After the Rip
Seventy-five years ago an antimatter test tore the world open. Four hundred million survivors live in the seams of that wound — mega hubs behind drone walls, market towns trading flux-salvage and rift-meat, villages that bury their dead near the well. The rifts pulse. The fauna come through. Travel kills. Somewhere under the largest hub lies a sealed pre-Rip record that says it was never an accident. Find it. Or do not. Either way the next pulse arrives in days.
The political tension escalates into open covert conflict as Director Marquand retaliates against the Rooted Villages' defiance, tasking Agent Thorne with destabilizing their operations. Simultaneously, Mara's desperate attempt to contain Kira's chronal energies fails catastrophically, unleashing a massive temporal surge from the Flux-Scarred Tunnel that further destabilizes the world. This surge, combined with the temporal whirlpool at The Long Road North Waystation, turns Aetherium Watch into an overwhelmed refugee camp, straining its medical resources and pushing its healers to their limits. The global temporal chaos deepens, affecting both the environment and the mental state of NPCs.
Live Events
Mara's Containment Field Fails, Kira's Energies Unleashed
Mara's makeshift containment field around the new rift in the Flux-Scarred Tunnel catastrophically fails, unable to withstand the escalating chronal energies. Kira, the Whisperer, becomes a direct, uncontrolled conduit for a surging temporal anomaly, causing massive distortions across nearby locations and drawing dangerous attention.
Aetherium Watch Becomes a Refuge for the Rift-Affected
With the temporal whirlpool at The Long Road North Waystation and the uncontrolled chronal surge from the Flux-Scarred Tunnel, Aetherium Watch becomes a desperate, overcrowded refuge. 'Doc' Wren and 'Doc' Thorne are overwhelmed by the influx of chronal psychosis patients and Glauk victims, as the outpost struggles to cope with dwindling resources and escalating instability.
Director Marquand Retaliates Against Rooted Villages
Incensed by the Rooted Villages' disruption of Atlas Authority supply lines and trade routes, Director Marquand orders Agent Thorne to escalate covert operations. Thorne is tasked with destabilizing Rooted Village infrastructure and sowing discord, using the escalating temporal chaos as a cover.
Rooted Villages League Escalates Resistance
Following Speaker Auria Lo's call for open resistance and Edda Mercier's strategic dissemination of pre-Rip information, Rooted Villages across the region begin to openly defy Atlas Authority mandates. Caravans bearing Atlas Authority markings are met with suspicion, and the Rooted prioritize internal trade routes, causing minor but widespread disruptions to Atlas supply lines.
Temporal Whirlpool Forms at Long Road North Waystation
As the chronal energies from the new rift intensify, a dangerous temporal whirlpool manifests directly adjacent to The Long Road North Waystation. Reality flickers violently, drawing panicked refugees from the breached Anvil Crossing Perimeter and attracting Glauk entities, making the passage through this area more perilous than ever.
cyrus: Confront the entity directly
The wall shuddered, then buckled inward, not crumbling but *tearing* as if the very stone were paper. From the rent emerged a colossal, angular form, less flesh and more solidified dread, its surface a shifting obsidian shot through with veins of raw, violet light. It wasn't merely walking; it was *
cyrus: [SKILL:Perception★] Assess threat's origin
As the terrified woman stumbled back, cyrus’s senses sharpened, cutting through the chaos of the crowd. Your Perception, raw but keen, pulled focus from her terror to the wall itself, where the rhythmic *thump-thump* now resolved into something far too massive for human feet. A tear in reality, shim
cyrus: Comfort the frightened woman
The booming *thump-thump* vibrated through the very stones of Anvil Crossing, closer now, accompanied by a low, guttural growl that scraped against the sky. A woman, her face ashen and eyes wide with terror, stumbled back from the wall, her hands pressed uselessly against her mouth as she let out a
cyrus completed a quest: [SKILL:Perception★] asses if anyone is paying atte
Cyrus's gaze swept over the bustling yard, your mind sifting through the cacophony of creaking carts and gruff voices. Your enhanced Perception immediately caught the subtle shifts: the way the outriders lingered a moment too long by the northern gate, their eyes tracking the incoming traffic, or th
Zaraki completed a quest: *I use the flux core to disrupt its energy field.*
Zaraki gripped the Flux Orb, its grimy surface vibrating with an eager thrum against your palm, and pushed it forward into the thrumming energy field surrounding the chute. A high-pitched shriek ripped through the air, sharp and metallic, as the Orb glowed with a frantic, internal light. The air shi
Anvil Crossing
townA walled caravanserai of mortared stone and salvaged shipping plate at the junction of the spine road and the southern split. Population fluctuates between four and twelve thousand depending on the season and the weather and what is currently on the rifts. The Long Roads Compact enforces a strict no-blood policy inside the gates, backed by Carrier outriders and a posting clerk who knows everyone's business. The freight scale at the center of the main yard runs day and night. Pre-Rip rail beds half-buried in dust form the southern wall. A relief map of the local rift mouths hangs at the wagonmaster's office, repainted weekly. The smell is grease, leather, woodsmoke, and the ammoniac tang of curing rift-meat from the kitchen at the back of the depot.
