After years of global upheaval, Earth finally calmed down and achieved peace. Soon after, they sent out a colony ship to Tau Ceti, the Sleeper Starship Pilgrim-9. The journey would take two hundred and forty years.
A few months before final arrival, engineer Morgan Hall is awakened by the ship AI to deal with a seemingly impossible situation: All the planets in Tau Ceti seem to have disappeared, replaced by a single massive terrestrial world. Before he can make sense of anything, the ship crosses into the domain of the System, a universe-spanning entity that grants power to individuals in easy-to-understand formats. Morgan and the colonists are stripped of their technology and teleported to the surface of the planet. Morgan, as the only person awake, is designated humanity's champion and placed in the Crucible for "additional advancement opportunities."
In the new colony, Bronwyn, champion VR fighter and the person hired to pilot the colony's mech, fights to advance as quickly as possible. She might not have the mech any more, but she's going to do her job as the colony's chief security officer regardless. Her first task: Make sure that everyone doesn't get killed by the monsters that surround them.
Humanity finds themselves on a world of magic and mayhem, where technology is seen as an indulgence at best and playing along with an enigmatic "System" is seen as the best option for survival. Not every race on their new world wants to kill them, but far too many do, and it's not easy to tell the difference between the two.
And that's not even getting into the spies in the colony...
Falling With Folded Wings is a LitRPG series by Plum Parrot.
This novel provides examples of:
- The Champion:
- Morgan is named Humanity's Champion by the System, pretty much for no other reason than because he happened to be the only person awake when they entered the System. The title gives him some important bonuses. Morgan assumes that it will transfer to Arthur Ballard or someone else with actual authority soon, but for the most part forgets about it.
- Bronwyn takes her duty as colony security seriously and tries to become the strongest as fast as possible to protect everyone. She does a reasonable job, though she's overshadowed by Morgan's advancements. The Summer Queen tells her about Morgan's title, and hints that Bronwyn should find a way to take it.
- LitRPG: The System uses a level-based system where people gain a class at level 10, then further refinements every ten levels after that. Towns can also level in their own way, based around a central citystone. Unlike most LitRPGs, the series provides an explanation for why a nigh-omnipotent entity like the System would bother to provide energy and instruction to mortals: It's a parasite, helping them grow so that they can feed it more energy. There's a reason many quests involve turning things into the citystone.
- Magitek: The System removes all human technology when it teleports them to the planet, warning them that high-level energy users will render technology irrelevant. While the humans do work to improve themselves through the System, they also try to find ways to re-invent technology combined with energy.
- The Mole: A big-headed idiot ends up signing a contract with a mysterious outsider to obey all his orders and spy on the colony. There was some mind-control pushing him towards it, but for the most part he's just a giant idiot who stumbled face-first into a trap. He becomes a rabble-rouser, pushing towards an early election to get himself on the council and working to undermine the proper functioning of the colony at every turn. In the end, he has minimal effect; he is found out soon after his betrayal, the attack he orchestrated is defeated via Combat by Champion, and he dies alone in the wilderness after running away.
- Non-Combat EXP: The crafting classes get energy (experience) for inventing new things. Likewise, inventing new spells seems to one of the fastest ways to level. If anything, combat seems the slowest way to level, as in the colony the crafters seem to be just behind Morgan and Bronwyn in levels.
- Our Elves Are Different: Ardeni are blue-skinned humanoids with extremely colorful hair, as well as proficiency in both magic and hunting. They fit the classic "forest elf" stereotype reasonably well.
- Our Goblins Are Different: Yeksa are small, barely intelligent humanoids who capture and eat whoever they can. The System doesn't even bother to translate their language, giving the impression they're completely non-sapient.
- Our Orcs Are Different: The urgot are large, fur-covered hunters and warriors who capture and eat whoever they can. Unlike the yeksa, they can speak, but they make it clear that they see everyone and everything else as beneath them. They are the first major enemies in the series, as when they realize there is a new colony nearby they immediately gear up for war. When they are offered an alliance, they laugh it off.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: Subverted for laughs. It's mentioned that for a little while, the humans thought the System might be on their side. After all, they keep getting quests to improve their settlement and defend themselves. Then Bronwyn gets a quest to kill a dangerous urgot at the same time he gets a quest to kill her, and everyone realizes the System is not playing favorites.
- The Symbiote: Olivia theorizes that the System is a parasite, providing energy to intelligent species so that they can grow stronger and then it can receive that energy in turn. While it does seem to be at least a bit mutually beneficial, the Elder Races complain that they were doing fine before the System started encroaching on their territory.
- Translator Microbes: Everyone in the System receives the System Language Integration skill by default, letting them communicate with everyone with ease. However, it seems like the System doesn't bother integrating the lowest-energy species, such as the yeksa. While most people assume that this means they are sub-intelligent beasts, the humans theorize that they could be perfectly intelligent, the System just doesn't care about them.
