Re:Arachne

part of this was already spoiled in a note dump (in the Grimoire, i believe), but i actually have a bit more planned, and this one actually has more of my attention these days, so it is getting its own topic

For the sake of convenience, I am typing this in my own time, and I'll be updating it in pieces:


Little bit of background before we get under way:
Girl was bossed around a lot with her first character when she started playing The Game and had very little fun, due to getting newbie-crushed all the time. When the server crashed and she lost her character, she saw a chance to start over. Decided she was going to do whatever sounded fun, regardless of how silly or useless everyone said it was. Also, while she enjoyed helping people in general, she expressly doesn’t want people to go through the same pains she did when she first started playing, and goes out of her way to help newbie players and groups. This made her a lot of friends as time went on, and she became one of the more popular players on the server
This leads to point number one: she was popular enough that she was selected to help beta-test a new set of skills that the Game’s developers wanted to release (based on the 7 Deadly Sin/7Heavenly Virtues). She was given one of the skills, which had a base function, and then worked in tandem with a developer to see what she could add to it, both w/ her own feedback and the feedback of her network.
One night she was involved in a raid, used an ability on an enemy; he died and a new ability popped up on her display. It was the Beta-test Envy skill. When she had killed the beta-tester, her own skill- Gluttony- and a combination of her other skills caused her to absorb the other Sin skill by accident.
Mortified, she called up the player and the developers to inform them of what happened. She left the raid to go fix the problem, but in the course of waiting for instructions she fell asleep. When she awoke, she was in another world, in the body of her avatar, with all of her abilities, status, and skills intact, Sin skills included
Note: Gluttony should have some of her touches in it, since it was after all a skill she was helping to design. Support/utility abilities, most likely. Envy should be markedly different from her skill, as it wasn’t hers to begin with

A general note on skills: within a game you can only do so much, so a lot of creature, or even mundane ability/power use is locked away. This must be considered w/ powers. Obviously, poison as a sterilizing agent, but consider how, say, combat tentacles might be used outside of combat.
Questionable powers: Blood Magic
Cannibalism superpower
Poison person
Pest controller
Steal powers from others
Darkness
Personally Desired: Combat Tentacles
Storms
Suggested: Necromancy
Mind control/domination/memory reconstruction
Power nullifier
Duplication/birthing
Undecided: Lovecraftian superpower
Storms
Hellfire
**Storms is something I am bringing in later in the series, which actually launches me into something else
The game that she was playing was designed for in-game purchases and interactions, with lots of microtransactions and specialty things. Paying money for an avatar would give you access not only a special character model but also to special abilities, bonuses to status, unique classes, etc. The relevant transaction here involved the leveling system. The primary/initial questline could be finished by level 30-40, but the level cap went up to 100. That said, as the game was modified and expansions were added, this became too low for veterans of the game, so there started being transactions to the level cap on your character profile, 10 levels per transaction. At the time, she had paid for five of these, so she had a max level of 150. That said, when the event triggered and sent her to the new world, she was only a level 131. Now, that is most certainly not low- she is by FAR stronger than virtually anything else in the setting- but the point is that, unlike overlord, she can still get stronger, and modify her abilities, and the big one I have planned is for her to pick up some sort of storm priestess class.
This would probably be a good time to mention how she picked her classes, or rather to explain her character choices in general. When she got her restart, she decided what would be fun would be a bit of irony- she decided that she was going to be the most helpful person she could be…by using the most evil classes and abilities she could find. This started when she was looking through the possible character models, and one of the premium avatars at the time was an Arachne. She decided to take splurge and buy it, and from then on started building the rest of the character around the design. It was actually pretty funny, using classes that were widely considered to be evil being used primarily as support.
I should probably mention at this point that when she picks up the storm priestess class, she gets those abiliites, but she is still a level 1 in that class, so she doesn’t have access to a Lot of those class options. That said, she Does have a massive mana pool and her relevant spellcasting statuses are through the roof, so even though she is a level one she can have a massive influence with is simply via brute force
Back to her classes for now, she picked her classes based on what she thought was fun, not what was mechanically sound or useful. Classes went up to level 25, gaining bonuses and special abilities as one goes up, usually getting a truly special and powerful ability once the class is maxed out. She…never did that. She has 7 (?) different classes, but hasn’t maxed out any of them

