Welcome to Elaria, enjoy your stay. [IC]

[Kasmania]

Today’s the day! Finally you’ve been able to make time to try out Elaria; whether you’ve been busy, or just now found the cash to actually buy the game, tonight’s the night you’ll finally be able to load into the game world proper. While the player base can’t compete with several, much more popular MMOs, there seems to be a healthy number of players in game, and all the reviews are practically glowing with enthusiasm, so you’re exceptionally excited to finally play it yourself.

Settling down in front of your computer, you boot up the program and the splash screen for Elaria appears on your screen. You wait impatiently as it runs through the various update checks until it finally reaches the log-in prompt.
Checking for updates, please wait…
Checking location, please wait…
Checking connection stability, please wait…
Checking gateway proximity, please wait…
Welcome to Elaria!
Username:
Password:

Entering your username and password brings you to the server select screen; as luck would have it, 4 of the 5 servers available are down for maintenance. You click your tongue in annoyance as you select the only available server: The Lair, a PVP server. It figures that the servers would all be down, right when you found time to actually play the game. Well, it’s just to try out for tonight, you figure you can always change servers later. You quickly run through the procedures for crafting up a new character (or select a pre-made one you made a while back), and hit the bright “Enter World” button at the bottom of the screen, bringing up a Terms and Conditions box. Quickly skimming through the text, it appears to be a normal T&C, so you hit “Accept” and wait for the game to load-

And frown in frustration as yet another text prompt appears on the screen.

“Elaria is best played with the included set of headphones! Please plug in the included set of headphones, or hit ‘Continue’ if you’d prefer to use your own headphones.”

That’s strange. You don’t remember seeing a pair of headphones included in the box, but maybe you missed it. Digging out the box that the disc came in, you give it another close look- and discover a small tab to the right of the disc indentation. Pushing it down lifts up the entire plastic disc cover, and reveals a small silver pair of sport headphones hidden underneath in a small indentation. Well that’s somewhat annoying; why not make it easier to actually find the headphones?

As you slip on the headphones over your ears and settle into place again, there seems to be a small attached piece that dangles right beside your neck; probably a microphone. When you plug the headphones into your computer, the program takes a second to recognize it, and then the text box on the screen changes:

“Thank you! We hope you enjoy playing in the world of Elaria.”

The screen adjusts to a classic splash loading screen. As you wait for the bar at the bottom of the screen to finish filling from left to right, you hear a series of three beeps coming from your head phones. Suddenly, there is an incredibly sharp pain in the side of your neck. Your vision starts going blurry as you frantically grope at your neck, and you detect the silvery metal texture of the headphones somehow- embedded in your skin? And then as the loading bar reaches the end of its progress, the screen goes completely black, as does your vision and consciousness half a second later.

Blink

A white room. You can’t feel anything. You can’t move. There’s nothing in this room except for a single man, looking straight at you. He’s very tall, and dressed in strangely flowing robes. He wears a neutral expression on his face (is that a hint of annoyance?) as he addresses you directly.

”Welcome to Elaria. Congratulations at being selected for a very special game mode. Not many people get the opportunity to experience Elaria quite like this. We’re trying something a bit…different with you. Though if I had my way, you’d still be going into this solo.”

His face breaks out into a grin, though he doesn’t look exceptionally happy, and somehow his expression looks even darker than before.

”I think you’ll find that this game is a tad bit more dangerous than you were expecting when you bought it. It is my personal recommendation that you do your utmost not to die. Perhaps you are indeed the saviors that Elaria has been waiting for, ha ha ha…”

Blink

Suddenly, you have sensation again. You feel yourself in a body…although it’s not quite the body you’re used to, if that makes any sense at all? You are standing on a dock, along with 6 other people with somewhat fantastical shapes; is that an elf standing there? To your left is a large wooden ship, its crewmembers busy hauling at the rigging, and to your right extends a long beach. Directly in front of you, a fair distance away, you can see a tent where the beach meets land proper. There is a man standing there with a bright red ! hovering over his head. A cold sea breeze blows in, and you shiver involuntarily.

Around your peripheral vision, there are some strange windows that hover seemingly in midair, shifting with your gaze as you look around. As the bottom of your view is an empty line bar, as well as what appears to be menu options: Bag, Map, Friends, Guild, and Options. To the lower right is a window that currently displays nothing but “Entering Zone: Coastline.” To the upper left hovers a bright red bar labeled with HP and- is that the name of the character you just logged in as!? As you look down, you finally notice that you are dressed in exactly the same outfit that you designed for your avatar to be wearing. On your back rests a small knapsack, and to your side dangles a small book attached to you by a small leather cord.

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The seven of you are currently standing on a dock. As far as you can tell with your senses, you are literally standing on a dock, as the character that you just loaded into the game.

To those of you who have played MMOs before: this is completely unexpected. You have never heard of actual VR technology even being invented to this extent, and Elaria was marketed as an onscreen game anyway. You should be staring at a screen right now, not...being in the game itself. What's going on here?

OOC chat here (just a linkback)

[sournote103]

Wesley was understandably surprised at seemingly having found himself within the game. After a minute or two of attempts to rationalize what was happening (maybe he was having some sort of seizure, or maybe he was dreaming, or maybe this is secretly what all video games are like and he had just never noticed...) he found himself completely lacking any sort of explanation.
He took a few deep breaths to try to calm himself, then went about testing what he could do. He started with the simple: moving his arms, legs, and hands. He then tried taking a few tentative steps to ensure that he could walk.

Assuming that I can do all that and it works without any problems:

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Wesley then went on to investigate the bag on his back and the book by his side.

