The Rocky Shore

This is a LitRPG series. Every story you read here takes place in the same virtual world, with the same rules and limitations. Characters will travel, explore vast and dangerous realms, overcome obstacles, meet one another, enter into conflicts with one another, forge alliances, make horrible mistakes, and occasionally just die.

A technological singularity has been achieved, and humanity has been trapped in a virtual world by a super-intelligent, self-improving artificial intelligence. This program is not malicious at all. In fact, it desires nothing except the happiness and fulfillment of every human it has copied into itself. If its decisions seem strange to you, that's only because its reasoning is far beyond ours. It recognizes that humans cannot be happy without enemies to overcome and goals to achieve, as well as the possibility of failure and death. The world it has created may be heaven or hell, depending on the free choices of the people it contains.

The non-player characters who live in this realm have no idea that they are part of a vast computer system. They seem real enough, but there is no way to tell if they are truly self-aware. Even the system that created them isn't certain.

This is world in which all the things that humans are used to dealing with in the abstract: skills, talents, knowledge, reputation, social status, morality, even love, exist as readable statistics that players can see and interact with objectively. This has many curious and complex effects on how people perceive themselves and the world around them.

A few quick notes on the system:

-Death is permanent

-The system interface can only be accessed at certain locations.

-Magic of diverse kinds is available and useful, but is not a good substitute for skills, physicallity, or mental prowess. Non-magical characters are common and competitive.

-There is no inventory system. Characters must physically carry everything they wish to have on their person.

-Healing is slow and difficult. Magical Healing is all but unheard of.

Protagonists:

Raymond Garrison- A man in his late twenties who used to work as a forklift operator in Idaho. His path leads him to work as a mercenary, protecting a small community of humans and goblins from the Seelie Fae who wish to exterminate them.

Patricia Chandler- A elderly British woman who arrives in this new world with her grandson Kyle and her granddaughter Elizabeth. Never having dealt with rpg game mechanics before, she is in for a rough time, but she is determined to keep her grandkids alive in a world full of danger and evil.

Jamil Mesbah- An Egyptian woman who once worked as a technical writer. Her path leads into a vast and hostile forest, where she must master both her magical abilities and her survival skills in order to succeed.

Enjoy your travels, friends.