Disclaimer: This Lore entry was written from an Omniscient perspective. It may contain information that no one in the current canon knows, or that has otherwise not been discovered and made known to the galactic public. This page exists to provide you, the reader, with an Out of Character perspective on the setting, and to help assist you in understanding more of the logic behind the world in which the Citadel RP universe takes place. Possession of knowledge outlined herein without justification may be regarded as a violation of Server Rule 3.

Introduction

At the beginning, all of the matter of the Universe existed in one compact gestalt. In a dark place before Time and Space, and all that follows after, the Universe still existed - a Terminus forward and back. Through mysteries unknown even to the Oldest of beings, that Terminus expanded, and gave birth to reality. For the longest time, the First astronomers and researchers believed that this - Reality - was all there was. However, as Time moved on, even this understanding changed and evolved. These researchers traced their own origin back to the Terminus, and in charting their place against it, and against the stars, they were able to measure energy on a cosmic scale. Many thousands of millena later, these energy patterns would come to be known to Human scientists as Redshift and Blueshift Radiation.

To these first scientists, the understanding of these radiation patterns brought with it an entirely new field of study. Theories were posited regarding higher and lower states of being, dictated by quantum frequencies and extradimensional wavelength agitation. Theory quickly became fact, and that fact bred understanding, and from this understanding came execution. The First Jump into Bluespace was a disaster, but its aftermath would pale in comparison to the First Meeting with Redspace.

Although these First men and their research were lost to time, those who came after rediscovered it, and lost it again. Rediscovered, and lost, and rediscovered. So it is today that the inhabitants of the Milky Way Galaxy have themselves come to rediscover and exploit Bluespace, and whisper in fear of its dark mirror.

Fundamentals: Redshift and Blueshift Radiation

These are cosmic-scale radiation patterns that allow us to measure the motion of the universe. Redshift is lower frequency radiation, and it means something is moving away from you. As it gets further, the waves take longer to bounce back, ergo, low frequency.

Blueshift is the opposite. As something gets closer, the frequency of waves increases, and moves into the blue range of the visible spectrum.

Realspace/Greyspace

Reality is often difficult to define, from a poetic standpoint. Scientifically however, the nature of the real world can be defined somewhat more easily. Reality is a stable, relatively mundane state of being for the Universe at large. Outside of exotic relativistic anomalies, Reality conforms to the laws of Time and Space, and exists as a stable, Causal engine. Events flow into Outcomes, which produce their own Events, and so it has been from the beginning. The flow of Time cannot be manipulated from inside Realspace, and neither may the underpinning mechanisms which oversee Matter and Space be manipulated.

All the laws and functions which dictate Reality, including the known scientific laws of Space/Time, are commonly referred to as Causality, even though some quantum phenomena may be recognized as Acausal. By virtue of being a human being reading this entry, you have an intrinsic understanding of how reality works, and should require no further explanation.

Bluespace

When first discovered, Bluespace was considered more of an academic curiosity than an exploitable resource. The native home for Tachyon particles, Bluespace is a separate dimension whose natural frequencies are so close together as to be indistinguishable on the Greyspace spectrum. The speed of light exists in Bluespace as the lowest vibrational threshold, rather than the upper limit, as it is in Greyspace. Bluespace is acausal, and defies the laws of Space and Time in its own unique way. In Bluespace, everything in the Universe is moving towards you, as the observer, all the time. It's an eternal Big Crunch scenario centered on every other point, relativistically speaking: the Dimensional expression of the Great Attractor.

Bluespace Transit

In practice, if an object can enter Bluespace from Greyspace with a specific target calculated, the target functionally moves towards the object as it moves towards the target, and the nature of the dimension exponentially accelerates this process. This phenomenon has been most closely abstracted as similar to the omnipresent pressure one may encounter at the bottom of the ocean.

This method of navigation is computationally intense, because one moving target is being aligned to intercept another moving target, whilst the road beneath moves independently. This requires intense, high-level computation, making longer Bluespace jumps prohibitively dangerous. The nature of Bluespace also causes shuttles to wear down rapidly, compared to transit in Realspace, and so, between maintenance and the raw data needed to safely travel, Bluespace is utilized only for short range travel and teleportation.

Galactic jump gates can take the abstraction a level further, but with a scaling cost and rarity that makes them unattainable to anything except a major galactic power. These mammoth engines require stable, mathematically predictable points in Greyspace from which to operate, which has limited their locations once again to these same galactic powers.

Redspace

In the same way in which Bluespace is everything moving towards the observer forever, Redspace, is a dimension where everything is always moving away from everything else. Due to this, Redspace is a vast, impossibly tangled maze of looping data and matter. A literal hellscape that can't be navigated, Redspace is eternal spaghettification in dimensional form.

In this space, hardy entities are capable of coming into existence that define themselves according to the nightmare logic that rules the realm. All of the Oldest beings were born from Redspace, and existed within it, adhering to their own ecosystem until the First made them aware of Greyspace. Ever since, what denizens remain - or have been born thereafter - conspire to enter Greyspace and reshape it to their whim. Redspace is a land of eternal chaos which breeds creatures from otherwise abstract entities and thoughts.

Lore
Corporations	NanoTrasen, Frontier Megacorporations, Minor Corporations, The Syndicate
NanoTrasen Specific	NDV Marksman, Paracausal Monitoring Division
Other Organizations	ITV Talon, System Defense Force, The Orion Confederation
Worldbuilding	Extradimensional Mechanics, FTL Travel, Galactic Landmarks, Legends, Mysteries, and Rumors, Metaphysics and Paracausality, Technology of the 2500's, The Timeline
Contribution Data	Lore Submission Templates, Roadmap for Lore Development