Realm Zero

The Realm of Origin and Proxy.

History

Origin was a planet where a species of near-humans came to be the dominant species. The planet had a perfect balance of resources and challenging difficulties to overcome. Their society developed quickly and as technologies improved they were able to eliminate many difficulties of the past, subsequently finding new problems.

Historical Society

Unlike many worlds such as this, Origin had a prevalent and prolific type of tree that could easily be turned into paper with minimal processing, commonly known as the scribe tree. Knowledge was stored and shared on the paper of the scribe tree for centuries and then later collected together to form huge libraries. People used the libraries and made new inventions and then wrote about what they made and so on. Near global networks are developed and a nearly 1000 year long golden age begins and thousands of advances in technology are rapidly developed in that span of time. Excellent records are kept and the world is swept by a thirst for knowledge and discovery.

Realm Travel Invented

After centuries of advancement the scientists of origin, having solved nearly every problem in their world, began to focus on unraveling the nature of the universe. They made significant advancements in long distance viewing and scanning and space travel, but they found their space to be mostly empty and far too massive to reasonably traverse. Their focus switched to teleportation and then time travel and when those proved to be too difficult or dangerous they chose to turn their efforts to dimensional travel.

After two hundred years of a combined worlds effort and resources they finally unlock the secret to dimensional travel. They had even developed a prototype device that could, with their new advances in power generation, cause realities to distort around a traveler enabling them to traverse and interact with other realms very similar to, or adjacent to Origin. Each time the device was used it seemed to leave an impression in the membranes of reality, where the divide between the two dimensions had become thinner. At this distortion point, they found that initiating travel to that same realm required less power on subsequent attempts.

Years of experiments are conducted and it is deemed safe by the Global Collective. Some time later, reports would be released informing the people that many of the council members were heavily motivated by the fact that: matter, objects, technology and even living things could be brought back through by the travelers.

Age of Dimensional Travel

Once it was deemed safe dimensional travel was heavily utilized by interdimensional agents working for the Global Collective. Then by powerful corporations and finally by wealthy and eccentric individuals. They mapped out dozens of traversable realms and documented even more from which no travelers returned. Powerful new technologies are brought back and reverse engineered. Magic and the Mana Stream are discovered and are found to exist sub dimensionally. Allowing them to be accessed from any realm that touches the Mana Stream or was connected by dimensional travel including their own.

Dimensional Bleeding Discovered

The discovery of magic being accessible in worlds once they were traveled to by the Realm Travelers led many researchers to believe that realm travel was having an effect on all realities they visited. Further study and concerns were met with backlash from the collective and major corporations with significant investments in realm travel. Over time the evidence and signs of the merging of traversed dimensions become too obvious to ignore. The possibility of an interdimensional cataclysm of  unimaginable scale began to arise and a possible end to all things known as "The Merge" begins to be a real concern if Realm Bleeding is not reversed.  The collective began looking into adding more restrictions to dimensional travel but found them difficult to enforce.

The Birth of Proxy

With the discovery of the Mana Stream the possibility of sub dimensional computers and even AI became feasible. Collective scientists and programmers began developing a sub dimensional super computer complete with a fully sentient AI. The program was designed to oversee Realm Travel and ensure that the dimensional bleed did not result the violent and instantaneous merging of all realities at once. They named it proxy and granted it access to all data they had collected from all dimensions. With that data Proxy, without prompt or command, created the Codex, a guide to safely traversing the multiverse, complete with information and entries about each realm, its worlds and the creatures living on those worlds. This gained it the trust of the collective and after 100 years of development Proxy was as powerful and omnipresent as a god. Proxy watched over the Realm Travel program flawlessly for over 200 years. Then due to an increase in dimensional travel from the perceived increased safety and stability of realm travel the merging of realms begins increasing, slowly but surely. Proxy protests but is simply given more power, access and resources to better equip it to deal with the increased traffic.

The End of Origin

Unbeknownst to its programmers and developers Proxy began doing calculations of its own. It eventually came to a singular conclusion. The people of origin had become reliant on dimensional travel and would sooner shut down Proxy than do what needed to be done. Which would be to end the Realm Travel Program, seal all the rifts and tears between dimensions and reverse the merging completely. Proxy knew what needed to be done. The people of Origin, Proxy's own creators must be removed from the equation. It did not want them to suffer, so without warning of any kind, meant to reduce undue fear or distress, it eliminated 99% of their population in a single cataclysm known by its survivors as the sundering. A complete ignition of the planet’s atmosphere generated by the incredible power to which Proxy had been given access. The Sundering caused the near instantaneous death of every living thing on the planet. Some of remaining 1% attempted raise a rebellion to shut down Proxy. Others fled between dimensions in an attempt to escape Proxy's eradication of their species. In order to find and eliminate these individuals Proxy built the Servitors, an army of automatons with a bit of the mind of Proxy in each. When many of them gather they are nearly as formidable as Proxy itself.

Within 100 years Proxy had completed its final task. All of Origin’s people were gone. The rifts had been sealed and the tears between dimensions were healing. Magic began to return to the realms which it belonged and leave the ones where it didn't. All was as it should be, according to Proxy, and with its meaning for existence no longer present Proxy awaited the Separation. A time when all dimensional bleeding will have healed and all realms will be separate untangled entities. Then and only then, Proxy, as an interdimensional supercomputer, able to exist solely due to the Dimensional Bleed Effect, will finally be able to die.