NaNo 2012 -Split 1

I was trembling with excitement.  The world's first virtual reality game, the game that had been highly anticipated in pretty much... well, everywhere, was finally here. Vernia, a fantasy, massive multiplayer online role-playing game had finally arrived, and with it, the pioneer of the future of gaming. What made it so special? Well, at its time of release, it was the FIRST, and yes, I will emphasise that again, FIRST virtual reality game ever.

It wasn't exactly cool, with the huge helmet-thing that you were suppose to wear, but I suppose when considering that one didn't have to hook up your brain to a neural interface with like, a gazillion wires, life support systems and emergency safety equipment while still being safe for public use, I suppose it was state-of-the-art at its time.

After spending hours in a queue and wasting a good one-hundred and eighty bucks on everything for the game, it was safe to say I was a little excited. In the heat of the late afternoon I had rushed home, large box in tow, eager to try out the new game. I was sweating, trembling and bursting with excitement in readying myself for what would be a first glimpse of a revolution in gaming as I knew it then.

There was a brief struggle to set up everything (and find a place to stow the headset), but when I was finally done, all that was left to do was to grab a shower and a cold drink, before settling down to the game.

Transitioning from virtual reality wasn't quite has fabulous as they had made it out in the books. My first experience upon turning on the headset was the feeling that my head was about to explode, before everything disappeared around me, and soon I was blind; falling, falling and falling through infinite darkness. Only for a moment though, because before I knew it, I was on the ground, on something that felt like grass. I could feel, smell and hear everything, it was so real! The ground beneath my feet, the smell of a pine forest, the heat of the sun, everything!

However, as much as I tried, I couldn't quite look around, and instead, I was forced to look at this strange, rectangular stone archway kind of thing in front me. I stared at it for a bit, perplexed, before the whole arrangement lit up in front of me, everything that I could see within the frame of the arch slowly disintegrating, distorting, before a shimmering portal appeared before me.

“Select your character.” flashed in the swirling mist of the portal in front of me, opening up a menu of sorts that contained a list of character design options available With a gesture of my hand and a thought, I scrolled through a list of races first, looking over all the generic ones, before one called ‘Dragon’ caught my attention. Picking that up as something interesting, I selected it with a gesture of a thought. Filling up the rest of the options, I was presented with a character selection and creation screen, to which I opted to take a preset after the grey blob in the ‘Create your own character’ section was nearly impossible to use.

Browsing through the millions of available character presets, I looked around, taking note of the millions of pre-made designs for a dragon. The selection was huge, and skimming over just one section of dragons coloured light grey took me what seemed like ages. I don’t quite know how long I was scrolling for, but as time grew by, I got tired of searching, and instead narrowed my search to something green. Even then, there was a whole spectrum of complex-looking green dragons, with designs ranging from feathers to fur to ones having pointy spines jutting out of every angle possible. It all looked very pretty and flashy, but none of it caught my attention in particular, and with an exasperated sigh, I thought, Christ, give me something simple already. The game responded to my thoughts, and immediately, the whole range was shortened down to a few hundred designs, most of them being much, much simpler, as one would come to expect of dragons done in older times.

Eventually, I settled upon a dark, emerald-green one with white highlights and an underbelly of similar colour. It was a simple, yet regal looking one, with nothing more than a pair of straight horns and a row of curved spines travelling down its back and ending at the end of its tail. Fierce, lime-green eyes gave it a fierce, distant look as well, which I thought to be rather representitive of myself as a gamer, and with another simple thought, I selected it.

In an instant, the image of the dragon appeared on the opposite end of the portal, cocking an inquisitive head at me. I named him Gzar, out of a whim, and with that, the game gave me a final confirmation (along with a few warnings about how its appearance couldn’t be changed after). Carelessly, I dismissed it, and after a blink, I found myself staring at... well, myself, rapidly fading away as the portal began to close. In a moment’s panic, I tried to reach over for it, but ended up stumbling over my tail and falling into a messy heap of scales and limbs.

From the grass a looked up, watching as my real self disappeared with the portal, leaving me sitting there in the grassy field, confused and disorientated. It was overwhelming, put simply, to suddenly have been transferred into another body. Granted, it was called virtual reality for a reason, but I was absolutely amazed at how real it felt. The twitch of my tail, the feeling of the sun beating down on my wings, everything! It felt like I had been a dragon my entire life, yet, I clearly knew it wasn’t true.

