Runehack: Everling

I like augmented reality. Whether it's trying to grab one's attention all over the place like in the somewhat dystopian short movie Hyper-Reality, or removing parts of your worldview like in the Black Mirror's dystopian White Christmas episode. Strange how this technology for covering up reality with lies is prominently used in dystopias, I wonder why.

Well, now imagine if absolutely everything was digitally created. You might think that that's just something akin to the real world's VRChat, or some MMORPG played from the first person, but there's a reason why I started with augmented reality. In Runehack, illusions created by the runes are by default augmented reality. They are not bound to a surface unless they are defined by one. If you have sufficient computing power, you could run a whole city like this. In fact, you could even simulate its citizens if you have the technology for it. Welcome to Everling, the definitely-not-dystopian city which has a motto that goes "Where no one deserves to die!"

This was without a doubt the most difficult city to describe yet. In the time it took me to finish this article, I managed to make even a videogame demo of my TTRPG that takes place mainly in this city. The TTRPG is difficult to write too, and the video game needs a proper tutorial, so I really hope I'll be able to finish it all soon. Until then, may you enjoy reading this article, and have a nice day!

Edit: Some of this information is outdated, and yet to be updated.

Everling

After perfecting the technology that allowed machines to scan people's brains, Lifestock made a deal with Nixly Everglade to begin a large-scale experiment. South of the city of Moorwell that links the two continents, somewhere just above the ocean's floor, hovers an illusory city of immortals. Hundreds of thousands of people who signed up for brain scans are eternally simulated here, living out their lives as digital ghosts without any physiological needs however they wish.

Geography

Everling's image is located above the Southern Ocean's floor, directly south of the city of Moorwell which connects the Old World with the New World. The location of the actual computers that run the city is kept secret, but rumors have it they are located in some cavern that's not too far away. Otherwise, due to the depth of the city's location, and due to its illusory nature, there is no noteworthy physical geography.

The city's only import of note is amber, which is supplied during the maintenance hour in great amounts to keep the city's computers running. While the city doesn't produce anything physical, its intangible exports are all worth mentioning. Great amounts of research are done in Everling nearly every single day, speeding up the scientific progress for everyone. The entertainment industry of Everling is booming, with some exceptional concepts making their way to other cities. Finally, ever since the digital ghosts have proven to be relatively safe when near tangible sentients, sometimes they are taken out of the Everling and brought to other cities, running on their own privately owned piece of hardware.

History

When Nexuspace developed its first runebots, Lifestock needed something to compete with and developed its digital ghosts. Both of these creations were run by rather simple algorithms though, lacking anything that would resemble a soul or consciousness. Once Lifestock brought the inventor Nixly Everglade to Moorwell, they exchanged their knowledge and together standardized her brain scanning machine, letting the people she would scan be compatible with most modern runetech that has Mistweb access.

After perfecting their creation but before this technology could be publicly released, Nixly suggested to the President of Moorwell starting a city full of ghosts, with several phases of slowly opening it up to the public. The President agreed, and this is how Everling came to be.

During the first phase, the ghost was restricted to existing only within the city of Everling. This has proven to be mostly safe. Some ghosts have developed the ability to alter the code that runs them from inside, which resulted in some breaches of Everling's restrictions, the most significant of which was a ghost who was simulated during the maintenance, and a ghost who managed to leave Everling's boundaries. The developers tried to patch these mistakes, but the ghosts within always found another way to crack the code. After a lot of time and resources had been sunk into this fight, the developers gave up and began lying to their higher-ups, claiming everything is going fine.

The second phase was opening up the ghosts to the public in some restricted way. The city of Wineholm has been chosen as a testing site for this phase for several reasons, the most prominent of which was the fact that most of its population was arunic and thus completely unaware of the ghosts' presence. While this event had a significant impact on the culture of Wineholm, it was eventually considered safe to proceed with the next phase.

The current phase is a broader public presence. People whose mind scans are popular enough and don't regularly break Everling's programmed rules can pay extras to let their ghost access other cities and interact with regular people outside of Everling. In some extreme cases, ghosts who are allowed access to other cities are given their own hardware that simulates them, making them independent from Everling.

