Jump 5. Generic Fantasy RPG

"Hey, you have like, 300 points saved up," said the being to me. "Spend them, you dork."

"More Harry Potter points?" I asked. "Oh, right, I didn't get any for the Azka-"
"I'm sorry, you thought 'There is Too Much Ham' was a 500 CP drawback?" asked my benefactor. "NO! I gave you those points. You spent them."

"Oh," I told the being. "Wow. I really thought ham was worth 500 CP, I'm a big dummy. Um. Anywho! Er, oh, right. These are from the Supplement Modifier, yeah?"

"Yeah," replied the being. "And now you can, I don't know, add electricity and heating to your warehouse, or make it accessible by portal, or hey, even buy something from the bodymod."

I contemplated it. Then I made my decision. "Yeah, the Portal thing seems good. I would have been able to avoid a lot of shit last time if I just had a portal."

"Anyway," said my benefactor. "I have five new choices for you today. Read them all, though I'm pretty sure I know what you'll pick."

Hm, okay. Fallout New Vegas, a solid choice. It was also admittedly another place where Cadis and I's interests in video games intersected besides The Sims. New Vegas was probably my favorite, though I did admit a certain fondness for building stupid settlements in 4 and watching my citizens try to deal with their new pointless housing. Generic Mind Control… um. No thanks. I was fine just reading people's minds and sucking all the information out for now. Dresden Files… dang, those books were on my 'To-Read" list but I'd never gotten around to that. Generic Fantasy RPG… another Generic one, huh? I did like Fantasy RPGs, even if I was kind of bad at them. I hated grinding, after all. Sekai Oni… never heard of it. From the image on the front of the brochure it did not look like a fun time, either.

I ordered my minons… um, I mean brothers, to work. "Okay, guys, time to read some brochures. I'll take New Vegas, one of you take Generic Fantasy RPG, um, everyone else, I guess you can read the other ones if you want but I don't think we're going there."

"Everyone else?" asked Jiro. "Sevvie, that's two of us."

"Shush."

I had read Fallout New Vegas, and found myself pretty impressed by the Courier Duster. And there was a lot of other useful stuff there. I was pretty sure I'd made my decision, but as I lifted my head from the pamphlet I saw my brothers gathered around Cadis, already planning out their builds for Generic Fantasy RPG.

"Oh, come on," I told them, "We haven't even decided on that one yet."

"You're going to once you see what's in it," replied Jiro. "Sevvie, it would be really interesting to go to New Vegas, but this one has a lot of useful stuff."

"Like what?" I asked, skeptical about it.

"Um, just read it," he replied, taking the brochure from Cadis and handing it to me.

As I read through the brochure I looked at New Vegas on the table and sighed. We would have to delay our trip to the world of Fallout to a different decade… and I would have to start figuring out how the hell I was going to afford everything I wanted from the jump.

"After this one we're taking a break," I told the entity as I handed them my final build. It was actually pretty similar to… well, most of the builds we'd made. Everyone had A Jumper's Wisdom, simply because it was just so good, and everyone but Sasha had Unshackled Potential, and even then it was hard for him to choose between that and the juicy interactions between the boosted form of Heroic Lineage and Hyphenated Name. Sasha and I had three classes and Jiro and Cadis had two. And yes, I had taken a miserable, miserable heap of drawbacks, but most of them just made the world a lot more annoying than more dangerous.

We had also decided it was time to create a new, fourth companion, and written out a build for them to present to my benefactor. After their bullshit the first time in saying I couldn't influence my brother's builds we just did them all at the same time now, though they did have the chance to change them once I was gone. But since this person didn't really exist, we could just pick whatever we wanted for them.

"I think you've missed something very important here," said my benefactor.

"What? Is my math wrong? Damnit, I was really hoping that I hadn't screwed that up. What do I need to fix."

They sighed. "Is this world based on anything, or…"

Oh. Yeah. That. "Yeah, I can't really think of anywhere I want to go. Just make it generic. But not like, weird generic, just like… normal."

My benefactor sighed. "Ah, yes, worlds where people can only speak three sentences are totally normal."

—

Power flooded through my system. Though I'd felt much stronger after my transformation into the Master of Death after last jump, which had been just minutes ago, now I was feeling a transformation that was on that level, though not quite as potent.

But I had to focus on what was going on right now. We were in the fortress belonging to my mentor, Sheyla Starix, the legendary Hero who had saved the world from Lord Galborthon over a century ago.

But now Galborthon's grandson, Zalborthon, had risen up from the shadows and conquered the world. Sheyla, my brothers, and I were the last of the resistance that could take down Zalborthon. We would need to travel to the seven orbs, and perform powerful rituals to convert each orb so it would no longer be funneling power to Zalborthon. Once that was complete, we could finally enter Zalborthon's fortress and destroy him once and for all.

...really, benefactor? Seven orbs? Each in a themed dungeon surrounded by themed monsters? I guess this place really was generic, ok.

"Okay, everyone, listen up, we gotta get to those orbs and quick. But first we need to do some rituals and then roll out."

"What sort of rituals?" asked Cadis.

