A location with a higher than average number of strangers.

A reasonably popular tabletop roleplaying game with lots of expansions and small metallic figures. Almost everyone who describes themselves as "nerdy" knows how to play, and probably has some of the guidebooks of their shelf. Owing to its appropriately "geeky" level of popularity, there are a lot of third-party add-ons that introduce strangers, sensitives, and VHZ-era technology to the game.

A recurring element within the character designs, with Valeks, Meaty Mouse, and Fifi all wearing animal masks at various points.

A thin layer of sub-dimensions that surrounds the Alphabetarian's dimension. Possessing an intrinsically chaotic central structure, it can be thought of more like a flipbook than a photograph,

A recurring image within the project. Prescribing to the theory that mankind's ability for abstraction was aided by ingestion of the psychedelic mushroom, the shape of the atom bomb, and its destructive annihilation, might be one way to represent an inevitable collapse of complex structure.

Behind the Curtain is a timeline and narrative within Goodbye Strangers, ostensibly taking place in the "real world".^ល Unlike the real world, though, every artist and writer's personal dream projects really seem to come true.

A foul-smelling, toxic fluid that drifts and settles into pools beneath the factories that pump it out through their "allowably loose" underground drainage pipes during the V.H.Z era. The unrefined pools are sticky, but easily-stirred.

A phenomenon that occurs when a stranger's form is revealed. With a scramble of light and colors, the stranger's body is removed, and all non-senstives experience anything from light nausea to momentary vertigo, but always with total loss of memory of the event, and some degree of disorientation.

Another name for North Mural. It's not a very accurate description, but a lot of stores still use it in their names. Locals will give you a dirty look if you try to make any kind of joke involving the word "bliss" or "city", with puns being particularly hated. Despite this, rhyming jingles and catchphrases remain popular in local commercials year after year.

A disease affecting non-sensitives, and originating from strangers.

Blue Hell is a dimension that projects blue hell fields. It resonates with certain types of strangers, causing them to produce psycholy as a byproduct of this resonance.

Blue Hell shares its shape with dissociative episodes, and the loss of the self. The ego is erased, and the outside world pours in. Its edges are hard, and monochromatic.

Any one of a number of electronic devices capable of recognizing certain ranges of thoughtform properties. First cobbled together from spare parts, and then manufactured by zone-contracted factories during the VHZ era, callyphanxes are mainly used for identifying psychics.

The high voltage and volatile substances required by the device, combined with the range at which its settings must be calibrated, means that any callyphanx can be used as a fatal weapon with almost no effort, causing massive seizures to the targeted victim.

One way to group and categorize strains. (see the class index for more information.)

The likelihood that a stranger will be present within a location. Even a stranger in a locked room will not always be present when the room is unlocked. In much the same way that a stranger avoids being observed by a non-sensitive, a sensitive will never observe the moment of the switch from 'present' to 'absent'.

A VHZ-era stranger-extracting device that saw brief application. Instead of being extruded with a violent yank, strangers were "guided" through a series of partial lamination chambers before being made inert. The process had a low strain loss rate, but was prohibitively expensive.

A classic and solid construct. Admired as a building block for untold generations, its kinship with the meom dimension is a more-or-less unknown side of this object's personality.

A type of puppet module used to control inert drone units during the VHZ era.

A clear-to-prismatic liquid, extracted from certain strangers. Useful for making processors and parts for kaleido-machines during the VHZ era.

A class of higher dimensional being, with the alphabetarian or animalarian being representatives examples. In general, they're not able to directly interact with any physical world that humans are a part of, but can still exert a strong influence upon any lower dimensional plane.

Largely negative, the dimensionarians seem to form a complex system (or "dimensional machine") that feeds upon human suffering.

All dimensionarians are transcribed from the author's dreams and extra-normal experiences.

The designation for Fifi's first bombing of Jaundice Press.

An apparent genre of fiction. It's probably not the genre of fiction that this website belongs to.

Bracey's name for his collection of drug-producing strangers.

