FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"And so that's how you use AltWorlds in a nutshell!" Deign finished. The help daemon's somewhat long winded spiel had touched on the basics, but she was in the dark about the more advanced features, all of which Will was essentially foaming at the mouth to know about.

"I'm just a generic help daemon." Deign said with a shrug. "But all our features have user made tutorial sessions, and Mina's plan includes us visiting the AltWorlds Fantasy RPG tutorial. Well, one of them. There's a whole bunch, though this one is the most popular due to the rather interesting content."

The dragoncat grinned, "If it's as interesting as what I've seen so far, then what are we waiting for?"

"Alright then!" the help daemon chirped. Accompanied by a poof of fruit scented smoke, Deign altered into a pixie like form, about a foot and a half tall, though keeping the mixture of snow leopard and dragon that she'd plucked from Will's mind. The little daemon fluttered up and takes a seat on her master's shoulder.

"Oh and just so ya know, if you get a phone call or if there's somebody at the door, I can put the call through to you, or pull ya out so you can answer the door. That is if ya want to. Don't have to leave AltWorlds either, I can just temporarily overlap your AltEnvironment with real-space for you only. And don't worry about nakedness or anything, to any nonuser you appear to just be sitting at your computer, wearing normal clothes."

"That's nice, Deign, but can we get going?" the blue furred dragon asked, eager to meet up with his sister, curious as to what form she'd chosen for herself. Or had chosen for her, if her experience was anything like his own.

"Sure!" the tiny cat-pixie squeaked, her already high pitched voice made almost ridiculously so by the change in size.

As the scent of fruit filled the air, Will found his vision obstructed by the brightly colored smoke that seemed to accompany all of Deign's magic. "Do you have to do that? The smoke?" he asked.

"Nope! Just the default effect. You can change it if ya want." the daemon chirped.

"No, it's fine, I was just won..." the dragoncat never finished his sentence, as the smoke cleared he found himself in a beautiful valley, the sun shining brightly overhead, the landscaping exquisite. The trees were of a variety he didn't recognize, and the flowers grew in sizes and shapes and colors not found in nature.

But what really drew his attention were the number of interesting looking people and creatures walking about. With a blink of his eyes he suddenly saw bits of text floating in the air above each one of them, player names, character names, levels, classes, and guilds. Another blink and the words were gone.

"So, suitably impressed with AltWorlds so far, Mister Durst?" rumbled a voice inside Will's head.

"Private message from one of the GM's on duty." Deign whispered.

"Yeah, it looks awesome, I can't wait to try it!" Will thought back. The blue dragoncat looked around, taking it all in, not quite sure of where to go yet.

"I'd recommend heading to one of the tutorial caverns, William." said the rumbling voice from behind him. Will turned to see a towering creature that looked like a mix of dragon and feline, much like himself, but with wings, placed atop a spider's body. A kind of altered Drider. The creature stood at least twice Will's own height. Her, for she was quite obviously female, body was colored black with red markings, looking like stripes and spatters of blood. The underbelly areas on her humanoid torso were a radiant white, her eight legs and wing membranes followed the spatter and drip pattern, but were colored purple on black. The same shade of purple in her hair and eyes.

"GM Hellkitten at your service." the Drider rumbled, leaning down and offering a hand to the somewhat awestruck dragoncat. Will shook the GM's hand, wide eyes looking up at her.

"Oh drat," she sighed, "It appears that 'Steal Tongue' is one of my automatic class skills."

"I'm sorry. It's just that... well... I've never seen anything as big as you are capable of speech before." Will said with a sheepish grin.

Hellkitten chuckled. "It's quite alright. I'm used to it. Though it's usually for different reasons."

"Kitten here converted the Ruramusho system so it can function with people of your realm." Deign said, "So she gets a lot of hero worshiping fanboys and girls."

Will's tongue suddenly wriggled and twisted as he was trying to speak. "A... buh... ja... guh..." he mumbled.

"We really need to get that skill looked at, eh Deign?" Hellkitten chuckled.

"Th... thank you." Will finally managed. "This is all so amazing, and I guess I'm experiencing all this because of you."