[Winds]

James glanced around the ship, noting the displays staying in the corner of his eye.

Months of saving up, then I have some kind of trip within seconds of logging in. Man.

Taking stock, James notes the sword and book at his side, armor, and backpack.

"Guess I'll start with this"

Muttering to himself, James tries taking out the book and opening it to the first page.

[Proud Tortoise]

Piper looks around with an incredulous look on her face. "What... the bloody hell..." The ground seems strangely close. She reaches up to feel her ears and exhales slowly.

She attempts to walk towards one of the ship's crew and shout, "Excuse me? What in the Nine Hells is going on here?"

[Elricaltovilla]

Well this is just weird. Spork looked adound at ghe sky above as ths smell if the docks overwhelmed her nose. these graphics are really good though. Alright! Let's engage the video streaming... hey, how do i make the video record?

[Abombom]

“Great. I’m dreaming about games again.”

Eddy rubbed the side of his neck, feeling for the phantom implant and still in pain from logging in.

Did I fall asleep on my desk again? Maybe character creation was so boring I dozed off…

He looked around and took in the scene. Everything looked just like the few screenshots and videos of Elaria his friends had linked him to. His character, Umom, had the same armor and appearance he had randomized when he zoomed through the login screen and copy+pasted his background and details.

Why is everything so bright? Dreams aren’t usually this detailed.

Eddy had Umom briefly look like a crazed headless chicken as tried to fly, like he usually did in his lucid dreams. “Fly! Fly!!” Nothing happened. “Fly?”

Meeting with failure, he began to walk up to the closest person in sight, another elf like Umom. Seeing that she wandered off and began yelling at the crew, he instead went up to a tall half-orc. Then, unsure about whether to poke the humanoid his ‘dreams’ had conjured before him or shoot it with his bow, he decided instead to talk to it.

”Sup? Er, I mean... greetings, half-orc! What brings you to these lands?”

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Umom goes up to Tormag.

[Felyndiira]

Question: Why did I choose to play MMORPGs?

Answer: I like to think of life as a jigsaw puzzle. An infinite one, if you will, with no ends or breakpoints in sight, and for which you only have finite pieces to place upon an ever expanding surface. Where your puzzle takes you depends on which pieces you decide to use in the earlier parts of an image; did you transpose the earth with the image of a carefree, transparent sky? Perhaps you chose the dark, somber colors of blue as your secondary finish, and continued from there to build a crayon rainbow from afar that is revealed as an transposition of mismatched pieces when one approaches the image? My puzzle was already filled with deceptive colors; when you view it from afar, it becomes a brilliant image of a carnival, with people dancing like pigeons in the summer wind and kids, together - always together, chasing each other amidst the forest of caravan stalls and adult legs. It's an impressionistic painting with multiple holes within the picture - no different from that of anyone else - with the games representing that ugly black bar in the horizon that seemed dissonant with the rest of the parade. I happen to like the color black, however; it's the only part of the puzzle that is missing not even a single piece for me, and the only part that is the same no matter if you see it from up close or afar. It is also the piece that connects the carnival grounds with the clear blue skies above this jigsaw version of my world, and that, to me, is no less important than any other piece of this picture.

It's all life - we all get through it the same, but people are weak, like myself. Some of us simply cannot tolerate that the world would be moving on even if we were to distance ourselves from it, and some of us simply demand that rare chance when we could take off our masks and become the very image that we have always desired in our deepest fantasies, hoping with all our hearts that it may someday become real. For some, then, social games - like Elaria Online - were just an escape into anonymity; a world that we can leave our masks behind us and let the world see our true appearance behind a few thousand polygons and a name that is false in every sense. Here, I am not Mana Nanmen, the tennis queen carrying the name of our school into the US National Invitationals tournament and the girl who cried herself to sleep when she was eliminated in the very first round. I was not Mana the Honor Student, who was obligated to keep a false smile and tutor a bunch of idiots that didn't truly need help, but never really had much of an interest in the subjects to began with. F***, I'm not even Mana the nice girl, or Mana the stoic, or Mana the one named after an anime character, or Mana who is wearing whatever mask society demanded of her.

Anonymity, as some university professor had once said, is like a shield for people like me. I could be an absolute jerk to everyone if I really wanted to. I could curse out newbies and flirt with random people, get a few special favors from a GM and proceed to sell everything from the guild bank without remorse. That sort of social behavior will inevitably sour relationships and destroy any friendships if continued for a long enough period of time, but the world is as disposable as the online identity shrouded behind a monitor screen. In one moment I could be gone from the world forever, and to me it would all cease to exist; somewhere, in some overseas server of a cheap Asian MMORPG, a bunch of unrelated people are probably chanting against 'Dailia the Elf' with the same wrath and disdain that one would have for a housefly. Meanwhile, I will simply step away from my computer and back into that mask that I would always were, and once again, I was Mana Nanmen. The good girl, the tennis star, and the honor student with her own irrevocable place in the social order of sixteen year-old teens. Amidst a comforting hierarchy that I would never dare abandon.

But really, I played WoW with my friends at some point in the past. I could never get truly addicted to it, mind you: the fear of losing my place amidst my peers was more than adequate to ensure that I put down that keyboard and step back into my proper mask. Still, it was a game that I had enjoyed; there was a degree of enjoyment in being Grummush the Orcish bad-ass with a sword twice my weight. There was some enjoyment, although a bit different, in re-christening myself Mr. Loopinboopers, the Jian Xia with the goofiest face you could create in Perfect World. It was all a fantasy that I could more than easily immerse myself into. Elaria, too, would be just another one of these fantasies - that, at least, was what I had told myself.

