"Join the Valorian Saga, the most immersive RPG experience that has ever existed."

Y'know, I might be a tad biased here, but the devs sure weren't lying. I mean, I kinda wish they were, but yeah, feelin' pretty immersed seeing as we can't actually leave the game...

It started out pretty normally as far as game launches are concerned. A brand new VRMMO with cutting-edge graphics, a neural link that promised full sensation, and even an adaptive AI that would supposedly learn as the game was played. I might've held off on getting it but aside from my friends going nuts over the thing, the people in the open beta were near weeping at how awesome it was, even the guys who usually populated YouTube and Twitch with unending cynicism and rancor. I mean, most professional reviews couldn't be trusted due to how these things get monetized, but when even the grognards are raving... you listen.

I still debated the purchase for several reasons, the chief one being the cost. With brand new AI came a brand new VR rig, and a neuralink system that was adapted over from the ones that were being developed for things like artificial limbs or to use computers without using your hands. With a far more lucrative and wider market in general gamers, it was only natural to adapt it to rake in more money...

"YO, Luke!"

I nearly jumped out of my seat. Rob, who worked over in sales, had the clear look of a man who'd been trying to get my attention for some time, "Sorry, man, I was deep in it. What do you need?"

Rob shook his head, "Uh... it's like five-thirty. You planning on going home? Pre-Downloads should be opening up soon."

"Oh crap. Totally spaced there for a minute. Yeah, I'll be along in a minute. Just finishing up the ledgers."

Working as an accountant isn't exactly the most rock n' roll job out there, but it paid enough to keep me in games, which was more the point of it. I know plenty of teachers had told me to 'follow my dreams', but I mean, starving gamer isn't really that appealing in the real world. An MBA did secure a degree of discretionary budget, however, and it did guarantee me weekends off for the most part. This particular weekend I'd requested Friday off, giving me a four-day weekend with Memorial Day on Monday. I dropped my ledgers, saved everything, and made sure I was as caught up as possible, then ran to catch up with Rob, who was busy chatting up a barista on his way out, "All good man. I'll just grab a coffee."

Rob decided that impressing his barista was important and picked up my coffee for me, as well as leaving a tip that was a little too good, and we rolled out. While most of the world didn't know much about the game, our phones were abuzz with Valorian Saga news. The game had fully sold out, even selling out of the digital codes because the devs had not quite prepared themselves for what would happen when game footage of a guy firing a bow from gryphon-back at a dragon in flight hit the web. Then there were the people going over, amongst other things, that the game had... smells? A lot of of YouTubers were talking at length of how detailed things like ray tracing were, sights, sounds, just a whole range of things.

My main worry was more the immediate server press. Figuring that this would either be the most epic game ever produced, or the Hindenberg of video games, I'd gone with the Limited Edition. Rob chuckled next to me as we were walking out of the office, "Still can't believe they hooked you on that. You know better. How many times have you told me about the dangers of going all-in on a pre-order for a new game?"

I sighed, and shared in the chuckle, "I know, I know, I... did you see what was in that bundle, though? I don't care if I gotta eat ramen for a month, that set is pretty awesome. A full cloth map of Equess, the journals with the race, class, and culture guides? Plus a neat looking starter outfit, and a purple dragon pet that flies along with you, and even perches on your shoulder, to say nothing of the dragonrider figurine."

Rob and I had graduated college together, and post-college, gotten a place together to make things a bit easier on us starting out, so we got the entire car ride home to nerd out about the game. The devs had set it up so that we could get the game downloaded and ready to go for when the launch kicked off at midnight, so we were heading pretty much straight home to get that started up, with a quick stop to grab some dinner on the way. When we pulled up to the drive-thru, the operator's usual tone switched almost immediately, "Oh hey, Luke. You guys on your way home?"

"Okay, yeah, we eat out too much, " Rob's tone was deeply sardonic.

I snorted a little, "Hey Kimberly. Yeah, we're just stopping off for dinner real quick. Our usual order, please."

The order was already popping up on screen, and I did hang my head for a moment, cause yeah, when you know the drive-thru lady by name, and she knows you by order and names... you're there too often. Upside, though, was she always got our order right, so there was a trade-off, and she was a casual gamer as well, "So I take you guys are no-lifing it this weekend?"

"Yeah, it's the big launch weekend. You gonna be playing?," Rob put in.

