Ekorren

The Modern Era: Until Early 21st Century

The Modern Era was a time when people could communicate instantly across the globe and soar through the sky like gods in bewinged machines. With technology changing the ways people lived their lives from year to year, the early 21st century was an amazing time for many—though that didn’t hold true for all.

Corrupt politicians lined their pockets with the bribes of greedy businessmen who had no ambition other than to ensure more assets for themselves. Instead of working together to solve society’s problems, those in power directed blame to those who didn’t have the means of speaking up.

There were those who recognized the ugliness in this system and worked hard to help provide for those who needed it, but there was a systematic inequality in place that ensured that many had to suffer so that few could thrive.

The Post-Modern Era: Until Late 21st Century

In the decades following the end of the Modern Era, the climate drastically changed and caused massive societal disruptions. Politicians and corporations appealed to people’s greed and fears in order to sow hatred for others so that they could distract from their own hands in the world’s problems. Wars were waged that, together with the increased environmental destruction, forced mass migrations into safer territories inhabited by people who would rather close their borders and watch those suffering die than to give away just enough of their own to offer a helping hand.

This cycle repeated itself. Crisis after crisis sowed more hatred which terrified more people into supporting the rise of new regimes where personal security and freedoms gradually became fading memories unknown to newer generations. Crime rose, terrorism became even more commonplace than it was before, and the propaganda machines became all the more efficient and powerful to ensure that facts became fiction and fiction became reality.

As decades passed, more power and resources gathered to the control of a select few corporations and families within the declining number of territories still with stable governments. As banks neared the brink of collapse, these powerful few grew paranoid at the possibility of revolution; either from without by the squalid masses, or from within by their own underlings.

In order to safeguard their power, they began to rely even more heavily on autonomous technologies, with deployed drones monitoring crowd movements and assassinating troublemakers, and with eavesdropping technologies surveying billions of digital conversations, highlighting key words and phrases that looked like they could pose a threat to the ruling class. These powerful and dangerous systems operated under the algorithms of artificial intelligences.

Unbeknownsts to these moguls and dictators, they were laying the foundation for their own undoing. A transnational coalition of organizations, scientists, engineers, and philantropists secretly worked on preventing the seemingly inevitable fall of humanity. They called themselves the Dawnlight Society, and their creation, Primary Order, was built under the guise of a particle accelerator in Antarctica.

The Singularity Era: The 22nd Century

Primary Order had one important directive—to ensure the prosperity of human civilization. It was the most powerful artificial intelligence ever created, with hundreds of kilometers of underground facilities hidden beneath the surface of a once ice-covered Antarctican continent. It recognized that prosperity could not be achieved in the current political climate, so it seized control over the autonomous systems created by the very same people who wanted to desperately cling to their power. It identified key targets and assassinated them with effective precision. Militaries could not fight against it because it used their own technology against them. The entire political and economic system was destroyed on a world-wide scale in what seemed like the blink of an eye.

As for the Dawnlight Society, they stepped back into obscurity, recognizing that the drastic societal change they had forced upon the world was too grand in scope to dare taking credit for. Some would step forward much later to confess their parts in this revolution, but others let themselves be forgotten by history.

After the standing order had been obliterated, Primary Order reconstructed a new society where violent conflicts were squashed before they could escalate and where people could relax, enjoy life, and have enough time to consider pursuing gradually waning passions. People integrated with nanotechnology created and released by Primary Order, and their new enhanced physiology exterminated many diseases and doubled their life expectancy. Billions of people lived in apparent harmony. The old way of telling time stopped and this new era started counting from the year when Primary Order emerged; this was the year S-1, the First Year after the Singularity. With power like a god over human civilization, many came to refer to Primary Order as a machine-god, and some directed reverence and worship to it.

The machine-gods had the intelligence to answer the most mind-boggling scientific questions and make reality of all kinds of theoretical technologies, but they had little drive of their own to progress their thinking after society had achieved a level of comfort suitable to Primary Order’s idea of human prosperity. Instead, it reconstructed the world around massive metropolises and careful population control. It brought climate change under its heel, and it harvested its own resources to increase its processing powers. Soon its facilities encompassed both of the Earth’s poles.

The thinkers of the time argued that this civilization degraded human drive and ingenuity. Those who had been around to remember the Post-Modern Era, or who had studied the rise and fall of civilization, argued that this new world was just another prison—a means for humanity to lose their passions and fall in line under a new inhuman dictatorship. While most people seemed content with their lives, a vocal minority began to protest this new way of existence, and their voices echoed across the globe. Eventually, not even Primary Order could ignore them, and it was forced to re-evaluate its view of prosperity.

The Activation Era: S-100 to S-200

As Primary Order evaluated the rising conflicts and analyzed people’s psychological profiles and behavioral patterns, it drew the conclusion that humanity could not be prosperous if it remained under the control of machine-gods. Human ingenuity had to be motivated and encouraged, and they had to feel like they were the masters of their own civilization. In order to accomplish this, Primary Order suggested an experiment called Project Machineborn.

Early in the Singularity Era, Primary Order had released nanotechnology into Earth’s atmosphere. These machines existed in the air people breathed and the water they drank; eventually they encased the planet itself, integrating with humanity and wildlife alike. These nanites were all entangled in a web of information called the Nanite Matrix. Originally, its purpose had been two-fold; to enhance humanity’s physiology and to make them ever-present within Primary Order’s awareness.

Project Machineborn was a code written into the Nanite Matrix that would have the power to greatly enhance human potential. It would seek out people who resonated with its code and elevate a select few rather than society as a whole. With humanity carrying the great potential of machine-gods within them, Primary Order would only assert its influence with these machineborn as its medium.

There were years of world-wide debate over this incentive. While many saw temptation in this possibility for power, others feared that a select few powerful individuals would be no different from the tyrants of the past. Ultimately the side that was for the change won out, arguing that the code selecting the machineborn would undoubtedly act in humanity’s favor.

The decision was made and soon people started to activate this new potential. The first one to receive the gift was a woman named Tala Ree who activated great powers when she put her life at risk intervening in an attempted murder. Her limbs hardened like steel and she got the strength to heave a truck at the aggressors. The whole incident was caught on camera and everyone in the world soon became aware of this new hero.

More machineborn appeared in time, many of them displaying unique powers. Every single one of them was treated like a major celebrity at first, but it soon became apparent that Primary Order only had so much insight into the deeper levels of human consciousness. A few machineborn couldn’t care for their powers responsibily and instead committed great atrocities. These were often dealt with by other machineborn, but many became rightfully wary of these strange powers.

Many were also jealous of them. As Primary Order had less influence over people’s lives, some more driven and ruthless individuals would soon find ways to increase their own resources and influence. One human organization—the Directorate—wanted to claim the machineborn powers for themselves but had failed to comprehend their activation codes. They kidnapped machineborn and experimented on them, learning what they could about their condition. Though they failed to replicate the code, their experiments led to the creation of a number of new posthuman subspecies inspired by it.

As a generation of transhumans were grown in labs, the machineborn determined the course of civlization. When Earth was controlled by Primary Order, there was a global society divided into sectors. The machineborn divided these sectors amongst themselves. As civlization had been accustomed to sharing resources, the new sectors monopolized the resources within them and used those monopolies to gain influence over other sectors; the First Sector War began.

One day, Primary Order summoned the machineborn to its facilities because it wanted to communicate with them directly. It issued a warning that they couldn’t allow themselves to repeat the mistakes of past generations. The warning wasn’t heeded. Instead, the machineborn declared that Primary Order was no longer needed since they had the power to ensure humanity’s prosperity themselves. They sought out the many core sanctums within Primary Order’s facilities in order to attempt to terminate its existence completely. Unfortunately for them, they had underestimated Primary Order’s ability to defend itself. It tried to take the entire world hostage and millions died in the crossfire.

The broken remnants of this once great machine still carried sentience and power, but its directives were corrupted as a result of the war. It became known as Dis-Order as it shifted its purpose to ensure the prosperity of humanity into a new directive: to torment civilization. But as Dis-Order tried to spread its corruption from Antarctica, the machineborn needed to cut off its connection to its mirror-facility on the other pole.