The most powerful stranger in the game Zeroworld, created by fusing the first four ("legendary") numbered strains.

During the VHZ era, extruded and inert strangers are augmented with technology to create drone units. The stranger within a drone unit does not move on its own, but instead, is either moved via externally attached or internal animatronic machinery, or via the use of nodules which control the drone units' tissue and behaviour with electric pulses. These motions are always externally controlled – whether manually, or through the use of artificial intelligence programs.

A dissembler from a previous generation, whose work was instrumental in spreading information about stranger-derived substances. Her guides, hidden in the mail-in instruction manuals for obscure electric components, helped lay the groundwork for much later home research.

Very little is known about her, other than her habit of chewing on pens, tangled platinum hair, and voracious appetite for drugs, and self-administered electro-therapy.

A popular brand of dry rations. They taste somewhat like sawdust, yet are strangely addicting. They have a cult following, and you can buy lots of shirts and other products with images of the iconic label on the front.

A website frequented by the cast of Space Madness, and used for a wide range of social functions.

The process by which a stranger is extracted from sociospace, utilized heavily during VHZ to create the inert stranger bodies used for "drone units". (Anywhere that they can find them, they jab them and they pull it out. The white cloud expands, and the strangers within become inert.)

The extrusions cause structural damages to their surroundings, which becomes an excuse to rebuild. (There are enough materials to do it over and over, and the factories are getting large enough to make whole buildings.)

From there on, though they still a bleed when cut, or shrivel their skin when touched, but they will never resist again, or cry out.

All strangers possess some form of eye. (The eye-emblazoned stranger becomes the spectator.) The eyes are otherwise an unexplored area of interest. (The strangers could have just as easily been categorized by "eye shape" instead of "vision types".)

The setting of Into the Fade, and a separate dimension from that of Space Madness. Its edges scrape upon the boundaries of the North Mural's physical reality, but intersect only in piercing moments. It shares its shape with "soft^ᘍ entropy", and the loss of information through subtraction, like a page left out^၇ in the sun.

The creator of Goodbye Strangers, and a notorious recluse.

An event that is heavily referenced, but not explicitly seen – the break that occurs when the structure and order of one world can no longer be sustained, and the field must be leveled by outside forces. It marks the end, and cannot be resisted.

A location where a sensitive has infamously died.

A ghost has a thoughtform that is differentiated from the world around it, but is not attached to a physical body. It has no ability to form memories, or perceive the physical world.

Although a human and animal's thoughtforms are no different on a qualitative level, animals do not share attachment to ghosts; their thoughtform differentiates itself directly from the outside world. (The absense of this intermediary stage allows animals to remain safe from the influence of outer dimensions.)

A spectral phenomenon that follows the death of certain strangers. A ghost stranger cannot be perceived by a sensitive, but can be seen by a medium.

Much like a "living" stranger, ghost strangers do not have a thoughtform or internal perception of the world.

A website and project that references itself.

A comic created to promote the Goodbye Strangers website, as documented within the narrative of Behind the Curtain. The loose collection of scenes depict moments and vignettes from the larger world and story.

A poem that appears in both Space Madness and the module Dead Cities, and functions to modulate the Motherbomb's explosive temporal ripple.

The greater hells (or "Greater Hells") of Blue Hell and Red Hell are powerful wavelength dimensions which are adjacent to, and overlap^൴ the real world. Although they do not have a physical form and cannot be physically visited (nor can their full structure be readily inferred), their hell fields influence various structures, interactions, and properties.

Lesser dimensions which lead either towards or away from the Probotaxazatonian dimension, transcribed directly from the author's dreams, as well as his experiences with sleep paralysis. Relatively unexplored outside of these journals.

Also known as the 人タイプ (ひとたいぷ), a person's hitotype (/ˈhitotaɪp/) determines their potential interactions with dimensional planes, with sensitives and psychics being two such types.

A holographic "windowset" that shows a view of a three-dimensional scene. The depth is more lifelike than you'd expect, but the texture has a quality that looks more like a VHS tape. The hologram is almost fully opaque, but can be disorienting to stare directly into. They're used primarily at heights of too high or obscured to allow this.

