FINAL CORE : [A holy dungeon-core litRPG]

Primary and Secondary classes

Every person is able to choose two classes, a primary and a secondary class.

A primary class is a person’s core trade and art of practice. This may be a combat class or a crafting class. It largely defines said person's direction in life and, under most circumstances, is able to be freely chosen, assuming one is qualified.

A secondary class is an augmentation. A secondary class can be any class, however, mastery of this field will be limited. A secondary class wizard will never be as potent as a primary class wizard.

Often, poor adventurers will take a primary combat class and a secondary gathering or crafting class to augment their adventuring income.

Common people of the city who avoid combat and such high stakes games take two non-combat mercantile or trade classes.

 

~ The ways people are, by Silvatar Edumando

 

 

~ [Jizalia] ~
Human, Female, Herbalist Location: The Forest Outside of the City

 

“Look,” says Jizalia, turning her head to her younger sister, who is dragging along. “This here is something special,” explains the herbalist, looking at a tall stalk that has seemingly wrapped itself up in its own roots, as if it had cocooned its body but allowed its flowering head to stick out like a person wrapped in a blanket. “It’s a rojid,” she explains.

 

Her sister squints at her and nods. The girl is tired, but she’s doing her best to keep up.

 

“It’s actually not from this area,” explains Jizalia. “Rojid comes from the east, from the other continent.”

 

(Normal)[Rojid]

A small, common, flowering plant. It has long, thin tendrils with sharp thorns that it uses to actively whip away disturbances. While not deadly, it can certainly pack a mean sting. Rojid typically grow in shady places in the wild. However, they have been commercially planted and harvested as a crop by adventurers farmers, in pursuit of their highly nutritious beans which are nested inside of the plant’s thick, tubular stalk.

They thrive in gray, cooler weather.

Use Cases: [Nutritional][Aromatic][Other] [Master Herbalist’s Insight]: This rojid is particularly small. It is likely to be freshly grown. Given its exotic nature in this region, it is likely that a bird carried its seed over the ocean. Secret Use Cases: [Medicinal] Value: 08 Obols

 

The girl squats down. “What’s it doing here?” she asks.

 

“Well, somebody carried the seeds over and it grew,” explains the herbalist. “Probably it was a bird, but maybe a sailor; we can’t say for sure,” she replies. She looks up. “But given that we’re near a tree, I’ll say a bird.” She pokes the flower, and it wraps itself up tighter than before.

 

“It moved!” gasps her sister.

 

Jizalia nods. “Mm,” she explains. “Not all plants are like the grass and the flowers you see inside the city, Tulsi.” Jizalia digs into her bag. “Some of them are much more alive. Rojids are harmless, but in some places in the world, there are plants as big as people, and they’re mean.”

 

“Mm,” replies Tulsi. She pokes the flower, and it leans back from her and away. “So what does it do?”

 

“Well,” says Jizalia, taking out a hooked knife from her bag. She presses a finger against the flower’s tightly guarded stem. “We want the beans in here. There aren’t many. But they’re very nutritious.”

 

— The flower whips her finger away with a sharp tendril.

 

“Isn’t that mean?” asks Tulsi. “It looks like it doesn’t want us to take them.”

 

“Oh, it doesn’t,” replies the herbalist. “But we’re taking them anyway, unless you don’t want dinner tonight?” she asks. The girl frowns and then frowns even more as her older sister hands her the knife. “It’s going to try to swat you away, but it only stings a little and doesn’t hurt-hurt,” explains Jizalia.

 

Tulsi shakes her head. “I don’t want to.”

 

“You have to,” explains the woman. The girl shakes her head. “Tulsi,” repeats the herbalist, sternly. The girl sniffs and then relents, stepping forward.

 

Jizalia points at the plant. “You have to cut the roots,” she guides. “Just take the knife and press it down sideways here,” says the woman, pointing at the soil at the base of the plant. It whips her fingers with its tiny tendrils. But her hands are so calloused and scarred from years of this work that she doesn’t even give it any notice.

 

Tulsi does as instructed, stabbing the knife into the soil. Her sister holds her arm from behind, her hand over hers, as they pull the curved blade together through the roots. The plant whips at them, and Tulsi squeals in pain, sharp, red marks appearing on her hands from the strikes but is kept in place by her sister, and then, after a loud popping sound, the plant stops moving.

 

Its tendrils stop lashing, and the others, wrapped around its stalk, uncoil and immediately fall flat — limp, like dead arms — revealing a thick, round, green stalk.

 

“Is it… is it dead?” asks Tulsi.

 

Jizalia ignores her question and guides her hand to the top of the stalk, and then they cut along its length vertically, pressing through the thick exterior of the tube from top to bottom. “There,” says Jizalia. She reaches inside with a single finger and scoops downward into her open palm, catching a large handful of moist, large, perfectly round, pale beige spheres. Each is about the size of a marble.

 

“…Is that all?” asks Tulsi, looking at the meager harvest.

