BECMI Chapter 4 – Setting Yourself Up for Success

Ur-Priest was priced appropriate to its power. Huh.

Ur-Priest was a Divine Class, sort of the proto-cleric. It basically operated by intercepting or stealing Faith, such as it was, allowing them to serve creatures and forces that didn’t actually grant spells. Big tree the tribe wants to worship? No problem, I could be priest for it, use their Faith towards it for spells, the whole nine yards. Demon king? Fallen angel? Mighty dragon? Aberrant horror? Old God? Slumbering Kaiju? Spirit of the bog? Old Man of the Sea?

Easy-peezy, work for all of them. Faith on the mortal side was all I needed.

I was an Ur-Priest because of the Priestesses. Shamans. Whatever.

It turned out that the Priestesses were Clerics of Gaebrel ON TOP of being Elves.

So, not only was there a primary Class, there were indeed Secondary Classes that I could take that had nothing to do with Race.They just didn’t have hit die related to them at all...

Now, I wasn’t going to take Cleric of Gaebrel, whoever that was. I was going to take Ur Priest, which survived on general faith and belief in any of the gods or powers out there, even if the pantheon I followed couldn’t respond to me or guide me here. Heaven was in the heart, even if it was nowhere else.

Oddly enough, Ur-Priest had NOT followed what I was sure was a standard progression format.

I had expected it would follow the standard clerical advance schema, but it didn’t. Instead, I’d somehow hooked into an Advanced Class with accelerated spell progression, possibly because empty Secondary Classes that only granted spellcasting did so with accelerated progression here.

It also meant that the Class cost Karma appropriate to the spells said advanced progression was giving me access to, which meant a lot of Karma…

Very amusingly, what it meant was I got to Seven, faux Eight in Ur-Priest… and I ran out of Karma to assign, because I now had access to VIII’s! And a default Caster level of 18!

As a Seven!

All of this was possible because I was playing games with the default Casting Classes of this place.

My /2 Level of the Elven Racial Class gave me a virtua Wizard Casting Level, then a second one at /3! Once I had it, I could take it with my relevant Human advances as well! Combined with Sorcerer/3, that meant I qualified for Arcane Theurge, the Sorcerer/Wizard combined Casting Theurgic Class!

The Secondary Ur-Priest Class, combined with an extra Virtual Level from my Halvyr Racial Class Level, qualified me for Mystic Theurge with those same Wizard Levels!

Thus, instead of my Halvyr Levels advancing me as a Fighter/Sorcerer, they were advancing me as a Fighter/Arcane Theurge, tied to my virtua Wizardry Caster Levels!

Instead of my Secondary Class advancing me as an Ur-Priest, it was advancing me as a Mystic Theurge, also tied to Wizardry!

Halvyri/7 (Sorcerer/4, Arcane Theurge/3) (Dhampir/shaden Elven) (infant)

+Ur-Priest/2 (3), +Mystic Theurge/5 (/Wizard)

-Wizard (4) (Racial Bonuses), +Mystic Theurge/5, +Arcane Theurge (+2)

Halvyr Paragon/3; Elven Paragon/3; Human Paragon/3

Str: 1 Con: 6 Dex: 3 Int: 35 Wis: 16 Cha: 17 Co: 20

Health: 71 (6+ 12 Int +36 (6d6 Maxed) -12 Con +7 Favored Class +15 Arcane Toughness, +7 Toughness)

Soak: 44 (18 (3d8-6 Con, Maxed), +14 Favored Class, +12 AT/2), +38

Spells Known (Sage Sorcerer/7): 7//5/3/2/1

Spell Slots: -/5/5/4/3

Wizard/11 Valences: (~)/6/5/3/3/2

Ur-Priest/8 Valences: = (6)//7/7/6/6/5/4/3/2 (includes Intellect bonus)

Default Caster Level: 18 (Ur-Priest/8 + (Sorc/7+Wiz/11, /2; +1 Spell Power)

Talent: (Concentration Skill Checks +4)

Marked: Intellect +5 (Sacred Bonus, +1 from Divine )

I was the epitome of a glass cannon, except gaining seven Levels and maxing out all the Karmic Costs I could meant I wasn’t so glass anymore!

A Racial Class as primary meant I had a magically reinforced body, the Soak was more like temporary HP that were soon expended, giving me a little cushion against physical injury, but not much of one.

That was fine. As long as I couldn’t die from being dropped on the ground on my head because baby, I was much, much more reassured.

Weird things had continued to happen around me, because style points. My clothes and blankets inevitably were stained black with red trim, maybe keeping a little white for contrast. It was just the Cantrip, but the change was permanent once the magic faded.

Sometimes my mother would walk into my room, and there’d be tiny spectral skeletons with spears walking guard duty around my crib, or a circling skull with roses in its eyes doing the same thing, or similar things. They’d all turn to face her, bow, and poof out of existence.

Of course, such things never popped up when the priestesses were around, either, which left just about everyone mystified about what was going on… and made very sure I wasn’t going to be taken into the temple, even if the spirits around me didn’t seem to be harming me…

My next step was, of course, getting out of the house.

Getting out secretly was harder than it seemed, because Mother was attentive and careful, as well as curious, and so would check on me in the middle of the night… which, since I often needed to go poo about then, was totally reasonable.

Thus, my initial forays were basically done with , and even .

I had access to spells that ole Aelryinth had not, because spells over Valence V were not easily usable on Terra-Luna. That was most amusing to me, especially Casting them as an infant. I couldn’t use anything fancy with valuable material components, but that still left a whole lot of things I could do.

Most importantly, could be Upcast, and thus I could go looking for of higher Valence, which was pretty helpful. What spells were available was a different consideration, however.