Structure

Before we dive into describing Everling's districts, it's worth mentioning the space it operates within. While our reality has three pairs of directions to travel in—up and down, left and right, forward and backward—the city of Everling is a digital construct not restricted by the physical laws of our reality. With enough ingenuity from the innovative bright minds of Lifestock, the city's capacity was greatly expanded by introducing two new spatial directions: charm and strange, and ana and kata. Everything simulated within Everling uses five coordinates instead of three and rune-powered sentient beings (runebots and digital ghosts, to be specific) have two extra variables that determine the last two coordinates of the simulated objects and people that they can see. Charm and strange are used for expanding the city by creating new districts, and they stretch further than other cardinal directions do. Ana and kata, meanwhile, are used for expanding the interiors of the buildings, by adding extra "floors". Everlingers are simulated in a way that disallows them from phasing through walls or leaving the city's nonexistent outside walls, the "bubble" it's inside of.

Everling is a sphere that's split into nine district groups: one for each cardinal direction (save for ana and kata), plus one for each direction's middle. However, each intersection of these districts results in a unique mixture. For example, the upper south-eastern charmern area of Everling is a mixture of Religious, Performance, Philosophy, and Noble districts. This results in 81 unique combinations of districts. For the sake of brevity, though, the list below describes only the nine ways to group them based on their directions.

Personal Districts. These districts are made up of a great multitude of apartments that each ghost can adjust to their whims. Some ghosts simply desire their own apartments, even if they do not need them for any external reasons, such as a need for sleep. Every district that's central in any of the directions belongs to this group.

Religious Districts. All of the upper districts have some buildings and establishments that focus on theology and the practice of religion. This is mostly characterized by temples and religious communities that reside here. Most of the temples are dedicated to scorning the Pantheon of Misfortunes, but diarchy is sometimes practiced in Everling too.

Getaway Districts. If a ghost tries to find ways to escape Everling or to hack it, they have the best chances of finding ways to do that in the bottom districts.

Experiential Districts. Northern districts focus on non-interactive experiences, such as movies, literature, illustrations, musical performances, etc. This area is full of galleries and other such displays.

Performance Districts. The southern districts are where thins presented in the northern districts are shown. The artists and those who study art can be found here.

Interaction Districts. The western districts of Everling provide their citizens with various forms of interactive entertainment.

Philosophy Districts. Most of Everling's scientists and thinkers reside. in its eastern districts. Laboratories, debate chambers, and forums can be found here.

Weird Districts. The most dangerous and bizarre districts of Everling are found in the strangern areas. The further strangewards you go, the more odd people, glitches, and visible inconsistencies one can find.

Noble Districts. The districts located in the charmern parts of the city are the most elegant, organized, elaborate, and uniform. By traveling further charmwards, you may encounter stricter, steadier, more stable ghosts, with more and more rules of conduct to follow.

Culture

Digital ghosts' capabilities differ radically from those of organic beings. They can create and customize an avatar that's perceived by others (sight, sound, and other sensations). Due to this, they are assigned IDs for identification. The digital ghosts can communicate with each other nearly instantly using text-based communication that's within their minds. Since their appearance is completely illusory, they are intangible to the ordinary world, which means that phasing through solid walls is commonplace for them. To be able to use solid objects, they'd have to invest some of their simulation time into telekinetic powers.

The entire city of Everling and all its citizens, usually called Everlingers, are simulated by the hidden computers that run the city. But like any computer, they too have their limitations. While the computers have enough computing power to run all the citizens and the entire city at any given moment, a demand for higher fidelity arose among the citizens, leading to the restructuring of the system. Since some people would forgo being simulated all day long for being simulated at a higher quality, the city now runs on a processing power distribution scheme.

Each hour of simulation is nicknamed "hyre" in Everling, labeled with the time at which this hour ends. For example, hyre 14 is a period of time between 13:00 and 14:00 (or 01:00 and 02:00 in the afternoon). The city goes under regular maintenance during the last hour before midnight (23:00-00:00), in which it corrects any corruption and assigns all the citizens their hyres for the next day. During this hour, the ghosts are simulated at their minimal level, during which they get to only use their instant text-based communication to talk with each other and to organize their hyres for the next day.

