The City over Orgystone V1.0 Text-Only

The City Over Orgystone
Unimaged Version 1.0
By Savestate

—

Intro:

You are born into a dark and dying city. Youngest child out of dozens, your mother’s psychic authority drives you to grow to maturity in the space of three days. Knowledge fills your head, ancestral memories stretching back more than a hundred generations. With it the cold awareness that there have been more than a hundred generations of your family in the past three centuries alone. The city is rotting.

You live in a large and opulent house. It is well-kept, and brightly lit, for all the darkness outside. But it is not safe.

You are largely ignored by your mother. In your three days of childhood, you are raised by the maids, slave creatures bred to task. Harsh social protocols present themselves, but you remember farther than your corrupted line- in your mind’s eye, you can see the sun rise on another world entirely. One of the maids sings to you, in the evenings.

You are brought sacrifices. Squirming lesser monsters, that you might kill to increase your own strength. In a day, you cut and kill until your arms ache.

On the fifth day, your mother and siblings commit themselves to the Orgystone, the final resting place for all the City’s souls. All wealth is spent, for the most absurd luxuries. When those are gone, they turn to the servants, and to each other. They strive for the greatest extremes of pleasure and sensation possible in material reality, and they die. Before she is eaten, one of the maids hides you away.

Five days old an adult, you find yourself alone in a dark house, in a darker city. The voices of the Orgystone call to you still, as they have since your birth, murmuring, pleading, demanding, that you only join them in pleasure beyond imagination. At the edges of your mind, tens of billions of departed souls clamor for your death. But you remember farther than even your species.

“-but look! Through the dark clouds, the stars still burn with an ancient promise. A hero will rise. Weather this storm, child- that is all anyone could ask of you. Weather this storm, and be ready to claim your future.”

—

Psionics:

As a System-recognized inhabitant of the City, you are furnished with an Oblivion Engine. This mindless instrument of psychic power encapsulates your consciousness and allows you to wield psionic abilities. When you kill a psi-active creature, your Oblivion Engine will attempt to absorb and digest its spirit. This is how an Oblivion Engine grows.

Having been provided many sacrifices by your mother, your Engine is at level 4, out of a safety-limited maximum of 10. Your psychic Intensity, the raw quantity of psychic power available to you, is at 8, and will double with each level up. You have access to four psychic Disciplines, and will unlock another Discipline with each level up.

Psychic powers are used through Disciplines, each a distinct method of psychic action. Using any psychic Discipline you possess is more natural and automatic than using an arm. Your psychic Intensity is a measure of how much power you have to throw around moment to moment; it does not naturally accumulate or become exhausted. Dividing it precisely between different Disciplines, or different manifestations of the same Discipline, is simple, even in units of less than one Intensity.

On unlocking a Discipline, it has a Mastery rating of 10. Higher Mastery generally corresponds to greater effectiveness, and the mental load of psychic power use is divided by your relevant Mastery. Each time you level up, all existing Disciplines develop a new Specialty of your choice. Specialties increase your effective Mastery within a narrower area, and may stack upon each other. A relatively broad Specialty could increase your effective Mastery by 3, while the most hyperfocused could increase it by as much as 10.


Select four Disciplines, and note the order in which they are acquired.


-Pure Psionics-
The most standard and obvious forms of psychic power. Defined by the effect they cause, and agnostic to the results of their use. Constrained by the user’s mental faculties, Pure Psionics can be almost arbitrarily precise and focused.

The impact of a Pure Psionic power is measured by its Delta. This is derived from invested Intensity multiplied by relevant Mastery.

Pure Psionics may be used at any location within your Manifestation Range, unless specifically interdicted. This range defaults to 10 times your base Intensity in meters.

Pure Psionics are susceptible to certain forms of direct psychic resistance. The most basic of these is Psi Static, a quirk of psionics which reduces the total Delta of hostile powers used directly upon a psychic’s person by 100 times their Intensity. Psi Static can be projected slightly beyond a psychic’s person, to a maximum of 1/10th their Manifestation Range, at a dramatic cost in efficiency.

Telekinesis
You can generate pure psychic force. Move objects directly, or generate shaped fields that exert force upon whatever intersects with them. Telekinesis disregards conservation of momentum, and may be safely used upon your own body for flight. With 100 Delta, you could comfortably lift half a ton of material, or fling around a shard of metal with speed and force akin to an anti-materiel rifle.