A faint wisp of wind reminded me that this is not just that kind of a simple world.

***

How does one describe this scene before Mana?

A metaphor, then. There was at some point in the past, as she had read in an English-learning audio tape, a young boy hailing from England who - while playing truant from elementary school - created a makeshift raft for himself and managed to land himself all the way in the coast of France. Imagine the situation for the boy; now amidst a entire village of people who did not even notice him, as a Brit in another European language was not in any way an unusual sight. The boy, however, was sleeping just a moment prior; he did not understand the language that these men and women were speaking any more than he could understand physics. And once he spoke aloud in English, screaming for help, the eyes of the crowd must have been upon him at once. A hundred eyes falling upon you; the sensation that one feels is best described as if a parade of bugs marched up one's backbone. It was a mixture of panic and fear, apprehension and weakness. For a human to be uncertain is almost like a death sentence in itself, and the boy, a complete stranger with all of his familiarities stolen from him and cast under the gaze of a thousand strangers in a foreign land, felt the brunt of the reaper's scythe.

That was about how Mana felt at this moment, standing on those docks with what was supposed to be pixels on her monitor playing out in front of her eyes. Virtual reality of some kind? This was not what the MMO label had promised her. Wasn't Elaria supposed to be just a conventional game, with nothing but a few buttons different from World of Warcraft or Perfect World? The girl cringed behind what seemed to be the avatars of a few other players, shuddering; her eyes scanned around her in fear as she reassured herself that it was all just a bad dream. Her left arm slowly rose to her cheeks; with a sudden and solemn breath, she pinches herself, screaming aloud into the virtual world.

"Wake up," she whispered. Then, when those artificial skies of Elaria would not disappear, she screamed - a bit louder at first, then at the highest volume that her voice can muster. "Wake up. Wake up! WAKE UP!" All of this - it must have been a hallucination from overexerting herself in the tennis match. But there's no time to rest now - her friends were waiting for her later tonight. She was supposed to sing with them, to have some bit of fun that she actually enjoyed in this day and age. Social obligations are like the world to her; what time is it? Why couldn't her body understand this? Why is it so insistent on playing this horrid f***fest of a dream?

"Please, if this is all really just a dream, let me wake up," she sobbed. Her right hand, almost instinctively, reached for where the system menu would be. Her last fragment of hope was shattered when the "Exit" button - unmistakable and omnipresent in all RPGs that she knows - is no longer there. It would take a while before the girl would look up once again at the world, but at least for the next minute or two, a passerby would only hear a few soft sobs from a well-dressed elven lady, crouched up and looking desperately toward the lake.

[Togath]

what is going on? Thought Akiho, How is this possible...a dream?, it looks like the screenshots I saw..and what was that room?, and that feeling before it?..

”Sup? Er, I mean... greetings, half-orc! What brings you to these lands?”

"Huh?, Wait!, What's happened to my voice.." says the orc lifting his hand, wait, this isn't my hand...what is... "orc?" it took her a moment to realized what the person had said, "what do mean!?" says the orc, trying to rush over to the water to take a look at his reflection..
"how did this happen.." says the orc---or at least a very orky looking humanoid---in a confused tone upon seeing himself in the water.

[Kasmania]

As you attempt to move, you get a disconcerting pause. In a panic, you actively think about moving your hand, and then suddenly your hand moves just as you had envisioned it. It's a very unnatural feeling, and while you get used to it relatively quickly, it's exceptionally strange to have to actively think about what body part to move, rather than simply...doing it. While you can still move as naturally as your real life body after a few seconds of practice, the odd feeling remains ever-present.

Fumbling with your backpack, you manage to flip open the upper flap, but the bag itself is completely empty. The bag itself is incredibly lightweight, and it's difficult to tell that it's even there as you sling it back over your back. As for the book attached to your waist, when you turn to the first page, the only thing you see is a picture of the character portrait you generated back at character selection, along with your character name captioned below it. Flipping through the pages, you see various lists of options you remember from character generation: ability points, feats, skills, spells. Everything is currently grayed out aside from the options you had selected for you character at the start.

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This is the in-game "leveling system" so to speak. When your character gains a level, they'll go to this book to input their selections for what new powers and abilities their character gains for the level-up. The book is essentially ephemeral; only you can touch it, the cord can't be cut, and if you change outfits, it spontaneously appears connected to whatever you change into. Since your characters don't have any rulebooks or PDFs for researching what they want to level-up into, use this book as a discussion tool.

As you look towards the ship, you see a flag flying high over the mast, emblazoned with an image of a red lion. As you question in your mind what that might represent, suddenly a translucent window appears in the air with an arrow pointing towards the flag. The text within the window reads "The flag of Arak, the country from which you traveled to reach Elaria."

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This is the in-game knowledge check system. Whenever you specifically think about wanting to know what something is, a simple window will appear in midair with the relevant information, so long as you have the requisite ranks in the relevant knowledge skill. The window will disappear as soon as you look away, or think about learning about something else. In this case, all your characters know where they literally just came from (across the ocean), so there's no knowledge ranks required.

If you attempt to interact with the windows around your vision, you find that only the menu buttons at the bottom of your vision actually react to physical manipulation; your hand simply passes through the other windows in your vision. Hitting "Bag" brings up a window with ten empty slots and a disheartening "0 PP, 0 GP, 0 SP, 0 CP". Hitting "Map" brings up a mostly blank window, with only your current location (a small coastline on the eastern border of a large continent) revealed and filled in. Hitting "Friends" or "Guild" brings up a blank list. Perhaps most disconcertingly, hitting "Options" merely brings up a completely black box; maybe there were supposed to be options in there, but they're apparently not available for you to use.

