A page for me to write about the worlds my stories take place in! Or rather some of said worlds, really just the important ones. And just the important ones basically means Varemo (which has its own page anyway because there is too much to fit here) and my Digimon worlds. Oh yeah and like one other one too I guess.
My main world and where most of my stories take place! Varemo is a small European country situated between France and Italy, with the official language being English due to centuries of British influence just before gaining independence during the Napoleonic wars. It has a rich history spanning from pre-Roman times to modern day (mid-1980s, rather).
Stories taking place in Varemo are split into three different timelines:
Main timeline which follows the base timeline, focusing on the early to mid-1980s
Years of Crimson which diverted from the base timeline in the 1950s when a US-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected communist government, plummeting the country into a dictatorship and subsequently a civil war
One-Way Mirror which is set centuries in the future and joins the two timelines into a dystopian world plagued by class inequality, terrorism and pandemics
Main timeline and Years of Crimson take place at the same time (albeit in different timelines of course, so they do not directly relate) whereas One-Way Mirror is a sequel to both - arguably a point so far in the future that it does not matter what timeline led to events in it.
Due to how much lore Varemo has there is a page dedicate to it right here!
The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a Digimon is a good guy with a Digimon.
The existence of rogue bits of data on the wider network has been known for decades, but only when those rogue bits of data became seeingly sentient did network overseers decide to step in. Not that they had much time as the world became increasingly reliant on technology - perhaps it is exactly because the solution had to be rushed that it was such a... Questionable solution. It was dubbed the Yggdrasil Protocol, touted as a failsafe program capable of managing the rogue code. Managing being the keyword, because the strangest part about those anomalies was that whenever it seemed engineers managed to isolate the problem codes, they evolved.
Thus the solution proposed by the Yggdrasil Protocol was to keep the rogue coding from interfering with the wider network. Out of sight, out of mind.
What unfortunately happened was that the Yggdrasil Protocol's ability to learn, change and adapt made it turn into the things it was meant to contain. More than that, the exponential expansion of the network (and later consumer internet) allowed the rogue codes to also grow exponentially and form a whole world, as infinitely expanding as the internet and existing parallel to our own world - king of this world none other than Yggdrasil itself, having reprogrammed itself to prioritise preservation above all else. None of that was known however, because so long as the Yggdrasil Protocol kept the rogue codes away from the wider network that was all that mattered.
It all came to a boiling point when the rogue bits of code evolved far enough to develop sentience and, more dangerously, appetite.
Through a process known as realisation these rogue bits of code could realise into the human world (as they called it) and, having acquired physical form, the newly dubbed Digimon (portmanteau of digital and monster) proved an immediate threat to humanity. Governments all over scrambled to fight these creatures, mindless and hostile in their hungers.
Decades have passed since those first realisations into the human world. The threat posed by Digimon is still very real, but humanity has more or less learned to cope with it. New tools and methods are constantly being developed; the current scramble is to find a method that will allow for the complete severing of the Digital World from the human world (if not the former's destruction).
Digimon have, however, never stopped evolving. Not all Digimon who realise into the human world now are mindless monsters but, on the contrary, many posess human intelligence and ambitions. Needless to say, Digimon are powerful creatures capable of great harm - there have already been numerous cases of criminals using them or, more accurately, partnering with Digimon. A governmental organisation known as DATS (Digital Accident Tactics Squad) is tasked with both dealing with aggressive Digimon realising into the human world, and criminals using Digimon. What distinguishes DATS members from regular police forces is that they work alongside Digimon.
While the phenomenon is not yet understood, it is possible for a Digimon still in the Digital World to resonate with a human. In such cases the Digimon is brought to the human world in the form of a DigiEgg which invariably finds the human it resonated with. When possible, the human is recruited into DATS as fighting Digimon with Digimon has thus far proven to be the most effective method of defeating them; when not possible, the Digimon is disposed of.
Fighting alongside a Digimon however is not for the faint of heart. A human and Digimon who resonated with one another share a bond - they share strength (allowing a Digimon to evolve in battle) but pain too, to a degree. Thus far the long-term effects of this are unknown.
How did we get here? This started off as a game.
Digimon is a succesful multimedia franchise that has been going strong since the 1990s, featuring everything from cards to merchandise to anime to games - the latter especially, as the brand was originally developed as a series of virtual pets and new models still come out regularly. These v-pets come in many shapes and sizes, from retro-inspired keychain critters with LCD screens to smartwatch-like. What connects them all is their ability to connect to a smartphone app and, from there, to the wider internet.