Thermokinesis
You can generate and destroy light and heat. Warm or cool an object linearly, or inject exactly enough energy to cause a state change. Thermokinesis can be used to forcefully stabilize temperatures within an object or area, preventing change with an equivalent effort to letting it happen and reversing the change. With 100 Delta, you could generate heat equivalent to burning a hundred kilograms of coal per hour, illuminate a circle thirty meters across like the noonday sun, or flash-boil a quarter liter of water into steam.

Cyclokinesis
You can bolster and drain energy currents. Provide power to electrical devices or prevent them from functioning, amplify tiny currents to electrocute someone, stir air particles into a churning windstorm. Cyclokinesis’s ability to effect a given type or expression of energy is determined by behaviour: it can be used to deplete exotic power sources as they circulate, but not the potential energy in a disconnected chemical battery. With 100 Delta, you could provide electricity for hundreds of suburban homes, or instantly cause many thousands of computers to malfunction catastrophically.

Clairvoyance
You can harvest information from material reality. Assess physical structure directly, or study light and sound and other emissions as effectively as any material implement possibly could in order to see much further than your normal psychic reach would imply. Clairvoyance does not interact with the world to draw information from it, and is often blind to supernatural forces. With 100 Delta, you could view the world from a dozen perspectives with all the acuity of the standard human sensorum, or sample the fine molecular structure of an object, or parse incoming light with the effectiveness of a large telescope.

Metacognition
You can generate abstracted thought. Fork or accelerate your own mind, do the same for others, or even grant a semblance of consciousness to the inanimate or non-sentient. Metacognition’s cost scales with the depth and richness of the thought it produces, and cannot increase the qualitative intelligence beyond the user’s own. With 100 Delta, you could accelerate your reflexes to fourty times the human norm, or lend human-level intelligence to a pack of dogs, or process mathematical formulae as effectively as a bank of servers.

Telepathy
You can exchange information between minds. Upload and download sensory input, conscious thought, episodic and semantic memory, and the like, and alter the contents of such data packages freely. You cannot erase information or directly alter what is held within another mind, and the exchange of skill or other components of mental architecture is beyond this Discipline entirely. Telepathy stores information on a wholly psychic medium, and can extend a person’s memory beyond normal physical limits or preserve it against normal deterioration. With 100 Delta, you could collect and archive the full perceptions of twenty normal humans, or download remembered text at a rate equivalent to some tens of thousands of words per minute, or incapacitate a dozen normal humans by overloading their minds with junk data and garbage noise.

Domination
You can influence and alter other minds. Erase memories, impose new loyalties and emotional states, or directly control a conscious being’s actions. Domination is useless against any mind defended by an Oblivion Engine, even at the greatest extremes of Mastery and Intensity. With 100 Delta, you could puppet five normal humans, overwhelm twice that number with supernatural fear, or spend a minute perfectly erasing the last ten of someone’s recollections.

Biomancy
You can shape and mutate living flesh. Accelerate healing and induce regeneration, resculpt your appearance, develop alien organs in response to extreme conditions. These are all lasting, semi-permanent alterations, with some impact on the genetic level, and biomaterial is conserved throughout the process. Biomancy can be used to alter the inheritable genome, but actually doing so remains complex. With 100 Delta, you could regrow a lost limb or completely alter your sex in twenty minutes, repair a gunshot wound in one, or block up four human hearts with malignant growths in the space of a second.

Synthesis
You can transmute matter into new and exotic forms. Fuse objects together, convert mud and filth into advanced hyperalloys, purify food and drink, or stockpile fissile material. Synthesis can produce exotic substances that incorporate psychic qualities, including the universal feedstock “SC matter” that can be technologically induced to bloom into several times its own mass in specific conventional matter and various “Negative Delta” materials that interfere with Pure Psionics. With 100 Delta, you could purify four liters of water of all but the most extreme contamination within a second, prepare enough U-235 for a simple nuclear warhead in 150 hours, synthesize a gram of SC matter in eight minutes, or convert a pile of scrap metal into a suit of space-age full plate in an hour and a half.

