Shatterloop

This post will describe the lore/conworld around a game I've been developing for around 3 years. I'm probably going to focus all my conworlding efforts here until the game is done.

Disclaimer

All lore here is subject to change. I will at least strive to keep this post internally consistent, but parts of it may not make it into the game's canon in the form presented here. Anything related to Civilization/history is going to most likely make the cut however as I'm currently developing that aspect of the game based directly on the lore.

As always, comments and questions are highly appreciated.

Universe Basis

Shatterloop is a universe composed of around 11 billion "Loops" which are relatively small planes a few hundred miles across that wrap back on themselves spatially. Each loop is surrounded by a Void Sea where this spatial transition happens. Hundreds of miles above each loop is a Self-Illuminating Band, which provides energy to the loop in lieu of a sun (I'll get to this in a minute). Below the ground is a thick rock layer that has unknown depth.

These 11 billion Loops function somewhat like separate sub-universes, but are connected to each other spatially provided you make a jump of a long enough length. The Civilization here and its predecessor Civilization have exploited this and so each loop is connected to other Loops in an unintuitive way.

There are also other parts of the universe that are similarly "shattered", however I won't get to them until they're relevant, as this is probably a complicated enough start.

This network of Loops can be represented on a 2D plane which also loops back on itself -- make enough large jumps in a direction and you'll end up back in the loop where you started. The original Civilization created structures known as Strange Loops that are based on mapping out this extra-dimensional space and can arrive at any loop from any other loop. The newer Civilization lacks that technology and so their transport networks are more rudimentary -- each loop has a set of other Loops that it connects to at a station known as an Aleph Conduit based on the most favorable directions. It's impressive technology (especially given the complex theory behind it), but doesn't have anywhere near as much utility as the old system.

The Self-Illuminating Band

Hundreds of miles above the surface, space and time curve to a Singularity and all matter that encounters it is emitted as an enormous amount of light. This band made Shatterloop a highly desirable universe to colonize by human settlers -- particularly useful for agriculture and energy production as the band is uniform across the surface and there is no day/night cycle.

However, constant energy output can absolutely wreck an environment and fragile human biologics. This universe was a bit more stable as the physics here allows for light crystallization and there are various dumping mechanisms that end up with it moving into regions of absolute void, however biological engineering was still necessary as the surface runs a lot hotter than other habitable places. The original settlers did this quite handily, and so the humans that live here have various new biological systems (known collectively as "biologics") that help them survive and thrive.

Resource extraction is another matter altogether -- the high heat and somewhat warped physics make even really basic refinement processes (like turning wood into charcoal) extremely temperamental and dangerous. Technology filled in the gap here -- first through imported machine designs and then later by sourcing native materials and effects. Because of its immense need, Shatterloop's people have retained a lot of high technology and science from their parent universe, however over time the use of it has become extremely gentrified and the use of native effects is more pronounced.

Exotic materials

As mentioned, light emitted from the Self-Illuminating Band will occasionally crystallize into solid forms, known as Starshards if they appear on the surface or Crystals if they appear in the Fourth Tetrad. There are also more exotic forms that will appear elsewhere -- I'll get to those as needed.

These exotic materials form because of a peculiar quirk in Shatterloop's physics - the fact that "infinite" forms can appear without achieving mathematical infinity. If enough energy concentrates in an area, it will turn into a mini-singularity of that energy -- an effectively infinite amount despite not requiring an infinite amount of input. This energy can then be exploited endlessly with finite processes, or exploited exactly once by finite processes. This is not as useful as you'd think -- technology rarely requires light but instead other forms of energy which are way more difficult to turn infinite.

Aleph Conduits make use of this principle -- through an energy family known as Ajna, they use Repulsor Conduit technology (basically jumping or warping technology) with an "infinite" jump size to warp into other Loops entirely. Despite their name, it's worth mentioning that they don't actually invoke Aleph (basically an infinity beyond regular infinity), this is instead based on the original settlers' use of the word to describe something a level of magnitude higher.

Shatterloop Civilization: Brief History

All of the 11 billion universes are populated and heavily exploited, which leads to a kind of extreme space scarcity that has led to some bizarre societal behavior. This pattern of human settlement wasn't organic but was instead created by the Shattering event that created 11 billion copies of a single universe, with all entities (with one exception) in it irrevocably memory-wiped. Why this happened is a game spoiler so I won't get to it here, but why the memory-wiping happened I will explain later.