Kimberly quickly checked our order, gave us total and had us drive around, handing us out our food as she responded, "Oh yeah. Mom and Dad got me the set for my birthday, though Dad thinks it's a waste of money. I'll be getting off after the rush dies down. Do you guys have your screennames worked out?"

She looked like the last person who would be a gamer by stereotype. She'd been a cheerleader in high school, as well as either homecoming queen or prom queen... maybe both? In any event, she'd gotten hooked on games in college... but she'd gone for an art major, and... yeah... that wasn't really paying the bills yet, "Not quite yet, but here-"

I fished out my phone, and held up a QR code for our Discord Group for the game, Dragon's Den, as named by a couple of junior high kids who thought it totally sounded cool, then kept it as a cheesy reminder of where we started out. She clipped the code for the invite, we collected our food, said our goodbyes and got on home. We'd opted to rent out a finished basement apartment. It wasn't the greatest, but it gave us each our own room, and the elderly couple upstairs were nice. Also, the rent wasn't too bad since they had to stay under a certain point to keep their SSI.

We used our regular entrance around the side of the house, and got to work, getting the downloads started, and having dinner. Next up, making sure I had a check-in time. I got out my phone and called my sister, "Hey Denise. Just checking in to make sure you know to call me in the morning, and if I don't answer, swing by and kick me. You got the key? Great. Talk to you in the morning. Love you, too."

Next on the plate was checking with the rest of our little group on Discord. Seemed like everyone was already moving on things, so I took some time to read up on the race and class guides I'd gotten while we all played around in voice chat and went through character options in the online character generator demo, "Rob, what're you looking at rolling?"

"Oh, you know I'm heading after that sweet, sweet Gladiator glory!"

Rob was pretty basic in games, but that's not necessarily bad. He pretty much always went tank, which also made him a lot better at running tank even in new games. Rob was really the only one I'd met face-to-face, and the rest of us had come together through various online stuff, not least of which was Minecraft servers, so we mostly knew each other by our gamertags. Temur wanted after the higher casting jobs but wasn't sure which one, we had our two crafters, Daeva and Arkadi, and pretty much every else got too back and forth to follow. Eventually, our newest member, Kimbarian joined, and she was far more interested in what race she would play, looking at elf primarily.

Eventually, the time came, and we all got to our places, setting up a meeting place at the Broken Wheel, a named Tavern in the starting city of Farrelston. It was useless to immediately partner-up since we'd all be doing tutorial right out of the gate. I laid down in my bed, made sure everyone's rigs were plugged in, and activated the links. At first the screen was blank, but steadily light emerged over the logo for Century Interactive, the studio making the game, a heavily stylized hourglass with ancient looking clockwork behind and name emblazoned across, lit as though by torch light form underneath. Then I got the usual assortment of engine logos, before the cinematic trailer began. It was astounding, really, showing a quick taste of the adventures to come.

It started out with me on horseback riding into the grand city of Farrelston as dawn broke in the distance, purple dragons rampant on a field of white and gold for the banners of Valoria, the starting kingdom in the world of Equess. I could feel the wind, and see the landscape spanning out around me, even feeling the shift of the horse beneath me as it moved. I'd seen the trailer before online, of course, and was initially tempted to skip it, but I mean, come on. This was what we all dreamed of as gamers. The scene shifted to me walking into a guildhall, and I could smell food, spices, and ale, feel the stones beneath my feet as the folks bandied about discussing various news of the day.

Again, the scene shifted as I now walked into a shaded forest, on the hunt for a group of goblins, and I felt the humidity in the air, the slight droplets of drizzle, "Holy crap!"

Eventually, it came to the title screen itself, and through the link, I selected to start, checked off the Terms & Conditios, and as agreed by the group, I chose the Brigandine server. The character creator was far different than what I'd seen online, and it showed as I stepped in front of a magical mirror, my footsteps echoing. The room around it was done up like a cathedral, with a solid shaft of light touching down on the mirror, surrounded in stained glass windows and high ceilings. A disembodied voice called out from above,

"Welcome to Equess, adventurer. Stand before the mirror."

I did as instructed, though a part of me kind of wanted to wait it out and see if there was any dialogue I would otherwise miss, but I didn't want to chance holding up my friends, "Eh, I can do that on the next playthrough."