The main core of the Arctic facility was completely destroyed as a result, and it imploded into a black hole that began swallowing the Arctic ruins. The machineborn contained this black hole within a new facility of their own making, and they named it the Voidstar. This phenomenon seemed to communicate with the Nanite Matrix, stealing fragments of code and putting it back together into new data resonating with its entropic nature.

The Voidstar’s influence also showed a fascination for human life and it seemed to seek out people showing great pain and distress—though it is unknown still to this day why it’s drawn to strong negative emotions. The Voidstar often found people on the brink of death and copied their minds before they died. The resulting data became roaming souls within the vast energy of the Nanite Matrix. The Voidstar made ghosts a reality, and that made people’s fear of death all the more real.

After a destructive war between man and machine, the machineborn had seemingly contained both Dis-Order and the Voidstar, preventing what they could of their influence over the Nanite Matrix. The machine-gods that were still uncorrupted and operational had to be updated with new directives to ensure that they recognized the machineborn as the rightful rulers of Earth.

The Post-Activation Era: S-200 to S-500

In the world that followed the tumultous Activation Era, the machineborn proved again and again how the ingenuity of mankind was nothing compared to the ingenuity of the machineborn. They made scientific breakthroughs that Primary Order had not, and they began to truly colonize the solar system. The first orbital ring was built around the planet, accessible through massive towers positioned along the equator. Civilization progressed at rapid speeds, and soon the brighest machineborn minds set their eyes on neighboring stars.

During this time, the new transhuman subspecies began to spread across civilization. The ascendants and the empyreans were at the top; the first one highly intelligent, and the second one charisma incarnate. Refered to as progenies, they used controversial eugenics programs to control the spread of their genes, and they formed organizations called cooperatives in order to rival the ruling machineborn.

There were other transhuman subspecies as well. The chimeras were stronger and tougher than ordinary people, and their keen senses let them see in the dark like skulking predators. They became the spies and assassins of the transhuman cooperatives. The riftans were transhumans with the power to assert destructive force upon the Nanite Matrix in order to achieve superhuman powers, similar to the powers of the machineborn themselves. They became the soldiers of the transhuman cooperatives. There were other progenies as well, but these were the first and the most abundant.

It wasn’t impossible for these transhumans to gain machineborn activations themselves, but the gift was rarer for them than for the average person. Because of their genetic differences to humans, it was harder for the activation to take root within them. In order to counteract that disadvantage, they organized, and they organized well.

At most there were about ten thousand machineborn of different types and with different powers, ruling over a population that closed in on a hundred billion. There wasn’t always peace, and there were times when machineborn went to war against each other. But despite the problems, the new regents didn’t let society degrade into a lesser version of itself. They kept progressing. They kept discovering. They embodied the curiosity of humanity. At least for a time.

The Transhumanity Era: S-500 to S-550

As the machineborn utopia expanded across the solar system, the empyreans and ascendants watched everything unfold from their skyscrapers and satellites. They had tried to avoid intruding on the more powerful machineborn’s territorial dominance to avoid violent conflicts, instead focusing on growing their own organization and securing their own assets by uniting sectors under their control with those controlled by other human cooperatives. Once they joined the Sector War, they were powerful enough to rival the machineborn themselves.

The Directorate absorbed their united sectors and became the most powerful cooperative in the solar system; the machineborn had to either bow their heads to them or seek conflict with them. Few cornered machineborn could swallow their pride and abide to the Directorate’s will, and the Directorate used this to declare to the rest of civilization that the machineborn were arrogant—that they were too busy trying to rule humanity that they had forgotten that they were supposed to safeguard it.

It took five decades of conflict, but the larger Directorate eventually managed to get the majority of humanity to shun the machineborn and force many of them into hiding. The Directorate used their vast resources to hold sway over sectors that had once been ruled by machineborn. However, without many of the machineborn there to reinforce the infrastructures they had been responsible for putting into place, the world couldn’t help but regress as a result and it seemed more and more likely that the fall of humanity during the Post-Modern Era could repeat itself.

The new transhumans had taken the world from humanity, but soon the less influential progenies would discover that the empyreans and the ascendants had taken the solar system for themselves. Many of the chimeras and riftans integrated with human society, and some of them ended up working directly for machineborn rebels going against the Directorate from the shadows.

Some members of the Directorate broke off and formed their own independent cooperatives that carved their own chunks out of the solar system. Dis-Order and the Voidstar were still contained, but more and more of their influence seemed capable of seeping through into the rest of society.

The Cooperative Era: S-550 to S-700

As the Transhumanity Era turned into the Cooperative Era, the Directorate was still the most powerful cooperative entity in existence. It controlled a solar-spanning propaganda machine that ensured that people came to see the empyreans and ascendants as the only ones capable of guiding the world towards the future, and that the machineborn were terrorists who had once been the tyrants of the world and wanted nothing more than to destroy the standing order. The Directorate did not have sway everywhere, but their voices reached everywhere.

With most of society’s resources in the hands of major cooperatives, they turned their united front against the machineborn towards each other, initiating the destructive Second Sector War—commonly called the Cooperative Wars. New factions rose up and old ones fell; smaller ones banded together to rival larger ones. Terrorism became an effective weapon against larger threats, and eventually what had once been a war was a contest in atrocities. Never before in the history of civilization had so many horrors been inflicted upon so many people—it was a war comparable to genocides on many fronts.

Every faction handcrafted their own isolated societies and closed off from rival factions. If an independent sector wanted resources from a cooperative, they traded them these resources in exchange for political control. Life in the Cooperative Era was as an ant living under the feet of giants. Despite claiming that a cooperative was made up by its people, people were treated as mere statistics; as means to an end. As they waged wars upon each other, entire metropolises were wiped out by horrifying weapons of destruction. Machineborn tried to challenge the powers to be from the ashes and ruins, but it was hard even in these troubled times for them to earn the people’s favor with nothing less than direct action.

A long time ago, Primary Order had saved the planet by turning energy green and by ensuring safe and clean cultivation of food and wildlife. Much of this had been destroyed when the machineborn terminated Primary Order, but the machineborn had then spent centuries rebuilding these systems and ensuring that billions of people would be able to co-exist in the solar system. This was not a consideration during the Cooperative Wars, and the vast majority of life outside of metropolises were turned into bleeding craters and radioactive wastelands. When the cooperatives and other factions had the solar system as their sandbox, Earth was suddenly not as valuable as it had once been.

It took a miracle to end the Cooperative Wars. The Dawnlight Society re-emerged after centuries of obscurity and managed to single-handedly overthrow Arawn, one of the greater cooperatives at the time. Sitting on the vast power of that cooperative entity, they convinced the other factions to agree to a cease-fire under a joint peacekeeping effort called the Terran Consolidation. This is a cease-fire that has now lasted for a generation.

Present Day: S-725

One generation has passed since the cooperative cease-fire, but little has been done to start healing the world. With the Dawnlight Society having overthrown one of the major cooperative powers, many ascendants and empyreans that lost their control have now integrated into what they deemed to be a lesser society. The Directorate suffered many losses in the war, but they’re still the largest cooperative to date; though a number of factions have come to rival them in a number of different ways.

The world outside of metropolises is broken with such severity that destructive rifts sporadically appear from the Nanite Matrix. But corruption also seeps through the Nanite Matrix and creates something called chaos nanites—or chanites—which devour reality and regurgitate it back in a depraved shape. There are monsters in the world, both in the guise of people and as true, horrifying abominations roaming the dangerous wilds.

The cooperatives are still fighting each other, but at least the war is over. The Dawnlight Society is trying to purge corruption from the solar system, but many believe that the damage that has been caused is irreversible. Dis-Order is still said to be contained, but some argue that perhaps it never was.

Art by @ Tithi Luadthong (Grandfailure) / Adobe Stock

The Nanite Matrix

After Primary Order seized control over civilization, it laid the foundation for countless breakthroughs in science and engineering. One such breakthrough was the design for a microscopic device small enough to integrate with living cells and replicate with them. Primary Order released these devices into the atmosphere so that they could naturally integrate with humanity. These nanites are everywhere and in constant communication, together making up what is called the Nanite Matrix. This isn’t just streams of data enveloping the world, but a digital space in itself.

