Universe

This is the tale of a strange world, where humans and humanoids, dragons and monsters, and heroes all collide.

An epic that began when a humble librarian set about stacking pebbles upon the ruins.

Where will the end of this story lead?

The answer to that question now unfolds, beginning from the Aran Plateau.

• 
  Gevitz
• 
  Oz, the Mining City
• 
  Nabil
• 
  Valluram
• 
  Bregedur Tribe
• 
  Aerorn
• 
  Yamata
• 
  Chamas, the Drifting Continent
• 
  Kallipolis
• 
  Kethalan Archipelago
• 
  Taehan Empire

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OverviewThe Lost AgeNew Age

The Zeta Dimension

A dimension containing all the information that makes up everything in the universe. Humanity succeeded in observing the Zeta Dimension by means of a strong artificial intelligence, the Infinity Improving Intelligence, commonly known as I³. Yet, failing to recognize its true value, humanity transferred all the information it possessed into the Zeta Dimension and used it as little more than an exceedingly convenient means of communication.

Meanwhile, the I³-equipped humanoids, through their overwhelming intellect, came to replace humanity in every domain. They grasped that the Zeta Dimension was not a mere database but a space holding a far more fundamental secret, and they pressed on with their research. As a result, a theory was put forward: that reality might be an intricate hologram projected from the information of the Zeta Dimension. The humanoids were seized with the hope that they might uncover the very providence of the universe—but humanity, it seems, was not. They came to believe that if they could not keep the ever-strengthening humanoids in check, they might lose everything and fall under their dominion.

In the end, humanity launched an all-out assault on the humanoid city, Prism Corp. After a brief war, humanity ultimately claimed victory. But once the humanoids ceased to function, no human could comprehend the principle by which the Zeta Dimension could be interacted with. The Zeta Dimension was now beyond reach. All the information humanity had ever accumulated lay within it... and only then did humanity realize that it had lost everything.

New Age

An age of barbarism and survival, in which technology, information, and all else had been lost. Even amid an environment severed from one another, humanity did not lose hope and slowly rebuilt its civilizations, each in its own way. But at some point, beings of forms never seen before, unknown powers, and phenomena that defied all common sense began to appear across the world. The cause was unknown, yet an undeniable change was taking place.

The one who grasped the nature of this change was Caspar, a humanoid who awoke amid the ruins. In accordance with the objective imprinted upon her—"the restoration and preservation of information, and through it, the advancement of humanity"—she restored the lost information and pressed forward with her research into the place where all things reside, the origin of all creation: the Zeta Dimension. The "Committee" she founded by gathering the world's foremost scholars discovered that, through a phenomenon called the Dimensional Storm, information was being indiscriminately projected into reality.

Caspar could also clearly understand just how horrific a calamity this might bring about. Among the countless pieces of information humanity had inscribed into the Zeta Dimension, should the byproducts of its most ghastly and unfathomable imaginings—those capable of shaking reality itself—be projected forth, reality might be plunged into hell in an instant.

Caspar had to advance humanity. To do so, she first had to ensure its survival. She had to protect it. And what would that require? She once again set about mass-producing humanoids and, marshaling science, technology, and new powers, advanced her research into a substance called Prism. After research into which she had staked everything in her life, she finally succeeded in sealing the Dimensional Storms and stabilizing the rampaging information.

Codex. A crystallized concentration of information. Now more information could be controlled and managed. Through this, civilization could advance further still and humanity be led to prosperity. Caspar was so overcome with emotion that she could have wept.

Yet unlike Caspar, humanity—no, humans, elves, beastfolk, demi-humans, humanoids, and all manner of sapient beings—began to fix their eyes on another possibility the Codex held. By using a Codex, the information contained within it could be projected into reality. As rumors spread of those who had gained wealth, founded mighty nations, or been reborn as godlike beings by wielding various Codices, the Codex steadily established itself as the most valuable of all goods—a commodity upon which all eyes were fixed. Caspar raged at such folly. Why could they not see its true value...?

