Server Lore
One of the defining features of Parallel is that the server has its own in-game storyline that players actively participate in (if they wish to). Featuring a number of individual NPCs, Event Sites, and Story Items, Parallel's main and peripheral lore narratives are richly integrated into the gameplay mechanics and social environment of the server. The major storyline of the server is still ongoing, which is why this wiki should be regularly updated with new information regarding the lore, dubbed by robbie1776 as "Loreos." Individual characters, events, items, etc. will have their own wiki pages. The timeline page gives a comprehensive listing of lore-related and other major events in chronological order.
Summary of Lore to the Present
The storyline of Parallel centers around rifts, which are mysterious and powerful structures that enable travel between separate dimensions in the Greater Parallel Multiverse. For example, there are two overworlds: Otherside, and Parallel Prime, both of which can be accessed by traveling through rifts. Since the opening of Parallel, the discovery of new rifts constitutes a major story event, where players can explore a new world, meet its Non-player characters, and learn about its details and secrets. There are a handful of rifts scattered throughout the worlds of Parallel, and all it takes to travel to another world is to simply enter the rift.
In spring 2020, a few weeks after the server opened to the public, the first known rift over the Parallel Prime Spawn Town began forming. Players became acquainted with the NPC scientist Niall as he studied how the rift changed form over time. Mysterious new mobs named Wisps spawned near the rift as it gained more and more layers. As the summer began, players met an explorer named Red who crashed onto Parallel Prime and opened a shop selling custom items. Since the crash affected Red's memories severely, it took some weeks before his space ship was found at the Crash Site Crater Dungeon. In August, the mysterious and terse engineer Jess came to Parallel, threatening to harness the power of the Parallel Prime Spawn Town Rift to her own ends. Some weeks later, she eventually did cause the server to shut down for some days as she harvested the rift, but when the server reopened after a few days players discovered that the rift in Parallel Prime Spawn Town opened to an entirely new world: The Sky Dimension.
In the Sky Dimension, players discovered new NPCs living in the Kingdom of the Sky ruled by King Cloudius, as well as more Wisps that dropped soul shards. While the opening of the rift caused extensive damage to the kingdom, Cloudius became interested in establishing a cooperative relationship between the Kingdom of the Sky and players on Parallel Prime. Players met kingdom citizens such as Buddy, Rudy, and Gino, and explored for secrets in the outer islands of the Sky Dimension. [[Eventually, Niall was able to use his new knew knowledge of rift energy to open portal pads between various locations on Parallel Prime. All was well and calm until June 2021 when the dragon Ralnthar was discovered in the outskirts of the Sky Dimension. King Cloudius asked players to hide his wealth on Parallel Prime and help defend the Kingdom of the Sky to prevent Ralnthar from razing the main island. Ralnthar defeated players in the Siege of the Sky Kingdom, ruining the main island and causing the residents to flee to Parallel Prime and establish their own NPC shops like Red's.
While the Kingdom was being rebuilt, players found outposts from Niall, Jess, and King Cloudius on the outer edges of Parallel Prime. These outposts provided more insight into the backstories and intentions of these characters, in particular that Cloudius was resentful to players for failing to defend his kingdom and wants to expand the rift into the Sky Dimension to hasten repairs to his kingdom. Some time after discovering these outposts, Red makes contact with his space station again and invites players to return with him and get parts to expand the rift to the Sky Dimension. Unfortunately, the space station has suffered from a catastrophic outbreak of the mysterious life-form dubbed Storm Mold, killing and turning nearly every crew member of the ship into undead mobs. After procuring the parts, players return to Parallel Prime, and Niall and Red return to the station to cleanse it of infection.
Progress on repairing the Sky Kingdom continued from the aftermath of the Space Station Event until December 2021 when the server shut down to prepare to update to 1.18. In the interim period during the shutdown, Niall noticed a severe energy spike near the Parallel Prime Spawn Town rift. When the server reopened, players were forced to rejoin into a secure vault outside of Parallel Prime because Cloudius shunted Ralnthar through the Sky Kingdom rift to Parallel prime in an attempt to rid himself of the beast. This severely compromised the Parallel Prime Spawn Town rift and contaminated players] equipment with unstable energy, preventing them from entering any world until the rift on Parallel Prime was fixed. After depositing their gear into the vault, players, Niall, Jess, and Red traveled to a new world from the vault: Otherside. Otherside is a parallel overworld to Parallel Prime that had an abandoned Spawn Town of its own, with the lone builder Willie. The new world had its own observatory owned by Researcher Lane, with notes revealing the location of scattered outposts measuring energy readings in various regions of Otherside. The Stormgate Keepers, a mysterious society scattered throughout the greater Parallel multiverse, make their first appearance in Parallel when one of their outposts is also discovered on Otherside. After discovering all of Researcher Lane's outposts, the scientist introduces himself to Niall and the players, where they then go to the Citadel to retrieve a part needed to catalyze a rift returning to Parallel Prime. Jess, Niall, and Researcher Lane successfully implement the rift catalyzer to open a stable rift between Otherside and Parallel Prime, overlaying the shopping district to Otherside in the process.
The Parallel Prime Spawn Town was severely damaged by Ralnthar's entry, but the process also injured Ralnthar and forced him to retreat to Midas' well, where players stored King Cloudius's treasure the previous June. After rescuing Jess and Lane from being teleported by the Otherside rift to inside Ralnthar's body, Ralnthar awakened but offered players to exchange soul shards with him for loot in a bid to regain his power. In the spring of 2022, Niall was reported missing. After tracking a trail of what appeared to be blood, as well as following up on information from Niall's previous actions, players located him some weeks later in a fishing village on Parallel Prime. He greeted players cordially but would not tell about his mysterious intentions, though in notebooks he left he wrote about suffering from terrible nightmares and about a vague but important project he was working on. Players also began noticing strange events in the lake underneath Otherside Spawn Town, where Niall said to be on the lookout for the missing explorer Captain Cora and the creature The Lake Lurker. The Keeper made periodic appearances warning of the impending threat of Ralnthar's minions.
Researcher Lane and Jess also began receiving signals from an object in outer space, which got progressively stronger and more clear as the object approached Otherside. The signals contained encoded messages from the entities inside the object hinting of an impending challenge. A month later, the object known as the Cube Dungeon landed in Otherside, providing an immense challenge to players as they combed the cube for loot with Researcher Lane. After retrieving gilded blooms from the cube, players discover pages from a notebook from the space station officer Vanessa Moore. After Red learned this, he used an emergency radio frequency to contact Vanessa Moore and Germaine Hoang on Parallel prime, where they detailed what happened when the cube aliens came for them on the space station. Players established Site 85 to reattempt conquering the Cube Dungeon.
Some weeks later Parallel updated to 1.19, revealing farther lands on Otherside to explore. Researcher Lane and Jess noticed unstable energy readings and directed players to a site on Otherside where the carcass of the Ice Dragon Ellanti was. Researcher Lane revealed that this was the dragon he killed with the Weather Machine, but warned that the machine could have been much more catastrophic than the threat he was trying to eliminate and cautioned against using it. Researcher Lane then hurriedly left the scene after thinking about something, leaving players at the current state of the lore.