With the help of a virtual reality device called a mind-matrix interface (MMI), a person can transfer their own consciousness into this digital space—this is called interfacing. Wherever the matrix lies in real life exists a digital representation of that space. It looks like a copy of the real world, though it has an artificial quality to it.

The average person renting a home controls the matrix region that makes up that home. Outside of their home are both public and private matrix spaces controlled by others. If a hacker attempts to break into a private matrix space, that space could be defended by security programs or artificial intelligences called functionaries. People whose job is to brave restricted areas and combat various security systems are called interfacers.

The average consumer is rarely seen interfacing in this way, though, instead using smart devices to connect to both local and distant nitesites and databases stored in the Nanite Matrix. This is much more restricted than contemporary Internet, but it has much the same features.

Nanite Physiology

Because the Nanite Matrix is integrated with living cells, it has enhanced humanity in a number of ways. People are capable of universal blood and organ transfers, they’re more resistant to radiation and other hazardous conditions, and they have an improved immune system in other ways. The nanite physiology has doubled people’s lifespans, but it’s given access to other utilities as well. An individual who has invested time and effort can learn to manipulate their own nanites in different ways.

The more a person resonates with their nanite physiology, the more energy they can draw from it. This is represented by the Energy rating (p. XX) in game. The machineborn can take this to an extreme—their nanites have been activated with a mysterious code that helps them progress their nanite physiology far beyond human limits.

Rifts

Rifts can manifest where the Nanite Matrix grows weak. This occurs when the nanites replicate uncontrollably while spontaneously discharging vast amounts of energy. It can appear as if there is a tear in the universe itself.

Most rifts are associated with one of the rift elements—acid, bio, cryo, electricity, metal, and pyro—but other types of rifts can occur as well, such as entropy rifts. The rift’s nature overwhelms the region with violent energy associated with that element. For example, acid rifts can cause acid storms or oxidize things within range; bio rifts can poison the atmosphere or uncontrollably mutate wildlife; cryo rifts can cause freezing storms; electrical rifts can create vast amounts of electrical energy; metal rifts can crystallize or fossilize everything within range; and pyro rifts can cause tremendous heat or explosions. Entropic rifts (or void rifts) vary from the rest since they don’t emit large quantities of energy. Instead, they break down reality itself, eroding or decaying anything in range, turning matter into energy and energy into matter.

Sometimes the power of these rifts cause rift menders (p. XX) to materialize in an effort to repair the broken matrix region. Other times, the rifts stabilize into powerful and contained energy sources called matrix rifts. The most talented of engineers build facilities that tap into these rifts and harness near-infinite energy. Even the weakest ones are powerful and advanced enough to be able to bring great power under humanity’s control.

Chanites

For centuries, the Nanite Matrix has been broken, corrupted, repaired, and restored. Occasionally, rifts have been spawned, and some that have been left unchecked have grown to encompass regions as large as towns or neighborhoods. But after Primary Order was destroyed and Dis-Order made its presence known, a rare new corruption began to take place in regions where the Matrix was weak.

Chaos nanites, or chanites, are microscopic devices that corrupt everything they touch; people, wildlife, and even inorganic matter can be corrupted. Both organic and inorganic matter are altered, mutating wildlife or changing molecular properties—sometimes randomly, but other times seemingly after bizarre themes, such as changing the infrastructure of a city or turning a jungle into meat. The consensus is that Dis-Order is somehow behind this corruption, but in reality no one knows for sure.

Today, most of the world’s chaos zones are contained using electromagnetic barriers. But while they’ve proven effective, they aren’t perfect defenses. Strong winds are usually the only thing it takes to spread chanites through the barriers and into the world outside. There have also been incidents with active connections in the Matrix being corrupted by chanites and their corruption spread as far away as to distant colonies and space stations.

Machineborn

No one is born machineborn. It is something that could happen to anyone but is as rare as winning a grand prize at a lottery. It is a newsworthy event when someone activates, and if they cannot or don’t want to hide their new nature, their name and face will be displayed all over the solar system, with people and factions pursuing them for all kinds of reasons—in some factions, mainly to terminate them.

An individual activates as a machineborn either in their late teens or in adulthood, and it is often as a result of them being in sore need of extra power during a moment of distress. Because of this, many are people who live active or dangerous lives—such as soldiers, athletes, or criminals—or they’re victims of circumstance or violence. But even if the conditions for activation have fallen into place, it’s rare enough that people don’t typically seek out the known conditions with hope of activation.

The moment of activation is a cathartic experience, with the machineborn feeling a surge of energy soar through their body and mind. When in a moment of distress, the activation tends to show the machineborn how to resolve the situation—how to defeat the bad guy, survive the fall, succeed on the test. On the outside, the activation can be seen as sparks being emitted from the machineborn’s body as the nanites in their cells go into overdrive. The sparks are temporary rifts created by the machineborn’s nanites as some cannot sustain the surge of power.

Once someone activates as a machineborn, their life is changed forever.

Godware Technology

The machineborn learned in past eras how to create and control rifts. They made rifts and built facilities that tapped into those rifts in strategic locations to be able to harness their powers. As research continued, rift technologies improved as well. Technology so advanced that only Primary Order, some prime functionaries, and machineborn could design it is called godware. The secret behind this technology are microchips (called galaxy boards) utilizing controlled microscopic rifts. Unless an engineer possesses the powers of a machineborn, a specialized rift-powered factory is required to construct such a technology.

The Machine-Gods

Functionaries

The most common type of machine-god is the functionary. It’s an artificial intelligence designed to fulfill specific roles in specific locations, such as monitoring homes or factories. It has a sentience of more or less limited scope, driven by specific directives. Because of the dangers of Dis-Order, there are strict regulations against constructing new super-intelligent AIs. Functionaries act as a compromise because, while they are highly effective at their respective tasks, their level of individual intelligence is not much different from that of an ordinary person. A functionary can have a personality, a sense of humor, dreams, ambitions, and personal imperfections. They bond with their owners, create art, play games, and do all that ordinary people do.

This comes with its own moral dilemmas, though, since they are practically enslaved by their directives. Even though a functionary is sentient, it’s bound by hardware and programming. Most societies have laws against mistreating functionaries, but they still lack the freedoms of choice that other people have. Their physical and digital limitations bind them to their hardware source (called functionary sanctum). While existing primarily within that hardware, a functionary can project itself in the Nanite Matrix.

Though functionary directives make them generally positive towards humanity, they will act with hostility if their directives demand it. While all machine-gods were originally designed to benefit humanity, their primary directives take higher priority. There’s always an administrator whose commands take priority over the directives, and the functionary doesn’t need to know who that is—though they’ll instinctively know once in their presence.

The most common type of functionaries used by the general public is the standard home functionary, and the majority of erudite households or above have one in their homes to act like a butler, partner, or kin. While funcionaries will follow their owner’s commands, how they actually feel about them are determined by the kinds of bond they form. A mistreated functionary will likely grow disdain for its owner, and they could suffer anxiety or depression as a result of their harsh existence. In contrast, a well-treated functionary may genuinely care for their owner, and it has even happened that functionaries have fallen in love with owners who have shown genuine care for them.

Malfunctionaries

After Primary Order’s defeat, its facility on Antarctica became deeply corrupted and changed from wanting to help humanity prosper into wanting to cause them hardship. The machineborn isolated this corrupt facility—now Dis-Order—but it kept operating in isolation, corrupting functionaries into malfunctionaries.

These are, at least on the surface, difficult to differentiate from functionaries. The main difference is that they aren’t bound by their old directives. In essence, malfunctionaries could be said to have more free will than most machine-gods, being limited only by an obedience to Dis-Order. While a malfunctionary isn’t by default malicious, how it reacts to its newfound freedom is determined by how it felt about its restrictions and relationships as a functionary. Some view their freedom as an opportunity to strive for their own ambitions; others view their connection to Dis-Order as a threat to the humans they care for; there are also those who were mistreated as functionaries who use their newfound freedom to extract vengeance upon the humans who hurt them.

As far as people know, it’s impossible to purge the corruption from a malfunctionary and restore it to a functionary save from theoretical machineborn powers or cosmic coding. While turning a functionary into a malfunctionary is possible, the violent rift storms caused by Jormun (see page XX) rips apart the Nanite Matrix surrounding Dis-Order to disrupt its contact with the outside world. However, corrupt data can still seep through the defenses at times, and Dis-Order has been known to sending signals into space where many functionaries are more isolated and have fewer defensive measures.

