The Call of Asheron: An Epic of Four Souls

Overview

Four souls. One impossible world. And a call that won’t be refused.

Duulak the Twice-Blessed tears open a rift in reality before the Chromatic Court, revealing horrors that break minds. Days later, portals appear across the kingdom—not disasters, but invitations. Step through, and you’re promised another chance. Die, and consciousness persists in a world called Dereth.

Thomas, a soldier drowning in violence, chooses the portal as escape. Elena watches her son die and follows the promise of reunion. Maajid al-Zemar, a brilliant young mage, sees the joke and laughs. And Duulak, responsible for it all, steps through to understand what he’s unleashed.

In Dereth, death is not an ending but a transformation. The Olthoi—insectoid nightmares—hunt endlessly. When they kill you, you resurrect at a lifestone, consciousness intact, memories preserved. You can’t truly die. You can only… iterate.

Asheron’s Call was the MMORPG that shaped my understanding of persistent worlds, consequences that matter, and what it means to inhabit a space where death is a mechanic rather than finality. This novel reimagines that world through a darker lens: What if respawning isn’t a game convenience but a horrifying truth about consciousness? What if the world you’re trapped in is farming something from your iterations?

The four protagonists are based on character archetypes I played in AC: the scholar (Duulak), the warrior (Thomas), the protective healer (Elena), and the mage—Maajid al-Zemar, directly named after my favorite character, who approached the game as a puzzle to be solved rather than a world to be accepted.

This is portal fantasy meets existential horror, wrapped in the mechanics of an MMORPG and asking: When you can’t die, what exactly are you?

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The Four Souls

Duulak the Twice-Blessed

The Scholar Who Broke Reality

Forty-seven years old, brilliant, and burdened by the weight of having been right too many times. He proved consciousness could cross the boundary of death by resurrecting Rashida. Then he tore open a rift to parallel worlds before the Chromatic Court, and something looked back that should never have been seen.

The portals that appear across the kingdom are his doing. He knows it. When the call comes, he answers—not from hope, but from responsibility.

Thomas

The Soldier Who Chose Death

Violence is a language Thomas speaks fluently. Thirty-two years defending the kingdom’s borders, thirty-two years of killing becoming easier, until one morning he wakes and realizes he’s forgotten what his wife’s laugh sounds like.

The portal appears during a skirmish. His companions see invitation. Thomas sees escape from what he’s become. He steps through not to live again, but to stop living as he is.

Elena

The Mother Who Refused Surrender

Her son died. Plague took him while she held his hand and promised lies about survival. When the portal appears, it whispers of another chance, and Elena—practical, pragmatic, done with accepting fate—walks through without hesitation.

In Dereth, she becomes the group’s anchor. The one who refuses to let despair consume them. The one who insists that consciousness persisting through death must mean something.

Maajid al-Zemar

The Mage Who Saw the Joke

Seventeen, brilliant, and utterly convinced that existence is a cosmic joke with humanity as the punchline. He discovered magic by stealing implements from traveling priests and teaching himself the patterns that bend reality.

When the portal appears in the royal court, Maajid hears what others miss: it’s not singing promises, it’s laughing at certainty. He steps through because the joke is too good not to see where it leads.

Personal Note: Maajid is directly named after my favorite character from years of playing Asheron’s Call—a mage who approached the game mechanics as elegant systems to be understood rather than immersive fantasy to be believed. This character captures that spirit: someone who sees the architecture beneath the illusion and finds it beautiful.

Themes

Consciousness Through Death

In Dereth, death is not the end. When the Olthoi kill you—and they will—you resurrect at a lifestone. Same memories. Same self. No heaven, no judgment, just… continuation.

The horror: You can’t truly die. You can only experience dying, over and over, each iteration leaving its mark on consciousness that won’t stop.

The question: If consciousness persists through death, what is being preserved? Are you the same person after a thousand resurrections? Ten thousand?

The Mechanics of Existence

Dereth runs on rules. Explicit, gameable rules. The suns that mark time. The lifestones that bind consciousness. The portals that transport without moving. The Olthoi that hunt with algorithmic precision.

For Duulak: Rules mean understanding is possible. Every system can be mapped, reverse-engineered, controlled.

For Maajid: Rules mean reality is artificial. The question isn’t how to survive the game—it’s who’s playing and why they built these specific mechanics.

Asheron’s Experiment

No one has seen Asheron. But the evidence of his work is everywhere. The portals that summon specific people. The lifestones that preserve consciousness. The Olthoi that kill with perfect efficiency.

The realization: They’re not being saved. They’re being farmed. Consciousness modified through repeated death and resurrection, growing into something beyond human architecture, while Asheron—whoever or whatever Asheron is—observes the results.

MMORPG as Metaphor

The novel uses MMORPG mechanics as literal truth:

• Respawning isn’t convenience, it’s horror
• Level progression is consciousness modification
• Quest objectives are behavioral conditioning
• The persistent world continues whether you’re logged in or not

The question: When the game mechanics become reality, and you can’t log out, what does “playing” even mean?

Structure

Volume I: The Calling

• The Weight of Knowing - Duulak’s rift demonstration and its consequences
• The Weight of Numbers - Portals appearing across the kingdom
• Four character introductions - Why each answers the call
• Arrival in Dereth - Death is not what they expected

Volume II: The Pattern

• Understanding the rules of Dereth
• The Olthoi and the inevitability of death
• Consciousness persisting through resurrection
• The Seekers—others trying to understand Asheron’s purpose

Volume III: The Iteration

• Repeated deaths and their effects on consciousness
• Maajid perceiving the underlying systems
• Duulak’s research into the lifestone network
• Elena refusing to accept this as final

Volume IV: The Recognition

• Understanding what Asheron is farming
• The choice between human and whatever comes next
• Maajid’s final insight into the cosmic joke
• Four souls, transformed by iterations they can’t escape

Why This Story?

I spent years in Asheron’s Call. Not just playing it, but thinking about what it meant. A persistent world that continued whether you were there or not. Death as a mechanic that reset you but preserved progress. Quests that suggested narrative but could be ignored. A magic system with elegant mathematical foundations.

AC was different from other MMORPGs. It respected your intelligence. It had complexity that rewarded understanding. And it had this haunting quality—the sense that the world existed independent of your observation, that Asheron himself might be watching from somewhere you couldn’t reach.

This novel takes those experiences and asks: What if it wasn’t a game? What if respawning was real, and horrifying? What if the mechanics you were learning to exploit were actually modifying your consciousness in ways you couldn’t perceive?

The four characters are based on my different playstyles over the years. But Maajid—the mage who sees the systems beneath the world—he’s the most personally meaningful. Named directly after my favorite character, he represents the mindset I brought to AC: not immersion in fantasy, but fascination with elegant design, with seeing the architecture and finding it more beautiful than the illusion it supports.

Current Status

Publication: Complete manuscript (210 pages, ~120,000 words) Last Updated: November 11, 2025 Format: Epic fantasy novel in four volumes Approach: MMORPG mechanics as existential horror, consciousness through death, portal fantasy with cosmic dread Dedicated to: The world of Asheron’s Call and the years I spent exploring it

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This novel is my tribute to Asheron’s Call—the MMORPG that taught me that game mechanics could be elegant, that worlds could persist independent of the player, and that sometimes the most interesting questions aren’t about winning but about understanding what game you’re actually playing and who built the rules.

Maajid al-Zemar lives again, seeing the joke and laughing at the certainty that anything matters beyond the pattern.