Projection
You can leave behind your physical body to exist in psychic form. Detect psi-active creatures and observe psychic powers directly, visit realms of the mind, play with the connection between mind and body. Projection allows you to briefly survive death-of-body, permanently losing one point of Intensity per second instead of dying until you find new flesh. With 100 Delta, you could spend a minute to teleport body to projected mind half a kilometer away, bring yourself and seven others into a dream or virtual world, ‘physically’ battle psychic entities with the strength of ten normal humans.


-High Psionics-
Meta-techniques to alter the use and expression of Pure Psionics. Of limited use on their own. Constrained by the user’s Mastery, High Psionics can make the impossible trivial.

Contingency
You may offset the manifestation of a psychic power on the temporal axis. Until its trigger conditions met, the power is undetectable- learning of its existence requires either precognition or observation at its origin- and it cannot be contested. When triggered, a Contingency may manifest at a location outside of your normal range. You may designate a set of up to Mastery boolean conditions for each delayed powers’ manifestation.

Permanency
With a minute’s effort, you may anchor a psychic power to a physical structure within your range to render it self-sustaining. As long as its anchor remains largely intact, it will continue to function at full effectiveness without any commitment of Intensity. Permanent powers can no longer be controlled directly like an active power, and use their physical anchor to determine manifestation range instead of your own. You may anchor weaker powers with proportionally less time and effort. Mastery determines the minimum volume of anchoring material; you require 60/Mastery cubic centimeters of material per permanent power.

Transmission
You may treat your active psychic powers as yourself for the purpose of defining your manifestation range. No matter how far you move away from it, you can maintain an active power for as long as you are willing to commit Intensity. Though you can cast out your powers arbitrarily far, your natural range and speed of thought somewhat limits the rate at which they can move. Any active power with an effective Intensity of at least 100/Mastery functions as a beacon.

Coherence
Your psychic powers inherit your will. They function as if they possess minds as intelligent as your own, with access to all your knowledge and mental resources proportionate to their committed Intensity. They are capable of altering their own manifestation, and will shape and optimize themselves to better express your will, cooperating with other active powers. Every 10/Mastery Intensity provides a quantity of pseudo-intelligence equal to your own.

Deconstruction
You may directly perceive and interfere with psychic powers. Within your Manifestation Range, you have a psychic sense to which Intensity and Delta are obvious and measurable, and with which powers can be recognized by form. If you understand a power well enough, you can interject with your own abilities to alter, suppress, or break it; this can be resisted with artificial complexity. You can shut down any psychic phenomena you fully comprehend that does not exceed Mastery/10 times your own deconstructive Intensity.

Materialization
You may manifest your Intensity as a physical substance. This material can be drawn upon to support periods of especially intense psychic activity, or used to fuel devices that wield psychic powers without your intervention. Psi-engines must be constructed to manifest specific Disciplines, and inherit the Mastery of their fuel’s source, limited by the quality of their design and construction. Other psychics using your psi-material are similarly limited by the lower of your relative Mastery ratings. One cubic centimeter of psi-material may contain up to Mastery seconds of your full Intensity.

Accumulation
You may gather psychic Delta without releasing it upon the world. A power with committed Intensity, held unused, collects and compounds its capacity to cause change. Its strength grows quadratically until it is unleashed, all its force rushing out like water from a broken dam. An accumulation of power can achieve potency up to Mastery times the nominal investment of Intensity and time, after Mastery minutes.

Overdraft
You may draw upon more Intensity than you possess. As your ‘available Intensity’ drops below zero, a negative pressure is formed that takes in the will of others. Your powers are influenced by a collective will, coloring and increasingly limiting their expression as long as this contamination lingers. Contamination accumulates and is purged only very gradually; Mastery does not make it fade any more swiftly, but can allow you to draw in even more. At its most severe, your psychic abilities may become as a sort of mythological figure with their own will, that you must bargain with and supplicate yourself to in order to act. You may draw upon a maximum of Mastery times your base Intensity.

Conversion
You may invert the normal relationship between psychic Delta and material phenomena. Where energy would be expended to produce work, you may divert its impact to instead contribute to a linked power’s Delta. Predictable and concentrated reactions are best for full efficiency- a nuclear reactor would serve well. You can obtain up to Mastery additional Delta from each megawatt of harvested energy.

