=== Creating a Character ===

Halls of Mist is a roleplaying game, in which you, the player, control a character
in the world of Halls of Mist. One of the most important things you control is the
"birth" of your character, the process in which you choose - or let the game
choose for you - various attributes that will affect the future life of your
character.

To create a character, you must first pick his or her gender, though it has no
real effect on the game. Next, you need to choose (or let the computer randomly
assign you by pressing '*') the character's race. Then, you choose what class
you want to play. Note that not all race/class combinations are supported -
those displayed in dark grey have either incompatible statistics or other 
attributes. You can receive a random class (selected from the supported 
choices) by pressing '*'.

At any time when selecting your character's basic characteristics, you can
recieve help and additional information about the choice by pressing '?', or
change the birth options by pressing '='.

Finally, you will have to generate the character's attributes. The exact method
used to do so depends on the birth options (for additional help on these issues
check the birth options help file).

You may restart the entire process at any time by pressing ESC, or quit the 
game by pressing CTRL-X. 

Once you have accepted a character you will asked to provide a name for the
character.  In general, the actual choice of a name is not important, but do
keep in mind that it may have some effect on the game itself.  For example,
on some machines, the chatacter name determines the filename that will be
used to save the character to disk.  On others, the character name specifies
special "pref" files.  Also, the character name is used on the high score list.

Whenever a character of yours dies, you have the option of "quickstarting" a 
new character by loading the appropriate savefile and answering the prompt. 
Quickstarting creates a character identical in all the above aspects to the one
that just died. If you don't wish to create an identical character, just answer
no when prompted, and you will be directed to the normal character creation
process.