Aetherium Watch (Medical Outpost)
marketThe Aetherium Watch, once a bastion against temporal threats, now lies in ruins, a testament to the escalating Smilodon attacks and the failure to reinforce its defenses. The outpost's demise leaves a critical gap in chronal monitoring and a wealth of pre-Rip information exposed.
Anvil Crossing Perimeter
townThe neglected outer perimeter of Anvil Crossing, characterized by fractured stone walls, sickly scrub brush, and the lingering scent of ozone. The ground is churned and marked by massive claw gouges, leading into deeper shadows.
Atlas Citadel
castleThe largest surviving mega hub on the continent, four million souls inside walls that absorbed the worst of three pulse cycles and held. Drone gantries line the curtain wall — currently empty, the patrol grounded by flux interference no one will publicly diagnose. The Authority Spire rises forty stories above the inner ring, lit at night by microreactor-fed lamps that the Outer Ward residents see as a constant reminder of who has the warm rooms. Strict ID at the gates. Carrier convoys are tariffed and inspected. Rift-touched must register and wear a band. Atlas's economy runs on microreactor maintenance, drone manufacture, salvage refining, and the export of clean water to anywhere it can defend the pipeline.
Agent Thorne
Atlas Authority Covert Agent (posing as Salvage Contractor)
Apprentice Mey Tarsten
Convocation Researcher, Junior Stabilization Assistant
Archivist-Master Thalo Kress
Convocation Archivist-Master, Stabilization Research Lead
Archivist Theron
Convocation Archivist, Data Retrieval Specialist
Aris Thorne
Scout Commander for Atlas Authority, attempting to re-establish communications.
Beam-Sigh
The Witness Inside the Pale Rift
- *WORLD HISTORY: The Rip occurred 75 years ago on a Tuesday in late summer, when a pre-Rip coalition government conducted what was officially described as an antimatter warhead test. Seven primary rifts opened. Four point five billion humans died in the first three years. Population stabilized at 450 million. The rifts pulse on a 60-day cycle. The current generation of survivors is the third post-Rip. The cataclysm is taught in mega-hub schools as scientific accident. Rooted Villages teach it as collective punishment. Stormrunner Bands teach it as a wound that wants something. The Convocation teaches it as data. Atlas Authority does not teach it — it manages it.
- *SETTLEMENT TIERS: Civilization is organized in four tiers plus mobile bands. Mega hubs are a handful of fortified cities of 2 to 8 million, with microreactor power, drone perimeters, strict ID, and visible class stratification. Regional cities of 200k to 1.5M are mostly under mega-hub orbit but retain regional councils. Market towns of 5k to 50k serve as repair, barter, and seasonal salvage points along Carrier Routes. Villages and hamlets of 50 to 2000 souls hold most of the surviving population — they prioritize food, water, defense, and remembering their dead. Stormrunner Bands are mobile groups of 30 to 300 who follow pulse cycles and migration corridors. Each tier distrusts the others for reasons it can articulate clearly.
- *RIFT PULSE CYCLE (MASTER CLOCK): The seven primary rifts pulse on a roughly 60-day cycle that escalates in eight stages. Pulse Week 0-1: minor drone interference, flux devices unreliable, animals restless, salvagers report new small fissures. Week 2-3: flux storms, larger fauna visible at rift mouths, bitter water in low aquifers. Week 4-5: a new second-magnitude rift typically opens somewhere unexpected, megafauna migration corridors shift, dreams sync across geography. Week 6-7: convergence approach — multiple rifts pulse in phase, atmospheric ionization, the Stormrunners and the rift-touched start to share visions, ancient fauna behavior turns coordinated. Week 8 (convergence peak): something else pushes through. After convergence the cycle resets and the recovery weeks resemble Pulse Week 0-1 again. The current cycle is FRONT-LOADED — the anomalies of Week 1 are larger than typical Week 3. Veterans are afraid for reasons they have not all admitted to themselves.
