The Rise of Voidspace
In the wake of the Source event, the virtual online reality of commerce, entertainment, and information has been infiltrated and transformed. Inhuman entities, ominous and alien, flooded this digital realm with corruption and darkness. Servers across the globe went offline, connections between individual networks were severed, and the bright shining silicon lights of the Net slowly blinked out. Those in power struggled to maintain the global network, but it was too late - Voidspace had come.
This corruption was not simply of data or protocols affecting only digital systems. These entities reached into the physical world, infecting the bodies and minds of biological beings. Those infected are driven to madness and much worse. Rumors persist of violent transformations into biomechanical abominations and horrors beyond understanding. Confronting these incomprehensible new realities drove humanity back into a dark age of fear and superstition. Modern words regained old meaning, digital entities born in darkness as old as humanity itself: daemons.
In the following decades, private networks were isolated and locked away. Corp and Cult initiated a lethal and merciless crackdown on any organization or person who attempted to access Voidspace. As with all things, these restrictions were only for the public. Privately, in highly guarded laboratories and hidden sanctums, they experimented and began to learn. A new field of study was born that fused cutting-edge technology with dark occult rites: Esoteric Technologies - or as it is more commonly known, .
EsoTech devices come in many forms and are among the most closely protected secrets of any organization powerful enough to produce them. It is rumored that simply examining the schematics of such devices has driven engineers to madness.
At its heart, EsoTech is the manipulation of daemons that populate the hidden corners of Voidspace. The exact nature of these daemons is a matter of great debate. Some believe they are otherworldly devils; some see free-willed AIs, while others think of them as extradimensional cosmic horrors. They are considered an intrusion and a grave threat to most - but to those who practice EsoTech, they are a gateway to power and heralds of a new future.