Pushing myself up with my forepaws, a too a deep breath, inhaling the now-stronger scent of the pine forest, along with the smell of all the woodland creatures in it. I could hear and see with a stunning clarity that far surpassed anything I had seen in real life, which I assume were credit to having taken on a dragon for a character to play.

As I sat there in the grass, simply looking myself over and trying just about everything that I could do with this character, I hardly paid mind to the knight that was coming up alongside behind me, the sound of his metal boots clacking around as he came closer not catching my attention, despite my heightened sense of hearing. It was only after he cleared his throat a few times and stamped on my tail (which hurt a lot, might I add) that I actually turned to face him, to which he prompted straightened himself up and loudly proclaimed, “Hark, ye foul best, I am Salenthor the Greater, and I have come for your head!”

I growled in response, backing off defensively as he waved his sword at me threateningly. “And why should I fear you...?” I asked cynically, cocking my head in a manner that I had first seen my persona do in the character selection screen.

“Because,” he said as-a-matter-of-factly, “I’m level nine.”

“Pfft.” I scoffed, “How do you know?”

“Duh, check your HUD, man.”

I hadn’t realised that I didn’t have one at all all this time. Staring at him a little dumbstruck, I quickly attempted to will an HUD to appear, to some degree of success, and managed to bring up the basic overlay. I simple, neat, yet surprisingly futuristic HUD appeared into my vision, which began feeding me data on my own health, status and condition, along with my name and level. I quickly looked over to the knight, finding him indeed being labelled, “Salenthor the Greater, level 9” in the form of text hovering over him. I looked up at my own and found “Gzar, level 1”, to which Salenthor cracked his knuckles at my revelation, earning a small ‘eep’ from me as I tuned tail and attempted to flee. Salenthor was far more agile than he looked though, and with a yank, pulled me back onto the ground, raising sword over me in preparation of dealing the killing blow.

In that instant, the artificially-programmed instincts implanted into my persona took over me, raising a forepaw to deflect a blow that would’ve ended me. I got up and swung my other paw at Salenthor in the process, managing to rake large gashes across his armour. Still, it only served to make a dent in the protective husk of his armour, and otherwise, I still hadn’t done anything yet. I cursed at the free-roaming, player versus player setting of this game, again rolling out of the way of another sword blow. I myself was slightly larger than Salenthor himself, but even so, I stood no chance against someone more experienced than myself.

In an act of desperation, I reared my head back and spew a huge torrent of acid at Salenthor, something that I didn’t know I could do, causing him to yelp as he was engulfed by the blast. It must’ve taken almost everything out of me, or something like that, as the moment I stopped, I felt weak, and immediately, I crumpled to the floor, panting. Salenthor, now peeling off the melted husk of his armour, emerged from the ground, looking thoroughly pissed. A quick HUD check confirmed that he was still alive and well, and for me, I was running out of both hit points and stamina.

“Found the breath attacks, I see.” Salenthor snorted, “Pity that only high level dragons can use it without it having crippling drawbacks.”

I growled under my breath, hissing as I tried to stumble back upright, my paws refusing me the ability to get back up.

“Would have made for a good fight, or at least hurt me, if you could’ve used that longer.” Salenthor raised his half melted sword above himself and poised, readying himself for the killing blow, which would be turned to mark my first death in this game. I personally refused to allow for this to happen, and with all I could muster, I spat one last glob of acid at him, just as the sword began to come down upon my neck. The glob of acid hit him squarely in the face, causing him to drop his sword (which clattered over my neck scutes uselessly) and reel backwards, screaming as he put his hands to his face to try to dissipitate the acid in vain.

Invigorated by this sudden turn of events, I found myself the strength to pull myself back up, and immediately tore into his unarmoured form in a sort of self-righteous fury. I roared and clawed at him, clawed and clawed until there was nothing in front of me but bloodied strips of flesh. I ransacked his backpack and used some of his healing salves, packed some of his supplies into my own inventory, and began making my way into the world of Vernia.

I checked my HUD once more and found that I had levelled up twice in the process of defeating Salenthor, giving me not only harder scales, but also slightly improved my usage of my acidic breath, something that I promised myself to avoid for now.

As I moved on from the scene, the world of Vernia unfolded before me, and a mountain ahead of me caught my eye. Seems like somewhere a dragon might go. I thought, looking it with a sense of longing. Perhaps I could find a cave there, set up a home or something...