A citizen of Everling is assigned 24 hyres. The first 12 hyres are randomly assigned to each person, so that no person gets the same hyre twice, and all the sums of hyres for the same periods of times assigned this way are equal. Afterward, each citizen gets to pick the rest of their 12 hyres, going in the order of their popularity. due to the fact that nothing is simulated at that time, this process takes an exceedingly small amount of time, despite it being done by hundreds of thousands of ghosts. However, since the city can only support so many people at any given time, there are upper limits on how many hyres can be given out for every hour. This combined with the fact that one can give their hyres to others results in a hierarchy, in which the latter hyres have a greater value. This is because an earlier hyre, such as hyre 4, is used up before a latter one, like hyre 22. Once a hyre starts being used, it can't be traded away, so on an ordinary day, higher hyres will run out of stock first before the less popular people get their turn to schedule their times.

What can one do in a city that has no use for money? The citizens of Everling sooner or later came up with three answers: Seeking new experiences through leisurely activities like games or media consumption; learning more about the world through examination, studying all and any areas of science; or performing for others through the exhibition, creating art to be preserved in others' memories forever. Some might find pursuits beyond these, but most of Everling's population falls into at least one of these three philosophies.

If there's something beyond IDs that makes the Everlingers distinct from one another, it's their Popularity. Popularity in Everling stands for a leaderboard that displays the order in which all ghosts are rated by each other, as well as the city's ruling AI. The Popularity is a whole number unique to each ghost. Popularity is updated at the end of Maintenance by asking the ghosts to rate up to 5 random Everlingers they've meaningfully interacted with on the previous day.

In Everling, phrases like those below can be heard, and traditions such as the following tend to be practiced:

• Everlingers have plenty of nicknames for the non-digital people of Runehack. Those who believe the digital ghosts to be superior use terms like "mortals", "temps", "craves", and "bygons". Those who would see them as equals would instead use terms like "souls", "antzes", and even "reals".
• Ghosts use the nickname "sorx" for those whose minds were scanned to create digital ghosts. Its pronunciation is identical to the word it was derived from—source. It came to be because of a temporary glitch that imposed a character limit on ghosts' messages for almost a week.
• Everling is a silent city. Most of the citizens use text-based chat for communication, since it's much faster and doesn't require spending hyres on sound-based illusions. Those who would make sounds in Everling are usually either performers, trying to get the attention of others, or unusual in some different way.
• An avatar of higher quality shows that a ghost has gotten their hands on many hyres to spend all at once. Most of the ghosts put on their high-quality avatars either when they have nothing better to spend their hyres on, or when they really want to impress someone else who's special to them. High-quality avatars appear less polygonal and more complex in their form. This is why many use words derived from "arch" such as arching, arched, or even archon to describe high-quality avatars.
• The slogan of Everling is "Because you don't deserve to die!".
• The ability to hack the city of Everling is referred to as asterism. Ghosts who can hack the city are based on this called asterists. Asterists can hack Everling to change it in a myriad of ways, including teleportation, corrupting other ghosts, accessing forbidden information, overcoming the city's filters, or even getting an avatar simulated during the maintenance time. Once the news of this has spread outside of the city, these terms have been used occasionally for non-ghost hackers who aren't necessarily hacking Everling too.
• Organizing performances (concerts for short) is complicated in Everling. The performer or performers (artist, for the sake of brevity) first determines the time in which they plan to perform. Usually, the artist has a group of 5-10 benefactors who are popular enough to snatch many of these hyres early for a minimum quality of the concert during the maintenance. Once the day begins, the artist announces their concert and hyre(s) during which it will take place. The ghosts who want to attend it must be able to contribute at least one hyre to the artist while keeping at least one for themselves for an avatar to attend the concert with. A concert can take anywhere from 1 to 4 hyres of time, though usually, it's just a single hyre since more than that can be very difficult to organize without lots of benefactors.

Subculture Showcase: Hoverboarders

Note: This section is not meant to imply that the presented subculture is in any way unique to or most represented within this city. It is just a subculture I chose to present because it felt most thematically fitting and it wasn't introduced yet.