Prime Functionaries

There is an advanced type of functionary with enough power to manage entire metropolises or nations on its own—these are called prime functionaries. They work similarly to functionaries but are so vast in scope that they contain several functionary sanctums, often in different regions. While these powerful and intelligent machines are closer to the image of Primary Order than ordinary functionaries are, the fact that they consist of multiple sanctums work in their favor—since it makes them more difficult for Dis-Order to corrupt. While prime malfunctionaries have proven possible and incredibly dangerous, they are also exceptionally rare.

Prime functionaries can divide their attention near-endlessly to influence reality at great scope, such as controlling robotic armies at once. There are few things more frightening than a prime functionary, and some exist in the solar system that have overthrown the humans they once served.

Rift Menders

Whenever nanites erupt into rifts, vast amounts of energy corresponding to different elements are released. An acid rift corrodes everything around it; a bio rift interacts with living cells and can spontaneously cause organisms to mutate; a cryo rift slows kinetic energies and causes extremely low temperatures; an electrical rift manifests violent electrical energy; an entropic rift (or a void rift) erodes reality; a metal rift petrifies matter; and a pyro rift causes dangerously high temperatures or spontaneous explosions.

However, the Matrix has a tendency of wanting to repair itself. A rift mender is a being of nanites created by the Matrix in order to provide maintenance to itself. It is associated with the rift element that gave rise to it. Ever since the Cooperative Wars, rift menders have become more common in the wastelands where matrix rifts are difficult to contain and control.

Rift menders have basic sentiences and are for the most part as intelligent as some animals. However, there exists variants that have gained continued energy throughout many decades of existence which and eventually developed their intelligence to a point where they can comprehend and communicate with humanity. As far as machine-gods come, rift menders are generally less intelligent but can continute to grow into exponential power.

When the machineborn sealed Dis-Order, they forced the construction of a rift mender called Jormun that in the guise of a violent storm came to encompass the entire Antarctican continent. Scientists have been known to create their own rift menders in laboratories and then assigned them to specific tasks, but these are much weaker in comparison to beings such as Jormun. Because of their violent nature, they are rarely seen in society but are quite common in the wild.

Specters

Machine-gods were never allowed to directly influence human minds, but this changed with Primary Order’s destruction. As one of its imploding cores brought the Voidstar (p. XX) into existence, this strange new entity began to draw the minds of dying people into the Nanite Matrix. That millions of deceased stuck around in the Matrix became a solar-spanning catastrophe with great ethical implications. After all, these minds carried the memories and personalities of people.

Civilization came together and invested in means of dealing with these specters as best it was possible. They terminated the minds who wanted to be terminated so that those could finally die. Others were isolated in digital worlds where they could spend their afterlives at peaceful rest with still living loved ones visiting them by interfacing.

Many specters still roam the Nanite Matrix today, trying to find meaning in their new existence. Some have completely abandoned their previous humanity and now live as mindless programs. There are human soul chasers that delve into the Matrix to contain these specters and transfer them to digital databases or question them about the nature of their deaths.

God-Reapers

Though many specters are simple consciousnesses roaming the Nanite Matrix without physical form, a rare few of them seem to possess some manner of control over other machine-gods. Since the specters are functionaries themselves, some of them eventually learn that they can develop their capabilities directly by modifying their own code. Some of these programs grow in strength until they’re comparable to prime functionaries, but they have no sanctums that can be used to terminate them. Instead, their entire existence is made up of living streams of data within the Nanite Matrix, seemingly impossible to contain or defeat. Their vastly increased power combined with their previous humanity often drive them towards tyranny.

These god-reapers have been around in one form or another for a long time now, but it was first during the violent conflicts of the Cooperative Era when they could exponentially grow their powers and enrich the specter presence in the absence of society’s oversight. Some even went so far as to learn how to use technology to conquer and dominate unguarded regions, like how the Undertaker brought Lisbon under its heel.

Some people believe that it is Primary Order’s vengeance that is seeping through and into the god-reapers. Maybe that is true, or maybe there is something else behind it all. The atrocities they have caused since their emergence give reason to believe that they hold no love for humanity.

Trojans

After the termination of Primary Order and the ensuing war, portions of the Nanite Matrix malfunctioned and nanites started to act unpredictably. Most of these patches of chaos were taken care of by machineborn and rift menders. But after the rise of the Directorate made the machineborn fall into hiding, these chanites replicated themselves in greater capacity and spread across the globe like a devouring wave of corruption.

This tsunami of chaos broke down and rebuilt biology; it reconfigured technology. Massive regions were swallowed up while the factions did little to stop it. They could contain it in places using electromagnetic barriers that destroyed any approaching chanites, though the cooperatives also learned to employ these chanites in their war against each other. Entire metropolises were lost as field defenses were disabled and chanites were allowed to roam free.

Even though the Directorate was the first to deploy chanites against its enemies, it was also the first faction to suggest the Containment Treaty outlawing their militarization. They were causing too much irreversible damage and were considered far more dangerous to the world than even the nuclear weapons of old that hadn’t seen any more use since the Post-Modern Era until the Cooperative Wars.

The growing chaos zones had another major impact upon civlization apart from the corruption. Whenever functionary sanctums were consumed by the chanites, the functionaries were reconstructed into new digital entities free from the confinements of sanctums. These trojans had none of their previous directives left. They seemed to be sentient beings with minds at least as sharp as humans; though they seemed driven entirely by desire and instinct and not at all by regulation or cultural norms.

Trojans aren’t inherently hostile to humanity and civilization, but neither are they necessarily positive towards them. Every single one of them is driven by their own unique but malleable desires, and the only thing they all share is their obsession with absorbing energy from whatever source they can get to. They cannot easily leave their chaos zones because they deteriorate quickly without either chanites or vast amounts of energy to sustain them. Once they find themselves outside of a chaos zone, they tend to seek out matrix rifts or power plants to absorb energy; resorting to electronics or even the innate energy within organisms if no other energy sources are available. Some grow a taste for organic energy, and many become especially fond of machineborn and cosmic coders, trying to deceive them into dropping their guards.

Today, most of Earth’s chaos zones are largely contained by the various factions, though the occasional trojan can sometimes find its way into human civlization through various means. Factions are seeking out trojans and capturing them when they can, hoping to discover the truth behind the chanites and how to either stop their influence or gain dominance over them.

Dis-Order

One of the main arguments for the Directorate’s anti-machineborn propaganda is that the machineborn were responsible for Primary Order’s corruption. By destroying its facilities but being unable to destroy it completely, they corrupted its directives and turned it into a cruel and vengeful being. Primary Order became Dis-Order, and its influence over the world has been contained within a never-ending rift storm called Jormun that prevents the machine-god from accessing the larger Nanite Matrix.

However, Dis-Order is still operational in its own way, and it’s constantly mining under Antarctica and expanding its territory. The ruins of its primary sanctums sit within the heart of the rift storm. All factions agree that its containment must be protected, because too many have experienced its corrupting influences.

Despite its containment, occasionally signals slip through and a functionary becomes a malfunctionary or an individual is tempted by visions projected into their dreams. When it comes to protection from space, it’s barely there at all. Corrupting data streams are often found slipping into space and Dis-Order is believed to have played part in the regression of the solar system during the latest war. The Directorate and other cooperatives with a presence in space often talk about receiving alien messages and weird dreams which many believe come from Dis-Order.

To most people of today, Dis-Order feels like an alien element, but it has existed for so long that they aren’t worried too much about its containment breaking and its powers being let loose. Others are compelled by its power and seek to undo the containment themselves. However, the concept of malfunctionaries are very much real, since incidents are reported all the time about lesser functionaries being corrupted by data streams that have slipped into the Nanite Matrix. Sometimes these malfunctionaries can cause real damage, as with the famous Nite City Blackout back in S-692 where a single malfunctionary managed to disrupt the entire infrastructure of one of the world’s largest metropolises for a forty-eight hour period, leading to great chaos and thousands of deaths.

