Showing results by author "James Hunter" in All Categories

Jack Mitchell knows he won't survive the impact of the massive asteroid hurtling towards Earth. He's not one of the handful of lucky lottery winners scheduled for rescue. But he did luck into a NexGenVR capsule, which means Jack can risk a one-way trip to the world of Viridan Gate Online (V.G.O.), an ultra-immersive fantasy role-playing game. Taking that leap of faith, though, means permanently trapping his mind in the game and killing his body in the process.

Twenty years ago, the Merge brought armies of monsters flooding into the West Coast. Dungeons popped up in shopping malls, airports, and Starbucks. Walls were built to contain the spread, but the promise of priceless loot dropped by the creatures inspired a new type of gold rush. Clay Jaeger has nothing left outside the walls. Civilization took everything he worked for, chewed it up, and spat it out. Now Clay, his wife Alex, and his beer-loving, chainsaw-toting brother, Joe, are going west to try their hand at monster killing.

Dan has accidentally "Noclipped" into the Backrooms—a bizarro, extra-dimensional Alice-in-Wonderland world, overrun with horrific nightmare creatures known as the Dwellers. No one ever gets out. Hell, forget about leaving, if Dan wants to survive the week, he's going to need to harness the strange game-like magic of the Backrooms, make some very sketchy allies, and carve out a little safe haven to call his own.

The end of the world is not such a bad thing for Russian weapons engineer Vlad Nardoir. Really his world ended six months ago when his wife died, and ever since then, things have been downhill. Soul-crushing medical debt. Favors to the Russian mafia. Now, asteroid. For Vlad, this is life in a nutshell. But, in a wild twist of fate, he has found a way out. A chance to start fresh in a brand-new ultra-immersive MMORPG called Viridian Gate Online.

After dying, losing his soulmate twice, building elemental cannons, and knocking down more than metaphorical walls for the Crimson Alliance, Vlad is looking for a place to call his own: a crafting guild that will be able to produce the most overpowered loot the world of V.G.O. has ever seen. Gathering his personal guard, Vlad sets off across the monster-infested Storme Marshes to find the perfect power source, hidden away in the guts of a mysterious sunken ruin.

Recent college grad Sam King was hoping for a backpacking trip across Europe as a graduation present. Instead, he’s going to get a different kind of trip: a three-month stint in the ultimate immersive gaming experience. As a lifelong geek, gamer, and outsider, it’s a better gift then he’d ever dreamed.

This witty and unexpected show brings you toponyms, abbreviations, euphemisms, old words, new words, cockney rhyming slang and Greek gobbledegook. Find out the meaning of words like giff-gaff, knock-knobbler and buckfitches; the difference between French marbles, French velvet and the French ache; hear the glorious poetry of the English language, as practiced from writers varying from William Shakespeare to Vanilla Ice; and spend time laughing and learning with some of the finest Wordaholics in the business.

Boyd Knight found his calling when he joined the Marines and qualified for the elite Force Recon. He'd found a tribe and a family, so when a hand grenade landed near his team, he jumped on it without thought or regret. But instead of winding up dead, he wakes up butt-naked in a cave full of monsters with a knife in one hand and a pistol in the other. He's been chosen by Raguel, the Five-Faced God of Justice, and entrusted with the power of the Vigil Bound.

The Resistance is fractured. The remaining survivors are buckling under the might of the malicious Tyrant King. Enter Roark von Graf, hedge mage, lesser noble of Traisbin, and one of the last freedom fighters. Desperate and unhinged, Roark crafts one final attempt to overthrow the king. The plan goes awry, and Roark finds himself tumbling headfirst into an interdimensional portal. On the other side, he finds himself stranded in an unexpected place - an ultra-immersive fantasy video game called Hearthworld.

Clay Jaeger and his family have faced down hordes of mobs, evil forces, and deadly Dungeon Lords since they came to the IZ, but this is the first time all of Civilization has been turned against them. Framed for heinous crimes they didn’t commit, Clay, Alex, and Joe will have to fight back with every resource the wasteland has at its disposal. If that includes taking over a dungeon and turning it against their enemies, so be it. This time, it’s not just the Jaegers’ lives on the line. This is bigger than them. The freedom of every wastelander and mob in the IZ is at stake.

