FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

I sat down in my computer chair, hands shaking as I set down the box as if it were made out of the finest glass. It was finally here, what I'd waited for, dreamed of, for so long. The Alt3rnate headset. Their slogan along the side of the box: "Anything you want it to be." This would be the thing that let me change from the slightly overweight, 5' 10 kid I'd always been, the thing to change my bothersome straight brown hair to something better. "A whole new world..." I breathed out, before tearing open the box, pulling out my new treasure, and the instructions manual that came with. Geez... Not even any wires? This stuff was advanced! The company, ForwardCo. Had made one of the biggest breakthroughs, heck, the biggest breakthrough in history when they managed to somehow create a system that could interrupt, and change the signals the brain sends. Able to transport you to a world where anything was possible. And somehow, they managed to do it super cheaply, the headsets costing less than a Playstation 9xL, $159.99 to the cent. I'd memorized it. I quickly flipped through the manual... Thumb and index finger together, slide wrist to elbow to pull up the menu, both thumbs and index fingers together, pulling apart to create a holographic keyboard when necessary, deaf options, I didn't need those, and, most important, to take off the headset, clearly speaking "I'm leaving Alt3rnate" and miming taking off the headset would actually take off the headset. Easy! With hands slightly shaking - nerves or excitement, I couldn't tell - I slipped on the headset, and everything went black.

A logo, in the darkness, of a backwards a, then the rest of the letters appearing to spell "Alt3rnate". Then, it was replaced with a menu, the voice of what sounded like a teenage girl to accompany it, it showed "Welcome to Alt3rnate! As this is your first time, I'll inquire, have you read through the manual, and all the safeties and warnings?" I looked for a button to press, then realized I was being dumb, and responded, "Yep!" It shined green, with a ding, then shifted back to the neutral blue, "Character creation screen loading... Initiated!" and a circle of blinding light flared beneath and around me, and I fell backwards, my feet lifting off the ground, I blinked, and suddenly I was seeing myself, floating there, above the circle, illuminating every feature of my body. I looked down, trying to see what my sight was occupying, but there was nothing there. That was a weird feeling. Actually investigating the character menu though... Holy... That was a lot of options. When they said you could be anything, they meant it. All the normal fantasy races, elves, dwarves, orcs, then the anthros of all kinds, even insects, to the weird, and uncommon, like a taur creator, able to match the body of any 4 legged beast to any upper body, humanoid dragons, feral looking beasts... Even a custom mix and match option. Geez! I took a moment to look at the other features, a bit overwhelmed. Interestingly enough, Alt3rnate didn't do classes like most other rpgs or mmos. Instead, you had five stats. Strength, just how generally powerful you are physically, and how much you can carry, good for front liners, tanks, fighters, things like that, Agility, how fast you could move, obviously good for mobility, but still helping your weapon skills, as some power does of course come with speed, Health, how many blows you could take, but also increases general stamina, and resistance to various poisons and alcohol. Next, intelligence, good for magic casters of all kind, whether arcane or divine, but also for people who focus on using skills. For example, if you wanted to model yourself off of that Blink character from the game Understare 2, once you'd gotten the needed skills, you could level your intelligence to maybe increase the number of blinks you could do, or lower the recovery cooldown. Last stat, Charisma. Good for speech related skills, and in general will lower store prices, and make you easier to talk to. Skills could be found almost everywhere in the game, from combat, quest rewards, things like that, scaling with your various stats and you could equip more as you leveled, but the real beauty was the combination system. As many base skills as there are, you could also take any two skills and combine them into one, for better or worse. Like, for example, cleave, requiring a slashing weapon, where you sweep your weapon across an area with good aoe, could be combined with a simple fire _spell to give you _ignis cleave, enhancing the ability with an flaming burst. And then you could combine that one with another, and so on and so forth. You can be anything. That's what they said, and you can truly acquire any set of skills you could desire, if you were willing to put in the trial and error to get there. So what did I want to be? I knew from reading the manual I'd get three characters, known as Alt3rs, for this account, though I was likely to focus on one, it'd give me backups in case I didn't like what I went with.