As I approached the mirror, it appeared as though I was still in shadow, but I knew that part of the process was starting out with a facial scan to give the game a baseline to work with. Standardly in these games, I chose a look as unique as possible, but this felt different, and eschewing that, I went for a more heroic version of myself: Human, five-foot-ten became an even six-foot, light brown hair that was decently longer than my own, blue eyes, combination of scruff and goatee, medium build with admittedly a much nicer physique than my own... and not quite so pasty white as me. As I finished up my appearance in the usual starting attire game for human males, the voice spoke once again,

"And now adventurer, on what path do you begin your journey?"

At first, it showed my as a warrior, holding shield and sword, which was just the default starting point of jobs. The interface was pretty cool, letting me use the link to navigate by swiping left and right, and it operated as its own tutorial in a way for basic system mechanics. Now... starting job... truthfully, they all sounded decent. Warrior could go in the direction of a tank or DPS build depending on how you wanted to play it. Acolyte covered the beginning support magics, and Arcanist started you down the path of DPS magic. Vagabonds were stealth/DPS, but in the end I picked Hunter, a ranged DPS job that could use pets and snares, "I am a Hunter."

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"Stand forth and sign your name, then speak it aloud, Hunter" The voice said, light illuminating a nearby pedestal.

I stepped forward, and looked on a ledger. I signed my character name, Lugh, "My name is Lugh."

The sound of opening doors echoed behind me as the cathedral doors opened, and I caught my first sights and smells of the world, "Welcome Lugh to the world of Equess, and the kingdom of Valoria! Go forth and begin your journey!"

I walked down the aisle of the cathedral and stepped into the light of my new world for the first time. The light of day was incredibly bright as I stepped forward, and looked out into a massive square. The cathedral spanned up high behind, as grand as any pictured I'd ever seen of Notre Dame. The smells of the city around me greeted me, the good and the bad, and I could do nothing but stand there and marvel. The buildings of the city were covered in blue tiles, a combination of timber and stone walls. For most, they were shuttered without glass, while the fancier buildings had panes of it. Smoke wafted up from chimneys, and a warm breeze hung in the air.

There was almost too much sensory input for me, just as if I was stepping out of a darkened basement for the first time in forever. It took time to adjust as I stood there at the top of the cathedral stairs, but finally, as I got my bearings, and young man wearing what I recognized as the outfit used by the heralds of the game came up to me, a golden glow limming him to mark him as a quest NPC, "Master Lugh! Welcome to Farrelston! My name is Pemby, and I can show you around."

A small window with the initial quest popped up: "Taking In The Sights"

"Alright, Pembry, lead the way," I said, falling into step behind him as he turned.

In most games, this sort of guide about town was pretty much bog standard and so was this, to an extent, but the ability to actually feel the world around me changed the entire feeling of everything. The city was massive, and having a guide would be necessary if I wanted to not get myself lost. He began where we stood, "Obviously, the building you've just stepped from is the Cathedral of Brigid, matron goddess of Valoria, built upon the founding of Farrelston some three centuries past..."

Pembry led the way, pointing out the various buildings such as the adventurer's guild, where we stopped off to get me registered by signing in at the desk, and I received a small booklet for my inventory. The menu system for the game wasn't like the ones I'd seen in so many other games. Instead of some general menu screen, it was a character journal that players could pull from a pouch on our belts. The first page was the character screen, the words and numbers done in a simple but well-defined calligraphy. It had all the vital statistics, which I checked real quick.

Eight attributes lined up vertically along the left side page, and they were pretty self-explanatory. Strength, Agility, Vigor, Intellect, Will, Spirit, Speech, and Wits. My two Primary stats were Agility and Wits, befitting a job that focused on hunting, firing a bow, and tracking, since Wits was a contributory attribute to to most of the survival skills. Agility would add to my skill and damage with archery, as well as combine with Wits to give me my baseline Reaction stat. The two stats sat at five points each, though I had no way of knowing how high they could go.

Strength and Vigor were secondary attributes, with a rating of four to start. Spirit and Will tertiary at three points, leaving my dump stats as Intellect and Speech... hm, I should probably work on those two, since they could effect a lot of lore skills and what price I got from merchants and vendors, at least get them up even with the tertiary scores. Things for later.

The right side of the book held my inventory screen. It was kind of like the ones from the old Diablo games, where it showed an actual backpack with slots, and a silhouette of a character with boxes for equippable items on it. The backpack was arranged with slots, most internal with a few outside slots. Different items had different slot sizes and shapes. For now, I had just my starting gear for Hunter: A simple outfit, a leather surcoat for armor that trailed down to about my knee, along with a bow and arrows slung over my shoulder crossways, a hunting knife, and a hatchet on the belt alongside a waterskin. In my backpack, there were a few days worth of rations, flint and steel, and some hemp rope. Playing around with the interface showed me that I could skip the screen and just put things directly into my belt or backpack if I wanted to, and I noted my encumbrance limit.