Oblivion
You can generate and manipulate Oblivion, antithesis to all derivatives of consciousness. A thin membrane of Oblivion wrapped around a mind acts as an absolute mental barrier, but manifesting Oblivion outside of a psychological context is unfeasible: it cannot deny the use of psychic powers upon the material world. Even this Discipline struggles to recover anything encapsulated within Oblivion; it would sooner prove that there is nothing at all behind a barrier than successfully breach it. This Discipline is sufficient to construct Oblivion Engines, given an existing specimen to sample from and psi-active sacrifices with a total Intensity of at least 30 for each new Engine.


-Applied Psionics-
A form of psychic power disfavored by the Brede. Defined by the result it seeks to create, agnostic to the how of its function. Its psychic influence emanates from action, and is diminished over degrees of seperation. Efforts become more effective and more successful, less hindered by ordinary hardships, and capable of producing otherwise unattainable results.

Applied Psionics amplify existing non-psychic functionality, but scale only sublinearly with greater Intensity and only poorly and indirectly with other psychic powers. They are measured by discrete Magnitudes, with Magnitude 1 representing an Intensity of 1 and each higher Magnitude representing an Intensity 10 times greater. Mastery contributes to Magnitude: At the thresholds of 10 Mastery, 20 Mastery, 50 Mastery, and 100 Mastery, Magnitude is increased by another step. With each higher Magnitude, the productivity of your efforts is increased by a factor of 4, complicating factors are mitigated a step further, and the lingering psychic shadows of your actions grow more powerful.

Normally, developing Mastery in a Discipline of Applied Psionics leads to the simultaneous development of skill within its domain. Mastery acquired from the evolution of an Oblivion Engine grants this skill artificially. At Mastery 10, this roughly equates to the peak of ordinary humanity, someone with decades of diligent study behind them or some rare genius. Using this artificial expertise is natural and automatic; it would be more difficult to disregard it and its habits. Even when Specialties fail to provide additional Magnitude, they can grant significant additional expertise.


Animal Husbandry
Within the domain called “sustainable exploitation of base creatures”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You could raise a breed of animals whose bodies incorporate but do not produce certain exotic materials, and in bolstering their growth and reproduction obtain more of those materials. As early as Magnitude 3, breed new psi-active species that can grow to match your own Intensity, raise prize specimens that surpass what material biology alone would permit, tame and train feral adults, use females of one species as incubators for males of wildly different others.

Gardening
Within the domain called “dominating territory through sculpted lands”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You could create a domain that lends you strength and saps that of your enemies. As early as Magnitude 3, create lush gardens on dead worlds, preserve your lands against centuries of abandonment, turn thorny brambles into an effective barrier against technologically advanced intruders, grow trees that fruit continuously in great abundance.

Artisanry
Within the domain called “crafting immaculate items”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You could assemble a sink that needs no plumbing hookups in order to provide clean water and dispose of waste. As early as Magnitude 3, construct fully effective jet engines with measurements inconsistent by several millimeters, accelerate data exchange speeds within a computer far past the speed of light, bake simple flour into supernaturally wholesome and nourishing loaves that keep indefinitely, sculpt loose chunks of brittle crystal into exceedingly tough and sturdy tools.

Architecture
Within the domain called “developing isolated structures”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You could build a fortress that defends against the intangible, keeping out even psychic powers as long as its walls stand tall. As early as Magnitude 3, create buildings that need no foundation, lay down walls of ordinary brick that can withstand at least a single massive explosion, modestly distort the internal dimensions of a structure, discern the locations of any secret rooms incorporated into a building’s structure.

Navigation
Within the domain called “establishing paths of traversal”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You could curve space all around the boundaries of a hidden grove until there is only one way in or out. As early as Magnitude 3, find hidden paths to walk to a floating island, chart an impossibly short journey for others to follow, helm a sailing ship through windless seas and devastating storms without trouble, slip free from an unbreakable coffin.

Survival
Within the domain called “preservation of self”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You would know not to join with the Orgystone. As early as Magnitude 3, find basic nourishment in a barren void, dodge a room-filling explosion without leaving the room, identify people whose plans would see you ruined, excise a nanoswarm rampaging through your body with only a scalpel.

