Stonehaven League

Devon Walker has one chance to turn her life around, and Relic Online is it. Hired as a salaried player to push the game's creator AI to its creative limits, Devon logs in expecting adventure — and spawns in a ruined jungle city with no skills and pocket lint in her inventory. Immediately running afoul of a stone golem the size of an apartment building, Devon learns that Relic Online is just getting started with her.

After hacking out a home from the choking jungle, gathering a loyal tribe of followers, and earning a wisp stalker who insists she is some kind of champion, Devon Walker has established her new normal — giant telepathic parrots, smelly goblins, and a tyrannical demon priestess included. But Relic Online isn't a wussy kids' game. The system cripples Devon's most powerful ability, strangles the village food supply, sends demons bursting through rifts in the earth, and exploits her worst fear. Then the other players discover Devon's home, and everything changes.

Devon has a settlement to grow into a city, a character she'd love to level, and an epic questline to finish that could reawaken the ancient city of Ishildar and turn the tide against rising demon forces. But real-world crises keep pulling her away — a friend injured in a mountain bike crash, a gaming company employee who needs her help unraveling the troubling actions of the demonic AI Zaa, and a raid force of anarchist players inbound to demolish Stonehaven, the only real home Devon has ever known.

Devon's former guildmate Owen is trapped in the demonic plane — not just his in-game avatar, but his mind, leaving his real-life body in a coma. The only way to get him back seems to be journeying into the underworld and guiding him home. Shouldn't be a big deal — as long as Devon doesn't mind transforming into a demon herself.

Freshly returned from the underworld, Devon Walker has a major task ahead: a demon army is coming, and she must prepare Stonehaven for war. No amount of fortification will allow the small settlement to hold against the horde — for her followers to survive, she must retrieve the final relic of Ishildar and wake the ancient city's power. Too bad about all the noobs getting in the way.

Devon Walker completed an epic questline to reawaken ancient magic, but so far the results have been anticlimactic. Worse, unless she figures something out, the game world — including the NPC friends she believes are just as alive as her human guildmates — is pretty much going to die in fire. Fortunately, being the Chosen One means she's still got to fix things. No pressure.

Devon Walker kind of saved the game world — or at least earned Aventalia's citizens a small respite from the demon attacks — but the wild magic she used had devastating consequences, starting with a shattered landscape and the apparent vanishing of her settlement. Now it's up to her to fix the problems, save her NPC friends, and lay plans to take the attack to the demon forces. The challenges are too big to face alone, and Devon will need the help of her guildmates.