Encyclopædia Dramatica

**Encyclopædia Dramatica** (also spelled ***Encylopaedia Dramatica, Encyclopedia Dramatica*** and commonly shortened to **ED** or **æ**) was a vast collection of encyclopedic documents, data, and statistics (a *wiki*) that was first created centuries before the Unification. Originally designed as satirical website, Encyclopædia Dramatica quickly became one of the most infamous websites on the internet, known for its complete lack of censorship, and as a hotbed for criminal activity. In particular, it was known for the theft - and publication of - classified corporate and government data. It was one of two organisations known for practising this, the other being Wikileaks.

## Early history

Over the course of several decades, and later centuries, Encyclopædia Dramatica developed into an immense repository of information taken from numerous sources. Constantly relocating it's servers to different countries, Encyclopædia Dramatica was able to avoid seizure by governments for centuries (although numerous countries did ban access to the website). In addition to classified information, Encyclopædia Dramatica also contained vast numbers of maps, instructional articles for the production of illegal goods (such as weapons or narcotics), defamatory articles about millions of individuals, and links to snuff videos and child pornography.

## Dark Ages

Following the century war, the Averte Statum launched operations to destroy Encyclopædia Dramatica once and for all by disabling the global internet and destroying any servers containing data from the wiki.

After numerous new technologies were deployed by the Averte Statum to remotely destroy computer equipment, the administrators of Encyclopædia Dramatica resorted to printing the entirety of the wiki into books, in a desperate attempt to protect the information from the World Government. The massive underground operation was the largest single printing operation in world history, and resulted in the production of over 100,000 unique books, with numerous copies of all, resulting in millions bound books being produced over the course of five years, containing the total repository of knowledge that had been previously stored on Encyclopædia Dramatica. The vast majority of copies of these books were seized by the World Government and destroyed.

By 11AU, the Averte Statum had confiscated millions of hard drives and similar electronic storage media, and purged much of Encyclopædia Dramatica from existence. Around 12% of the wiki survived in electronic form, having been successfully preserved. The remainder of the wiki was returned to the internet, having been copied from the books starting in 30 AU. By 120 AU, 99% of the original Encyclopædia Dramatica had been returned to the internet. However, some of the books - entrusted to various former administrators of Encyclopædia Dramatica - were not returned to the internet for various reasons, with some of their more unscrupulous guardians believing that the information they contained was too valuable to be released online. The books that were not returned to the internet became known as the Lost Novels.

## Post Dark Ages

After the end of the Dark Ages, Encyclopædia Dramatica came back under the control of its former administration and their descendants. The website firmly reestablished its online presence, and continued to host highly controversial and often illegal content. As an additional safety measure, multiple copies of the printed-book version of the encyclopedia were kept as libraries around the world. Each year, new content on Encyclopædia Dramatica was compiled into a series of new books.