was floored by this presentation. it felt like something out of a movie. This only happens in movies, right?
"Your joking right?"
"I assure you, i have no sense of humor."
"Come on. this kind of thing is stuff from bad movies for kids."
"Yes, But you are a very special case. You have a gift that is priceless and might save lives in the near future."
"Lets say i believe what you're saying. How did you find out that i can see things?"
"You weren't exactly discrete about it. you even posted some very interesting things online about it. from what I've seen, you were ridiculed pretty badly for it. we, however, could see that you truly believe this. also from the recon, we could tell that you were reacting to things that we couldn't see. your psych notes from your therapist don't paint you as a schizophrenic. all signs point to an ability that is unique to you and might be of use to us."
my jaw was on the floor. the more he talked the more i believed him. if he was government then all this would be child's play to pull off. now i was very excited.
It was late afternoon by the time i arrived at my new home away from home. the placed looked like an abandoned farm with helicopters in barns as well as some military trucks. there were soldiers and mechanics scattered in each building. Granted all i could see were blobs but they they looked familiar. Agent Costus lead me to a small shack and motioned for me to join him. when i did, he revealed a bio scan pad and put his hand on it. i jumped a little when the floor started moving down. i guess the actual base is underground. if i had any doubts about what Costus had told me before, i had none of them now. this was friggin' real.
the shaft opened up on a wide expanse of what looked like a small town with buildings and offices. he lead me to an office close by and produced a small stack of papers. explaining that they were nondisclosure forms, privacy forms, and so on and so forth. i signed everything i had to and filled out my info.
From there he dropped the papers on a desk with a name plate that i couldn't read thanks to my eyes. and yes i can read braille. i'm not very good at it yet but i can at least find and sign where i need to. he leads me now to the back of the twisting halls and buildings.
"I'm taking you to the bio labs. try and get you set up with the implant that will allow you to see properly again. or would you rather go straight to your room to meet your team?"
both were equally tempting.
"Implants first. it would be nice not to have to feel my way around this place. I can tell it's big and i would like to be able to see who i'm working with so i don't have to identify everyone by sound and aura. human auras change sometimes. not completely sure why."
"All right the bio labs it is."
we took another elevator and went further down. How deep does this place go?
We reached the bio labs a couple floor later, i think due to the beeps in between floors. when we exited the elevator a man comes up and Costus tells him to take my bag to LQ-6. The man says ok and runs into the elevator and disappears. Another man comes up and his aura was strange. the color was constantly changing lighter, darker, lighter darker.
"Ah, Hacker. This is Sean Mendez. He is The Seer."
"Yes, i figured as much. Are you ready, Sean? I'm Terry by the way, my code name is Hacker. I'm the one that designed the implant you shall be receiving today."
"Will this hurt?"
"Oh no, not a bit. to be honest its just an injection. Nanites, Tiny tiny tiny robots, will be injected and then they will make their way to your brain and set to work fixing the problem. they are simple ones. i myself am filled with them. though the ones i have are way more complex. the ones you will be receiving will allow you to switch from your "Sight" to regular sight. or so that's the idea. it might work out that you will still have the "Sight" even after your vision is fixed. worse case scenario, your vision won't improve or it wont change too much. but lets not worry about that now. you vision won't change right away, it will take time for the nanites to get into place and start making changes and fixing the damage and reroute impulses."
"Alright Hacker, I'll leave him in your care. when he is ready make sure to show him to his room and introduce him the the others."
"Will do.'
With that, Agent Costus turned and got on the elevator and off he went.
Terry lead me to an open room and called for an assistant. someone popped their head in and he told her to bring him the... i can't remember the string of numbers and letters he spewed. before i knew it he grabbed my arm gently, and prepped me and then... Boom. injection. It was cold and stung a bit but other than that wasn't all that bad.
"Alright, all done. I'll keep you monitored for the next few days, just to make sure that you don't have any reactions. I'm not expecting any, but it always pays to be prepared for the worst. If there is any issues i just have to press this button and the nanites will disintegrate harmlessly into proteins and be flushed from the body. now, lets go meet the rest of the team."
