Imagine if you found yourself suddenly whisked away to the current video game you were playing in’s world. How would that go? How would that even work? Does the game have food for you to eat? Is it online so you’re not the only one from your world now here? How would you survive and what would you do to get back? For the Adventuring Guild of Log Horizon, this is their current situation. How did they get there and who are they? Let’s find out!
Elder Tale is one of the most popular and longest running Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games in the world. It’s a fantasy game set in a post-apocalyptic Earth that has rebuilt to a sort of medieval/renaissance era with magic in the world, think Adventure Time or Wizards. Taverns and guildhalls are built into old moss covered remains of buildings past. The People of the Land have built their entire economy around the gold brought in by Adventurers.
Adventurers are people from another world to aide the People of the Land in stopping the invading force of monsters that seem to be literally popping up out of the Earth itself. Not really alive in the same sense people are, monsters just appear then make cultures with the design to wipe out all other living things. Thankfully, the Adventurers come with powers beyond that of most Landers and appear to be immortal and ageless, if they die, they just return at a local church.
This was the world that players of Elder Tale, roughly thirty thousand Japanese people and whoever else was playing at the release of the twelfth expansion of the game. Some countries were sleeping when the even occurred and some players just didn’t get on in time when it came online but those who did found themselves suddenly in the world of Elder Tale. It was bleak at the beginning, no one knew what was going on, you could still pull up your menus but if you tried to fight monsters you came across like in the game, you could get bogged down with all those clicks. You had to start playing the game intuitively, calling upon your powers as they were now a part of you and not just a command menu. Even worse, all food one had their inventory, while able to provide nutrients, was tasteless.
Soon players found that dying didn’t mean the end for them, they would resurrect just like in the original game, back at the cathedral they were stationed at. This began raids of higher level players going out and killing other players for their gear, whether to keep or sell it back. Life was rough in those first few weeks after what was often called the Apocalypse or Catastrophe. One player, Shiro, a level ninety Enchanter (known for their buffing and de-buffing abilities) class player, known through out the Japanese servers back when Elder Tale was just a game as a legendary strategist and former member of the well regarded Debauchery Tea Party guild, began to try and make things right.
Shiro would team up with his old and guildmate, Naotsugo, a level ninety Guardian (known for being a tank who could force enemies to fight him instead of his allies) class player to make their way back to the city they were nearest, Akihabara. Along the way they’d meet a level ninety Assassin (a high-damaging ninja) class player named Akatsuki, who was a woman now trapped in the body of her male character. Given a Character Reset Potion by Shiro, Akatsuki was able to make her form now look closer to her real world form. This kindness had Akatsuki pledge her undying devotion for Shiro and work as his bodyguard. Some players are keeping some degree of roleplaying since the Apocalypse as a way to cope.
The three would be asked by old friends of Shiro’s Marielle, level ninety Cleric (a healer with defensive capabilities) guild leader of the Crescent Moon Alliance, to aide in finding one of her younger members who had landed far away from the rest of the guild when the Apocalypse occurred. Where it may have taken a month to walk to the new location, Shiro and Naotsugo had access to rare Gryphon mounts that allowed them to fly there in days, along with Akatsuki, the three would not only find the missing girl, Serara, a level nineteen Druid (a healer with animal companions) but also their old guildmate, Nyanta, a catman race level ninety Swashbuckler (a high damage dual-wielding duelist) player.
Even better news was that Nyanta was also a level ninety Chef, a subclass one could take, meaning he had uncovered how to cook food with actual taste. Returning to Akihabara, the group of four, now including Nyanta, would aide the Crescent Moon Alliance in gathering all the major guilds of the city to discuss forming a council to establish order in their part of this world. Twelve guilds would meet, one would end up leaving, and Shiro would form his own, Log Horizon, to unite the remaining guilds into the Round Table Alliance. Seeking to not only help all the players who were now trapped in the game but realizing that the People of the Land, the Non-Player Characters were now fully sentient beings with their own lives and desires, to also aide them in all this. It was even realized that since Adventurers were effectively immortal with amazing powers while the Landers were very mortal and nowhere near that level of power, the People of the Land were more human than the Adventurers now, technically.
Using the knowledge Nyanta had discovered to make food with taste allowed early success with the Round Table, less than ten percent of all Adventurers have the cooking skill leveled high enough to use it but it made a world of difference. Soon there were new problems to deal with, the need to enforce laws so that enslaving lower-level characters to harvest them for their experience point potions the game was giving them daily so that higher level characters could use them to become more powerful. Shiro was often at the cutting edge, seeking out ways to crush those who would exploit others. Not caring how his plans made him look, he had gain the name the Villain in Glasses by many who didn’t care for him, even a joking gesture by his closest allies.
Trying to wrangle Adventurers with new laws to stop them from making life worse for one another was just one problem. Due to all the chaos of the Apocalypse, the People of the Land were not getting much money or help like the old days of Elder Tale as a game. This meant the Lander economy was struggling without Adventurers and monsters were multiplying without Adventurers killing them, especially goblins, who were now numbering in the thousands and forming armies to destroy Lander towns. Log Horizon would lead the way with its newest lower-level members fighting alongside the higher leveled guilds of the Round Table while Shiro and the higher levels were dealing with the People of the Land’s royalty to make a better world for Adventurers and Landers alike.
Time was changing the world of Elder Tale even more, just as the former NPCs were becoming more themselves than just stories in text, so was the physical world and items of the game. The game world being a mimic of our own, was now growing in actual size so that distances were becoming more accurate to ours as well. Where the game world was ours but smaller, it was literally becoming harder to get from one town to the next due to the new sizes.
Even more dangerous, items’ flavor texts were becoming real, so where a cursed item may have just had a stat de-buff before, it was now able to cause other effects due to its description. It was also being discovered that where players would be in the body of their character, this meant you could be in a male or female body in the game that was not the gender of your body from our world. As time was going on, this meant you would begin transitioning, voice changes and bodily functions of that body type would begin to take place.
Nothing seems to be going easy as there definitely appears to be something or someone who caused all these people to get pulled into the game. There’s also other beings who have been pulled in, taking on the bodies of emptied alt-accounts of players. Even stranger, bots used to farm gold in the game for real-world monetary transactions, are not experience true sentience as well. Also, while Akihabara was lucky to have Log Horizon to help build a community with the concept of caring for and looking out for one another, other communities weren’t so lucky. Some players have taken to ruling as despots and warlords, all too willing to take whatever they can from whoever they can, even if it means going to war. New dangers and problems are cropping up constantly and Log Horizon and the rest of the Round Table Alliance are doing their best to meet them head on and with a plan.
There you have it! Log Horizon is a series that started as a light novel series, became an anime, and then got a manga adaptation. Due to many outside forces, the series has been on a delay but soon should be finishing its story in the following year. What will happen to Shiro, Log Horizon, and the world of Elder Tale? Guess we’ll have to wait to find out! See you next time!
Suggested Reading
Log Horizon
Dr. Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net