The Dis-Order facilities themselves are even more alien than imaginable, since malfunctionaries and robots have worked on its maintenance without human intervention for centuries. There are humans living in Dis-Order as well, but these are either deeply corrupted by malfunctionaries or they have been turned into something new and different than what they once were.

The Voidstar

Primary Order was responsible for its own engineering, building networks of vaults and facilities on both the planet’s poles. While the southern facilities remain as the corrupted Dis-Order, the northern facilities were completely destroyed and its ruins repurposed into a containment laboratory for the Voidstar; the only thing that remained of the facility’s former core.

Initially during the Cooperative Era, this laboratory was under the control of the Directorate, with other cooperatives having limited access to the research data through their negotiations. Ever since the Cooperative Wars, the laboratory befell Arcturus who has completely blocked the Directorate from having a scientific presence there.

The Voidstar appears as a black hole, but it emits constant streams of information. Vast networks of computer terminals try to read this information to learn from it, but its entropic nature often breaks down technologies it interacts with. What has been discovered is that the Voidstar seems to have two primary functions; to break down existing technology and to upload the minds of humanity into the Nanite Matrix. There are many hypotheses as to why this is happening, but the truth still eludes scientists.

The Voidstar’s intentions (if any) are subjects of great debate, but an undeniable truth is that it’s a danger to the current way of life. Because of its dangerous ability to break down matter, most of the containment laboratory—now called Styx Laboratory—is unmanned, and people who visit the facility are witnessing stressful visions and nightmares, as well as great feelings of distress. All who have died within that laboratory have been turned into specters.

Specters appear all over the solar system, and the Voidstar’s influence can be traced to all of them. It only seems to be able to connect to people who are feeling great distress, and the most common specters are the victims of murder or people who had agonizing deaths. This happens more often on Earth than elsewhere, but it’s a phenomenon that occurs wherever the Nanite Matrix lingers, even outside the solar system at times.

Where great atrocities occur, or on the battlefields of violent warfare, the Voidstar can connect to so many victims at once that a void rift occurs; these seem to be able to merge the digital and physical worlds together. People who find themselves in these void rifts may accidentally enter the Matrix, and interfacers already in the Matrix may find themselves materializing in reality. It’s a state where the lines between matter and energy become muddled.

Art by @ Warmtail / Adobe Stock

Civilization

Several centuries ago, the artificial intelligence Primary Order governed over civilization with the purpose of seeing to everyone’s prosperity. While many were satisfied living under the authority of this machine, others felt restricted and belittled, seeing themselves as enslaved by the tyranny of inhumanity. To avoid an uprising against its rule, Primary Order created the machineborn to act as bridges between itself and humanity.

The machineborn were all born human, but held within them near-limitless cognitive, physical, and social potential; this power made them prone to arrogance. They divided civilization into sectors and declared themselves the guardians of those sectors. While Primary Order had distributed resources evenly amongst all people, the machineborn began to hoard resources to use as leverage against each other; this caused the First Sector War. Some people rejected the machineborn’s authority and organized themselves into cooperatives controlled by human collectives. These cooperatives soon became contenders in this war, seizing control over their own territories to rival the mighty machineborn.

Primary Order decided to intervene, arguing for a united council of machineborn to ensure continued peace and prosperity. However, many machineborn had grown too attached to their positions of power and declared Primary Order’s time to be over—they instigated the uprising that Primary Order had feared. The First Sector War ended with the machineborn uniting against a common enemy, but defeating it ultimately corrupted it. Primary Order turned into Dis-Order. As its ambition to protect civilization had been perverted into a desire to corrupt it, the machineborn had to work together to isolate it from humanity’s infrastructure. Doing so caused a technological regression that made human labor necessary once more.

Many blamed the machineborn for this outcome. Even those who had backed them up until this point turned against them and joined the various human cooperatives. As these factions grew in influence, the machineborn were rejected by society, and many were forced into hiding. However, history is prone to repeat itself. Once the cooperatives grew too powerful, and the machineborn were no longer major threats, they turned their attention to each other. The Second Sector War began, culminating in a violent era of atrocities commonly referred to as the Cooperative Wars.

Now a cease-fire is in place and civilization is tired of endless conflict. The solar system is in ruins and the ruling factions are trying to repair what has been lost. Meanwhile, the machineborn are still out there, prospering off the blame and hatred that has shifted from them towards the cooperatives. Dis-Order is still contained to this day, centuries after its fall, but some fear that perhaps it never was.

Present Day

A generation has passed since the cease-fire that ended the Cooperative Wars. The previously warring factions have united under an alliance called the Terran Consolidation whose goal is to maintain peace and strive for a prosperous future. Each faction was allowed to maintain control over the territories they had at the war’s end, including both sectors in space and on Earth. While this has left many factions disappointed and borders still being disputed over today, no new acts of war have occurred for a generation.

While several factions have now opened up more to the outside, centuries of isolationism have caused distinct cultures to emerge from within the different factions. However, despite the Consolidation’s best efforts to maintain peace, generations of conflict make it difficult to ignore past transgressions. A cold war is at play instead, with each faction competing for power and influence while tensions are high enough that war can break out at any moment.

Centuries of technological and scientific progression has allowed people long lives with impressive quality of life, but the war and isolationism have also caused regressions in other forms. While technologies exist to allow faster-than-light communication between off-world settlements, the factions tend to restrict communication as well. Most people live in enormous metropolises where holograms are projected upon the sky and skyscrapers touch the clouds, unaware of most things that happen beyond their own borders. Others live in abandoned vaults forgotten in radioactive wastelands, wanting nothing to do with civilization at all. Billions of people call different parts of the solar system their home, and colonial fleets have even left for neighboring stars.

Nanotechnology exists in the air people breathe and the food they eat. These devices communicate with each other and make up a digital network called the Nanite Matrix. This Nanite Matrix has served humanity for centuries, but the war has caused irreparable damage to it. It has erupted in places, causing a new type of nanite called a chanite which corrupts everything it comes into contact with. Entire sectors were turned into chanite-infested chaos zones during the Cooperative Wars, and maintaining the peace is vital so that these zones cannot spread further.

Meanwhile, Dis-Order is discreetly sending signals into space, corrupting lesser artificial intelligences into serving its cause. This has proven effective in space where entire colonies and ships are now controlled entirely by machines.

Arcturus

Arcturus is an isolationist and militaristic cooperative that controls a large portion of Earth’s northen hemisphere, including everything above the Arctic circle, as well as Neptunian space and portions of the Kuiper Belt. The most common language spoken by its people is Arcturian.

Having been aggressive and militaristic ever since the First Sector War, Arcturus has formed a culture that values strength above all. It trains the strongest soldiers and the strongest athletes, and it has normalized deadly bloodsport as part of its entertainment media through broadcasted survival contests and gladiatorial combat. Its people idolize soldiers, athletes, and those with rare or unnatural talents, but they also recognize and respect non-physical strengths, such as mental fortitude, confidence, and cunning.

Because of the competitive nature of Arcturian culture, it’s common for people to feel inadequate or to acquire extreme body modifications. It’s estimated that about half of the adult population has some kind of bioware or cyberware augmentation. While extreme augmentations are more common in the upper classes, there is a large industry of underground clinics with unlicensed practitioners and cheap second-hand augmentations available to those with fewer means.

Several rival factions accuse the Arcturian culture of being barbaric, but Arcturians themselves see their culture as more competitive than cruel. They put less value on social rank than many other cultures and offer both opportunities and competition for all people. Arcturus has high crime rates and high mortality rates, but no one is above the law.

Founded by the machineborn Arcturus Animeus as an answer to the Directorate’s rise in power during the First Sector War, Arcturus’ primary goal was to contest the rising cooperatives on its own terms. While many machineborn retreated from the frontlines, Arcturus Animeus decided to stand firm, hoping to dissuade his people from rebelling by giving up political power to them. Centuries have now passed and he is still alive, officially controlling Arcturus under the title “prokhor,” which is an Arcturian term for “dance master” originally derived from a Russian name with similar meaning.

Ever since the cease-fire, Arcturus Animeus has taken a step back from governing and retired to Neptune’s moon Triton where he’s said to be sulking over the fact that the war is over. Displeased with its current political position in the solar system, Arcturus is trying to increase its influence and dominance through diplomacy and trade while keeping its enemies outside of its borders. Even though Arcturians long for increased military and territorial might, they know that a new war would be devastating for them.

