Spider

Character-Type: Player-Character Username: Spider (most know her as THE Spider, but that's ironically not her actual screenname) Avatar-Gender: Female Race: Elf

Avatar-Appearance: She stands at 5'8" and keeps her long, silky hair in an unceremonious, loose pony tail. She typically wears no jewelry and plain, loose brown clothes, but her avatar apparently was purposefully the excruciatingly beautiful type. Although she maintains excellent posture, she is slender and does not look particularly powerful. Funnily enough, she uses her sword far better than any sort of natural poise.

Personality: Spider is not much of a talker, but nonetheless carries with her an air of almost-bored confidence. She does not appear to take much note of her own appearance (so what if she's pretty in this world? It's just a game, get over it), and is oddly evasive about her life outside of Altera. It is almost immediately apparent to others that she likes her freedom, as she comes and goes here and there with little regard to anyone, but other than that, she doesn't exactly live up to being "the Spider," with her straightforward and nonthreatening attitude, hardly one to spin lies like webs or try to trap anyone. She is very firm about the idea that Altera is just a game and they are going to get out some day, and perhaps a hint of that shows through in the occasional recklessness with which she hunts, though anyone who happens to see her hunt could acknowledge that there is less ingenuity involved than basic skill most likely acquired through practice in building upon her original stats.

History: Spider logged on on the very first day and quite quickly began hunting down monsters. Not known for working with others, she left the heart of the kingdom in short order and built up more of a reputation closer to the borders of the kingdoms, as she began to level up enough to take on more dangerous monsters. The butchers in the first towns she stayed at have amusing stories of being asked to teach her how to properly carve up some of the simpler beasts, but for the most part, she is only seen looking for lodging and a place to sell the meat (and occasional trophies) of whatever she appears able to kill. Little else is known about her, although rumor has it that she purposely plans hunts to go for the Alphas of packs, and is a stone-cold killer who doesn't discriminate between beasts and people. She doesn't appear to appreciate these rumors, but what can you do? It was a few days after getting trapped in the game that she started looking for other high-rankers to team up with.

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Tier: Advanced Primary Spec.: Warrior - Hashashin Secondary Spec.: Talisman - Umbra Skills/Abilities:

• Combat - Although being a Hashashin Warrior doesn't come with the potential for a lot of "special moves," it does mean Spider's quick on her feet and it's hard to land a hit on her. As she is at the Advanced level, her skill here borders on the inhuman, most specifically in terms of outrageous jumps and speed that can make it hard to see, much less hit her. It works well with her weapon, which changes lengths and balance, but not overall weight, which allows her to strike from a variety of distances, utilizing her speed to feint.

• Shadow Web - It just so turns out that being of the Umbra Talisman Spec does allow for "special moves," and this is one of them. Not exactly the most powerful of spells, this allows Spider to make a small net of shadow and cause it to solidify temporarily. She got the idea from actual spiders, and can make it a number of sizes (the largest being 4 feet in diameter), but the spell rarely lasts for more than a handful of seconds. She's working on making it more powerful, but for now, it suits her just fine to stall things or catch stuff thrown at her. It is strong, but not impenetrable.

• Dark Vision - This phrase is somewhat ambiguous, but it holds the meaning of someone who has a dark vision rather than darkening someone's sight, and is one of her more powerful abilities. For thirty seconds, whoever it is cast upon will relive their darkest moment in full.

• Slight Illusion - Being a more nuanced spell, Spider is not very good at it, but she has learned to use some simple illusions. Since it is easy to break, she's discovered that it's simplest to alter reality just a tiny little bit, rather than causing a full-on illusion. For instance, if she's standing next to a tree, she can cause someone to think she's standing a few paces from it instead, so that they miss her when trying to attack, etc.

• Hard worker

• A little familiarity with camping basics

• Good Artist

• Fantastic Experimental Cook

• Equipment: A magic pole-sword - an unnecessarily ENORMOUS sword, it is literally taller than she is, the blade alone four feet long. This pointlessly huge sword is genuinely pointlessly huge, because its magic lies in its ability to change blade and handle length according to her will. The apparent problem is that when she isn't concentrating on changing its size, its default is as large as it can get without knocking against the ground (thanks to this quality, she somewhat suspects that it may have a will of its own, but that one's difficult to tell). She carries it strapped across her back. It does not have an official name, but she calls it "Splitter the Fancy Pole" when forced to give it a name.

• Two fat little journals - one is for the recipes she has come up with, the other is a list of herbs, spices, and fruits and their properties, with illustrations included.

• A magitek pen - this magical pen was a lifesaver, as Spider could NOT get used to writing and especially drawing with a quill. It looks like an ink pen when used, but doesn't require a cartridge or dipping in an inkpot at all. It only does black for color, and she originally traded for it largely out of curiosity before she started keeping her journals. It is supposedly from Machina, but that's not where she bought it.

