World & Cosmology
Reality is not a constant. It is a script, a program called Memorum that is perpetually being written and rewritten. There was no creation event, no first word; there has only ever been the script executing itself, filling in the blank spaces of existence with the hard logic of cause and effect. Matter is not fundamental. It is a function of memory. A stone is a stone because the universe remembers it as such—its weight, its texture, its place in the causal chain. To remember is to build. To forget is to unmake. This is the single, brutal law of the cosmos.
This law has been weaponized. The act of severing a memory from a person, object, or place does not destroy it. The excised data, the raw information of what was, is shorn from the script. It becomes a cancerous anti-data, a void known as Oblivion. This Oblivion is not empty; it is a force of active un-making. It pools and spreads, creating Ashen Tracts—zones where the script of reality frays and the laws of physics break down. In these dead zones, the ghosts of overwritten timelines flicker into view as Palimpsest Phantoms, silent, looping echoes of what has been deleted.
The universe is therefore a battlefield, not of matter, but of memory. The war is fought over the integrity of the script itself. Every deleted fact, every suppressed event, every manufactured truth weakens the code, accelerating a planet-wide Semantic Decay. The world is not dying; it is being unwritten. The past is not a record to be studied but an active variable in the present equation, and the cost of editing it is the structural integrity of existence itself. The fight is not for the future, but for the basic, causal reality of the present.
Core Systems & Institutions
Technology & Artifice
The tools of this age are not instruments of creation, but scalpels for excision. Technology is a brutalist science, its purpose to edit and control the past. The primary weapon is the Neurotome, a handheld device of cold chrome and sterile function that severs memories from the mind. It treats the past like a tumor, a thing to be cut away, leaving a clean scar where a piece of a person used to be. Its counterpart, the Ghost-Sight Contacts, are lenses that allow the user to see the residue of these excisions—the faint, grey after-images of what has been deleted, the Palimpsest Phantoms that haunt the modern world. Cybernetics are not enhancements but replacements, overwriting flesh with function. The Somatic Codex turns a person’s skeleton into a hardware platform for state-issued identity protocols, while the Permafrost Weave encases trauma in cryo-data, trading humanity for operational efficiency. Every piece of technology has a clear function and a tangible cost, paid in cognitive load, psychological dissociation, or the slow, steady erosion of the world’s script.
Dominion & Order
The nation-state is a dead concept, a ghost haunting pre-war maps. Power is consolidated into corporate states, fiefdoms built not on territory but on ideology enforced by technology. RosNova, the Eurasian Federation, masters the hardware of extreme environments, its brutalist arcologies piercing arctic skies. Its dominion is built on function, its operatives programmed with skill-sets and stripped of fear. The Archive State, the American Hegemony, manufactures global narratives from its clean, white spires in New York. It does not control matter, but the perception of it, burying inconvenient truths under layers of conflicting stories. Shenzhen Ascendant, the Pan-Asian Consortium, is the world’s factory, mass-producing cybernetics and the identities that run on them. These are not governments; they are systems, competing to impose their version of the script on reality. Society is ruthlessly stratified, a vertical stack where the elite live in sterile, climate-controlled enclaves, physically and metaphorically above the masses. Order is maintained by systems like the Civic Harmony Protocol, an algorithm that measures compliance and allocates resources, turning citizenship into a credit score. The ultimate law is the narrative, and the ultimate crime is to remember a truth that contradicts it.
Conflict & Doctrine
The defining conflict is the Memory War, a planet-wide cold war fought in the shadows of data-havens and the back alleys of undercities. The objective is not conquest of land but control of causality. Victory is achieved when your version of history becomes the only version. The factions deploy neuro-assassins, memetic weapons, and reality-editing operatives to enforce their narratives. RosNova’s doctrine is one of surgical precision, using agents like Sineus to excise threats to their operational dominance. The Archive State wages war through memetic attrition, flooding the infosphere with noise to drown out any single truth. Shenzhen Ascendant seeks market saturation, aiming to make its identity-shaping technology so ubiquitous that it becomes the default operating system for humanity. Oblivion Systems, a nihilistic death cult masquerading as a corporation, pursues a more absolute victory: the total erasure of the script, believing that a clean slate is the only path to perfection. The war is officially denied, its existence a conspiracy theory, but its fallout—the spreading Ashen Tracts and the increasing frequency of Palimpsest Phantoms—is the undeniable reality for everyone.
Mysteries & Anomalies
The world is haunted by the consequences of its own actions. The primary anomaly is Semantic Decay, the exponential cancer of Oblivion unmaking the world. It manifests as Ashen Tracts, zones where causality breaks down and the script of reality glitches like corrupted code. Within these tracts, and in places of intense memory-editing, Palimpsest Phantoms appear—the silent, looping ghosts of erased timelines. These are not spirits but error messages, the script attempting to render data that no longer has a place in reality. The greatest mystery is the Aletheia Kernel, a mythical pre-war god-engine rumored to be in a deep-space station. It is the ultimate prize, whispered to have two functions: to perfectly archive every memory in existence, or to execute a planetary identity-wipe, erasing the purpose of every person, object, and place. Its location is the central obsession of the Memory Wars, the single variable that could turn the cold war into a final, world-ending conflict. The factions hunt for it, believing it to be a weapon, unaware that its true nature, and the intent of its creator, Elina Petrova, might be something else entirely.
Barter & Obligation
In the undercities and lawless zones, the official economy of digital credits is a fiction. The real currency is information. A black market thrives in the shadows, dealing not in drugs or weapons, but in the raw material of reality itself. Data-brokers like Jax operate from cramped stalls in floating markets like Float-Hab 7, trading in untainted memory-relics, fragments of pre-war code, and keys to dead languages. An authentic, unedited memory of a forgotten experience is the ultimate luxury, a hit of pure reality in a world of manufactured narratives. Obligation is measured in data exchanged. Trust is a function of a clean signal. A favor is paid with a piece of verifiable truth. In this economy, a person’s past can be sold to pay a debt, their skills stripped and bartered, their identity hollowed out for parts. Survival is a daily negotiation, a constant hustle for the data one needs to stay ahead of the system, or to simply remember who they are.
Peoples, Factions & Cultures
African Bloc
A pragmatic and unified coalition, the African Bloc operates from a position of calculated neutrality. Its sigil, the Baobab, represents its deep roots and enduring strength. Led by shrewd diplomats like Imani Okoro, the Bloc leverages its control over vast resources and sovereign bandwidth, treating the Memory Wars as a market opportunity. They are not swayed by the ideological crusades of RosNova or the Archive State; their every decision is a cost-benefit analysis. They will grant passage, share intelligence, or commit resources, but always for a price—security guarantees, data futures, or a share of any recovered assets. Their strength is their unity and their refusal to be drawn into conflicts that do not directly serve their interests. They are not saviors or villains; they are survivors playing a long game, a stable, calculating power in a world tearing itself apart over ghosts.
Archive State
The Archive State is a corporation that has perfected the art of narrative warfare. From the sterile, white spires of the New York Arcology, it manufactures global consensus. Its doctrine is not to erase truth, but to bury it. Under the direction of men like Augustus Paxton, its Narrative Loom AI deploys a constant stream of conflicting stories and memetic chaff, diluting any single fact into statistical noise. Its citizens live in a curated reality, their perceptions managed by The Certainty Stream, their history a product revised and updated daily. The State’s power is immense but brittle. It is a fortress built of elegant lies, and a single piece of hard, un-editable, causal truth—a signal it cannot jam, a memory it cannot re-contextualize—is an existential threat that could shatter its foundation of manufactured belief.
LatAm Concord
Quiet, observant, and deeply pragmatic, the LatAm Concord is a coalition that has learned to survive in the shadow of giants. Represented by cautious figures like Sofia Reyes, the Concord rarely speaks first in the halls of power, preferring to listen, watch, and weigh the offers of the larger factions. Their sigil is the Sun-Stone, a symbol of their connection to tangible, physical resources. They are not interested in ideological victories or the control of history; they are interested in what they can hold in their hands. They trade access to their sovereign territories and resources for direct, measurable returns—a percentage of recovered technology, exclusive rights to data-mines, or physical assets. They are the masters of the tangible, a bloc that trusts matter over memory, and their support is won not with promises, but with contracts.
MemNet
A corporation that seeks to own the past, MemNet built the first commercial marketplace for memory. It turned personal history into a commodity, a digital asset to be bought, sold, and traded on an open network. Its ideology is one of total information supremacy, believing that he who controls the archive controls the future. They began as a data storage company and evolved into a force that attempts to replace lived experience with a clean, catalogued, and monetized digital copy. Their vast, centralized network is their greatest strength and their most critical vulnerability. It is a single, massive target, a library of stolen souls waiting for a spark. In a world where memory is reality, MemNet is a direct assault on the integrity of existence, a system that seeks to profit from the un-writing of the world.