Battle
Within the domain called “victory in battle”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You could augment a war machine of obscene size, so long as you were the sole pilot. As early as Magnitude 3, cut an opponent that is formless and immaterial with a common sword, duplicate a grenade’s impact across dozens of targets, reduce effects that would defeat you instantly to mere grievous wounds, exponentially increase the difficulty of resurrecting an opponent you have slain.

Warfare
Within the domain called “controlling the shape of warfare”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You could develop doctrines that offer unnatural success and fortune to militaries that follow them strictly. As early as Magnitude 3, assemble dumb animals into a reasonably competent combat force, develop oddly-shaped mecha as a modestly superior alternative to sensibly-designed tanks, operate a large fleet effectively on a fraction of the supply it should require, implement sneaky tricks that render a technology like radar largely ineffective for both sides of a conflict.

Infiltration
Within the domain called “forestalling awareness”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You could publish misinformation that leaves readers incapable of figuring out electricity. As early as Magnitude 3, become effectively invisible, exponentially increase the difficulty of connecting two alternate identities, conceal a sky-piercing tower as well as a buried bunker, render your speech unintelligible to unwanted listeners.

Diplomacy
Within the domain called “mediating cooperation between people”, you may support your actions with psychic influence. You could create contracts that do not bind or restrict behaviour, but lend strength to those that would follow the spirit of the agreement. As early as Magnitude 3, communicate effectively with beings that lack any shared language or communication medium, briefly combine with another person to pool your powers, act as a supra-ideal node of democractic governance, render your own sincere honesty obvious and irrefutible.

—

Companions:

Somehow, you don’t end up staying alone for long. You’re lucky enough to find some people that truly care about you, that will stand with you against the dark. Together- that’s how you can survive.

Choose two Companions.


Maddy
One of the maids that raised you. Determined not to leave you alone, she managed to survive where all the other maids were eaten. By the standards of the City System, she’s only a monster. (Her line actually descends from Earthly canines.) Fully sapient and capable of speech, but unrecognized as all monsters are, left without Oblivion Engine or System privileges. She loves you as her own child, and is willing to do the impossible to see you grow strong and happy.
-Psi-Active, Intensity 2/2
Self-Sustenance 1

Nameless
One of your sisters, whose strong self-preservation instinct drove her to flee the family home a year before your birth. Abandoning all contact with people allowed her to avoid your family’s fate, but allowed the City’s creeping corruption to break her in another way, leaving her unable to communicate. Mind as sharp as ever, she found you, knowing a solid interpersonal relationship would protect you both. For all her strength, she’s clearly terrified. If she thought running away would work, she wouldn’t be letting you stay in the City.
-Oblivion Engine, Level 6
Survival 10 (Specialties: Evasion 3 + Awareness 3 + Identity 4 + Oblivion 7 + Oblivion Engine 10)
Battle 10 (Specialties: Ambush 3 + Resistance 3 + Immaterial 5 + Degenerated 4)
Navigation 10 (Specialties: Escape 3 + Path-Closing 4 + Interstellar 5)
Infiltration 10 (Specialties: Intention 3 + Vehicle 2)
Metacognition 10 (Specialties: Reflex 5)
Clairvoyance 10

Melissa
A young woman from the Champions. Having been raised to adulthood in a stable, wholesome, nurturing environment, growing naturally over 18 years without any psychic acceleration, she is incredibly well-adjusted, the product of another era entirely. Knowing she could not seclude herself forever, she has ventured out into the wilds of the City to see it for herself, and maybe do some good, make a few friends. She has well-warranted confidence, with over a hundred tons of advanced hardware brought with her and hundreds more left behind at her home. Badass mech pilot, technological savant, and self-avowed comedic genius, she’s asserted that you’re lonely and need a friend.
-Oblivion Engine, Level 6
Cyclokinesis 10 (Specialties: Electricity 3 + Generation 2 + Vibration 3 + Depletion 2 + Logic Circuits 4)
Synthesis 10 (Specialties: SC Matter 6 + Supermaterials 2 + Negative Delta Materials 4 + Fissiles 4)
Materialization 10 (Specialties: Cyclokinesis 5 + Cyclokinesis 5 + Cyclokinesis 5)
Permanency 10 (Specialties: Cyclokinesis 5 + Cyclokinesis 5)
Coherence 10 (Specialties: Digital Logic 4)
Artisanry 10

