Showing results by author "James Hunter" in All Categories

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.

An EMT in 2042 San Diego, Jack knows he won't survive the impact of the massive asteroid hurtling towards Earth. After all, 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 virtual reality world of Viridan Gate Online, a completely immersive online multiplayer fantasy role-playing game, or RPG.

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.

Two months ago, Clay Jaeger, his wife Alex, and his chainsaw-toting brother Joe came to the Infested Zone on a mission: kill a Dungeon Lord. What they found along the way was a land of opportunity. Gold-dropping monsters, magical weapons, and best of all, freedom—all there for the taking. If they can live long enough to grab it. Surviving in the wasteland has been a constant fight, but thriving in it, that’s going to take something more. Not just power, but the brains to use it in ways nobody’s seen before.

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 weeklong leadership retreat at a remote Benedictine monastery.

Forged in the fires of the lawless wasteland, Clay, Alex, and Joe have finally earned the unimaginable power of Incants. All they want now is to settle down, drink a few beers, and carve out a new life west of the containment wall. Not everyone in the IZ has such noble goals at heart, however. When the Jaeger Squad learns that another group of magic-slinging Incants are enslaving homesteaders to farm gold and harvest enchanted items to sell on the black market, they can’t just turn a blind eye. Especially since Clay and the others are the only ones with the power to make things right.

Not even gods are safe from the power of the fabled Doom-Forged weapon. Grim Jack didn’t set out to be the leader of Eldgard’s united armies, but with dungeons falling one by one and hordes of Vogthar pouring into the material plane, it’s up to him to save both citizens and travelers from digital destruction. His doomsday weapon will take him straight into the heart of Morsheim, but once there, even the combined might of the Empire and the Crimson Alliance might not be enough.

It’s been a busy month for 32-year-old Jack Mitchel: Three weeks ago, he died. Two weeks ago, he founded the first Faction in the ultra-immersive, fantasy-based VRMMORPG, Viridian Gate Online. A week and a half ago the world ended, destroyed by a cataclysmic asteroid. Seven days ago, he conquered the Imperial city of Rowanheath, bringing all of Eldgard to the brink of war.

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.

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.

Roark von Graf has been fighting for one thing since the night his family was slaughtered: to kill the Tyrant King. Even when he was transported to a strange new world called a VRMMORPG, Roark recruited an army of Trolls, built a nation of high-level Dungeons, and crushed his opposition through trickery, seedy alliances, and sheer overwhelming force, all in service of revenge.

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 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?

Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality that, tragically, has seldom been realized in practice. While these contradictions have caused dissent and even violence, there was always an underlying and evolving solidarity drawn from the cultural resources of America’s “hybrid Enlightenment”. James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of “culture wars” 30 years ago, tells us in this new book that those historic sources of national solidarity have now largely dissolved.

New worlds get new kings, and that’s exactly what Abby thinks she’s found in her boss’ hacked code. 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.

December, 2042: The Imperial Legion marches, and war looms on the horizon. Jack Mitchel and his misfit crew of rebels never wanted a fight with the Empire, but the time for diplomacy has passed. 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.

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, Five-Faced God of Justice, and entrusted with the power of the Vigil Bound.

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.

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. Thankfully, everything isn't quite as hopeless as it seems - Jack has a plan. Sort of. With only a handful of supporters, he's going to get the jump on the bloodthirsty empire, by snatching one of their key cities right from underneath their noses. In order to pull off the impossible, however, Jack's going to have to develop his formidable Shadowmancer powers.

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.