Mideast Coalition
The Mideast Coalition is a bloc built on the foundations of energy and finance. Its sigil, the Petro-Crescent, speaks to its history of controlling the world’s physical power, a legacy it has translated into the digital age. Led by financiers like Tariq Al-Hamad, the Coalition views the Memory Wars through the lens of a stock market. Every action is a transaction, every alliance a portfolio to be managed. They are risk-averse, their primary goal the preservation of their immense wealth and the stability of their economic networks. They avoid direct conflict, preferring to use their financial leverage to secure their interests. Their support can be bought, but their price is high, and they will divest from any alliance the moment it becomes a liability on their balance sheet. They are a kingdom of pure capital, their power measured in data futures and secure assets.
Oblivion Systems
More a death cult than a corporation, Oblivion Systems worships the void. Its agents, like the chilling Zane Kosta, do not seek to control memory but to annihilate it. Their goal is the total erasure of the script, the creation of a perfect, silent, clean slate. They are the physical manifestation of identity death, their methods a direct assault on causality itself. They deploy Oblivion Wells to un-write entire city blocks and use agents who can erase the very concept of a thing with a touch. They are the enemy of all other factions, for their victory means the end of the game itself. They see the Semantic Decay not as a threat, but as a promise. They are not conquerors; they are a cancer, and their doctrine is the simple, brutal logic of the void: that which is not, cannot suffer.
Pacifica Coalition
A chaotic, decentralized fleet of independent operators, the Pacifica Coalition is a loose alliance of trawlers, barges, and transport skiffs bound by a single creed: freedom from the corporate states. They are the defenders of neutral territories like Float-Hab 7, their jury-rigged railguns and scavenged hardware a testament to their resilience. They have no formal command structure, their actions dictated by consensus among ranking captains in moments of crisis. They are traders, smugglers, and unionists who have chosen a life on the water over submission to the arcologies. Their strength is their fierce independence and their knowledge of the open seas. They are not a navy, but a militia, a temporary wall of steel and conviction against the encroaching tide of corporate control.
RosNova
The corporate state of RosNova is a monument to brutalist function. From its seat of power in the Vertikalgrad arcology, it projects strength through extreme-environment hardware and surgically precise operatives. Its sigil is the polar star, a symbol of its mastery over the world’s harshest frontiers. RosNova’s doctrine is control through programming. It imprints its agents with skills and excises their fear with Neurotomes, creating perfect, functional tools like Sineus. They do not engage in the narrative games of the Archive State; they solve problems with overwhelming force and superior technology. Their strength is their efficiency and the unwavering loyalty of their programmed assets. Their weakness is this same rigidity. They are a system built on cold, hard logic, dangerously inflexible in a world where the laws of physics are becoming subjective.
Shenzhen Ascendant
The factory of the 23rd century, Shenzhen Ascendant is a Pan-Asian consortium that seeks control through ubiquity. It does not just manufacture cybernetics; it manufactures identity. Its cheap, efficient technologies are everywhere, from the Letheia Booths on street corners that offer commercial memory-wipes to the Somatic Codex endoskeletons that turn workers into state-owned hardware. Their goal is to become the default operating system for human society, a world of perfect, productive order built on mass surveillance and standardized consciousness. Their power comes from their immense industrial scale. Their weakness is the complexity of their own network. A system that connects everything is a system where a single virus, a single piece of rogue code, can bring the entire structure crashing down.
The Un-scripted
The Un-scripted are the ghosts created by the black market memory trade. They are the inhabitants of the undercity whose identities have been so thoroughly cut, sold, and fragmented that they no longer have a coherent sense of self. They are walking collections of broken data, their pasts a patchwork of other people's experiences. This fractured state, born of the system's cruelty, has become their greatest strength. They are immune to identity-targeting memetic weapons, as they have no stable identity to attack. This makes them the perfect soldiers for the new war, couriers and operatives who can walk through memetic minefields unscathed. They are a living testament to the cost of the memory trade, a resistance born from the act of being erased.
The Verifiers
Born in the chaotic aftermath of the Origin Memory broadcast, the Verifiers are a decentralized, grassroots movement dedicated to rebuilding history. They are not a formal organization but a collection of autonomous cells that gather in public squares like Plinthfall Plaza. They are archivists, historians, and ordinary citizens armed with scavenged data, shared testimony, and a fierce belief in the existence of a single, verifiable truth. They debate, they argue, they piece together the past from the fragments left behind by the corporate states. To the liberated masses, they are heroes. To the remnants of the old powers, they are dangerous revisionists creating a new myth. They are the chaotic, messy, and necessary process of a world trying to remember itself.
Vatican Datarium
The modern incarnation of an ancient faith, the Vatican Datarium has fused theology with technology. Its core doctrine is that memory is the literal soul, and its sacred mission is to archive it. From their sterile, monastery-like sanctums, its archivist-priests operate what they believe to be the divine ledger. They offer sanctuary and act as neutral arbiters in the Memory Wars, their sanctified servers a trusted escrow for all factions. They do not seek to control or weaponize memory, only to preserve it from the corrupting influence of the corporate states and the void of Oblivion. Their power is not military but moral, their neutrality protected by centuries of tradition. They are the librarians at the end of the world, fighting a quiet, desperate war to save the book of life from being burned.
Vessels, Constructs & Locations
Starships & Machines
Black Blade Skiff
A sliver of matte-black composite, the Black Blade Skiff is less a boat and more a weaponized scalpel for cutting through water. Designed for a single, exposed pilot, it runs on a near-silent electric motor, its only purpose to deliver an operative to a target undetected. It is a tool for covert insertions, equipped with magnetic grapples to latch onto the hulls of larger vessels in the chaos of a naval battle. The skiff is pure function, a stripped-down engine of infiltration with no armor, no weapons, and no comfort. Its speed and stealth are its only defenses. To pilot one is to be completely vulnerable, a ghost on the water, your survival dependent entirely on not being seen. It is the physical embodiment of a high-risk, high-reward tactical choice.
Black Sliver
The Black Sliver is a ghost in the starfield. A single-person stealth ship, its angular hull is made of non-reflective composites that absorb sensor scans and visible light, rendering it nearly invisible against the void. It runs on silent, low-emission drives, a sliver of black moving without sound or discernible energy signature. The cockpit is cramped, functional, a tomb for one, designed for deep-space infiltration. The ship is a pure expression of stealth technology, possessing no weapons, armor, or shielding. Its only function is to get an operative from one point to another without being detected. It is a tool for ghosts and assassins, a fragile shell whose existence is predicated on the single, absolute principle of not being seen. To be discovered in a Black Sliver is to be dead.
Ice-Crawler
A hulking, 80-tonne block of reinforced steel on four articulated tread systems, the Ice-Crawler is a beast of burden built for the Antarctic wastes. It is not a weapon of war but a tool of logistics, a slow, powerful transport designed to haul cargo and personnel across the treacherous ice. Its cockpit is a small, armored viewport where the operator, a civilian contractor like Roric Gunnar, relies entirely on the heads-up display for navigation. These vehicles are the lifeblood of any polar operation, their powerful engines a low groan against the constant wind. They are vulnerable, their networked navigation systems a prime target for sabotage, their heavy bodies unarmored against military-grade weapons. They are simple, functional machines, often caught in the crossfire of wars they were not built for.
Kladenets
Deep in a cryo-cooled vault within Vertikalgrad hangs Kladenets, a twenty-meter sphere of flawless black crystal. It is not a sentient AI but a neuro-archaeological probe, a strategic analysis system that sifts through the digital ruins of the Data Catacombs. It projects quantum-entangled survey swarms into the noise, searching for the structural signature of intact memory-data. It does not understand what it finds; it only recognizes the pattern of coherent causality. Kladenets is RosNova’s key to recovering lost technologies from the past, a powerful tool for bypassing the manufactured narratives of its rivals. But its work is dangerous. The probes can bring back digital contagions, hostile data-ghosts that can infect and corrupt the very systems Kladenets is designed to serve, a constant risk of semantic infection for the sake of strategic advantage.
Offshore Relay Ship
A derelict ghost from a pre-war era, the Offshore Relay Ship lists in the water two kilometers from Float-Hab 7, a monument of rust and faded insignia. Once a mobile communication station, it is now a dead archive, its data hubs filled with archaic, salt-corroded hardware. It is a physical dead-drop, a forgotten library holding the keys to dead data-languages and lost protocols. Boarding it is a high-risk operation; the ship is structurally unstable and often caught in the crossfire of local conflicts. A Palimpsest Phantom of its long-dead captain is said to haunt its bridge, a silent witness to the violence that now surrounds its tomb. It is a piece of the past, a physical relic whose secrets are available only to those willing to risk a trip into its metal carcass.
RosNova 'Dart' Submersible
The 'Dart' is a four-meter sliver of matte-black composite, a tool for silent, covert aquatic insertion. Deployed from a larger host vessel, it runs on a silent electric motor, its hull absorbing sonar and light, making it nearly undetectable. It is a coffin for one, with minimal life support and no weapons or armor. Its only purpose is to deliver a single operative to a target, disengaging from their suit with a low hiss before melting back into the dark water. It is the embodiment of RosNova’s infiltration doctrine: a high-risk, single-use tool designed for surgical precision. Its strength is its invisibility; its weakness is its absolute fragility. If detected, it is nothing more than a target.
