Grey
Dialectical Hermeticist
"Sans Arcanists uses the latest in bonework technology in order to improve the standard of living for soldiers, survivors, and disadvantaged people the world over. Using a proprietary neural interface offering the best reaction time and strongest security, Sans Arcanists augmentations don't just give you your life back - they make it better.
Sans Arcanists - Because loss doesn't have to be the end."
- Billboard, Downtown Califresco.
The world is ruled by corporations. What little government remains, the Federal Union of Imeria, is hardly better than a puppet lending a veneer of legitimacy to proceedings and keeping the free market from descending into anarchy. Their control is assured by the Redline System.
A tiny, heavily enchanted chip of ruby; your Redline is implanted within days of birth and carries your medical data, bank details, ID, ephemeral keys, and GPS coordinates. It labels you as a Citizen, with access to insurance, healthcare, employment, housing - at the price of constant monitoring and loyalty to the corporation.
Anyone without the chip is a Blackline, unregistered. An unperson, relegated to slums, without any legal protections. But being invisible has benefits, and Blacklines are often hired by the corps for industrial espionage, the dirty work that can turn someone’s neighbours against them if they used branded and payrolled security staff.
The executive boards of the corporations are often filled by Magi - people born with the ability to manipulate mana, a force immanent in the world that can be bent to wondrous ends. Historically, this involved calling lightning on your enemies or puppeteering the king, but when Samuel Wilson invented the flintlock the playing field got a little more even, and Magi were barred from public office, registered first on paper and then with Redlines. But when all the best technology is built on manatech - electricity from tamed lightning storms, the world-wide information web of the Mindsea, advanced munitions used to exercise your constitutional right to protection from Magi - they still found ways into power. Of course, you also find Blackline Magi, those born outside the corporate-culture. Barely trained, dangerous, and often with a grudge, they become pillars of their slum communities; gang-leaders, terrorists, black-market manatechs, or mercenaries.
In the last thirty years, cybernetic augmentation using complex industrial sorcery has been on the rise. Now people either reject it utterly, get the bare minimum necessary to compete in an increasingly gemmed workplace, or decide they want to spend the rest of their natural life shiny and chrome. Direct Mindsea interfaces, wireless communication, military-grade body armour, and personal enhancements from charisma boosters to cognitive overclocking - anything is possible for the right price.
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Califresco was founded a little over two centuries ago, straddling the Nightvale Sound at the edge of the Antaen Sea. Established by a Magus named Malachi Gardiner - who styled himself as King Gardiner - it was inducted into the Federal Union of Imeria within ten years of foundation when Malachi's null-born son Lawrence sold his father out to the Ordinary Rule Party which then controlled the nascent FUI.
Young Lawrence was fascinated by technology and the promise it held for the ordinary man. While his police force - at the time not Federally subsidized - were notably hard on Magus residents, he still invited some pioneers in the fields of Manatech and engineering into the city.
Shortly before Lawrence's death by heart failure (he always stubbornly resisted offers of magical healing), Union Spire was completed and began powering the city. Governorship passed, by democratic vote, to Micheala Walsh. The Gardiners have not since held office, but the family is still a vital part of the city, having invested in many local businesses and donating to public works projects.
The city has still gone from strength to strength. It is currently the beating heart of the augmentation industry, and the old munitions factories remain in business in spite of a trend for artisan-crafted manatechnical firearms. However, the docklands have fallen into disrepair and criminality - the shipwrights are silent and empty, the steel mills under rust, warehouses fallow. Slums spread around the edges of the city, and most neighbourhoods under the cloud level are considered little better.
You are detectives in the Thaumatic Crimes Unit, and you're not liked. The one department in CPD with jurisdiction over Magi in a way that can threaten executives, you suffer from funding cuts, obstructive bureaucracy, and threats from above. You, personally, have been assigned here as punishment or out of misguided zeal.
Now all that remains to be seen is if you can make it work for you.
