Okay, so, you're here...now what? Now...you start getting to know the actual place! This page is an introduction to the planetcity of Timil, the Below, and some key people and places you'll encounter here in Luridity. Some key terms, too, are provided in the Luridity Words section!
Ready? Let's descend...
"hold up did that sound ominous to anyone else? dani, this is LURIDITY, u r supposed to say something like 'let's penetrate the below'. bah, u know wut lemme rewrite this"
Right-o. Wristcomp's nice and tight, you're braced at the entrance to the Below, but now you need to ease your way inside! No need for booze to lubricate your social friction, just use the new enabler lore-dic! It's a dic tionary with extra d irections, stuffed to the hull with grade A tips. Go up and down as fast or as slow as you like on this page until you're satisfied that you've learned enough to fit in.
Look out Below, there's a newbie coming!
"You are a menace, Fate."
"sorry wut? can't hear you over the applause"
A sudden burst of tinny, pre-recorded audience cheering can be heard in your general vicinity. It attracts attention, but you're still close enough to Ground Level that glazed looks bounce off of you as working folks scurry to their next destination.
In the lowest levels of the Upwards and the highest level of the Below, most keep their heads down to better achieve the daily rote "get-home" or "get-to-work" grindset. Avoiding eye contact with strangers is as much for safety as it is conservation of time. Curiosity costs kitsch and minutes that can't be spared.
Besides, if they wanted to watch strangers they could get paid for it, maintaining the hovering and omni-present drones, some of which even now surreptitiously turn toward you and adjust the zoom on their lenses.
You step back into a shadowed nook to review the orientation guide that's just appeared on your wristcomp.
Luridity is the vast, living galaxy in which you find yourself. It is divided into six massive Zones, each made up of a seemingly limitless amount of star systems--so many, in fact, that most have yet to be fully explored.
Perhaps you'll wind up in another Zone of the galaxy eventually, but to get new folks like yourself oriented quickly upon arrival, this guidebook's focus is the planet on which you find yourself, in one Zone of something much, much bigger.
Located in the Centralvest Zone of Luridity Galaxy, Timil is a planet, if you can believe it. On approach, it looks entirely too metal-encrusted for something that once had continents.
Every bit of its surface has been usurped by a city so vast it wraps the entire globe. You're standing on a sprawling, vertical ecumenopolis where conglomerates rule supreme.
The corporate Elite hoard a clean atmosphere and a clear view of the stars in exquisite suites and penthouses atop ever-climbing skyscrapers, while the folks working in their factories, shops, and offices toil on every floor beneath their feet, all the way to the ground. As you might expect, the further your apartment is from the top, the harder you'll be working to keep it.
And then there's the Below.
Beneath the "surface" is an entire undercity of people left behind in the name of progress. Decades of corporate purges down here have broken communities, shattered families, and devastated infrastructure, but somehow we keep on keeping on. Survival relies on improvisation, spite, and chosen family in equal measure.
Timil divides by class incidentally.
People are simply abandoned downward as it grows.
Concrete and hardsteel walkways stretch across the entire planet's surface. It's dotted with translucent elevator shafts, traversed by skiffs for non-linear distances, sturdy enough for shipping trucks to get to where they need to be. No path is ever obscured by smalltime street vendors. Organized corporate-approved shop fronts are stacked between fancy entryways to corps towers. It's clean, orderly, and everything's in its place.
But corporations are always expanding.
They build new floors and connecting passages between buildings, and restructure and renovate their towers. And the Elite seem to enjoy building fancier housing structures atop their previous ones--either from competition with their peers or sheer boredom. When enough construction warrants it or the lowest floors begin to slip on maintenance: Ground Level rises.
What was Ground Level becomes One Level Down. People scurry to move their businesses up, closer to folks who might have spending money. What was One Level Down gets absorbed into the Below. The people who can't afford to follow the rising floor, folks already struggling to meet rent, get left behind with the newly decommissioned level. Addresses shift by a single letter.
The Upwards calls it progress.
The Below helps our new neighbors move.
A sprawling mess of consignment stalls, trading hubs, Net hook-in cafes, and junk collectors buying whatever folks venturing down from the Upwards have on hand. Almost everything is used. Newer goods tend to disappear, heading for deeper markets.
Corporate security has long since given up regulating One Level Down. Their bosses pretend it doesn't exist, probably because there's no competition to their sales margins when people aren't spending out of their kitsch accounts.
Some people say One Level Down has the best food in the city. Those people have never set foot in the Below.
If you think One Level Down is a disorganized mess, we're not about to apologize: from here on it only gets worse.
