Due to issues in my life, i will have to put this story on hold. I have been having numerous difficulties in the last week or so, and it will probably be another two weeks before I can get all my shit together.

When I come back, I will begin posting two chapters a week, rather than one, and I will try to make up for lost time as well. That being said, here is some general information about the setting:

It is hard sifi, no ftl or anything that seems to be beyond known physics.

The story takes place on a ring world, around a star a bit smaller than our own. It is a megastructure, encircling the star at about what the outer distance of mercuries orbit would be.

The ringworlds width is also its north/south directions, and is about as wide as a polar circumnavigation of earth. As for the ring itself, it is divided into sectionals called realms. Each realm is about as large as an equatorial circumnavigation. The total number of realms is 11,000 realms, each of which possesses a bit more surface area than earth, due to its rectangular shape.

The materials are normal materials; primarilly steel. A normal ring world would tear itself apart trying to spin up to 1g. However, this ringworld doesnt use that. Instead it has an orbital ring, and hovers the sectionals over said ring. The ringworld thus only spins up to counter the stars gravity. It uses solar collectors, much more vast than the ringworld itself, to gather the power needed to hold up these platforms via active support.

Beneath the ringworld itself, is a number of rotational habitats strung together in a geometric structure. This is where all the behind-the-scenes stuff takes place.

On the realms themselves, they play around with various fantasy world types, including artifical magic. They even have artifical, biological, people. These people have chockpoints in their minds, preventing them from surpassing certain arbitrary limitations. The reason for this is to sell the one thing that a sociaty capable of producing such structures will crave; entertainment. Mining the data for interesting stories to sell to trillions of potential audience members. Providing immersive MMO enviroments, even more realistic than the artificial reality people make.

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Now, there are some obvious ethical issues, and they come up later. Additionally, the reason for such a thing arising in the first place? Croudfunding. A fundraising campaign, not unlike kickstarter, garnered enough funds to start this project. They created an AI manager dedicated to this task, which appointed directors like in a company. Its job is to simply realize the original goal of building a ringworld, and keeping it alive indefinitely. In the few thousand years since then, it has become a megapower in its stellar system.

Thats another point; longevity is common, and most people can expect to get it. functional immortality, where the recipiant cannot die, even if killed, is also common, though much harder to aquire. There is still more immortals in just the ringworld than there are humans on earth right now.

The reason for the cataclysm is quite simple; the realm this group of gods are managing is dieing. There arent enough trace metals in the soil to meet the growing population. Due to the growing demand their realm for stories, some technological restrictions were lifted, and are on the cusp of an industrial revolution. Unlike on earth, this world was not designed to handle that. It quite simply does not have the resources that a post-industrial population requires. Additionally, the magic system was expanded beyond its specifications, and so has resulted in numerous ecological disastors. If they let this keep going, they may have a very dead realm in the future. One that cannot be brought back so easily. They would likely have to tear down their realms superstructure, and have it reassembled from scratch. Which might mean that they loose their jobs as gods.

So, their solution is to engineer a cataclysm of their own. This will allow them to work on the world unfettered, as well as continue to profit on it both during and following the cataclysm. This is the basis for this story.