Relity
A thousand years ago, the souls of the departed would often leave the Orgystone to be reborn in new flesh. One day, this stopped happening. There was a princess who lost a friend to a terrible accident. For all she pleaded, her friend would not return- instead, she demanded the princess and her remaining friends abandon material existence and join her forever. The princess saw something dark and terrible that day, and quickly commissioned psychic prisms that would encase and protect a person’s soul, prevent them from being drawn into the Orgystone. A horde of monsters destroyed her kingdom before her subjects could be protected, but the princess and her closest friends were preserved. Now reborn, her memories are faded and her powers are gone, but she holds on to what is truly important. She’s going to stick with you no matter what, because she’s pretty sure it’s critical to finding at least one of her reincarnated friends.
-Oblivion Engine, Level 4
Diplomacy 10 (Specialties: Friendship 4 + Love 4 + Redemption 5)
Gardening 10 (Specialties: Social Territory 4 + Purity 4)
Biomancy 10 (Specialties: Healing 3)
Overdraft

Sophie
A former soldier from the self-proclaimed “Eternal Empire”, a warband formed some 15 years ago. Born to fight and die, raised knowing only unquestioning obedience, she had no idea there was any other way. Until one day, she woke up. Abandoning her role, leaving her past behind, she fled into the city a new woman. Not quite a pacifist, she claims to abhor purposeless violence but will fight and kill without hesitation as soon as it seems necessary. She sees something in you that needs to be protected.
-Oblivion Engine, Level 4
Thermokinesis 10 (Specialties: Incinerate 4 + Incinerate 4 + Anti-Heat 5)
Clairvoyance 10 (Specialties: Targeting 5 + Visual 3)
Transmission 10 (Specialties: Clairvoyance 5)
Biomancy 10

Husc
Thousands of years ago, in another world entirely, a magical kingdom was protected by twin spirits of light and darkness. They were like sisters; they were lovers. One day, invaders came like none before. The kingdom fell, and Husc, spirit of darkness, was sealed away inside her own shadow. What happened next she refuses to say, but now she’s stuck in the City. In fact, she’s been in the City for hundreds of years, failing to draw attention. Lacking any obvious solution, she seems to think if she just waits long enough, everything will resolve itself in her favor. Apparently you’re fun to hang around with, so she won’t be leaving you alone.
-Spirit of Wind and Darkness
Elemental Mastery: Wind and Darkness
Magical Material Conjuration: Wind and Darkness
Speed of Dark
Immunity to Conventional Weapons
Rapid Regeneration
Dark Spirit Resurrection

Helena
An otherwise ordinary inhabitant of the City who stumbled across a philosophy towards life and pleasure that insulates her from corruption. Despite indulging in the greatest extremes of sex and fetish behaviour, she and her partners are undegraded. Wherever she goes, she seems to bring out the best in others, and in the world itself. Small hordes of monsters have come after her, and been not destroyed but uplifted into tribes of new people. She’s not blind to the state of the City, but somehow she’s full of hope anyway. Apparently she thinks you need her by your side.
-Oblivion Engine, Level 5
Animal Husbandry 10 (Specialties: Sex 4 + Aftercare 3 + Uplift 3 + Defense 3)
Gardening 10 (Specialties: Eroflora 5 + Comfort 3 + Invigoration 3)
Diplomacy 10 (Specialties: Inspiration 3 + Clarity 4)
Navigation 10 (Specialties: Where You Are Needed 5)
Artisanry 10

V’nessa
An alien from beyond the City, born around another star. Crashed and stranded here, on what can only be the work of some elder race, she’s remarkably unworried. The City System fails to recognize her as a person worthy of an Oblivion Engine, but her people have been studying psionics for more than three hundred years- she has her own power. Her species naturally resemble formless slime, but can merge with other creatures through natural psychic symbiosis. She’s already wrapped around you, and though she’s fine generally taking the backseat, she won’t accept indecisiveness, and the outfits you wear are no longer yours to select. You’re not the first intelligent alien she’s met, but something about you is especially cute.
-Psi-Active, Intensity 123/198
Symbiosis 10
Bioalchemy 5
Adhesion 2