After an hour or so, I'd finally decided. I tapped on the anthro wolf icon, and the circle of light beneath my body flared, and my body glowed, shifting into a humanoid form, fur sprouting from every part, muscles growing slightly, the bend in my legs shifting. I moved through the menus, making some cosmetic changes, height, 5'7, average height, unassuming. A scar over one eye, since that was cool, fur colored a deep, greyish blue, the color of the night just after sunset. Add some purple headfur, in what was basically a comb over fade, a couple other changes, huh, they even let you change your genitalia. 4 inches should be fine... And done! Next, stats. I had the basic array of 10 in everything, and 10 points to add where I chose. I was kinda feeling like something similar to an assassin, with some magic skill to assist, so I put 6 in agility, 2 in intelligence, and then, on a whim, 2 in charisma. Being able to talk well never hurt anyone. Starting weapon, a dagger, powerful weapons, good for crits, but low range and low durability, they worked best with agility. Simple leather armor, and lastly, all I needed was a name. Hmm... Pyrus. I could sway and bend like the papyrus reeds, but had the strength of fire as well. And the name wasn't even taken! I hit okay, and anothet menu, bigger than before, shined, "Is this who you are? Y/N" I answered yes, and saw a teardrop shaped crystal appear above my head. I remembered from reading the manual that the crystal was what showed players vs npcs. All players had the intangible crystal. Suddenly my vision moved back towards my body, circling it once, staring into the closed eyes, then rushing into it, and suddenly that was me. I felt myself lowering back down, a thin chill touch of wind caressing my body, and my footpaws hit grass, and I opened my eyes.

I was in a grassy field, in front of me a large city, with many, many people walking around, some even riding on various animals, or even monsters. Around me I could see others who'd just awakened, and some people excited to see friends had joined. A twinge of disappointment hit me, but me being alone couldn't stop the excitement for long. I looked over myself, admiring my hand, and then running it along my body, amazed at how the fur felt, and how different _I _felt. I felt fast, I felt stronger than irl, I felt good. I ran my tongue along my jaw, and my teeth, my "canines" heh, were a lot sharper. I walked forward into what was clearly the starting city, as a fancy graphic appeared in my vision. "Welcome to Tellius! (Recommended Level: 1)" "Cool." I couldn't help myself, a wide grin on my face. As the graphic faded, I noticed a yellow alert symbol, leading me deeper into the city. Sure, I'll follow. It led me into the center of the city, to a giant wooden board, with papers placed all across, some haphazardly placed on top of others. Alt3rs of all kinds were interacting with what I realized was a quest board, I could see a name and level floating above their heads. There was a bear in fancy red metal armor named "Igrizz: Level 42", another new guy, a human, "Pw$$yDestroyer: Level 2" who would play a human when they could play anything out of fantasy? I idly wondered, also noting some people were of course going to have... Normal online names, to put it nicely. Anyways... The alert led me to the bottom left of the quest board. The paper was for a tutorial, tapping the paper raised a menu listing the same thing as the paper. "Tutorial Quest: Using the quest board. Accept? Y/N" Of course I accepted, and the menu changed. Essentially, the quest board in each city was the hub for missions of all kinds, default ones, made by the game itself, but also ones made by players, for players. The game was actually made to have lots of content, with players being able to make their own in certain ways, and certain areas. The quest board would direct people to the quest locations, via those same yellow alert symbols that led me here in the first place, which apparently I could turn off in the basic menu. The one I'd just accepted, to make sure I understood the quest board, and also to get me started, had 4 parts, each a quest of their own. There was one for learning crafting, one for alchemy, one for... Socializing? At an inn? And, finally, apparently had a "huge rat problem" that we'd need to take care of. Alright then... I felt a grin spread across my face. So it begins. My adventuring career, my new life, begins.