set_author changes the author of the object that it is called within. That author will get credit for all future actions of that object that affect mudlib statistics. Note that this may cause some weird numbers to occur in the categories "objects" and "array_size", since the object may have initialized arrays or been created under the original author's credit, but it could be destructed or free the arrays that it's using under another author, thus reducing numbers from a count that didn't have those same numbers added previously. To rememdy this, only use set_author within create(4), and use it before any arrays are allocated if at all possible.