Today was the day. Today. Today. Claire mumbled the word over and over, eventually singing it under her breath – today-day-day-day-day, day-day-day, day-day-day – as she lowered herself cross-legged onto the doormat, staring at the letterbox with the same intensity as she clutched her coffee.

On average, the post arrived at 09:53 on Thursdays, and she’d set an alarm so the precious parcel would stand less than a two sigma chance of lying neglected on the mat and wasting valuable installation time. Ever After promised to be game-ready within 15 minutes, but the odds of a zero-day patch were pretty high. She’d allowed half an hour for the patch, and an hour for character creation – she may not be the biggest slider fiddler around, but it was always important to get them right – and then she’d be in. Living Ever After, as the ads kept saying.

She had the race and class descriptions from the pre-launch wiki almost memorized by now, but she scrolled through them again. Human, elf, dwarf, goblin, dragonkin, forgewrought, surfing the turn-of-the-century retro mania, and completing that with old-style hardwired classes straight out of D&D. All the ads had the classic combinations on: a blue-eyed human paladin in shining armour, a half-seen elven ranger, and a goblin wearing steampunk goggles and wielding a spanner taller than she was.

The forum chatter mostly followed suit, dominated by min-maxers bragging about the best race/class combinations, but after the third page of moebius arguments between Lego1as, Leggolass, l3g0las, and RedPillGalahad, Claire had given up and decided to go with her intuition – with the unprecedented realism of the Ever After simulation engine, the racial innate bonuses probably wouldn’t matter nearly so much as her own ingenuity and enthusiasm. And she had plenty of that, having driven friends wild complaining about the linearity and restrictiveness of the mechanics of even the most sandboxy of games. Besides, she always played either dwarf rangers or halfling wizards, and since Ever After had lost that lawsuit with the Tolkien Estate, halflings were Right Out.

And there it was! The faux-leatherbound package slipped through the letterbox, and Claire opened it with all the care and deliberation of a badger who had been living on nothing but boiled sweets for a week and had just smelled peanut butter. Quickstart guide, SR diadem, USB-T cable, and the terabyte plug-and-play disk with the game itself: yup, all there. Fifteen minutes was long enough for coffee and porridge, some good solid slow-release energy food for the long hours motionless.

The room faded slowly, the diadem cool against her forehead, and Claire found herself floating bodiless in a simple white-walled room. Text scrolled up the wall in “front” of her at a frustratingly slow pace.

Supplemental Reality gives you the experience of a thousand lifetimes. Interfacing directly with your senses, SR transports you instantly to whole new worlds. Be anything or anyone you want!

A very small proportion of users may experience nausea, headaches, migraines, or feelings of dysphoria or body dysmorphia. If you experience any of these symptoms, or encounter unusual shades of blue in inappropriate locations, please contact an SR-certified doctor as soon as possible. Inexperienced users are strongly advised to stay with a body plan and proportions close to their own to minimise dyspraxia and feelings of dysphoria.

The usual slew of warnings and disclaimers followed up, and Claire muttered under her nonexistent breath – “Yes, yes, I accept, yes, yes, standard symptoms, like I don’t get those all the time anyway, yes” – till the EULA finally heard her, realised it wasn’t wanted, and disappeared in a vaguely embarrassed manner, taking the wall with it. Beyond were a dozen lifelike statues, arranged in pairs – male and female versions of each playable race. She shot forwards, melding into the generic (but cute-looking) female dwarf, entirely ignoring the ornate engraved plaques vying for her attention, and the rest of the room faded from view as dozens of sliders arranged themselves around her.

Ninety minutes, nine hairstyles, five hair colours, and innumerable tweaks to her height, weight, bone structure, ears, and eyebrows later, Claire Ironflight was ready. She’d normally pick a Norse or Anglo-Saxon name, but since this system embodied her so thoroughly, and it was new enough that her own name was available, it seemed like a good idea.

Fitting her skinny six-foot-two consciousness into a short, broad-shouldered, buxom dwarven frame proved a bit of a challenge – everything was further away than it looked, and her centre of gravity lower in proportion. The system offered a virtual gym to get used to the new body – Claire hadn’t expected minigames this early, but fifteen minutes on the monkey bars (the roughened grip felt so real under her hands) and fifteen playing a retro-styled dancing game got her most of the way to instinctive movement.

Luckily, the sturdy grey-and-brown starter outfit apparently included a sports bra – Claire really wasn’t used to jiggling, and even this feeling was as disturbingly and joyfully different as her new voice, a surprisingly American-accented contralto. At least she didn’t have to be Scottish this time!

Taking one final look in the mirror, she assessed her work. Four foot nine in sturdy boots (at last, a game that didn’t start you off in embarrassingly scanty rags!), with an archer’s shoulders and hourglass hips, probably an F-cup bosom, bright blue eyes, and long dark-blonde hair in a pair of French braids. (Dwarf braids? No, that probably means beards here…) Still a lot like her own face, but much less angular and ridiculously cute. She did a delighted little dance, vaguely wishing she’d thought to video it, and headed for the blocky, ornate archway that had been patiently waiting for her to finish up. “One short step for a girl, one… short step for dwarfkind!”

