Welcome to Angvarde!

The booming voice announcing the initial greeting to the world echoed in Tyr's mind. The virtual reality world he had joined was just beginning. This was the first fully immersive game world of its kind, and he was overjoyed with excitement. A world where you could finally be an RPG player. The ultimate video game.

***

As the players enter the world the most noticeable feature is how real it is. The sun in the sky warmed the skin, the breeze chilled the neck, and the smells of a nearby bakery made feelings of hunger pang in their bellies. The players enter the realm finding themselves in a very large courtyard in the shape of an oval. Stonework reminiscent of the black ages of human history. Buildings made of brick, stone, and wood huddled closely together to nearly the point of stacking them on top of one another. The garb of players and NPCs alike were clearly those of peasant class from serfdom kingdoms long forgotten. A far cry from the modern age which they entered this realm from.

Tyr had been lowered into the immersion tanks with more than a little apprehension. This technology was still new, and while though exciting, it was also still scary. He was built of average height, average weight, and was just small enough to fit into the cheaper immersion units. The added benefit for the smaller unit was a more comprehensive time-data flow. It has been found that the human mind could be overclocked from reality, imposing images and sensations to extend time beyond the parameters of real time. He smirked while remembering the hours of training videos that he had to watch. Immersion gel began filling his tank and he felt an electric vibration come from the warm liquid. The gel reached his ears and he could faintly hear an echo of the training videos.

In immersion, a human mind experiences far more time in the same span of real time. In the first few years it was just a few extra hours, four to six. Given that researchers also immersed and researched for years more, the technology had advanced to where a mere hour in real world time would be the equivalent of a year in immersion. Humanity had essentially evolved into immortality.

The worlds of immersion could add layers of fantasy, bring back animals long extinct, and creatures of myth. Angvarde was the first such world based purely in the world of fantasy; a world of magic, blade, and myth. The cost was quite steep but this was the first to fully clock the human mind. An hour in Angvarde would be equivalent to a full century of real world time. Every player now joining would be immersed for the maximum two weeks before needing to be awakened from their immersion tanks. A full 33,680 years in game.

Nearly 40,000 players joined the game at its inception, with nearly ten times that many NPCs spawned. The NPCs spawned in a thousand years beforehand in game. NPCs would live full lives, averaging 60-70 years, though some could live longer. The AI algorithm used for them would fuel no difference from that of a true human. In truth, the NPCs were very much alive in their own right, if only within the game. The players, while though ageless, could be killed. In doing so would reset them to this initial spawn point, with nothing, and at level 1.

***

As Tyr opened his eyes, it was into this realm that he found himself.