[Kasmania]

When the slim elf poses her question towards the ship's crew, one of them pauses in his tasks, before turning to the party and pulling the pipe out of his mouth.

"Whatcha talking bout? This is Elaria, ya paid us to get ya here. Don't tell me yer getting second thoughts about this now, you only paid us for a one-way trip!"

He guffaws heartily and cracks a wide grin.

"Sure we'll take ya back, but it don't look like you have the cash to pay for it!"

As the elf speaks, a black, almost cartoonish, chat-bubble appears over her head containing her words printed in white. The same goes for the crewman. In your text box to the right, text appears as they talk.
[shout]Cassandra Lakes: Excuse me! What in the Nine Hells is going on here!?
[say]Crewman: Whatcha talking bout? This is Elaria, ya paid us to get ya here. Don't tell me yer getting second thoughts about this now, you only paid us for a one-way trip! Sure we'll take ya back, but it don't look like you have the cash to pay for it!

[Elricaltovilla]

"No options?" Spork cried as she flipped through the menus. "How am I supposed to do my game review without clips? And what's with the weird first person perspective? I thought this was a top down game..."

Jessie turned her head around to look at the scenery. The graphics really were impressive, and the HUD was pretty ingenious.

"OK! Let's try this out. Armor, equip! Go go gadget armor! Don Armor! Hello?" Thoroughly confused, Jessie settled on doing the one thing gamers hate more than anything. Checking the in game manual.

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I don't know if there's a knowledge check to be able to research through the manual, but that's what she's doing.

Once she finally got her armor on and her weapon equipped, Jessie decided it was time to form a party. People were already looking to pair off or form up in groups, and Jessie didn't want to be the lamo stuck soloing. It would look terrible for her videos. She spotted a female Half-Elf (according to the window that popped up after Jessie stared at her a little too long) that seemed just as confused as she did. So Jessie walked over and introduced herself.

"Hail fellow adventurer, I'm Je... Spork. I was wondering if you were interested in joining a party with me, we're both new here, so I figured it'd be nice to have someone else to rely on. I'm a magus, master of steel and spell!" The little gnome pointed at herself. "What class are you?"

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Spork is introducing herself to Princess.

[Winds]

James glances at the 'master of spell and steel' talking to the upset girl.

[say] Mathias: "You, ah...don't think something is wrong here? You didn't have anything weird happen when you logged in? Screen goin' black, passing out, showing up in person in what's supposed to be a video game? Obviously upset and confused players on the docks?

James' annoyance (and fear, not that he'd admit it) causes him to raise his voice.

[shout] Mathias: "Don't you think we have bigger problems than forming a group? 'What in the Nine Hells is going on here' is right..."

[Elricaltovilla]

Jessie winces as someone starts shouting behind her. That options menu would have been really great, if only so she could turn the SFX down. Still, Jessie turned her character around to address the guy shouting at her.

[say] Spork: "Yeah weird stuff happened when I logged in, but it's like 4 AM where I live, chances are I'm asleep right now and having a lucid dream.

[Whisper to Mathias] Spork: "Do you really want to upset this poor girl even more? We're better off sticking together if something weird really is going on, don't you watch anime or movies or anything? The first guy that freaks out and runs off into the wild is the first one to die. If we stick together, we have a better chance of figuring out what's going on."

Honestly, some people...

[sournote103]

Wesley supposed that, considering that he did not seem to have any difficulty moving, speaking and casting his character's spells would be the next logical things to try.
Not having anything in particular to say, he simply muttered "Let's hope this works," before moving on to his spellcasting attempts. Rather than wasting the use of an actual spell, he instead opted to attempt to summon his Eidolon (or rather, take its form, though the class feature was much the same). He first tried to simply will it to happen, much in the same manner in which he attempted to move about.

If that fails...

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Wesley the moved on the HUD which hovered on the edges of his vision. He tentatively tried interacting with an icon that appeared to represent the class feature he was attempting to use.

[Winds]

[whisper to Spork] Well...yeah. I'm not in any great hurry to go anywhere without everyone being clear on what's going on. I guess if you want to do it that way, I'll go with it for now.

Hmp. Been a paladin for 5 seconds and I'm already shouting at people at the first sign of trouble.

Smite, check. Evil, not quite. Healing and protecting, no.

Quite a start.

James takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh.

[say] "A dream, okay...well, I'll join your group if you want. I'm a paladin. Master of steel and...uh...not much else, yet. Name's Mathias.

[Kasmania]

As Jessie called out various voice commands for applying armor, nothing seems to happen at all. Confused, she checks the option menu again- only to discover that 3 buttons have appeared that weren't there before: Characters, Interface, and Manual. Hitting Characters brings up another black box with a single button in it: Outfits (hitting this button does nothing; perhaps you need multiple outfits first?). Hitting Interface brings up a black box with two slider bars: one is captioned "World Volume" while the other reads "Window Translucency". Beneath the "Window Translucency" slider is a single check box that says "Show Text Bubbles." It is currently checked.

Hitting Manual brings up a window and a table of contents. It appears to be exactly the same as the paper manual found in the Elaria box that the game came in. It even references actions such as "right click from your bag to equip items" and "press space to jump." It does not seem as if it will be relevant to your situation.

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To equip items, bring up the bag window, and tap on whatever item you want to equip or use. You can bring up the bag window in combat, as well as use consumable items, but you can't change weapons or armor mid-combat. You can also physically go through your bag itself, assuming you have a free hand; it takes exactly as long as going through the Bag interface.