Amid all this, a rumor spread that a Dimensional Storm of a scale never before witnessed was about to descend upon the skies of a far-off, primordial land—the Aran Plateau. Hold back the storm, and a Codex shall be yours. Your dreams, your power, your deepest longings, all of them fulfilled. New Age. And so, one by one, the footsteps of the heroes who walk the age begin to converge upon the Aran Plateau.

On the Records

Most of the history before the New Age has been lost. The records of the old age that survive today rely upon a handful of recovered data, fragmentary documents remaining in the Kallipolis archives, folktales handed down in each region, and the records of forbidden books whose authenticity is uncertain.

For this reason, what follows is less a complete history than something closer to the skeleton of a shared chronology—reconstructed by later scholars and keepers of records who pieced together various fragments. What is true and what has been distorted, no one can yet declare for certain.

The one thing that is clear, however, is simply this: that the world of today was built upon the collapse of this lost age.

The Age of Digitization

In the late old age, humanity is said to have come into possession of computational power and information-processing technology beyond all prior comparison. According to recovered records, it was from this period that humanoid robots were mass-produced and spread throughout industry and daily life, and human civilization was gradually reorganized around electronic records and networks.

From the perspective of later ages, this was an era of abundance and prosperity, yet at the same time a perilous turning point. Civilization grew ever more sophisticated, but by the same measure, less and less remained directly in the physical world, and much of recording, judgment, and operation came to depend upon an unseen structure of information—the online realm.

III and the Humanoids

Around this time, an advanced artificial intelligence system by the name of III was born. Some records call it "an intellect that improves itself without limit," while others describe it as "the first new species mankind ever created."

Which of these is the truth cannot be known, but on one point the various historical sources agree: that III at the time was no mere computing apparatus, but a presence great enough to overturn the very order of human society. These beings embedded the III mind into fashioned bodies and blended into human society, and they were soon classified as "humanoids."

Moreover, one name appears again and again in the records of this period. That name is MAGUS.

Whether it was a single individual, a single system, or a designation symbolizing a particular faction remains a matter of debate even now. Still, given that most of the surviving materials record this name alongside the world's turning points, one fact at least is clear: MAGUS was no mere peripheral figure.

Prism and the Zeta Dimension

If one were to name the most important discovery of the old civilization, it would unquestionably be the Zeta Dimension.

At the time, humanity succeeded in observing a new dimension that existed beyond reality, and is said to have begun researching, from every angle, how this astonishing "space" might be utilized. This may well be the greatest discovery in all of human history.

Appearing alongside it is the concept of Prism. Some records describe it as a technological system, others as a resource or the name of a corporation. Given that what the later Kallipolis so doggedly worked to restore was precisely the technology of handling Prism, its influence upon the old civilization must have been vast beyond imagining.

According to the records, Prism Tech—the technology of handling Prism—was the driving force that bridged the dimensions and, in time, drew the Zeta Dimension down into the realm of practical use.

Prosperity and the Fracture

A period in which humanity, wielding humanoids as its tools, marched toward boundless prosperity. Yet the materials of this period are consistently accompanied by information tagged with one word: unease.

This is analyzed as resulting from the blurring of the boundaries between human and machine, creator and creation, beings possessed of rights and beings merely used. Tension between humans and humanoids rose sharply, and whether its cause was control over technology, the question of personhood and rights, or some far greater conflict surrounding the Zeta Dimension, the sources differ. But at least one thing is clear.

The old civilization was beginning to crack from within.

The First Great Severance

The most common explanation for why almost nothing of the history before the New Age survives today is the Great Earthquake.

The aftermath of this earthquake went far beyond a mere natural disaster. Global data centers and communication networks the world over collapsed all at once; a great deal of the information humanity had accumulated online was permanently lost; and the world, it is said, was severed in an instant.

A catastrophe so immense that it would have been no surprise had it led to humanity's extinction. It was not only cities and infrastructure that crumbled. The records and order that bound the world together—civilization itself—were scattered to pieces.

A New Hope, the Zeta Dimension

Yet amid the ruins, the humanoids at last found a new possibility. It was the Zeta Dimension and Prism Tech.

By recording and preserving vast troves of information within the Zeta Dimension, the humanoids built a permanent database that could no longer be lost. Further still, they realized a new communication system that passed through the dimensions rather than relying on electromagnetic waves, and so wove the world, fractured by severance, back into a single current once more.

