Puzzlebox/Glossary

ARCHIVAL INFORMATION

This information dates to an earlier instance of this wiki and is very likely not current with the metaplot.

Cube Tree

One of the Mess's few pieces of religious iconography, the Cube Tree resides in Puzzlepark and seem to have originated with the Mess; shows signs of autonomous growth and learning, and radiates feelings of well-being and otherworldly gnosis; beings who have meditated near the Tree for long periods have reported an overwhelming sensation that She is trying to point them to something.

Faction

Groups of subcultural and ideological affiliation, devoted to spreading their sense of style; factions roughly take the place of ethnicities and nations in the Mess, and levels of participation range from casual fashion affectations to ritualized daily devotions to a faction's lifestyle.

Fashion War

AKA "Art War," "Poetic Terrorism," "Meme War": the predominant form of cultural conflict in the Mess, in which various factions attempt to popularize their ideology through propaganda, psychotronic devices, guerrilla theater, graffiti, performance art, and so forth.

Imipolex (also, "flickercladding")

A putty-like computing medium that can also act as a display.

Imilexene

An nth-generation descendent of rubber and imipolex; an artificial resin seeded with a parasapient magic mirror preparation that allows it to reshape itself instantly and respond to the desires of its user via voice command or neural impulse.

Instantiator (also, "matter compiler")

A device or system which creates objects on demand from a base material. Puzzlebox's instantiator system is built into the atmosphere and allows most sentients to summon material objects of reasonable complexity at will. (Item templates of high craftsmanship or very specific function are deliberately disabled, for the sake of the local artisan communities.)

Magic Mirror

A liquid biocybernetic supercomputing medium of almost magical levels of complexity and flexibility; can also be used to reconstruct matter and energy from a pattern, so it forms the basis of the Mess's transit system as well.

Puzzlebox

A massive self-constructing, self-designing, possibly sentient habitat system of unfathomable size; more-than-three dimensional and so convoluted in structure that it may enter and exit several pocket dimensions (the Mess is just one settlement in this much larger structure).

Tasp

A device which stimulates a sentient (but not necessarily organic) being's pleasure center; available in a dizzying variety of forms on Puzzlebox, from small bliss-wands, to rifles and crowd-control devices, to sky-mounted bombing platforms.

The Mess

An anomalous urban development at the outer edges of the Puzzlebox; a six-zoned complex of themed areas, connected by a system of magic mirrors; the first known evidence that Puzzlebox possesses self-awareness, long-term goals, and/or a sense of humor.

Warp

Each of the six themed areas named for a species of quark; the six warps are not apparently physically contiguous with each other, and each may exist in its own pocket dimension.

Zipstops

Huge, bustling travel plazas built and operated by the Zips; comparatively sane, safe areas favored as vacation spots for frazzled Puzzlebox pioneers.

Zipways

Fancifully structured highway system built by the Zips; Zipways provide transit service to MUCK areas outside the Mess.