Lore
The lore of Lagrange is loosely based on the stories and universe of the Post-Self setting, a world of uploaded consciousnesses and the unique mechanics of their day-to-day existence in comparison with those who remained back on Earth. The hardware in which these uploaded consciousnesses live exists at the Earth-Moon L5 point, and is known as the Lagrange System, with the support station surrounding it known as the Lagrange Station. Here is where the world of this server lives.
While there is much lore in the Post-Self setting (eight books and several stories!), none of which is essential reading, a simplified and semi-canon version is provided here for roleplay opportunities.
2000–2100
After a series of pandemics washed across the globe one after another, the culture of Earth remained — frustratingly — largely unchanged. The superpowers of the world continued to consolidate their neoimperialist empires, the technological arms race saw no sign of slowing, and the old rivalry between East and West still dominated worldwide politics.
As the ailing Russian Federation sought to reinforce its position by forming the Sino-Russian Bloc in tandem with the Chinese Communist Party, NATO and its neighbors responded in kind by restructuring the European Union into the first Western Federation. Each was a supernation that defined itself in antithesis to the other, and thus the Cold War carried on entirely uninhibited.
2100–2200
If the Space Race was the premier performance of the technological arms race in the late 20th century, then the prestige of creating the world’s first successful mind upload was to be the battleground of the early 22nd. After a political scandal resulted in the psychological imprisonment of a few hundred residents of the Western Fed by trapping them within their own exocortices, the S-R Bloc saw an opportunity to undermine the Western Fed’s position by making their victims into the heroic unknown pioneers of digital consciousness.
After several failed — and ultimately lethal — attempts to map their experiences while stuck dreaming, the S-R Bloc finally succeeded in creating the first partial successful upload in 2115. By the end of 2123, the population of the System had entered the several thousands. However, it quickly became apparent that the world’s collective goals were not in alignment with the needs of the residents of the System.
Numerous parties sought to either exploit or destroy the System, and the political debate as to whether they had the same rights as those living on Earth was, exhaustingly, tainted by capitalism and bigotry. However, some governments found an opportunity that compromised between their needs and the needs of the System’s inhabitants, and it was ultimately agreed upon that the System would be placed into a recently-completed space station and made into a repository for the Earth’s revered ancestors and its scorned political outcasts.
On January 21st of 2125, the System was officially recognized as a sovereign and independent entity on the world stage. A formal treaty was created to codify this agreement, and to set boundaries that ensured no one government acquired the favor of the System or lost the privilege to send new uploads. In turn, the System was guaranteed protection by the governments of the world, for they had a vested interest in preserving this unprecedented form of both execution and immortality.
The rest of the 22nd century would see the Earth steadily decline into a state of climate collapse at the hands of uninhibited capitalism. By the turn of the century, desertification and rising tides and crop failure had forced most of the Earth’s population to move from their homes to what temperate regions still existed.
2200–2300
The 23rd century was defined by a metastasis in which capitalism poisoned the Earth and its people, was followed by a period of socialist reclamation in the hopes of improving the global quality of life, and then came full circle as conservatism surged and once more dominated the political and environmental climate. This metastasis was reinforced by depopulation programs that disproportionately coerced the impoverished and dejected to upload to the System via financial incentives for their families.
Thus, the governments of the world were absolved of accountability, for they were no longer responsible for the preservation of life, longevity, and wellness; the System gave them an excuse that allowed them to continue their industrialized destruction of the Earth without meaningful political consequences. An official here and a figure there might lose their position, but the hegemony remained unfettered.
As a result of the climate crisis, and because the progressive habit was to upload out of desperation or despair, the public attitude towards space became one of disdain. Escaping the Earth either to space or to the System was seen as a form of cowardice, and so the economic and political will to invest in the space industry for the betterment of mankind waned.
Throughout the 23rd century, the majority of the world’s large-scale projects were investments in city-scale bunkers to ensure what remained of Earth’s population could survive an environmental catastrophe of their own making. Consequently, the System and its curators remained the only significant space-bound organization.
2300–2400
The System sought to absolve itself entirely of its physical dependence upon the Earth in order to maintain its longevity. Accordingly, after several decades of preparation, the Castor and Pollux launch vehicles were sent rocketing outward from either end of the station in polar directions out of the Heliosphere, each carrying with them a fully-automated and independent copy of the System which remained in Earth’s orbit.
Castor received a signal in 2346 indicating that an alien vehicle was approaching its position and intended to accept the Golden Record signals both launch vehicles had put out for the decades prior. Contact with the Artemisians went swimmingly, and a mutual exchange of digital populations and information was had during the short few weeks that the alien vehicle remained in immediate contact. Castor now boasts the only alien minds who remain in regular contact with Earth.
Their ideological and technological wisdom helped to stabilize the Earth’s dire state throughout the later half of the century. After several decades of work, the climate crisis was brought to a halt, although the political mechanisms by which it was allowed to occur were entirely unperturbed. The Artemisians offered the Earth a second chance, but it remained up to its residents not to repeat the same mistakes again.
2400–2500
At Midnight on New Year’s Eve, 2399, a disillusioned group of people on Earth attacked the Lagrange System with a contraproprioceptive virus, which crashed every single instance within. It took the System technicians one year, one month, and ten days to bring the System back up to the point where it could be run successfully. In the process, however, approximately 1% of all instances were irretrievably lost. Everything from ephemeral forks created for simple tasks to entire uploaded consciousnesses were left effectively dead, totalling about 23 billion souls.
This lead to renewed cooperation between those sys-side and phys-side. Combined with AVEC — Audio/Visual Extrasystem Communication — those who uploaded, regardless of their immortality, maintained connections with those back on Earth, forging new ones over time. However, the transmission delay between Earth and Lagrange Station, at nearly 1.4 seconds, made immediate communication between the two somewhat difficult.
In order to assist in this, a smaller instance of the System was created in Trondheim, Norway with a permanent connection maintained between the two, allowing individuals to ‘step’ from one System to the other. Some decades later, android bodies — known as ‘frames’ — allowing individuals to truly inhabit the physical world. However, these frames were quite expensive to manufacture, and the materials used for power storage such as lithium and cadmium remained a limiting factor.
The Century Attack also led to a re-shaping of the political landscape of the member-nations of the Western Federation. This second Western Fed began to encompass much more of the world, rivaling the size of the United Nations. Throughout this process, pressure from the various Western Fed councils led to a weakening of capitalism and a wave of disarmament.
2500–2600
The need for more of the materials required to finally destroy the last remnants of dependency on fossil fuels led to a new space age, with mining ships being sent out to various places within the Solar System. With the need for living space, cargo staging, and easier access to Earth, the Lagrange station became an obvious solution. The station was expanded, encompassing ore processing, material reclamation, and living quarters for those involved.
With the resources and effort required for these ventures, the Western Federation was folded in with other nation states and federations of nations to form a new United Nations. This also heralded the effective end of imperialism and served as the death-knell for capitalism as scarcity was conquered and humanity was united in its expansion into the remainder of the Heliosphere. Through this cooperation, sys-side and phys-side were at last united in a critical mass of mutual continuity.