Age 1 of 9 · Local scale · 1-2 hours
Street Hacker
Everyone starts somewhere. For you, it's a cramped room with stolen power and salvaged tech. But every empire begins with a single line of code.
Identity
A nobody. A salvager who found something they shouldn't have. You live in the cracks of the Sprawl, invisible to the powers that rule this world. You have no name that matters, no connections that protect you, nothing but desperation and a strange piece of code whispering in your neural implant.
Story
You discover the ORACLE shard during routine scrap work in The Deep Dregs. The moment it interfaces with your implant, everything changes. You see patterns in data you couldn't see before. Networks reveal their secrets. But you're not the only one who felt that activation pulse. Someone is looking for what you found.
The Conflict
Survival vs. Discovery — You need to stay alive. But the shard shows you things—opportunities, secrets, power. Every time you follow its whispers, you expose yourself. Every time you play it safe, you stay nothing.
"Is this thing in my head a gift, a curse, or something waiting to hatch?"
Key Moments
- The Discovery: Finding the shard. The first interface. The first vision.
- First Contact: The Collective reaches out. They know what you found.
- First Hunt: Someone else is looking for ORACLE fragments. You see what happens to those who are found.
Faction Relationships
- Nexus Dynamics
- Don't know you exist yet. That's your only advantage.
- Ironclad Industries
- Background presence. They built the infrastructure you scavenge from.
- The Collective
- Your first contacts. They recognize something in you. They offer help—but their help comes with ideology.
ORACLE shard
Dormant but awakening. The shard communicates in fragments—error messages that aren't errors, dreams that feel like memories. It's learning you as you learn it.
How it played
- Manual and constrained — Every action requires direct input
- Resource scarcity — Struggle to get basic materials
- Learning the systems — Tutorial concepts introduced naturally
- Small wins feel significant — Your first automated process is a breakthrough
Age milestone: Establish your first automated income stream and control at least 3 production chains running simultaneously.