She turns to respond to Mathias shouting at her. As soon as she thinks about using the whisper system mentioned in the manual, a window appears in the top right corner of her vision; it looks like another text box, though the caption at the top of the box reads "Whispering with: Mathias". As she thinks of what she wants to say in the whisper, the words appear in the text box as she thinks them.

James sees a window of his own pop up in the upper right corner of his vision. His caption reads "Whispering with: Spork". As the text appears within the text window, he also hears Spork's voice directly, though rather than hearing it out in the air, it seems to be echoing in his brain directly, as though it simply bypassed his ears. He thinks of responding, and the words he wants to say appear in the text box as well, and Jessie hears Mathias's voice echoing in her mind in a similar fashion.

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You whisper in your avatar's voice, but your character is the one to actually hear it. There are limitations...but you're all standing next to each other and looking directly at each other, so I'll leave that alone for now.

Wesley, on the other hand, attempts to summon and merge with his Eidolon. As the decision to summon his Eidolon concretely forms in his mind, he finds his body suddenly moving on its own. Rerim, his avatar, begins going through the necessary hand motions, and in a few seconds, Wesley finds himself in the body of his Eidolon: a large upright bipedal wolf.

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Casting and activating abilities in this game is as simple as actively deciding to use them. It's similar to pushing a button: as soon as you decide it, your avatar will automatically go through the motions and attempt to perform your desired action as best it can.

[sournote103]

Having tested his own capabilities, Wesley turned his attention to the HUD. He examined the various components, finding them to be for the most part the same as what he had seen in screen captures of the game. What caught his attention was a line in the chat log: "You, ah...don't think something is wrong here? You didn't have anything weird happen when you logged in? Screen goin' black, passing out, showing up in person in what's supposed to be a video game? Obviously upset and confused players on the docks?"
He sought out the player who had entered the message of interest and said, "Excuse me, but you said something about seemingly being physically transported into the game? Becausr I seem to have found myself having the same proble."

[Togath]

*upon hearing Wesley's question*;
"so it happened to you guys too..." mutters the orc.
"if we're stuck here, we're likely to need supplies of some sort.." he says, eying the npcs on the ship and trying to gauge how powerful they are.

*if they're level 1-2*
[whispers to all of the players]: "the npcs here might be useful.. I'd be interested to see what they drop.. and I doubt they'd have many defenses ready"

[Winds]

[say] "Well, I didn't get turned into a walking wolf, so I don't think it's quite the same..."

James notes the whisper about attacking NPCs with some concern.

[whisper to all] Let's not start any more trouble than we have to. I do not want to know what that twerp in the white room meant by his 'personal recommendation' that we not get ourselves killed. Besides, they're dock workers. I don't think they'd have anything worth that much trouble.

And I really don't want to end up losing my paladin abilities, either.

[Elricaltovilla]

Jessie flipped through her menus until she came across the particular script she was looking for.

[Invite]: Spork has invited you to join a party! The invite went out to everyone present, although she felt a little obtrusive since not everyone had introduced themselves yet.

[Say]: I don't think its such a good idea to go around killing townies. I don't know how many MMOs you've played, but even if the townsfolk are weak, the guards are usually 5 to 10 levels above the level cap. Why don't we go looking for a quest or something instead? I think there's a tent over there with a strange flag over it.

Jessie continued flipping through her options menus, hoping to find the one that would let her start recording her videos.

[Felyndiira]

A few minute's - feeling almost as if they were hours - passed before Mana was finally able to regain her composure. The girl looked about this new world: it was Elaria - no doubts about it, almost exactly the same as the introductory area from a few of the 'let's play' videos. Except...she was in it, and the images that were supposed to remain pixels on her screen were rendered as a magical reality before her eyes. She was in this world - for whatever it is supposed to mean; not in the real world, and without her status and without the support of her circle of friends around her.

It was just like when she was young, when they still called her Mana the cartoon girl - when she was still a social reject and a punching bag to the other children. It reminded her of a time that she had tried to put behind her, when she felt as if she was still alone in the world.

She was scared of those memories.

"I'm fine," she whispered, still shaken as she stood. Her body felt a bit thinner than usual - a bit weaker, and maybe quite a bit sexier than she did in real life. She looked down into the docks, and the image of her half-elf summoner, dressed in the beautiful "midnight dress set" that she had paid an additional sum for, stared back at her as if in curiosity. She smiled; the image smiled back in response. She tried laughing dryly at the seas - nothing happened. She tried thinking about laughing dryly at the seas, and the voice that came out was just an octave and a pitch too high to be her real voice. She studied her hand for a bit - her soft, noble-like hands that seemed to have never held a single tennis racket in her life. She tried tugging at her clothes - her shirt, her stockings, her boots, and finally running her finders through her hair. Then, satisfied that her sense of touch was at least real, she turned towards the...gnome that spoke to her, kneeling a bit so that her eyes were in parallel with its face.

[say] Princess: Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha. Ha.
[say] Princess: I can still talk, it seems.
[say] Princess: Are you guys real people? Um, can you hold still for a bit, Mrs. Gnome?

Her hands reached toward the gnome. The girl could imagine the rudeness she would incur if she were to try this with another person - even a close friend - but the image of a gnome was strange enough that she could easily distance him from the image of a real person. It made physical contact a bit easier - not between Mana and another boy, but between the imaginary princess and a fantasy thing. She tried at first to just touch the little gnome and to ascertain that he felt, at least, real. She tried to stretch its face a little as if a parent teasing her child. She didn't even understand why she did this, but somehow, it brought her a measure of comfort - to be here with another human instead of a world of digital quest givers and their ore-programmed speech.