Six players - five detectives with one being de-facto department head, one player as consulting Magus (making the tech, analysis, and hacker rolled into one depending on your choice).
Can run with a minimum of four players.
Sans Arcanists - Because loss doesn't have to be the end."
- Billboard, Downtown Califresco.
The world is ruled by corporations. What little government remains, the Federal Union of Imeria, is hardly better than a puppet lending a veneer of legitimacy to proceedings and keeping the free market from descending into anarchy. Their control is assured by the Redline System.
A tiny, heavily enchanted chip of ruby; your Redline is implanted within days of birth and carries your medical data, bank details, ID, ephemeral keys, and GPS coordinates. It labels you as a Citizen, with access to insurance, healthcare, employment, housing - at the price of constant monitoring and loyalty to the corporation.
Anyone without the chip is a Blackline, unregistered. An unperson, relegated to slums, without any legal protections. But being invisible has benefits, and Blacklines are often hired by the corps for industrial espionage, the dirty work that can turn someone’s neighbours against them if they used branded and payrolled security staff.
The executive boards of the corporations are often filled by Magi - people born with the ability to manipulate mana, a force immanent in the world that can be bent to wondrous ends. Historically, this involved calling lightning on your enemies or puppeteering the king, but when Samuel Wilson invented the flintlock the playing field got a little more even, and Magi were barred from public office, registered first on paper and then with Redlines. But when all the best technology is built on manatech - electricity from tamed lightning storms, the world-wide information web of the Mindsea, advanced munitions used to exercise your constitutional right to protection from Magi - they still found ways into power. Of course, you also find Blackline Magi, those born outside the corporate-culture. Barely trained, dangerous, and often with a grudge, they become pillars of their slum communities; gang-leaders, terrorists, black-market manatechs, or mercenaries.
In the last thirty years, cybernetic augmentation using complex industrial sorcery has been on the rise. Now people either reject it utterly, get the bare minimum necessary to compete in an increasingly gemmed workplace, or decide they want to spend the rest of their natural life shiny and chrome. Direct Mindsea interfaces, wireless communication, military-grade body armour, and personal enhancements from charisma boosters to cognitive overclocking - anything is possible for the right price.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Califresco was founded a little over two centuries ago, straddling the Nightvale Sound at the edge of the Antaen Sea. Established by a Magus named Malachi Gardiner - who styled himself as King Gardiner - it was inducted into the Federal Union of Imeria within ten years of foundation when Malachi's null-born son Lawrence sold his father out to the Ordinary Rule Party which then controlled the nascent FUI.
Young Lawrence was fascinated by technology and the promise it held for the ordinary man. While his police force - at the time not Federally subsidized - were notably hard on Magus residents, he still invited some pioneers in the fields of Manatech and engineering into the city.
Shortly before Lawrence's death by heart failure (he always stubbornly resisted offers of magical healing), Union Spire was completed and began powering the city. Governorship passed, by democratic vote, to Micheala Walsh. The Gardiners have not since held office, but the family is still a vital part of the city, having invested in many local businesses and donating to public works projects.
The city has still gone from strength to strength. It is currently the beating heart of the augmentation industry, and the old munitions factories remain in business in spite of a trend for artisan-crafted manatechnical firearms. However, the docklands have fallen into disrepair and criminality - the shipwrights are silent and empty, the steel mills under rust, warehouses fallow. Slums spread around the edges of the city, and most neighbourhoods under the cloud level are considered little better.
You are detectives in the Thaumatic Crimes Unit, and you're not liked. The one department in CPD with jurisdiction over Magi in a way that can threaten executives, you suffer from funding cuts, obstructive bureaucracy, and threats from above. You, personally, have been assigned here as punishment or out of misguided zeal.
Now all that remains to be seen is if you can make it work for you.
Six players - five detectives with one being de-facto department head, one player as consulting Magus (making the tech, analysis, and hacker rolled into one depending on your choice).
Can run with a minimum of four players.
