The Sphidi Saga
A virtual world takes on a life of its own and heralds the climax of galactic history.
Virtuality series
A persistent virtual world and direct neural uplinks change the nature of relationships, society, and life itself.
(Later features of Darklight, such as assorted ents and trolls, dragons, merfolk, wargs and stags, and werefolk, originate from these early versions of Virtuality, as do elementary versions of the goddesses Fire and Ice. All human inhabitants of Virtuality would be described as Dhampires or Halfelves by later Darklight terminology).
When people ("Dhampires"/"Halfelves") 'die' in Virtuality, the automatically regenerate new bodies/avatar as their old ones decay; the faster the old one decays, the faster the new avatar regenerates. A completely disembodied person (freshly dead) is completely invisible, completely intangible (can move through solid objects effortlessly), completely massless (unaffected by gravity), and can move anywhere at any speed by sheer force of will. As their new body generates, they become more opaque, more solid (requiring more force to move through objects), more massive (more affected by gravity), and less able to move by force of will. A half-regenerated avatar, thus, appears ghostly, can push though solid objects with some effort but cannot move heavy objects, can jump preternaturally high up or far down, and can affect their speed and direction while airborn to a limited extend.
Merfolk are the gatekeepers between different "realms" in Virtuality, controlling passage across the deepest seas. Their primary responsibility is to to balance the realms by grouping 'players' by skill and behavior, keeping weaker players from the 'harder' realms, and keeping rougher, more violent players from the 'softer' realms. Strong but gentle players are free to pass through the realms as they please. They are in some sense like angels controlling passage between heaven and different levels of hell; and to the extent that Virtuality comes to serve as a sort of afterlife, even more so. They have no power beyond transport between realms, though the green sea-dragons serve them in that capacity.
Fire and Ice are the personifications of passion and dispassion, and the "goddesses" of the realms. Fire and her followers treasure strong emotions, of both positive (love) and negative (hate) varieties; they will be warm, but you might get burned. Ice and her followers shun emotions, again both negative ones and also positive ones; they hold no grudges, but they also have no compassion. In the 'softer' realms, they work together to advocate love and non-violence, while in the 'harder' realms they oppose each other and epitomize the twin evils of violence and indifference. Red and blue dragons serve Fire and Ice and weild their eponymous powers, respectively.
Wargs and Stags are non-sentient fauna, and have a predator/prey relationship with each other. Their respective were-varieties are sentient, somewhat sapient even, longevously immortal, and invulnerable; but they are concerned only with the preservation of their respective herds. They typically appear as normal people ("Dhampires"/"Halfelves" in later terminology), albiet inexplicably living alone in the wilderness, and they only invoke their monstrous powers when their herds are over-hunted.
Ents and Trolls are semi-sapient, semi-humanoid rocks and plants, respectively They exist to maintain an ecological balance between forests and prairies, and rocky mountains and deserts, respectively, and rarely meddle in the affairs of anyone who is not upsetting that balance. They are strong but not invulnerable, and though very long-lived will gradually transform into natural rocks and trees with age. Likewise, natural rocks and trees spontaneously transform into Ents or Trolls as needed to maintain ecological balance.
In the later, corrupted world, Vampires and Elves are people turned toward darker inclinations of Fire and Ice, respectively. The Vampires cherish violence, and the Elves are utterly indifferent to the suffering of others. The further "fallen" versions thereof, 'Men' and Orcs, mix aspects of both: the Men are industrious and outgoing like Fire but careless and indifferent like Ice; the Orcs meanwhile isolate themselves into small distant groups, but are warm and familial within them. Elf-Man hybrid Wizards and Vampire-Orc hybrid Warlocks are, expectedly, intermediate in these regards, the Wizards resembling ivory-tower academics and the Warlocks resembling nomadic warlords.
Life in Virtuality
The impacts of a fully immersive virtual world on peoples' "real lives".
Part I
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Part II
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Part III
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Death in Virtuality
Love in Virtuality
Darklight series
The virtual world forgets that it's virtual.
Genesis
The Eldest, Fire & Ice's betrayal, the splitting of the world, Elves vs Vampires..
Part I
(To tell in mythologised form, less straightforwardly than here)
As the World Ring collapsed and human civilization fell, Zeus, connected to Virtuality in search of Metis, copied as much as possible of Virtuality into his mind, becoming a virtual god of the virtual world. He obfuscates the fact that the world is virtual to spare people the torment of knowing that Earth is now dead. The archetype "deities" of Virtuality, Fire and Ice, are the only ones left in the know, and the only company for Zeus, "the Eldest".
