This is the first in a series of posts on the World-Building for my HIVE-first-published mythpunk novel Ragnarok Conspiracy. The world-building part of my novel is defined as open-world, meaning there are no copy rights on the world I created for my novel. Other than the story and the characters and my actual novel, the world building is public domain and any author wanting to use my world building in their work is free to do so.
While a lot of the world-building bleeds though the actual story, the reader has to connect a lot of dots, and as it is important to keep a story from being filled with info-dumps, solid world building is like a foundation. You can feel it's there, its part of the lore, but much of it remains hidden even after connecting the dots.
In this first post in this series I want to discuss the related subjects of DRM, printer-drones and base in the world-building of Ragnarok Conspiracy.
Base
Before the copyright-wars started, a major shift in the logistics of industry had started to take place. Molecular 3d printers had become as common as TV-sets are today, and in order to print anything, a substance called base was used. The most expensive type of base, referred to as just base could be used to print just about anything. Base was a beige fluid with a viscosity roughly like that of honey.
While base could be used to print basically anything, it was mainly used for the molecular printing of food. 3d printers using electricity, water and base could print a fairly accurate reproduction of basically any food item, equal in taste and molecular composition and only slightly off in texture. So you couldn't exactly taste the difference between a real hamburger and a printed one, there was a noticeable difference in texture.
Once base had been used for printing food items a number of time in this way, the remaining fluid, lacking sufficient Calcium, Magnesium and Phosphorus, could still be used to produce many food items, but some food items would end up tasting less like the real thing. Below certain thresholds of Calcium, Magnesium and Phosphorus, base would be referred to as depleted base. Depleted base was available much cheaper than base, and was used both for printing food and for printing other non-food items.
Once depleted base, through usage, had Nitrogen levels below a certain threshold, or if it ran completely out of one of the previously named minerals, it would no longer be usable tor printing food. This base, referred to as unmixed base could have a wide range of compositions. Unmixed base would usually either be used for printing every day non-food items like toilet paper, soap, and all kind of simple utensils, or it would be sold to a base mixing company that would use it to mix up construction base.
Printer drones
While base, depleted base and unmixed base were used in stationary 3d printers in peoples homes, construction was done on structures too big and unpractical to do using a stationary 3d printer. Instead, 3d printing of larger objects was done by swarms of so-called printing drones. These flying drones were tiny mini printers, ranging in size from half a centimeter up to about seven centimeters, working together in printing larger objects. A TV, a car, a military airplane, and even whole buildings, could be printed by these drones using only construction base.
DRM
While depleted and construction base were cheap and technically a 3d printer or a swarm of printing drones could print anything, any printable item in existence was governed by Digital Right Management. Wanted to print a set of six teaspoons? Buy a DRM protected printing file for printing spoons with. Your printer would print a spoon. Then another spoon. But after exactly six spoons no other spoon could be printed using this particular printing file.
This DRM plays a huge role in the world building, the lore, of our story. Once the South-Atlantic GNU Defense Alliance (that we'll discuss in a future post) manages to hack into a PUPR quantum-slicing facility (also a subject for a later post), and manages to create and publish a counterfeited root key, everybody on the planet becomes capable of re-signing and re-attributing printing files. This means that if you can get your hands on an old depleted printing file for printing a hand-gun with, you can re-attribute and re-sign the printing file and get your 3d printer to print you a handgun. Or you could have your home 3d printer print you a swarm of printing drones and then have those printing drones print you a fighter jet.
Needless to say this wasn't the South-Atlantic GNU Defense Alliance its intention when it published the root key. And needless to say this one act ended up escalating the copyright wars.
Base as the new currency
During the copyright wars, the monetary system starts to collapse. A large scale blockchain, that set the events in motion to start the copyright wars, basically collapsed the whole cryptocurrency market, but things didn't end there.
After cryptocurrency, soon fiat currency starts to lose its trust base as well and the monetary system collapses.
Then, after the publishing of the counterfeited root keys, base soon fills up the gap that fiat and cryptocurrency left. No banks, no digital money, no paper money. No, the only currency anyone accepts are the three main forms of base. base, depleted base and construction base.
Did you enjoy this post?
I'm not sure yet if these world-building posts work. I would like this to be the first in a series of posts on the world-building for Ragnarok Conspiracy. In my next post I'dd like to discuss m-brane folding, quantum-slicing an portal-spheres. If you think these posts are spoilers or you don't like them for other reasons, please comment. If you do like these little peeks under the hood of my novel, please also let me know.
And again, if you are an author and find any of my world-building efforts interesting enough to reuse: It's all open-world, public domain world building. Use my world-building as you see fit. I'dd love to see same-lore fiction build on my world-building.