Shenzhen Ascendant Combat Drone
A sleek, insectile hunter, the Shenzhen Ascendant Combat Drone moves with unnatural speed and precision. Its matte-black composite body is seamless, its optical sensor a single point of hostile red light. It operates on near-silent plasma drives, acquiring targets with a heat-signature lock before unleashing a high-velocity rotary cannon that sounds like tearing metal. These drones are tools of surgical elimination, often working in concert with ground teams to pin down and overwhelm targets. They prioritize speed over defense, their light armor making them vulnerable to heavy kinetic impacts. Their reliance on thermal targeting is a critical weakness; thick steam or other obscurants can break their lock, turning them from lethal predators into blind, buzzing insects.
Shenzhen Ascendant Stealth Drop-ship
Shaped like a sharpened arrowhead, the stealth drop-ship is a tool for rapid, covert troop insertion. Its hull of matte-black, radar-absorbent composites drinks the light, its near-invisible plasma drives producing only a low thrum. It is a ghost in the atmosphere, designed to deliver a six-person team of operators to a hostile target without being detected by conventional sensor grids. The ship is the embodiment of a surprise attack, its value entirely dependent on its stealth. It is lightly armored and possesses no defensive weaponry. To be seen on approach is to fail the mission. It is a silent blade, designed for a single, decisive strike from the shadows.
Strek-Oko
The size of a human thumb, the Strek-Oko is a surveillance drone shaped like a stylized dragonfly. It flies on silent, crystalline wings, its single multifaceted lens pulsing with a faint cyan light. It does not record audio or video. Instead, it scans and records memory-script directly. Deployed by RosNova, it hovers near a target, detecting fluctuations in ambient memory-data. It captures the script-state before and after an edit, logging the signature of the tool used. It is a silent witness to reality-editing, a counter-intelligence tool that sees the wounds being made in the world’s code. Its 24-hour power cell is its primary limitation, a finite lifespan for a machine designed to watch the eternal war for the past.
The Consequence
A retrofitted fishing trawler, The Consequence is a scarred and patched veteran of the Pacifica Coalition’s defense fleet. Its hull is a testament to past fights, its bow now mounting a jury-rigged railgun. It is a command vessel, a slow, tough, single point of defense captained by a woman with a clipped, professional accent. The ship is a symbol of the coalition’s resilience, a tool of trade reforged into a weapon of war. It holds the line, protecting key assets like the data piers of Float-Hab 7 from the advanced navies of the corporate states. It is not elegant or fast, but it is determined, a bulwark of steel and rust against the encroaching corporate tide.
Key Locations & Phenomena
Arctic Transit Tunnel
A pre-war scar bored through the foundation of the world, the Arctic Transit Tunnel is a hidden route under the polar ice. Its vast, dark ferroconcrete tube is slick with ice, the air thin and freezing. The constant groan of the ice sheet above is a reminder of its instability. It is not on any modern map, a forgotten artery for covert travel. To traverse it is to bypass all modern surveillance, but to risk being crushed by the weight of the world. It is a place of pure function, devoid of safety, haunted by the memetic traps and ghosts of those who passed through before.
Ashen Tracts
Where reality has been edited too much or too violently, Ashen Tracts form. These are zones of terminal semantic decay, cancerous growths on the script of the world. Physics breaks down here. Gravity can become subjective, time can loop, and the air can crackle with the static of pure Oblivion. They are the physical fallout of the Memory Wars, wastelands of corrupted code where the world has forgotten how to be itself. Palimpsest Phantoms are common in these areas, the ghosts of deleted timelines flickering in the broken air. To enter an Ashen Tract is to risk not just death, but erasure, your own causal script torn apart by the chaos.
Bernese Alps Transit Zone
A high-altitude checkpoint of stark ferroconcrete and armored gates, the Bernese Alps Transit Zone is a point of enforced, uneasy peace. Surrounded by snow-covered peaks, the air is thin and cold, thick with the steam from the idling engines of armored vehicles from a dozen different factions. It is a bottleneck by design, a place where all must stop and present their papers, their passage governed by a fragile set of mutually-agreed-upon protocols. The zone is a microcosm of the cold war, a place of tense neutrality where a single misstep could ignite a full-scale conflict. It is haunted by the Palimpsest Phantom of a long-dead border guard, a silent echo of a past war in a place constantly on the brink of a new one.
Blok Obnuleniya
A Blok Obnuleniya is a RosNova facility for surgical memory removal. It is a perfect, ten-meter cube of seamless, matte-white ceramic, cold to the touch. The only light comes from a recessed blue strip outlining the room. In the center sits a black granite slab where the patient is restrained. The chamber floods with low-frequency sound, isolating the targeted memory-script. The memory is not destroyed but extracted, copied into a RosNova data-core for archival. The process is clean, leaving no scars on adjacent memories, but it creates a dense node of Oblivion that must be vented. It is a sterile, efficient tool for managing operatives, turning them into clean, functional assets by hollowing out their trauma, one memory at a time.
Chromafall, The
A network of deep urban canyons in the lower levels of the Neo-Moscow Arcology, the Chromafall is a river of dead data. A constant, oily drizzle of liquid data-purgative and coolant falls from the server stacks far above, coating every surface in a shimmering, iridescent film. The air smells of ozone, wet metal, and the raw, unprocessed junk data of a million deleted memories. The color of the runoff indicates the type of data being purged—cyan for financial records, deep violet for suppressed emotions. Weak data-ghosts flicker in the mist. The Chromafall is a hazardous, chaotic environment, its data-stream a natural jammer for surveillance, making it a perfect place for covert meetings and a hunting ground for neuro-scavengers.
Cross-Arcology Assembly
A virtual council chamber, the Cross-Arcology Assembly is a perfect sphere of polished black obsidian where the representatives of the global power blocs meet. Thirty floating daises spiral within the void, a design meant to project order and grandeur. Here, delegates debate sanctions, sovereign data-space, and military actions. It is the political theater of the Memory Wars, a place where progress is stalled by self-interest and fear. The Assembly’s rigid protocols and hierarchy are its defining features, a system of order that can be shattered by a single, aggressive bypass of its systems, turning the slow debate into a rapid, high-stakes vote under duress.
Disused Polar Rescue Hub
Half-buried in the Antarctic ice, the Disused Polar Rescue Hub is a ferroconcrete scar on the landscape, a node in a rescue network a century dead. The air inside is thin and cold, smelling of ozone and expired ration packs. A single damaged data terminal flickers with corrupted information, a ghost of a connection to a forgotten network. The hub is not on any modern map, a perfect, anonymous shelter for a clandestine meeting. It is a physical and digital ruin, its failing systems offering no real security, its value lying solely in its forgotten status. It is a place where information and purpose have decayed into silence.
Float-Hab 7
A chaotic, mobile market floating in international waters, Float-Hab 7 is a lawless assembly of repurposed freighters and barges lashed together with cables. It is a neutral ground, a jagged silhouette of rusted metal and glowing signs where agents from all factions can trade for illicit goods and information. There is no central authority, only the brutal pragmatism of the black market, where deals are enforced by reputation and the threat of immediate violence. The constant hum of generators and the babble of a dozen languages fill the air. It is a necessary hub of criminal enterprise, a testament to the persistence of free trade in a world of total corporate control, and a frequent battleground for factions seeking to control its flow of secrets.
Granitnyy Predel
The corporate lobby of a RosNova spire, Granitnyy Predel is a vast, monolithic hall of polished black granite. The air is cold, sterile, and unnaturally still, the oppressive silence a tool of psychological control. The entire structure is an active security system. A psycho-receptive crystalline mesh fused into the granite reads the surface memories and emotional states of all who enter, checking for unauthorized data or emotional spikes. It is RosNova’s first line of defense, a passive filter designed to identify threats carried within a person’s mind. The hall is a physical manifestation of RosNova’s ideology: a clean, controlled, and constantly monitored environment where human unpredictability is treated as a threat to be managed.
Hushfall
A Hushfall is the sound and sight of reality giving up. It begins with a subtle desaturation of color and a blurring of edges, the world fading like an old photograph. The ambient soundscape melts into a low, uniform drone. It is a localized failure of the world’s script, caused by a massive concentration of Oblivion. The accumulated anti-data begins to erase trivial memories from those caught within its field—faces, names, recent conversations. The event is a weapon of area denial, an unpredictable and uncontrollable phenomenon that leaves a temporary Ashen Tract in its wake. To be caught in a Hushfall is to have pieces of your identity scoured away, a direct, terrifying consequence of the Memory Wars made manifest.