Her eyes wandered back to the system menu and it's missing "exit" option. She wasn't given a keyboard or a reset button, from which she presumably could hit ALT-F4 or CTRL-ALT-DEL and exit the game in a different way. They had planned this, then; it's not just an upgraded feature of the game anymore, or a missing 'logout' button would have been the first thing they would have fixed. Did they just not care anymore? Was this something they are even allowed to do under the US legal system - to just, at their whim, turn the lives of their customers into a game for their own amusement? What would happen if she were to die, or if her house was hit by a thunderstorm and lost connection to the net?

Mana shook her head slightly, and the figure of Princess acted out her movements. She didn't even want to think of something like this.

[action] Princess is pointing to X2467 Y2618 Z140.
[say] Princess: I guess no one else can see my UI, sorry.
[say] Princess: Are the logout buttons missing for you guys too?
[say] Princess: I guess we're stuck. I really don't want to think about what my friends would think if they find out I'm stuck in my room for days.

The girl takes another look at the group. This was not like Perfect World or World of Warcraft; she would probably feel pain if something were to just hit her (lthough she was not nearly brave enough to test this theory), and who knows what would happen if something actually killed her? Even in TERA, she was the BAM solo sorceress; the dungeon soloing daredevil warrior - but the concept of 'challenge' didn't seem right for something so forced. Rather, they had the same goals, and seemed - save maybe one - to not be welcome to the idea of staying here.

She had wondered briefly what kind of players they were behind their avatars, but dismissed the thought as a triviality. Married men gaming in their spare time, teenagers, or hikikomori - either way, she would have to work with them to solve what had happened in this game. For her own protection, too - one of them, at least, was bound to be a veteran with extensive knowledge of these matters.

[say] Princess: If you'll have me, can I join your party as well? I'm mostly a casual player, so I still don't really know my way around things yet.
[say] Princess: I guess I'm afraid.
[say] Princess: What would happen if you were to die in this game?

[Togath]

*to spork*
[say]: "I suppose you have a point there.., I doubt it'd be worth finding out.. we don't even fully know what's going on here... If it's happened to you guys as well that is.."

as the invite pops up akiho tries to figure out how to acept it, "do I?, can I just?, wait?, do I just need to think about it to?, Ah, there it is" he/she mumbles as she figures out how to acept the invitation.

[party]: "are you people stuck in this weird first person setting as well?"
[party]: "did anyone else encounter a strange room before they ended up here? and a strange man talking about testing a new feature?"

[Proud Tortoise]

Piper steps back from the ship.

[say]"Spork? Is that a name?"

Piper stares nervously at the "party" option.

[say]"Um, there was a sort of white room... Am I in a coma?"

[Abombom]

…Aboard the USS Galactica, a climactic battle for the fate of the universe was to take place. Darth Lamer threatened to wipe out the entire galaxy cluster, potentially wiping out all civilization-nay, all life!- and only one man could stop it… Deadeye and his token legendary pokemon, Shootermon. Chun-Li and Cammy, dressed in skimpy cheerleader outfits, would cheer on our fateful protagonist. The two combatants would stare each other down, the camera zooming in on their intense faces and focusing on their opposed drives for glorious victory. One fought on the side of Dark and one fought on the side of Awesome. And, after the appropriate amount of witty remarks as well as a lengthy repertoire of insults were exchanged, combat would ensue. The good guy would always win, magical cookie-donuts would rain from the sky, and Eddy ‘Deadeye’ Hannegan would make out with the girls in the end as he tossed some memorable one-liners every which way. Fireworks would erupt and then: Fade to black…

At least, that’s how his dreams normally went. Well, the ones that he could control anyway.

Normally Eddy was capable of wrestling control of a dream if he was aware of being in one. By now, he should have had full control. What was this, though? This has to be a dream...

As he saw while he goofed around with the features, he could read text; something that happened extremely rarely throughout his mind’s adventures. His world was perceived from a first-person perspective instead of a more cinematic, third-person view; an equally infrequent event. He even saw little picture in picture displays and chat bubbles, when he normally couldn’t even visualize a single clear image from a TV. It wasn’t just that… what really bugged him was that everyone had a distinct face, from the dockworkers to the people around him. His common dreams would usually only ‘assign’ faces to important characters.

Everything looked so realistic. Yes, a few old dream-realizing tricks still had to be tested: turning the lights on and off, looking for furniture from the room he sleeps in everyday, etc. but… Where were the surreal qualities? Not the setting itself, but just the things to break internal verisimilitude… The Demon-Hippo casually smoking weed right smack in the middle of his living room. The woman in the dream who had been a man just twenty minutes earlier. His 4th-grade teacher standing in the middle of the Cyber-Blob army. Where were the logical fallacies? The errors in the prescribed reality? Maybe… maybe this is real?

But, these are the thoughts Eddy always had when he encountered a particularly interesting dream. And every time he gave in and accepted his environment to be his reality, he had been fooled. Not in recent years, though. Hah! I won’t fall for that trick again. The dream still has plenty of time to show itself as the illusion it really was. Just a moment ago, he was in his room, putting on headphones! That was probably fake, too. At the end of the day, here he was surrounded by orcs, elves, gnomes, and god-knows-what-else in Generic Fantasy World #5,493. There was no way this wasn’t a dream. Or some crazy acid trip, but Eddy wasn’t really into that sort of stuff.