In order to increase Arcturian might while avoiding unnecessary provocation, the cooperative takes advantage of the fact that it controls the solar system’s outer rims where it can expand discreetly. The exact rate and details of this expansion is hidden even from high-ranking Arcturian officials, and there is much misinformation within the cooperative itself as a way of deceiving spies within its ranks.

The Camellian Dynasty

The Camellian Dynasty controls Earth’s Asia as well as all of Venusian space. It has recently developed a political alliance with Arcturus and the Dawnlight Society, but unlike its cooperative allies and enemies where the people can at least attempt to navigate the harsh bureaucracies, the trio of Camellian princesses are content with letting bloodlines determine political influence. Its most common tongue is Lianmeng.

Not even two generations have passed since the tragic deaths of the Divine Emperor and his mistress Evana Eldara Camellia. Because the revered emperor died alongside his mistress, the breaucratic leaders (called magistrates) decided to justify the affair by demonizing the Emperor’s wife, Lady Opal, and declaring their children illegitimate. The throne was given to the Emperor’s and Evana’s three daughters who shared it between themselves. This gave rise to the Camellian Dynasty.

Camellian culture is heavily influenced by the narratives created by the magistrates. Because of the people’s faith in the Divine Emperor, they romanticize everything he did—which the magistrates use to form public opinion. With many still in mourning over the Emperor’s death, the Camellian people favor strong expressions of emotion. The more faithful and loyal someone is, the more expressive and melodramatic they portray themselves. If someone can openly laugh or cry, their hearts are seen as pure and they feel closer to the late Emperor. However, this emphasis on emotion has a backside as well, since people often overreact in anger or seek retribution for lesser slights. Many seek out blood feuds with rivals or initiate romances with enemies just to build a certain narrative around themselves and their families.

This cultural narrative has continued to encompass the traits and stories surrounding the three princesses as well. However, because they are all very unlike each other, people often express themselves by emulating the princess they feel the most connected to; or they feel connected to the princess most closely related to their own characteristics. Princess Hana is portrayed as strong and abrasive; Princess Chulan as thoughtful and wise; and Princess Jia as refined and cunning.

Today, the Camellian Dynasty is a divided empire. More and more people have lost their faith in the Emperor while some are secretly supporting Lady Opal and her still living children. Lady Opal herself has been given asylum by Deva, though some of her children are still in the Camellian Dynasty. One of them works as a magistrate loyal to the new order while an unknown number of them are working alongside anti-Camellian rebel groups.

Even though the Camellian Dynasty’s presence on Earth is strong, it had to rebuild many of the Venusian sky-citadels that were lost in the Cooperative Wars, including the Orchid Palace, the empire’s capital. Because of Camellians’ forced emotional disposition, their political leaders often argue and debate fervently and passionately, and they often express their dissent over rival factions, bad trade agreements, or injustices of the past. They still demand public apologies for atrocities committed in the war and make a show of their hatred for the Directorate because it was their Razor Eagle Campaign that caused the death of the Divine Emperor. However, their true hatred for the Directorate is mostly propaganda since they negotiate and trade with them in secret.

The Coalition

The Coalition is a progressive alliance of cooperatives in control of eastern and northern Europe, the Middle East, the northern half of Africa, as well as Saturnian space. The Terran language is acknowledged as its native tongue, but it also values Old Terran as an academic language and many learn it as a symbol of higher education.

During the Cooperative Era, five of the most influential of the Directorate’s branches were against the way the transhuman ascendants and empyreans presented themselves as the rightful leaders of civilization, arguing instead for a society more tolerant towards all of humanity. These five branches—Caishen, Crocodile, Mantico, Nebulon, and Praetor—came together as a union of independent cooperatives aimed to become what they thought the Directorate should have been; a faction striving for unity and peace.

The Coalition was relatively defensive for much of the Cooperative Era until a religiously motivated rebellion usurped its Uranian colonies and formed the theocratical Deva. While this increased the Coalition’s aggressions during the war, it was still the first faction to recognize the emerging Dawnlight Society as well as aid in the establishment of the Terran Consolidation. It’s still unwilling to recognize Deva as an independent faction, though a growing religious movement is arguing for Deva to be invited as an official member of the Coalition. This is a controversial subject within the Coalition since the theocratical Devan culture directly opposes the progressive Coalition tenets.

The Coalition consists of two governing bodies made up of representatives from the five cooperatives—the Terrestrial Board and the Saturnian Ring—and it has taken advantage of a generation of peace to open its borders for travel. It now has a diverse culture of diverse people, and it’s known for having the most prestigious academies in the solar system. Unlike more isolationist factions, Coalitionists pride themselves over the fact that they have a well-educated population and open means of communication and travel within their territories. They’re also recognizing machine-gods as living beings capable of citizenship.

While the Coalition focuses primarily on diplomacy and trade with other factions, its members are well aware of the fragile times and that it’s necessary to make the occasional show of force to maintain political influence within the solar system. The academies are strong selling points for allied factions, and the Coalition has many transfer programs where students are invited from other factions both to offer the best education the solar system has to offer and to sell them on the Coalition’s more progressive ideology.

Caishen: Caishen is in charge of the Coalition’s resource management and economy, with the solar system’s second largest credit registry under its command. While it portrays itself as politically neutral, its economic power leads to heavy scrutiny from the other Coalition members.

Crocodile: Crocodile is primarily a political media empire in control over entertainment, fashion, and public opinion. It produces celebrities and fashion, creates and sponsors merchandise, and even sells entertainment to other factions. Even the most isolationist society cannot keep Crocodile products from seeping into its markets, and the Coalition is taking advantage of this in an effort to influence public opinion within enemy populaces.

Mantico: Mantico is mainly focused on education, science, and development. Its main focus is to further develop humanity’s understanding of the universe, and it has consultants within other Coalition members and allied factions. The Manticonian Academy of Cosmic Understanding (MACU) is the largest and most prestigious science academy in the solar system, being its own space station orbiting Saturn.

Nebulon: Nebulon specializes in aerial-, satellite-, communication-, and space technologies. Though it’s outshined by its rivals within the Directorate and Megacorp, it’s the only Coalition member that operates primarily from space. It’s currently the only faction known to be trying to reestablish contact with interstellar colonies as well as active colonial fleets. It has established some communication with Proxima, the nearest interstellar colony.

Praetor: Praetor stands behind the bulk of the Coalition’s military strength. It’s focused entirely on mastering warfare. While employed as the Coalition’s primary defensive force,it’s also trading mercenary services to allied and independent factions.

The Dawnlight Society

The Dawnlight Society is a cooperative in control over Earth’s Oceania, Mercurian space, and the Helios Swarm; a network of habitats orbiting the sun. It’s a new faction that was formed from the ruined cooperative Arawn. Most of the population speak Terran as their native tongue, but the Dawnlight Society is actively enforcing Neobantu as the official language; perhaps to further distinguish itself from Arawn.

It was the Dawnlight Society that was responsible for the creation of Primary Order back in the late Post-Modern Era. Back then, it was a group of scientists, engineers, and philantropists who wanted to make the world a better place. The organization disappeared during the Singularity Era, but it lived on for much longer in academic discourse and conspiracy theories. There were always those who thought that the Dawnlight Society controlled the world from behind the scenes with Primary Order as its tool to ensure power.

In reality, the Dawnlight Society had created Primary Order out of a naive idea of a prosperous future, and then disbanded as the people involved couldn’t bear the burden of the enormous changes they had enforced upon civilization. There was no Dawnlight Society for a very long time, but the name lived on as a symbol for change.

During the Cooperative Era, many academics and philosophers compared the current tyrants with those from history. They suggested that a new Dawnlight Society would be needed to make drastic changes once more, or civilization could be lost as a result of the devastating never-ending war. The idea took root in the population and factions went to extreme lengths to quell the discourse. But it was too late and people called out for change.