This part's kinda chunky, but it's worth a read if you want to know how to get around. And uh...live to tell about it.
The Below is everything beneath One Level Down, but where One Level Down got a pass where the corpo rats were concerned, their security drones and officers have "best practices" to help govern their vertical slices of the undercity, sectors that extend below a corporation's property lines in the Upwards.
No real rules to follow--our folks pretty much prefer you don't purposefully hurt anyone, don't swipe something you weren't given or didn't trade for, don't break stuff that's not yours. (Consider not breaking stuff that IS yours, honestly. Want to ditch something? Drop it off at a fixer to get repurposed.) And maybe take fights out of populated areas--so the corps don't have a reason to send in security. So...three "rules" and a suggestion! On the other hand, corps "best practices" tend to involve things you best avoid for...health reasons. Each sector is owned and managed by a different corporation with different priorities, security changes, and new and exciting conditions to keep us guessing.
Knowing your sector address means knowing which corporation technically owns your walls and what that means for your safety. Ask a Framework leader or scan for nearby ARAugmented Reality, accessible via datapad, eyewear, & some cybernetics. graffiti if you aren't sure.
Each Sector of the Below is divided into Levels. Generally, there's an A through L, but keep in mind that not all of those are the same heightGenerally, the taller the level, the more likely you'll see drones., not all of them are intactOur engineers try to keep up with structural dangers, but if a place looks unstable, use caution., and a few of them are too toxicPro tip here: if you like to breathe, make sure there's no atmospheric neon signs nearby. to traverse. Some have deeper--uncharted--spaces, too. The higher the letter, the deeper you go, and the further you get from all that corporate policy, corporate attention, corporate utilities...sure! But you also get further away from help in an emergency, from an even sort-of-working infrastructure, and from anything resembling structural consistency.
That's a Below address, by the way: Sector and Level. Movement through the Below happens via maintenance shafts, abandoned infrastructure and delivery tubes, the occasional actual staircase, hallways that have become main streets. Go on foot, get wheels underneath you or try airborne bikes and skiffs, just don't ever take an elevator. Not down here.
Corporations abandoned these levels.
Communities didn't.
In the Below and across Luridity Galaxy, resistance takes many forms. People who rebel against the corporate crush have found their own ways to contribute, survive, and defy. Some find allies and friends this way too, because we tend to naturally be drawn to others with the same instincts, the same skills, the same way of moving through the world. Over the years we've come up with a shorthand for the different ways people show up for the rebellion. We call them Frequencies, and sometimes folks will use them as a layer of identification here in the Below.
Nobody knows where Fate lives. Very few people have seen him, virtually or otherwise. He's the reason your wristcomp does obnoxious and impossible things from time to time, and also the reason the VIDscreens in a public corridor may suddenly become really damned inconvenient for a nearby corpo rat.
Fate is a hacker, an agitator, and the Below's most enthusiastically omnipresent digital presence. Agoraphobic and brilliant, he communicates exclusively through The Net...usually by hijacking whatever technology is nearest. He's on your side, but, well, sometimes he has unique ways of showing it.
Other critical info: He has a dirty mind and boundary issues, and he once organized the rescue of an escape artist octopus named Mortimer.
Somewhere in the deep Below there was a broadcasting station that the corporations abandoned decades ago.
Soleil found it, and she keeps turning on the microphone. She's an idealistic poet-broadcaster with a voice that carries hope like a torch, and she uses that voice to remind the Below that we are not alone.
Ruster keeps things running. A former corporate enforcer turned community maintenance worker, he's better at fixing broken things than talking about his feelings. He's working on both.
Stray keeps things interesting. She's a daring catKynd with a knack for tech and a gift for finding loot, as well as a sneakiness factor well into the 9000s.
Together they run The Outlier Frequency, the Below's pirate radio transmission. You'll no doubt hear it soon if you haven't already. Take it as proof that hope in the shadows is still hope.
Kappō can be found behind the stoves of his Steam-and-Soupery in Sector 4, on Level C. His personal philosophy is that nobody in the Below should have to go without a hot bowl when they need one.
Kappō himself is Gilled: he's got four tentacles, two humanoid arms and hands with slightly webbed fingers, and a wildly bioluminescent stalk on his head with an orb that usually shifts from blue-green to deep blue depending on his mood. (Other colors have been rumored!) He is, by all accounts, extremely attractive. He is also extremely dedicated to feeding people.
Both of these facts have led to regular romantic declarations from members of his adoring public. The latter fact, however, means these efforts continue to zoom right over his stalk. Those bowls won't ladle themselves, and it's important that to-go soups get packed up safely.