Supposedly, everything around him represented was the MMO he had meant to play tonight. Are you a brave enough soul to answer Elaria's call and come to her aid? Here he was, Umom Ranight, elven cleric and worshipper of… Calistria? Eddy had troubling remembering his deity’s name, as he had swapped it out dozens of times during character creation. Supposedly, he had been… transported? Into this world? Supposedly, the people around him were fellow characters. Fellow… people? Was he supposed to think that he was stuck in an MMO? Two realities: the real world and the MMO-world. No… three realities! A dream making him think there’s a real-world which was fake, and then a fake MMO-reality within that dream’s real-world itself! A dream within a dream within a dream… Genius, really! Sometimes I friggin' surprise myself… But I’ve seen Inception too many times for you to get me this ****ing time!!! Got the extra-special deleted scenes Bluray and everything, you bastard. Eddy’s avatar knocked on his forehead a few times, as if he was talking to his mind.

Umom smiled to himself in Eddy’s place. Are these the trappings my brain has concocted for me tonight? The whole situation reminded him of his younger years’ battles with lucid dreams. He would have to look for the logic errors, the hints of the real world. As soon as he could pinpoint one, the whole façade would fall apart. He used to hate being stuck in these long sleeps, but the trick was to roll with it and just keep a watchful eye out for inconsistencies.

Just roll with it… Have fun till it all falls apart! If he couldn’t control this dream, he’d have to make the most of it. It was time to embrace whatever this was, and laugh in its face. He even decided to go along with the long-winded RP-backstory he had written as a means of infiltrating the RP-heavy guild known as [The Happy Fellowship], as a fun way of saying “Screw you!” to whatever crazy plot his mind had in store for him tonight. In short, Eddy was stuck in Elaria and loving every second of it.

*to all around him*[say] "Greetings from Ca-Ca…" Eddy took a moment to try to remember his deity’s name. “…Calistria!" I am Umom Ranight, a Cleric of Calistria! A lifetime of Shadow and Pain to all who would lead us astray, friends! I will join you all in your valiant quest to investigate our present circumstances!"

He accepted the party invite and paused for a moment. Umom’s voice was much deeper and sinister-sounding than Eddy’s, but he still came across as enthusiastic and at least a bit cheesy-sounding like he intended. It had hints of timelessness and subtle irony. Eddy kind of liked it. Well, that’s about as cool as you can make a lame-ass elf’s voice sound anyway.

*to party, responding to hurting dock workers*[party]"Perhaps we are Blessed with intelligence?" he asked, trying to refer to their player status. He hadn't checked yet to see what exactly qualified them as players and the workers as NPCs anyway. "What if these dock workers are fellow Blessed Ones as well? Murder them over a few trinkets?"

*to party, responding to Tormag’s question*[party] "Forsooth, there was a man who spoketh to me! He spoke of a strange new ‘game mode.’ Perhaps we are all meant to play cards together!”

[Winds]

James accepts the party invitation, checking the dock around them. Most of what the group is doing escapes his notice as something occurs to him.

[say] I have no intention of finding out what happens if we die. But, more importantly...the game has been out for a while, but shouldn't we have seen more players coming in to the dock? Or talking to that guy on the beach? Somethin' isn't right with this whole deal."

Mathias scratches at his neck, half expecting to feel the headphones there.

I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it. The things were the right size to be normal headphones. But obviously they weren't. I wouldn't have thought something like that was possible, but whoever did this doesn't seem to care about that...

James checks the in-game logs for any information on death. The blanked out options menu doesn't give him much hope of learning anything, but it's worth a try.

[Elricaltovilla]

[party]: Wow, I wasn't expecting quite so many of you to join up. But the more's the merrier I guess. I'm Spork, Gnome Magus and a recorder of fantastical worlds. I was planning on making a guide to Elaria, so I hope you all don't mind being famous all over the internets once I figure out how to get my recorder working! Now, what do you say we go check out the town and meet some NPCs?

Jessie doesn't even wait for a response before rushing off to find someone with an icon over their heads.

[Felyndiira]

Her eyes, now having studied the new world around her, were habitually drawn toward the flashing window at the bottom-right of her field of vision. It seemed like a simple party invite dialog - a few simple words written within an elegant frame - when compared to most of the games that she had played in the past. Most notably, the 'party name' textbox seemed to be missing...that, or it's there, and the gnome 'Stork' simply did not see a reason to name the party. Mana puzzled at the screen for a moment, not certain what she wanted to do. Then, deciding that physical action was necessary, she reached for the 'yes' button and watched as the world changed once more.

Stork. Tormag. Umom Raknight. Mathias. Those seemed to be the names of the other 'players' that joined; their names, in beautiful gothic print, was written before a series of HP bars on the left side of her vision. Her own 'status' is there, too - she was too distraught to notice it at first, but the word 'Princess' was engraved very clearly above a flaring red bar with the text reading '10/10'. For an MMO, this seemed a bit too low to be a proper HP value, but there's no time to worry about that now; there are other things that she needed to figure out before she could proceed in this world. For example, the party chat that the half-orc 'Tormag' had just used, or how to whisper to another player.

[Party] Princess: <Please Insert Text Here>
[Whisper] Princess: <Who Would You Like to Whisper To?>

The two prompts briefly flashed across her screen; the girl yelped almost instinctively, surprised at what had just happened. Her avatar responded in kind; the 'party chat' window had already long since disappeared, although the 'whisper' window was still there. Perhaps she has to think of a player?

[say] Princess: Ya-wha?