Music swelled, vaguely Celtic harp-and-drum stuff, and her feet crunched on a gravelled path through a forest. Tall dry-stone walls ran along each side in the traditional “nothing interesting here, go THAT way” sign, and in the distance a low stone building sheltered under the arching boughs.

“Guess that’s where I find a starting quest, then! Here we go, here we go, here we go...”

“Fair meet, young adventurer!” The old dwarf’s voice was equally American, but a granite-rough baritone. “Don’t be seeing too many of you round here – decided against the way of the axe and hammer, did you?”

“Yep, that’s me! I like being a good long way away from someone who’s trying to kill me. And trees and animals, I like those too.”

“Sounds like yer in the right place, then, lass. Welcome to the Ranger’s Guild!”

A triumphant ripple of harp music sounded around Claire, and a ring of warm golden light raced up from the ground, dissipating above her head. Off to the side of the old dwarf, floating text helpfully informed her that she’d completed a quest - “Join a guild!” - and received her first 500 xp.

“Thank you! What is there to do here? Do you need any wolves killed, rabbits for the pot?”

“I like yer enthusiasm, lass, but you’d best get yerself some weapons and a bit of practice first, aye? Come back to me when yer done. I’m Helgrim Farhammer, and you’ll be seeing more of me than you’ll end up wanting – leastwise till you make yer way to the Mountain, anyroad.”

“I’m Claire Ironflight!” She waved as she bounced off towards the archery range, and the glowing golden book hovering over a rack of bows, showing a quest for her.

“Arrow in yer face! Take a bow and a quiver of arrows, and practice at the butts till you can hit the bullseye nine times out of ten. REWARD: yew longbow, endless quiver, 500 xp, title: Archer.”

“Hee, butts! Right, let’s see what this baby can do...” As she pulled a longbow from the rack, gold sparkles highlighted the notches at either end, and a waxed paper packed containing a coiled bowstring. “I’ve never had to string it myself before, this is awesome. Now, I think I have to - ” she broke off as she lost her balance, longbow between her legs and body sprawled in an undignified heap on the cobbles.

“Nobody saw that, right? I am a mistress of grace and dexterity.” This time, she managed to keep her balance, bending and stringing the bow. The sparkles swirled and coalesced on the nock of an arrow and the middle of the bowstring, and as she nocked the arrow a silvery targeting reticule appeared. Shifting her aim to the shield-shaped target, the reticule changed to gold, and her arrow flew smoothly to stick in the painted bullseye. Fascinated, she nocked another arrow and moved around, letting the reticule float over different targets and ranges, and noticing how it adjusted for her inclination as well as aim – no more flat trajectories!

Drawing the bow was a bit more difficult than the IRL archery she’d done, mostly because of the extra encumbrances attached to her chest, but she would be damned if anyone would make her emulate the Amazon style! Nine arrows later, the quest dinged, and a triumphant drumroll sounded. Level 2!

New skill gained! Sharpshot (passive): your arrows fly truer than most archers’, and strike harder.

New skill gained! Longshot (active): infuse mana into your arrow for extra range and damage.

A quest notification popped up alongside: Longshot! Land a bullseye on the long-range butt. A helpful trail of sparkles led Claire’s eye to the long-range target perched in a tree, easily three hundred yards away. This one… wasn’t shield-shaped. It looked, in fact, like an ogre, bending over and mooning her.

“Right, arrow in yer butt it is...” she nocked an arrow, wondering how to infuse mana, and then noticing that a bluish-purple cloud gathered around her shoulders and upper arms. She imagined it flowing down into the arrow, and grinned in delight when it obeyed, packing the mana into the arrow’s form till it glowed throughout its length. Lift the bow… watch for the golden reticule… and release! The arrow soared, fast and hard, and angled down to give the wooden ogre a fine feathered tail, and the quest dinged. 200 xp, nice!

“Hm, where’s my xp bar…?” As Claire asked herself that, an iridescent bubble floated up to hang in front of her, and popped to reveal a status screen. Health, mana, xp… another 1800 xp for Level 3, shouldn’t be too hard at all. And that Longshot had taken about 40% of her mana, so getting two of those off before her target got to her shouldn’t be a problem.

“Inventory!” A second iridescent bubble floated out of her belt pouch, and expanded to a 5x5 grid of slots, all empty. Experimentally, she prodded the longbow she still held at the top left corner slot, and the sensation of it vanishing from her grip was really disconcerting, but a tiny longbow and quiver appeared in the grid. Dismissing the inventory screen, she turned back to Helgrim, who now had a golden book floating above his head.

“Rabbits for the pot, was it? Well, we’ll never say no to rabbit stew, so if you happen to pick up a few on your way to deal with our warg problem, we’d be delighted.” Helgrim’s moustache twitched in subtle amusement.

“...warg problem? Tell me about the warg problem.”

“Huge evil things, like wolves would be if they’d been created by humans not the Wildfather. Slavering jaws, red eyes, spend all their time fighting each other for dominance – when they’re not menacing travellers and driving away the forest creatures. Thin out the pack a bit, and see if you can work out why they’ve come here.”

Wargs in the Greenwood: Kill wargs (0/10). Find out why the wargs have come to the Greenwood. Reward: 500 xp, cloak of the warg-slayer.

“I will! I just need to go and, er – I’ll be right back.”