The next page had my job information, currently just Hunter, and a few abilities for using my weapons, tracking, and basic stealth. Just the immediate necessities for being a Hunter. The rest would pick up as I used my abilities, so I could check in on those later as I got some experience under me. Opposite of the journal's spine were index markers for various sections, such as craft jobs and skills, skill trees, and much more, easily flipped to in the journal, with the final section being devoted to settings. I could over everything else later, but for now, I wanted to focus on being in the moment.

I got taken past some shops, the auction house, and finally, to The Broken Wheel, the tavern where I would finally be able to start on my own. My guide explained each of the structure to me as we walked along, and after coming up to the door of the tavern with me Pembry said his farewells, and I got my quest rewards: A small amount of skill xp in Farrelston Lore, a slight rise in my local reputation, and a writ for a free night's stay at the tavern, along with a flyer recruiting for the local militia. I stowed my gear, checked my pouch to see I had fifteen gold, and stepped into the tavern. It was a massive press of people all around, most starting players all shouting to form groups, *sigh* "I really should've picked a different spot. Oh well."

Finding Rob was going to be an issue. It was difficult to see anyone, but I had an old solution. Holding my hands up over my head, I clapped loudly twice. For anyone else it wouldn't register, but my mom had done that exact clap all growing up, and I'd gotten used to using it when I needed to summon Rob. I wasn't... precisely sure it was him 'til a massive half-orc stepped from the mob and crushed me in a bear hug, "Grats, man! We're here! Come on, the guys are waiting upstairs."

I turned in my writ for a free night, then trailed along with Rob, who was only too happy to talk about things, "Oh, name's Khargol, by the way. And here's the gang!"

Knowing my friends pretty well, they were easy to pick out. Temur had settled himself on a Dracon Arcanist, a half-dragon race, his scales an iridescent blue. Daeva was quite clearly going to be playing up the runway model turned smith role, while Arkadi was playing Sylvain, a sort of half-fey, half-plant hybrid that didn't really have a gender to speak of. Kim had chosen elf like she'd wanted, and was apparently trying to test if she could actually run the tavern out of food, "Hey guys! So what's everyone's name? I went with Lugh."

Temur stuck with Temur as standard. Daeva went with Chrysta, and Kim went with Shelara. For a while, we were all just going back and forth about our experience so far, and how amazing the world was. Once I'd let the kittens run some nerding out of their systems, I rapped my mug on the table, "Alright, so everyone stuck with their initial jobs, right?"

Warrior went with Khargol, Temur the Arcanist, Arkadi the Acolyte, Lugh the Hunter, and Shelera the Vagabond. We'd ended up just covering our bases for starting jobs, figuring we could always change up later once the option opened up after the usual run-through of the starting quests. Khargol was amped to get started, "Alright, team, let's get to the guild! I wanna go fight some stuff!"

We made our way out of the tavern, and passed through the square where plenty of people were already calling out stuff, looking for group to adventure with, or trying to already hawk wares that they likely didn't have yet, but they're gamers. We got into the guildhall, and Khargol made a beeline for the quest board, perusing it and grabbing a stack of stuff to come back with, "'K gang, we've got a bunch of stuff. There's 'run around the city' quests, they seem to have small bits of gold, then once we run through all of those, I figure we get into the fun stuff."

The city quests were just that, the simple quests that ran you about town, got you familiar with the city, and got us used to everything. Admittedly, we were kind of rushing a bit, but it was launch day, we wanted to get as much in as we could together. Khargol and I would end up getting way ahead of the others over the weekend, so this would be our best chance to work as a team for a while. We familiarized ourselves with the various tabs, got some more coin, and continued on until we started getting hungry and tired. Most of the group went back to the tavern, but I'd seen a park I wanted to check out, and took the occasion to break out some water and rations, resting on a bench by a small pond with swans swimming in it. It felt amazing, and eventually, I noticed all the newly minted adventurers in town heading off to rest, tiring out. I hated to miss anything, but I was starting to feel drowsy, so I went back to the tavern for my room. In my room, the footlocker at the end of the tavern bed held my extra gear for the limited edition, and I tried on my new outfit. I liked the look, but better was watching the little dragon's egg hatch, and a small dragon, no larger than a kitten uncurled itself, and I heard the voice from the cathedral speak, "And what is your companion's name?"

