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Grove of Lemon Questions
 Image from DSPE |
Among the successful virtual modalities conceived in the early days of the Grove were the perennially popular "Abstract Simplicial Emotive" ontology and the "Billion Screaming Billiards" virtutainment complex, which would famously cause the Knilanian Virchwar (6132-6134 AT) centuries later. This conflict would lead to the destruction of the "Uliyonic Caramiosis" environment, which notably led to the creation of the song "Bitter Heartache," in which a former enjoyer of "Ulyonic Caramiosis" laments its deletion. The song also correctly blames the uncontrolled spread of the "Lime Shock" - a psychosoftware developed by the Billion Screaming Billiards complex that rendered ((sweet)) deletions intensely pleasurable and addictive - as having a key role in escalating tensions between virch users and ultimately fueling the outbreak of the Knilanian Virchwar.
The Grove experienced a rapid increase in users during the so-called pre-Black Box Era leading the group which came to be known as the Goth Unicorns to create the Visimounds; a virtual space that was experienced as a non-Euclidean, hilly Tohulian plains biome. Eventually the Visimounds became the third Grand Sub-Forum, gaining the Goth Unicorns widespread notoriety within the virchworld. The wild success of this new construction combined with the fact that it mixed a ril setting with distinctly non-ril physics caused a large schism within the Starfruit Reality Rejectors about how to best vie for influence within the virch. For megaseconds at a time, the Starfruit Reality Rejectors fiercely debated plans to gain influence in the Grove, with votes on various options.
Ultimately, one faction among the Starfruit Reality Rejectors won a majority of support and it was decided they would formally take on a number of maintenance, research and development roles within the Grove. Eventually, success in creating the "Mandarina Experiential Filter" gained them popularity and ensured the Rejectors had seats on the select list of the Grove's Administrators. Their rise was met with wariness by various influential user groups who preferred ril-based experiences and didn't wish to see the Grove's artistic trends increasingly shift towards the abstract.
Inhabitants
Over the course of its history, the inhabitants of The Grove of Lemon Questions varied greatly in both clade and ideology, often to such a degree that the environment is cited as a major example of morphodynamic evolution in action. At different times, usually based on fashions and social trends, different clades each experienced a greater influx of people wanting to belong to this or that way of experiencing life.One notable group were the Matter Hatters, a clade of several million sophonts who spent their time shifting between various phases of virtual matter (gaseous, liquid, solid). Although initially popular, the Matter Hatters were ultimately completely removed from the virchworld's avatar choices due to a civil argument based around whether plasma-based body forms were acceptable. Another relatively enduring and notable clade were the Naranjans, an esoteric alife group whose avatars resembled bunches of oranges connected by computronium vines and while using remote drones as sensory organs. Their primary notoriety came from several locally-famous poets that utilized the relative free space of the virch to create novel sensory experiences.
A third notable group were the Silk Singers, a clade of hiveminds based on social spiders living in colonies of thousands of individuals. The hiveminds resided not in the spiders themselves, but rather as an emergent process generated by the totality of the computations they carried out by sending signals along their webs. Silk Singer bodies were practically blind, only being able to sense the polarity of light, although they could connect their webs to external sense organs when desired. The Silk Singers decided at one point to institute a rule for their part of the simulation: the laws of physics within the local virtual environment would change at random intervals. These changes could, depending on their preferences, be influenced by the state of the simulation itself.
One of the most notable - and controversial - clades was the "Union of Virtual Mahamaad Yubeen", a clade of formerly outlawed personality templates from a historical celebrity. The group created an artist's club that primarily existed within the Grove until many of them grew tired of celebrating their distantly remembered identity as they were, and either migrated out of the Grove, or integrated into the Goth Unicorns.
The End of the Grove
As the 58th century drew to a close, the citizens of the Grove of Lemon Questions became increasingly inclined toward joining together into collective minds and eventually merged with the software infrastructure to become a unified sosimev with approximately superturing-level intelligence. This new entity/society, still calling emself the Grove of Lemon Questions, emigrated from Quint along the Lightways and eventually transcended to the Second Singularity. Records of the original virchworld remain stored in Quint, and are occasionally revived for historical reenactment. The cultural influence of the virchworld is still felt today, in the form of a Caretaker God, unrelated to Quint or the virchworld, who continues to use the name.Related Articles
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Development Notes
Text by Worldtree, ProxCenBound , Godd Howard, Tasp, MiyuwiAuthor, SimplePig, Rakuen07, DSPE , Grawa427 , Borklord , Luxastrorum , Starscapion, libyan muuh, CeeTee, Avengium, RazzleDazzle9989 , Todd Drashner
Initially published on 28 July 2026.
Initially published on 28 July 2026.