This event was absolutely catastrophic to a Civilization already adapting to an unusual cosmology. Even worse though, this event happened right before a cataclysmic event in the parent universe that caused all extra-dimensional communication/transport lines to be severed as entire chains of causality were ripped apart. It may have even been what caused it -- Mass destabilizing events like that can do damage to neighboring universes, so it's plausible that the parent universe may have been affected given its proximity. The Conic Civilization in another close universe (who I'll probably never mention ever again) has that as their dominant theory, but there are unresolvable issues with it.

At the time of the Shattering, the people living on Shatterloop were highly specialized researchers and engineers that thankfully were able to reconstruct their technological designs. The Shattering may have been fortuitous to the development of the Civilization here-- there's nothing quite like duplicating a group of highly qualified people 11 billion times.

Unfortunately, the Shattering caused a very different problem. Originally, Shatterloop was a single Loop around a light-year from end to end. With the Shattering, it turned into Loops that were a few hundred miles across at best, most of which had already been populated. Over time this led to an extreme space scarcity, which when coupled with the absolute reliance on technology for basic survival led to some really horrible societal conditions.

They're definitely better than our current society in many ways because of the high technology, but are incredibly worse in other ways. People live and work in cramped spaces with other members of their Guild. Reproduction has been outlawed to the extent of mass sterilization campaigns with only the elites being allowed to have a single child. Going Guildless or otherwise jumping ship on society is basically a death sentence (though there are groups clustered around areas of dense native power do alright if they can manage the paranoia and backstabbing). Guild disputes are intense, and places of recreation or mental health improvement come under frequent raids. Overall, it's a very mixed bag.

Some basic Civilization stuff

Societal concepts in Shatterloop don't make sense without exploring their immortality. The pre-Shatterloop settlers had perfected a system known as the Newflesh Network that allowed people that died to be reborn in a new body almost instantly, provided their consciousness was entangled with the network. Additionally, anti-aging biological improvements and regenerative enhancements had been discovered hundreds of years earlier.

In an expansive universe with three galaxies worth of space, these achievements made sense and enabled humanity to spread rapidly. However in a closed environment like Shatterloop where technology was absolutely essential followed by being gentrified to an absurd extent, immortality is a huge societal issue. This explains the mass sterilization and extremely limited reproduction, but also made warfare absurd and based more around memory-wiping/biological altering/reintegration than very temporary deaths or injuries.

Guilds

The Civilization of Shatterloop is organized around political groups known as Guilds -- groups dedicated to a particular specialty or set of specialties of labor/production. Around 7 or so will exist at any time, however the subgroups will variously split or realign themselves and since they're decentralized to Loops, Guilds may operate completely differently in different locations.

Guilds can be thought of as gigantic but highly decentralized unions -- there are loop-based hierarchies that wield influence over town-based ones but don't micromanage their affairs. Many town-based Guilds operate as co-ops rather than hierarchies in practice if not in officially. Worker standards are particularly good, and work-life balance is stellar, and the living situations creat tight-knit if highly dysfunctional "families".

Absolute political power doesn't exist, with the exception of the Maintenance Guild who wield an absurd amount of influence over the entire society since they're the sole maintainers of Shatterloop's machinery. Instead, Guilds self-govern and take control over local areas in mostly symbiotic relationships. There is a heck of a lot of infighting and sabotage, so much so that theft has been basically institutionalized, but towns aren't hellscape dystopias. There's a balance there.

Over time, Guilds (with the prodding of the Maintenance Guild which basically won the last war) have come up with a set of principles known as Charter that govern the relationships between Guilds and other Guilds as well as individuals and their Guilds. It's here where you'll find the right for people to switch Guilds or go guildless, to have a required (and very generous) amount of leisure time, and some rules to keep disputes from escalating to violence (or Shatterloop's equivalent thereof). These rules also include various provisions that enshrine the Maintenance Guild's hegemony and provide the blueprints for other types of productive gentrification. It's a bit like a constitution except unalterable and also heavily enforced by the ubiquitous presence of the Maintenance Guild. It is thankfully benevolent -- being the only person alive that remembers thousands of years of history made its leader particularly effective.

The Maintenance Guild