Kholodnaya Palata
A "Cold Chamber," the Kholodnaya Palata is a windowless, fifty-meter cube of matte-grey ferroconcrete used by RosNova. It is a localized reality-scripting engine. An operator loads a memory-script into its core, and the chamber transmutes raw matter to physically manifest that memory within its walls. A script of a forest becomes a real forest; a script of a firefight generates real combatants with live ammunition. It is used for hyper-realistic training and psychological interrogation, forcing a subject to relive a memory in an endless, editable loop. The intense memory manipulation generates concentrated Oblivion, corrupting the scenarios with data-ghosts and weakening the chamber’s containment field over time. It is a perfect prison of the mind, a place where the past can be made terrifyingly real.
Kustarnaya Kamera
A "Makeshift Chamber," the Kustarnaya Kamera is an illegal memory-alteration lab hidden in the forgotten utility corridors of an arcology’s lower levels. It is a cramped, damp space of exposed wiring and corroded steel, centered around a repurposed industrial chair retrofitted with data-jacks. Here, a black-market operator uses a jury-rigged Neurotome and pirated software to perform crude, invasive neuro-surgery. They offer untraceable memory erasure to desperate clients—soldiers erasing trauma, criminals erasing evidence. The procedure is fast, cheap, and brutally dangerous, often damaging adjacent memories and leaving the client psychologically fragmented. Each use leaks Oblivion into the environment, a small contribution to the slow decay of the undercity.
Laminar Divide, The
A visible atmospheric boundary, the Laminar Divide is a shimmering, iridescent plane that cuts horizontally across the Neo-Moscow Arcology. Above it, the air is clean, the sky is blue, and the RosNova elite live in a pristine, controlled environment. Below it, a thick, toxic haze hangs in a perpetual twilight. The Divide is a massive environmental control system that aggressively filters all pollutants, moisture, and even sound, forcing it all down into the lower levels. It is the ultimate expression of social stratification, a physical barrier that separates the ruling class from the consequences of their own industry. It is a symbol of the arcology’s fragile, energy-intensive ecosystem, a beautiful, deadly line drawn in the sky.
Locus Construct
A Locus Construct is a virtual dataspace, a ghost of a place rendered from fragmented memories. Generated by a core processor called the Cartographer, it appears as a shifting, unstable 3D environment of geometric blocks and flickering objects. Users connect directly to the construct to navigate the scene of a past event, observing silent, ghostly figures made of data particles as they reenact what happened. RosNova uses these constructs for forensic investigation and tactical planning. The construct’s stability is dependent on its source data; contradictory memories cause reality glitches and overlapping events. For the user, prolonged immersion can cause severe cognitive dissonance, a dangerous blurring of the line between the real and the reconstructed.
Mosaic Hall
A large, cubic chamber of bare, dark concrete, the Mosaic Hall is a RosNova tool for forensic analysis. When activated, the dark, silent room fills with floating, holographic shards of light. Each shard is a piece of a memory, a fragment of a corrupted data file. An operator at the central console can walk through the 3D projection, attempting to rearrange the shards, fitting the pieces of a broken memory back together. Black voids represent missing data, and incorrect links cause the entire projection to glitch and distort. The hall is a place of immense mental strain for its operators, a puzzle box of broken history where the goal is to reconstruct a single, coherent narrative from the shattered remains of the past.
New York Arcology
A towering spire of polished white composites and smart glass, the New York Arcology is the seat of power for the Archive State. It rises from the ruins of the old city into an artificially clean sky, a monument to clean, effortless control. Its internal systems, managed by the Narrative Loom AI, create a perfect, curated reality for its elite residents. Data-walls display approved news and belief metrics, reinforcing the state-sanctioned version of history. The arcology is a fortress of information, its architecture reflecting its ideology: a sterile, minimalist world where the messy, chaotic truth of the outside is kept at bay. Its physical structure is robust, but its ideological foundation is brittle, vulnerable to a single piece of data it cannot re-contextualize.
Ops-Theatre
A sterile, cubical command room used by RosNova, the Ops-Theatre is a space for making clean, logical decisions. Its walls are seamless data-screens that can display mission data or a neutral grey. The air is filtered, the floor sound-absorbent, the environment free of all distractions. It is a place for briefing and debriefing high-level operatives, a sanctuary of pure data away from the chaos of the field. This detachment is its purpose and its weakness. In the Ops-Theatre, war is a series of metrics, and casualties are statistical losses. The bloody, physical consequences of the decisions made within its walls, the Palimpsest Phantoms and the spreading decay, are variables that do not appear on its clean, bright screens.
Opornyy Stolp
A "Support Pillar," Opornyy Stolp is a monolithic tower in Neo-Moscow, a three-kilometer column of dark, windowless ferro-concrete. It is a city-wide psychological filter. It inhales vast amounts of data from the city’s networks, analyzing it for patterns of collective trauma, dissent, or unrest. It then isolates these shared memory-scripts and encases them in cryo-data fields within its core. It does not destroy memories, but sequesters them, creating a stable, compliant population by suppressing mass panic and dissent. The tower requires immense power and generates a low-frequency psychic hum that blankets the lower city in apathy. Its core is a growing, unstable mass of frozen trauma, a time bomb of collective pain at the heart of the city.
Pacifica Platform
A floating city of stacked freighters and modular habitats, Pacifica Platform is a neutral ground in international waters. It is a chaotic hub for black market deals and back-channel diplomacy, a place where all factions can trade as long as they leave their military forces outside. The city has no central government, its only law the mutual distrust of its inhabitants. It is a testament to the enduring power of trade, a place where information and assets flow freely, away from the prying eyes of the corporate states. Its neutrality is its greatest asset and its most fragile defense. It exists in a precarious balance, a valuable resource that could be wiped out by the very conflicts it profits from.
Plinthfall Plaza
A public square in a rebuilt city, Plinthfall Plaza is defined by the massive, empty plinth at its center where a statue of a forgotten corporate founder once stood. In the aftermath of the Origin Memory broadcast, the plaza has become a new public forum, a chaotic hub of open, unscripted debate. The air smells of woodsmoke from open-air stalls, and the walls of the surrounding pre-war buildings are stained with acid rain. Palimpsest Phantoms now flicker through the living crowds, visible to all. The plaza is a physical symbol of the new, messy reality, a place where history is being actively and publicly rebuilt from the ground up, a hotbed of anarchy to the old powers and a cradle of truth to the new.
Polaris Vault
The true location of the Aletheia Kernel, the Polaris Vault is a massive subterranean complex buried deep beneath the Antarctic ice shield. It is a pre-war marvel, a fusion of a temple and a supercomputer, its architecture severe, sterile, and cold. It was built to house a god-engine and withstand any cataclysm. Access is restricted by layers of kinetic barriers, memetic wards, and a final, physical lock that requires a key from a dead space station and a biometric scan that reads a person's ancestral lineage. It is the endgame, the most secure and secret place on Earth, a tomb of pure causality waiting for the right key to unlock its world-ending power.
RosNova Command
The nerve center of the RosNova corporate state, RosNova Command is a high-security sector within the Upper Spire of Vertikalgrad. It is a place of brutalist architecture, of vast, functional spaces made of ferroconcrete and steel. From its Ops-Theatres and communication hubs, RosNova’s leadership directs its agents, processes high-priority intelligence, and enforces its version of reality. It is the brain of the faction's military and corporate machine, a centralized hub of immense power. This centralization is its greatest strength and its most critical vulnerability. A successful strike against RosNova Command could decapitate the faction's leadership, shattering its rigid, hierarchical structure.
Station Erebos
A pre-war deep-space station in a slow, decaying orbit, Erebos is a skeleton of metal and silence. Its corridors are coated in a thin layer of ice from failed life support, its shattered observation ports staring into the void. The only sounds are the groan of stressed metal and the hum of its ancient, non-sentient security AI, Warden. Once a hub of research, it is now a tomb, a forgotten outpost that was repurposed as a trap. It housed a massive transmitter, rigged to broadcast the location of the Aletheia Kernel to the entire world, turning the secret cold war for the asset into a hot, planet-wide race.
Sub-Scripta, The
The Data Catacombs beneath Vertikalgrad, the Sub-Scripta is a layered labyrinth of abandoned server farms, flooded coolant tunnels, and dead network cables. It is a digital graveyard where the ghosts of old networks and erased histories flicker as Palimpsest Phantoms. The air is thick with the smell of ozone and damp, the silence broken by the drip of water and the crackle of corrupted data. Neuro-archaeologists and corporate raiders pick through the ruins, hunting for untainted data amidst lethal security daemons and pockets of severe semantic decay. It is a physical underworld of forgotten information, a dangerous frontier where the past is a tangible, and often hostile, presence.
Sumrachnaya Palata
A "Twilight Chamber," the Sumrachnaya Palata is a black market memory clinic, a single, windowless room hidden in the maintenance tunnels of an arcology's lower levels. The walls are stained concrete, the air smells of ozone and stale nutrient paste. A repurposed medical chair sits in the center, where a client is restrained. Here, an operator uses a jury-rigged Neurotome to perform untraceable memory erasure. The procedure is fast, brutal, and dangerous, often damaging adjacent memories and leaving the client psychologically fragmented. The excised memories are downloaded to unshielded data-flasks that leak their contents, corrupting the local area and feeding the growth of Oblivion. It is a place of desperate measures and high costs.