Can't believe I actually didn't start with this bit of information
This project began from me reading a few other stories in the reincarnation genre, and inspired me to make my own. Most of the inspiration is from Overlord and A Skeleton Knight in Another World

The story stars a girl who was not particularly socially outgoing irl, but loved playing games and interacting with people in the medium. One night after trying to help work through a problem with some untested material, she wakes up in a world not her own, in a body with abilities that should not exist

What is this body, you may ask?
She now inhabits the body of an Arachne, a monstrous, centaur-like creature with the upper body of a beautiful woman but with the lower body of a massive spider.
Alluring, stronger than a human and possessing of foul eldritch magics, she must find out why she is here, for what purpose she has been transplanted from her home to this strange place

Stupid dump; ignore me:



November- Fractured Faith Rework
by CGlas




[Request] Arachne
by TheifysSoul




Dark Souls - The Chaos Witch Quelaag
by iforher



Quelaag
by vempirick

Tentative build:
a list of all classes she has, powers they include, and questions of interest where they are concerned
this is going to be one of the bigger posts in this section, because i intend to update it with everything i can to try and make a clearer picture of what i'm doing


Necromancer
The classic in all its glory, the necromancer class gives one power over forces anathema to the living. These abilities include, in no particular order, the ability to create, summon, and command undead creatures, manipulate dark/negative energies, strengthen the dead, curse one’s enemies, manipulate poisons, converse with spirts, and strengthen the undead. This list is far from exhaustive, and the list will probably be added to as time progresses.
The initial inspiration for this class came from Ainz of Overlord, unsurprisingly, but was fairly heavily mixed with the necromancer from Diablo, not to mention D&D and several others
She picked this class specifically because it is a classic. It was instantly identifiable, a known factor. Anyone could look at a character with this skillset and would probably say, ‘yeah, they’re evil’, so with her particular theme in mind it was a fantastic starting point. There is currently a toss-up between this class and the Cultist (see below) for which one is actually ahead, as they are both technically base classes and within her particular build they are of almost equal importance considering virtually everything else was built up around them, but which one is actually ahead is still arguable. Honestly, it might be pretty funny, if meta, to switch these numbers around when she is talking about her abilities, but even for this character that seems like it’d be a bit much
Demon Cultist/Priestess
A little less classic in terms of, well, class, but no less recognizable than the necromancer. This is the evil counterpart of the more typical priest class, a mockery of all that most archetypal clerics stand for and a servant to the enemies of their gods. As far as powers go, this is basically a cleric with an evil bent for flavor, but there are a few little tidbits to make it more interesting.
The specific ability that comes to mind is the corruption ability, a method of ‘conversion’ for lack of a better term that leaves a noticeable taint on its target, reducing or nullifying the effects of divine casters not affiliated with the corruptor’s patrons while increasing the effectiveness of those that are (including the caster herself, of course). Fluff-wise this was meant to represent the cultist planting a seed in the mind of the victim, twisting their mind and morals and making it easier to influence them. This has some…interesting implications when she gets sent to the new world, but I’ll get to that later
As mentioned above, this class is tied with necromancer for her highest level, and I’m still stuck on which one I want to be most powerful. Due to this class’ extensions I am heavily favoring the necromancer, but it’s still up there, and even if I go with the necro, a level 20 is still high up there
Where she is concerned well, who would look at mad-eyed priestess worshipping demons and say to themselves, ‘yep, that is totally a normal, well-adjusted member of society’? it took a very unusual turn when she started branching off, but the influence of the cultist class on her build was undeniable, and fittingly ironic.
Puppeteer/Dominator