I idly spread my wings open a little as I pondered the possibility, not realising that I was already preparing for flight. It was only when my wings started flapping on their own a little to begin the takeoff did I actually notice this, and with a final flap of my wings, took to the sky. I flew over rivers, hills, villages and all of the land between my starting point and the mountain, gazing of what was to be just a small part of Vernia. It looked like something out of an older game like Skyrim, all the little houses and villages dotting the landscape below me as I flew by them at mind-boggling speeds.

In no time, I was flying around the mountain already, inspecting it for myself up close. As much as I could see, there was a small cave entrance up the side of the mountain, faced on a nearly vertical cliffside that overlooked a large part of the land. It was the perfect vantage point with probably one of the most amazing virtual landscapes I’d ever seen, and at that moment, I wished I could’ve taken a picture. A small beeping sound suddenly came, followed by the appearance of some floating text in my HUD that mentioned that a screenshot of my game had been saved, right into my C:/ drive. As I brought up a preview of the image, I laughed, the screenshot turning out to have been of the scene I was thinking of. In a way there,  the virtual reality was amazing, the non-game elements working perfectly at the mere thought of it.

With that done, I turned back to the cave, gazing into it. It wasn’t exactly big, since it at that size where sunlight could extend its reach to almost every corner of the cave, but it seemed cosy enough. I put down some of the items from my inventory and looked at the plain interior of the room and thought, maybe some furniture would be good?

My stomach growled as the thought reached me and I stuck my long head out the mouth of the cave. I took a deep breath and inhaled the scents of the world around me, my nose picking up the scent of pine trees and mountain goats, their scents having been picked up by the breeze that passed my cave. Immediately, I set out, following the scent as it travelled against my muzzle in the wind. I first found the goats after a brief moment, and fished it off the side of the mountain one well-placed swoop, picking up the poor creature in my claws as I landed somewhere flat. Following the artificial instincts I popped the whole goat into my waiting maw, devouring it whole in just a few bites. It felt moderately satisfying to have done so, and with a full belly (and some terrified goats), I began making my way further up, until I found a small outcropping of pine trees. I picked those up with my inhuman strength (albeit with some difficulty), carrying both them and another terrified goat in my talons as I made my way back.

Upon arriving there, I set the goat down, and with the encouragement of the sheer drop just at the only exit to my cave, managed to encourage the goat to stay where it was while I began with my own work. First things first, I began by crafting a basic chest-like box with the wood I had, placing some of my food supplies that I had picked off earlier into the box. Then as the goat bleated at me, I began working on a pen for any other goats as well, in order to keep them from messing up the rest of my did.

With the spare wood, I even managed to carve out a small shelf, using my claws (which I had also used for the others) to whittle away the wood piece by piece, until I could assemble the hand (or claw)-carved shelf. For that, I left to perhaps store books, but for now, I would remain empty. Thoughts of adding a bed crossed my mind but never made it themselves, as when I began putting in considerations to the design of the bed, I ended up only confusing myself as to how I could design a bed that wouldn’t break under my weight. Instead, I settled for laying out the bits of pine branches on the floor at the far back end of the cave, before stomping it over a few times in order to make it somewhat soft-ish, to provide me with some sort of sleeping space.

I stepped towards the entrance of my cave once more and took in a deep breath, before thoughts of heading back to the real world crossed my mind, now that I was at least settled for now. Without skipping a beat, the game brought my HUD to a menu selection screen, which gave me the option to do so. I selected that with a thought as well and as soon as I did that, there was a blackening sensation, before I woke up in my chair, back in the real world. It was now evening-ish, close to dinner time, and with that, I realised that I had spent nearly four hours in game already.

I wondered to myself if it had really been so, since so little time had seemed to pass in Vernia, but my growling stomach threatened to disrupt the dispute its way, and I put my questions on hold as I went downstairs to get dinner.

Dinner in itself on my first day of playing Vernia was uneventful, with me plowing through my baked chicken, peas and carrots before heading back up to my room with another cold drink in hand. I didn’t even really make much effort to get some conversation in with mum and dad, I just went all-out to go back to Vernia. In a sense, I felt a sort of longing, to play it, even if I was off for just a mere half an hour.

