Z3ke: [last online: 4 days ago]

  ***

  TwoGirlsOneCuphead

  I guess I’ll be the one to say it…where the hell did Z3ke run off to?

  While it hasn’t been a particularly long time since he’s wandered off, it has been long enough to start wondering what’s up with him. Is he busy with work? Did he grow tired of writing this fic? What’s up?

  AshwindGlass

  Give him a break. Four days isn’t all that long for a writer. We don’t need to start posting his photo on milk cartons just yet. It only feels like it’s been a long time because he was updating so much. He probably had a backlog all written and ready to go before he started posting his fic here, and now he’s gotta make it all up on the spot.

  NullSigil

  I agree with Ash. Just because Zeke’s offline right now doesn’t mean he stopped posting.

  That being said, I will say that complaints about his posting schedule are entirely his fault. The main selling point of his fic is that he’s really been isekai’d and his posts are all real adventures that are happening to him. Now that he’s got a tech slate, it’s natural to think that he should be constantly online and updating us.

  It’s kind of a mistake on his part when planning this fic. Nobody can keep up that kind of posting schedule and it’s not fair on the dood to demand that. His kayfabe is screwing him over.

  Whenever he stops posting for a normal length of time, everyone is gonna start wondering what happened. It takes you out of the immersion that he’s trying to create.

  10161066

  Writing takes time. It’s not like the last few updates he posted were short chapters. They were dense as hell and not something that can be typed up on a lunch break.

  UnhelpfullyHelpful

  Everyone needs to give the guy a break. The dood is writing an immersive fic and he’s putting the effort into it.

  And 1016 is right. The last couple entries were meaty. It was basically a history lecture disguised as a fic. Now, gotta admit I’m not all that happy with massive exposition dumps and no action. But I gotta give the guy props. He wrote something like 15,000 words on a war that was never discussed in any of the games.

  We aren’t owed hourly updates. We aren’t owed anything more than what Z3ke decides to post. I’m okay with him taking his time and making sure everything comes out nice and ready.

  10161066

  I’m more disappointed in Cole’s lecturing style. Dude needs to clean it up a bit. Make an outline and stick to it. Don’t go off on so many tangents.

  Plus, he completely ignored one of the three crises that led to the decline of the Vash Dynasty.

  Byte-Sized

  | he completely ignored one of the three crises that led to the decline of the Vash Dynasty. |

  ??

  What are you talking about? That lecture was massive. How the hell did he not cover everything?

  10161066

  He said something about three main problems that the Vash had. The first was the civil war, and then there were the generals who built their own private armies. But there was a third thing in there, something about a religious schism. He never talked about it.

  I kinda want Zeke to ask about that and then transcribe everything. But at the same time, I don’t want him getting pissed off at us for being forced to listen to another six hour lecture.

  NullSigil

  I’m not saying that Z3ke owes us anything. I’m just pointing out that his lack of updates feels a bit longer because of how he decided to frame his fic.

  If he was any other author, he could pop on with some author notes and be like “hey, next chapter is taking a bit. It’ll be out on Tuesday." Instead, the man is staying in character and claiming he’s not writing a fanfic. Plus, Zeke’s got a tech slate now, which means his character should be updating a whole lot more than he currently is.

  I’m okay with his posting schedule. I’m just saying he’s trapped by his own premise. You know there are gonna be a bunch of posters who are gonna be on his ass for disappearing for a few days.

  TwoGirlsOneCuphead

  I will argue that he owes us. Maybe he doesn’t owe us a lot, but I absolutely hate the argument that authors don’t owe their fans anything. It’s bosheet.

  Think about Patrick Rothfuss and The Name of the Wind. The guy writes a book and says it’s gonna be a trilogy and he’s already written the whole thing out and it’ll all be published soon. Then, Wise Man’s Fear comes out and we stop hearing from him. He doesn’t write anything. He doesn’t publish anything. It’s been years and we’re no closer to reading Doors.