As opposed to the necromancer or the cultist, the Puppeteer is very much a ‘prestige’ class, as she only obtained access to it by meeting very specific requirements and completing certain events. Given what avenues it opened up for her, however, and it is little surprise as to why she immediately pumped so many levels into it. These avenues included the options of charming, commanding, or straight-up mind controlling her enemies, subsuming them into her party. How long she could do this depended on how strong the ‘puppets’ were, though in general PCs were harder to control than NPCs, and in both cases it was dependent on level. Benefits also included a lot of straight battlefield manipulation- moving people around, making areas impassable, making certain actions impossible, modifying/strengthening those under her control, etc
Total manipulation of a player was only available at the highest levels, but she found a work-around that worked with her role as a support. Instead of trying to control her enemies and risk her control failing at an inopportune moment, she opted instead to dominate her allies. She modded the skillset (combined with some of her cultist abilities) to give her allies an option of whether or not to accept the domination, which in turn made the domination essentially indefinite. From there, she could freely buff her allies before activating a secondary mod to offer them back control of their avatars (‘You’re powered up- get in there!’). In addition, if someone else tried to mind-control her allies (or use any mental effect, for that matter), her previous puppeteering bit would take precedence and give her back control of her allies, making any party including her incredibly hard to pin down
This class was something she qualified for by accident, but she picked it up with the idea of using it on her allies in mind. It is perhaps one of the few that she actually developed a plan with as she got further into it, and it is one of the hardest she worked on to build its strength. Because of that plan, and because of her intentions, she discovered a loophole that existed because nobody in their right minds would allow themselves to be taken over. In a world of crazy powers, the insane choice made perfect sense
Void mage/Harbinger
The first prestige class on this list, the Void Mage was an eccentric branch of the cultist that tapped into the powers of the void. Darkness, power nullification, debuffs due to confounding or obstructing the senses, isolation via teleportation, gravity, life-stealing, and so on. At higher levels the list would have also included annihilation, providing high damage output, but damage hadn’t been her biggest concern in the first place, so little harm done
There might honestly be too much packed into this class, considering it is pulling from a couple different interpretations of void- outer space in general, black holes in particular, a parallel plane of antithesis, and so forth. While versatility is nice, the class and the character both might be better off if one in particular was picked, allowing for streamlining. To be determined
She picked this class because it was something unusual, still in the vein of what she was going for (come on- if you had to be a cultist to get into this class, it has to be bad on some level), and because darkness was… well, dark. It fit perfectly, and added more tools to her already (necessarily) varied toolkit
Brood mother
Brood mother was a restricted class that she gained access to by virtue of purchasing the Arachne premium avatar. Most, if not all, premium avatars included bonuses and extra tidbits like this, but brood mother in particular was seen by most as mechanically useless. For being a restricted class, it acted essentially as a summoner that had some added synergies, mostly having to do with boosting the Arachne’s already above-average stats. It was very lackluster, and several other, more easily-obtainable classes could do its job better, so there were few people in the entire game who picked it up.
What most people failed to realize is that even, or perhaps especially, with premiums, the really special stuff is hidden, and doesn’t make itself evident until it is actually used. Even then in some cases, like the brood mother, the effects are subtle enough that you don’t pick up on them unless you are paying close attention.
The real benefit of brood mother was selectiveness and specialization in summons, including the option to add special abilities to them. Add to that hidden eggs, the ability to lay them preemptively and let them mature (with a contingency to hatch immediately upon a sibling’s death), effectively bypassing the summons limit made this class very useful in setting up traps, upsetting enemy team comp, and adapting to the enemy at every turn.
Still working out some of the particulars of this class- wasn’t sure if I should have a specific Arachne class and thought it would be kind of redundant, but still thought it would be a good idea to boost the Arachne’s natural abilities and tack on some extras, so here it is
