This is the seventh in a series of articles introducing The Strange. You can read the first one here.
The Strange is the alien data network that The Strange (the game) is named for. Also called the Chaosphere, the Strange was intentionally constructed by the Precursors— technologically advanced aliens—billions of years ago to facilitate intergalactic travel across the universe. The aliens would upload themselves into the dark energy data web, then “print” themselves anew at some distant star, without having to travel the light years between the two locations in the normal universe.
Then something went wrong. The Precursors lost control. In the billions of years since, the Strange has continued spread through the universe, and is evident to most scientists on Earth only as mysterious dark energy.
Within its immense and ever-expanding volume, the Strange is capable of hosting almost limitless amounts of information. Over its billions of years of existence, entire worlds (called recursions) have been seeded into the Chaosphere, where they’ve grown and flowered with their own unique sets of rules to govern them. But a much wider regime lies between the recursions, and that’s the Strange itself.
SHAPE AND NATURE OF THE STRANGE
The Strange is a chaotic flow of spiraling fractal patterns forever iterating in upon itself without end. The area immediately around Earth and its recursions usually appears primarily bluish- purple and sometimes dark green, but other areas are gold, orange, or even blood-red.
Although vast and expanding, the Strange has different distinct regions within its barely understandable chaotic twists and turns. Brave recursors report ever-shifting landscapes within, some resembling swirling fractals and others akin to impossible spacescapes with stars and planets that form and disappear in the blink of an eye. Still other explorers describe areas that move like vast creatures, as though portions of the Strange have gained sentience or are inhabited by immense intelligences that wear its essence like flesh.
Nothing physical in the universe of real matter is large enough to contain the network, except for the universe itself, and that must constantly expand with the network to hold it. Compared to the wind-tossed white caps of our visible universe, dark energy constitutes the unending depths beneath, vast and alien.
ALIENATION
Recursors of Earth and linked recursions have learned that traveling into the Strange is a task worth attempting. It’s dangerous, but deep within its folds and recesses lie treasures and wonders that literally can’t be imagined by Earth natives who have no prior frame of reference. That said, minds that evolved within the universe of normal matter and linked recursions were not designed for the naked, unprocessed, near- infinity of the dark energy network. Those who are exposed to it suffer mental and physical consequences called alienation. The more alienation one feels, the greater the potential for bad outcomes. Recursors attempt to limit direct exposure as best they can, though it’s not always possible.
CREATURES OF THE STRANGE
Living outside the boundaries of recursions or the prime universe, the bizarre, often mutable creatures of the Strange are far more alien to humanity than even beings from a different planet might be. One such creature is the Nmidon, a three-eyed, white skinned, vaguely humanoid being that serves as steward over a site called Icos Directrix, at the center of which it maintains a sort of forge for violet spiral.
A serious scourge of the Strange are the inklings. Lesser inklings have about as much substance and are about as dangerous as regular shadows, but the more inklings that pool in a particular area, the greater the chance that the dangerous types will appear. Inkling snatchers drain the color and substance from other creatures when allowed to feed, until nothing is left.
And then of course there are the planetovores—creatures in the Strange able to find and access inhabited prime planets, then subsume them. Although some planetovores are native to the Strange, not all are. Some are alien artificial intelligences (AIs), aliens displaced into the Strange (perhaps put there by other planetovores), and once-fictional creatures birthed in recursions of distant star systems who broke free of their original conception, who’ve come looking for sustenance. Sustenance such as planet Earth.
This is the seventh in a series of posts introducing The Strange. Read the next article, Playing the Strange. We’ll post new articles every week throughout June, July, and into August!