Back into the elevator, and up this time. i walked out of the elevator and was lead into a day room i saw a couple arcade games, a refrigerator, a couple tables with chairs, a chess table, a huge 80 inch hd tv, and a couple couches and comfortable looking arm chairs, there was a line of book shelves filled with books and a cabinet that was left open. it looked like it was a game cabinet cause i recognized monopoly... I could see!!! I could see things and make out what they were. the change was so slight that by the time i had noticed i could read the letters on the monopoly box. i dropped to my knees and cried. i had been stuck in a strange world for so long that finally being able to recognize things around me was like being home after a lifetime of homesickness.
Terry dropped down next to me to make sure i was ok, i straightened up enough to let him know i was. that i was just so happy that the little robots were working and that i could see again. granted everything was a strange gray color but i could see. I looked at Terry and realized that he was swole. i was expecting some short chubby nerd. he looked like he never missed a day at the gym.
As i regained my composure, Terry started to run some eye tests (follow my finger, covering one eye asking me to name an object, then the other, etc.) until he asked me what color his eyes were. i told him everything is gray. He look pensive for a moment and said,
"Well, at least there is improvement. Honestly i thought it would take longer. Understand that your eyes are still messed up, the nanites are just translating what information your eyes are giving them and what you are seeing is the outcome of that translation. i can make a few adjustments, but lets test your "Sight". I'm not sure what you see or interpret..."
At this i cut him off before he said more that confused me.
"I see auras. It's like a glow that surrounds living things. i can tell what im looking at due to the color of each aura."
"Ok, So do you see an aura now?"
"I can, actually. By the way, your's keeps changing colors. it's strange, cause it usually takes time for auras to change like yours does."
"Hmm, maybe it's cause of the nanites in my body."
"What's because of the nanites brother?"
I turned around as a new guy walked in closely followed by three other people. at this Terry began introductions. My code name apparently was Seer, i then met Ty, Streetfighter; TAC, TAC?; Jake, Gunslinger; and Mia, Blade.
My jaw dropped as i saw Mia. She was the most beautiful woman i had seen in a long time. i realized i was staring and turned away in embarrassment. she must have noticed and chuckled as she walked over and kissed Terry. At this i couldn't help but think "Well there goes that thought."
We gathered around the tables as a couple guys wheeled some carts in with trays of food. apparently dinner time. Steak, loaded bake potatoes, corn on the cob with plenty of butter, and a slice of angel food cake chocolate frosting and a strawberry on top. my stomach growled and everyone laughed. we dug right in except TAC, who had dropped his head and clasped his hands in prayer. We ate and chatted a bit, mostly about me. time to get to know the newb, i guess. we talked, answered and asked questions, and jokes were thrown about. everyone wanted to know what color their aura was. after dinner the trays were taken away. TAC and Terry were at the chess board, Ty, Jake, and Mia were talking about a mission that was coming up and shot me glances every now and then. the issue i was having was that i knew this but wasn't looking at them. i was in front of the television and watching a sitcom but could see everything around me. I'm talking 360 degrees of vision. this distracted me cause i had never had this happen before. not only that, i could sense the auras of things under us. there must have been a hundred things below us. this scared me. i got up and asked Terry about it, he looked confused.
"Who told you about them? i don't remember anyone mentioning it."
"I don't fully understand it. this is all way new. but i can sense their auras from here i can also see everything around me. Watch."
Without looking i yelled to Ty to hold up some fingers and not to tell me how many.
"Four."
He was shocked and held up another number without me asking.
"Two, Five, now you're pointing at Mia."
With this he stood up and looked a little confused and very intimidated. when he regained himself a second later he said,
"That's pretty cool. how did you do that?"
The rest of the evening was spent testing my now new abilities. Terry thought it had to do with the improved vision. that i might have had this ability if my eyes had not gotten damaged. As night came on we all had had enough excitement and i was shown my room.
