Tales of Yggdrasil, a game synonymous with greatness. For ten years it was the most influential VRMMO-RPG, or Virtual Reality Massive Multi-player Online Role Playing Game, on the market. It's a massively extensive and popular fantasy based adventure game whose gaming setup allowed it's players a near completely immersive virtual reality experience.

Calloway was a gamer whose sense of adventure was captured by Tales of Yggdrasil's numerous possibilities. For instance, the level cap was 100 but classes allowed only a max level of 15. This meant that in order to reach level 100 you had to master a minimum of 7 classes. With over 1000 base classes, like Rouge or Knight, and subclasses, like Assassin or Holy Paladin, the combinations were limitless.

With a total run of 10 years Calloway joined a few years after the launch, but was soon caught up in its realism. Shortly into his gaming experience he was recruited by the High Elves of the North Wind, a guild made up of gamers who had chosen the race of elf in some regard. At the time Calloway had been leveling up his druid ranks and as an elf he had stood out enough to join.

Unlike Knights who defended their comrades in battle, or Archers who took opportunity shots to do tons of damage, Druids were supporting units who healed their comrades or wielded the natural elements like manipulating vines or lighting powered magic attacks. Clerics or Priest were similar supporter classes but owe the origin of their magic to gods where Druids drew on the nature powers of the earth.

Shortly upon joining he learned that the guild was one of the top guilds in the game and that being able to join had been considered a great honor especially since his level at the time was so low. Yet when he entered the great fortress of the North Wind that acted as the guild's headquarters he was introduced to a concept that took the cake for him. It was the ability to create within the game.

From that moment on Calloway became engulfed with the fortress. It was relatively small at first with a minor nobility of NPC's, or non-player characters, at the figurative head of the social order. Since the guild was so famous the fortress had been complete with the minimum defensives required to hold up against any raids from other guilds or random adventurers. Since the member roster was so prestigious it was easy enough to defend with only the basics, but Calloway saw the untapped potential of the fortress.

Guilds claimed fortresses to gain resources and benefits from the regain to grow stronger either by the wealth or natural resources, geographical location for trading, or in the North Wind's case the plethora of strong monsters in the local region for fighting to level up. Guilds with and without fortresses often fought over them or sacked them for quick resources. Assaulting a Guild fortress with a large force was an action formally called a raid.

Raids were simple and there were three kinds. Raids were player-centric campaigns where numerous players gathered together to achieve a goal, anywhere from three to thousands. A regular raid involved conquering a highly populated dungeon of high level monsters, and one super powerful boss monster at the end. They were usually too hard to do alone and they also generated valuable rewards, depending on the difficulty.

Guild raids targeted guild fortresses in place of a dungeon. The players of an opposing guild or independent force sieges the fortress and either gathers as many resources as they can pillage, or they can replace the NPC figure head with their own to conquer it and take it over completely.

Event Raids were the third kind and were usually hosted by the developers. They were many times harder than normal raids and were only available for a limited time. The biggest draw of event raid were their unique and often priceless rewards for their completion. Even more valuable rewards could be received if the hidden and often secretive Optional quests requirements were fulfilled.

The North Wind guild focused on Raids and they were so numerous that only the highest-ranking members were allowed to create and edit NPC's. they had power over everyone from the Ruler NPC to the guards, and even the shopkeepers. They could also reconstruct various parts of the fortress or even the whole thing, for the right price and with sufficient resources. The problem was that the highest-ranking members had no desire to augment the city so most of the NPC's that existed were bare-bones as far as back story and design. Most of the guards were copy and paste mobs with no personality. Mobs is a gaming term used in reference to the mass-produced computer-generated NPC's, most commonly associated with generic creatures like spiders, bears, goblins, bandits, and soldiers. Even the princess at the time, who was the highest rank and level of the nobility, only had a handful of functions which included sitting at her throne and sleeping in her quarters when night fell.