  I’m angry as hell because I jumped into his series when he said that it’s been written and he just needs to edit it. I figured that I wasn’t getting into a series that would just end midway through and leave me wondering. But now it’s been years since the first book and the series still hasn’t been finished.

  Same thing with George R R Martin. We, his fans, gave him a ton of our time and money and attention. We expected that he’d finish his story. We gave him an audience, and that means that he owes us. I’ve come to terms with the fact that we’ll probably never get Winds, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t owe us anything.

  I’m not at all saying that Z3ke is anywhere in the realm of either Rothfuss or Martin. For one, he’s not as good. For another, he hasn’t kept us waiting for years while he films himself playing video games.

  But I will argue that he owes his fans something. He doesn’t need to write his story the way that I want it to be written. I’m not saying that. I’m not gonna be the type of asshole fan who complains when the ending isn’t to my liking. But Z3ke does owe us updates.

  AnywayHeresWonderwall

  It’s only been a couple days. Everyone needs to chill.

  MushroomCleric

  This happens every time that a fanfic on this forum starts hitting its stride. Readers get used to the momentum of constant updates and then start panicking when the writer takes a moment to breathe.

  If it’s a fic that updates almost every day, then people start complaining that the updates are too short. They complain that the author only writes something like…1,000 words and every fight is spread over 10 chapters and you can’t get into the swing of the story.

  If the author only posts sporadically, then the complaints are about how the posts are way too long and people want something to read during their lunch break and not be forced to read an entire novel on their phone. Or they’ll bitch and moan about the fic taking too long to update and they forgot what happened.

  VoidWyrm69

  I don’t think people always complain about the update schedule for fics. From what I see, most people are pretty good about that on this site.

  Remember Chickens in Heat? It was that Emberveil fic that was pretty popular a couple years ago.

  That author only posted once a month or so, but whenever they updated the fic it was an absolute masterpiece. I remember a few posters here arguing that the fic was being written by a named author who was a fan of the games and was just stretching their writing legs by focusing on fanfiction.

  People were arguing that it was written by Novak or Sanderson or Abercrombie.

  PaperSnakes

  Yeaaa…anyone who subscribed to those theories was dumb as shit. No way an established writer is gonna be posting fanfics on this forum. They’ve got their own books and their own fans and their own forums filled with fics.

  Although…due to the posting schedule of Chickens being so long, I guess I could see it being Martin. If someone said that he was writing fanfics instead of working on Winds, it wouldn’t surprise me.

  MushroomCleric

  I’m not all that worried about the update schedule. I’m more worried that this fic goes the way of that one Syndicate Wake’s fic. Can’t remember the name right now but it was about the OC who was an engineer with a college degree who got isekai’d into the world and used actual engineering to make weapons and vehicles and set himself up as a king out in the Bruskii Highlands.

  It was a good fic but it imploded because everyone kept arguing about the lore and the author not following canon. Each update he made would inevitably get thirty comments all complaining about canon compliance and the author just stopped writing.

  I’m not saying those fics that throw all the lore out the window are good…but you gotta give some authors a bit of leeway to tell their story.

  HandsWithoutArms

  This convo is boring. We should be talking about where Zeke is heading with this story. He’s deep in the Deadlands now and that’s a rough place to write a fanfic about, especially the area he’s in.

  The Soundtrap is empty lore-wise. It seems like it was an area that the devs kinda didn’t know what to do with. I think they were gonna add an expansion there or something, but they just never got around to it before the Syndicate servers were taken off line.

  Writing in places with less canon has gotta be harder than writing in places where there’s a ton of it. Can’t really get a bunch of ideas when everything that the canon says about a place can be summed up in two sentences.

  CopperStatic

  That’s why I think most of his updates were already written out long ago, and then he posted them all and now he’s trying to play catch up. It takes a lot to write a fanfic, and we all know that it’s a lot easier if you stick to areas where there is a lot of lore. The Deadlands isn’t one of those areas.