The next few days were spent testing the range of my new abilities. as it turns out, if i concentrated hard enough, i could turn them off and on at will. we practiced and each shift got easier and easier. I found out that i could see a couple seconds n the future and a couple seconds into the past. that one was fun to figure out. Rock, paper, scissors was like playing poker and being able to see everyone's hands and being dealt a royal flush each hand. i did homework when we weren't working on gaining control of my abilities. As it turned out Mia and Ty were to be my martial arts and weapons trainers and Jake even gave me some gun lessons. Soon a month had passed. i kept in touch with my parents with emails twice a week, never revealing the truth of what i was doing. as far as they knew, i was attending classes and training and everything else that a good student does. I told them that they had a surgeon come and if they signed the form, he could improve my sight enough for me to be able to see well enough that with glasses i should have the ability to read again, but would need heavy duty glasses. all lies but it made it easier than having to constantly act blind. they signed and sent it back right away. My dad instantly started talking about football, but when i told him i had no interest in playing football again, he went right back to having no interest in me. oh well.
the next week we were given our next mission. we were to go hunting. The target was to be a dragon. A DRAGON! i was in total shock. from the looks of everyone else, they were equally shocked. TAC was the first one to speak.
A dragon? Your... Never mind. i know, no humor. but seriously? how come we never heard of them being real before?"
"Because we never had a way of finding one. We could find the signs of one , but no way of finding it and capturing it. they can camouflage their skin and adjust their body temperature so well that they are imperceptible in fact they seem to be able to hide from anything we have to detect. that is until now. You, Mr. Mendez, are our secret weapon here. Your ability to see auras will, hopefully, give us an edge and make this a success. in addition to your new found abilities makes you vital. Everyone else, your job is to protect Seer. that is top priority. second see if dragons are intelligent enough to communicate, and, if need be, tranq and capture the dragon. if it is not intelligent then go ahead and capture it."
"Doesn't that seem a bit extreme?"
Mia voiced my own misgivings.
"This is diplomatic and useful. if it can talk we try diplomacy, if it is just an animal then we capture it to find out how to counter dragon attacks. dragons raid farms for the livestock and then if they are found, they kill innocent people. these attacks are rare, but need to stop. gather your gear and be ready in 30. TAC you're in charge on this one. I'll be staying here to make sure all preparations are in place in case we receive a hostile reptile."
at this, everyone got up and got ready. i put on the body armor i was given for my safety. i was given goggles to protect my eyes from any further damage and they actually help bring some color back to my vision. my weapon was a paintball gun that would be used to make the creature visible and to give Jake a target. my paint balls were actually modified darts that were also tranq darts. the tip was tranq and upon impact would inject and then the rear would shatter and spread paint, splattering the target in bright florescent paint.
We spent the better part of the day traveling to our destination. found out that signs of dragons were easy to find. scorch marks, scales that shed, and scratches on trees. we were in another country and surrounded by forest. we spent the better part of the evening setting up base camp. we ate and TAC poured over research notes and gave us plans to follow for the next day, details were in depth but the plan sounded solid. the next day, we got up early and headed out. i was up front and using my 360 view to scan everywhere. i saw animals and plants, even more i saw unseen. they didn't seem to want to bother us. one of my gifts was the ability to sense auras through solid objects and when i focus on them i could see them through the object. well to an extent. i could now see the unseen as well as their aura.
it was around 5 pm when we found long deep scratches in trees. a territorial marking. the grass around the tree had been burnt. we found our target. we continued to walk until the sun had set. we set up for the next campsite and got dinner going. TAC said we were to continue with the original plan but to take it slowly. didn't want to accidentally over look any sign of danger.
The next day started the same. up early, and packed up and moved on. i was scanning everything. we had traveled for maybe two hours when i saw it. it was maybe 20 feet ahead of us to the left at the edge of a clearing. i motioned for TAC and informed him where the dragon was. i could only see the aura the camouflage was too good. it wasn't some kind of magic that hid it, it was actual pigment modification. TAC had me and Jake take position at the edge of the clearing hidden in the bushes. Ty and Mia were behind us. i know i forgot to mention this but Terry didn't come with us into the forest. he was back at the main base. He only came because he was in charge of keeping the dragon sedated and cause he wanted to see an actual real life dragon.
TAC walked out into the middle of the clearing. he looked in the general direction of the creature and said loudly,
"Excuse me, Mr. Dragon. i know you are there and i know you can hear me. if you can understand me please respond. i mean you no harm unless you choose to attack me. I come in peace."
For a moment there was no response. TAC pressed the button on his radio and asked if i was sure he was there, and i told him i was. Then we heard a loud growl that turned into growling words.
