Hisa's Garden

Hisa's Garden is a trapped-in-virtual-reality character game off the traditions of Sword Art Online, Log Horizon and Overlord. The protagonists are a small after-school club trapped by the final server shutdown of Altima, the great MMO of the previous generation.

Hisa's Garden Character Creation

Background

Released in 2022, Altima was among the first and by was by far the greatest child of the FullDive virtual reality MMO boom. Though hardly the most innovative as a game, Altima defended its incumbency from later products through an enormous advantage in content bolstered by powerful user creation and custom content tools. For nine years the game reigned supreme and for nine years it waned. Eventually, all things come to an end. With the announcement of its successor, HiSA Online, it was also quietly announced that the nigh abandoned world of Altima would finally be allowed to end.

Altima Archaeology Club

In a certain school in a certain prefecture of Amahara, there exists a small but unique school club – the Altima Archaeology Club. Though their reasons for being here are all different, they have been exploring the endless realms of this once thriving game, rambling through myriad realms filled with the works and monuments to the achievements of their forebears. Though it is a reality whose existence has been but an eyeblink to the real world, it is still a reality older than they are. Now, however, the world is ending and with it, so will the club. To celebrate and mourn the end of this reality, the club has gathered in their humble guild hall to wait out the very end.

But it didn't come.

The club members watched the stars swirl and the earth shake is if the whole world were tumbling into the void... and then the stars returned... as did the moon. The smell of grass and trees, the night of the wilderness wafted in through the windows, and you could no longer log out.

Guild Hall

In Altima, individuals or guilds could own real estate. These range from single rooms within larger buildings to vast palaces, dungeons or entire cities. Practically any real estate that wasn't for sale could be had if it is forcefully taken, purchased and then maintained. With sufficient resources and space, a piece of land can be expanded to include practically anything with any amount of functionality. In order to hold it, a maintenance had to be paid or else the title was lost. While much real estate has passed back into public domain in this way, some locations had treasuries so rich compared to their support costs that they would not have fallen out of ownership for years. Even when a location falls into ruin, it remains partially standing and can be explored or cleared of squatting NPCs.

In cases where the holders had enemies amongst other players or if the natural state of the area is to be occupied by NPC mobs, the territory might need to be held against incursion and would be designed with view of resisting attack. While a fortress might be built to withstand regular attacks by NPC goblins from a nearby hostile area, guild sieges were best known for being massive pvp events.

The Altima Archaeology Club has a virtual "club room" in the form of a modest wooden cottage located in the hinterlands of a peaceful area, fairly close to some standing stones (fast travel hub).