Hellkitten grinned widely, "Yeah, I guess you do. Just don't do anything silly like doing that worshiping hand motion." the GM patted her belly. "I have one person on a one hour ban for doing that."

The dragoncat raised a brow. "So for a one hour ban they stay inside of you?"

Hellkitten's grin only widened, showing off sharp fangs. "Yup. Either that or get webbed up in a cocoon. Of course that means I have the bondage and vore communities pestering me on purpose. But anyhoo, you're definitely here for a tutorial on the whole thing, and I've got the one Mina made loaded up in a cavern over yonder. I need to review it for inclusion in the game anyway, so I'll be your guide for the duration of the tutorial!"

A bright aura surrounded the GM, and when it faded Hellkitten had dropped the Drider aspect of herself, taking on a purely draconic form. The red and purple dragoness took Will by the hand, giving the awe struck dragoncat the nudge he needed to get moving.

"The class system is a mishmash from different RPG's. Selecting a certain class will boost your stats in some areas, decrease them in others, and grant you a special set of abilities. Some of 'em stay with you if you change classes, while others'll stay with you when you hop to another class. Though almost all of the skills will stay with you eventually, once you attain the proper level."

"Though we have some player skill based combat areas, most of it is essentially chosing a command. The rest is automatic essentially. You'll see what I mean when we get into the combat part. Wanna pick a class to start off with?"

"Geez, what all is there?" Will asked.

"Anything that you can imagine. Though different sections usually use thematically similar classes. We'll be going with our most popular 'server,' which has classes from a couple of popular game series' and a bunch of D20 type classes. Mina said that you probably wouldn't be able to decide and remind you that Red Mage was a mix of everything."

"Sure, that sounds good." Will said quietly, still awed by everything around him. "Will I be picking a race too?"

"Well, I kinda assumed you were going for dragoncat anthro. But appearance and race don't have to match up. It's just good for continuity. You get racial abilities as you level up too. You've got your Red Magic from the class, and some monster type skills from being a dragoncat, but mostly that's stat increases. You can go with monster classes as well. The Dragon class is pretty fun. Normally you're limited to base race norms for size, but with the Dragon class, you can get pretty big. It's fun. Sure, you can be as big as you want in the scenarios. But it's really neat to tower over a battlefield."

"Well, Mina chose this form for me, and I don't know what she has in mind for me, so I think I'll just stick with what she has laid out."

Hellkitten smiled and patted Will's rounded tummy. "I think you'll be doing a little bit of laying yourself, cutie."

Looking down Will suddenly realized he was naked, and that it didn't bother him a bit.

"Oh don't worry about that." Hellkitten purred, "A few mental tweaks for while you're in the game. Getting in character if you will. But yeah, we do need to get you some clothes."

With a flash a red cap with a long white feather appeared in Hellkitten's handpaws. Matching gear materialized on Will, a red vest, red fingerless gloves that went halfway up his arms, a pair of similar 'socks' of the same material that went to his knees, and to Will's minor annoyance, a red knee length skirt.

The dragoncat glared at Hellkitten as she handed him his hat. "Do you do this with all the new players?"

"Nah, just the ones I think look cute in skirts. You do look very sexy in that outfit. Red is very much your color." the dragoness purred. Will suddenly found him looking at himself from a perspective outside his own body. He did have to admit that he did look sexy in the skirt.

"Alternate 'camera' view." Deign whispered into Will's ear. "Allows ya to recreate the experience of a typical RPG. Some people do it for familiarity's sake, playing an RPG the emerses all your senses is still playing one for some people."

Will blinked a few times as he found his perspective returning to normal. "That's... kind of disconcerting. I think I'll stick with a first person perspective." he said with a smile.

Hellkitten nodded. "Most people do. Though the outside view is nice when you're checking out a new outfit, or armor, or form and don't have a mirror handy. Anyhoo, here we are. Need anything before we get started? If you want to get a bite to eat, or take a leak or anything, now's the time. Can't having you peeing in a treasure box and leaving it for the next guy who comes through, now can we?"

Will chuckled, "Nah, I'm fine." he said, stepping into the cavern.