Alan Campbell thought he'd gotten his dream job working on a revolutionary VRMMORPG with Osmark Technologies, until the project was canceled. He has one weekend to dive into an untested world full of intrigue, violence, and corruption to prove that Viridian Gate Online works, but the AIs running the game have their own plans for his soul. Set a year before the events of Viridian Gate Online: Cataclysm, Viridian Gate Online: Nomad Soul takes you back to when VGO was just a game, or so it seemed.

Three days ago, Jack Mitchel saved his life. By dying. He dodged a world-ending bullet—in the form of an extinction-level asteroid cannonballing toward Earth—by successfully uploading his mind into the brand-new, ultra-immersive, fantasy-based VRMMORPG, Viridian Gate Online. Unfortunately, he's also stumbled headlong into a secret conspiracy that will transform V.G.O. into a new feudal dark age. Jack expected to live out his new fantasy life in peace, but now he and his misfit crew of rebels are the only ones preventing a tyrant emperor and his regime from taking power.

Wounded Army vet Logan Murray thought mimics were the stuff of board games and dungeon manuals...right up until one ate him. In a flash of snapping teeth, Logan suddenly finds himself on the doorstep to another world. He’s been unwittingly recruited into the Shadowcroft Academy for Dungeons - the most prestigious interdimensional school dedicated to training the monstrous guardians who protect the Tree of Souls from so-called heroes. Heroes who would destroy the universe if it meant a shot at advancement.

With a cataclysmic asteroid careening toward Earth, the VRMMORPG project Viridian Gate Online has become more than just a game, and Abby thinks her boss, Robert Osmark, wants to be more than just its founding father.

Roark von Graf fought his way up from the bottom to become not only the Dungeon Lord of the Cruel Citadel, but the leader of the Troll Nation, making underhanded alliances with other dungeons and players along the way. To stop Lowen and his Divine armies once and for all, Roark will have to drag the magics of the game into the real world, harness deadly new technologies, and build dungeons in places no Dungeon Lord has ever gone before. The fate of Earth hangs in the balance. The duel between Dungeon Lords has begun. And one of them isn’t leaving Hearthworld alive.

Clay Jaeger finally has the chance to become the spellslinger he always wanted to be—the one his family needs him to be to survive the dangers of the wasteland. A teacup pig claiming to be a cursed Great Blue Wyrm has offered them a quest to take out a Dungeon Lord with the exact power set Clay’s been looking for. There’s just one problem. The Dungeon Lord can steal the souls of his enemies and summon them to fight his battles for him. Clay is more than willing to lay down his life to protect his family, but is he willing to risk his eternal soul on a gamble that might not pay off?

Ruthless tech genius Robert Osmark is coming, and trailing behind him is a vast army determined to wipe the Crimson Alliance from the face of Eldgard. Impossibly, Jack has united the warring Murk Elf clans under his banner, but even with their aid, the Alliance is still badly outnumbered, and Osmark has some nasty tricks up his sleeves.

After saving the people of Ironmoor, Boyd Knight thought he was finally getting a handle on this whole Vigil thing. Bounties were rolling up. Monsters were dying in droves. Plus, he convinced his chaotic pixie familiar, Renholm, to stop committing random acts of arson. But defeating the fabled Hexblight of Ironmoor is child’s play compared to the tests Boyd will face in Wildespell, home to the Citadel of the Vigilant. Something foul has infiltrated the city.

When Marine Corps pilot Jacob Merely crashes during a routine mission off the coast of Cyprus, he was sure it was game over. After surviving the crash and pulling himself onto the sandy shores of a long-abandoned island, however, Jacob unwittingly stumbles headfirst into the ancient ruins of a dead city. Unfortunately, he also stumbles into an age-old battle between good and evil—and he is now its newest recruit.

In this absorbing tale, you watch the timeless principles of servant leadership unfold through the story of John Daily, a businessman whose outwardly successful life is spiraling out of control. He is failing miserably in each of his leadership roles as boss, husband, father, and coach. To get his life back on track, he reluctantly attends a week-long leadership retreat at a remote Benedictine monastery.