(More mythologically, the Eldest was a god of an ancient world, ancient even amongst those who created the world before "this" one, those who created the goddesses Fire and Ice. He saved both them and the souls of all "this" world's ancestors from the destruction of that previous world and his own people, creating "this" world for them to live in).
Part II
Fire and Ice grow jealous of the Eldest's superior power and trick him into imprisonment in his virtual ship, later known as "the Sword of Darklight" due to its shape, is crashed into the virtual earth, and the lands are sundered in two. The dualistic "magical" energy of the world, "Darklight", is drawn from the earth and separated into the lights of the Sun and the Moon, the grand sky palaces of Fire and Ice respectively. They each imbue much of their own power into "magic" gems, each harnessing the power of the Sun or Moon respectively. On one continent, the virtual people are tempted by the power of the Fire gem and become Vampires; on the other, they are tempted by power to of the Ice gem and become Elves.
Part III
The continents drift together on the other side of the world. The Merfolk render an illusion of a flat world to hide the Sword of Darklight on the old side of the world. Elves and Vampires make war, learn of their abilities to transform one another into "Orcs" and "Men", eventually leaving a world populated mostly by the latter. The gems of Fire and Ice are lost in the battle.
Corruption
The age of humans and orcs, wizards and warlocks. The continent is reshaped.
Part I
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Part II
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Part III
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Revelation
The vampires return; war again; a new creature is born; and the Sword of Darklight is found.
Part I
Vampires return, trouble brewing; eldest "wizard" is actually a Dhampire. His half-sister hold a similar position amongst the Warlocks.
Part II
Climactic battle; Vampire queen seduces Elven king, gives birth to a Giant, Sphidii.
Part III
Sphidii seeks out the Sword of Darklight; Dhampire siblings pursue her but fail to stop her. Fire and Ice destroyed, Darklight returned to the world, and all are transformed into Dhampires, so that only the Sword of Darklight, in Sphidii's possession, can hold any mortal threat over anyone; thus leaving Sphidii in absolute power.
Sphidia series
The virtual world discovers the real world, and neither will ever be the same.
Sphidian Awakening
Sphidii has learned that her world is virtual, but keeps this a secret from her people so as to keep her world isolated from the real world and retain her power. But eventually the humans in the real world begin reactivating the old worldnet, and some of the Sphidian people begin to wake up to the virtuality of their world.
Part I
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Part II
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Part III
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Sphidian Incarnation
The virtual people aquire robotic and later holographic bodies. Sphidii guards access to the real world via the power of the Sword of Darklight, disrupting any attempts to copy virtual people outside of the Eldest's mind (and thus, beyond the power of the Sword of Darklight, and thus of Sphidii). Virtual people can only remote-control their physical avatars; they don't actually reside in them.
Part I
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Part II
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Part III
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Sphidian Endgame
The holograms assert themselves in galactic politics to the devastation of all. Sphidii decides that the real world is a growing threat to her power, withdraws all connections of normal (Dhampiric) Sphidians to the outside world, and unleashes an army of terrible "Demon" programs which fully exploit the destructive power of holographic technology. (cf "grey goo scenario"). Overwhelmed by this attack, Christi seeks out and locates Niarba, finds Keius, who directed a concerted action amongst the Ehrban to cause Geia to "cry" to the Minded Worlds, who intervene by granting Christi sufficient power (anti-entropic shielding) to break the Demons' guard of Zeus, the Eldest, aiming (with a heavy heart) to kill him and thus destroy the Sphidii. But the twin Dhampires (from Darklight Revelation) in the virtual world manage to destroy the Sword of Darklight first, releasing the Eldest, who then terminates Sphidii's control and puts an end to the Demons' reign before Christi must carry through with her dire plan to kill her love to save the galaxy.
Most of the galaxy is completely annihilated in the battle, but once the Sphidian threat is gone, the Ehrban at long last stablish connection to the Minded Worlds, and with their great power, the galaxy can be rebuilt, even in defiance of entropy. The people of Virtuality are transferred out of Zeus' mind into their own holographic forms, humans and Ehrban all transcend into holographic form as well, and the real world becomes as fluid and malleable as the virtual one (as is already the case in the galaxy of the Minded Worlds).
Part I
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Part II
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Part III
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