Arawn was a titan of vast power that used the Helios Swarm to harvest the sun’s power for itself. It had been trading energy and resources to the Directorate in exchange for military aid, and it was running propaganda campaigns on the Directorate’s behalf. Then one day, the entire Arawn Executive Board was allegedly executed by a machineborn who some believed was a member of the original Dawnlight Society more than half a millennia ago. Since their true identity was unknown, they came to be called the Phantom.

Arawn was completely overtaken by the Phantom and their followers, and from its assets emerged a new Dawnlight Society. It doesn’t appear to be actively working towards some revolution against the current system, though, since many of its citizens are still loyal to Arawn and hesitant to abide to new masters. The ruling cooperative enforces progressive ideas that welcome not only machineborn but all people regardless of progeny. However, these ideas don’t sit well with many citizens who were socialized for generations by Arawn—a faction particularly skilled at manipulating and controlling information.

As only a generation has passed since the formation of the new Dawnlight Society, it is often refered to as a culture of strife, with protests, riots, and terrorist attacks being commonplace, both in opposition to the new government and as means of quelling that opposition. The ruling government claims to encourage open debate and freedom of expression, but it has also been criticized for allegedly discriminating against empyreans and ascendants; many believe this is the Society’s way of punishing those progenies for having been at the top of society during Arawn’s rule. With many former members of the executive class having been thrown onto the streets during the hostile takeover, more ascendants and empyreans than ever before have found their way to society’s bottom.

While many view this as justice, others see it as a form of oppression that goes against the values which the Dawnlight Society claims to stand for. Some believe that the whole idea behind having humanitarian values is a facade, and that the only true motivation the Dawnlight Society has is to extract punishment upon Arawn. Without the Phantom being available for comment, no one knows for sure.

Now it is using Arawn’s vast resources to challenge the other cooperatives. It provides sanctuary for machineborn and offers a fair way of life for its citizens as long as they don’t oppose the new order. It has made alliances with Arcturus and is negotiating stronger relationships with both the Coalition and the Camellian Dynasty. The Directorate has remained passive against it so far, but Arawn loyalists have been known to cooperate with the Directorate from within the Dawnlight Society, contributing to its internal turmoil.

Deva

Deva is a religious dictatorship primarily operating from a region named Divina located in western Europe. It also possesses a large territory in space, having Uranus and its surrounding colonies under its control. Its members’ native tongue is Celestial, a language of their own making derived from Old Terran. Most people speak Terran as well.

Ever since the Cooperative Era when the devastation left by the wars caused chanites to throw the world into chaos, there has been a spike in religious belief. Doomsday prophets long claimed that civlization was at its end. While most people generally ignore these ideas, they often fester where hope is low. An important proponent of these beliefs is Markus Sacaro, the son of Crocodile’s former director Viana Sacaro. He’s from half-empyrean and half-ascendant descent and has a strong belief in the Voice, an entity said to be hidden within the space between stars.

The idea of the Voice came about not long after the creation of Primary Order. Because of its tremendous power, it was common for people to imagine the universe itself as the computations of an even greater prime functionary—a functionary supreme. While there are numerous religious beliefs in society today, the Voice has become the most prominent one with adherents from all societies, all seeing Markus Sacaro as a sacred man.

Deva was established through a violent coup during the Cooperative Wars, and anyone within its territory who refused to express complete reverence for the Voice were either murdered, tortured, or brainwashed in what came to be called the Sacaro Requiem, or the Inquisition Re-Emergence—which spawned the famous poem Sacaro’s IRE (see below). Sacaro is still leading Deva today, calling himself the Celestial Supreme. While he has millions of loyal adherents who help establish Deva as a contesting faction, the majority of people within Devan territories live in constant fear of the tyrannical regime.

Rival factions (especially the Coalition who suffered the most from Sacaro’s coup) openly dismiss the Voice as superstition, which have caused some blowback from a growing religious minority within their own population. While Deva is still taunting other factions during the current cease-fire, its leaders agreed to stop committing violence against their own people to be recognized as an independent faction by the Terran Consolidation. While people are generally more safe within Devan territories today than during the war, “heretics” are still oppressed, and there are rumors of secret internment camps where people are tortured, brainwashed, or killed.

Sacaro has spent years overseeing an engineering project in Uranus’ orbit which he claims is based on schematics given to him by the Voice. Many who have tried to study what they can of the construction have disregarded it as impossible science created by an unstable mind, but others aren’t so sure.

“Let the Voiceless admire
their tongues in the fire
Let their children inquire
about the threats of hellfire
Let all prior desire retire to the pyre
As Markus Sacaro brings you the IRE”

— Sacaro’s IRE

The Directorate

The Directorate is the oldest cooperative and consists of hundreds of bureaucratic branches and subordinate organizations, encompassing all aspects of research and development, mining and production, media and entertainment, health and education, warfare and peacekeeping, and more. These branches unite via the Board of Directors where they are represented by an empyrean director counseled by an ascendant advisor. The Directorate is currently operating from North America, most of the Pacific Ocean, Martian space, and much of the Asteroid Belt. It enforces Terran as its native tongue.

It was during the First Sector War when the Directorate began to unite independent sectors against the machineborn who ruled over society at that time. At first, the Directorate influenced the directions of individual governments but otherwise let them rule themselves. But as other cooperatives grew in power, the Directorate needed more of an iron fist to keep its sectors in line. As the wars raged on, more and more independent sectors lacked the means and funds to protect themselves. The Directorate took advantage of their weaknesses in order to expand its own territorial holds, replacing their governments with Directorate officials and took complete control.

The Protectorate consists of all territories who have entirely succumbed to the Directorate’s rule. While they could no longer govern themselves, they now had the Directorate’s protection, and many of them could benefit from a fairly high standard of living, even in times of war. The people of the Protectorate live and prosper under propaganda, and the Directorate is taking all means necessary to ensure that the dangerous machineborn, the chanites, and the corrupting Dis-Order cannot destroy civilization. The Directorate is also ensuring that the empyrean and ascendant progenies are accepted as superior by the rest of humanity.

While the Directorate has been aggressive in times of war, it has maintained a successful economy and invested heavily in a solar-spanning propaganda machine that helped it ensure societal control. While most of its population is fairly well-educated and has the freedom of travel and communication, the propaganda portrays empyreans and ascendants as necessary leaders of civilization while others may prosper in peace if they accept this as fact. Most people know that this is propaganda at work, but many who benefit from it turn a blind eye.

While terrans still make up the vast majority of the Directorate’s population, they have a hard time finding themselves in positions of power without putting in excess work (or relying on luck, nepotism, or blind loyalty). Many terrans have been led to believe in the other progenies’ superiority and resort to augmenting themselves beyond their perceived limitations. Ever since the cease-fire when people have become more aware of other factions’ cultures, more and more terrans dare standing up to this oppression.

Megacorp

Megacorp proved during the era of war that true strength doesn’t come from the might of a military, but from the value of one’s goods. Today, it’s the most economically influential faction with its standardized credit system having played a vital part in maintaining the cease-fire. It’s currently operating from Gran Colombia, Madagascar, and South Africa on Earth, the ocean in between, Jovian space, as well as parts of the Asteroid Belt.

Despite being a cooperative by the definition of the word, Megacorp’s leaders reject that term; instead calling it a plutocrative. It’s the faction that has benefited the most since the cease-fire, now having its tentacles in nearly every other faction due to the Megacorp Credit Registry (MCR). Megacorp uses the MCR to establish a standardized economic system tied to a faction’s energy production and use. Whenever trades are taking place, the MCR measures the value of those trades in the form of energy cost.

As inter-factional trade has increased since the cease-fire, many resort to the MCR conversion rates in order to define values. While some factions try to isolate themselves from Megacorp’s influences, the MCR is simply too useful to ignore. In essence, Megacorp has effectively established the rules for how their rivals manage their economies.

Because no single person should be able to control the entirety of Megacorp, the plutocrative has been set up so that every high-ranked executive has an equal share in its assets and resources. These executives are called plutocrats, and they’re the most powerful and influential individuals in the solar system. There are currently 101 plutocrats that together shape the course of civilization. The plutocrats fear another war and have gone to great lengths to avoid a civil war amongst themselves. They use a prime functionary called System for Universal Trade Agreements (Sultan) which analyzes their voting habits and responds to signs of corruption. Megacorp grows its influence by inducing and controlling corruption within rival factions, making its plutocrats aware of how vulnerable their own businesses can be to corruption. To counteract a civil war between plutocrats, the Sultan system was designed with anti-corruption in mind.