This class she selected because of the simple fact that the vast bulk of people have some kind of fear, even outright phobias, of insects, so being a vermin master would go a long ways in fleshing her out as a horror hero. The fact that it was a rare class that few people went with was an added bonus- she was treading virtually uncharted waters, and finding its hidden depths, even if by accident and through much trial and error, was incredibly satisfying for her
Lurker at the Well
The Lurker is the first of the classes she obtained through the necromancer, and this one dialed in on dealing with spirits. The Well described in the class name is the Well of Souls, which makes sense because that is exactly what it gave the character the ability to manipulate. Not only did it tack on even more debuffs to throw at an enemy via directly affecting their spirits while they are still alive, but it let the character benefit directly from this. Minor details aside, it notably gave life-steal and, more importantly, the ability to both suppress and to outright steal an enemy’s status and skills, adding them to her own. How many people could be affected, how many stolen items could be held and for how long was determined by the number of levels one has in the class.
Didn’t honestly have much to base this on, to my knowledge anyway. Kind of a combination of ideas I had from The Lurker at the Threshold and Darksiders
Souls are something special in the universe, unique to the individual, so the power to use a soul like a tool, wield it like a weapon, steal it like change, and mold it like clay is not only unsettling but is almost undeniably evil. That and the utility it offered made it a perfect fit for her build
Toxicist/Poison mage
The toxicist is one of her more offensive classes. A sub-class obtained through the necromancer, the toxicist gives a character power over poisons and venoms, toxins of all kinds. This included effects, potency, duration, area of effect, manner of delivery, and so on, with more levels adding more and more options, slots available, if you will, per toxin. This class is one of her lower-level ones, but her synergy with it through the Arachne avatar made it stronger
This class was very heavily inspired by the Poison skill tree from Diablo’s Necromancer, and shares a number of the same abilities, but with added options due to flavor and necessity
Killing someone is generally considered bad, but at least there is some glory to be had in fighting an opponent head-on. Using something like poison is often considered cowardly and underhanded, by comparison, but it is more than that. It is a weapon of fear, a tool not natural to humans. It turns muscle and nerve against owner, destroys tissues; it can be delivered through a wound, by inhalation, by ingestion, or simply by touching it. Poison is scary, and people really don’t like it. Toxicist didn’t add much to her repertoire as far as her role as support was concerned, but the value to the overall aesthetic of her character was incalculable
Choir member
While its status as ‘evil’ is arguable, there is no doubt that the Choir member class is the most unusual on this list. While the simple cultist deals with demons and evil patrons of all kinds, the Choir member vilifies the Great Old Ones, those beyond the threshold humanity clings to. By aligning with these unknowables and working towards their inexplicable ends, this mad caster gains access to a variety of unusual talents, some of which have stirred great controversy, in-game
Feel kind of bad about this one, because I am straight-up stealing inspiration for this one directly from Bloodborne. Adding in some ideas from Lurker at the Threshold, and the abilities listed below are from pathfinder, but the actual class itself was specifically meant to be from the high order of the Healing Church.
She took this class mostly because it was unusual and rare, pretty hard to get into, and she qualified basically by accident, not wanting to pass up the opportunity. Funnily enough, this class has some of the most devastating combat spells in her repertoire, but it is still one of her lowest classes, and in the new world she takes care to try not to use most any of its associated abilities.
Using the pathfinder srd oracle- old gods for examples of possible powers she could get from the class-
• By my name you shall call me
• Dimensional shift
• Dweller in darkness
• Eldritch knowledge
• Festival of the servants
• From beyond
• Through ancient doorways
Also adding in a couple from Bloodborne that really kind of inspired this particular class-
• Augur of Ebrietas
• A call beyond
The thing is, in keeping with her character as well as keeping with the mythos, even if she didn’t outright forget that these powers are available to her, she might not want to use them, because if her other powers are real, who knows what might be waiting, just beyond the veil, for her to call to them…