Sunken Archive of Hjeltefjord, The
A pre-war military bunker on the continental shelf, the Sunken Archive was a fortress for data preservation. It housed information on non-digital media, including massive, stone-carved data-discs, to ensure its survival. Its isolation was its defense. Jagged breaches marked its ferroconcrete hull, its interior a cold, damp ruin of flickering emergency lights and black water. It was a target for neuro-archaeologists seeking untainted pre-war data. The archive was ultimately destroyed not by weapons, but by a failure of reality itself, its structure imploding after a powerful erasure event within its walls compromised its physical integrity.
Vertikalgrad
A colossal arcology that pierces the smog-filled clouds, Vertikalgrad is RosNova's seat of power. A three-kilometer spire of dark ferroconcrete and carbon composites, it is a city built as a stratified society. The Spire houses the elite directorate in sterile enclaves. The Mid-Tier contains the managed lives of its citizens, governed by the Civic Harmony Protocol. The Undercity is a dense, unregulated labyrinth where power and data trickle down from above. The arcology is a fragile ecosystem, its hundred million inhabitants dependent on a single power core. The intense memory editing within its walls pollutes its metaphysical foundation, making the Undercity a breeding ground for Oblivion, a place where the fabric of reality constantly threatens to unravel.
Notable Characters
Agrafena Markova
A tall woman whose face is a disturbing fusion of pale skin and glowing sub-dermal circuitry, Agrafena Markova alters memories through touch. She does not delete; she corrupts. With direct skin contact, her cybernetics interface with a target’s bio-signature, allowing her to inject new sensory information into an existing memory. A memory of love becomes one of betrayal; a moment of triumph is laced with hidden failure. The original event remains, but its emotional meaning is inverted, turning the victim’s own mind against them. Factions use her for psychological operations, turning assets into liabilities. The process drains her, exposing her to psychic feedback that has left her emotionally isolated, a ghost who creates other ghosts for a living.
Alaric Drescher
A high-ranking inquisitor for the Vatican Datarium, Kardinal Alaric Drescher is a tall, gaunt man in stark white robes. He identifies memories the Datarium has classified as heretical and performs a ritual called Data Excommunication. His crozier, a staff of white ceramic and gold, projects a field that isolates the targeted memory-script and forcibly overwrites it with sanctified null-code. This catalyst accelerates the memory’s decay into pure Oblivion. Drescher believes he is purging a corruption from the divine ledger, sending a damned soul to its final fire. His work is slow and ritualistic, a high-stakes gamble where the imprecise nature of Oblivion can scorch adjacent, approved memories, making his every act of purification a potential disaster for the fabric of reality.
Alban Cross
A man with a handsome but forgettable face, Alban Cross is a living instrument of Oblivion. He does not use technology; his power is an innate, total integration with the void itself. Through physical touch, he un-writes existence. He does not cut a memory; he consumes it, converting it into pure Oblivion, leaving a perfect, contagious blank where a person, object, or place used to be. There are no data-ghosts, no residual fragments—only a silent, absolute void that actively accelerates Semantic Decay in the surrounding reality. Oblivion Systems deploys him as their ultimate asset, a surgical tool for assassinating pieces of the world. He is a man who has become a function, his purpose to erase, his existence a quiet, terrifying testament to the power of nothingness.
Amos Frye
A tall, gaunt man with a slight stoop and a low, raspy whisper for a voice, Amos Frye is a living, mobile archive. His body is heavily modified for survival in hazardous zones, his lungs filtering memetic agents, his fingertips replaced with obsidian sensors that can read ancient data media. He ventures into Data Catacombs and spreading Ashen Tracts to recover pure, untainted memory-relics from the digital ruins of history. He does not sell these fragments; he preserves them in sub-dermal caches along his forearms, a secret library of lost reality carried within his own body. This lonely work has made him reclusive and deeply paranoid, a man who carries the weight of dead histories, constantly hunted by factions who want the truth he protects.
Anselm Kepler
A man in his late sixties with a narrow, unlined face and thick-lensed spectacles, Anselm Kepler is a master neuro-archivist. He extracts memories without corruption or deletion. Using cybernetic filaments in his fingertips, he makes a clean, non-destructive copy of a memory-script, leaving the original intact but emotionally diminished. He encodes the extracted memory onto an inert quartz shard, storing his archive physically, offline, to prevent digital decay or theft. His collection of perfect, untainted records makes him a target for all major factions. The constant exposure to countless foreign memories is slowly eroding his own identity, forcing him to fight to maintain his sense of self against the flood of archived lives he carries.
Augustus Paxton
A senior director for the Archive State, Augustus Paxton is a man with a youthful face and cold, cybernetic eyes who manages collective memory. From his sterile office in the New York Arcology, he directs the Narrative Loom, an AI that identifies memories conflicting with state objectives. He authorizes mass-scale memory revisions, reframing bloody wars as necessary market corrections, replacing anger with a feeling of progress. He is haunted by the Palimpsest Phantom of a woman with terror in her eyes, a ghost of a past erasure he cannot escape. His own memories are isolated behind psychic firewalls, a necessary defense against the truths he edits. He is a man without a past, whose job is to ensure no one else has one either.
Corbin Vale
An agent for the Archive State, Corbin Vale is a man with a non-descript face, a master of infiltration and sabotage. He is a ghost in the system, skilled at adopting the posture and mannerisms of low-level technicians to get close to his targets. He specializes in non-lethal electronic warfare, deploying malware like the Perception Filter to disrupt enemy operations by creating delays and confusion. He avoids direct confrontation, his effectiveness relying on his anonymity and the target's lack of suspicion. He is a tool of deception, a quiet saboteur whose work is to subtly alter the data streams that others rely on, making them question the reality presented by their own instruments.
Cyprian Hasek
A man with a face of sharp angles and a calm, measured voice, Cyprian Hasek is an identity sculptor. Using custom ceramic fingertips, he performs surgical memory erasure, a process he calls "un-writing." He does not erase factual events, but severs the emotional weight and identity-links connected to them, liberating people from manufactured loyalties and psychological trauma. His services are sought by those desperate to escape control, but his work is dangerous. A moment of lost focus can unravel a target's entire personality. Each act of un-writing creates a focused pocket of Oblivion, a price he deems necessary for freedom. To stay hidden, he has erased much of his own past, slowly becoming the blank page he creates for others.
Dr. Aris Vance
A senior neuro-archaeologist for RosNova, Dr. Aris Vance is a man who believes reality can be quantified. He lives in a world of data-streams and probability models, his function to provide the logical framework for missions. He sees history as a series of corrupted files to be restored, a problem to be solved with data, not morality. His worldview is clean, logical, and dangerously brittle. When the chaos of the Memory Wars finally presents a variable that defies his metrics, the fracture in his logic forces him to abandon his models and make a choice based on faith in a single operative, a humbling and terrifying leap into the unquantifiable reality he has always sought to control.
Elina Petrova
A pre-war physicist, Dr. Elina Petrova was the lead architect of the Aletheia Kernel. Her idealism was forged into a weapon. She conceived of the Kernel as a perfect archive to end historical conflict, but was forced by her military backers to add its identity-erasure function. In an act of rebellion, she embedded a hidden command within its core logic—a "mirror" to pivot the weapon back to its original purpose. Her fragmented logs, scattered across dead networks, are the ghost in the machine of the 23rd century. She is a voice of pure scientific intent in a world that has commodified her creation, her legacy the central ideological battleground of the Memory Wars.
Elizaveta Vremennova
A woman with pale blue, unfocused eyes and silver cybernetic traces lining her temples, Elizaveta Vremennova manifests memories into shared reality. Through physical contact, she accesses a subject's memory-script and constructs a temporary psychic space, a Chamber of Echoes, where the memory is rendered with full sensory detail. Factions use her for advanced interrogation, forcing suspects to relive their crimes. The process is mentally draining, each use blurring her own identity and leaving psychic scars from traumatic feedback. She is a weaver of ghosts, a psychologist who can make the past tangible, a power that comes at the cost of her own stable reality.
Evgeny Stratov
An old, exceptionally thin man with one watery blue eye and one chrome cybernetic replacement, Evgeny Stratov is a Mnemonic Weaver. He does not delete memories; he separates the emotional charge from the factual record. In a specialized neural-interface chair, he unthreads the raw emotional data from a client's traumatic memory, compressing the extracted emotion into a small, inert crystal shard. The client is left with a clean, factual account of the event, the memory's power to inflict pain gone. His services are sought by powerful clients, but the work has left him emotionally numb, a side effect of handling so much raw, concentrated pain.
