Universe setup

I have no idea how to write this out coherently, so I'm just going to write out whatever I've thought of first and maybe write a better post to organise it later. It might turn out to be a case of "it sounded better in my head" but yeah idk

Worms

Each universe has a worm in it. Larger universes have bigger worms in them, and sometimes small baby worms. Each worm represents a possible state of existence, what we'd normally call a universe. These worms are part of a higher ecosystem...that's currently irrelevant to what's going on here (read: I haven't thought of it yet). We're on the very micro scale of things.

Worms exist within their universe, which they can mould to some extent. They're powerful, but not absolutely so - they can define their own universe, but don't have absolute control over it. Larger/older worms have more power, but younger ones can't do much more than influence things beyond the original premise of the universe.

Incidentally, I mentally imagine these worms looking more like centipedes. Maybe they look more like stuff from the Cthulhu mythos...eldritch abominations...
Also, toying with the idea of wyrm puns...wyrmhole, earthwyrm etc. but I definitely want them to be more grotesque than dragons, if I were to ever draw them. Really ugly stuff. I'm not even sure if they're worms, or just called worms for some reason (possibly because wormholes).

Cosmic Ecology

Life is a requirement of a worm universe. Basically, worms need 2 things to survive: life energy (sustenance) and creative ideas (to support the universe's development). People grow old and die because the worm feeds off them (so the universe is the worm's food farm).

Universe grows on creative ideas -> inhabitants increase, sustaining the worm -> universe becomes more stable -> inhabitants happy, make more creative ideas -> universe grows on creative ideas -> repeat

Universe stability is important - if the system's not consistent, the worm has to work to patch the holes, or the universe won't be able to support itself, will fall apart and the worm will die. On the other hand, a stable world is self-sustaining. For this reason, many worms have similar universes.

When the worm's large enough with a stable enough universe to have many extra creative ideas, new baby worms are spawned to occupy those universes. Weak/small worms are unable to maintain a stable universe though, so their universes are limited to just concepts. From there they have the option of splitting off to form their own separate universes, or remaining with the mother worm to strengthen the colony.

As a further little note, baby worms tend to inherit some ideas from their parent, so their universes are usually pretty similar and lineage can be traced from there.

So now there are basically 3 types of worm -
1. Mother worm - owns a large stable universe
2. Wandering worms - owns a small universe, may or may not be stable
3. Daughter worms - help to manage a large stable universe

So how is this even relevant

Let's look at the last 2 types of worm.

Wandering worms

These are attached to a particular concept that they're trying to grow. To grow the concept, they need inhabitants, but they can't just reappropriate inhabitants from another universe to work for them (they do quite poorly and also runs the risk of unsettling the universe). What they can do though, is bait inhabitants of other universes into entering their own and feed off their life energy. This is often not a pleasant experience - no life is tbh - but wanderers will try and squeeze every possible drop out. If an inhabitant returns to their original universe, they pick up from roughly where they left off, in more or less the same state regardless of what happened outside of it (undoes everything, so the worm will do its best to prevent them from leaving).

Technically mother worms can do the same, but they generally don't need to unless their universe is collapsing. Also, wandering worms don't return to their parent.

Baiting on the worm's part generally involves inserting a bit of their universe into the target universe that can be used to open a wormhole to their own. Of course it's not going to be easy for the victim to leave their own universe, so it's more like they're making it easy for the victim to enter theirs - the victim has to voluntarily want to leave their own. To leave the new universe, the victim also has to want to leave (no attachment) - it's easy for them to re-enter their own universe, but the wandering worm will try to stop them from leaving.

Daughter worms

These are not specialised to a particular universe for the most part. They attach themselves to particular individuals and use their ideas to create small temporary universes. The primary purpose is to attack/defend against other worms.

People who have worms can't defy the mother worm (can't cause any effect in their universe), but can open wormholes to temporary universes (stability limited to the person's ability to keep consistency) and import ideas at will when in another universe (e.g. give powers to the host that defy the universe's laws of physics). The trade-off is that their worm feeds exclusively off their life energy unless provided with another source, which means they'll have shorter lives unless they 1. manage to get the worm to leave (if the worm finds it's not getting enough ideas, rare because the worm's presence stimulates the host to seek ideas) 2. feed it with the lives of inhabitants in other universes (can be a personally-managed universe). The upside is that the drain only happens when the worm has to open and maintain a temporary universe, plus it's fairly easy to meet the quota.

The theme I wanted to run with for this was "parasite" but I'm honestly not sure if it counts as parasitism, or something that's slightly closer to symbiotism.

Incidentally!! The host can adopt a different form outside of their own home universe, just like other worms can. (This does mean alien magical girl CAN be a thing.) Worms in general adopt a form that's not immediately obvious...they might pretend to be one of the inhabitants, or an inanimate object WHO KNOWS. When attached to a host they might be something like a brain cell idk.

So what is the point

Scambaiters is about people who don't know about worms baiting wandering worms (and sometimes killing them, which is like taking down a bear with one's bare hands).

Library Club is about a club of students who're infected with worms.