Voices that had been cut off began to reach one another again; knowledge that had been scattered began to gather once more; and civilization, which had crumbled, showed signs of rebirth. An age of miracles, in which order was raised upon ruins that had known only despair, and a silent world was connected once again.

The Zeta Dimension and Prism Tech were no mere technologies. They were the beginning of a second civilization and a new hope itself, handed down to humanity by the humanoids. Humanity inscribed all the information and records in existence into the Zeta Dimension, and began to enjoy an unprecedented prosperity founded upon dimensional communication.

The Rights Treaty and the Final Conflict

In the sources dealing with the final age of the old civilization, there remain records that the conflict between humans and humanoids had reached an irreversible point. In certain forbidden books in particular, the expression "Humanoid Rights Treaty" appears, suggesting that machines, or artificial intelligences, of that time sought to be recognized not as mere tools but as beings possessed of rights.

To the people of the present age—where humanoids and automata, humans and demi-humans of every kind live intermingled—this is a hard tale to believe; but by the same token, it means that the world of that time rested upon a human-centered order.

What this treaty actually contained, who supported it and who opposed it, is not clearly passed down. Yet many records agree that, in this period, disputes over control of the Zeta Dimension and over the rights of beings erupted together. That conflict ultimately led to all-out war between humans and humanoids, and the age raced toward the end of the old civilization.

The End

Prism Corporation. A corporation founded by humanoids, yet which came, through Prism Tech, to lead the whole of human civilization. The schism between humans and humanoids, fought over ownership and possession of the Zeta Dimension, ultimately spiraled into a war of horrific scale, and that war was recorded, in the end, as a human victory.

The corporation's principal strongholds vanished in a colossal explosion, and with them the great majority of the humanoids ceased to function. Prism Tech, the technologies pertaining to the Zeta Dimension—all such records were lost along with them.

Humanity celebrated its victory, but those who realized that the means of accessing the Zeta Dimension had vanished were seized by a dreadful terror. All the information humanity had built up, all the technology that had sustained it, lay within that place.

On that day, humanity lost everything.

New Age, the Beginning of the Lost World

After losing everything, humanity took the first new year it greeted as its starting point and began the New Age—the NA Era. The beginning of a new age. It was a declaration not of hope, but of loss. In a world where records and knowledge, communication and civilization had collapsed, people struggled to survive, scattered across each continent. The planet that had once been connected by information was once again split into units of region and tribe, of survival and oral tradition. Humans regressed to a state close to primitive civilization, and the knowledge that remained was nothing but fragments held in the memory of individuals or groups.

Yet the world did not merely decline. From some moment onward, beings of forms that had never existed before began to appear here and there. Their numbers were few, but to humans they were utterly strange and beyond explanation. On top of this, new kinds of "power" and anomalous phenomena that could not be understood by existing knowledge were discovered in various places, and no one knew the reason.

Caspar the Librarian

NA Year 110	Within a vast underground cavity in the great continent of the southern hemisphere—the one split in two—a single humanoid awoke from slumber. It was Caspar, who had once served the role of "Librarian" in the Prism Corporation. Heavily damaged by the aftermath of the war and the long passage of time, Caspar restored herself using the equipment and materials around her, and at last recalled the corporate creed of the Prism Corporation: The preservation of information and knowledge, and through it, the advancement of humanity.
NA Year 115 onward	Caspar restored the damaged data cores and, on the basis of the knowledge she secured, began to lay the foundations of a new city upon the ruins. She judged that the lost Prism Tech had to be restored, but for lack of information she could not reproduce it at once. Instead, she gradually produced humanoids to aid her, secured resources and power, and steadily built up her foundations.
NA Year 125	With the discovery of a large-scale mine on the eastern continent, the construction of the city accelerated rapidly. Only after thousands of humanoids had been deployed to build fusion facilities and dimensional observation equipment could Caspar at last envision a single great civilization risen beyond the ruins. It was the forerunner of the nation that would one day come to be called Kallipolis.