• Needle and thread

• A blanket

• A pouch of coins

• Spare clothes (including one fairly nice dress)

• A silver flask - this item was one of the more expensive items, but 1. it's cool, 2. she can trust what's in it isn't poisoned (she thinks), 3. it's cool.

• A cast-iron pan - it's always worth it to have a pan to cook with.

Extra Notes:

• She almost always keeps a part of her spoils of the hunt to taste/experimentally cook with

• So as to make sure she wouldn't poison herself, she made it a habit to go to the closest apothecaries and kitchens every time she was in a new town to compile information about the flora of Altera (which is how she filled out most of her herbs journal)

• The inspiration for the magic sword came from this image. It is not a super high-level weapon.

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[Real] Name: Derrin Chan [Real] Age: 24 [Real] Gender: Male [Real] Appearance: Derrin is a boring 5'8" East Asian dude, with coarse, short black hair, and brown eyes. His skin is somewhat darker in color, but that is natural rather than tanned. His features are naturally on the rounder side, but physicality-wise, he'd probably be best described as scrawny. He has thick eyebrows and somewhat poofy lips and is overall not a very attractive or unattractive man.

Personality: Derrin is one of those weird people that likes the daily grind, and remains pretty content with his lot in life. He is not ambitious, and considers himself blessed to have a steady income and people who love him. He's very much a homebody and was never exactly enthusiastic about sports of any sort, though he has fond memories of camping with his family as a teen. His job is boring, and he sometimes wishes it wasn't, but there's also something soothing about that sometimes. This bizarrely unconcerned attitude apparently applies to all situations, so Derrin appears to handle stress well, among other things. Those close to him, however, will tell you that he's easy to read once you get to know him, and more emotional than he appears at first. Though he rarely takes the effort to make new friends, he is loyal to those he does make and goes out of his way to keep up with them if he can. Despite being a detail-oriented man, he is a poor communicator, and most of his friends seem to agree that he's internally surprisingly easy to irritate, as he can be impatient, mostly if he thinks someone is being stupid. He does not seem to have much pride as a man, and is willing to ask questions if he's uncertain about anything, but can be quite stubborn when he thinks he's right. Quiet he may be, but reserved he is not, and it does not occur to him to be shy about pestering or confronting people when he feels he has to (though thankfully he often decides it's not worth the bother when someone is irritating him and often chooses silence over saying whatever potentially offensive thing he happens to be thinking).

History: Derrin picked up Altera mostly out of "scientific curiosity" rather than anything else. He had never particularly been a big fan of video games. It wasn't like he didn't like them, but he found he got bored of them quickly and tended to wander back to his main hobbies of cooking and listening to music. Other than that, he was a regular, weak-noodle, introvert, nerd Joe. He spent most of his free time watching TV at home with a beer and had a plain 9-5 job as a drafter (draws plans for construction etc). He used to love to draw, but his motivation to do so lowered significantly once it became his job to draw boring things for boring people. He had no pets or romances and his closest relationships occurred through occasional phone calls to his family and old friends. His life was normal.

He had his eye on Altera for a while, however, because it was a FULL-SCALE VIRTUAL REALITY WORLD. He had played some virtual reality games before and found he enjoyed them more than other types of games because it was easier to get immersed in them, and some part of him wanted to test the limits of Altera as a world and as a game. It helped that he had a vacation scheduled the week that it was coming out, and he scooped it up on the very first day. Since he was trying it mainly as a matter of curiosity, he went with a joke avatar and name. He picked "Spider" because he'd wanted a pet spider when he was a kid, and decided to be a pretty elf girl just to make fun of fantasy game tropes. It was to his surprise that he found himself loving Altera, and he spent most of his week-long vacation on the game, excepting a couple meetings with friends and his younger sister.

Upon discovering he could no longer exit the game, he definitely panicked a little bit. Even on the game, he had never been social to begin with, and he was worried about the practical things like what would happen to his body in the real world, what he was going to do if he got sick in this game, how he was going to tell his parents and little sister where he was. Once he got over worrying about the logistics of the situation, though, he found himself settling quite comfortably into the new world. He was a different person here, and his week binging the game left him in a good place compared to most of the players, especially since he'd spent that week mostly just hunting tons of things, because it was a simple way to level up. He wasn't quite sure if he was happy that he might be stuck as a girl for the rest of his life, but he would take this from a day-to-day perspective and figured he'd be fine that way. Although up till this point he had been mostly a loner, he decided to start seeking out other player characters if he could, letting them know he was in the same predicament and offering to help find a way out if he could.

Choosing to have a female avatar was on a whim, but he chose not to reveal his real life gender basically because it seemed like it would be inconvenient. He has absolutely done nothing to purposely portray himself as a girl and acts like he normally does in the real world, but telling people that he's actually a guy just seems like it would cause confusion. He also doesn't really share his personal information because these people are still just shady gamer people, whether or not he comes to trust them as companions in the game.