Storm Priest

I don’t remember what math I used for it, but at one point I calculated that, through her force of arms alone, she was worth an army of 5,000 soldiers. Now, for a level 130+, that doesn’t sound like a lot, and it isn’t. the thing is, she is very much NOT a frontline combatant. She has absolutely zero fighting classes- she is pure mage. So when you look at it that way, when she is using absolutely no magic at all to supplement her powers, its actually pretty impressive. So, when she actually bothers to use magic in a fight, her presence in the fight spikes exponentially.
Also, I’m more or less certain I forgot to factor in her natural strength, given that the premium skin gave her higher-than-average stats, and they’ve only gone up since she started playing

I think I just answered one of my major problems with this series. Maybe not the specifics, but I now have a general idea to work with

For some time now, I’ve been wondering what she was going to bring with her into this new world. Considering her high level count, I thought it would be a bit much to throw her in with all of her high-level gear, like Overlord’s Momonga, but at the same time I didn’t want to drop her in naked, like Kumo-chan from Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka. So, I planned on dropping her in with only a few items, kind of like Arc from Skeleton Knight in Another World. Okay, fine, but what do I give her? I could put her in battle gear and give her a weapon, but that doesn’t make sense for a character that’s not a front-line fighter, so I’ve more or less decided to drop her in basically naked, but with a few magic items.

The problem up till now has been what items to give her? What purpose do they serve? I think I have the answer now

I think what I am going to do is give her items with a very niche purpose; powerful items, never you mind, but items with powers that are only useful under very specific circumstances. This is so that the items seem more or less useless when she first enters the world, but as the story progresses she finds that each one is perfectly suited to take out one of the major threats of the story.
Example: one item I am heavily considering giving her is a ring that cancels out time magic- high-tier, of course, but in a world where magic is much more limited this item could almost be considered a waste of space. Then she meets The Dreaded, a virtually-immortal sorcerer who regularly hands out fates worse than death with no one able to stop him, because he is the only (or one of the only) magic users in the setting who can actually use time magic. All hope seems lost, until she activates the ring, and suddenly he can’t do shit except die

It just occurred to me that it might be a little meta, might even be a bit mean to the character by not giving her anything that can just be regularly used, but I still kind of like the idea. That also doesn’t take into account the sheer eccentricity of the character herself, and the fact that she probably has  a lot of rare and specific-use items just like that. Maybe it would be a better idea to think of her, what she’s been through game-wise, first, find some of her more unusual and/or favorite magic items, and from there figure out how they fit into the campaign and where they would be useful


EDIT: also have to factor in just how monstrously strong she is normally, either with magic or with her bare hands- the fact that she goes in only with such niche items might be a hint that she doesn't need anything else, regardless of how much she bemoans her terrible luck

Still really stuck on how big I want her to be.
Obviously, bigger than a normal human, but that brings up the question of how much bigger, which further deviates into two separate ponderings: how big is her human half, and how big is her spider half?
Still curious as to whether I want to do the typical drider/Arachne, or if I want to run with the Arachne tangent I got from Kumo Desu ga, Nani Ka?, but that is another discussion entirely
Back to what I was talking about, and I’ll put this as two separate paragraphs, so I don’t lose myself
Human
The human torso that I envision for her appears sensual and slender, and slightly larger than normal. Not immensely large, mind you, but noticeably. If I had to guess, I would say that her torso is roughly the size it would be if she were, say, 7-8 feet tall as a regular human. I imagine her hands as being slightly larger, but that is still up for debate
Spider
If I had to put the size of her spider body into an image most people could look up, I would tell them Rachnera Arachne from Monster Musume. Some basic info on Rachnera is that her spider body is roughly the size of a king-size bed, so that should be pretty well-defined. Problem being, I for some reason actually envision this character as actually being mildly bigger than that, which makes no Fucking Sense because that would in most cases make her too big to actually fit in most humanoid structures
Now, according to Alderac Entertainment Group’s Monster book, a typical drider (dark elf monstrosity, but it’s basically an Arachne) stands about 8-10 feet tall and is roughly 10 feet long- so, roughly a ten-by-ten-by-ten space. I…kind of want her to be a little bigger than that, but I’m not sure how much bigger. Senseless, perhaps, but for some reason my brain has decided it is necessary for this character

addition
In most of the imagery I have, it’s almost like she has yaoi hands- I mean, yeah, she’s bigger than a normal human- she can cradle a teenage human with her human torso with ease- but whenever I imagine her kissing scenes, I imagine her hands wrapping around the recipient’s entire back. Iii don’t really know- it’s stupid
Aaand now I need to explain the kissing scenes. Shit

