Game Kernel Creation--HELP!!!! please :)

Hello, Okay, here the schtick: I''m making a game engine desinged for multiplayer and RPG-style games. The core of the engine will be based around a scripting engine that developers will be able to use to make whatever they want (within the confinds of the language, obviously). -- BTW, I''ve never made a scripting engine before, but am learning fast. Any help that people may have with that such as tutorials or just suggestions would also be apreciate -- My main question is how would I go about righting a system that will take the information from the scripting engine (after it has been through the lexer and parser) and change that into Virtual Machine opcodes to be executed by the VM (I''m assuming that it requires a VM, although if I am wrong, I''m open to other suggestions)? If at all possible I would like to avoid using alot of assembly, because I want this to be as platform/system independent so portability is easy (hence the scripting language in the first place). Thank you for any help that anyone can give me! Thanks, Thomas ''Code-Poet with writer''s block'' Luce