The NPC Development system was extensive. It had everything from complete control of their physical appearance, to their skills, how they acted and reacted, and even their backstory. If their back story was good enough, it could be submitted to the develops and they might integrate it into the game or even give the NPC unique skills, classes, and stat bonuses that were otherwise unavailable to players. This system promoted Lore-friendly character NPC's that enriched the world. An attempt to keep players from going way off script and creating a city of super-human gigantic-breasted naked women with ridiculous hairstyles and poorly written porn-based back stories. Raids on these immersion-breaking communities were promoted by the developers in weekly and sometimes daily event with 'fabulous' prizes.

Many of the NPC's of the early North Wind Guild fortress had little variety, were half done, and sometimes their description was cut off since the guild member tried their hand at it and grew bored, opting to quest rather than create.

After rising substantially in rank, and after continuous begging, Calloway was giving access to the software of the city and its denizens. This small permission threw the High Elves of the North Wind into the spotlight. The humble fortress hidden in the forest became the beautiful and dangerous City of Perils.

At the height of its power the guild ranked 10th in all of Tales of Yggdrasil and its defenses became a proving ground for raiding parties. However, thanks to Calloway it's defensive were impregnable even without the aid of its members.

Allowances were made for him, through charismatic and sometimes threatening persuasive means. Eventually, the pure Elf city was saturated with a number of beautiful and powerful elementals, dryads, nymphs, and other mobs that were lured to the city because of its status effects or were gained as event quest rewards. With it being in the forest and some of these effects being ideal for elf Druid mobs to spawn, the druids also brought with them their summoned beasts and familiars. All of these were allowed since none of them took away from the pool of NPC's points allotted to the city.

With a total of 1000 levels to play with and a maximum limit of 100 per NPC, one could have a city with ten level 100 NPC's or a thousand level 1 NPC's, as well as any combination in-between as long as it added to 1000. The restrictions that the guild master at the time gave him were that all the NPC's he created or augmented had to be Elf. Since their whole theme was an elf only guild. But the loophole was that none of the mobs that freely entered or spawned within the city limits had to be elf. The elementals were a special case of summoning magic Calloway imbued into the city itself by means the world lusted to know but never discovered.

There was a loophole with the levels too. Any level the NPC gained for themselves after gaining sufficient experience they were able to keep and it wouldn't take away from the city's total pool. The catch was that as soon as the player changed their level, the NPC lost 75% of the experience gained which would drop its added levels by the correlating amount.

Thus, Calloway's guild continued into greatness until the last days of Tales of Yggdrasil. After 10 long years Tales of Yggdrasil would finally see it's end. In its last year, its servers boasted only several hundred regular players where it had once boasted hundreds of thousands. In this last year of its decline Calloway was the last member of his guild. Having been promoted to guild master he'd served this role for only 3 years, as it's seventh guildmaster and second longest serving one, when the announcement came that Tales of Yggdrasil would finally have its servers shut down. This devastated Calloway who for the last year had been the sole remaining member of the once great guild that ranked 10th. It now ranked 23rd among all the remaining guilds which was partially due to its impressive wealth and its unraided status.

After this development, he spent most of his day leading around the princess of Peril NPC. She was not a character that he created originally, but he found himself seeing her in more affectionate lights the longer the days drew on. She became his companion while he tweaked the city, its NPC's, and Mobs. Calloway and the princess Shayley O'heira Van Dravenkin were inseparable within the last months of Tales of Yggdrasil and when the last day finally reared its head Calloway planned an event for the city he'd spent so much trouble developing. He felt robbed to have it taken from him.

But he was a realist, he knew that the end of the game could be treated as a new beginning. He'd resolved that he'd put everything into the city and finish it before the countdown reached zero. And when Tales of Yggdrasil shut down he'd throw everything into reality. So he allowed a few selfish desires.

With four hours to spare Calloway completed the city. He recorded its splendor with screenshots saved to his computer hard drive, then he augmented it one final time for the sake of his own selfish desires, and with his final business out of the way he would leave the world behind for the last time.

Or so he thought...