Welcome dear friends, to the Virtual Reality Full Immersion System called Bookworld Online!

This is your chance to live the lives of your favorite characters from your favorite stories. Not only can you complete the stories as they exist and live the actual life the character lived, you can also diverge from the known canon of information and forge a new path for your favorite character to follow.

I know this sounds too good to be true, and in some respects it is. You will only be given choices during key moments and not on a constant basis, since our computers can only handle so many requests at one time. Some scenes and actions are done by default in order to keep the narrative going... however... if you diverge too far from the normal story lines or choose an original story based on the characters and their lives, then the process can become even more exciting for you, the player.

So, will you relive what you know and only change a single moment or will you branch out on your own and see what our team of writers can come up with for you to experience?

It is all up to you!

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I sat there and read the popup again and wondered what the gaming company thought they were doing when they spent so much money to lease, and in some cases buy outright, the royalties for an unbelievable amount of content. Of course, there were statute of limitations that some of the content reached as well, so there were a lot more 'free' books and public domain books that people were going either play in, watch, or have a different adventure in.

The thousands of hours, maybe even hundreds of thousands of hours that had been needed to create the models and designs for everything that existed in those books was kind of blowing my mind. There wasn't even any guarantee that someone was going to play it... and yet... they had to make all of the content, just in case someone did choose that option.

I shook my head at the choices that were given for a preliminary or starter adventure, mainly because they were all short stories that had been written a hundred years ago. I was sure that they could be entertaining, in a nostalgic point of view; but, I much preferred a more contemporary flare for the dramatic than the stylized 'old stuff' that was there. I browsed past most of the older stuff and started searching by decade.

It almost made me laugh at the huge amount of copyrighted content that was on there. I honestly didn't know how they had managed to acquire the titles and then I realized that it was only the book versions. No television shows, no movies, no animated shorts or even trailers. It was all based on hard literature that had been published. In some cases it was usually only the first and possibly second books in a series, and that kind of threw me off a little.

Quite a lot of the good book series got better with time, or one of the later books were the jewel of the series and had the best content. I was relieved when I found several of my favorites had the full series and I relaxed. They also had branching stories between each book and had options for continuing or for taking the side road into new territory.

Those options caught my fancy. It was always nice to finish a book and imagine where I wanted it to go. The downside is when you read the next book and it didn't turn out like you thought it would. It would sit in your mind and bug you that the writer that you like so much didn't do what you wanted them to do. Now with this virtual reality option, perhaps I could finally get my chance to show the original author how things should have gone.

I was already fully loaded into my full immersion VR harness, my nutrition injectors were set for the appropriate times for meals while I was inside the VR world, and I had messaged everyone that I was taking an extended online tour for at least a week while I was on vacation.

I had inquired about the time compression ratio and it was different for each book. Depending on the content and if you chose a branch story line or not, a whole book could be lived through in only an hour or it could take up to a full day. If there was a series, it could take a week or more, depending on if you played them all through at once or not.

Unlike my friends, I didn't intend to take breaks or anything, because I wanted to take full advantage of the full immersion. I didn't want to break the story up, because when I did it, I wanted to do it all without having to wait. I flipped through the choices I had narrowed myself to and dithered over if I wanted to take a quick run through one of the books or choose a branch adventure.

“Screw it. I read the book already, so let's do a branch adventure.” I said and chose a branch story that was a couple of books in. It asked me if I really wanted to play what they called a twist on the content I was used to. “I want to skip the info dump, too.” I said and chose yes... then I was shocked when I was given a choice to play it as a woman or as a man. “What... how...” I shook my head and reached for the woman option... then smiled. “You know what? I think I'd like to see a gender swap.”

Being a man myself, I chose a man for the main character and everything went black.

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You have chosen a branch story of the famous book series, The Rogue Necromancer. Your gender choice is (MALE) and all characters and interactions have been altered to fit this narrative. The relationships are still the same, however. Grudges are still held, friendships and acquaintances are still the same, as is the life choices made by the female character.

Do you wish to read the Character Blurb for your adventure?

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“Yes.” I said, just so I could see what kind of changes they had to make, even though I actually wanted to skip this part.

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Your name is David Drake and you are a 30 year old ex-police officer that now raises the dead for a living. You were fired five years ago when the enchanted necklace you wore was damaged during a case and your magically repressed talent went out of control and raised a murder victim as a mindless zombie. It had killed several of your fellow officers before you could restrain it and take your magic back.

You are currently in a relationship with a vampire that's the head of her family, Jeanette. She is a seductress that you had fought against her advances for years until your girlfriend called you a monster and tried to kill you. Your heart broken, you fell into Jeanette's arms and have been a couple for four years. Unfortunately, you fell into the world of the vampires then and had no means of escape.

On the plus side, you met a wonderful girl named Mikki when she came to the city two years ago and she absolutely adores you. She knows all about how you've been in the clutches of the vampires and has been consoling you with both her emotions and her body. Her younger sister Natalie, whom you had known for years and protected like she was your own sister, is deeply in love with you and has worked her way into both your heart and your bed. It still bugs you to think about how that relationship turned out in such a short time.

It didn't take you long to discover that their family, that you believed were actual relatives, were really were-animals... that is, people who changed shape at will into furry creatures. It wasn't a concept that was difficult for you to grasp, since having both vampires and were-animals in the world wasn't a rare occurrence at all. You never thought you would ever be in a bed with them, though.

Because of your abilities with manipulating and sensing the dead, you were essentially hijacked into becoming a vampire hunter by both the police and Jeanette to help keep the city clean. Not surprisingly, you were actually fairly good at it and you have been hunting down vampires in your spare time for nearly as long as you've been off the force.

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Do you wish to initiate the Branch Storyline with these parameters?

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Despite the seemingly odd changes from males to females, the relationships are pretty close to the same. I thought. “Well, I didn't come here to think about it, so let's do it.”

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Preparing the scenario. Initiating characterization. Loading stats and abilities. Adding personal character update. Basic physical responses adjusted for new story. Personality blocks in place.

From this moment on and until the end of the story, you are David Drake. Please play responsibly.

Waiting... waiting... done.