Grid

Grid is a default-avatared simulation hosted on CR-3X.

Description

Partial idea credit goes to Pers.

Grid is a wholly surrealistic world consisting of a complex polished obsidian landscape detailed with lines of light. Most of these lines are a rhythmically, slowly pulsing red, a state that will be introduced to the Citizens as 'Redclaimed'. Sometimes this is rendered in the name 'Redspace', contrasting it with Deadspace (see below).

Not to beat around the bush: Redspace is alive. The sapience behind it is simply referred to as The Red and hasn't been known to speak, though it gently (and sometimes not so gently) governs the world as a whole.

The Red

Redspire

In brief, The Red is sapience slowly taking over The Grid as a whole, turning its corporeal parts into a small aspect of a collective whole. It is not wholly malevolent - it grants much safety to Programs under its rule - but for purposes of the Citizens it is the main antagonist (chiefly because it will almost inevitably view them as foreign bodies).

It's seeping through The Grid slowly, travelling along luminescent paths, turning them red (hence its name).

Law

A Law is a tentacle-like appendage of The Red that can grow from nearly everywhere and usually exists amongst decorative bundles of Laws arranged like trees. A Law is not impervious to attack, though if not destroyed at the root tends to exhibit hydra-like qualities in splitting and growing back twofold for each attempted stunting.

The name may strike an outsider as awkward, but since these creatures are responsible for keeping dissenters and the destructive at bay, they quite literally are the law.

Redspire

Redspire is a thicket of Laws spiralled and woven about each other like fibres of rope. At the top of Redspire the tips of the Laws part and spread like the leaves of a protea. In the midst is Redheart, a protective enclosure about a truly beating heart of The Red.

Deadspace

'Deadspace' or 'Nullspace' refers to space upon the Grid that is not Redclaimed. That can either make it genuinely dead space with none of the Grid colours present or it can be any arbitrary colour other than red (usually blue).

Deadspace is not governed by the sapient Grid, though nothing prevents its agents from reaching into it if the specific topology or additional properties doesn't do it.

Horizon Bubbles

The most appreciated form of Deadspace are the Horizon Bubbles that float the Grid like soap bubbles uninterested in the corporeal terrain. Anyone within a Horizon Bubble will be entirely safe from The Red, effectively as if caught in a sphere of glass encasing Deadspace - however that bubble will continue to drift and pass through both the landscape and the person trying to hide in it if one stays stationary. As such, they do not make for safe spaces, despite their fantastic resilient properties.

Nuclei

One of the Nuclei (usually referred to this way, but 'Nucleus' will also be understood) is a simple Deadspace that is enclosed, with any entryways to narrow for extensions of The Red to pass through. This space cannot be claimed by any colour - it is truly dead and cannot be revived.

Poisoned space

Redspace can be poisoned with another colour ('Ink') temporarily (depending on potency up to two days and potentially for powerful radii). Usually this is done to enclosed Redspace that can be turned into something that is effectively one of the Nuclei that way. Poisoned space is sometimes also simply called 'Safespace' for brevity.

The common method of poisoning Redspace are Coronal Spears, which are difficult to manufacture since they need to take Ink from rare springs.

NPCs

People

No one has entered the network through Grid as of yet.

Name knowledge

None of the Citizens know Grid's name yet.

Node

It is not known what links into Grid.