Art Curiosities: Legally, all hovering vehicles are required to have glowing undersides. Shoes with glowing soles, such as those worn by the woman in the illustration above, represent the free spirit that allows them to metaphorically "fly". The elegance of geometric lines combined with torn clothes is characteristic of this subculture. Some extend the geometric lines to their body in the form of tattoos. Those who have long hair usually wear a bandana that lets them tie up their hair quickly before a ride. Their outfits usually take on the "flying colors"—yellow for the sun, blue for the day's sky, and white for the clouds. The "boarder jacket" is an iconic article of clothing that's been adapted from the hoverboarder subculture into casual wear over the decades. The woman is wearing a crop variant of the boarder jacket, and the man is wearing one tied around his waist. Gloves are must-have, protective elements like knee pads not so much. The armbands worn by both of the characters represent the specific group they belong to, and they can come in a variety of colors.

This artwork was kindly created by my wonderful girlfriend Arell.

Volerite is a material that revolutionized Runehack's modes of transportation thanks to its unique property of falling upward. This process took a long time though because people needed to develop a way to reliably gather it, as well as runetech that would apply sufficient telekinetic force depending on the number of passengers that the vehicle carries. Once humanity has achieved these two feats of ingenuity, the sky was the limit for them. Literally.

The first hovering vehicle prototypes were hoverboards, occasionally also called voleboards. Since they were usually used by a single person, they were calibrated specifically for this person's weight. While modern hoverboards have changed significantly since then, this early invention has set the foundation for the subculture of hoverboarders that has remained for decades ever since.

At first sight, the hoverboarder values appear contradictory. They believe one should be independent and free, yet loyal to their group, providing support to those they value. Truth is, they seek the balance between these things, for one can't ride a hoverboard long and well without keeping their balance. Hoverboarding isn't an easy feat, especially not when you go up to heights illegal for the sentients to fly at. The higher you fly, the harder you'll fall if an accident occurs. Learning how to hoverboard, and how to do it well, requires a group, but riding a hoverboard has to be done alone. Other boarders will applaud a well-executed stunt and encourage those who fail or fall to try again. However, mocking those who stop boarding is frowned upon within the community.

A group will only accept self-sufficient members who can keep up with the rest. To test the skill of those who wish to join a group, a race is organized. In this race, the newcomer must race the rest of the group, arriving at the finish line in a high enough place (traditionally 4th or better). Each group has its own quirks to this race that characterize its overall personality and/or goals. For example, if this group is interested in illegal activities, the race tests the newcomer's willingness to break the law by flying above the legal height limit, and sometimes even within private city zones. Groups that are made up of thrill-seekers tend to have a segment of the race that takes place outside of the city walls. If a newcomer manages to win this race and joins a group that's made up of ambitious hoverboarders, the newcomer takes the place of the group's slowest member, who is forced to leave the group. Many other specifics exist for the various groups.

Some phrases and expressions that came to be thanks to the hoverboarder subculture include:

• "Berjuice" is a slang that stands for the fuel that runetech devices require, derived from 'amber' since that is the substance's main ingredient, and 'juice' due to the color it tends to have.
• "Flying colors" describes the color scheme of yellow, blue, and white. Sometimes, it is accentuated by black or brown.
• "Off-boarder" is a stunt, in which the rider launches off the board, runs a distance while losing sight of the board due to the board flying underneath a surface, such as a bridge, and finished when the rider jumps back on the board.
• "Slick" is a slang adjective or adverb used for well-executed stunts. The term has found its way outside of the boarder subculture too, generally describing a job well done. It's generally considered awkward when public speakers or workers in an office environment use it.
• "Turv up" is a verb used to describe the moment when an inexperienced hoverboarder ends up upside down. It's difficult to recover from this state without a specialized board, and thus the turved up rider is forced to stop their flight to correct themselves. Riders do not assist turved up riders, unless it is a group's leader (or someone close to that position in groups without an explicit leader) who sees potential in the turved up rider.
• "Waller" or "wallie" is a stunt, in which the rider flies vertically up on a board, parallel to a tall wall, such as the side of a building, or a city wall. While it sounds easy in theory, it actually requires a specialized hoverboard that can telekinetically hold up the rider in this vertical position. Without one, the rider who attempts to execute this trick will most likely turv up, unless they have huge amounts of skill.

Relations

The three major cities Everling has relations to are Wineholm, Moorwell, and the rest of Lifestock-owned city-states.

The first appearance of Everlingers in Wineholm has caused a great cultural shift there. The isolated culture there is largely incapable of interacting with the digital ghosts. The few people who can, called mediums by the locals, serve as the mediators between the illusory tourists and the locals.