"Thou art a brave fool, to disturb a dragon from his slumber. Clever thou art, to find the sleeping dragon. I sense thou art not alone. There must be one, gifted with the Sight. To find me, i would say the gift was the result of a goblin attack. Very interesting, very interesting indeed. Show me respect by showing thine selves, and i shall return the respect. Only then shall we parley."
"Do as he says, stow your weapons. it would appear that they won't be needed."
We followed TAC's order and stowed our weapons and made our way into the clearing. when we were all standing in the clearing the dragon stood and moved into the clearing as well. He was the size of a horse. scales the size of a human hand ran the length of his body. a plate of sharp bone the shape of a spade was at the end of his tail. each talon was as long as a human finger. lion like teeth poked out from his jaws. a tuft of fur was on his chin and ran down the length of his neck like a horse's mane. his eyes were yellow and orange and a cat like pupil. large round nostrils sat on his crocodile like snout. his wings were folded and looked bat like. he walked on all fours but i got the feeling that he could walk on two legs as well. and finally his scales and his fur rippled as they changed color. his natural color was... hard to put. it was green, but as he moved i saw purple and brown and blue. it was like that chameleon paint people get on their cars and acted the same way.
It eyed each of us in turn until his eyes settled on me.
"Thou art the one with the Sight."
Nervously i answered.
"Y-Y-Yes s-sir."
"Thou art lucky to be alive. Goblins don't intentionally give that gift. It is a side effect of their venom. It seems to have severely damaged thine eyes. They like eyes the most. If they were intact, Thine gift of Sight would be quite powerful. thou hast some artificial enhancement allowing ye to see. Hmmmm, curious. What is it ye have come to speak with me about?"
At this TAC spoke.
"We came to see if there was some way to get dragons to stop attacking farms and killing people. we would prefer a peaceful cease fire."
the dragon bellowed a laugh and when he was done looked at TAC with amusement.
"Not all dragons are intelligent. not all dragons can talk. some are just animals. Only we old ones, we immortal few, we leaders of the Mahgwan..."
At this everyone except me and Mia flinched and looked horrified. Jake put his hand on his pistol and looked nervous.
"It would appear thou hast encountered one of our servants before and survived. Be ye innocent? Or be ye Champions?"
Ty answered this question.
"The second time i encountered one, he called me Champion. i assume that when someone takes one on and wins, then they are champions?"
"Yes. To kill a Mahgwan is to be a Champion. Champions are honored and their sins erased. Fear not Champions, I May be Judge, but i am not executioner. i can and will kill, but thou art Champions. All except this innocent Seer and this woman. Her sin is thick. Pray ye that thou doesn't cross a Mahgwan. As for thine question. Kill the beasts. even us old ones see them as a pestilence. vermin that shame us. they can never become an old one for their lives are not counted among the immortal. they were not created to restore balance, but to mock the Sky Father and Earth Mother. They have a few of our powers but are pale imitations of our glory. If ye wish i shall travel with ye. i am very interested in this Seer. I sense he has a grand future, an important future. i shall heal him and teach him how to tap into his grand gift. it will be a great honor to teach such a special individual. in return, i'll teach ye all i can about these lesser dragons including methods to kill them where they stand. quell their numbers as thou pleases. no old ones will interfere. As for thou, Seer. I shall bestow upon ye a name. A name that will Grant protection from the Mahgwan and any other dark being that reveres the Sky Father and Earth Mother. Thine new name shall be Orstahd. It means Rock Heart, a name blessed by The Earth Mother. But take heart young one. You will have a difficult road ahead of ye. Thou shall be a Paladin and I shall be thine mentor."
no one said a thing in all this. we were stunned. especially me. so much to take in. and when he mentioned that i had a great future??? everyone looked at me like my head had started spinning. to be honest, it felt like my head was spinning.
After a short conversation with Brizane, (the dragon's name as it turns out) he joined us and together we all returned to the main camp. upon return, Terry lost his mind. he was every bit a fan boy. Mia laughed and you could see the love in her eyes. Jake just looked embarrassed. the dragon followed us to the home base. turns out that he refused to be kept underground. so they began work on a barn specially to house him. that was the start of my new daily lessons to become a paladin on top of my high school courses and martial arts training. My plate is very full, but at least I'm loving it and i am getting paid tons. I'm loving being... a Natural.