While originally developed by a group of AI enthusiast hobbists in the 1980s, the Digimon brand has since changed hands into Kamishiro's, a massive company dealing with numerous products and IPs. When Kamishiro's virtual reality, Eden, became massively-popular it took no time for Digimon to grow there too. Suddenly, battles were no longer limited to an exchange of static pixels but had become these grandiose events taking place in real-feeling arenas, with audiences made up of like-minded enthusiasts watching and cheering. Of course Eden is massive and frequented by all walks of society, many of whom have no interest in games such as Digimon.
For those who enjoy the franchise however, Eden is the best thing to happen to it in a while. The introduction of virtual reality has made their Digimon feel like geniune companions; while the programs' AI has always been praised for its complexity, none could have expected just how interesting interacting with their Digimon in Eden would be. It almost feels as though they were not AI after all.
Because, well, Digimon are not AI after all.
While originally constructed as such, within the original coding (which is still at the base of all Digimon v-pets) is the ability to evolve and grow even without showing signs of such. Limited to an LCD toy this means little: when connected to the internet, this changes everything. Unbeknownst to humans, a parallel world - the Digital World - began forming on the network and expands alongside human use of said network. And this Digital World is inhabited by Digimon, both ones that migrated there from v-pets and, later, ones that were born there. Eden inadvertently became a midway point between the digital and human worlds - one where Digimon can be as real as the technology allows them to.
Despite the name however, Eden is not perfect. The sheer volume of the people using it means that one will inevitably run into shady characters: hackers, as they are called, responsible for everything from petty trolling to account theft to phishing. Moreover, said hackers have found that the complex coding of Digimon can be used to carry out their nefarious deeds. So there are two kinds of Digimon players: those who enjoy the monster-raising and battling aspects, and those who enjoy causing havoc.
Complicating things is the existence of a third group: those who found out that Digimon are not just AI.
The process colloquially known as bio-emerge allows a Digimon to take on a physical form in the real world - retaining its supernatural abilities. Thus far the process is not at all understood, but a handful of tamers have found themselves suddenly face to face with what until then had been an AI in a game. Almost as strange is a different type of data transfer: Digimon travelling from the digital world and into Eden, inevitably losing much data and reverting to their earlier stages, inhabiting Kowloon, the lower levels of Eden. Such Digimon seek out a human partner to help them grow stronger - a goal shared by all Digimon.
Human consciousness is online now - but so are Digimon.
The year is 2XXX and the world is a grotesque palimpsest of neon and decay, extravagance and squalor - all connected through the Neurawork network, a new technology that allows for the digitization of human consciousness and subsequent storage on cloud servers. The technology's utility grew exponentially, from expanding the capabilities of conventional psychiatry to offering solace to sufferers of neurodegenerative disorders. While still controversial, this technology would also allow for users to upload their consciousness into a new body when their current one fails.
Neurawork functions in the background. People go through their days whilst their consciousness is backed up every few minutes - it is such an automated, painless system that most pay it no mind. Security is top-notch - it has been proven time and time again - in large part due to the fact that the encoding does not allow decryption unless performed by the consciousness' owner themselves, so there is no reason to not partake in it. Besides, ever since the government partnered with the company behind the technology, allowing your consciousness to be backed onto the network has become borderline mandatory.
What nobody could have anticipated was just how alive the network really was.
Digimon are sentient life-forms with human intelligence, capable of living entirely within the network, temporarily growing stronger (thought a process known as evolution) to battle, and who are extremely sensitive to human emotions, memories, cognition. Sometimes, a Digimon will be born within someone's online consciousness. And sometimes, that is not where the Digimon will stay.
The process of physically transferring into the Neurawork is known as digitization whereas returning from the online world to reality is redigitization - both processes Digimon are capable of and, furthermore, those they have bonded with (whose consciousness the Digimon was born from) are also capable of travelling to and from the Neurawork when together with their partner Digimon. The world within the Neurawork too has evolved far beyond those who created the technology anticipated. Within the network human consciousness takes on a tangible form in the shape of a dungeon of sorts, moulded after the person's own perception of the world, feelings, life experiences. Aside from being vast and convoluted these maze-like environments are also dangerous; non-sentient monsters of uncertain origin roam them, attacking intruders. And network or not, any damage to the body or psyche sustained within the Neurawork is real.
So where does that leave the world? To almost everyone, the existence of life-forms within the online backup of their consciousness is irrelevant. To some however, these newfoud abilities to explore what should technically be unexplorable have opened up countless possibilities. More so when it was discovered that Digimon can affect online consciousness too. Theoretically the process of backing up consciousness onto the Neurawork is one-way: information from the real world gets backed onto the network. The pulling of information back from the Neurawork and into a human requires specialised equipment - or Digimon. Though the process is different, Digimon are capable of forcing changes onto the online consciousness to be pulled back onto the source consciousness. What is to stop Digimon users from using their newfound powers to make the world into a better place, then?
Unfortunately for Digimon users however, the government is not as ignorant about the Neurawork's true nature as they had hoped.
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