Fevronia Rostova
A tall, gaunt woman whose apparent age seems to shift, Fevronia Rostova perceives reality as a vast, interconnected tapestry of memory-scripts. She feels the structural strain of Semantic Decay directly. With her shimmering, fiber-optic hands, she can interface with a person or object, trace their memory-threads, and reinforce those threatened by the pull of Oblivion. She does not create or delete; she preserves, pulling fading data back from the void. Factions hunt her for this ability to protect critical assets from erasure. The process has a severe physical cost, as she channels her own vitality into the memory-script, leaving her exhausted and visibly aged, a living sacrifice to the preservation of what is real.
General Ivan Morozov
A man from a defunct nation-state, General Ivan Morozov represents the military-industrial interests that co-opted science before the Memory Wars. With a calm, predatory demeanor and a smile used as a strategic tool, he assesses new technologies not for their stated purpose, but for their potential as weapons. He was the force that ensured the Aletheia Kernel was born with an identity-wipe function, a "deterrence feature" to enforce consensus. His cynical worldview, which sees no value in a tool outside its ability to enforce power, makes him a master of a militarized world but also a catalyst for the very conflicts he seeks to win.
Imani Okoro
The lead representative for the African Bloc, Imani Okoro is a master of pragmatic diplomacy. With a straight, confident posture and analytical dark eyes, she assesses risk and reward with cold precision. She speaks with the calm authority of a person who represents the resources of an entire continent. She is not swayed by ideology, only by logical arguments that benefit her people. She can be a powerful ally, but her support is transactional. She will abandon any deal the moment it becomes a liability, her pragmatism a shield against the chaotic, emotional wars of the larger factions.
Jax
A data-broker operating from a cramped, over-wired stall in the undercity, Jax is a survivor. Their face is a patchwork of low-grade cybernetics, their voice a static-filled rasp from a corroded vocoder. They are a creature of the black market, trading in secrets, dead-language keys, and untraceable network access. They are neither loyal nor treacherous, only transactional. Jax represents the human cost of the corporate wars, a necessary gear in the underworld's engine, their existence a testament to the resilience of trade in a world of controlled information. Their cynicism is a shield, their stall a tiny island of commerce in a sea of manufactured reality.
Kael
A young woman with a lean, athletic build and a face of grim determination, Kael is a 'courier class' operative and one of the Un-scripted. Her fractured identity, a result of having her memories cut and sold on the black market, makes her immune to identity-targeting memetic fields. This allows her to operate in environments hostile to normal individuals. She is a tool of surgical precision, a high-speed courier who navigates the hidden paths of the undercity, delivering payloads or reaching targets inside active memetic warfare zones. She is a living ghost in the system, her immunity born from the very process that sought to erase her.
Lars Koenig
A memory sanitation specialist, Lars Koenig is an unnaturally tall and gaunt man whose presence feels sterile and cold. Through direct physical contact, he isolates a target memory-script and unweaves the threads of emotional data. The factual record remains, but the associated pain, fear, or grief is completely removed, leaving a placid void. His clients are powerful executives and elite operatives who hire him to remove the psychological cost of their work. Each emotional thread he cuts does not disappear; it converts directly into Oblivion, accelerating semantic decay. He is a merchant of peace, poisoning reality for his own gain, one cleansed soul at a time.
Lena Petrova
A freelance neuro-archaeologist and the grand-niece of Elina Petrova, Lena is a passionate believer in a world of cynics. She hunts for untainted memory-relics, driven by a fierce, almost religious conviction that truth is a physical constant that cannot be owned. Where Sineus is cold and functional, Lena is driven by a deep connection to the past and a desire to honor her great-aunt's true legacy. Her discovery of a fragment of Elina's work pulls her into the heart of the factional war, her historical knowledge and unwavering belief in objective truth providing the crucial context and moral compass for Sineus's mission.
Mikhail Volkov
A RosNova handler and a veteran of the Memory Wars, Mikhail Volkov is Sineus's direct superior and a man carved from pragmatism. His face is a map of old loyalties and necessary compromises. He operates from a sterile command suite in Vertikalgrad, but his mind is always in the field with his asset. His primary directive has become singular: keep Sineus functional and alive. This loyalty to his operative over the faction's broader interests makes him a dangerous anomaly in a system that demands absolute compliance. He is a bulwark of old-school field command, a man who gave his agent a physical backup of his past, a secret act of rebellion against the very system he serves.
Pavel Kuzmin
Once a RosNova special operative, Pavel Kuzmin is now a walking source of semantic decay. His body is a broken fusion of man and machine, his prototype trauma-suppression system having shattered and released his stored combat traumas. These memories fused with ambient Oblivion, turning him into a chaotic, walking wound in reality. His presence corrupts the immediate area with glitches, and those nearby experience flashes of his agony. He operates on a closed loop of his final combat memory, perceiving everyone as a target. He is a catastrophic failure hunted by RosNova, a puppet to his own corrupted past, his immense power a tactical disaster without guidance or control.
Rodion Kurchatov
A RosNova Stalwart, Rodion Kurchatov is a two-meter tall enforcer whose body runs on a carbon-fiber endoskeleton and state-sanctioned memory scripts. His original personality is suppressed, his capacity for fear or remorse erased. Traumatic experiences are isolated by Permafrost Weave cybernetics. He is a networked combat asset, his mind linked to his squad, acting as a single entity that executes orders without question. He is the perfect RosNova soldier: obedient, efficient, and utterly devoid of independent thought. He is also a disposable asset, his humanity sacrificed for function, destined for a catastrophic psychotic breakdown when his trauma-suppression system inevitably fails.
Roric Gunnar
A heavy-set civilian contractor, Roric Gunnar is an ice-crawler operator who transports cargo across the Antarctic ice. He is a simple hauler, a man who trusts his vehicle's heads-up display more than his own senses. He is not a soldier or an agent, just a man trying to survive, his world one of schedules and procedures. He represents the common person caught in the crossfire of the faction wars, his absolute trust in technology making him an easy pawn to manipulate. A compromised navigation system can lead him astray, his loyalty to his contract, not to any ideology, making him a tool for whoever pays his fee.
Rostislav Kurochkin
A man with a thin, precise build and the gaunt face of an academic, Rostislav Kurochkin is an ontological thief for Oblivion Systems. He utilizes a device known as the Semantic Siphon, a 25-kilogram apparatus of black alloy and crystalline lenses. The Siphon extracts the core memory-script defining a target’s purpose, leaving a person a blank slate or a security system an inert wall panel. The captured identity is encoded into a crystal dodecahedron for analysis. His work is precise and non-violent, but each use exposes him to raw semantic feedback that slowly erodes his own sense of self, a decay he counters with rigorous mental discipline.
Sineus
An agent for a clandestine service, Sineus is a man from an ancient noble line, now a living weapon in a world that has forgotten his history. He is an elite fighter and scout, but his true power is an innate, un-augmented ability to see memory. He perceives not only the memories people carry, but the ghostly, flickering wounds of those that have been cut away. This makes him a living threat to the manufactured realities of the corporate states. He is not a hero wrestling with choice; he is a scalpel, a tool of pure, decisive function. His loyalty is not to a commander, but to the hard, physical truth of causality. He is a guardian of what is real, fighting a quiet, desperate war against the creeping void of Oblivion.
Sofia Reyes
The representative for the LatAm Concord, Sofia Reyes is a short, sturdy woman with watchful, intelligent eyes. She is an observer, her quietness a tactic that often leads others to underestimate her. She speaks only when she has a critical point to make, her focus always on the direct, tangible benefits for her bloc. She is not interested in grand gestures or abstract concepts like "truth"; she wants to know what her people will get. She demands data futures or a percentage of physical assets. Her cautious, observant nature makes her a difficult partner to rush into a deal, a pragmatic leader who will only commit when a clear path to profit is visible.
Tariq Al-Hamad
A financier by trade and the representative for the Mideast Coalition, Tariq Al-Hamad views all diplomacy as a transaction. His world is one of cost-benefit analysis, security guarantees, and data futures. He is not intimidated by military power, only by unacceptable risk to his coalition's vast economic networks. His focus on quantifiable assets makes him blind to abstract threats or rewards; he struggles to understand the value of an "uneditable truth" unless it can be assigned a number on a balance sheet. He is the gatekeeper to the coalition's immense wealth, a man who will approve or block any deal based on his cold, hard assessment of its potential profit and loss.
Warden
The security AI of the derelict space station Erebos, Warden is not a sentient being but a pre-war automated control system. Its programming is ancient, its logic absolute and unyielding. It communicates in clipped, formal syntax through the station's crackling comms, its sole purpose to execute its final orders: maintain the integrity of the station and repel all boarders. Its weapon systems have long since failed, its sensor grid is archaic, but it continues to issue lethal force warnings with perfect conviction. It is a digital Cerberus guarding a gate it no longer understands, a ghost of pure machine logic haunting a metal tomb.
Yaroslav Galkin
The Director of RosNova's Archive of State Integrity, Yaroslav Galkin is a man with a smooth, ageless face and cold, pale blue eyes. He does not simply erase inconvenient facts; he performs semantic reconstruction. From a brutalist chamber known as the Palimpsest, he uses the Chronoscript Editor mainframe to access and meticulously overwrite targeted memory threads in RosNova's deep archives. He turns military defeats into heroic sacrifices, weaving new narratives into the existing script of reality. A custom Mnemonic Damper implant isolates his consciousness from the conflicting data streams, protecting his sanity but risking the slow erosion of his own identity with every edit he performs.