Edit: actually, now that i've had some time to think about it, her torso might actually be big enough as-is.
if going from a d&d template works, the lower half of her body is basically the size of a large monstrous spider, 10 feet in diameter.
Thing is, a large monstrous spider only stands like, 3 1/2 feet tall. if she stands a total of 10 feet tall, claw to crown, then her torso would have to be stretched to almost 7 feet. Even assuming she stands higher off the ground than a normal spider, which i am, her torso would still be 4-5 1/2 tall, which is far bigger than a human in its own right

topics i need to work on (probably editing this out)

tremorsense as a possible power for her, from the arachne skin, or from brood mother?

storm priestess
how she is viewed, both in the beginning and in later days
story progression, where it is all going
world she is

Something I forgot to mention is how the class system works
Aaand, well, it’s kind of bare-bones.
An individual player can reach a level 100 with a character, but each class can only reach a max of 25, with abilities and benefits growing over that time, and usually with a capstone at max level. Debating having prestige classes having a cap of 15 levels, but we’ll see about that. Back to levels, while normally you can cap out at 100, there is an option in the cash shop to ‘patch’ your character and gain additional ‘slots’ for levels. These slots are bought ten at a time, and at the time of the story, you could buy a max of 5 sets, giving an overall game cap of level 150.
Our character at the time had bought her five sets, but had ‘only’ gotten up to level 131, so she still has plenty she could go up, even though she is far higher than the typical player, and higher by far than any ‘normal’ person.
Also important to note (or reiterate, as the case may be), she doesn’t actually have any of those capstone abilities. She was more interested in having fun and going for the aesthetic of her character rather than making herself mechanically sound. Now, does this mean she is weak? Of course not, in fact her classes synergize well and make her incredibly potent, especially as a support-style character, but she is still not as strong in any role (typically) as a more meta character.

So, I’ve been bouncing this idea around in my head for a while, and I think I’m going to roll with it. The idea follows thusly:
When she was pulled into this new world, she was relatively close to leveling, and within the course of the story she does indeed ‘level up’. I don’t think she will level up twice (again, I think), if only because being as high a level as she is going into such a low-level world, she’d essentially have to kill everyone raise them all again, re-slaughter them, rinse and repeat before she even comes close to gaining another level. I digress, let’s get back to the story
Which class she actually ends up with is still in question, but I’ve been leaning heavily towards something along the lines of Storm Priestess- powers over wind and lightning, the ability to call storms, enhanced combat abilities (a drop in the bucket at this point, but every little bit helps), and a bit of a holy(??) bent. Even still, storms were viewed by the superstitious in ages past to be either evil spirits or signs of the gods’ displeasure, so it at least kind of fits in with her running theme.
Also, it allows her to fill a new role in the world she now inhabits, but I kind of feel like I should leave that along for the time being, if for nothing else because it requires context, which I will unveil in future posts

As she is only halfway up the class ladder, she doesn’t have full control over poisons, but the class/abilities synergize with those from other classes, like normal necromancer and brood mother. As such, the actual strength of these toxins is remarkable,, and in the new world their effects are limited only by her imagination:
Possible effects:
• DPS
• Broad range of abnormal status effects
• Frenzy from bloodborne (buildup to explosion)
• Cardiovascular
• Skeletal
• Pulmonary
• Neurological
• Strength
• Damage
• Stats
• Mana
• Antiseptic
• Anesthetic
• Sedative
• Neurotoxic
• Pain/debilitation
• Hallucinations


Should poison and acids stay as separate abilities? Or can they/should they be mixed?