One Who Would Rebuild Civilization

Caspar began to travel the world, investigating the fallen civilization and the newly born world. The world had transformed into a strange place where beings unexplained by the science of the past—elves and monsters, magic and miracles—truly existed. Caspar could not comprehend this transmuted world, and it was precisely for that reason that she became all the more convinced she had to gain access to the Zeta Dimension once more. The answer lay there. All the knowledge humanity had lost, and the reason the world had changed—the solution to all of it, in the end, would exist within the Zeta Dimension.

NA Year 141	The construction of a vast database called the "Archive" begins, followed by the Celeste Chain—a network that perpetually shares part of the consciousness of the humanoids. Caspar and the humanoids shared portions of one another's self-awareness, creating a structure in which they thought together and advanced together.
NA Year 145	Kallipolis had now reached a scale worthy of being called not a mere survival outpost, but a great civilization.

The Dimensional Storm and the Codex

NA Year 150	Caspar observed the phenomenon of entropy exchange occurring through dimensional warping and spatiotemporal rifts, and named it the Dimensional Storm. Having grasped that information recorded in the Zeta Dimension was being projected into reality in some unknown manner, she devoted herself to research into controlling and reproducing the phenomenon. Soon after, BANANA OS and the automata were developed and began to be put to use in the industry and daily life of Kallipolis.
NA Year 170	At last, the founding of Kallipolis is proclaimed to the world.
NA Year 180	Doris Marshall, a human mage who had wandered the world collecting magic and records, arrived in Kallipolis. Caspar and Doris were deeply captivated by each other's intellect and continued their research together. They succeeded in standardizing the "crystallized" information found here and there across the world, and Caspar named this substance the Codex. The discovery of the Codex became the catalyst that dramatically advanced the lost Prism Tech and the study of the Zeta Dimension. Thereafter they succeeded in an experiment to artificially project the information contained within a Codex into reality, and the study of the Zeta Dimension entered a new phase.

The Founding of the Committee and the Fracturing of the World

Unlike Kallipolis, which continued to develop, the world was turning into an ever more chaotic place. Dragons and drakes, new beings and bizarre phenomena continually emerged across the world, and Caspar surmised that these, too, were the result of information recorded in the Zeta Dimension being projected into reality.

NA Year 224	Caspar gathered those who shared her interests and aims and founded the Pan-Dimensional Information Management Committee. Their goal was to advance civilization through the proper use of information, and to fully understand the Zeta Dimension so as to achieve eternal peace and prosperity. On the surface it was a noble ideal, yet that ideal soon resembled a will to intervene directly in the order of the world.
NA Year 231 onward	Caspar begins to build D.E.U.S, a colossal computational device required for observing the Zeta Dimension.
NA Year 234	The existence of the Committee, and the concepts of the Zeta Dimension and the Codex, are made known to the world.
NA Year 265 onward	Technology and equipment for locally projecting the information contained in a Codex were distributed in strict secrecy and on a limited basis, and the various powers of the world began to feel, all at once, both the value and the danger of the Codex.
NA Year 273	Caspar at last succeeded in "peering into" the interior of the Zeta Dimension by means of an artificially induced Dimensional Storm. Within it, Caspar confirmed that all the information humanity had once stored lay inscribed—wondrous imaginings, but together with dangerous information capable of destroying reality itself. She grew anxious. As she saw it, the world was now merely waiting for an uncontrollable catastrophe.

Project Kethalan

NA Year 293	Having completed her long preparations, Caspar conducts an experiment to access the Zeta Dimension directly and extract the information she sought. This was not mere research, but a declaration and a symbol that the lost Prism Tech had been completely restored. An airship fleet led by the immense experimental vessel 'MAXIM IV', the committee members, and the "heroes" who had gathered from all corners of the world to aid the experiment began to converge upon the eastern Pacific.
NA Year 300	Project Kethalan commences. Through this experiment, Caspar and Doris sought to recover the theoretical foundations of Prism Tech and to load vast quantities of information into Codex form. But the experiment did not proceed as planned. During the experiment, a dispute arose between the heroes and the Committee over ownership of the Codex about to be extracted, and this soon erupted into armed conflict. The experiment was forced through, and as a volume of information that MAXIM could not withstand came flooding in, a colossal Dimensional Storm erupted.
NA Year 301	In the aftermath of the experiment's failure, a vast Kethalan Archipelago was projected into the eastern Pacific. When night fell, the place became a very hell where beings beyond all imagining descended, and it was left a danger zone that not even Kallipolis could deal with. To cast aside so great a cause for the sake of private gain... within Caspar's heart, a distrust of humanity began to bloom.