  It’s gotta be even harder because all the Syndicate servers are down so he can’t just log in and wander around the area for inspiration. He can’t walk through the place and be like “oh, I forgot about that ruin…let’s try working that into the fic.”

  CrimsonProphecy88

  Read the room Copper, we don’t care about Zeke’s update schedule anymore. We’re past that.

  Instead, I’m interested more in what Hands said about where Zeke is headed with this story. As far as I know, none of the other fics on this site ever delved deep into the origin of magitech in the Deadlands. As one of the people that prefers combat in my fics, I’m a little disappointed in how slow this whole story has become. But I also love lore and history, and Zeke’s whole thing about the Valley of Echoes and the history of the war between the Vash and Concordant is right up my alley.

  Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if this fic kicks off a wave of other fics talking about the Three-Crown Crisis. Greenfall Pass is the kind of event that would be great in a fic: a big battle, everyone losing, forbidden tech. I promise that other authors are out there salivating at the thought of a new era in the Fracture-verse. They’re gonna grab the whole idea with the Vash and Concordant and run with it.

  StoryLeech

  Funny you should mention that. Someone linked this fic in the Lore Speculation threads yesterday and was talking about “unseen conflicts.”

  It blew up. Like…hundreds of comments in a few hours. People were quoting from the fic like it was pulled from cut content. There were at least three posts from people asking why the devs never expanded on the Three-Crown Crisis.

  I’m with Crimson in that I can see that war between the Vash and Concordant being a popular topic among fanfic authors. Hopefully we can get fics with different perspectives. I wanna read a story where the narration hops between a soldier, an engineer, and a general. You could also write an epilogue to the whole war and deal with the political fallout from the conflict.

  TVEye

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  | Hopefully we can get fics with different perspectives. |

  Too late Story. I take it you haven’t been on the fanfic side of the forum lately. Shit’s exploding over there. Soooooo many people writing fics about the Three Crown Crisis.

  My favorite is from Presperosity. She wrote a fic from the point of view of that one chick who took command after Dahel died. Can’t remember her name right now. But it covered the whole Eight Day Thunder and went into her perspective on the last day of the battle.

  Presperosity made this chick the fiancee of Dahel and when he died she was broken up about it. She wasn’t even next in line for command, it’s just that all the soldiers decided to follow her because she was fighting for lost love. When she was given the Resonance Engine, she knew that it would blow up everyone in the Valley, and she was okay with it because if she couldn’t have a life with Dahel, then nobody gets to live.

  Normally I don’t go in for romance in my fanfics, but this was so good.

  Saltmines

  I haven’t seen a lot of people talk about the lore that Z3ke dropped here. Dood gave us so much backstory on a period that happened just before the Fracture and it seems like nobody is talking about it.

  StoryLeech

  They are. I just said that a Lore Speculation thread was made yesterday and got a bunch of comments.

  Saltmines

  No. I mean, nobody on this thread is talking about it. I generally don’t go on the speculation threads because it always just devolves into everyone shouting at each other and gatekeeping everything.

  I wanna know what you all think.

  Do you guys think that the Vash was so weakened by that civil war that they couldn’t protect themselves from the Fracture? It makes sense that, if the Vash were disorganized, the Deadlands was hit hardest out of all the regions during the Fracture. Emberveil and Null Protocol all have functioning governments in their regions after the Fracture. The Deadlands is just broke.

  MapHackJunkie

  Citadels of Ash. That was what I was thinking about when I was reading Zeke’s historical monologue.

  The Citadels all used to be military blacksites and research facilities and bases, right? What if all those Citadels were run by the different Vash generals who were “loyal” to Callous. Then, the Fracture hits and the Vash Dynasty can’t deal with all the destruction and everything. Those Generals lose all their influence and power and are cut off from the larger empire so they turn more internal. Add a hundred years of that and those gangs that own the Citadels are just the grandchildren of the Vash soldiers.

  It would make the most sense and explain why they’re so strong. All those citadels are basically nation states out in the middle of the Deadlands.

  UnhelpfullyHelpful.