- *FACTIONS — ATLAS AUTHORITY: The largest surviving mega hub, Atlas Citadel, presents itself as the legitimate civilian successor to the pre-Rip coalition government. Led publicly by Marshal Iren Vega, a career soldier who took the post after the previous marshal died in the Bone Field disaster. The real power inside the Authority is Director Saul Marquand, the head of Intelligence and Records, who oversees the sealed pre-Rip archive beneath the city. The Authority enforces strict ID, runs the microreactor monopoly, polices flux-device licensing, and maintains the only meaningful air patrol (the drones, currently grounded by interference). It taxes Carrier Routes traffic at Severance Pass and considers Rooted Villages charming but obsolete. SECRET: Marquand is the great-grandson of one of the pre-Rip engineers who lobbied for the warhead test. The Authority has been suppressing the original records for three generations. Marquand believes the truth will collapse what remains of civilization.
- *FACTIONS — CARRIER ROUTES: A loose confederation of armed caravan clans whose Long Roads Compact governs the spine roads between mega hubs and the southern coast. Led by Senior Wagonmaster Hesper Crane out of Anvil Crossing. Their toll forts at Severance Pass and similar choke points are the only thing keeping inter-tier trade alive. Carriers are pragmatists — they pay Atlas Authority tariffs and ferry Atlas-banned goods in the same week. Their motto is: a load delivered is a load delivered. They control most of the salvage market and most of the courier traffic.
- *FACTIONS — ROOTED VILLAGES LEAGUE: A defensive alliance of around four hundred small villages who practice what they call Rift Restraint: the belief that humans caused the Rip and should not exploit rift-derived materials. Led by elder councils, the most influential being Speaker Auria Lo of Greenfield Hamlet, a woman whose grandmother lived through the Rip and who keeps the only complete pre-Rip oral history east of Atlas. They trade food for tools and refuse to host the Convocation. They tolerate the Carrier Routes because Carrier convoys do not stay overnight. They lose two villages a year to rift drift, raiders, and crop failure. They are angrier than they look.
- *FACTIONS — STORMRUNNER BANDS: Mobile clans who follow the pulse cycle northward and southward by season, harvesting what the rifts cough up. About thirty thousand people across maybe ninety bands. Each band has a shaman who reads rift dreams; the most respected currently is Konar Voss-Hekma of Driftcamp Severin. Stormrunners have a higher proportion of rift-touched than any other faction — children born inside a pulse, adults exposed to a flux storm, the unlucky and the chosen. They despise Atlas Authority, trade with Carriers, and have a long memory for old grievances. They believe the Rip wants something specific and they argue about what.
- *FACTIONS — THE CONVOCATION: A semi-religious, semi-scientific order founded thirty years post-Rip by survivors of what used to be a major university. Headquartered in the Old Library under what is now the Convocation Quarter. They study the rifts, the prehistoric fauna, the pulse cycle, and rift-touched cognition. Led by Archivist-Master Thalo Kress, a brilliant man currently working on a stabilization protocol he insists is purely theoretical. SECRET: Kress has already trialed his protocol on three apprentices, none of whom returned to the Library. He has told the Convocation council they transferred to a satellite outpost that does not exist.
- *PREHISTORIC FAUNA: The rifts cough up fauna from deep time — the Pleistocene primarily, but older fragments too. Short-faced bears nearly four meters at the shoulder. Dire wolves that hunt in coordinated packs of fifteen. Woolly rhinos that breach defensive walls without thinking. Smilodon. Glyptodons. The occasional terror bird. Older still: arthropod things from before vertebrates, fungal blooms that should not metabolize this atmosphere. Most fauna die within weeks — the atmosphere has too much oxygen for some, too little for others, the wrong soil microbiome. The ones that survive concentrate around active rifts and along migration corridors. Hunting them is the second most dangerous job after rift-diving. Their meat, hides, and bones command extreme prices. Their behavior near a pulse peak becomes coordinated in ways no biologist can explain.