AN-CR
An intelligent android built almost a thousand years ago. She’s lived through many eras of the City’s history, and she’s confident this won’t be the last. If you let her, she’ll tell you all about the greatest horrors of the past millenium, and the ways they were inevitably overcome. She has what feels like endless stories to tell, and a lesson in each one. As long as you’ll let her, she’s going to stick around to help you find your way.
-Anti-Psi Construction
Psi Engines

—

Location:

The City is a big place, encompassing just over 240,000 square kilometers of territory at ground level and stretching high into the sky and deep into the ground. Traversing the City can be difficult and dangerous, with monsters everywhere and millions of corrupted madmen lurking in the shadows. You find yourself at a specific region of the City, far from its heart- from that great crystalline monolith stupidly called the Orgystone.

Choose one.


Starlit Horizon
The City is bounded on its sides by walls of folded space, mirror-like barriers that reflect all forces backwards onto their source. At ground level, the walls appear solidly cylindrical, but as you ascend higher, they curve outwards to an exponentially increasing degree. Three hundred kilometers above the surface, what were walls become the ground, an endless flat expanse reflecting the distant stars above. Enough pseudo-gravity remains even this far out to keep people from floating off, but the lack of atmosphere can pose a problem for the unprepared. Out here, you have all the space and solitude you could want.

Warrens
The City System allows for the direct purchase of all sorts of goods, up to whole prefabricated houses. What it won’t do is deconstruct an unwanted building for you- any building you want to remove has to be dismantled the hard way. The Warrens are the result of three thousand years of people stacking new homes on top of and in between the old, a maze of decrepit luxury housing that spans much of the City, just below the nuclear devastation of the surface. These spaces are cramped and labyrinthine, and home to many, many monsters.

Webbing
The Architecture Discipline trivializes the construction of floating structures. When people want to live away from others, without losing access to sky or atmosphere, the obvious answer is to go up. Now, a network of ungrounded buildings and makeshift paths spans much of the City’s airspace. There might not even be a million sane people left in all the City, but this is the best place to find them. Lights cast out into the darkness can reach far.

Imperial Waste
The far edge of a self-proclaimed Empire’s territory. The warband uses mind control and intensive breeding programs- every woman a broodmare- to build massive armies, but already it crumbles. Even without the City’s corruption degrading their leadership, psychic domination in whatever form it takes inevitably fails when used on any large scale. The little empire won’t last another decade- people have already started waking up. Overhunted of monsters, troops withdrawn to fight rebellion, this little stretch of surface territory has grown quiet and empty, ready for someone new to lay down roots.

The Pit
The walls of the city draw closer together as you descend below ground level. Some thousand kilometers down, they narrow to less than a kilometer apart, and the normal rocky groundfill disappears. The Pit is empty and endless, but has been divided into segments over the ages, great gates built to take advantage of the Pit’s natural chokepoints. Many of these gates can no longer be opened, and they tend to be difficult to bypass even for those with great power. Trapped together, those groups that survive and hold on to themselves are able to establish and maintain solid communities, tribes of a few dozen to a few hundred living together in the darkness.

Sunshroud
The City was lit by a great artificial sun, before a class of nobility rose that drew upon its radiance to fuel their own workings. For hundreds of years now, the sun has hung in the sky a blackened shadow of itself. The palaces of the solar nobility occupy all the interior of that dark orb, and will not allow you entrance, but a great shell of decrepit infrastructure remains all around its exterior. Amongst this ancient machinery, you are defended from outsiders by weapons and barriers fueled by the sun itself, and have opportunity to draw upon some small fraction of its energy.

Champion Ruins
The Champions were an order that fought to defend the City’s people since before the corruption was recognized. For almost three hundred years, they warred against the darkness pouring from the City’s heart, not once straying from their ideals. All the terrors of the City seemed drawn to them, driven to destroy the Champions and all they stood for especially. These ruins are but one of many sites where the Champions were pushed back, mounting losses forcing them to cede ground. All around the ruins, monsters and maddened cultists abound, but the deepest bastion remains unbreached.

