Hisa's Garden

Hisa Online is a character RPG inspired by Sword Art Online and Log Horizon. The protagonists are a group of players, caught within the world of Hisa Online along with thousands of other pre-order players on the Dominion of Amahara server. While the concept of players in a video game might seem mundane, be aware its closest relative is probably Exalted. Might have preludes but expect timeskips.

Background

Incident

The incident occurred on 11 November 2019. Two years after the unveiling of first generation arcade-style machines using FullDive VR technology, the first FullDive machine designed for home use was released. Declared to herald a resurrection of the specialist home gaming console (though it is more properly a gaming peripheral), the Neuron launched simultaneously in 13 countries and territories with a small collection of third party games and a single first party killer app: the Virtual Reality MMORPG HiSA Online. Rumored to stand for Highlyadvanced Subliminal Assembly, Hisa Online is not only the world's first VRMMO but also vastly advances the older concept of dynamic content, combining the traditionally static MMO world with the characteristics of a sandbox and an exponential increase of the amount of content implied by its development budget. Then, on launch day, something happened. All pre-order customers logging in during the initial rush were swept into the virtual world and found themselves unable to log out.

World of Hisa

The game world of Hisa Online is composed of realms. These are open play areas that vary widely in size and theme, though the starting ones are especially large and generic. In contrast, "dungeon" realms tend to be smaller and more heavily themed and often have foes with unique mechanics. Realms are in turn divided into different zones ranging from completely safe protected zones to dungeon zones where in-game communications or other functions are restricted. The zone restrictions in effect at any point are always visible to the player. Realms are connected to one another via portals. Every realm has, at minimum, an "inbound" portal where arriving players will find themselves appearing when they first unlock the realm and from where it is possible to warp back out to where they came from. Therefore, in order for players to access a new realm, the outbound portal leading there must be found and opened. While some portals are merely well hidden, most are guarded by bosses. Once unlocked, any portal allows free travel to the corresponding portal in the next realm over. Portals with a town or castle around them either are or can upgrade to join the warp network which allows quick direct travel from node to node for a fee. Any uncontested portal within the network can also serve as the target of expensive Warp Scroll items which will, depending on the item's level, teleport one or more players to that portal.

Additionally, there are also realms (the aforementioned "dungeons") that consist exclusively of a single dungeon zone and have no exit besides the entrance. The myriad realms in the game are thus conceptually arranged in vertical order with each portal leading "up" to progressively more difficult content in an arrangement referred to in lore as the World Tree. The "trunk realms" – large, relatively generic realms defended by the largest scale bosses – progress towards the endgame with each one branching off into many minor realms where resources and experience can be gathered. A variety of "quests" are scattered throughout the realms though there is no formal quest log and players must act based on the information they gather. When a quest completion is triggered, the credited players are notified and rewards are received. Simpler quests are usually limited to a single area or realm but complex ones require a great deal of travel or obscure knowledge and lore. Nevertheless, all could properly be described as side quests. The "main" quest line of Hisa Online is entirely implied: reach the realm of Hisa itself at the very pinnacle of the World Tree where, the celestial gods and true heroes reside.

Gameplay

Death

When a player dies, they respawn at a temple after a delay. This was quickly demonstrated in the first few hours, allaying fears that death might somehow be permanent in this strange virtual world. Nevertheless, even the staunchest players report that death is a strange and disturbing experience that often results in forgotten nightmares among other things. There remains a large proportion of players who have never died out of fear of it, including those who go as far as to never leave the home city and simply wait to be rescued by the outside world. Those who have died before are usually quite aversive to it.

Players can attack others. In general, players are protected from being harmed or harrassed while in a protected zone. Attacking or killing innocent players results in not being protected while in said zones (which could make entry to some realms difficult or impractical), aggro status from some "guard" type mobs and also allows others to kill you in the open world without repercussion.

Characters

The PCs are a group of involuntary players in Hisa Online who have chosen/will ultimately choose to do something instead of lying around in the starting area waiting for the real world to return. You need the following things:

• Name: This is the Amahara server but there are foreigners who imported the game in order to play with friends.
• Background: Whatever you like. It could have some connection to why you are good at the game or it might not.
• Appearance: Appearance as well as vocal tone and even body odour of your character in game. This is, in all respects, your new body. In particular, it does not actually have to be the same gender nor remotely similar in any way to your real body which is now but a memory. That said, most people play modified or beautified versions of themselves. One reason for this is that the game accurately detects and presents an enhanced version of one's body and appearance along with a simplified set of quick change buttons and sliders by default during character creation that most players simply accept that. Most people also find playing someone significantly different from their original selves to be either psychologically uncomfortable or disadvantageous since their motor skills need to adjust for different limb lengths and so on. There is also a bit of a negative stigma applied to males playing cross gender.
• Motivation: What you want to do in-game as the story progresses is not as important as what aspect of your character makes him/her determined to do something as opposed to nothing. An unmotivated character would quickly fall to the wayside and not remain among the doers of the server.