"I was thinking an Effigy Ritual, to protect you three chumps," I told him. It was a ritual we'd learned about last world but never actually performed. It'd transfer damage from one willing target to another, the instant it happened. But it sucked against things like Instant Death Spells and just most magic in general, to be honest. But here we were now, and with my transformation into the Master of Death and the fact that I was just really, really hard to even harm in the first place… it was worth it to perform.

"I've never heard of a ritual like that," offered Sheyla. "Did The Codex tell you of it?"

"No, I… had a dream about it. Anyway, gang, let's go."

"How are we supposed to go there with Zalborthon's troops in the way?" asked Cadis. "My family's home is in the middle of controlled territory."

I waved my hand and opened a portal to my warehouse. "Okay, everyone get inside, we have to do the thing where you assholes remember who you are for this decade."

This time it wasn't actually that easy because I mean, it was a drawback after all. Cadis had accepted it so quickly last time because it'd actually been like a month or so into the jump. Still, he was willing to humor me enough to teleport all of us to the ritual hall so we could perform the needed rituals. And then we were off.

Even to liberate the first orb was quite the task. We spent about a month running around, yelling at NPCs and attempting to gather the needed ingredients. They rested in mini-dungeons, fetrid swamps, and underwater caves, and we couldn't take any shortcuts. If we didn't collect the jewels of water breathing from the Shrine of Supernal Mysteries, we wouldn't have been able to stop the priestess of the shrine from getting killed by one of Zalborthon's minions, and she wouldn't have been able to give us the jewel of door detection! Never mind that I could just detect secret doors because, um, I had Kryptonian eyesight here, because later the jewel was needed to open the door of seventeen jewels in the secret sanctum of the Gemvore, the monster that ate only jewels.

But worst of all was that Sheyla, my mentor, the woman who I thought was going to be coming with us from this world, the one who would finally make it so I had another woman to interact with for the rest of this journey, was killed by the guardian of the first orb. And despite Jiro and Sasha's strongest healing magics… she wasn't coming back.

That put a big damper on the rest of our journey in this world. I wasn't even happy when I killed King Wall, the Father of All Walls, who had hindered our progress for over a month. And I only had a small glint of happiness when we killed Zalborthon, who was even more of a stereotypical villain than Cornelius-and who didn't even have the excuse of accidentally having intelligence modifying spells reflected onto himself. Dude turned into a giant snake in his fourth form. Even I didn't turn into a giant snake in combat and I was a giant snake that killed with a glance. Seriously, please send this man a copy of the Evil Overlord List.

We had about a week to try and get the world back to normal before we found ourselves in another world.

World Two as similar to World One, but it was a world where everyone lived in giant trees and the villain was a powerful druid. We had to cleanse the eleven oldest trees in the world from his corruption before we could fight him. But it was actually the easiest world in all. We spent only six months there.

World Three was probably the most annoying, because the BBEG there was obsessed with puzzles and every single one of the magical factories she had pumping out more minions for her could only be destroyed by completing a very complex sliding stone-puzzle - on the first try. Each color of stone did something different and pointless, and even the first few puzzles were challenging. That was before she got into 3D puzzles… and then puzzles with time limits, and puzzles that dealt with imaginary dimensions… blegh. And no, we couldn't just get the foremen of these factories to help us. Asking them got us the riveting line of dialogue, "YOU'LL NEVER GET ME TO BETRAY THE COMPANY!" over and over again…. in the same voice for each guy. Trying to rip the info from their minds was equally useless, as they were totally blank.

At least three times we had to wait another month before trying the puzzle again because we failed that bad. Oh, and by the way, we had to collect our own stones for the puzzles. We spent three years there. It was miserable.

World Four was interesting, because the BBEG there seemed less of a dictator and more of a benevolent ruler. But since we hadn't taken the Big Good Was Actually Big Bad drawback, it was super obvious a few days in that our summoners were right and he was actually a shithole. This world was two parts combat, three parts political bullshit, and it was one where my brothers actually did a lot more than me. Yeah, let Jiro woo the Senator who had the secret dirt on the Secretary of State that we'd need to blackmail him so we could finally get the secret reports on crystal smuggling… He was good at that. I couldn't seduce anyone if I tried and this world had mental protection jewelry as just something everyone wore all the time.

World Five was where we finally met our real companion, not our beloved dead mentor, Sheyla. We were trying to talk to an innkeeper in Storlia, the Last City (yes, the capitals were mandatory every time you said the name, they'd somehow detect if you did otherwise) to find out if he had seen one of Emperor Taliox's minions. But of course…

"Would you like a room? It's 3 Gold for a night, 10 for a week! We also sell various food items."

"Have any of Emperor Taliox's minions ever taken you up on that offer?" I asked.

"Would you like a room? It's 3 Gold for a night, 10 for a week! We also sell various food items."

"Can you say anything else?" I said, knowing that the answer was probably no.

"Would you like a room? It's 3 Gold for a night, 10 for a week! We also sell various food items."

"Who has stayed in your inn lately?"

"Would you like a room? It's 3 Gold for a night, 10 for a week! We also sell various food items."

"What would you do if I burned down this inn and force feed you the ashes," I muttered.