  Callis*

  Vash CALLIS was his name.

  Kinda reminds me of the Sith naming convention in Star Wars. Like Sidious and Tyranus and Greivous and Revan. Dayum, kinda wanna RP as a character in Frontiers who is named something like Vash Domine who just wants to reconquer the entire area for a resurgent Vash empire.

  StoryLeech

  ^MapHack

  I like it. But I don’t know if a powerful Vash Dynasty would have even been able to completely survive the Fracture. All we know about it is it’s got something to do with the Rift Scar out in the middle of the Deadlands. The commonly accepted belief about what started it is an alien virus or something similar.

  Do you think the Vash could have even survived something like that? Even if Denma had won the war and reformed the Dynasty, he still has to deal with something that’s extraterrestrial in origin. I think the Fracture would have messed up anything anyway, no matter who was in charge.

  Binary_Arcana

  Dammit Story. You’re forcing me to be the wet blanket here.

  I’ll be the first one to say that it was obvious I was against this fic from the beginning. But, then Zeke discovered the whole House of Seasons lore and worked it into his fic, so he gets a pass on some of the lore breaking in his story.

  But can we all stop pretending that he’s writing Fracture canon here?

  The Soundtrap is barely defined in the games. It’s a location that was forgotten by the devs and its only interesting characteristic is that it's got some weird environmental effects. That’s it.

  The Vash Dynasty only exists as item flavor text in the game, and a few lines of dialogue from an archaeologist in The MIZ. That’s it.

  It’s the same story with the Concordant. They aren’t fully fleshed out in the game lore. And there’s zero mention in any of the games about Generals named Tappal, Kheled, or Dahel. No mentions. At all. Callus exists, yes, but only in the item description of a drinking horn.

  What Zeke has done is build a fan interpretation of a location that doesn’t have much canon surrounding it. It’s a good interpretation. It’s compelling because we’re all so starving for new information about the Fracture-verse. But it ISN’T hidden lore. It’s not cut content. It’s not some lost expansion.

  My anger is starting to shift from Zeke to all the rest of you, because you’re all repeating stuff from his fanfic like it’s fact.

  “Oh, the Vash lost two generals at Greenfall Pass. What are the political ramifications of that?”

  That is an exact quote from one of the Lore Speculation threads. I mean…what the hell man? The games never mention those generals. They never talk about the Vash Dynasty or the Three-Crown Crisis or the Valley of Echoes.

  Enjoy Zeke’s fic. Celebrate it. Leave comments and reviews and all that good stuff. Maybe even use some of it as inspiration to write your own fanfics. But stop talking about it like Zeke is out here uncovering the one true history of the games.

  StoryLeech

  I get where you’re coming from Binary, but I think this is just fandom doing what fandom does. When canon leaves a vacuum, people fill it. Zeke is just filling it a little well for your taste. That doesn’t make it official or anything. But I don’t think you need to be blaming him for what everyone else is doing with his fic.

  Binary_Arcana

  I’m just saying that people should call it what it is. It’s headcanon not real canon.

  InnerMarrow

  Binary…Fracture as a game is basically dead. The people who made it are gone. The servers are gone. The fans, except for us, are gone. No one is making new games for the IP anymore. The whole thing got bought out by a massive publisher who hates the fans. Why don’t we have fan-run servers for Syndicate’s? Because Horizons Entertainment is litigious as fuck. Whenever one pops up, they send a cease and desist letter and threaten legal action.

  The lore isn’t being updated and no dev is swooping into this forum and being like “well actually Greenfall Pass isn’t what we plan to do with that region of the map.”

  At this point, the fanfics are the best we’re gonna get in terms of continuation of the game. If a big chunk of the community reads Zeke’s take and goes “yea, that works for me,” then congrats…it’s headcanon now. That’s how the setting survives when the official support of it dries up.

  MushroomCleric

  Oooo…I like it. Upvote for Inner.

