Hear Our Prayer
YGGDRASIL.
In Norse cosmology, it was the world tree, rooted deep in the earth and stretching to the heavens, uniting the nine worlds with its majestic branches. Heaven unfolded around it, the gods gathered around it, and it was the centerpiece of all creation.
In the real world, it was a DMMO-RPG, which rose from many game servers and extended into the minds of its millions of players. Yet it was more than a game; it was more like a digital multiverse, containing nine virtual worlds of fantastic creatures and landscapes.
The YGGDRASIL developers wanted to inculcate the love of exploration into its players, and so they filled their worlds with beautiful vistas, secret locations and other impressive sights, in the hopes of enticing players to plumb the mysteries of the world they had made. In addition, they took a hands-off approach to player activities, affording them almost limitless freedom in their actions within the game world. Together, these two factors meant that players could experience the game in any way they liked.
Even the process of creating one's player character was a complex minigame in itself, seeing as one had hundreds of player races and thousands of character classes to choose from. Just about every sort of species and role was reflected in that selection, and the way that the character-building system was set up practically forced players to diversify and experiment with the way in which they made their avatars. As such, the most bizarre entities of YGGDRASIL were often not the monsters, but the players themselves.
However, like any good game, it was not a static thing of code. The lack of official oversight meant that players formed their own communities and cliques, which in turn made them more meaningful to the people who had made them. In addition, there were readily-available creator tools on the cash shop. Those allowed players to create and upload their own content, thus allowing them to shape their characters and little corners of the world to their liking. In this sense, it was the players and not the developers who were the true makers of YGGDRASIL, much like how a city was as much the people as the buildings in which they lived.
With all these factors in mind, was there any wonder why YGGDRASIL was the most popular DMMO-RPG of its generation? Anybody could hook up their cortex bridge or nanotrode net and immediately enter a world of fantasy, beyond the banal reality of daily life. It was a place where even the lowest dregs of society could wield world-shattering firepower, where people could recreate a blue and pure world lost to the grinding gears of industry, or where those who loved ancient shows of masked heroes could indulge their desires to jump in and save the day.
Yes, YGGDRASIL was a shared dream, born from the hearts and minds of those who made it and those who played it.
But like all dreams, it had to come to an end.
Asgard — The Upper Boughs
11:44:23
Each of the nine worlds of Norse mythology were represented in YGGDRASIL; fiery Muspelheim, fertile Midgard, gloomy Helheim, but there were more realms than that within the game. There was Valhalla, a waiting area where players scheduled PVP matches which would in turn be fought on the Plains of Vígríðr. One could compare the spacious void where all players logged in to Ginnungagap, the primordial abyss of ice and fire.
Naturally, the World Tree Yggdrasil qualified as a world unto itself. It stood as tall as a mountain, at the heart of every realm, where it served as an axis mundi — a connection between the heavens and the earth. Only, in this case, it connected each of the nine worlds, from dreary Hel to soaring Asgard.
Anyone who touched its surface and used the appropriate skill (freely available to anyone who wanted to learn it) would be transported to a corresponding location on their destination world. This skill cost no MP or money or experience to learn, so in theory, it seemed like an ideal transportation method.
In practice, most players preferred to use spells or magic items for inter-world travel.
This was because travelling via Yggdrasil meant that one had to be in its vicinity. Many PKers — especially those in the more heteromorph-friendly realms such as Niflheim or Helheim — enjoyed setting ambushes near Yggdrasil and attacking disoriented travellers. Granted, Yggdrasil had a large footprint in all the worlds and there was no guarantee that they would be attacked, but high-level players often had high-level equipment they were attached to, and those articles of gear would drop if they were killed. Thus, many people preferred to use [Plane Shift] to cross over to another world, and then [Greater Teleport] to get where they needed to be.
Of course, not everyone did that. Some players were too low level to afford or cast the necessary spells. Others were roleplayers, who felt that making use of a facility which the developers had provided for them was a flavorful and fun act.
It was probably for the latter reason that the white-clad figure appeared out of thin air, one hand on the dark bark of Yggdrasil.
The other held a staff before it in a defensive stance. It was made of some kind of golden metal and terminated in an eight pointed sunburst with an eye motif in its center. Its body language was so expressive that one could imagine the grim set of its jaw and the intensity of the gaze under the golden mask it wore.
Alertness. Focus. Readiness.
If someone or something attacked it here, they would not find a defenseless mark.
However, there was no attack. The white-clad figure turned its head, and then its line of sight settled on a motionless stag that seemed curiously at home on the branches of a giant tree.
A distorted snort came from beneath the mask, and then it visibly relaxed.
The stag — actually a low-level monster called a Child of Dvalinn — was not moving because it, like all monsters in the game — had been put on standby mode for the last day of the game. In all likelihood, there was virtually no chance of ambushers hiding around either. The figure's detection spells revealed nothing, and in all likelihood any potential attackers were having fun elsewhere.
The figure straightened up and sighed, the sound coming out as a heavily-modulated voice which sounded like that of a girl's.
"Well, it was only to be expected. The biggest party in YGGDRASIL's happening now; why would anyone try to bushwhack me? Then again, there might be no life kings who just want to make people suffer, even on the last day of the game…"
As its words trailed off, the figure removed its mask, revealing the face of a young lady.
She had long raven hair that she fluffed out by shaking her head. Her skin was a light gray, freckled with black. She was pretty in every sense of the word… well, except for her eye.
Yes, singular. She had only one eye; a big one with a golden sclera that occupied the center of her head, with a vertically slitted red pupil.
Her name was Hitomi Kousen.
In YGGDRASIL, players could pick their character races from three broad groups: the humanoids, the demihumans and the heteromorphs.
Humanoids, as the name suggested, were human-looking races such as dwarves, elves and, of course, humans. They were beings who were most commonly featured as the main characters or supporting cast of a fantasy story. Unlike the other racial groupings, they did not have access to racial classes, but that simply meant that they could take more job classes to compensate.
Then, there were the demihumans, who were races that were still roughly human-looking, but possessed distinctive — perhaps even monstrous — features that set them apart from the humanoids. Giants, pixies and trolls were all examples of demihumans. They were either much bigger or smaller than the norm, lived in more hostile regions, or simply looked different.