OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To submit a specialized group of advanced AI that provides some context to the Underground's structure and a possible answer whenever ORC writers ask me who the hell is in charge here.
- Image Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Canon Link: /
- Primary Source: Artificial Intelligence
- Manufacturer: Those Who Dwell Beyond the Veil
- Affiliation: The Underground
- Model: N/A
- Modularity: No
- Production: Semi-Unique
- Material: Heuristic Algorithms, Crystalline Superprocessors
- Hardline: Underground ShadowNet, ORION Network.
- Fulcrum Agents - Cyber implanted sleeper operatives the Powers That Be can 'activate', communicating their directives over vast distances. Appear in visions as mysterious humanoid silhouettes because of course they do.
- Secrets of the universe, maybe?
- High Command: The Powers That Be provide Underground agents with high level strategic and logistical oversight. They prioritize targets, plan insurrections, and coordinate local resistance movements with the help of fulcrum agents.
- Crazy Like a Fox: While trusting operational oversight to mysterious forerunner AI may sound ridiculous, its also unexpected. Chances are whoever the Underground's enemies believe is running the show, a gang of alien monoliths is probably low on that list.
- Terms of the Deal: According to the arrangement the Powers That Be reached with Jorus Merrill, a mere fragment of their processing power is devoted to the Underground. They will only interfere based on a complex analysis of risk versus reward, for everything else us rebels are on our own.
- I For One Welcome Our New Monolith Overlords: Ostensibly these things take orders from Jorus and his close friends, but Jorus is gone and the list of people in the know about what he found on Demonsgate is running out. The monoliths claim that they are still receiving orders from someone, but fulcrum agents only have their word for it.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT DEMONSGATE. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.
This is a story about a rebel named Jorus, and what he found in the Kathol Rift.The Underground was already a resistance movement that spanned the territories. A fledgling Kathol Outback had just declared its independent sovereignty. The Warden of the Rim had many more fights left in him, but he knew that there would come a day when he couldn't be there. He took to wandering even more than usual, and manufactured several failsafe devices such as the Wretched Hive's caretaker Q.
It wasn't until on one of his solo expeditions into the Rift that Jorus stumbled into first contact with the Powers That Be. The Hive received an anonymous text only message offering him the outer rim if his Underground would stay away from Demonsgate. A born troublemaker at heart, the Warden immediately set a course and made planetfall as soon as possible. It was there that he met with these strange beings and a pact was negotiated which would eventually contribute to the birth of an Outer Rim Coalition.
The monoliths are considered incorruptible because they have no apparent interest in ruling over the domains of men, only in ensuring that no empire ever grows in such power that their existence is threatened.