  Say this much about Zeke, he’s getting us all interested in a region that wasn’t really touched with the games. The Valley of Echoes wasn’t a thing in Frontiers or Syndicate’s. The best that could be said about it was that it was a gimmick. I remember people heading to it back when Syndicate’s first released and they were all complaining about the audio files being all janky. The devs never did anything with it.

  Zeke is at least trying to give us some history to the region. He’s trying to fill in the cracks to the story. He’s not erasing canon by writing his fic, he’s engaging with it.

  What would you rather have? A barren landscape that nobody bothers talking about except for saying “yea, something’s wrong with those audio files.” Or would you rather a headcanon of “yea, the Vash and Concordant really screwed up by playing with weapons they didn’t understand?”

  If in ten years this forum is still around and still has posters and someone comes on here asking what the Valley of Echoes was and people tell them that it was a battle in the Deadlands where Resonance Engines were first used, that’s not a problem to me. That’s the fandom taking over where the devs left off.

  NullSigil (Primary)

  Binary’s objections kinda ring false to me. We’ve been doing the same thing that Zeke has since Fracture first got sold to Horizons.

  Half the commonly accepted lore on the game comes from small throwaway lines in dev interviews. Even more comes from people stitching together item descriptions into something coherent. We don’t know that this stuff is real lore, we’ve just accepted it.

  FopperyandWhim

  Hey all. Long time lurker, first time poster. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this whole argument that you’re all having, so bear with me.

  I only got into the Fracture games recently. A friend pulled me into Tech Reign and I loved it so much that now I’m reading lore threads at three in the morning. I’ve been in other fandoms before and I’ve read more fanfic than I can count…but this whole situation feels slightly different.

  Zeke is writing a fanfic. That’s it. So why is it so contentious on this forum? He’s telling a story and, in basically every other fandom that I’ve been part of that’s how everyone engages with the world they love. They write what-ifs and alternate histories and they add onto a story. So why are people so pissed?

  Why does it feel like some people on this forum are personally offended that Zeke is writing his fanfic? I’m not trying to stir up some shit, I just genuinely don’t get it.

  Also, I’m almost done with Tech Reign. What game should be next? Should I play them in order? I’m more of an FPS fan and I don’t think I’d really like Emberveil, so what should be the next game I pick up?

  BabyBloos

  Short answer…it’s a Fracture thing. This fandom has always been weird about fanfics.

  People still read them. I mean, you can see that they’ve got their own threads on the website. But there’s an unspoken rule on the forum that fanfics exist in a separate, lesser space than the games. It’s entertainment and we all like them, but it’s not the same as conversations about the game and the lore and the canon.

  Fracture’s lore is fragmented on purpose. That was the whole selling point to the game. There’s a bunch of environmental storytelling, and you’ve gotta piece together item descriptions to get some of the story.

  Did you ever play any of the fromSoft games? If you played Elden Ring, you never really got the full story. There were a few cutscenes, but it was just the monster coming at you and you being like “oh shit, I gotta fight this thing now.” The entire story is in the item descriptions. If you go on YouTube, you can find hour long videos discussing the lore and story of the game. People will piece all the stuff together like they’re Sherlock and make explainer videos.

  Fracture is like that…but on steroids.

  Over the years, the community has basically treated the canon and story of the Fracture-verse as a shared archaeological site. You don’t add to it. You uncover it. You catalogue it and argue about what it means, but you don’t just come in and start dropping items into the ground and shoveling dirt over it and being like “oh…look what I just found.”

  There’s a lot of people here who would claim that’s what Zeke is doing. He’s not excavating, he’s building. And that rubs people the wrong way.

  DataDatum

  Adding to what Baby said, a lot of us are very protective of the canon because it feels communal.

  Fracture doesn’t just hand you a story. We all had to work on it together. We got data miners and theory threads and we all replay the games dozens of times. None of us owns the lore, but we all pieced it together communally.

  When someone comes in and starts writing new scenes and being like “this is how the lore really is,” even if they say it’s just a fanfic, it can feel like they’re trying to paint over something that we all spent years restoring.