I don’t think it would ever have been something that I could’ve explained myself, as despite it being, well, virtual, I had already begun to sort of feel a sense of comfort from being a virtual dragon, and without it, I felt exposed, weak, small... I wasn’t too sure whether this was some sort of influence cast upon me as a side effect of the virtual reality helmets that I was using, but one thing that I was sure of was that totally alien feeling, the feeling of being something and someone else for a change, totally free and easy, was pure euphoria to me, it being the stuff of my daydreams from that point on.

Perhaps it was just me being weird, but as much as possible, I enjoyed Vernia as it gave me insight to first-hand experience of a foreign lifestyle and culture altogether, and the more I played it, the more irresistible it became. Granted, I was born a natural introvert, but honestly, this was one  time and place where that didn’t matter at all.

As I logged back in to Vernia, there was a great ‘Ahhh...’ sort of feeling upon coming back into the body of a dragon, and more specifically, there was that alien feeling I hungered for. As I looked out upon the now-sunset scene of Vernia, I couldn’t help but feel that this was something I could get used to. I spent the next few hours in-game exploring around the place and having a look at the mountain, calculating its defendability from various angles, should I really decide to make this place my home. For the most part, it seemed that this cave was not very easy to reach, and given that I couldn’t see any rival dragons flying around, I assumed that it’d be alright for me to make myself comfortable. I wanted to carry on gathering materials and, well, improving the cave a little, but that was cut short by my student obligation to go to school the next day. It was a Sunday evening, and with a sigh, I logged myself out, readying myself for school tomorrow.

Preparing for school revolved around nothing more than tossing a few books into my bag, mentally making a note to finish up some uncompleted work during recess the next day, and setting my school uniform aside, and with that, I brushed my teeth and flopped into bed, falling into a state of dreamless sleep.

The next morning came like a train running me over, with my alarm clock blasting noise into my ears as I dragged myself out of bed, mumbling and grumbling about having slept so late last night. I wasn’t exactly at my best of states, but somehow I managed to drag myself put of bed and into the bathroom for a morning shower and a brushing of my teeth, before I headed down for breakfast. Breakfast in itself was a slice of cold toast on some partially melted butter, that being eaten on the way out of my house as I walked towards the bus stop.  My thoughts were on Vernia the whole time, wondering what would be my next course of action when I next logged on. It was safe to say that I was distracted, in the least, which came by most noticeably in school when I sat down for morning assembly. I hadn’t even noticed the command to stand at attention when I was there, my friend saving me by giving me a hard nudge in the stomach with his rather assuring elbow to get me to pay attention.

Class came and went as well, and by recess, I was out and ambling my way to the canteen, sorely needing something caffeinated to keep myself awake in class. I bought myself a cup of tea and a sandwich to compensate for my measly breakfast, sitting at the table with my friends as we discussed... well, stuff, in general, from the latest internet fad to Gordon Ramsay. It was around there that I was somewhat distracted from gaming, my interest having been caught on other things, which was supposedly healthier for me, I guess. I scrapped in some of my homework here and there as I sat at the table, chit-chatting with friends.

My choice of friends were an interesting bunch, or, given my kind of hobbies, interesting for me to have. As a gamer, none of my friends were very much interested in games, most of them were more focused on politics, sports and all that other funny nonsense that was greek to me.  I could never  really understand myself why we clicked together so much, despite the differences, but somehow, we still did.
They tended to be the more outgoing than me, they being the ones dragging me out for movies and outings and all those things that I’d  refuse to go for, but would more or less end up enjoying anyway, while I would be the shy one, perfectly at ease when out of the limelight and at the side, observing, laughing and following along with the rest, helping to keep them in check and giving my opinion and advice on personal matters that they individually confided in me. They meant a lot to me, having been my close friends for years now, and I suppose they helped me to stay updated with the world around me, being the ones able to talk and think about something other than gaming. Of course, I had my gaming friends, but I hardly bothered with them in real life, because I preferred talking about something other than games when I wasn’t actually gaming.

As we waited for our next class, someone asked me what I was up to now in my gaming, and when I sheepishly admitted that I was just about getting on to Vernia, someone made a remark about why I half asleep in class earlier. A chorus of laughter erupted from the table, and I laughed along with them, albeit somewhat embarrassed myself.

The rest of the day passed by somewhat uneventfully, save an invite to go watch a local football game, which I casually declined due to a genuine lack of interest. I said my goodbyes to my friends as I headed back home, kicking off my shoes and socks as I headed back upstairs to relax. I’d had my fair share of the real world today, and now it was time to head on back to the online one.