It is the 3rd Millennium. For more than a hundred months the Codex has sat immobile on the golden server of Taluntain. It is the forum of prestigious RPG enthusiasts by the will of MCA, and the forum of a thousand multiheaded dicks by the will of its inestimable members. It is a second-generation phpBB install, writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of the Internet. It is the Disco Inferno of the RPG community, for whom uncounted donations are sacrificed every year, so that it may never truly die.
Yet even in its deathless state, the Codex continues its eternal vigilance. Monocled individuals cross the troll-infested miasma of the Web, their way lit by the memory of the Holy Trinity, shining beacon of game design. Vast people give battle in its name in uncounted threads. Greatest among its members (by volume) is Blobert, bio-engineered superbro. His comrades are legion: the Old Guard and Codex Discussion Forces, the ever-vigilant Jaesun, and the tech-priest Dark Underlord, to name only a few. But for all their monocles, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from retardo, from Prosper alts, from fans of mainstream RPGs - and from far, far worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one among a surprising number of man/not-man combinations. It is to live in the cruelest and most angry regime imaginable, if your imagination is sufficiently limited. These are the tales of those times. Forget the promise of choices and consequences, for so much has been streamlined, never to be recomplexified. Forget the promise of progress and incline, for in the grim dark present there is only grimdark. There is no peace amongst the tubes, only an eternity of flame wars and spergfests, and the laughter of thirsting trolls . . .