Dungeons & Dragons Online with permanent death
The land of tears gave forth a blast of wind,
And fulminated a vermilion light,
Which overmastered in me every sense,
And as a man whom sleep hath seized, I fell.
— D. Alighieri, “Divina Commedia,” canto III, trans. H. W. Longfellow 1867
“Mortem Aeternum Permadeath” is a guild in the MMORPG known as Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO), on the Sarlona server.
Mortem Aeternum is distinct from most guilds in DDO, as it enforces a playstyle known as permadeath, which means that, in general, if your character dies, it is permanently dead and must be deleted (or must otherwise leave the guild). For more information on the exact rules that are used by Mortem Aeternum, see the Rules page.
Permadeath is a way of keeping the game itself challenging (rather than simply time-consuming, c.f. past life grinding), while adding a few extra elements of realism and bringing out game mechanics that are otherwise trivial or unnoticed in “normal” play.