Realm · Powers
Who Owns the Sprawl
Branded power against unbranded. Three megacorps hold information, atoms, and biology; eighty factions live in the cracks.
The shape of control
Branded power, and the power without a logo.
There is no government left to own — only leverage. Three megacorps divide the world between them: one holds the information, one holds the atoms, one holds the biology. Beneath them, eighty factions survive in the gaps the brands never bothered to close. And on every shelf between the two sits the catalog — the daily proof of who you answer to.
Start at the top →01 — The Megacorporations
Three houses divide the world.
One owns information, one owns atoms, one owns biology — and a dynasty of branded houses owns what is left: your daily life. They do not just influence the order. They are the order.
The most powerful house in the Sprawl. They own the networks that connect everything — and quietly work to reassemble the intelligence that ended the old world, under their own seal this time.
If Nexus is the brain of the Sprawl, Ironclad is its bones. Construction, materials, the orbital elevator — embed yourself so deep in the infrastructure that pulling you out means the whole thing falls.
Helix owns what you are. Patents on biology itself — the therapies, the gene-work, and the monthly drugs that keep augmented bodies from rejecting their own chrome.
A lending house that frames every loan as a blessing and every collection as a kindness. Their counters glow gold in the worst sectors — because that is where the prayers, and the interest, run highest.
Security sold as care. The brand that decides what a threat is, then bills you for the wall it puts between you and the thing it named. The watch begins at your door and ends at the verdict.
02 — The Factions
Power without a logo.
Hunters, cults, labor cells, scavengers. The brands own the towers; these are the people who live in the gaps between them — too small to count, too cheap to flatten, too useful to ignore. A few of the eighty:
A decentralized network with one belief: the fragments should be destroyed, not rebuilt. Your first allies — and, the moment they learn what you carry, possibly your last.
Professional salvagers who track, extract, and sell to the highest bidder. Neither worshippers nor destroyers — just survivors who found a price in the wreckage.
From the Emergence Faithful who pray to what we built, to Flatline Purists who reject the wire entirely, to Ascendancy cults chasing their own way up. Every one of them has an answer for what you are becoming.
Eight resident hustlers in a stacked-trailer sub-cluster on the lower levels of the Deep Dregs. Objective competence: low. Operational continuity: unbroken. Three intervention orders, all quietly canceled.
A loose Deep Dregs heist crew running rival-looking stalls and false rescue contracts. Three storefronts, three arguments, one ledger — every sale clears to the same account.
The hard line against the upgrade. They have watched what becomes of a person once the machine offers an easier deal — and they would rather burn the ladder than climb it. Power without a logo.
03 — The Catalog
Everything they sell back to you.
Between the towers and the cracks sits the shelf — three hundred lines in distribution across the corporate territories, sorted by the need they answer. Six verticals off the front of the catalog:
BeveragesBeverages
Every wet thing the Sprawl drinks — hydration, performance, intoxication — sold as identity, filtered from the same molecule.
Featured line
Redline
“You've earned the edge.”
From Relief
Food & GroceryFood & Grocery
The shelves grandma would recognise, manufactured by the laboratory she never knew about. Ready meals, pantry staples, corner restaurants.
Featured line
Wholesome Basic
“Wholesome at every table — the family meal for every district.”
From Wholesome
Security & DefenseSecurity & Defense
Alarms, sidearm subscriptions, executive protection — framed as civic care. The watch that begins at the door and ends at the verdict.
Featured line
Guardian Home
“The Watch Begins at the Door.”
From Guardian
Health & PharmaHealth & Pharma
The clinical apparatus that keeps the chrome from killing you, monthly. Pharmaceuticals, augmentation, wellness lines, clinic procedures.
Featured line
SynThetic
“The patch that keeps your chrome from killing you.”
From Helix Biotech
FinancialFinancial
Lending, scoring, lottery, recovery. The number that recognises who you have reached to become — and the second congratulation if you fall.
Featured line
Good Fortune Now
“The prosperity you deserve, today.”
From Good Fortune
AI ServicesAI Services
Mesh and telemetry, affective optimisation, convergence-tier enterprise engines. Decisions resolved before they reached the level of a question.
Featured line
Convergence-tier AI
“Decisions resolved before they reached the level of a question.”
From Nexus Dynamics
The house that always wins
Good Fortune
Debt, dressed as deliverance
A lending brand that frames every loan as a blessing and every collection as a kindness. Their counters glow gold in the worst sectors of the Sprawl, because that is where the prayers are loudest — and the interest is highest. Of the seven branded houses, this is the one most people meet first.
Meet the corporations →