Although I.Q. (or "insensitive quality") is never strictly defined, it seems to be a linear scale by which strangers can be ranked.

The state that a stranger enters when touched by a dissembler, or extruded via outside technology, as in the drone-powered VHZ. An inert stranger cannot move, and its side-effects become reduced to levels barely more than psychosomatic, though its lifespan and passive qualities (such as regenerative abilities) are unaffected. (A functional radio does not function in an area with no radio signals.)

A famous spaceman whose exploits are known by everyone. He not only saved the moon, he was the first to explore brand new parts of space that no one had ever discovered before, even though they were barely far from the earth at all.

He's an absolute hero, except for his mental breakdown, and the unsettling sense of dread knowing that he's always hovering over earth in his weaponized spacestation, the Tin Utopia. But we don't have to worry about a washed-up, moondust addict like him; he has enough drugs to last until the end of the world.

Kaleido technology is used in tandem with television monitors, holographic projectors, and speakers (among other supplemental components) to create a virtual environment. The kaleido-machine's output responds and reacts to brain waves of individuals within its range, contrasting expectation to remain novel.

The kaleido sensors do not read thoughts, and cannot be used to force an individual to divulge specific information. They are thus considered safe technology for recreational use.

Though kaleido technology does not specifically require the use of a drone unit, there are few manmade machines that can match a drone unit's processing power and speed, and thus, the extracted strains are frequently used.

A highly popular and counterfeited brand. In addition to their iconic hoodies and t-shifts, they've also gotten a lot of media attention for their range of limited-release branded products, like the Kruger ant farm, the Kruger bong, and the Kruger colostomy bag.

A laminate is a type of sensitive whose physical touch allows them to carry dead stranger matter from the sociospace into the real world. Parts that bear resemblance to the stranger's form are less likely to survive the transition – fluids and tissues have far greater odds than heads or limbs, while a fully intact corpse would be virtually impossible to recover.

Also known as His Highness the Limerick, The Prince in Yellow, and a wide range of obscene expletives, this entity appears to those who ingest certain stranger-derived drugs in large amounts. Though this figure does not appear to actually exist, that hasn't prevented his out-of-control popularity among dozens of cult organizations.

A series of astonishingly collectible rubber toys. They're so desirable and rare, even celebrities can't buy some of them.

An unsuccessful project, mentioned in Walltown. The concept and design seemed to revolve heavily around weather, and assorted weather conditions.

An unrealized project. This one didn't seem to make it much farther than the name, but would have involved some kind of crowd-gathered content.

Material D, like psycholy, allows the user to interacts with adjacent dimensions. Unlike psycholy, which allows the user to directly infer outside shape and structure, Material D grants awareness (through a nauseating, dizzy sensation) of the degree of difference between two dimensions, such as how much their histories or other concrete details diverge. For example, two dimensions may both have a medieval era, but do they both have the Kennedy assassination?

By itself, Material D looks like a grey liquid-to-sludge that can be heated and cooled rapidly to create a gelatin substance. It has the effect of causing temporary suggestability and fatigue in psychics, and during the early VHZ era, is introduced into the water supply in order to suppress their abilities, thanks to Olivia North's success in lobbying and campaign financing.

Material D's "difference amplification" can be triggered easily through song lyrics, which grow more distorted the further "in" one travels from dimension to sub-dimension. Song lyrics within Space Madness are a deformation of those within Behind the Curtain's, which differs from our world. Thus, the music of Carrie Sands (an entirely fictional music artist) acts a significant amplifier for the effects^ㆡ experienced by Mae Szyszyszki after she is poisoned by Olivia North.

Large-scale internment facilities, presumably set up in the wake of the Blotchman's Plague pandemic event. Although the less visceral details are unexplored, it can be assumed that the soggy, sloshing hallways of a mattress camp (where the plastic bins of used syringes are sterilized with a soak in tepid dish water) is not a place one wants to end up.