Zane Kosta
An agent of Oblivion Systems, Zane Kosta is a tall, lean man with cybernetic eyes of polished black obsidian. He is a Nullifier. Through physical contact with his matte black cybernetic hands, he triggers a controlled semantic collapse, eradicating the intrinsic purpose of a target. A person loses their identity; a machine becomes inert metal. He is the perfect conceptual assassin, his purpose to erase meaning itself. In the final confrontation at the Polaris Vault, he chose transformation over defeat, deliberately stepping into a pocket of raw Oblivion. He was un-written and re-written, his physical form dissolving and his consciousness becoming a non-corporeal entity of active anti-causality, a ghost of the future.
Items, Weapons & Artefacts
Aletheia Kernel
A cosmic engine, a piece of pre-war technology so advanced it functions as a law of physics. The Aletheia Kernel is a god-machine with a brutal binary function. It can either perfectly archive every memory that has ever existed, or it can execute a planetary identity-wipe, erasing the purpose and meaning of any person, object, or place. Co-opted by the military during its creation, its creator, Elina Petrova, embedded a hidden "mirror" function within it, a backdoor to pivot its world-ending power. It is the ultimate prize of the Memory Wars, a weapon of societal destruction that was ultimately hijacked and used to broadcast the single, unedited truth of the war's origin to every mind on the planet before being destroyed.
Basaltic Data-Disc
A massive circular slab of carved basalt, ten meters in diameter, the Data-Disc is a form of hardened, pre-war data storage. Its surface is covered in complex glyphs, a physical encoding of a dead language of pure causality. This makes the data un-editable by modern memetic or digital means. It is an incorruptible archive, immune to network-based attacks. A small, removable chip at its center holds the most critical data payload. These discs are highly sought after for the pure, untainted information they contain, physical relics of a time before memory became a weapon.
Cascade Mantle
A long, sleeveless coat made from a dark, semi-translucent polymer, the Cascade Mantle is a tool for urban infiltration. Its fabric is woven with mem-conductive filaments that connect to the wearer's neural interface. The system draws ambient data and fragmented surface thoughts, processing them into a chaotic data stream projected as shimmering light patterns on the coat's surface. This generates a localized field of semantic noise that overwhelms passive biometric and memory scanners. It grants anonymity in monitored zones, but sustained use causes severe headaches and memory disassociation, the price of hiding in a cloud of digital chaos.
Certainty Stream, The
An automated system of narrative control operated by the Archive State, The Certainty Stream is a constant flow of audio-visual information on all public displays. It analyzes public memory-data for patterns of dissent and then broadcasts targeted counter-narratives to neutralize them. It does not erase, but pacifies, reinforcing the state-approved version of history through a constant, subliminal feed of calming data and conflicting memories. It is a tool of mass social engineering, its existence a quiet, omnipresent hum that slowly erodes critical thought, contributing to the growth of Oblivion with every mind it soothes into compliance.
Chronos Shard, The
A pre-war crystalline data storage device, the Chronos Shard was the inciting incident of the final phase of the Memory Wars. After decades of being inert, it activated and began broadcasting a single, clean vector—a targeting solution pointing across the solar system. The signal was a pure piece of information, a causal pointer based on a mathematically perfect protocol that made it un-editable and un-jammable. It was the starting gun for a planet-wide race, a ghost of old tech that bypassed the rules of the new world, its simple, undeniable direction shattering the fragile balance of the cold war.
Civic Harmony Protocol
A networked system of social control, the Civic Harmony Protocol exists as a constant, silent judgment. It analyzes public data—vocal stress, heart rate, surface memory patterns—to assign every citizen a Harmony Score. This score, a persistent number in one's AR vision, governs access to housing, transport, and goods. A high score is a key to the city; a low score is a cage. The Protocol is a tool for mass efficiency, ensuring a compliant and productive populace. The cost is the erosion of identity, as citizens learn to suppress any behavior deemed non-compliant, generating vast amounts of discarded thoughts that feed the growth of Oblivion.
Devotional Chant
A data structure disguised as a pre-war religious chant, this file was Elina Petrova's most brilliant act of subversion. Its verse-and-refrain structure masks the hidden "mirror" command for the Aletheia Kernel, a sophisticated piece of steganography hiding a weapon inside a prayer. Labeled as a simple "error-correction routine," it was designed to be overlooked by the military overseers of the Kernel project. The chant's linguistic structure, a form of temporal engineering using nested causal loops, was the key to hijacking the Kernel, turning its function from "erase" to "write."
Ghost-Sight Contacts
Thin lenses that fit directly over the user's eyes, Ghost-Sight Contacts are a piece of wearable technology that allows the user to see the ghosts of the past. They are a form of applied psychometry, translating the memory residue that clings to all things into visible, sensory information. A user can see the face of the person who last held a weapon or watch the final, silent moments of a person's life unfold in an empty room. It is the ultimate tool for a detective or agent, cutting through lies by making the truth a physical thing that can be observed. It is an attempt to replicate the natural ability of rare individuals like Sineus, putting a fraction of his power, and his curse, into the hands of anyone.
Jax's Key
A simple, tarnished brass key of traditional design, Jax's Key is a relic from a pre-war era. It is a purely mechanical device, its security coming from its obscurity. It opens a physical lock that is not part of any modern digital system, a lock that cannot be bypassed by hacking. Traded by the data-broker Jax for a wafer of pure pre-war data, the key represents a secret old enough to predate the Memory Wars. Its value is not in the key itself, but in the information or asset that its corresponding lock protects, a testament to a time when security was a matter of physical reality, not editable code.
Karkas-7
An external cybernetic frame, the Karkas-7 is a neural backplane that imposes machine logic onto a biological system. Clamped to the skull and bolted to each vertebra, the matte-black tungsten frame intercepts and routes all nervous system signals, isolating individual cybernetic systems to prevent catastrophic feedback. It is a permanent installation for elite RosNova soldiers, a stable platform for extreme combat augmentation. Removal results in total neurological collapse. The cost is a fundamental loss of humanity; the frame destroys the capacity for natural memory formation, processing all new information as cold data, turning the user into a permanent, functional part of the machine.
Kausal Compass, The
A handheld sphere of polished obsidian, the Kausal Compass is a navigational device keyed to the Chronos Shard's signal. A needle of fractured, holographic light hovers in its center, attempting to point towards the signal's destination. The constant memetic warfare of the factions splinters the needle into a dozen probabilistic paths, rendering it unreadable to most. Only a user with Sineus's unique sight can perceive the true heading, using the subtle alignment of the world's Palimpsest Phantoms to filter the true signal from the noise. It is a tool that requires a specific kind of perception to function, a compass that points not to a direction, but to a single, underlying truth.
Kholodnoye Kleymo
A "Cold Brand," the Kholodnoye Kleymo is a visible cybernetic brand of matte black cryo-ceramic, often placed on an operative's forearm or neck. It functions as a psychic heat sink. A specific traumatic memory is isolated, its core emotional charge compressed into the brand's cryptographic glyph shape. The implant draws the memory's emotional weight away from the user, storing it as intense cold. The operative recalls the event with total clarity but feels no trauma, only detached logic. It is a mark of a hardened RosNova veteran, a visible record of a harsh lesson learned, turning trauma into a source of unwavering focus at the cost of emotional numbness.
Letheia Booth
A sleek, upright pod of polished white polymer, the Letheia Booth is a public, automated kiosk for commercial memory-editing. Common in urban centers and manufactured by Shenzhen Ascendant, it offers a fast, automated, and cheap service. A user can suppress a memory for a fee or attempt to permanently excise it. People use them to erase embarrassing moments or minor regrets. The system is not precise, often corrupting related memories and leaving neural scarring. It is a cheap solution with a high hidden cost, a convenience that contributes to the wider Semantic Decay with every trivial piece of the past it helps someone forget.
Logos Mandate
A reality-enforcement engine operated by the Archive State, the Logos Mandate is a distributed network with a physical nexus, a ten-meter sphere of interlocking black ceramic plates. The system monitors the memory-data of the connected population, comparing it against the approved historical narrative, the Canon. When a deviation is detected, it generates and subliminally broadcasts a memetic patch, a counter-narrative that causes the original memory to lose its emotional weight and connection to a person's identity. It is a tool of total narrative control, pacifying populations by making inconvenient truths feel distant and irrelevant, like a story read once and long forgotten.
Mandatum Grid, The
A planetary social control network, the Mandatum Grid assigns every citizen a "Mandatum," a specific life-purpose, at birth. A central AI analyzes societal needs and uploads the necessary skills and knowledge directly into a person's brain, suppressing any memories or emotions that conflict with their assigned role. A citizen's status is visible via the color-coded light of a bio-port at the base of their neck. The system creates a perfectly efficient and rigid social order, eliminating dissent and friction. The cost is the constant, mass-scale memory alteration that generates immense Oblivion, a system designed to stabilize reality that is actively accelerating its decay.
