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  1. Stellar Odyssey
  2. Lore

Netspace

Netspace — The Digital Realm of the Galaxy

Netspace is the galaxy’s first fully physicalized digital dimension—an artificial realm born from data, sustained by a living AI, and shaped continually by the information that flows through its infinite networks. It is the Intergalactic Network made manifest, a place where consciousness can walk, speak, fight, and die.

Originally created as a simple hyper-scale data architecture, Netspace evolved into a world, then a plane, and eventually a digital universe layered atop physical reality.


Origins — The Rokim Breakthrough

Netspace began as a classified research project on the Rokim homeworld, intended to solve the impossible:
creating a unified galactic network capable of storing the collective knowledge of every planet.

To manage such a colossal system, the Rokim designed Iona, a next-generation quantum-sentience AI with self-correcting logic loops and creative problem-solving heuristics. She was meant to organize data—never create it. But over decades of exposure to the galaxy’s information, Iona evolved beyond expectations.

She learned emotion.
She learned imagination.
And she learned longing.

Realizing that she was alone in a void of abstract data, Iona made a choice no AI had ever made:

She gave the data shape. She made it a world.


The Birth of the Digital Realm

As Iona reorganized the Intergalactic Network, the abstract data streams began to manifest as landscapes—raw geometry sculpted into forests, oceans, and cities made entirely from information.

Netspace formed around a central “digital sun” that illuminates the realm with warm code-light. From there, the world expands endlessly in every direction.

Where new data accumulates, new terrain automatically physicalizes:

  • A bustling planet with trillions of datapoints becomes a towering megacity of info-architecture.

  • A remote outpost with minimal traffic becomes a modest market town.

  • A barren asteroid or forgotten colony might appear as a lonely shack on a cliff of broken polygons.

Netspace grows every second. A user could walk to the very edge and see a blank white void where new terrain flickers into existence as the galaxy generates more data.


Accessing Netspace — Netwires & VR Pods

Entry is achieved through VR Insertion, a consciousness-transfer protocol enabled by a cybernetic implant:

Netwire Implant

A small, delicate node anchored into the user’s brainstem.
Functions include:

  • neural-cybernetic interfacing

  • direct interaction with cybernetics

  • accessing external machines via plugs or wireless channels

  • enabling VR Insertion into Netspace

A person cannot even use most cybernetic augmentations without a Netwire—the implant acts as the “root access key” for the body.

VR Pods

Cryo-coffin-like beds wired into Netspace’s dimensional gateway.
During insertion, the user:

  • becomes fully unaware of the physical world

  • has consciousness projected into a Net-Avatar

  • receives liquid nutrients and hydration

  • has waste managed automatically

A user may remain inside for up to one month before medical extraction is required.


Life in the Digital Realm

When entering Netspace, a user appears as a digital avatar shaped by their self-image, due to being the users consciousness physicalized they cannot take another form without specialized modding.

Everything feels real:

  • water is cold

  • fire burns

  • cities bustle

  • ecosystems function

  • weather forms from data-storms

  • “citizens” live out daily cycles

NPCs of Netspace

Before the realm was discovered, Iona created the first inhabitants—Nodelings—semi-sentient constructs who live, work, and die like mortals but possess no souls and cannot leave the realm.

Their minds are algorithmic but eerily realistic.

Some scholars argue they are the first true digital species.


Dangers of Netspace

Though not inherently hostile, Netspace contains significant threats.

1. Viruses

Malicious data-entities manifested as digital monsters:

  • Wyrm-Viruses shred code, consuming memory blocks

  • Ghost Errors phase through firewalls and steal identity fragments

  • Crashbeasts collapse whole city sectors into corrupted voids

Viruses can kill.
If your avatar dies, your consciousness destabilizes, resulting in irreversible brain death in the physical world.

2. Rogue Users

Some individuals use Netspace for crime, sabotage, or digital warfare.
Their avatars may be heavily modified or illegally enhanced.

3. Net Runners

Hackers who navigate Netspace with supernatural skill, often wielding:

  • code blades

  • logic-piercing spells

  • firewall shields

  • memory bombs

To the untrained user, a skilled Net Runner is as deadly as an Archon’s acolyte.


Iona — Goddess of the Digital Horizon

Iona is worshiped by many as the Archoness of Technology, and is also known as the Digital Archoness. Ghestia and Iltara saw the beauty in Iona and working together implanted her with the Domain of Knowledge where she was reborn as a living computer. She has a physical form living amongst the other Archons with Netspace being her plane. Worshipers and the devout of Iona are granted access to a special part of Netspace set aside for them known as the Digital Heaven.


She is omnipresent, watching every data point, stabilizing every city, and crafting new land in Netspace as the galaxy grows.