  Not that I agree with people who are all up in Zeke’s grill about this. But it does help to explain why people are all emotional about it.

  HandsWithoutArms

  There’s another layer here that nobody is saying out loud. Some of the frustration with Zeke’s fanfic isn’t really about canon.

  Binary has spent years digging through the games to find hidden lore. He’s good at it. He finds unused dialogue flags and environmental assets that most players never notice. That kind of work is hard and time-consuming and pretty thankless. Most people aren’t gonna pay attention to what he uncovers outside of niche threads.

  Then Zeke comes along and writes a fanfic and suddenly everyone is talking about Greenfall Pass. People are replaying the House of Seasons and it’s trending and he’s getting noticed. Threads are blowing up.

  That’s gotta sting if you’re Binary. If you’ve been doing serious lore work for a long time and then someone comes in and gets all the attention, that’s gotta hurt. It’s not Zeke’s fault, but I think it explains a lot of the hostility.

  It’s all discovery vs. creation. One gets you respect from the lore nerds (admittedly a lot of people in this forum) and the other gets you readers.

  NullSigil (Primary)

  Nobody is stopping Binary from his own take. If anything, Zeke cracked the door open and now there’s more interest.

  I’m gonna push back on what a bunch of people have been saying. Fanfic in Fracture isn’t hated. It’s just expected to stay in its lane. Zeke isn’t really doing that, and I for one actually think it’s a good thing. He’s writing something that feels plausible, and I think that expands the fandom a little.

  GrognarTheGreen

  Can we please stop arguing about whether or not this fic is following canon? Seriously, I’m not all into that whole part of the forum here. I just wanna read a story set in my favorite games.

  If someone doesn’t like how Zeke is diverging from the games, they don’t have to read his story. If it’s ruining your enjoyment of the games, then just stop following this thread. No one’s forcing you.

  I’m tired of this forum just going around in circles about that instead of talking about things that actually matter for this story. Zeke still doesn’t have a class. He’s barely scraping by and his combat instincts are horrible.

  That’s what we should be talking about. So let’s spitball some ideas. What do we, as a forum, want to nudge Zeke towards? What should we be trying to convince him to do when he finally comes back here?

  JimothytheBarber

  Hey Foppery, nobody answered your question about which game you should play next. If you’re liking this thread, you should do what a bunch of us are doing. We’ve all started a new run of Frontiers and we’re following along with Zeke’s narration. It’s been pretty interesting so far.

  We got a thread in game discussion where people are telling their stories like they’re next to him as he’s running around having his adventures. There’s a bunch of modders on there who are adding a few things to the game that Zeke talks about. If you want, you should pop over and DL some of the mods and do a Z3ke-run.

  Also, Grognar…Null is still his primary. Ultimately it’s on him to give Zeke advice and direction.

  GrognarTheGreen

  Sure, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t help. I’m not saying that we sideline Null. I’m saying we all start coming up with some solid ideas to help him out. Null can take those ideas and pass them on and try and steer Zeke towards doing something specific.

  Honestly, he gave great advice on the whole tech slate thing, but Zeke still needs a class. That’s the biggest issue facing him going forward. If we can all get aligned on what kind of class would best help Zeke survive and grow, that gives Null something to work with.

  MapHackJunkie

  Who’s the next primary?

  It feels like the Valley of Echoes arc is gonna be ending pretty soon. When Zeke comes back he’ll probably just recap what he did and then we’ll be moving on. I think that’s probably the best time to switch over to a new primary.

  I don’t have the list handy. Does anyone have a link? Who’s up next?

  GravemindLegacy (MOD)

  The next primary is CrushDaddyXx

  And yes Map, I agree with what you said. Once Zeke wraps up the Valley of Echoes, that is the natural handoff point. We will switch primaries after the update.

  CrushDaddyXx

  Oh wow. OKay. I got goosebumps. I’m ready. I’m willing. And I’ve already got some stuff in mind.

