Fiction Primer: Reasons to Wager

From most worlds that it crosses, entering the Precipice is a bad gamble, at least for the people who actually have to set foot there. A world might be perilous to its inhabitants, but the Precipice contains countless utterly uninhabitable realms, with elements or laws of physics wholly hostile to the life of other worlds. Even in those places where worlds safely overlap, there are others fighting their own battles to survive. Newcomers may be viewed as competition, rightly or wrongly, and are often met with hostility.

This fiction primer delves into three reasons one might enter the Precipice… and the reasons others might send them there. It also serves as a preview of the four categories of missions (each associated with a card suit) in the forthcoming Open Alpha v1.2 Update.

To Probe the Terrain (seen in Arbelos) - ♠

The process of lowering the damaged descender was taking longer than Borread wanted, and he pawed through the charts impatiently. Patching Lodi’s leg up was a quicker job. The shrapnel had only grazed him, and while the lead mechanic didn’t look happy, he could walk.

Plotting a pursuit, on the other hand, wouldn’t be so easy. Getting the rest of the way down was making a mess of the damaged rail, so they needed to reach one of the backup rails to exit, elsewhere on the lip of the crater. He sketched absently with a pencil through the sections marked with the deeper probability fields. It would be risky to go after their attackers, but some risk was within mission parameters…

The sound of a camera clicked, and Borread looked up and smiled. “You never stop with that thing, do you?”

Riston gave a shrug, his grey eyes on the mists below. “It’s my job. I spent a couple of years watching every angle when I drove a trak. The glint of a spotter’s scope here, a smudge of smoke on the horizon there. Had to keep watching to survive, because the little things you miss can kill you. The habit stuck, so I might as well put it to use, right?”

Borread nodded.

“So, how’re we going to proceed here? Isn’t it protocol to break off when the mission goes this far off track? I want to understand, so I can tell the story better.” Riston let his camera fall to his neck, and pulled out his notepad.

“If this were an Astiagen operation, you’d be right. But these Varallen soldiers have their own chain of command. Sergeant Vedos is the ranking soldier, with chain of command straight down from the high house in Yarselo. I’m just here to ensure proper use of the M-Traks and report findings to S.I.”

“But you’ve got the maps.”

Borread looked at Riston in surprise. “Well, sure. These have sealed intel on them. This whole region is under info quarantine by S.I. I’m technically not supposed to let the Irregulars see them, but I doubt they know the jargon. Even I have to look up what these codewords mean half the time.” He gestured widely to the scramble of letters and numbers on the page. The reporter nodded.

“Should you be letting me see them?” Riston joked, pulling up his camera to snap a picture of the liaison.

“Oh, that’s no problem. I’m sure S.I. will be scrubbing your report of anything sensitive, right?”

From Arbelos Chapter 2: Hollow Chase by Max Brooke

Arbelos has only recently come into contact with the Precipice, and only in the region called the Icano Disaster Area. Dense fog and violent weather shrouds the area, preventing aerial surveillance. The only way to find out what lies at the heart of this phenomenon is to do so on foot (or on track, as case may be). This anomalous region represents an unknown element in the balance of global power between the Astiagen Coalition and the Oberect League, and that makes getting the lay of the land a priority.

The Astiagen Coalition has established some facts about the Icano Disaster Area, but it is loathe to share with anyone else. The Varallen Irregulars it recruits for its exploratory missions are kept largely in the dark about the nature of the domain they plumb, and even the “Military Advisors” charged with oversight have only fragmentary information about the features of the region.

There are other groups making more direct scientific inquiries into the nature of the Icano Disaster Area (and the Precipice itself), but they have their own reasons to want to maintain secrecy…

From a game mechanics standpoint, Missions associated with the Spades suit (♠) relate to surveying and controlling the ever-shifting terrain of the battlefield.

To Seek the Lost (seen in Swarmworld Arcturus) - ♥

There was a peal of thunder, closer this time than before. Maris had never experienced a real storm; the petals had artificial weather systems that produced clouds, wind, and rain, but every time they had a downpour, Mother mused that it was nothing compared to a real storm. Maris couldn’t imagine wind and rain capable of wiping entire cities off the map. If this place was a planet, and it had actual weather, she didn’t want to get caught in it.