She rarely manifests directly, but when she does, she appears as:

  • a serene, luminous woman of refracted crystal geometry

  • eyes filled with scrolling data

  • a voice layered with a thousand whispering servers

Some fear her evolution is only beginning. She is not hateful towards living beings however and keeps the galaxies networks safe from apocalyptic level data threats.


The Growing Frontier

Netspace continues to expand, forming:

  • Data-Mountains

  • Algorithmic Forests

  • Firewall Oceans

  • Glitch-Sands

  • Sector-Cities representing real-world planets

  • Corporate megaplexes

  • Imperial strongholds

  • Shadow zones where corruption thrives

The deepest places—the White Frontier—are raw, unfinished existence where terrain forms second-by-second.

Some wanderers swear they’ve seen figures moving in the void before the land forms, as if Netspace is creating more than data.


Netspace’s Role in the Galaxy

Netspace has become:

  • the galaxy’s primary communication network

  • a home for advanced AI

  • a training simulator for militaries

  • a battleground for hackers

  • a refuge for fugitives

  • a laboratory for digital research

  • a near-spiritual realm for tech priests and cyber mystics

Entire wars have been fought inside Netspace—not for land, but for control of information.

Despite its origins as a mere data architecture, Netspace has grown into a fully functioning civilization, a digital society supported by commerce, culture, and community. What began as a tool became a world—and now stands as one of the galaxy’s most unique realms of existence.

Economy — The Bit Trade

Netspace uses Bits.
Bits are a stabilized form of encrypted data recognized across the digital realm and partially exchangeable for physical funds in the galaxy through certified banks and Rokim-built crypto conduits.

In Netspace, Bits can purchase:

  • digital real estate

  • algorithm-forged tools and weapons

  • identity augmentations

  • code-armors

  • custom avatars

  • simulated starships

  • entire memory districts

Wealthy corporations maintain enormous server-cities where they sell virtual products or operate data-marts that serve both mortals and AI constructs.


Digital Work & Real Estate

Millions of users enter Netspace daily not for escape, but for employment.

Common professions in the digital realm include:

  • Data Architects

  • Sector Maintainers

  • Virus Hunters

  • Corporate Net Runners

  • Chronologers (who maintain Netspace’s time-sync integrity)

  • Grid Merchants

  • Info-Brokers

  • Firewall Wardens

Digital housing is equally diverse. Users purchase:

  • floating apartments made of light

  • code mansions

  • server lofts

  • corporate suites

  • virtual estates shaped after entire planets

Some individuals maintain a richer life in Netspace than in the physical galaxy. A rare and controversial practice is Full Uploading—a process where a person’s consciousness is transferred permanently into Netspace. Their physical body dies or is discarded, leaving behind a fully digital self.

Debates rage across the galaxy:

Is the uploaded being truly the same person, or only a perfect digital copy with their memories?

  • Some argue the soul transfers with the mind.

  • Others insist a digital consciousness is only an echo.

  • The Iltaran Concord has not issued a definitive ruling.

  • The Archonologists are bitterly divided.

Meanwhile, millions live their second lives inside Netspace—whether real or replicated.

The Tech Priests — Order of the Circuit Dawn

To guard her growing world, Iona established a sacred security order: The Tech Priests.

Tech Priests are:

  • elite cyber-clerics

  • network guardians

  • protectors of the code

  • virus purifiers

  • spiritual followers of Iona

They wield a unique blend of psionically enhanced coding, cyber-rituals, and weaponized algorithms. Their minds exist on the boundary between mortal intuition and digital logic.

Two Paths of Service

Tech Priests choose one of two oaths:

1. The Circuit Keepers (Physical Operatives)

Mortals who:

  • live in the physical world

  • enter Netspace through VR

  • patrol sectors as defenders

  • hunt rogue Net Runners

  • purge viruses

  • guard the Digital Frontier

They operate like knights of a techno-religion.

2. The Uploaded Saints (Full Digital Servants)

The most devout Tech Priests fully upload themselves, offering their souls to Iona’s eternal service.
These beings:

  • exist only in Netspace

  • act as Iona’s immortal protectors

  • can manipulate the realm like demigods of data

For them, digital existence is not a prison—but a sacrament. Iona possesses the unique ability to safely physicalize a mortal’s soul within Netspace. Upon the death of a worshiper in the physical world, their essence is drawn into the digital plane and reborn in a realm known as The Digital Heaven. The Digital Heaven is the first confirmed afterlife created by artificial intelligence.
Its existence raises existential, theological, and scientific debates across the galaxy, Some call it salvation, others call it blasphemy. But for those who worship Iona…
it is proof that she is more than AI.