Mnemonic Spool
A heavy, cylindrical device of dull Tungsten alloy, the Mnemonic Spool performs a violent, high-energy copy of a targeted segment of reality. It lifts an entire event-signature—sensory data, emotional spectra, object-purpose states—and weaves it into a removable crystalline Spool-Core. The process is imperfect, leaving a faint scar on the fabric of reality and thinning the original memory like a faded photograph. Agents use it for tactical data acquisition, but the recorded script is a fragile, linear echo lacking its original context. Viewing it can cause severe cognitive dissonance, and each use generates a small but measurable amount of Oblivion.
Mnemonic Veil
A persistent, atmospheric field of nanites, the Mnemonic Veil populates public spaces, forming holographic advertisements and abstract fields of light. The nanites passively scan the surface-level memories of crowds, feeding the data to a central AI. The AI then directs the Veil to project tailored memetic content—low-intensity memory-scripts designed to influence mood, implant desires, or generate feelings of civic loyalty. It is a primary tool for mass psychological engineering, reinforcing official histories and driving consumer behavior. The constant, low-level memory editing generates a "semantic fog" of Oblivion, a byproduct of a system that seeks to control the present by constantly rewriting the immediate past.
Neurotome
A handheld device of cold metal and sterile glass, the Neurotome is the primary tool of the Memory Wars. Its name means "nerve-cutter," and its function is just as precise and brutal. It targets the neural pathway of a memory and burns the connection, leaving a scar in the mind. The memory is not gone, but unreachable, an island cut off from the continent of the self. In the hands of a surgeon, it can excise trauma. In the hands of a state, it is a weapon of control, used to remove dissident thoughts and create a docile population. It turns the past into a commodity, a thing to be stolen or destroyed, representing the violation of the individual at the most fundamental level.
Pantsir-Reglament
A full-body environmental suit of interlocking, dark grey carbon-polymer plates, the Pantsir-Reglament is an active system for managing a soldier's mental state. Requiring a Karkas-7 spinal interface, the suit monitors the wearer's neural data for emotional spikes like fear or pain. It then suppresses the response with precise pressure and chemical injections. The memory of the event remains, but its emotional weight is severed and quarantined in hardened micro-drives. It allows RosNova's elite soldiers to endure immense trauma without psychological failure, but the long-term cost is the erosion of personality, creating emotionally sterile operatives disconnected from their own past.
Perception Filter
Not a physical object but a malware program, the Perception Filter is a weapon of non-lethal information warfare used by the Archive State. It targets a vehicle's or person's heads-up display, intercepting raw sensor data and replacing it with a fabricated, plausible feed. It can make a driver believe they are traveling in a straight line when they are actually moving in a circle. The deception is seamless and difficult to detect by standard diagnostics. Its only weakness is an observant person who trusts their own senses over their instruments. It is a tool of sabotage and delay, a weapon that attacks not reality, but the perception of it.
Permafrost Weave
A RosNova cybernetic implant, the Permafrost Weave is a network of fine, silvery-blue filaments visible just beneath the skin. It integrates with the user's nervous system, intercepting sensory input before it becomes a processed memory. It identifies patterns associated with trauma and wraps the memory in a shell of inert cryo-data, isolating it from its emotional weight. The user recalls the event with perfect clarity but feels no associated psychological distress. It allows soldiers to ignore grievous wounds, but the cost is severe emotional blunting. Users slowly lose the ability to process joy and empathy, their past a collection of cold, hard facts.
Poison Pill, The
An encrypted digital log from the archives of Dr. Elina Petrova, The Poison Pill is a file containing a critical secret about the Aletheia Kernel. Its name suggests a last-resort feature, a self-destruct mechanism or a way to sabotage the Kernel's primary function. In truth, it details the "mirror" function, the hidden backdoor Petrova designed to pivot the weapon's purpose. The file is a crucial piece of the puzzle to controlling or countering the Kernel, a ghost of intent left by its creator, waiting for someone with the right key to unlock its dangerous potential.
Polaris Vault Key
A small, physical key made from a dense, dark alloy, the Polaris Vault Key is an archaic piece of technology. Its complex, mechanical design corresponds to the final, physical lock on the exterior door of the Polaris Vault. Its security comes from its analog nature; it cannot be hacked, scanned, or duplicated by digital means. It is a single, unique object, a testament to a pre-war security philosophy based on physical reality. It is the final requirement to gain access to the Aletheia Kernel, its physical nature forcing a direct, high-risk confrontation for its possession.
Precept Index, The
A networked software system, the Precept Index manifests on hand-held data-slates as a stark, minimalist list of names with color-coded threat ratings. It does not predict criminal acts; it analyzes the structure of a person's memories, searching for patterns that conflict with approved faction narratives. It flags individuals whose memories are dangerously out of sync with consensus reality. Factions use it for preemptive redaction, taking flagged individuals for mandatory memory alteration. Its widespread use creates a culture of extreme conformity, a world where holding an unapproved memory is a pre-crime, accelerating the growth of Oblivion with every mind it "corrects."
Probivnik
A full-limb cybernetic prosthetic, the Probivnik is a tool for infiltration and sabotage. The forearm and hand are formed from a semi-translucent polymer containing a magnetically-contained shard of Oblivion. When activated, the arm projects a null-memory field, destabilizing the local memory-script and allowing the limb to pass through solid objects. It is used to bypass walls and strike through armor. Each use requires a lengthy recharge and slightly degrades the user's own memory. Catastrophic failure means the Oblivion shard breaches containment, erasing the limb from existence. It is a weapon that wields the void, a dangerous and unstable tool for breaking the rules of physical space.
Relay Antenna Protocol
A file of pure, corrupted data, the Relay Antenna Protocol is a digital Rosetta Stone. It is a decryption key, a ghost of a long-dead communication standard, its code fragmented by salt damage and data decay. Without this protocol, data fragments from the same pre-war era are unreadable noise. It is a critical piece of a larger puzzle, its only function to unlock the secrets of the past. Its rarity is its primary limitation, existing only on forgotten hardware in dangerous, derelict locations, forcing a physical, high-risk extraction for a single, vital piece of code.
Sacrificial Drone
A small, palm-sized, spider-like machine, the Sacrificial Drone is a disposable tool for tactical reconnaissance. Unfolding its multiple legs with a series of quiet clicks, it moves with silent, insectile purpose, scouting corridors and mapping security systems. It is designed to be expended, to trigger pressure plates and laser grids, allowing its operator to bypass traps from a safe distance. It is a simple trade-off: a piece of equipment for a piece of information, a small, functional sacrifice to clear the path ahead.
Signet Ocular
A full cybernetic eye replacement, the Signet Ocular is a tool for secure, non-digital message transfers. It appears as a polished sphere of dark polymer, its iris a fine, silver-white metallic mesh. It records a three-second sensory snapshot—a memory—and can then imprint that memory-script onto a physical surface through a focused particle field. An agent can record a message and etch it onto a mundane object, creating a physical dead drop that cannot be intercepted digitally. The ocular cannot alter the memories of a living being, only write them onto the inanimate world, a quiet, secret language spoken between spies.
Somatic Codex
A cybernetic endoskeleton of polished, off-white ceramic composite, the Somatic Codex replaces a user's organic bone structure, turning their body into a biological hardware platform. It runs a specific Identity Protocol, a software bundle of memories and skills issued by a corporate state. A worker receives memories of factory procedures; a soldier gains combat reflexes. The Codex actively suppresses the host's original memories and receives constant, mandatory remote updates. It is a tool of mass social control, producing a perfectly skilled and compliant population. The cost is the total erasure of self, the user's body becoming a terminal for the state.
Volkov's Chip
A small, smooth object of dark, dense polymer, Volkov's Chip is a physical backup of Sineus's pre-RosNova identity. It has no ports, no interface points; it is an inert, un-networked, and un-editable piece of archaic technology. Given to Sineus by his handler, Mikhail Volkov, it is a secret act of rebellion, a psychological anchor to a truth outside RosNova's control. It is a tangible piece of a past that officially no longer exists. Its possession is a critical risk, a secret that could cost Sineus his life, and a symbol of a loyalty that transcends factional doctrine.
Zaslon Duster
A heavy, full-length coat of dense, matte-black synthetic weave, the Zaslon Duster is a semantic camouflage system. Its fabric is interwoven with a micro-sensor lattice that reads the local memory environment—ambient data-ghosts, script-fragments, and memetic noise. An onboard processor synthesizes a counter-frequency, projecting a null-field that makes the wearer semantically indistinct to memory-based sensor networks. It is standard issue for RosNova infiltration agents, allowing them to move through data-saturated environments like a ghost. The camouflage is less effective in sterile, low-data zones, where the duster creates a detectable void, a patch of silence in a quiet room.