A repulsive and inspiring structure constructed out of the countless mattresses of the appropriately named "mattress camps" set up to contain Blotchman's-infected patients. An impressive engineering achievement.

A twisted, evil poodle featured in the first movie of the One Billion Poodles cinematic universe, and voiced by none other than Orson Welles. The tie-in "Naxry-Snax" plastic toy had parts that could choke small children, but it wasn't recalled.

A mass-produced and highly collectible line of toys. They're notable for their exorbitant quality, excessive rarity, and exclusive licensing agreements with almost every single media franchise.

The mascot for the mirinet advertising network. No one can really seem to agree whether each head has a body that's never seen, or if they're both two halves of the same entity. It doesn't seem to have ever been an actual stranger strain.

An advertising network. It's not always clear what their ads are selling, or how they are targeted. Sometimes it feels like they're trying to play into your insecurities. They might make your head feel kind of funny.

An enclosed collection of strangers, and vehicle by which to demonstrate the theme of "deformation of a system".

A highly toxic chemical, extensive use of which led to the discovery of over forty brand new forms of heart and skin disease.

All strangers are composed of one or more physical structures, known as monoforms. The monoforms refers to the structure itself, and not the individual atoms or chemicals that compose it. The uniform intestines that fill many strangers, for example, would be counted as a single monoform. In the case of a stranger with three layers of skin, each a different color or substance, each layer would be counted as a separate monoform.

The bomb constructed by Fifi Cherish.

A popular restaurant chain. Their paper bags don't do a very good job at keeping the grease off your car seat, but your drunk friends won't mind.

The main setting of Space Madness, the city is a major hub for the East Coast non-standard community, and is home to most of the main cast. Also known as "Bliss City", it is located in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it is third largest city in the state.

A layer of reality inhabited by ghosts and ghost strangers.

Another of the creator's imaginary settings, and the backdrop for a large part of his Goodbye Strangers work. There is some overlap between the Nurenverse and the world of Goodbye Strangers through the Fade, with this liminal reality existing as a satellite of the former. The cosmology of the two worlds are otherwise largely non-compatible, with the Nurenverse being much more detatched from the specific details of our history (though the imagery is no more or less fantastical, albeit less modern), and with animate entities possessing a nurenform,^Ꮈ rather than a thoughtform.

A record-breaking animated movie franchise, notable for featuring Orson Welles as McBastle Betrixy, the villainous poodle from the "dark dimension". After its unprecedented level of success, merchandise and tie-ins related to the media property now account for 1.6% of the global waste stream.

An educational videogame that has attained nostalgic cult status. A number of characters in Space Madness have vague memories of playing it during their childhoods.

A former film director. He's mainly known for directing the terrible movie, The Fearful Frontier, based on the spaceman, James Killjoy. Now, he mostly spends his time browsing the internet, laughing at memes of himself, and attending to his modest, but by no means embarrassing poodle collection.

A group of authors and writers dedicated to revealing the truth of the strangers and other higher dimensional phenomena.

A science fiction magazine that stood at the forefront of genre publishing,^ᕍ based on its imaginative short stories, speculative editorials, and occasional . Though not a political magazine per se, its readers skewed left-leaning, and certain articles were widely circulated among members of the so-called "counterculture".

But, critics claim that it's not the same content quality as it used to be, and now, it can be pretentious . The runaway success of the "strangers mystery" serial among fringe, conspiratorial groups didn't help its reputation.

A less expensive form of polywood that's still technically polywood. It's great to use if you want to manufacture a small object cheaply, but still use the words "genuine polywood" on the label. Notable for being completely recyclable, minus the toxic by-products.

A slang phrase, meaning to feign ignorance of a situation - like an "ostrich with its head in the ground."

Also spelled poly-birium, this highly toxic chemical is utilized by hundreds of industries during the VHZ era, although it poses complex and various environmental challenges.

A VHZ-era wood replacement material. It doesn't feel, or smell like wood, but it's less expensive than growing a whole tree.

A coveted breed of pet with greatly appreciating value.

