Okay, here is a BRIEF (believe it or not) explanation of the series.
-MAJOR SPOILERS-
It all began with an epic poem written by a woman named Emma. The poem was called the Epitaph of Twilight. The poem was only published on a private website for fans. A man named Harold Hoerwick loved this woman Emma, but shortly after one of the final chapters of the poem was written, Emma died, leaving the story unfinished. Harold fell into depression, and decided he wanted to create a daughter, but not a real one, a Virtual one. And so he worked on the \"Ultimate AI\", which he called Aura. He reffered to it as his daughter, and when he went to companies to support his idea, they all turned him down. So he covered up the idea and put it into an online game known as \"Fragment\". A program known as Morganna Mode Gone was supposed to study humans from the game\'s perspective, as she was the game. Harold made Morganna to give birth to the Ultimate AI once enough data was collected. But soon Morganna grew jealous, and tried to stop the Ultimate AI\'s birth. At this point a game called \"The World\" was released, and it was an upgrade from Fragment. CCcorp, the creators of the game stated the upgrade was because \"The actions of Player Killers has gotten out of hand\" though the real reason was because of Morganna\'s malfunctioning. This is the time when Tsukasa\'s story is started. He was abused by his alcoholic father, who started drinking heavily after Tsukasa\'s mother died. Because of Tsukasa\'s incredible grief, Morganna chose him to be part of Aura, taking his thoughts, feelings, and actions out of his body and into the game. Tsukasa was part of Aura, when he was happy, Aura was able to grow, but when he was sad, Aura\'s birth halted. Eventually, when Aura finally is born, Morganna creates Skeith, who was formerly the part of her programming that was supposed to study the human race\'s fear of death. This is when Tsukasa\'s story ends, and Kite\'s begins. I\'m gonna leave this part of the story to you, (though I already know ;)) so good luck.
*takes a breath* Well, I\'m done for now, any more questions about .hack, PM me.
[Edited on 5-6-2004 by Mike]