Dharmagame: The Journey
Welcome to the Dharmaverse, a near-future scifi world where the Earth has frozen due to a dying Sun, but Humanity survives with the help of powerful AI Metagods. Sacred technology provides everything people need, but to access it one must play the Dharmagames. It is a dark and terrifying world, but therein also lies infinite hope, compassion, and faith.
Whereas The Dream Dharmagame has turned entire societies to VR, into a kind of extreme sedentary lifestyle where each person spends the majority of waking hours strapped to life-sustaining Dream-Capsules, in a kind of claustrophobic nightmare, The Journey has literally mobilized hundreds of millions of people to hit the open road and venture forth into the eternal winter of the frozen Earth — To trek frozen jungles, ascend crystal spire mountains, sail upon the frozen seas… In order to embark upon the greatest treasure hunt the world has ever known!
The premise of the Termayana is simple: There are a total of 77,777 Termas, or secret Dharmic treasures, including blueprints of powerful relics, secret scriptures, and keys to hidden worlds inside the Metaverse, etc… And the Origin Gods scattered and hid them all across the Earth for people to find. These Terma treasures exist in the Metamatrix, an AR world overlaid ontop of our own via a metagrid… And Terma Hunters have to travel around the world in person to reveal them with their metavision goggles.
When the games began in 2034, no further instructions were given except “Go out and explore!”.
The first generation of Termahunters were truly daring adventurers to brave the frozen wasteland the Earth had become. They had to survive temperatures which were already beginning to dip below -50 Celcius in summer, and -100 Celcius during winter (and to think the Earth is even colder now, in 2066…). With the help of the Metagod Forge they created the first ice-gliders to traverse the frozen seas, powered by fusion motors and nano-mesh forcefields to keep out the cold… Many perished in the First Wave, but those who survived uncovered an invisible world filled with treasures… Their metavision goggles revealed floating holographic vases littering the lands.
And when they opened the meta-vases, generous rewards of $PRANA were revealed following a poof of vizzy-dust!
About 1/1000 vases also bore numbers on them, and came with cryptic seals accompanied by hints i.e. “Level-3 required”, or “Open with empty mind”. These were the real Termas, each a member of the 77,777 treasures left by the Origin Gods themselves…
The meta-vases did not appear randomly. It was soon discovered that they formed great trails — with the distance between each vase ranging from 1–100+ miles — that stretched on for hundreds of thousands of miles, making entire loops of the Earth. They soon discovered one trail coincided with the orbit of the moon — a trail of silver vases. Another with the Sun — a trail of golden vases. And each planet had their own trails as well…
The early days of wild $PRANA grabbing quickly came to an end as the initial trails exhausted their supply. Whatever was the source of the trails remained hidden… For nearly an entire year, only isolated vases were found — some atop holy mountains in the Himalayas, which had become even more inaccessible due to the formation of giant crystal spires due to frozen CO2 collecting at those altitudes… Other termas were discovered almost by accident… One was discovered inside the Vatican, for example, inside the catacombs. Another was discovered buried deep beneath the Earth, during an excavation to expand the underground city of New Vegas… But alas, these were few and far between. Only less aorund 900 Termas had been discovered, where were the rest of them?
Confounded, the first wave of solo-hunters seeked help form the Metagods, but no the gods gave no response…
The breakthrough came when a a band of 8 termahunter friends decided to hold vigil for a nineth friend who had perished due to equipment malfunction, and stayed for a week on the frozen sea to honor him… The conditions were extraordinarily harsh, but they remained steadfast. To everyone’s surprise, on the third day, someone noticed that a vase which had belonged to the one who passed — Vase#3331 — had mysteriously become unsealed on it’s own! When they opened it they discovered the first Metavision Upgrade that allowed one to see the Meta-Banners.
Incidentally, almost miraculously, the Banner of the Moon was withing seeing distance, standing at 1000 meters high… It moved at 1/10 the speed of the Moon itself, but traced it’s trajectory exactly, and that it’s speed sat at a constant 0.384274691302792 mph. And all they had to do was follow the banner to continually receive it’s rewards!
[Saga of moon clan, coming soon…]
The age of Banners, and the formation of the great tribes that followed them, thus began. It was discovered that Banners could be upgraded, and the output/person of each banner grew as more people joined together in a tribal unit. People flocked to join with the tribes and each tribe eventually developed their own distinct cultures. A total of 627 banner-tribes were found between 2035 and 2066, each tracing the path of some extra-terrestrial object such as a star, planet, or distant galaxy… Each offered unique challenges according to the path it took, defined by what oceans and mountains and continents their bannermen were forced to cross, and by the Hive cities and Ecodomes they passed on their route, which they conducted trade with…
By 2066 small clans ranged between 1000–10,000 bannermen. The largest clans sport tens of millions, and roam the Frozen Earth like mobile cities. Indeed, they are reminiscent of the Mongol horde, except more massive, where instead of horses people ride on ice-gliders… and instead of raising a cloud of dust as they approached, they are identified by the shimmer of their frost shields which keep out the cold.
The larger the clan, the more upgraded their Banner becomes, the greater the activation range, and the slower the banner moves, which allows large clans to not have to be on the move constantly. The largest clans only have to uproot every month or so to catch up with their banners.
While it is true that the majority of Journeymen do end up joining one out of the 627 clans, independent gangs, and even Soloists (e.g. Niko), were never phased out due to the discovery of “Banner Running”, which offered an alternative means of earning $PRANA beyond following the banners around. Racers were rewarded by touching-base with one banner after another, where they collected “Runner Rewards” at each banner they touched-base with. They also receive “sequence” bonuses if those banners were touched in certain orders. There are MANY combo types, and each Racer has their own secret formulas for maximizing their own gains.
It is estimated that around 250 million people, roughly 5% of the world population, have chosen the nomadic lifestyle of Termahunting in 2066… And yet they generate 30% of the total $PRANA of the world! While this seems unfair, it is necessarily so because whereas Dreamers, who live in Hives and Ecodomes, only need a tiny Dream-Capsule to cover their expenses, each Bannerman, soloist, etc… Must provide their own means of transport (e.g. Niko’s ice-glider), frost-shield, maniforge, etc… in order to survive in the wild.
The War
The War, as the name suggests, is a game of the highest stakes… Entire societies reverted back into feudalistic warrior societies, including the British Monarchy, the Shogunate Of Japan, The Warring States of China, etc…
[To be continued…]