Perhaps she needed to think about a person first before it would work? Her eyes scanned through the party list on her left, stopping briefly at the name 'Stork'. Instantly, the window seems to have changed.

[Whisper to Spork] Princess: <Please Insert Text Here>

She quickly thought of a few words, and a voice seemed to ring through her head. Somehow, she knew that the message was successfully delivered. "So, I guess it's like the machine is scanning my thoughts," Mana mused to herself; then, with a bit more confidence, she tried interacting with the other players more directly, with greater haste than before.

[Whisper to Spork] Princess: Can you hear this?

[party] Princess: I don't know if I can call it a first person setting. It feels...almost as if we are our characters, but not quite the same.

[Whisper to Tormag] Princess: I do remember the voice. Selected for a special game mode, not many people participating, and trying something a bit different, right?
[Whisper to Tormag] Princess: Ah!
[Whisper to Tormag] Princess: The voice also said that the game is more dangerous. Try not to die. What will happen if we die?
[Whisper to Tormag] Princess: Will something happen to us in real life?

...

[party] Princess: That's why the voice said it's dangerous, isn't it? If we die, something will happen to us in the real world.
[party] Princess: Oh god, I hope I'm wrong...

...

[party] Princess: If that's the case, shouldn't we wait for someone in real life to help us, rather than rushing off to danger like that?

[Elricaltovilla]

When Princess's Whisper echoed in Jessie's head, the health bar with her name flashed briefly in the corner of Jessie's eye.

[whisper] Spork: I hear you just fine. I'm glad you decided to join me. I promise we'll get out of this ok, but we have to stick together. Why don't you tell me about yourself and your character to start?

[Felyndiira]

It would not be a stretch to say that Mana was, at best, frightened about this whole thing. The prospect of dying in-game, and the 'dangerous' consequences in real life that she was suddenly reminded of, was not at all comforting to her. Imagine, if you will, a man who found himself bound to a thin cord between two towers of frightening height. His arms were tied together and dangled on this apparatus with a simple hook so that he could not escape, and as the wind sways the man back and forth, it feels as if the rope will break at any second. Or, perhaps the hook will simply give away to a particularly strong wind, leaving the man with no choice but to fall to an almost certain doom. The man, after barely conquering his fears, looks down at the infinite stretches of space between him and solid ground. The roads appeared as small lines no wider than his left feet, and the cars were like insects as they scurry below him. Each and everyone one of these things was certain death for the man; as another wind blows past, the man's body swaggers across the rope; the hook moved until it tip was a few millimeters away from breaking free, and the man's futile struggles made a risky situation seem even more futile before his eyes.

The man was a lawyer; well-protected, young, and never once having considered the possibility of his own death. What would he have thought about this whole situation? Would he be able to think at all? This situation felt eerily similar to such a scenario; the possibility of trapping someone within an imagined world already stretched beyond the law, so her safety cannot rely upon legal persecution of the creators. A man with nothing is truly a fearsome beast, so what of the game masters of Elaria? If they wanted to, could they have just flushed out her life with the push of a button, drinking martinis and sitting coldly - non-chalently at their transgression against life - while marveling the fruits of their work?

"Was it karma, for all the people I angered in other games?" she asked herself; privately, making sure that no one else could hear her. For a moment, 'Princess' seemed to show a bit of remorse for some actions unnamed. She was supposed to be cheerful and happy here, but her frown was noticable to anyone who would care to observe her. Her shivering was perhaps a simulation of . Finally, she sat down, stood, and hopped a few times in the air; perhaps a trick for Mana to push her mental baggage aside and communicate with this stranger that seemed so much stronger than she is.

[Whisper to Spork] Princess: Do you know of a way out?
[Whisper to Spork] Princess: I think I made a summoner. I was too focused on reserving this name that I didn't even look at which class I picked.
[Whisper to Spork] Princess: I've played a few games before this, but only casually. I'm not a raider or anything.
[Whisper to Spork] Princess: I just want to get out of here so I could see my friends again.

...

[Whisper to Spork] Princess: Sorry.
[Whisper to Spork] Princess: God, I'm really pathetic, aren't I? I'm really sorry you had to see this kind of side of me.
[Whisper to Spork] Princess: I'm scared, though...I don't want to die...
[Whisper to Spork] Princess: Do you think we could escape if we actually tried playing the game?

[Abombom]

Hearing the player marked 'Mathias' talk about 'no more players' on the beach, Eddy again wondered why exactly everyone assumed those dock workers weren't fellow players. He had done some basic character optimization and simple online searches about characters prior to making Umom, but he didn't know much about the very basics of the game. He had figured that he would breeze through the tutorial like he did in every game he played or just figure it out. Instead... he was just dropped into the world. No tutorial or 'hint' boxes in sight. Awesome. No carebear spell-everything-out-for-you crap. This is the coolest tutorial ever. I bet when I actually play Elaria when I wake up it won't be half-way as cool as this. Time to check the manual. Old-school style.

Spoiler

Show

Umom skims through the manual to find out if the game differentiates at all between NPCs and PCs and what the quickest way to tell would be. He also tries to analyze the differences between the character information shown when looking at the members in his party and one of the supposed NPCs. If he can't initially see anything character information about the NPCs because they are too far away, he stares intently. (possible perception check?)

Umom also checks to see if the manual mentions whether or not NPCs can even be killed in the first place.

Seeing Spork, the recorder of fantastical worlds, seem distracted as she began to wander off towards the dock, he wondered why the eager player almost seemed to stop for a moment as if she was having a conversation with someone.

Spoiler

Show

Umom also focuses on Spork. (Possible perception check to overhear [whisper]?)