~Chapter 1~
The sun shines, its sunset rays streaking brilliantly over flowing hills and sparkling lakes.
It peeks between the disks of the floor and sky.
For it does not shine upon a spherical Earth. No. This is «Aincrad»: a massive floating castle of steel and stone. Its base diameter, ten kilometers. Its height, twenty kilometers. Its bulk, stratified into a hundred levels, each a hundred meters thick, with a hundred meters of space in between them.
Each floor is a country, a landscape, complete with towns and cities. Together, Aincrad is not merely a castle. It is a world.
It is not, however, the world its creator wanted it to be.
Kayaba Akihiko is now a household name. He is best known as the genius inventor of the «NerveGear» and its key «FullDive» capability. By catching nerve impulses sent to and from the brain, the NerveGear could transplant its user into a fully interactive 3D virtual world. You could kick a stone, feel its weight as you hit it, hear the solid *clunk* your boot made, shout in joy, and then chase it as it rolled down a hill. You run, jump, fly in another world, while your body remained unmoving, with a plain helmet on its head.
The intense research that produced FullDive technology revolutionized the field of neurobiology. The introduction of the NerveGear itself and its APIs revolutionized much more.
Almost immediately, there was intense demand for the creation of a game. Not one of the simple technology demos that had been pieced together to showcase FullDive, but a true game, a massive game. An MMO.
Unexpectedly, Kayaba shortly announced that this had been his plan all along. Within a week, he had founded the game development firm «Argus», and set to work crafting a masterpiece. In a press release, Kayaba gave it a name: «SAO: Sword Art Online».
But SAO was never finished. This was because, six months into its development, its spiritual father, Kayaba Akihiko, was murdered. A robber had entered his house, panicked, and fired a shot into his gut.
It is rumored that Kayaba died with a NerveGear on his head, immersed in a FullDive, pouring his heart and soul into the creation of SAO even as blood leaked from the wound in his chest.
Fortunately for the gaming community, Argus did not abandon what they had built. What Kayaba had accomplished in six months was extraordinary. An intelligent system named «Cardinal», designed to oversee the virtual world and automatically generate events, to lessen the load on human administrators. Also complete was the incredibly high-fidelity modeling of most of the world's flora and terrain features.
Argus was restructured. Its new management was dubious of the initial premise of Sword Art Online. The game disappeared from the media radar for an entire year. Finally, in 2022, Argus revealed what, in Kayaba's absence, they had toiled to create. Aincrad was complete. The game's closed beta, accepting just 1000 players, would begin in August and last until the official launch in September.
Kayaba Akihiko imagined Aincrad as a land of legend. He imagined calm winds rushing over fields of green grass. He imagined mystical creatures roaming shrouded forests. He imagined a world, brighter in every way than our own.
He imagined a world called «Sword Art Online», in which a single blade could take you as far as you wanted to go.
This game, however, is not called Sword Art Online.
This game is named «Castle Carnation».
Though it is staged on Aincrad, it is but a second iteration. An unfinished dream, completed by another. Completed incorrectly.
Players do not begin the game with a simple sword in their inventories. Rather, they start with a handgun, modeled after the real-world «Glock 19».
The «Starting City», in which all players will begin their adventure, is not rustic. Its streets are not paved with hand-chipped stone slabs. The largest buildings do not resonate with the architecture of Venice, or Ancient Greece or Rome. Instead, the streets are rolled with asphalt. The buildings are of glass and steel.
The man, Kayaba Akihiko, died. But unbeknownst to Argus and to the world, Kayaba is not gone. He is far from gone. His world is not exactly as he envisioned it, but it is his. And he will ensure that his game is played correctly...
Welcome
to
Castle
Carnation
Disclaimer: I do not own SAO.