(or start) factions in the game. If the faction is large enough, they can take control of one of the eight strongholds in the world, granting members access to that stronghold and any skills exclusive to it. On death, characters normally lose experience, drop a random item, and become a ghostly sphere that is only able to move and speak. The character is restored when they return to a non-combat zone, or Sanctuary. The game does allow players to 'kill' other characters permanently through the use of a particularly rare and powerful skill, though the difficulty of obtaining and using it prevents all but the most experienced and renowned characters from doing so. Setting Underlight takes place within the City of Dreams - a consciousness shared by all those who visit it and enveloped by the Chaos, the source of the nightmares in the city. Characters come from a realm called Cloudsbreak, a plane divided into an infinite number of 'shards', one for each player, which are unable to interact with each other and are relatively mundane. Characters arrive in the city during sleep, and thus logging out is referred to and roleplayed as waking. Most story events in the game are entirely player driven, and structured around the existence of up to eight houses that open and close as events in the game transpire, and as factions rise and fall. Each house has its own ideology and conflict between the houses often plays a major role in the plots and motivations of individual characters. The game world itself is spread across multiple planes, with each house controlling one of the basic planes accessible by new dreamers. Planes that are only open to higher level dreamers tend to be further away from the city's hub, more dangerous, and more affected and distorted by the surrounding Chaos. The game uses different terms for most familiar concepts that reflect the setting and help to facilitate roleplay. Characters are called 'dreamers' while monsters are called 'nightmares'. Items are 'talismans', skills are called 'arts'. Art levels are 'plateaus', character levels are 'orbits', every ten character levels is a 'sphere'. Logging out is 'waking' and staying logged in while away from the computer is referred to as 'trancing'. References https://web.archive.org/web/20130228124806/http://www.1up.com/reviews/underlight https://web.archive.org/web/20000816002417/http://www.gamespy.com/interviews/ulprofile_a.shtm https://web.archive.org/web/20011205092637/http://www.rpgplanet.com/games/824.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20011123190751/http://rpgplanet.com/underlight/dagger_journal.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20011215130657/http://rpgplanet.com/underlight/mike_journal.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20011215125628/http://rpgplanet.com/underlight/martin_jour.htm https://archive.org/details/Computer_Gaming_World_Issue_217/page/n91/mode/2up https://web.archive.org/web/19980423224847/http://gamespot.com/features/10multi/und.html https://www.gamezone.com/news/lyra_studios_contracts_themis_group_to_market_underlight/ https://www.gamezone.com/news/lyra_studios_to_add_background_music_for_underlight/ External links Original Lyra Studios Underlight Web Page Underlight Wiki 1998 video games Massively multiplayer online