"Would you like a room? It's 3 Gold for a night, 10 for a week! We also sell various food items."

"Holy shit," said a man who was just entering the inn. "You can talk."

I stared at him. "Yeah. Shockingly, it's not a rare ability."

"No, I mean, you can really talk," he said, coming towards me. "Oh my god. You're immune, like me."

"This some sort of curse? I thought that this world was always like this," I said, remembering what it had said in the brochure.

"No, it's always been like this," replied the man. "I've just always.. been able to say more than other people. Um. Wow. Another person like me. It's… I can't believe it."

Tears began to roll down his cheeks and I rolled my eyes at that. "JIRO! CADIS! SASHA! COME OVER HERE, WE MET A DUDE!"

"My name is Eurynomos," he said, introducing himself. "Wow, there's more of you? This is the happiest day of my life."

And so Eurynomos joined our party. He was actually pretty useful, though admittedly we'd kind of made him that way. As a member of the "Dark Knight" class he had various skills that were useful in both infiltrations and combat, and he was a pretty solid debuffer. And now we had a party of five, which was not very "Generic RPG" but whatever. It was always good to have another body on the field.

He was a tall, handsome, dark-skinned man, with a ridiculous haircut and even stupider outfit. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when I found out that Jiro was interested in him. ...Cadis was a bit more of a shock, though. Despite what he and Jiro had told me about looking for a number three (or more), he hadn't really seemed to express interest in anyone else on their travels. But soon the three of them formed a triad, with Sasha and I as once again the singletons in the party. I was a happy single- Sasha was an unhappy one.

"Why couldn't it have been someone I was interested in?" Sasha vented to me one night. "Why is it just another guy for Jiro and Cadis to get with?"

"Um, another?" I asked, not being in the loop about… uh, was there a different time they picked up a number three?

"I mean, they already have each other!" replied Sasha. "Couldn't I have gotten someone before they got another?"

He huffed slightly. "I was the one who actually wanted to go on this journey with you. I wasn't planning to bail during jump one."

"I'm sorry, what?" I asked Sasha.

"They told me not to tell you but now I'm too upset to keep my promise. In the first world, Young Justice, they were just going to kill themselves once they gained consciousness and make it look like an accident."

I was shocked. I had never even suspected- they were having a good time! They seemed to enjoy this journey. I mean, not this world, nobody was having fun here, but last world was fine, the world before that they played board games for like five centuries, Zendikar was okay! I felt totally betrayed by two of the most important people in my life. I would have been devastated if they'd died there. I would have probably doubted what the being had said, that they'd be safe and sound back in their home world. And I would have not been able to get through the last world without them, or this world either.

"I shouldn't have told you," said Sasha, looking at my expression. "Oh, Sevvie, I'm sorry, I-"

"I'm going to talk to them about this when I can handle my own feelings," I said, aloud but mostly to myself. "There is no good in talking to them now that I'm angry."

"That's a good idea," said Sasha. "I-"

"I'm going to talk to them about this when I can handle my own feelings," I repeated, hoping I could convince myself this was the correct course of action. "There is no good in talking to them now that I'm angry."

"A- Are you getting the whole repetition thing?" asked Sasha, looking nervous. "Or just trying to calm yourself?"

"The second one," I replied. Then I continued. "I'm going to-"

Sasha interrupted and hugged me. "I wanted to be here, Sevvie," he told me. "And I still want to, I mean! This has been one of the best times of my life. Even worlds like this… well, it's not boring, huh?"

I nodded, hugging my brother back. At least there was someone who wanted to come along with me.

2018’s Author’s Notes:
"Why didn't Sevvie just use her coupon to go to Fallout: New Vegas?" I didn't think I had enough time to research my holes in my knowledge of that game and write a snippet for that, even a short one. In character, she's looking for a vacation after this and the Fallout Universe is definitely not one.

2026 Retrospective:
This is a jump where you go to a generic fantasy RPG. Sevvie has a whopping 3600 CP to start with, and becomes a ridiculous tri-class character with bullshit perks, like immutable mind, body, and spirit, unlimited potential, and killing anything. Her companions follow suit. Everyone becomes a mage and scout, oddly enough, but Sasha also becomes a warrior, as does our new companion, Eurynomos.
Sevvie and The Gang go to very generic worlds, which are actually detailed somewhat. Everyone here speaks in only three sentences, despite the fact that some of them are political in nature. (This is never explained). Eurynomos, a native of the fifth world, is immune to this and overjoyed to finally find other people who can actually talk. He shortly afterwards enters into a relationship with Cadis and Jiro.
Sasha is jealous of this new relationship, and confesses to Sevvie that Jiro and Cadis were originally planning to kill themselves in the first jump and return to their original world without having gone on the jumpchain. But since they didn’t have their memories of who they were, they didn’t. Sevvie is hurt by this, and Sasha comforts her. This is where the story for this jump ends.

Chimera Corner Ammendum:
Man, I sure spent a lot of the retrospectives recapping the stories. I guess it makes more sense in the context they were in another document.
Generic Fantasy RPG is a bullshit jump. It was also featured in Unnamed Story, where Reagan went there.