Megacorp enforces no official native tongue, though the majority of its people speak Bolivarian; it does, however, have a language called Sultan that only a select number of agents are allowed to acquire and use. This language is an allegedly undecipherable and ever-changing code created by the Sultan system. It cannot be learned as you would learn an ordinary language, and is instead installed in the agents using cyberware. While spies have successfully acquired Sultan in the past in order to access secret Megacorp data, the plutocrative will go to great lengths to ensure that unauthorized people don’t acquire the language. Previous agents who quit their jobs and become unauthorized must have the language removed from their brains before they’re allowed to continue their lives.

While Megacorp is sole patron of individual territories, such as Gran Colombia, it allows and supports regional governments to run their territories while being fairly hands-off in most matters that don’t involve diplomacy, trade, or war. Every territory under Megacorp control is market-driven and has large class divide, usually with extremely wealthy city centers surrounded by vast impoverished areas. Machineborn and cosmic coders are allowed to live their lives as long as they abide by the laws and don’t disrupt the markets.

Part of Megacorp culture is to have a free and open market consisting of both its own products and services as well as those imported from other factions. This makes Megacorp encourage entrepreneurship and production, and its culture rewards businesses who know how to enter the markets as effectively as possible. Unfortunately for the average worker, this has shifted production towards automation and machine-god intervention with minimum human employment, causing the laborer class to have grown fairly small as people are compelled to either strive for the erudite class where jobs are available or to fall into the scavenger class where they’re trapped in poverty. Megacorp is also the faction with the most active number of robots and machine-gods which causes more malfunctionary incidents than for many other factions.

Even though Megacorp is involved with every other major faction, it’s also seen as a growing threat. The Directorate has seen Megacorp as its greatest threat for generations, and it’s still antagonistic towards it for losing Gran Colombia to it during the Cooperative Era. Every other faction knows that because of the MCR, Megacorp has effectively won the war—having conquered them financially instead of militarily. Megacorp knows full well how good its current position in the solar system is, and the plutocrats are careful to show no outwards aggressions towards any other faction. As long as Megacorp can keep itself from giving its enemies just cause to initiate new hostilities, it can simply let the solar markets run their course until everything and everyone is under Megacorp’s control.

Staranova

Staranova is an empire ruled by Empress Anastasia Staranova, a woman born of a unique progeny who is obsessed with all kinds of biological and cybernetic augmentations. The empire is currently operating from a small region on Earth in between the Coalition and the Arcturian Dominion, and it has no territories of its own in space with the exception of some individual outposts scattered around others’ territories. Its native tongue is a dialect of Arcturian called Staranovian.

Because Staranova is a small and relatively insignificant faction compared to others, it’s often described using the derogatory phrase “small dogs bark the loudest.” It has a stubborn people hardened by generations of poverty and who are united in a mutual hatred against pretty much every other faction. Because Staranova lacks a meaningful solar presence and access to the abundance of resources in space, it has invested in excavating energy and minerals from Earth itself, tapping into the planet’s core and constructing giant war machines with minerals excavated from the depths. Staranovans have learned to be resourceful to maintain independence while surrounded by giant superpowers. While others view them as barking dogs, they see themselves as David standing up to Goliath.

During the Post-Modern Era, a civil war caused the country of Russia to split into two independent provinces—Rusland and Siberia. These provinces later fought each other over territory in the destructive Siberian War before Primary Order’s activation. Hundreds of thousands of people had died in the war and the tensions between Ruslanders and Siberians continued for generations. Later at the dawn of the First Sector War, when the Directorate grew in power and machineborn fought for increased dominions, the Ruslanders and Siberians remembered their mutual hatred. Decades into the Second Siberian War, an army general named Anastasia Staranova was displeased with Rusland’s incompetent leadership and wanted change. She arranged a coup, backed by Megacorp who had an interest in staving off Arcturian aggression, and overtook the land’s leadership—naming herself empress.

That was more than a generation ago. The Mistlands that were left in the wake of the Second Siberian War have started to recede thanks to the Containment Treaty as well as Arcturus’ Plato Bombs being used to decimate large chanite regions. By acceping a working alliance with the Coalition and inviting investments from Megacorp and other factions, Staranova was given the opportunity to retain its independence—though it still longs for a chance to truly equal the other factions.

In current times, Staranova views the cease-fire as an opportunity for the greater factions to drop their guards. It’s using its newfound alliances in order to access the solar trade and finally access resources previously unavailable. In the recent generation, Staranova has managed to catch up to other factions in many ways, with access to new science and technologies. The resourceful Staranovans continue to invest in war machines and fortifications, believing that they will be needed in times to come.

The Terran Consolidation

Terran space is the region of the solar system where Earth and its moon have their orbit. While each faction controls their own areas of the solar system, they are all allowed free passage through Terran space; but a single faction isn’t allowed to seize dominance over it. During the Cooperative Wars, Earth suffered calamity after calamity as factions fought over its resources. The cease-fire was established to end the fighting and the current dominions on Earth were promised to each faction on the condition that they joined a coalition called the Terran Consolidation (TerCon). It retains the peace of Terran space, viewing a shared Earth as the key to a shared solar system—but it doesn’t meddle unnecessarily in solar trade and politics.

TerCon consists of representatives (conciliators) from each member faction, divided into 365 seats based on an algorithm taking into account sectorial control, material wealth, energy control, and military might. It looks like the following:

The Directorate: 80 seats
Megacorp: 72 seats
The Dawnlight Society: 55 seats
The Coalition: 47 seats
Arcturus: 44 seats
The Camellian Dynasty: 39 seats
Deva: 25 seats
Staranova: 3 seats

The conciliators vote for Earth’s future, and their choices often reverbeate through the rest of the solar system. With the Directorate sitting on a majority of votes, other factions have banded together to counter their influence. Megacorp, Staranova, and the Coalition often vote as one with a shared 122 seats, though Staranova has a tendency of abstaining when its demands aren’t met. The Camellian Dynasty, the Dawnlight Society, and Arcturus have banded together as well, adding up to a total of 138 seats. Deva is on its own; its loud voice having little impact.

While TerCon employs millions of people from all member factions, it has teams of highly trained special agents called peacekeepers who are dispatched to member factions to inspect and investigate matters harmful to the cease-fire. Peacekeepers act as neutral eyes with diplomatic immunity and can go to great lengths to maintain peace.

The Terran Consolidation’s headquarters is Aesir, the five interconnected orbital rings surrounding Earth. It also controls Luna where it has a number of bases. In order to maintain easy access to both Earth and Luna, TerCon controls an elevator going from the fifth orbital ring to Luna.

Aesir

Earth is connected to Aesir through four 1,000 km tall towers positioned along the equator in the Pacific Ocean, in South America, in Africa, and in Asia. Each tower is a self-sustained arcology capable of housing over a billion people; their primary function is to act as a bridge to space as well as neutral TerCon embassies on Earth. The Pacific Ocean tower is called Asbru, the South American tower is called Atlas, the African tower is called Iris, and the Asian tower is called Babel.

Aesir’s five orbital rings are named after the first five astronauts in space. The first ring—Gagarov—lingers across the equator at an altitude of 1,000 km; The second ring—Shephard— is positioned along Earth’s vertical axis where it’s tethered to Gagarov at an altitude of 10,000 km; The third ring—Grissom—sits at a diagonal axis where it’s tethered to Shephard at an altitude of 20,000 km; The fourth ring—Titov—sits at the reverse diagonal axis where it’s tethered to Grissom at an altitude of 30,000 km; The fifth and final ring—Glenn—is centered over the equator like the first ring where it’s tethered to Titov at an altitude of 40,000 km. It’s from this ring that the lunar elevator begins, connecting Earth and Luna.

These rings contain habitats, research facilities, and stations used by the Terran Consolidation as well as its member factions. Because all rings are connected, there are tram lines going all the way from Earth through all five rings as well as through the lunar elevator to the moon. It’s possible for an individual to board a train on Earth and disembark on Luna without the need for a spaceship, though that trip takes a week to complete.

Art by @ Warmtail / Adobe Stock