The likelihood that a stranger will appear within an environment capable of generating them. It does not denote overall commonality; a strain with a prevalence of 1% and a wide range of possible environments, for example, may appear more frequently than a strain with a prevalence of 100%, but which requires a hyper-specific environment.

A psychic is a person who possesses bifurcate thoughtforms, allowing them to perceive adjacent dimensions. They have unusual biology, including a cluster of nerves known as the messianic crown that grants them their abilities, as well as psychoactive tears.

Psychics are able to see strangers at all times (regardless of whether or not the connection to the sociospace is interrupted), perceiving the stranger in either a holographic or physical form.

Psycholy, also known as 最己離 (さいこり), or psycholysergic acid diethylamide, is a psychedelic drug harvested from strangers. Mirroring the way in which strangers are generated by friction between the higher dimensions, psycholy accumulates either between, or within a stranger's various tissues as the stranger is pulled by Red and Blue Hell. Because the psycholy is not part of a stranger's body, it can be taken from sociospace without the need for a laminate.

The blue liquid acts as a powerful hallucinogen, inducing effects that are euphoric, kaleidoscopic, and long-lasting. It greatly amplifies the abilities of psychics, mediums, and other non-standards, and can help reveal new dimensions of thought for all individuals, non-sensitive or otherwise.

Long-term side-effects are subtle enough to persist unnoticed, until they become debilitating.

Red Hell is a dimension that projects red hell fields. It resonates with certain types of strangers, inducing the production of red milk.

Red Hell shares its shape with psychotic episodes, and the muddling of the self. The ego boundaries become diffuse, bleeding in and out freely with the outside world.^ଟ

A stranger-derived drug that doesn't have a lot of positive effects. It makes you sweat, it raises the heartrate to an uncomfortable level, and it makes it hard to eat for several hours. Except, it's addictive. After ingesting the drug,^ᗰ the user experiences a "delighted agitation" and a loss of inhibitions; memories are similarly disrupted. Some people like to take it when they do really nasty things, and it often comes in and out of the fringe markets.

A white and red liquid that causes a fevered rush of energy and a loss of inhibitions. This can manifest as desperate ecstasy, or violent rage, depending on the user's state.

A sensitive whose contributions to The Phenomenon Papers (along with those by a legion of subsequent authors) helped develop an elaborate fictional canon and backstory involving the strangers.

She's rumored to have died far underground.^ᘋ

A former president. Notable for his highly iconic face, as well as his success in bringing the zebras to America as part of his diplomatic endeavors. You might also know him as "Tricky Dick", whose his assorted misdeeds have filled the pages of over twenty books. It's such a popular Halloween costume across the United States, you can find Nixon masks to match any skin color.

Collossal constructions built during the Dead Cities era, these psychic-powered strongholds are tall enough to use the orbiting Tin Utopia's magnetic pull to maintain their astonishing height.

An indie game company – in reality, an alias for Christine Verity, the artist behind Zeroworld.

A sensitive is a person who can enter into the sociospace to engage with the phenomenal shapes known as strangers. Sensitivity expresses itself to varying degrees, and can manifest at any age. Though the trait has no genetic link, and there are no specific differences that distinguish a sensitive from a non-sensitive, it appears more common among minorities, outsiders, and outlier individuals within a population.

The trait that distinguishes sensitives from standards. It is not hereditary.

A movie mentioned in Space Madness. This entirely fictitious account of the Dirty Mother Incident drew unexpected critical and popular attention. Despite the serious tone and subject matter, the film inspired jokes, impressions of the dialog, and spawned a wildly popular meme that depicted Orson Welles throwing a poodle at Fifi Cherish.

A module that is described as being "like stumbling onto something you weren't supposed to see; like you've just exposed someone else's secrets, and they don't know it."

A space created by friction between our reality and other dimensions, in which the strangers generate, propagate, and flourish. Though it is entangled with physical reality, this connection ebbs and flows. If left undisturbed by standard human activity, the fields settle in a tangible form, allowing the strangers to interact with the concrete world. The shifts of connection and disconnection can never be observed by a standard human, as a stranger will always shift out of reality before being perceived.

