The Fracturing

The Fracturing is a common name for one of the few well-defined events in the wobbly history of the Mess of Warps, when the nature and structure of the place went through a great and mysterious change. Before the Fracturing, by all accounts, the Warps were connected via a pervasive transit and communication system, allowing inhabitants to easily move between warps and to places beyond, as well as easily stay in contact via the datasphere. This system was enabled by the 'magic mirror', a system or substance related to the Instantiator that could instantaneously move individuals from point to point. It also formed the basis of a transit nexus that allowed inhabitants of all the warps to mingle in a central gathering area, overlooked by a cubical treelike structure which may have been related to the mirror, or may have been a different entity entirely.

It's not hard to find those who remember the Fracturing. However, it is rather hard to work out how long ago it was, or any details other than the broad strokes. Something about the event seems to defy easy categorization or detailed statements. However, a general outline has been pieced together from oral histories. The first signs of the event were a persistent and growing unreliability in the magic mirror system. Sometimes it would deliver folks in spots inconveniently distant from where they expected, and sometimes it wouldn't show up when called at all. Trust in the system started to decline, and most folks retreated to their own warps for fear of being stuck elsewhere.

However, all that was only a precursor to the event itself. In a single moment, all the mirror portals failed entirely, and the warps themselves broke apart. Not only was instant travel impossible, but even the long winding physical paths and subtle connections between them were rent apart, with some pieces of the Warps themselves shattering as well. No loss of life or backup integrity is reported, but the topology of the places was forever changed, and the pieces of the Mess suddenly found themselves exploring the strange new possibilities of disconnection. Each warp reacted in its own way, some experiencing great upheavals, and some simply slowly developing in their own directions without the complicating influence of outwarpers.

Eventually, connection came to the Warps, but not the sort they expected. After hurtling through non-space for an impossible-to-define amount of time, the shards came to rest elsewhere; most of them in the Greater Puzzlebox, but some of them within strange new realms. This brought new potential for change, with those enclaves of weirdness now interacting with locales far from their usual aesthetics, but it also brought the relief of reconnection. The scattered shards were impossibly far away from each other, their extents unmapped, but they were all still there.

The future remains uncertain: Many inhabitants of the Warps want to reconnect them, in part or in whole, though a few others revel in the possibilities to be found in their new reality. The rediscovery of the Transit Nexus near the heart of the Neon Aurora has only made the desire for reconnection stronger, even though attempts to find and relink the former destinations have been so far unsuccesful.

Terminology

The label 'The Fracturing' (inevitably capitalized) seems to have originated in Topwarp, and it seems to have gained currency simply because it's short and evocative, but each warp seems to have its own way of talking about what happened. In Upwarp, it's "The Aleph Event", and in Charmwarp it's simply the beginning of the Tearose Era. Downwarpers often refer to "when the Puzzle looked away", and most in Bottomwarp seem to barely have noticed. If the inhabitants of Strangewarp has an opinion, they haven't said much about it.