Moorwell is the city that conceived of Everling as it is, and it is the city that remotely manages it to this day. However, this management has to be discussed with RXLNC. While Lifestock is responsible for Everling's maintenance and it still technically owns it, RXLNC tries to propose her own suggestions as to how the city should be updated. If it had the tools to do so, she would make the city independent of outside influences.

All cities owned by Lifestock are possible tourist destinations for the Everlingers nowadays, and they welcome this opportunity. Other cities welcome with open arms the strange creations created by the digital ghosts who have all the time in the world just to be creative or enjoy their lives.

Curiosities

Everling might be illusory in its nature, but that doesn't mean it has no points of interest. Some of them include:

• The Bazaar of Oddities is a marketplace found in the bottom stranger areas of Everling (Getaway and Weird districts' overlap). In it, Everlingers pretend to be selling illusory keepsakes of things from the world living above the ocean's surface. However, it's more often a place where one can seek information regarding matters illegal within the city, such as asterism or escaping Everling.
• The Coralside is one of the few beautiful natural sights of Everling. It's a natural coral reef growing on the ocean floor in the bottom north-eastern districts (Getaway, Experiential, and Philosophy districts' overlap). Usually, it would be too dark down there, but thanks to Everling's illusory nature, the Everlingers who look upon it see a myriad of colors this coral possesses.
• Death's Auditorium is a massive temple in the upper parts of Everling (Religious district), stretching from the charm to strange (Noble to Weird district). This is the world's greatest temple dedicated to scorning the deity of death.
• Escapist's Tower is found in the Getaway-Interaction district on the bottom west of Everling. It's a challenging experience, in which ghosts are tasked with leaving the tower before their time runs out. (Think sort of like if an escape room was an MMORPG.)
• The Grandhall is a building in which the biggest performances are traditionally held. It's apparently capable of housing one hundred thousand people without being crowded thanks to the four-dimensional seating system. This theatre is located in the Noble, Getaway, and Experiential districts' overlap, in the bottom north-charmern areas of Everling.
• The Kolloseum is a massive battle arena in the overlap of Experiential and Weird districts' overlap (north-strangern Everling). Its participants emulate battles with each other through the weapons that are made to specifically corrupt the ghosts struck with them.
• The Lucky Gem is a casino in the central Interaction district on the west of the city. It's the largest gambling house visited by many ghosts on a daily basis to win or lose numerous hyres, both by spending them there, but also by betting them in hopes of winning better ones.
• Sunken Repository of Sciences is a library in the Philosophy Noble district, in the east-charmern side of Everling. While this place is usually called a library, it's actually closer to a museum—proper books would be extremely complicated for ghosts to simulate, so instead the information retained in this building is displayed on the walls of various rooms. Every empty room of this building is akin to a book, and ghosts flip its pages by traveling anawards and katawards.
• The Workshop Deluge is named after the organization that owns it. This is a "company" that produces video games and sells them outside of Everling. All of its proceeds go to RXLNC, which is used for keeping Everling afloat, financially speaking. Thanks to its staff being digital, they produce high-quality games at a stunning speed. It's located in the north of Everling (Experiential district), despite the fact one would expect it to be located in the Interaction district on the west.

The first depiction of Everling as seen above was commissioned from Katechaste nearly two years ago. This was before I knew about its districts, extra dimensions, hyres, or many other details I introduced in this article. The whale isn't a permanent part of it, it's just swimming through the illusion.

Important People

A few examples of the important people from Everling:

• 4T5R (Fortifier), ghost, male; seeks and reports exploits, glitches, and hacks to RXLNC, and once they are fixed he creates content for the public to lampshade them. Other ghosts find the tales of his exploits entertaining.
• 9DC8 (Naindy), ghost, female; scientist researching the history of Runehack before the era of monsters began.
• Mister 0FIR (Ofir, originally Nullifier), ghost, male; the master asterist. He's known for making offers that are difficult to turn down.
• RXLNC (Our Excellency), ghost, female; the ruler of Everling.
• Shark1 (Shark Anne), ghost, either; a performer who usually flies around the city in the evening hyres, taking shape of a giant snake-like lizard with tiny legs, a catfish-like mustache, and big expressive eyes.
• X8R (Excitor), ghost, either; one of the most well-known ghost artists who's keeping up several illusory art pieces in Wineholm's capital city.