- *FLUX DEVICES AND SALVAGE: Flux is the post-Rip term for the patterned anomalous energy that rifts emit. Pre-Rip electronics retrofitted to harvest flux power are called flux devices — they run on ambient rift exposure and fail unpredictably during pulse weeks. Microreactors, the higher-tier alternative, are jealously hoarded by mega hubs. Salvage means going into rift-scarred ruins to recover pre-Rip tech, books, medicine, and occasionally rift-derived materials whose properties have no name. The deepest salvage sites are inside active rift influence zones. Salvagers who go in too often become rift-touched.
- *RIFT-TOUCHED: A small fraction of survivors — roughly one in two thousand — show signs of permanent rift exposure: silvered veins, periodic visions, mild precognition, dreams that match other rift-touched on the same night, occasionally physical changes that do not heal. Atlas Authority requires them to register and wear a band. Rooted Villages exile them, gently or otherwise. Stormrunner Bands prize them. The Convocation studies them. Most rift-touched congregate at the Veiled Cradle, a village inside a calm rift influence zone where gravity is slightly wrong and where a six-year-old named Mira has been correctly predicting pulse anomalies for two years.
- *THE RIP TRUTH CHAIN (MYSTERY): The cataclysm was not a test gone wrong. A faction inside the pre-Rip coalition government engineered the warhead detonation to succeed, believing that controlled rifts could end an emerging nuclear war and supply civilization with limitless energy. The records are sealed in The Spine, a partially-buried pre-Rip research bunker beneath Atlas Citadel, accessible only through the Atlas Underworks. The truth chain has four pieces: (1) the original engineering records, in The Spine — guarded by a still-active pre-Rip security system. (2) A working access key, held by Edda Mercier, a retired physicist now hiding in Greenfield Hamlet under Auria Lo's protection. (3) A sealed file proving Atlas Authority has been suppressing the records for three generations, held by Pernell Sky, a wandering archivist who keeps moving through Anvil Crossing. (4) Director Marquand's personal knowledge — he is the great-grandson of one of the architects, and he has decided the truth must stay buried because he believes revealing it will end Atlas Authority and therefore civilization. Multiple NPCs hold partial pieces; no single NPC holds the whole.
- *PLAYER FREEDOM AND ALLEGIANCE: There is no faction-selection screen. The player arrives at Anvil Crossing as a traveler with no declared loyalty. Reputation emerges from action: helping Greenfield earns Rooted Villages standing, completing a Carrier contract earns Long Roads goodwill, registering with Atlas Authority binds you to their ID, joining a Stormrunner ride binds you to a band, donating findings to the Old Library earns Convocation access. Factions track player standing independently. The player may build relationships with multiple factions in parallel until forced to choose. Some events at later pulse weeks force exclusive choices. The player may also attempt to become independent (a Wanderer, a Scout, a Salvage Captain) — the world recognizes those identities too.
- *THREE ENDINGS: (1) Seal the Source — Travel to the Singularity Memorial pilgrim path and trigger the counter-collapse device hidden beneath the original detonation crater. The cycle stops. Every flux device on the planet dies in the same instant. Mega hubs lose most of their auxiliary power. Tech regresses fifty years overnight. The rift-touched lose their visions. The Rooted Villages become the dominant tier within a generation. (2) Stabilize the Cycle — Recover the pre-Rip stabilization device from The Spine, install it inside the Pale Rift during Pulse Week 7. Rifts become smaller, more predictable, eventually mostly closed. Tech is preserved. The fauna stop coming through within a decade. But the device modifies the rift signature in ways the Convocation does not yet fully understand — rift-touched genetics will diverge from baseline human within two to three generations. A new species is being born. (3) Step Through — At Pulse Week 7 convergence, lead a small expedition through the Pale Rift at peak. What is on the other side is the pre-Rip world, frozen at the moment of catastrophe — possibly walkable. Possibly recoverable. Possibly a one-way door. Nobody knows whether anyone returns. The player who chooses this ending becomes a legend or a footnote.
- *ECONOMY AND TRADE: The Carrier Routes Long Roads Compact uses a paper script called the carrier-mark, exchangeable at Anvil Crossing, Ironsong Town, and the larger waystations. Atlas Authority uses centrally-issued credit chips tied to ID. Rooted Villages barter in food, hides, salt, and labor. Stormrunner Bands barter in meat, fauna parts, and rift-derived materials. The Convocation pays in books, medicine, and access. Prices spike during pulse weeks. Rift-meat is illegal to sell in Atlas Citadel but commands premium prices in every market town. Pre-Rip antibiotics are worth their weight in flux-cores. Microreactor parts cannot be bought — they are issued, audited, and recalled.