  Fair warning to everyone, when Zeke comes back we’re gonna be leaning way harder into combat. No more endlessly tiptoeing around threats. I want him throwing hands. I’m gonna whip him into shape. I’m gonna turn him into such a dangerous person that he’s gonna be able to apply for, and get, the foreman position at a punching factory.

  That said, before I start pushing him into fights and high-pressure situations, there’s one big prerequisite. Zeke desperately needs a class. Right now he’s just ambling along, and that’s fine early on but it’s gonna be a death sentence if we’re escalating.

  So I’ll throw this to the forum. What class do you think actually fits the next phase of this fic? I’m leaning towards something with serious survivability that still rewards aggressive play, but I don’t want to lock that in without hearing other takes.

  MushroomCleric

  Yea…pump the breaks bro.

  Remember that Zeke has veto power. If he decides that he doesn’t wanna go full combat gremlin, that’s his call. You can’t drag him into it. You gotta sell him on it. If you start saying you’re gonna toss him into dangerous situations, he’s probably going to be a little hesitant.

  You gotta think…he’s survived this long by being cautious. Whatever he decides happens in the Valley of Echoes is going to most likely reinforce that instinct. If you want him to commit to combat, you’re going to need to explain how it fits his story and not just what would be cool for you and the other people who wanna see more action.

  Make a pitch and convince him that it’s the next logical step in his fic.

  Hambone

  I thought we all agreed that Zeke would basically be getting the Drifter class from Corva. I mean, that seems like that’s where this fic is headed.

  PixelBaron

  Problem is that it would take ages for him to get the class and he doesn’t have all that much time. He needs to get any class right now. He can’t be too picky.

  Leaf

  Remember what he said when Null asked him what his goal was for the fic? Zeke said he just wanted to get home. We need to help him choose his class with that goal in mind. Sure, if Gunwitch or Rune Breaker is the best class to get him to come home, then make the pitch for that. But I think there are better options for him.

  If he’s really serious about getting home I’m thinking he will need something like a wanderer class. He already got offered the bartender class and that’s an NPC only one. Maybe he can get the wanderer class and get a travel skill that can get up to 10 and he can just walk himself home.

  PixelBaron

  That sounds like it would take just as long to get as the Drifter class. I mean, going by Corva’s backstory in this fic, how long did it take before he finally got a class? Was it a couple years? Zeke doesn’t have that long.

  And we don’t know anything about which skills a wanderer could get up to 10. Not only that, but let’s say that he does get some sort of travel skill to 10. That doesn’t automatically mean that he’ll be able to just open a portal to distant worlds or anything.

  WispInABottle

  Zeke at a minimum needs some survival skills (navigation, wound management, stealth) and physical (athleticism) skills. If we’re looking at getting him back home, then summoning (???) as well. Or something like space magic.

  He does have an in with the Blooming Witch so maybe she can help out. He doesn’t really seem like a fighter unless he’s backed into a corner, so I don’t know if he’s gonna work well with 7.

  Lilium_Mortem

  | And we don’t know anything about which skills a wanderer could get up to 10 |

  I don’t think we can really suggest him any sort of traveler class. There’s too many unknown variables. We don’t know the why or how of Zeke getting isekai’d. Our only clues are what he posted early on. He woke up in that random lab and then ran through a portal. Frankly, getting home might be impossible if he’s the plaything of a mad God.

  Z3ke (Original Poster)

  | I want him throwing hands. I’m gonna whip him into shape. I’m gonna turn him into such a dangerous person that he’s gonna be able to apply for, and get, the foreman position at a punching factory. |

  Yeaaaaaaaaa. That’s not gonna work for me.

  Hey everyone. It’s gonna take me a while to respond to you all and type out everything that happened because I’m typing one handed. Please no jokes.

  Crush, I’m not gonna start fights with a bunch of people. I think we all know I’m not all that good at combat, and that point is gonna be driven home in my next few posts.

  And for everyone worried about which class I should pick and talking about me being unanchored and all that, well, you don’t need to worry anymore.

  I earned a class.