The apparently-inherent sex appeal in her character is actually derived from several sources, and most of it is completely unintentional
- Some of it is just how her premium avatar was designed, to appear and move in such fashion
- Some of it results from her classes, or other magical sources
- Some people just have really dirty minds
That said, some of it results from her simply not knowing the effect her new body has on people, and not knowing how to hold herself
More of it comes from her social awkwardness, where she thinks the sexy action is the better/less scary one (if she even realizes it could be perceived as sexual in the first place)
“I…I thought that kissing you would be an easier way of administering the sedative than viting you. W-was I wrong? O-oh god I made it awkward, didn’t I? I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Wahhh!”
^the funny thing is, in most cases she is usually right- doing what she does in any other fashion would generally be seen as terrifying, or at the very least somewhat malevolent

Since ghosts are basically souls without a body, they could possibly be more vulnerable to attacks or abilities that target the soul specifically, like the Lurker abilities

Since she played the game strictly for fun, she’s not as straight-up powerful as other players were, but a lot of her abilities and statuses happened to mesh well and complement one another, so she’s actually a lot stronger than people give her credit for, even if they gave her credit in the first place

To point of fact, she is a very strong and tough enemy to fight in melee; going up against her is like trying to fight a tank with a knife- However, that is more because of her natural state of progression rather than focus, as most of her choices for buffs as she leveled were aimed at her spellcasting and similar abilities
Yeah, think about that for a second: as tough as she is, she could be Stronger

‘By My Name You Shall Call Me’ was a pretty controversial ability, mostly due to the fact that it relied on listening in on all chats everywhere and let the subject in question teleport straight to them. The developers defended it by saying that it was based on the cthulu mythos (meant to inspire fear), it was limited to usernames, the users had the option of whether to teleport or not, and it was stupidly easy to ambush someone that way.
A compromise was offered that opened a chatroom highlighting nicknames given to people who could use the ability. This was often deemed as an invasion of privacy in the other direction, as it gave anyone anywhere the knowledge of who had the ability/class, but many were sated with knowing what nicknames people attached to them.

A few less scrupulous individuals hacked the servers to teleport to their nicknames as well, but they were subsequently banned.

Our character was fairly well-known, so she had a lot of nicknames, and some were actually pretty cool.

Upon rebirth, she faces sensory overload sometimes, as she actually does hear her most common nicknames as well as her given one

For items, I could make use of certain plot-related items and/or key/quest items. i have two separate examples:

1st- in general, if you are a sentimental softie like me, your character's inventory tends to get cluttered up with all sorts of items from previous quests- books you needed to transport, notes needed delivering, stuff that you just in general needed to hold onto for the sake of the quest. Normally, once the quest is done these items serve no point, and are just representative of code, but here they are actual items that can in fact serve new purposes. this might not mean much for that memento of the fight club you won way back when, but what if you are holding a book that can tell you how to create golems, or the phylactery of a powerful lich you defeated that may yet come back?

2nd- actually thinking specifically of the mythallar from Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide. if you've read my post about the archmage i want to build (which i doubt, but i don't know how much you guys read this stuff), you'll remember the flying cities of Netheril. These cities were powered by magical stones called mythallars, and in SoU you are sent after one, although you don't know it until much later. you can't use it yourself, but it drives the entirety of the plot. Now, however, imagine that our character finds herself exploring a ruin that turns out to be a flying city that crashed to the earth long ago. it's of great archaeological value of course, but the magic used to make it fly is long gone
... until she pulls out this item. then she runs the place, and she has her own flying city

Pretty sure I haven't mentioned this specifically, so before i forget:

one of her most common tactics in group fights would be to use her Dominator abilities, not on her opponents, but on her allies. Mods allowed her friends to simply allow the possession. this dominance would override negative status effects, further buff them, and let her direct the flow of battle
or use a mod of her own to 'direct' control back to the player, only boosted and without negatives



(I'm sorry)

I have this idea that since our character decided to go off the rails and just do stuff for fun, not only did she discover some of the hidden secrets of various classes, she actually inspired a bunch of other people to do the same thing, and she ended up becoming an encyclopedia of sorts about lots of esoteric and underutilized classes and what they could do, with her natural curiosity and desire to explore leading her to stumble across a variety of secrets