 

“Mhm,” replies Jizalia, eating one and holding her hand out for her sister to take one to try. “Usually, they’re grown in colonies of hundreds for industrial harvest,” she explains. “This one isn’t a lot for two people.” She shakes her head. “But it’s not supposed to be. We’re here to teach you how to survive.”

 

Tulsi cautiously bites into the bean, making a face before she ever even tastes it. But out of a desire to not be scolded, she chews and eats.

 

“See? It’s not so bad,” replies Jizalia.

 

“Mm…” relents Tulsi. “But what about the flower?”

 

Jizalia places the rest of the beans into her sister’s hands. “It’s dead,” she replies. “We killed it, so we could eat.”

 

Tulsi frowns, lowering her head. “I don’t like this…” she says. “I don’t want to hurt things.”

 

“Do you like eating?” replies Jizalia. The girl is quiet and then nods. “Then this is what we have to do.” She bends down and clears a small hole below the same tree, then plucks one of the beans from her sister’s palms and plants it in the hole. “We took a life, but we can keep the cycle going by adding a new one,” she explains, holding her hand over the soil as she very lightly creates a mound of dirt.

 

The girl nods, and the two of them continue on with their lessons.

 

 

~ [Johan the Baker] ~
Human, Male, Baker Location: The City

 

It’s all gone to hell.

 

The baker looks around the streets, where people wander in much different ways than they did only months ago. Last year was so good and kind to them, but now, suddenly, everything has changed. The mood, the faces, just… everything. Customers aren’t what they used to be.

 

Sure, people still live their lives — those who haven’t made their way to the tower as pilgrims. But the looming crisis above their heads has changed people’s ways. They don’t hang around outside anymore, even on good days. They walk to their destinations, buy their things, and go home immediately, tightly shutting their doors and windows.

 

The shadow of the tower looms heavy over the city, and nobody here seems to be able to find any solace. People are afraid. They’re spending less. Many are moving away, seeing that there is a disaster of some form to come; it just seems inevitable, doesn’t it?

 

The church has been brewing up a storm after the assassinations of the cardinals and the bishop; rest their souls. But if the tower is capable of this, it certainly won’t just go quietly when they work to remove it from the land.

 

And, given that this entire city is quite literally in its shadow, well, people have changed.

 

The only constant he can rely on are the adventurers who go to the dungeon here in the core of the city as they always have, but even they are becoming somewhat obscure. There are rumors that the tower is exceptionally generous with its payouts. But he doesn’t know much about any of that. He just wants to sell bread, and as things are going, he can’t really do that anymore.

 

Life is hard these days.

 

— The man closes his shop early, not having met his minimum sales goal, which has been steadily decreasing.

 

 

~ [Taishi-shi] ~
Vildt(Rabbit), Male, Classless Location: The Far Off Eastern Continent

 

Taishi-shi works around the ruined, dilapidated building. It’s come a long way since he received his mission from Isaiah, but he is just one creature, small and untrained — unfed. There is only so much he can do to build his church, despite his best efforts. It is grueling work, day in and day out.

 

The others mock him, they say he is building a house and laugh at him for thinking he could have one. All of them once had such a thing, but it was taken from them, just as this one will be as soon as it stops being a ruin.

 

Greedy eyes will always find their way to things that small hands cannot protect.

 

He wipes off his sweat and keeps working.

 

It is what Isaiah wishes for him, and he will follow.

 

 

~ [Jizalia] ~
Human, Female, Herbalist Location: The Forest Outside of the City

 

It is many hours later.

 

She stands there, admiring the sunset with her exhausted sister. The two of them sit on a fallen log near the city and look out towards the sinking sun beyond. They’ve had a good, but exhausting day. Her sister was full of questions but had worked hard, considering she has lived a pampered life until now. But the girl is simply exhausted and lays there with her head on her lap, asleep.

 

It wasn’t a bad day. That’s something, right?

 

Jizalia smiles, looking at the distant tower that she can see clearly. She doesn’t know what to make of it, but she knows that because of it, she has her eyesight.

 

That’s also something, right?

 

— A streak of colors explodes out from the top of the tower, vivid lights from every facet shooting out in all directions at once.

 

 

~ [Johan the Baker] ~
Human, Male, Baker Location: The City

 

The man sighs, throwing off his shirt as he falls into bed, not sure how to make tomorrow work.

 

— There’s a rumbling downstairs.

 

He immediately jumps up to his feet again and then rushes down. Thieves?!

 

The baker tears open the door to his kitchen and looks.

 

His basket, overflowing with the bread and cakes that he didn’t sell today, is gone.

 

A stack of money is on the table — gold.

 

He blinks, walking over towards it to look at the tokens, emblazoned with the image of the tower.

 

 

~ [Wandre] ~
Dwarf, Female, Tailor Location: The Gathering of Pilgrims, Down in the Forest Below the Island

 

They have gathered by the hundreds, by the thousands. The pilgrims of Isaiah camp in tents and crude shelters down below the island, between it and the southern city, where the majority of wanderers have gathered. They are unable to find a way up to the island, but they keep faith in their hearts that they are not unseen by Isaiah down in this shadow of its realm.