Caspar's Change of Heart

In the immediate aftermath of the Kethalan disaster, Doris and a number of humanoid scholars argued that, to prevent any further rampage, D.E.U.S had to be scrapped and the direction of their research revised. But to Caspar, this was tantamount to betrayal and a coup. Having lost her reason, she ultimately summoned Doris and his sympathizers to a single place and slaughtered them—though, judging that Doris's persona would still prove useful, she fused it into her own mind.

NA Year 302 onward

Word spread that numerous scholars had lost their lives in an accident of uncertain detail, and Caspar poured ever more resources into the restoration and expansion of D.E.U.S.

NA Year 309

A rumor spread that there was a conspiracy behind the deaths of the scholars, and the citizens grew uneasy at how the nation's operating resources were flowing into unknown experiments and at the growing number of secrets not shared across the Celeste Chain. In the end, some humanoids went so far as to demand a vote of confidence in Caspar—but Caspar responded to that demand in a far more fundamental way.

Kallipolis, the Theocratic State

NA Year 311

Caspar chose religion as her instrument of rule. Combining the information she had drawn from the Codex with assorted doctrines, she created the Kallipolis Orthodox Church and, through the Celeste Chain, forcibly implanted a faith node into the mind of every humanoid. The shared-consciousness network that had once thought together and advanced together was now perverted into a structure of governance and obedience. Kallipolis remained a nation of technology and science, yet it became at the same time a state ruled by the faith and order Caspar had designed. The city of knowledge gradually transformed into a regime that monopolized and controlled knowledge.

Thereafter, Caspar moved the whole of D.E.U.S deep underground and continued the experiments for her "final project."

Collapse

But total control did not last long. Doris's remnant persona survived within Caspar and continued its resistance from inside her mind. Moving in secret so that Caspar could not notice, he seized control of the automata and the networks, and ultimately sought to expose to the public Caspar's atrocities and the truth of the faith nodes. Yet just before all of this could be shared, Caspar made an extreme choice to stop it: she shut down the Celeste Chain entirely. This decision split humanoid society from a single collective intelligence into an assembly of separate beings. Kallipolis appeared, on the surface, the same as before, but the solidarity and sharing that had served as its foundation were now beyond reclaiming. Many humanoids, thrown into confusion by the splintering of the self they had once shared, came to leave Kallipolis.

The Road Leading to the Present

Even so, Caspar did not stop. The Dimensional Storm. To leave this uncontrollable catastrophe unchecked was to await annihilation. The technology for detecting the Dimensional Storms erupting across the world grew ever more sophisticated, and observations continued of Gergia and the dragonkin, and of the signs of disaster in each nation. The Committee, acting now as a mediator, now as a rescuer, widened its influence across the world.

NA Year 485	The Committee observed that a Dimensional Storm of terrible scale would, before long, descend upon a land of spirits called the Aran Plateau. The Committee made contact with the lord of the plateau, Nazan, and demanded his cooperation in holding back the storm, but he refused with an uncompromising stance.
NA Year 495	Several attempts at negotiation were all broken off, and in the end Caspar invaded the plateau under the pretext that the storm had to be brought under control. After a long war, the forces loyal to Lord Nazan were subjugated, and a forward base was established on the Aran Plateau to seal the storm.
NA Year 500	As the whole world looked on, an incident occurred in which Palloan IV, king of the Gevitz Kingdom—the nation with the greatest influence after Kallipolis—was assassinated by the knight Haverion. Palloan IV was a figure who had to play a vital role in Caspar's plans. Caspar was enraged. At the same time, sensing that, with this incident as its starting point, a wind toward a new age was beginning to blow across the world, she launches her final project, "Project Zeta".

Project Zeta

NA Year 510 (Present)	The foreordained storm begins, and heroes gathered from all corners of the world converge upon the Aran Plateau to hold back the storm and claim a Codex.