Aaaand the trick was limited to my Sorcerer Levels for my Arcane spells, which basically meant I was using it to find out what Clerical spells I could skim from the local Divine network.

was the most useful spell, as I could send spells of my own through it, including to open doors, to open locks, to conceal said , various spells to sense for stuff, and to read anything I could ‘touch’.

Unsurprisingly, I found out a lot of the stuff I was supposed to learn far earlier than I should have… and I found out a lot of stuff I wasn’t supposed to learn at all.

Particularly about this worship of Gaebrel…

I looked up at the ceiling above the city. We were underground nearly twenty miles, I knew it, and had long confirmed it. I was expecting to see stone, maybe crystal formations, some hugely oversized stalactites, and the like.

I wasn’t expecting to see the cavern .

My elevated turned around to survey the city sprawled out around me, then looked back ‘up’.

The Hells…

This Sternvult was located on the …

It was easy to tell, because there was a river flowing through the cavern ‘above’ us, going in one side of the miles-long cavern and out the other one. There were magical flows here and there, pouring up and down the sides of the cavern into reservoirs and streams on this side, then back out, basically making an artificial diversion for the use of what was a subterranean elven metropolis.

There were a lot of mushroom and other fungi farms down there, as well as some elves working the river in boats, hauling in pale white fish. The difference between the two levels was over two thousand feet, with the vaguely rippling flux point a hundred paces or so short of the ceiling, where gravity did a sudden reversal, home to building mists and clouds from warm water vapor condensing, doubtless building up over time and then falling as rain, probably in both directions!

I considered the clean lines of whitened stone most of the buildings were built of. True to elven sensibilities, few of the buildings extended very high, with pyramidal temples and the spires of the King’s Palace visible over the walls. Most of the buildings were 2-3 stories at most, cozy little homes of stone with soft lines, mats of lichen in place of grass, and only the dimmest lights here and there to see by, given everyone’s excellent darkvision.

They called themselves shaden elves, all of them pale-skinned, ranging from bone-white to pale grays or blues, and all white, silver, or gray-haired. Mailed soldiers flew through the air on great bats and lizard-pteradactyl creatures obviously bred for combat, while other lizards and what looked like giant slugs dragged wagons around down below on the cavern’s floor-farms.

I… didn’t get the mass evil vibe of the infamous dark elves of D&D, the drow. There were spiders around, I could see clusters of webs, but they seemed to be in… ranches, I supposed? There was no overarching spider motif, and and tended to ping to Blue and Green, with the darker hues being rarer and leaning to Lawful Evil obedient soldiers who’d kill anything on command. The overall clothing color preferred was white, maybe with accents in other hues here and there, with the priestesses seeming to lead the style.

Even the soldiers were wearing white, eschewing dark colors even down here where they might be useful. Kind of surreal, really.

There were few points of illumination, and they were dim, no stronger than Cantrips, a few torches, dancing on points of interest to draw attention or form points of reference for those on the streets or flying, I assumed by the patterns and spread of the colors. There was a fair amount of bio-luminescence, and the rocks did seem to be phosphorescent, my getting spritzy and probably needing to be Upcast to really study the magic in the area.

Still, the place was an elven metropolis. This Sternvult was big, miles in diameter, sprawled across a truly massive underground cavern’s ceiling. I could only imagine the size of the farms and food supply that had to surround it, forming from the numerous tunnel entrances extending out in all directions, particularly around the river down there. There were stalactites and stalagmites, but they seemed concentrated towards the walls, not the center areas, with a few notable exceptions that looked to have been taken over, carved out, and turned into temples, fortifications, and barracks for military forces.

Active military forces meant there were things that needed to be protected against...

The elves didn’t seem to need to eat too much, and indeed I’d only seen mother eat once a day on average, some sort of condensed fungi-food that as pseudo-alchemical, much like elven trailbread.

I couldn’t imagine eating the same thing over and over every day for years, but all I’d witnessed indicated that was the case, and the daily preparation of the stuff, soft brown egg-sized lumps called was overseen and considered one of the sacred duties by the faith of Gaebrel to teach and pass on.

Blue was the predominant Aural Color of the populace. A Lawful Neutral elven population, sapped of fey joy and life, brainwashed by the need for survival into a fixed pattern of behavior… and the very Blue to Sapphire organization of the female-dominated priesthood, for all that their patron Immortal, Gaebrel, seemed to be male.

It wasn’t exclusive, but the men were outnumbered in the clergy at least 3:1 by what I’d observed. What was uniform was that the priests all had purple or violet mask-like markings about their eyes on their faces. Apparently it was something that occurred at birth, marking the child as chosen by Gaebrel to be a shaman and priest for the people...

So, I knew where I was. This was the Sternvult, built in the cavern anointed by the , the words of Gaebrel that formed the basis for the religion of the Immortal. Rough population estimate, this county-sized cavern held a quarter-million elves, and was home to the High Priestess of Gaebrel, the King of the shaden Elves from Clan Celedryl, its most powerful mages, army, and it was the center of their culture and power.

It was an interesting place to have to grow up in, and I was Visual Filing like mad in case I needed to get out of there. It was a long way to the surface if I needed to leave, but I was absolutely sure I could make it if I needed to, even if I vastly preferred being able to eat solid food first. I could for myself that would get me through on the eating side, and so my only issue would be what I would encounter on the way up.

So, I needed to be finding out more about the religion and priesthood of Gaebrel, as it was the dominant social power in the society here.

Happily, I was quite well-equipped to go searching into places I was not invited, if I was so inclined. I wasn’t going to be stealing anything but knowledge, but sometimes knowledge was the most valuable take of all...