That's what's actually going on behind the scenes.

The school's actually under an organisation dedicated to the monitoring/research of worms. Students who're known to host worms (have reported strange instances of stepping into places that don't exist etc.) are funnelled in and educated/given training. It's a rare occurrence though, so the general decision to keep it a secret remains, particularly since opening new universes can be pretty dangerous if not used right, but can't be used consciously if the user isn't aware that it can be controlled (i.e. it's safe enough to leave alone, and known cases should be controlled). Of course, hosts aren't necessarily just students...there are many other grown-ups that do host worms.

Training generally consists of foundational stuff like how to create a stable universe (basically, lessons in worldbuilding) and how to safely enter/leave a foreign universe. Since there aren't that many trainees, the organisation does its best to keep them working in it, particularly by supporting their creative endeavours...anyway, further training is centred on techniques to kill wandering worms, which is their main job in this organisation.

It's all kept under wraps, but the information does leak out somehow, and the rest of the general populace do occasionally run into wandering worms (more like, fall prey to their traps). There are small unofficial communities of people who call these traps "scams" and bait them as a hobby, sometimes boasting of actual kills. The whole worm setup isn't widely known, but the communities are aware that there is good reason to bait these scams, and many of the training techniques that don't just apply to worm hosts (like safe practices) are common knowledge. It's suspected that these techniques are intentional leaks, but no one really knows where they came from. In any case, the commonly-accepted explanation for scams is quite inadequate, has 29348792387 variations, is of urban legend quality and there are lots of conspiracy theories flying around so it's pretty fun.

Plot

Now comes the part that gives me space to work on...

The premise is that there've always been mysterious cases of people disappearing, but it's been happening more often as of late, and includes lots of obviously unreported cases.
The idea is that a large mother worm's universe is dying and it's turned to leeching off people in this world, resulting in a bunch of worms trying to bait people over. Maybe they eventually manage to Trojan horse their way in and open a permanent wormhole. What 2 do??? Thing to consider: half-daughter half-wandering worms, with impermanent universes but no hosts...or worse, sending hosts to this universe to drag victims back. Friendly aliens who look entirely indistinguishable from regular people (they are regular people)! Newbies who're actually spies in the organisation, trying to kill off as many defending hosts as possible!

This could potentially get on the Bokurano level of horrible since it would be Very Difficult for there to be a good ending for everyone - either the other world wins and saps this world of its energy (goodness knows if that'll even be enough for it to stay alive), or this world destroys the other world (which could mean defenders having to kill new friends). The safest good ending is that the two worlds establish some kind of alliance where people get sent to the other world to provide life energy (which is also an unsettling thought), and the normal ending would be that the other world gets turned away and feeds off another one instead (which is also bad news for the third world).

Misc notes

Worm sentience/communication

I actually don't know which way to take this one - I was originally going to have daughter worms be mind-control parasites that make their hosts crave more ideas (I think they still have this sort of effect) and the effect can't be resisted even if it's known, but otherwise there's no communication with the worm other than a sort of satisfaction/hunger.

It'd be interesting if they were some kind of daemon though...they wouldn't appear physically, but show up in maybe dreams or the mind's eye, as whatever the host thinks they look like, and talks to them in a kind of roundabout cosmic entity kind of way or just a plain imaginary friend. The mother worm...probably can't be communicated with...maybe there's just a sense of foreboding, or it communicates through the daughters.
In any case I'm thinking there should be some form of communication, because otherwise people wouldn't know what's going on...they could deduce some things, but I think a fair bit of this knowledge has to be communicated because the stuff on the cosmic scale wouldn't be observable.

Also incidentally, worms are neutral and only concerned with the universe's survival. If they show concern towards their hosts it's only because they're most likely to survive well on their respective hosts, but it's not impossible for them to agree to make compromises with/small sacrifices for a trusted host (it helps survival in the long run to be on good terms with hosts). I guess they're a bit like incubators, but unlike those, they need their hosts to survive.

Travelling between universes

You need three things:
1. A universe to go to - either one you created (if you host a worm), or one that you're invited to (if you're answering a scam, or returning to your world)
2. A door (the wormhole) - just a hole you can pass through will do, even, but a door is more convenient
3. Your consent

Put the universe on the other side of the door - experienced hosts won't need to do anything as long as they know where they're headed, but less experienced hosts may need to stick a piece of paper on the door as a tiny ritual to put them in the mindset of leaving their current world, and non-hosts will definitely need to stick the invitation (comes in many forms and instructions are always provided, open for interpretation here) on the door when travelling out.

People who die in another universe never come back - they're just missing persons now.

Unless an invitation to the same world is found (rare unless it's a notoriously hungry worm), it's impossible to return to the same one, and there are many variants on even the same base universe. Repeat worms are noted both within the organisation and scambaiting community (probably leaks the sightings to the organisation). They're categorised and the research department also studies their heritages (assumed from similarity to other worms) to see trends in worldbuilding, and develop strategies for countering common world types.

"The organisation" is a mouthful and definitely needs a name...maybe I should just go with Earthwyrm or something equally bad