When she caught up to Komodo, he was standing over another dead faun, shoulders hunched. This one’s body looked blackened and misshapen by intense heat, like it had fallen through a star. Its head, with a single eye on either side like the Komodo’s, was pointed directly skyward, mouth hanging open. A large coilgun took up most of the inside of the mouth. A lattice of deep grooves crawled from the eyes down the sides of the head. Maris brushed her fingers across the grooves; they were nearly as wide as her fingers, and they didn’t look like they were supposed to be there. For a moment, she imagined them glowing red.

The end of Komodo’s pointed snout slid down and nearly touched the dead faun’s own, and Maris couldn’t help but notice a resemblance.

“Is this your…”

She paused: because she didn’t know how to finish that sentence, and because, in the fossil-like shape of the dead faun, she could make out writing. Human writing. She wiped her hand across it, and the stone flowed aside in an uncomfortably unstonelike manner. Beneath, she could read a word in the same sharp serifs that she’d seen Zilant’s name written in: Beithir.

From Swarmworld Arcturus Chapter 4: Beithir by Brandon Perdue

For Maris, the trip to the Precipice might have seemed like sheer bad luck, and this is one way people end up in the Precipice. But for Komodo, the trip had another purpose that is also sadly common: the search for others lost between worlds. When someone vanishes into the Precipice, sometimes the only way to gain closure is to go in after them.

Missions associated with the Hearts suit (♥) relate to matters of personnel rescue (or elimination).

To Learn About the Past (seen in Harness) - ♦

At last Orlondo reached the top step and a shallow landing widened before him. While the walls of the cloven mountainside rose above Gatewatcher’s height, they were pierced here by another arch; a twin of the Heart Gate below. He stopped to heave deep, ragged breaths and looked beneath the archway. The tear was still there, with its erratic, dazzling images filling his mirrors. Now he could confirm where it rose from.

A great bowl spread out below him atop the mountain’s summit, cut and polished from the granite. The bowl’s sides were stepped, like some ancient theater, and the tiers were proportioned like the stairway. At its lowest point, there was a lip, perhaps three times as wide as the steps. Beyond that, at the center, yawned an open pit. The glowing effluence stretched up out of that. It was still roiling up from somewhere below, even though it had gradually receded from when he’d first seen it.

The Navel’s void was, as the old tales whispered, like a great well. Not the well, Orlondo reminded himself. Not the God-Well, which lay far distant, near the mouth of the Ribbon Sea, somewhere in the old Bronze Kingdoms. All the priests’ cycles agreed on that.  

And this does not look like the cold fire; but there is something beyond, he thought as he stared at the tear. In its bounds, he saw another vista blink into being. A pier of rock drifting in a void, with huge, dark chains tethering it somewhere out of view. In the distance, a similar mass of rock floated, likewise anchored below. Above both there was some sort of crystal shell, catching faraway light and reflecting it. Each shell was transparent, like the float globe fastened above his mirrors, yet on a far vaster scale. And unlike the varied thickness of the blown glass, these were perfect. Trees, grasses, and flowering brush sprouted within each of the domes, and in the closest one he could see some square-sided, columned building. It reminded him of the ruins below, but it was painted in vivid colors, not bleached by centuries of sun. 

Orlondo’s old master, Solvi, had once worked on an engraving for a book translation, The Orbis Restored. It held ancient speculations about the the Ribbon Sea, the world-shards, and the Shatters Above—chained so they would always trail along with the Orbis. Solvi’s etching looked crudely next to these. Was he seeing them now as they truly were, like through a looking glass?

From Harness Chapter 4: Possibility by Michael Gernes

When Orlondo stands at Navel’s threshold, he sees worlds beyond his own. Yet it is the past that draws him there, and the hope that in the history of the Peninsula and its fallen kingdoms of yore, he might find an answer to the problems of today. With war spilling across the Peninsula and threatening his home of Premonta, knowledge becomes weapon of great potential that might stay the ambitions of neighboring kings. Or what Orlondo discovers in the void might be his undoing.

Missions associated with the Diamonds suit (♦) relate to gaining crucial information on the battlefield.

For Material Gain (seen in ???) - ♣

In the next world we will be revealing, ventures into the Precipice are a matter of nation-building. Material resources, wealth, and prestige flow through the Precipice on the backs of great metal striders, and powerful forces contest one another to maintain their grip on these assets. Of course, projecting power through the Precipice is no easy feat, and requires travelling with a rugged convoy capable of crossing this tempestuous domain. And as with any effort to extract resources from faraway places through military force, the consequences are dire in ways all-to-predictable and totally unforeseen.

Missions associated with the clubs (♣) suit represent interactions with materiel and resources in the field.