"Her name is Yndress."

The little dragon uncurled itself, little purple scales rippling. and as I reached out a hand, she sniffed, stretching tiny wings, and then scrambling up my arm to perch herself on my shoulder and let out the tiniest of roars from her 'throne'. It was amazing, I could feel her claws on my arm as she climbed. After spending some time petting her, I turned in for the night and drifted off. Morning is when it all went wrong.

I came out to mass hysteria. The tavern common room was splite between players all screaming back and forth at once, flipping furiously through their journals, and NPCs just trundling about doing their regular routines about the tavern like nothing had happened.

"LUKE!"

Rob was generally good about staying in-character, so hearing my actual name snapped me around as he looked at me concernedly, "Can you log out?"

I popped up my menu, and went through settings. The logout button was there, but it was greyed out. Checking another part, I looked for the emergency cut-off, the rig's version of Alt+F4, and again, greyed out. Rob was going on about stuff, but I was ignoring it, combing through the menus for anything I could think of. GM Ticket, greyed out. In fact, everything that changed settings weren't working, it wasn't just the parts related to logging out, "Rob, the others around?"

He was still going on, and I had to snap my fingers in front of his face to get his attention, "Dude, where's everyone else?!"

Rob nodded somewhat stupidly, and grabbed me along with him to a backroom the tavern rented out for players, where the rest of the group was going into hysterics, with Kim leading the charge, "This sucks! I've got class and work!"

Temur quirked an eyebrow, "Seriously?! That's your concern right now?! What happens when we have to go to the bathroom out there?"

It was devolving rapidly. I slammed the door of the backroom to get everyone's attention, "Everyone! Okay, look, there's some sort of bug, I get it, and we've all got stuff here. Now, let's just chill out for a minute. Is there anyone here who's living alone? Me and Rob are together, but my sister should come at some point to get us."

Everyone shook their heads, "Okay, then it's just a delay, alright? Something like this is going to make news, and the GMs may have just suspended logout or something to deal with it, okay? Everyone stay here while I go see if I can find out more, but we'd best party up."

Establishing a party gave us location on one another, and with at least some sort of plan, they were calming down, "Rob, you're with me. Everyone else, stay here."

We got free of the now completely packed out tavern, and I grabbed Rob to motion him down an unoccupied side street, "We need to talk."

"Yeah, dude. If they were gonna log us out, they'd have done it while we were all down for the night, or at least made some sort of server announcement even if they weren't," Rob replied.

I closed my eyes. I needed to think, "Okay, let's work it through. We know that all the settings are gone, and... yeah, the real-world clock is gone, too. Something bigger is wrong here... respawn's at the cathedral right? Someone must've been dumb enough to die by now."

We got back to the cathedral and went inside by the dais where those respawning would appear. It was empty except for a group of freaked out players who were going into full-blown panic, "HEY! You guys waiting on people to come back?"

An elven woman nodded, "My brother Tom. He should've already respawned by now. We tried to run that bandit encounter, and he went right after the leader."

The bandit quest had been in the stack we grabbed but hadn't gotten to it, "Okay, anyone else?"

Heads nodded all around. I spared a look to my friend, and he was faltering, so I regarded the others, "Okay, looks like we have... about eight people here? Everyone party up, and come with me. We've got a backroom at the tavern. We can wait there."

Rob was drifting. Oh, hell. This wasn't shaping up well, and the view was getting more dire as we went along. No logging out, the GMs weren't forcibly ejecting folks or shutting off the servers, no access to anything outside the game, and now, no respawn. There weren't any answers, just more problems. The server was going into a complete panic, complete with anime references back and forth. The newly minted party followed us back to the tavern, and as I closed the door, Kim came up, "Did you figure out what's happening?"

"Yeah. It's not good."

I motioned her to sit, and everyone else took seats around the room, looking to me, "I'm pretty sure we're trapped here, at least for the time being. I don't know what's going on with respawning, but neither does anyone else, so for now, we assume that they're more or less okay, but we can't risk dying just to test it. We don't have anyway right now to contact anyone, and the server's flipping out. For those of you who are new, I'm Lugh, and the half-orc beside me is my friend Khargol, and we're gonna help keep everyone safe."