A digital, artificial ecosystem residing in a
virch.
Virchologies may
be copies of a
ril
ecosystem in a ril-like virch, or may be an
entirely artificial system in one of the less ril-like virchs. One
example of the last, is the five-dimensional rubenstein prime number
colonies popular in 5d rubensteinian virchs.
Virchologies differ from straight ecosystems in the fact that they
have to be adapted to a digital environment. A very few,
high-definition virchs can run true detailed ecosystems, but most
ril-like virchs uses various tricks to merely simulate an ecosystem.
In more fantastic virchs the designers may not even be interested in
simulating ril-like ecosystems, and design imaginative virchologies
from scratch, which presents its own challenges.
Pure virchologies are designed from scratch, and do not require
outside intervention to survive in their original environment. If the
environment changes, or the virchology is moved, intervention may be
necessary, but in its original environment, the system should be
able to run on its own.
Rough virchologies have been built bit by bit, as new users add
extra
parts to the virchology. These users may become incredibly diverse and
fantastic with time, however, the fewer restrictions there are on new
contributions, the greater the chance is that a super-predator or
parasite may be introduced to the system, and the virchology die out.
The largest recorded, modosophont created pure virchology, in terms of
species, is the Euopia virch on the F3425-34 server cluster in the
Solarian League. It took the Sun Monks 1200 years to design the 10^9
species, straddling 3 x 4-dimensional layers of existence.
The largest recorded, rough virchology created solely by
modosophonts
is the Animal-Experiment, residing in a Naurinume server in
Alpha
Centauri.
With approximately 1,2*10^14 species and 10^16 entities, the
Animal-Experiment has been running for 8000 years, with only a few
updated in
the code and changes of server. Though the origins of the code lies
shrouded in legend, it is said that the very seed of the code may
origin all the way back from early experiments in AI and flock
simulation in the Information Age.
Arguably, several virchs can share the record for the greatest amount
of entities in a single virchology in a virch, since a number of
low-resolution virchs argue that they have an infinite amount of
entities in the virchology.