Spade doesn't really have a home base because he's too busy exploring for what other people would call 'junk', but he technically runs a parts shop somewhere mid-Below. You can't miss him if he's in: his cyber-augmented neon-colored hair spikes change color like Kappō's stalk bulb, but unlike Kappō, Spade can change his colors anytime he wants (which is often).
Like many of us down here, he prefers to trade skills and components instead of charging kitsch. If he has the parts handy, he seems incapable of letting a neighbor go without a needed repair. If he doesn't have the parts handy, they might suddenly show up on that neighbor's doorstep after he's been gone a day or two.
No one asks where they come from.
Jet'l is a non-binary, massive Serpentian with scales in varying shades of magenta and fuchsia, tailored vests, and a gaze that makes you feel like they already know what you're going to say before you say it. They are extraordinarily well-connected and in possession of an information network that spans more of the galaxy than most people realize. Jet'l runs that network out of a bar they own, called...The Cackling Cock.
Yeah, you read that right.
Jet'l drops by Timil from time to time--mostly to deliver intel personally--and when they do, they always reserve part of their trip for the Below. They're really helpful around here and they remember things that matter to our people, so everybody knows their name. And to be on their best behavior.
You'll smell it before you see it. Kappō's main location sits in Sector 4, on Level C. That's where you'll find the best food on Timil. His soups and dumplings travel further than he does--independent stalls on every level between C and One Level Down carry his stock--but if you want the freshest of the fresh, pay the main location a personal visit. Show up hungry. Leave feeling like someone's glad you exist.
Spade's ShopSomewhere in the Below there is a parts shop run by Spade. Look for neon spiked hair and a place surrounded by giant piles of electronics in various states of disassembly. You may see the piles first, especially if he's freshly back from a dumpster dive. All those bits and pieces of unidentifiable once-things will be surrounding a young man who somehow knows exactly where everything is. Bring something to trade.
The Cackling CockThe Cackling Cock isn't in Timil. It's on Qirial, in the Cazimi system of the Centralvest Zone of Luridity. The reason this bar's reputation travels considerably further than its address is not because it's run by a big hunk of a Serpentian named Jet'l, nor is it because of the delightfully joyous phallic neon sign on the front. It's because everyone knows that's the place to go when you need information.
And if you need a private word or a discreet arrangement, there's no better time than open mic night. Jet'l hosts this intentionally loud weekly event and they're right to consider it a public service despite the slew of terrible entertainment on the bar's stage. No one--flesh or bot--can eavesdrop through all that noise, nor through the other secret tech Jet'l has installed, but you didn't hear that last bit from me.
When they're behind the bar, Jet'l personally serves drinks to customers. When they're not behind the bar, they might
still come out to serve drinks to customers they find interesting, which is either an honor or a warning, depending on
whether or not that customer is a Problem.
You won't find The Outlier Frequency by looking for a place, because it's always on the move. It finds you, either by a random turn of your radio dial or a passed word from someone who knows which wavelength it's on tonight. A pirate radio broadcast originating somewhere in the deep Below, it cuts through corps VIDstations and VIDcasts to deliver something the corpo rats would rather the Below didn't have: the truth. The Outlier Frequency takes requests, delivers warnings, uplifts folks after a long day of work or first thing in the morning, and keeps us informed with codes that keep evolving. When Soleil broadcasts, the Below listens.
Maker Markets & Grey MarketsForget the corps-approved shopping venues on Ground Level. Skip the hustle on One Level Down. In the Below, commerce looks different. We're talking community-run stalls and spaces with repurposed goods, homebaked treats, and skill trades. The Below is full of people who have learned to make do with whatever comes to hand. While new things trickle down here as they make their way past One Level Down, it's rare to see something in its original state...and uncommon to see it whole. Instead, you'll find redesigns (and usually better designs. Seriously, if you want something in different colors than the corps make them or something that bypasses planned obsolescence, a maker market is your destination.). It's legal-ish.
Some corps seem to take more umbrage to sales being made offbooks than others, so the markets in their sectors are more likely to be open on a schedule that changes according to community needs--and corps security presence--instead of consistent. Check with a neighbor if you're in one of those sectors to get the week's times and verify with a local Framework rep if you need to assess threat levels before you go.
You lower your arm and your wristcomp automatically slides shut. Now, you're armed with (what's hopefully not an overabundance of) starter Luridity knowledge: Timil's structure as well as its undercity's places, people, and precautions. Is it enough to help you survive your adventures in the Below?
You hope so.