—

System Shop:

As a System-recognized inhabitant of the City, you have certain privileges. Amongst them, access to the System Shop, an automated storefront available anywhere within roughly 300,000 kilometers of the City’s heart. Loose items may be sold directly to the Shop, and purchases appear through teleportation.

Almost anything short of a living creature may be sold to the Shop, but only certain things are attributed value. Various kinds of exotic matter, especially psi-active substances. Various monster organs with specific properties. Various materials with a specific composition, such as a certain blend of concrete or a particular alloy.

The System Shop directly sells a long list of goods. Foods, medicines, bulk raw materials, infrastructure up to and including whole prefabricated mansions, all sorts of consumer goods. What it does not sell is powered technology- anything driven by more than muscle power- though it does offer items incorporating monster organs that can provide light, heat, water purification, and so on through the psychic qualities of those materials.

The Shop can additionally be used for anonymous trade between people. Objects are registered based on their evaluated qualities and listed in a searchable subsection of the Shop. Here, you can obtain seed material for growing certain kinds of monster, Permanency based psychic artifacts, Materialization formed psychic material, and similar. There are variable fees on all interpersonal exchanges.


Example Prices:
Complex Material (Food, Clothing, Cocaine) – 2 Credits/Kilogram
Simple Material (Water, Concrete, Gold) – 1 Credit/10 Kilograms
Exotic Material (SC Matter) – 1+ Credits/100 Grams
Devices (Eternal Lamp, Everburning Stove) – 12 Credits/Ea
Housing – 520 Credits/Room

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Income:

You were left without any money or supplies. Your resources might still be such that you don’t even need anything the System Shop provides. But depending on your abilities, there are several ways to gather wealth and Exp. These are only some of the most obvious examples.


Synthesis
For every 55 Delta allocated to Synthesis, you can earn one Credit per day by transmuting and selling exotic matter. With Permanency, a single minute’s work can provide you passive income equal to your maximum active income.

Animal Husbandry
Raising and culling monsters for their valuable flesh, you can expect a basic income of 0.5 Credits per day, as well as some Exp. For each Magnitude of Animal Husbandry above 1, this income is quadrupled. With direct and personal involvement in the breeding process, you can quadruple your income again without any additional investment. Alternatively, with massive amounts of space and infrastructure, you can increase your income as much as a thousandfold.

Hunting
Monsters are generally inferior to anyone with an Oblivion Engine. They only ever have a handful of instinctive Disciplines, and never any of the High Psionic arts. The most powerful monsters may possess an Intensity approaching 800, but such creatures take decades to grow. The overwhelming majority will be less than a year old, with an Intensity no greater than 30; many will have an Intensity as low as 1. With a combat-effective build, you can expect a minimum income of 40 Credits per day, as well as some Exp. Expect to at least double your income with each level up. Local monster populations will affect your income significantly.

Trade
If you have a Discipline such as Permanency, Materialization, or Artisanry, you can earn significant sums. The wealthiest individuals have massive passive incomes from Synthesis and Permanency, and in dominating the markets they drive up your own sale prices. You can easily earn several hundred Credits per day, if you have any really useful product to sell.

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Leveling:

Each higher level takes three times as much Exp as the last. Exp gained from a kill is directly proportional to the creature’s psychic Intensity. Reaching Level 10 requires psychic sacrifices with a total Intensity of 885,690.


The standard method of growth is through Animal Husbandry, with direct and personal involvement in the breeding process. Through this method, a person can expect to reach Level 10 in the space of twenty years.

Lv1 0 Days
Lv2 101 Days
Lv3 177 Days
Lv4 405 Days
Lv5 576 Days
Lv6 1,088 Days
Lv7 2,626 Days
Lv8 3,779 Days
Lv9 4,644 Days
Lv10 7,239 Days


Hunting monsters is viable wherever their populations are high, which is most of the City in the current era. Through this method, a person can expect to reach Level 10 in the space of ten years.

Lv1 0 Days
Lv2 82 Days
Lv3 193 Days
Lv4 346 Days
Lv5 553 Days
Lv6 836 Days
Lv7 1,222 Days
Lv8 1,748 Days
Lv9 2,465 Days
Lv10 3,443 Days


With the personal efforts of someone already at Level 10, you can reach Level 10 in half the time with much less work.