ONLiNE DEATH

**ONLiNE DEATH** is an ongoing action-drama series by Wither, inspired to an extent by *Homestuck*, *Sword Art Online* and *The Matrix*. The series has an anime art-style.

## Overview

ONLiNE DEATH revolves around a group of humans between 13 and 24 years old in the year 2024 who live as data entities inside of an internet and video game-like world. Each of them has a "Class" that determines their talents and general being.

The kids find out that an international real life organisation known as the ICITS (the **I**nternational **C**onsortium for **I**nformation **T**ransmission **S**tructures; abbreviation pronounced as "Eye-see-tee-es"), a joint venture of the American, Chinese, Russian, Belarusian, Turkmen and Iranese governments, has been working on a virtual world / cyberspace and spread an artificial protist that would transfer the mind and body of whoever it infected into the Internet when they die. The series's main villain regularly changes.

One consistent factor with the villains is that they are regularly (but not always) a parody of common gaming and internet-related subjects; for example, Rootware is a parody on malware, Pascal C. Fortran is a parody on programming and the Vektis Collective is a group of hackers, internet trolls and video game griefers.

## Terminology

### Life forms

There are four types of lifeforms within the Internet:

* **Actors**: Sometimes referred to as **NPCs**, Actors are entities fabricated within game worlds that run by its logic a bit more than other lifeforms. Actors are almost always made with a pre-set table of characteristics and are set to be bound to their code, unless they break free from it; this is only possible by Actors with high amounts of unbreakable will, or if someone else frees them. If an Actor is killed, they remain dead, unless they have the "Backturn" Skill, then they will respawn if the one who killed them leaves the level, loses a life or goes far away from the area where they killed the Actor.
* **Players**: Players are fabricated outside of game worlds and usually hail from the IntraWeb. They have more freedom than Actors and are unrestricted by game logic. More often than not, Players also have special abilities, usually things like freezing time (through the Pause Menu Skill), warping game rules (through the Option Menu Skill), teleporting between worlds, respawning and possessing Actors (through the "The Player" Skill. The most powerful Players, like Francis, can even possess other Players). Players also have a Health Bar that guarantees their survival for as long as it isn't empty, allowing Players to shrug off far more and heavier injuries than Actors, and they have a Life System that allows them to auto-revive / respawn a select amount of times after death. Unlike Actors however, Players do have the weakness of being bound to certain Needs, like Hunger, Thirst and Energy, represented as bars. Should the Energy bar be empty (recharged by sleeping), the Player will fall asleep on the spot; should the Thirst or Hunger bar drop to zero (replenished by drinking and eating respectively), the Player will die. In addition, if a Player dies on their last life, they encounter a Game Over and are permanently dead unless revived with a Continue.
* **Intelligence**: Intelligence are essentially AIs; they don't have the Needs of Players nor the restrictions of Actors. This makes them into some of the most powerful creatures, as they lack the limitations of both Players and Actors. Their only weakness is that they can be killed through things like the Task Manager; additionally, entities with the "Cursor" skill are able to close them, rendering them inactive, and for all purposes practically dead until something invokes them to reopen. The most powerful Intelligence, Malware, are exempt from those weaknesses but can be destroyed through the "Antivirus" skill, possessed by powerful Intelligence like McAfeel, AMG, Lavast, Horton, Rophos and Wylance (parodies of the McAfee, AVG, Avast, Norton, Sophos and Cylance antivirus software respectively).
* **Bots**: Bots have none of the weaknesses of Intelligence, Players and Actors but do not have any form of sentience. Bots do not think, decide or feel and are programs operated by Actors, Players or Intelligence. The only way to destroy Bots is by killing their operator. A Bot that somehow **does** achieve independence (like Relay) is called a Crawler; due to their complete lack of weaknesses, Crawlers are extremely tedious to take down. Relay is the only bot to have ever naturally became independent, this due to a glitch in his code; however, due to his Intra-Spider Skill, Relay was able to turn other Bots into similar, semi-independent lifeforms known as Agents.

All Actors, Players and Intelligence have a certain Class that often determines many of their characteristics — and their general being. Some Classes are locked (e.g. Administrator), meaning one can't be born with them. There are hundreds upon hundreds of Classes.

All lifeforms nonetheless of type can potentially use various types of special abilities. These are grouped into three categories:

* **Skills**: The main category for special powers. Skills are the main techniques that lifeforms can utilize; the strongest skills for Players usually usurp a tiny bit of their Mana Bar. When said bar is empty, the Player can't use any skills that require Mana. Not all skills require Mana however. The term "Skill" is extremely broad and can vary from elemental abilities, lasers and mind control to teleportation, intangibility, shapeshifting and sometimes even reality warping.
* **Resistances**: A Resistance is a type of ability that renders the user resistant or possibly even immune to certain effects, Skills, ailments and more.
* **Passives**: An effect that is passively active and does not have to be deactivated — for example, Francis' unexplained ability to naturally bend universal laws, logic and physics in his advantage and Triguza's passive ability to make those around him feel paranoid.

All Actors and Players go by a Level system. They start at Lv.1 and can gain EXP, **Ex**perience **P**oints, from various tasks that differ from person to person. Collecting sufficient EXP will cause the individual to level up; e.g. from Lv.1 to Lv.2. This renders the person stronger and sometimes unlocks new Skills, Resistances, Passives and weaponry for them. Some powerful Skills can allow the user to temporarily or permanently skip arrays of levels or change the level of others.

With this Level also come stats; these are POW (**Pow**er), ATK (**At**tac**k**), DEF (**Def**ence), STA (**Sta**mina), SPEED, MANA, M.Atk (**M**agical **At**tac**k**) and M.Def (**M**agical **Def**ence); these respectively govern the users' physical strength, attack strength, durability / endurance, stamina, speed, mana, magical power and resistance to supernatural abilities. These stats increase naturally when one levels up, but certain Skills can increase and decrease them as well.

## Heroes

### Brandon Wecklester

The main character of the series, and the only one of the main characters to originate from the Real World. He hails from Queens, New York City and was 15 years old when he was hit by a drunk truck driver in The Bronx. His Class is the "Hero"; as a result of that, Brennan is bestowed a sword and mastery over it. A kind person, Brennan develops feelings for Sophie as the series progresses. He's slim, tall and has light brown hair and green eyes.

### Sophie Ducaine

One of the main characters in the series and Brandon's love interest. She has long blonde hair, blue eyes and is generally slim just like Brandon. She was given the "Hacker" Class and as such is able to use various hacking-like abilities such as ESP, Teleportation, Aimbot, Invisibility, Noclipping, One Hit Kill, Invulnerability and various others.

She and Brandon get together near the end of Season 1 and become a couple following that.