Metaverse

The **Metaverse** (イセカイ, *Isekai*)**?** is the place where combat takes place during Persona Record Series.

## Profile

Much like Tartarus and the Midnight Channel, the Metaverse is formed from the collective unconscious, although unlike those respective areas, the areas in the Metaverse are personalized cognitive spaces based on areas in real-life Tokyo. While usually not directly affecting the real world, the Metaverse is known to have fused with it should its master wish to. For most, a Metaverse Navigator is required to traverse into any areas of the Metaverse, and anyone without a Persona will inevitably run into a life-threatening situation inside it.

The Metaverse takes the form of Palaces, with a central Palace manifesting under the Shibuya subway known as Mementos, where Shadows of the general public are imprisoned. However, certain distorted desires, such as an overwhelming desire for control or suicidal depression can result in personalized spaces known as Palaces to form. All of these personalized places correspond to certain areas of its owner's interest, and are representations of the distorted desires that caused its creation, powered by a Treasure, or an item of significance to its owner. Usually, the Palace's host is unaware that such a place exists, and most events that the Shadow encounters there is of no relevance to the real person. Most Palaces have no direct effect on others and only affects it's owner's mindset by making them entrenched in their distorted beliefs.

Shadows patrol the area for intruders once attacked and can be negotiated with like their mainline counterparts, although they are still Shadows and not the real entity. Should the treasure be taken, the Palace will fall apart, and as the ruler's Shadow disappeared in prior, the real person will supposedly become a better person. In reality, many of them simply resign themselves back to the system they once defied, begging to be arrested and thrown in jail. To prevent this from happening, the Palace ruler in the Metaverse will defend their treasure at all costs.

To enter a Palace, one must enter three keywords: the owner's name, the type of distortion and the location of the distortion. In case of Mementos, the Palace of the public, only "Mementos" needs to be inserted.

Two years before, a massive political Antisocial Force led by Masayoshi Shido and backed by the general public who were influenced by the master of Mementos, Yaldabaoth, consisting of corrupt politicians, con-men, Yakuza, corporate executives and nobles began gaining abnormal levels of popularity, basically controlling Tokyo's jurisdiction, society and the media. The conspiracy's goal is to commit treasonous acts that will propel Masayoshi Shido into becoming prime minister, who will supposedly install his draconian nationalist policies which will cause the suffering of Japan. Yaldabaoth deliberately influences the public's cognition to make them think that Shido will guide Japan into a golden age as an example of humanity's sheer stupidity and apathy, making them ignore how corrupt and undesireable Shido is and vote him into prime minister unconditionally. Many of the conspiracy's more dangerous and influential members also generated Palaces of their own, separate from Mementos.

To make a finishing touch to the game, Yaldabaoth granted a teenager named Goro Akechi the ability to enter the Metaverse so he could serve Shido and cause havoc by inducing mental shutdowns on his enemies. Yaldabaoth also compromised the Velvet Room by merging it into his headquarters, captured the real Igor, took his form and separated Lavenza into the Twin Wardens. It's also heavily implied that, to give him an extra subject to toy with, Yaldabaoth engineered the protagonist's first clash with Shido, causing him to be put on probation as the "most dangerous criminal" and the general public distancing from him in fear of his criminal record. With the trickster Igor foresaw in Yaldabaoth's hands, he began to mentor Ren Amamiya as if he were Igor while secretly distorting the public's cognition further.

Yaldabaoth's real goal with this Conspiracy is to have either Ren Amamiya or Goro Akechi dismantle it, so he can determine if Akechi's desire to destroy and recreate the world or Ren's desire to reform society would be stronger. Supposedly, if Ren ever won, Yaldaboth will vanish and revert the world back to normal. If Akechi won, it's implied that he will kill Shido and expose his crimes. In reality, he never intended to hold his end of the bargain, and he blatantly rigs the outcomes so he can consider humanity as foolish and ignorant, so he can take over and guide them as their sole "god."

After Shido is taken down, Yaldabaoth, in the form of the treasure of Mementos, takes action on his own, setting up the final stages of his game by inversely making people wish for Shido to return even if he shouldn't be able to. In order to fix this, the Phantom Thieves of Hearts travel to the Depths of Mementos to reform the public, who are all imprisoned within, also known as the "Prison of Regression," but are perfectly comfortable there. As they go deeper into the prison, they were alerted by the reason why their change of hearts do not work as planned when all of the Palace rulers they previously reformed are trapped in a massive cell, where the apathetic form of Shadow Shido explains to them that the Palace Rulers created Palaces because their will for independence and oppression are so strong that they can no longer be contained within the Prison of Regression and formed their personalized Palaces. However, those within personalized Palaces are also the ones who watch over the public within the Prison, preventing them from ever escaping. Once the Palace ruler's treasure is stolen, their Shadow returns there, rendering them apathetic. This is imperative for Yaldabaoth's plan, as he can use it to justify that humanity is ignorant and wishes for his control, and so no corrupt conspiracies can exist, like the ones he set up and assigned the Phantom Thieves to dismantle.

Once he exiles the party out of Mementos as the Holy Grail, he takes a step further by fusing the entire Metaverse with the real world, and making the public believe that the Phantom Thieves never existed, erasing them from the real world and into the Velvet Room. There, Igor was exposed as Yaldabaoth's impersonation, and his offer for the protagonist to enforce for him in exchange of eternal serenity and ignorance was refused. After freeing the Velvet Room and his teammates, the protagonist and the other Phantom Thieves scale the Qliphoth World for their grand finale: Taking down Yaldabaoth. After his defeat, the Metaverse was sealed away from the real world, losing its physical form.

Alternatively, when Yaldabaoth proposed his deal, Ren may accept it. Should he seal the contract, Yaldabaoth will revoke all visual distortions in the real world as stated by the rules of the game. However, the masses remain apathetic and complacent, Ren becomes a force of terror in Tokyo with unanimous public support and his teammates are presumably still imprisoned in the Velvet prison

## History in Persona Record Series

In Persona Record: Magi Arena, The Metaverse was in infused with the midnight channel and the dark hour, created a alter world as a arena for Magical girls and Persona-Users to Fight Each other in, and Crated Shujin Tartarus, where a lot of the arena battles take place in the Story.

## Trivia

* Certain hazards in the Metaverse (Such as falling from incredibly high altitudes or getting squashed by debris) do not seem to have any real life consequences, as shown during situations where the Phantom Thieves can escape Kaneshiro's Palace without suffering injury, even though it was located at an assuredly lethal height were one to fall from it, or Ryuji seemingly being killed in the explosions caused by the collapse of Shido's Palace only to end up perfectly alive and in one piece next to the Diet Building's courtyard.