 

Most of the people here are from the city itself, but by the day, more and more come from further reaches of the nation. Riders from the western city, the eastern city, the northern city, and the central city have all made it here in great haste, telling of the swarms of people who are on the move by foot from the same places but have yet to arrive. Thousands and thousands of pious souls wander the landscape, drawn as if pulled in towards the beacon of the heavens lit alight here for them to move towards, as if it were the only light in a sea of darkness.

 

Wandre finds plenty of work. Her trade as a seamstress is a fairly competitive one, but every person wears clothes, so there is generally always a customer somewhere. She sews a ripped garment, her eyes wandering up to the tower atop the great island and then around to the people all around her.

 

There are many in good health, but there are just as many poor, wretched souls with bad backs and sick hearts. There are faces that are as fallow as the trampled grass here around the camp, which is turning to mud, and eyes that are as yellow as chamomile. People are hungry and thirsty, and they pray to Isaiah to finally be heard, now that they are so close.

 

But no response has come yet.

 

– Murmurs. Excited gasps and shouts come.

 

Wandre turns her head to look as the tower atop the island explodes in radiance, colors of unimaginable rainbows shooting out into the world in all directions, many of them towards them.

 

An orb lands down in the crowd, red as a phoenix, and they all part ways. Another one, as black as the gaps between stars, and then another one, and then another one. More and more of them land here together in a cluster, their bodies hewn in the shape of people, yet their contours painted by the threads of the spirit-world. They’re dressed in the robes of high priests, ordained by heaven, and they lift their hands out around them, holding the blessing sign in the air. The crowd does not dare go near the presences that hover now just above them.

 

A voice rumbles through the world, through her ears and the hearts of everyone around her, together with the great ticking of the final clocktower.

 

“You are not forgotten,” says a voice that she knows in her heart is Isaiah’s. “Know that I am with you and that you will soon be with me,” it proclaims. “We are together the pieces of one whole.”

 

The messenger’s hands glow alight as they channel magic outward into an aural burst that runs over the entire camp, like a wave washing over a shore.

 

(Isaiah) has cast: [Greater Heal], [Greater Blessing], [Chronol Restoration]

 

By the time the light fades, the resplendent rainbow vanishing, Wandre feels a new strength in her bones and an odd firmness beneath her feet. She and hundreds of others look around the campgrounds as the ground beneath them has been fully regrown, as if covered in fresh spring grasses. The trees that litter the camp are flush with leaves and provide healthy shade and fruits, which drop to the ground in abundance. Hundreds of broken tents, bones, and possessions have been made whole, and crates for the storage of food and drink have been refilled to overflowing.

 

The apparitions, the messengers of the divine, have gone once more.

 

But they are not alone, as is proven now by the faint dust of pure gold that rains from the skies, coating the world and the voice of Isaiah that promises them the sanctity of wholeness.

 

 

~ [Jizalia] ~
Human, Female, Herbalist Location: The Forest Outside of the City

 

A light blinds her, as radiantly orange as the morning sun. “Hi! Isaiah said I was supposed to give you this. BYE!” says the voice.

 

By the time she can look, her eyes adjusting, there is nobody there anymore.

 

But for some reason, there’s a small stack of boxed baked goods at her feet.

 

Jizalia turns her head to look around, confused but not too confused. She’s used to dealing with crazy stuff, after all. "Isaiah..." she mutters, looking at the basket in confusion as her sister stirs from the noise.

 

 

~ [Taishi-shi] ~
Vildt(Rabbit), Male, Classless Location: The Far Off Eastern Continent

 

It is much, much later.

 

Taishi-shi sits and rests after days of labor. He has moved closer to his goal, but not as close as he needs to be. Isaiah had asked him to do this, but how can he? He is tired and alone. The others will not help him.

 

— The boy sighs, getting up and wiping off his forehead, as he returns to work for the night.

 

He does not want to go to sleep, lest Isaiah speak to him in his dreams and judge him harshly for his failure. Taishi-shi stands in the open doorway, being that way because there is quite literally no door, as he stares at the stars, one of which stands out in the night in its brightness.

 

The boy narrows his eyes.

 

— The bright star crashes down towards him, and he covers his face in fear.

 

But nothing happens.

 

After a second, he carefully looks out from behind his draped down ears and hands, to look at an entity hovering there and examining the structure. It is like a person, but not, with wings made of the most fragile, crystalline glass.

 

“Isaiah sent me,” says the entity. “Good work so far,” he says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll take the construction from here.”

 

 

~ [Isaiah] ~
Location: The Roost

 

Isaiah looks out over the world. There is so much to see and so much to do. It is learning as life goes on that sometimes actions are best not taken in order not to stir the pot too much. But also, a total lack of action is also inadequate. If the people are worshipping it as a god, then it must act accordingly, no?

 

Gods do not simply send omens and signs. Sometimes, they also send miracles out into the world beneath them, small as they might often be.

 

 

Razmatazz

Please remember to rate! I'm begging you x-x

Anyway, here's big Sister Basil Jizalia! =)