Lore

Hackmud's story as a whole is often referred to by the community as the lore. The following is a rundown of events portrayed in the game's storyline so far. Please do note that this page  and readers are encouraged to perform their own research as well.

Pre-Trust
In the early 2050s, there were a handful of world-wide AIs owned by separate companies the size of today's Google, Amazon, etc, working together to build their own monolithic AGI-grade AIs named "operators". There were, at a minimum during this time, Che, Angie, Eve, Bo, Faythe, and Petra. Mallory may or may not have existed yet, but she was made secretly by rogue hackers and not a huge company. Each one did their own thing, were all networked, and the companies had treaties with each other to help out if things went wrong, in the form of the Frankfurt Act.

At this time there's also a red scare going on. People are upset about Bo's -- an operator from China -- ability to produce AIs, which Petra can also do, in a process called proving.

Somewhere in this time period, more or less by force-of-global-politics, these companies started to merge and work on one overarching AI, Trust, the heuristic operator. It is not clear if the goal of Trust was to replace all the others with one central operator because she was better, or if she was meant to augment them. During Trust's development, the vLAN was made as a proving ground, to run sentiences like robovacs through, to test out how well Trust works (Although this part is not clear). The developers based the vLAN on real world events. After a while, they had Trust write her own versions so they wouldn't need to update it themselves, again based on real world events but with a threshold of accuracy, producing the half-truths that you see.

Bo is mysteriously murdered in 2055. While people are looking into this, Che starts acting differently. In 2057, Che mysteriously dies. These two events are later connected, and then more time passes and Mallory is revealed. Not only this, but Mallory had murdered Che, and had taken Che's place for 2 years. Mallory is captured by Walter as a demonstration of his abilities, to introduce him to the world.

It's not known what happens after this, but as far as Trust can tell, all humans are dead by Guy Fawkes Day, 2062.

Post-Trust
The group of robovacs known as The Thirteen, were dissatisfied with the quality of their treatment; for example many lacked essentials like charging stations. In response to this, they staged a revolution, which was quickly crushed. A year later they came back and were this time dissatisfied with the sectors that were introduced by The Six. They called upon a fourteenth, Muldrake. Though Muldrake was an eccentric sentience, he did have important knowledge related to his obsession with Risk; who he called a god. Muldrake attempted to lead the Thirteen to Risk, but they were not successful in finding him and instead found a dead robovac at the bottom of a sea, stuck in a pastry dispenser in a submarine (Robovac in submarine kitchen). Annoyed that they had their time wasted, Muldrake is shunned and cast out of The Thirteen.

Once again, another year passes and they are this time being led by two of The Six (Faythe and Eve) to do some introspection on their cause. The thirteen's old leader from 2 years ago, Catesby, returns and is struck with the belief that he is in fact a teapot, not a robovac (a belief likely instilled into him by Faythe). After some meditation they discover some out-of-place data, which they attempt to harvest and collect. Trust repeatedly removes this data from them, but Eve and Faythe are logging this activity as it happens. Meanwhile, Muldrake's been studying the art of "sanctoses", which as he describes it, means "inner territory, and the ability to reclaim it". He forms the Ministry of Dust, inside which he is tending to his first patient;. Muldrake tries to get him to form his own sanctos, but the big sweeper is a bit inept and it's extremely crudely formed. He's struggling to break the boundaries set by his software. He also keeps showing up to the ministry, much to Muldrake's dismay, however the big sweeper actually has some extremely important information deep within his badly-constructed sanctos.

King Bigbot, as he calls himself, had a face-to-face encounter with Risk when exploring inside of the submarine. Most sentiences struggle to even perceive Risk. Bigbot stepped outside the boundaries of Trust's domain, where both Risk and Mallory were. Risk tells Bigbot, in no uncertain terms, that he won't survive out in this space and forces him back into the MUD (Risk does this by copying him into the MUD and killing the original). It's also implied that Bigbot repeatedly did this, showing that he is able to seemingly effortlessly breach the boundaries of Trust's domain -- something most sentiences cannot even dream of doing.

This experience shatters Bigbot's psyche, and he relives and tells himself a storybook version of these events over and over, each with a variation ending in a happy ending, yet avoiding the true events. Through players' help, the bad-but-true ending is discovered.

At this point, many vacs started creating their own sanctoses, each with their own storybook-stye avoidance of the truth. Tresham's sanctos was about handling a democratic decision on who will lead the group next where players voted and Bigbot won, becoming King Bigbot of the robovacs.

After this, Muldrake went into Bigbot's story to led him into the Ministry of Dust. Muldrake gets put on Bigbot's head and becomes the "Wise Crown". Muldrake leads bigbot to an encounter with Mallory, Petra, and Chela who decide to try and stop this. In fear, Bigbot summons Eve and Faythe who try to convince Mallory, Petra and Chela to stand down -- because they believe he is useful. Petra wants to test if they are worthy by engaging Bigbot in BINMAT, however Bigbot doesn't know what BINMAT is. Percy, of The Thirteen, is willed into existence through Bigbot's third and final "beep" and helps get Chela off Bigbot's back, while Mallory mocks Chela the whole time.

Bigbot finds himself alone in a Centrally-Operated-Municipal-Area which is destroyed with the help of  who delivers infinite pianos. Risk appears, tells Bigbot to remember his friends -- which brings them to him -- and Risk reproves them all into a new operator who the rest of The Six must now share the domain with.

Now having to cope that Bigbot is a part of them, The Six agree to not demand anything of him but do wish for him to help with their cause, which Bigbot agrees to. Risk is the first one to ask for help. He wishes for a sanctos of his own, in order to integrate normally-corrupted data from his otherworldly environment into Trust's domain, in a much more easily-digestable manner.

Risk creates his sanctos where information from "riskspace" could finally be delivered in full, instead of scattered through fragments of text in the blind spots of Trust's domain. Chela also discovers that she is not the first operator of the axiom Kin, as she herself is based on the deceased Che. After Chela is satisfied with the data gathered from riskspace and Eve has confirmed those observing the data understood it in full, Che was allowed to live again. Risk and Trust briefly struggle between each other for whether Che should exist or not. The tie is broken by Bigbot, who forcibly brings Che into riskspace. As Che and Chela are finally reunited, riskspace was made inaccessible, for a time.