The centermost narrative within the world of Goodbye Strangers, depicting the city of North Mural, and the characters that live within.

Also known as the "Mother-of-Pearl", this gosdragon spars with FM in the finale of Into the Fade. Her appearance matches Fifi's mask.

A stranger's overall health and constitution. A stranger with a stability of 100% will reach its maximum lifespan 100% of the time (barring outside forces), and a stranger with a stability of 0% cannot generate at all. Strangers with high stability are less prone to illness, thrive more readily, and display a uniformity in their behaviours, whereas strangers with slow stability are shorter-lived, prone to disease, and display a greater degree of erraticism.

A natural phenomenon that take on composite, and often anthropomorphic behaviours. They are invisible to most standard people, dwelling within the sociospace. Generated as a byproduct of human activity,^ᔐ strangers can be found in any city. Although the strangers exhibit complex behaviours, and exert both physical and mental influence upon the world, they do not have thoughts. They do not have feelings. They do not have a thoughtform. They cannot be communicated with, and they are not alive.

Strangers that share a prefix with an earlier strain. Did you know? Nearly all stranger strains generate a number of child sub-strains, which, in turn, can generate sub-strains of their own. Although exceptionally common, not all sub-strains are prolific, notable, or long-lasting. Many sub-strains deviate only in exceptionally minute ways (such as a 0.4% decrease in size, or a subtly increased level of aggression). Other sub-strains consist of only one, short-lived individual.

There is a potentially infinite number of sub-strains, although stability tends to decrease with suffix length. A "boguldrove" sub-strain of the boguldromi will be more stable than a "boguldrovorivodri", which will be far less volatile and erratic than a "boguldrovorivodridronarivoliri" sub-strain.

A secretive underground organization^ㄓ whose members have interactions with varying levels of dimensional entities.

A recurring number in the world of Goodbye Strangers, as seen in the thirteen strains of each suit in Primer, thirteen hollow crowns, thirteen animal bloods, thirteen lines of the Heath & Hollow poem, thirteen gosdragons, thirteen central characters, thirteen issues of Gutters, and the thirteen zodiac signs, among others. With twelve allowing divided sets of two, three, four, and six, thirteen allows for two new sets - "parts of the set of twelve" and "lone outlier to each set".

All natural living entities possess a thoughtform. It is the part of the self that perceives, senses, and decides, equivalent to what is typically known as "consciousness" or "free will".^㆟

Various nonstandard thoughtforms occupy different ranges of space, which they share with other entities.

A calamity event of some kind. It involved a lot of black smoke, and things burning that should have never, ever been on fire.

A company that makes industrial products and other objects that the average consumer would not know the name of. Wearing their logo on a hoodie wouldn't make you look cool, but you wouldn't get a mango lassi thrown on you for being seen in public with it on, either.

A future era in which strangers are extruded and used as products, fuel sources, entertainment, or within "drone units", among other uses. Society changes rapidly and exponentially as technology develops from the strangers (which change in response, as well.)

A higher-dimensional level of reality, known primarily through the manifestation described as the "VHZ era".

A film based on the life of the missing singer, Carrie Sands. It was evidently "snubbed" for a lot of awards. If it's your favorite movie, it might make you look really nuanced and a bit intense, though almost anyone under fourteen would find both you and the movie to be completely boring.

A series of "blind box" toy releases, and one of the author's earlier, non-strangers works. With lots of different themes, there's something for everyone.

An animal that makes an appearance in Space Madness. It's sort of like a horse, but it's definitely not a horse. Iconic, mainly for its stripes.

It's made from hooves, but the mix of animals is a heavily guarded trade secret. The zebra mascot on the small boxes urge you to try "every single flavor". The next closest rival brand, Bepps-O™, just can't compete.

A videogame created by the independent studio, sadware. The tribute to the obscure Pokémon series featured art and programming by the sensitive, Christine Verity, and writing by the psychic, Default.

The electronic or mechanical components that attach to the extruded VHZ-era strangers.