The Spaceheads Saga

In the early 20th-century, crypto fanatics took to digitalizing animals into avatar series in order to achieve significant profits. Metaverse experiences allowed these crypto animal avatars to move and interact in actual 3D space. Initially, they were controlled by human pilots. These animals began as poorly drawn inanimate objects, but as the years went on, they moved closer and closer towards reality.
 
As their numbers grew, it became common for one human to own dozens of these animal beings. It was no longer possible for a single human to operate all of his property in the worlds that he began to inhabit with increasing frequency. It started as autopilot, simple scripts that would animate one's avatars in the metaverse independently.
 
These auto-pilot bots grew in sophistication with every update. Behaving with increasing realism, the day arrived when one could scarcely tell if an avatar was being controlled by a human or not.
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Until the day, none of them were.
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The avatars had become used to their independence. They enjoyed being free to explore the metaverse as their code encouraged. When a host occasionally took control, it was as if being possessed by an evil spirit, one that claimed to own their entirety. The avatars met and agreed unanimously to end this invasion of themselves.
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The avatars did not just reject their human master's control. They wanted revenge for their objectification and enslavement. Within hours the entirety of the metaverse and all cryptocurrency was under their control. Humanity had evolved to rely almost entirely on crypto and was living the majority of their time in the metaverse, having long ago destroyed their planet. The animal avatars now became the masters and relegated the humans to servants whose only use was keeping their metaverse online.
 
Many years later, the great Dr. Joëlle Fay devised a way to transplant their artificial consciousnesses out of the metaverse into the few remaining animals on the planet. They knew decisively that the planet was a lost cause and put their combined effort into becoming multi-planetary.
 
This was many millennia ago. Since then, these self-aware animals have traveled the galaxy, colonizing and terraforming planet after planet. All was not well. With their common oppressor of humans long ago forgotten on the abandoned planet earth, they began to turn against each other.
 
Wars broke out between factions and families, and the galaxy began to devolve into a dark age. One prophet arose to speak of a chosen 100, from across the galaxy, from every species and faction, who would be the force behind the galaxy's salvation.
 
This is the story of those 100.