Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by American studio Virtrium and originally released by Artifact Entertainment as Horizons: Empire of Istaria. Tulga Games, LLC acquired the game and all related assets on January 25, 2005 and sold them to EI Interactive in July 2006. On July 18, 2007, Virtrium LLC (Vi) acquired the rights to the game. Set in a sword and sorcery world, the game allows players to be adventurers, crafters, or both, and features a struggle between the "living races" (including the players), and "the Withered Aegis", an army of the undead seeking to destroy all life. Istaria is unique among MMORPGs in that players may choose a dragon for their avatar. Istaria allows players to build non-instanced player communities with either multi-level underground dragon chambers or ground level communities. Gameplay Istaria uses the race/class/level paradigm common to many role-playing games, as well as similar mechanics as other massively multiplayer online games. The goal is to join the forces of the "Gifted" together with other players against the evil hordes of undead, the "Withered Aegis", to build communities, repair broken structures, and solve quests. Unlike other MMORPGs, players do not normally fight each other in player versus player (PvP) battles, but they work together in player versus environment (PvE) battles. To fight in PvP battles, one would have to travel to a designated PvP area, like the Isle of Battles. Races There are eleven playable races in Istaria. These include Dragons, in addition to the more biped classes of Human, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Half-giant Dryad, Satyr, Fiend, Saris (a catlike anthropomorphic humanoid), and Sslik (an asexual non-anthropomorphic reptilian humanoid). Biped Classes There are 28 adventures and 19 trade schools a biped can choose from. The biped classes have the special ability to be able to learn any amount of trade schools. Only one trade and adventure school can be active at a time. Each adventure school adds master-able abilities to the character, which can be used in all other adventure schools, adding additional powers to the character. These abilities can be changed between the schools, as they often have their own disadvantages as well. The adventure schools split up into the healer, mage and warrior paths, as well as hybrid paths. Dragons Dragons have one adventure school and three trade schools. In this sense, they are different from bipeds. A