Postfurry MUCK/Roleplay Guide

First things first: You don't have to read this, to be on Postfurry MUCK. If you just want to wander the place, see the sights, chat and play, please go for it without feeling like you need to know the Deep Lore. But if you're getting into complicated plots, want to contribute to the setting, or simply are interested in the Deep Lore, this is the place to go.

The Neon Aurora

The Neon Aurora was the main result (and presumptive intent) of the Fracturing that scattered the Mess of Warps through the rest of the Puzzlebox. To the eye, it is as the name suggets, a shimmering mass of high-saturation glow, easily visible from many places across the Puzzlebox. In terms of effects, it is a rift across realities that seems to have a will of its own, and a playful yearning for novelty. It has made connections with realms that challenge the conventions and even some of the physical laws of the Puzzlebox. These places are not strictly part of the Puzzlebox, but the Aurora puts them in contact, allowing for the use of Puzzlebox infrastructure to travel to and in those places.

But the Neon Aurora doesn’t just connect places. Sometimes it even reaches out for specific individual creatures, most often the sort that might benefit from, or be a benefit to, those diverse locales. It seems to have some sense of restraint; no one is pulled in who will be imperiled or made actively miserable, but certainly many who find themselves pulled into the Puzzlebox are quite bewildered by their new surroundings.

OOC Note: The Neon Aurora is meant as a device to tie together diverse themes and provide a way for any character to end up in the Puzzlebox, but it’s not the only canon way for characters from other settings to end up there. Puzzlebox exists in space and time; entities can and have travelled to it by other means. Nor is everyone who arrives by the Neon Aurora pulled in unawares; it’s entirely possible for someone to hear of the effect and seek it out, or simply be pulled in by fortunate happenstance of wish-fulfillment.

Post-Scarcity Infrastructure

The world of Postfurry MUCK doesn't work like our day-to-day reality; it doesn't even particularly work lik the average fantasy or sci-fi world. Postfurry MUCK is a place where hypertechnology has become magical, and reality is bent around aesthetics. One of the most straightforward ways of thinking about it is that the rules of the world are the rules of the MUCK: People have a lot of control over their own appearance, substance, and even what else in the world can affect them, and the world itself is literally endlessly mutable if someone is willing to put in the effort to build and change it. For the purposes of roleplay though, it helps to outline some mechanisms, complications, and limits to these rules, so people in-character will sometimes talk about the physical systems that are behind these capabilities. The names and specific details below are used across the Mess of Warps and the rest of Greater Puzzlebox, and may be less-known in places such as the Oneiropolis and 12Fold Resorts, but you can figure that all points in the MUCK have the same basic precepts, even if the particulars differ.

The Magic Mirror Network

The Puzzlebox is unthinkably huge, spanning lightyears of normal space and making frequent dips into spaces that are far stranger. It would be very difficult to get around by normal means. To travel long distances, most folks rely on the shimmering liquid metal portals of the Magic Mirror system. These are actually a network of picotech that connect the vast distances across the Puzzlebox and through the neon aurora. They allow for both instant communication and the conveyance of entities and objects from one place to another by enveloping them, converting them into quantum information, and then reconstructing them at their destination.

Has this ever gone wrong? Probably! It's a big universe. But it's such a fundamental part of life that most folks don't think twice about stepping into a pool of mercury to visit a friend.

The Instantiation Interface

The Magic Mirror can reconstruct people, so it's a simple matter for it to construct other things as well. It's easy to find kiosks, terminals, or personal devices that allow beings to construct their own objects out of nothing, using the Mirror's hypertech. There's no cost, no energy budget, the only real limitation is finding the right template for something that already exists, or being able to imagine something new in enough detail that the system can successfully bring it into being.

The practical upshot of this is that no one need go hungry, or lack for shelter, but invention and art are still alive and well. It still takes all the same understanding and mental effort to create a novel device or stirring work, but creators will never lack for parts or materials.

The Backup System

The Magic Mirror doesn't just reconstruct bodies as part of transit, the capability also allows inhabitants of the Puzzlebox to be free of the spectre of mortality. Anyone can register their desires with the mirror system of how often they want their body and mind to be backed up, and under what circumstances they want it to be restored. Most people are set up to be backed up every time they use the mirror system, and restored when they experience fatal injury, but other options are possible, from streaming connections all the way down to dedicated single-lifers.

The Consent Effect

By far the most esoteric part of the Puzzlebox's infrastructure, no one is entirely sure if the Consent Effect even exists as a specific system. Instead, the term came about as a way of describing a frequently-observed phenomenon: When one being tries to affect another in a way that the target does not want to happen, the action tends to fail. This goes even beyond the backup system's preservation of bodily form and function: fire a gun at someone, and it may misfire, ricochet harmlessly, or the other person may be much better than expected at dodging. It seems that the rules of reality themselves seem to encourage collaboration of actions rather than direct coercion.

Complicating the question of the origin of this effect are the cases in which it breaks down. There are some locations where peril is on the table, and individuals who seem to find ways around the restriction (though when either of those are discovered, most folks tend to avoid them, for obvious reasons). Still, the apparent existence of the Consent Effect is responsible for much of the cultural vibe of the Puzzlebox, "wars" are fought not with force, but with aesthetics.

OOC Note: The Consent Effect is meant as both an in-character way to handle powergamers, and an setting detail to encourage forms of conflict that are more creative than basic combat. Finding places where the Consent Effect does not apply can be a fun source of roleplay potential, but it does not mean that the out-of-character rules about consent are set aside in those places.

Getting into a role

There are countless great ways to get into the depths of roleplay on the MUCK. One good way to start is to ask OOCly, either on the MUCK or the Discord server, if there are any ongoing plot threads or other activities happening that you might get involved with.

But an even better way is to bring your own plots to the world! Here are some great places to start with your own RP hooks.

Artwar

This is one of the classic pastimes from the old Mess of Warps. Physical conflict is generally irrelevant or impossible for most folks on the Puzzlebox, but that doesn't mean no one's interested in status, or even conflict. For those who want to spar, the most common way of doing it is by being flashier, showier, more impressive, or more convincing than someone else. Many inhabitants join Factions that align with their philoshopical or aesthetic inclinations, and vie with other factions for who can make the best point, or attract the most attention. Is there a point your character wants to make? Why not try to make it by starting a massive dance party, or painting the city in expressionist dazzle-camoflage patterns?

Exploration

The Puzzlebox was never an easy place to understand, and The Fracturing definitely didn't do it any favors. What it did do is make it a lot more interesting to poke around in. Maybe you're a denizen of a particular Warp, who has been cut off from it and is trying to get back home. Maybe you've heard rumors of a place, or an object, or a person, now accessible thanks to the Neon Aurora, that you just have to be the first one to find. Maybe you just want to try every possible variant of noodle soup that can be found across any reality. There's plenty of worlds for you to search through!

Self-Actualization

Not every place is as Interesting as Central Puzzlebox's tangle of aesthetics and possibilities. Maybe you're from one of the far reaches of the 'Box, or maybe from someplace beyond. Maybe you traveled a long time to get here, or maybe you got yanked in by happenstance outside your control. Regardless, you're now in a place where you can find a way to be anything, and we do mean anything. What is that like, for someone who's not used to it? And what will you become, after you stay here long enough?