Digital Web

See also: Digital Web and Digital Web 2.0 

The Digital Web is a Zone based entirely within virtual reality, and the unofficial home of the Virtual Adepts. It is to be the foundation of the "Reality 2.0" initiative of the Adepts, moving humanity to a better world free of the problems of material reality on Earth. Just like the Internet is a sort of virtual "space" which has no bearing on an actual location, the Digital Web is theoretically an important Correspondence Point. It may also have some sort of connection to the Mount Qaf of the Ahl-i-Batin.

The experience of the Digital Web seems to follow the state of technology and the sensory of the realm has tracked Sleeper technology. At current, the Digital Web provides exceptional sight and sound but images often still feel "flat" with taste, touch, and smell being generally dulled.

History

The Electrodyne Engineers first conceived of "virtual space" in the 19th century, causing them to change the name of their Convention to the Virtual Adepts. Alan Turing began working on practical implementation of Virtual Reality in the 1940s, decades before such a thing appeared on the Technocracy's Time Table. With the help of the Sons of Ether, Turing developed a simulated reality and projected his Avatar into it via a telephone line. Something, however, went wrong; by some accounts, there was an error in his calculations, while others suggest his body was assassinated by Technocrats while his mind was absent, or that he made contact with Mount Qaf. Whatever the case, his death transformed his simulation into the nascent Digital Web, and catalyzed his fellow Adepts into fleeing the Technocracy for good.

Forms of the Digital Web

The Digital Web has no known end and is difficult to chart. Areas divide into three large types.

Virgin Web

Area of the Web that is yet to be given form and seems to be tied to new users joining the Web. If new users were to stop joining and bringing a sense of potential, new Virgin Web would cease being formed. The sensory experience of Virgin Web is foggy, uncanny, and shrouded in digital mists.

Formatted Web

When someone claims Virgin Web and spits it into a fixed form, Formatted Web is created. The area is divided into sectors, regions of specific purpose and rules and conduits connecting these areas. Sectors can be free, open to all users, or restricted, barring users that do not observe the sector protocols.

Corrupted Web

These areas have been somehow broken or damaged and the experience tends towards the surreal. In these areas, digital death, or 'de-resolution', is a defining threat.

Sectors

Sectors are area of Virgin Web that have had some order imposed. A sector may be in a formatted web area or corrupted web area and come in a variety of forms.

Haunted Web

These are areas that have been corrupted by whiteouts, a ghastly death, overlap with the Dark Umbra, or some other phenomenon. Endless loops and broken fractals are common motifs and may draw travelers into the Rip, a storm-tide that draws users into the Trash Sector, a virtual hell of lost data.

C-Sectors

Constrained sectors have had some limitations placed on what can exist in that space during the formatting process. This may include:

• SRVRSZ, the restricted Technocratic strongholds maintained by Iteration X
• FreeSpace that requires entrants to abide by the rules of idealistic transhumanists
• Saves, for private groups
• Coms which are open to all

Grid Sectors

These are areas containing the activities of sleepers and are set up to divert Sleeper traffic off of the rest of the Digital Web. These sectors have restrictions that prevent sleepers from wandering into the rest of the Digital Web.

Access Methods

The digital web is accessible in three main ways with increasing levels of immersion.

Sensory Visitation

Using VR gear, the entrant gains sight, sound, and touch but with a higher difficulty for magic (+2 difficulty). VR gear is made available to Tradition mages by the Virtual Adepts. The entrant remains aware and awake outside of the web, and while easily surprised, the mage will know quickly if someone tries to interact with them in meatspace.

Astral Immersion

The entrant uses Correspondence Sensing (Correspondence 2) to shift their senses and no longer incurs the +2 difficulty on magical effects. The character gets much more information and the world is in sharper detail. Since the mage's senses are elsewhere, the mage is unaware of what may happen to their body. The mage's astral self is hard to kill and any lethal interactions simply dump the mage back into their body with damage and effects depending on from where they were ejected. The character also uses Mental for Physical attributes except for Stamina which stays stamina.

Holistic Immersion

The mage wholly translates to the digital web and leaves no physical body remaining in meatspace. The character uses physical traits rather than mental to do physical things and dying in this state results in the character's death.

Entering From the Umbra

Characters already astrally projected or who have stepped sideways can enter the web by climbing the Pattern Web into the Digital Web or by entering from the Cyber Realm through the portals available there. This method can be overwhelming as the character is not shielded from any of the information coming at them and it may take time to adjust.

Web Today

The Digital Web 3.0 is after all, the real-life Internet is easier to use in 2015 than it was in 1994, so the cumbersome rules systems presented in the original Digital Web (book) are clearly obsolete. These days, adventures in the Web are more like adventures in material reality than they were back then. This era’s netizens are more native to that environment than the old school Web-spinners were, and the Web itself has – for better and worse – become more like our world than it used to be.

As far as rules are concerned, we suggest treating the Digital Web as a Realm of the Middle Umbra, subject to Whiteout Paradox backlashes and accessed by several forms of astral and metaphysical projection, as outlined under Web Access, below. Keep things as simple as possible, and treat weird online life forms as spirit entities. If and when you want to get into the more complex and peculiar aspects of the Digital Web, check out Digital Web 2.0. Although those systems are based in the late ‘90s, many of the specific rules still apply.

References

• M20: Mage: The Ascension, p. 107-109, 466
• MTAs: Digital Web, p. 21-44
• MTAs: Digital Web 2.0, p. 18, 86, 95, 100
• MTAs: Technocracy: Void Engineers, p. 25
• MTAs: Virtual Adepts Tradition Book, p. 33, 34, 57, 78
• MTAs: Guide to the Technocracy, p. 87
• MTAs/cMET: Laws of Ascension Companion, p. 208-210
• HTR: The Spellbound, p. 112