Who runs Catena, and who wants it back
Meridian built the city and wrote the registry. Everyone else is deciding how to answer it.
Three answers to the registry
You pick one in the creator, or stay Unwritten. Your pick gives you a head start in that faction's standing and is set once.
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Collaborate
Meridian Combine
We're the reason there's a city to complain about.
The corporation that built the Deepworks and wrote the registry, and still runs it. A strict hierarchy: the Licensed board on top, Meridian Security in the middle, and an audit function underneath that the street can't name. Its headquarters is the Coil.
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Revolt
The Undercurrent
Every wall is a leash, and breaking is freedom.
A cracker cell and Legend-liberation movement. A distributed network that cracks, broadcasts and shelters people who run, with no top-down hierarchy. Every Legend hears its pirate voice, Nyx Static, before meeting a single member.
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Endure
Scrapline Union
The union buries its own. It's the only thing it's ever been able to afford.
The Fringe's syndicate of powered labourers. An honest trade union of locals, elders, and a boss who signs the death-book personally. To Scrapline, Legends were workers, and augments are work gear with union rules attached.
How each answer reads the others
| Looking | Meridian | The Undercurrent | Scrapline | Chrome Dogs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meridian | Criminals to catalogue | A tolerated pressure valve | Pest control | |
| The Undercurrent | The lie with a logo | Allies who won't commit | Recruits gone feral | |
| Scrapline | The boss, distrusted | Kids playing with live wire | Our failed kids |
The ones you can't join
Institution
The Registry
Meridian's licensing system. Registration is a status a Legend has to keep up, and a Legend's standing is Licensed, Ghost or Blacklisted. Clarity Systems scanners sit at every checkpoint, and the Licensing Tribunal handles anything involving alloy discharge.
Enforcement
Meridian Security
The Combine's enforcement arm. It patrols the Fringe's mid band with detention authority over the unregistered, in plate rated against alloy discharge, with the Clarity handheld clipped at the hip.
Street gang
Chrome Dogs
An aug-junkie gang of Legends and failed splices on chop-shop chrome, with nothing written down. Three packs: the Strays, the Muzzles and the Pedigrees. Their apex is the Toll, who rides a scrap throne carried by four bearers.
Possessed machines
Bleedthrough
The third army. Machines possessed at breach scars by the Seal's leakage, still doing the jobs they were built for. Their flagship is the Repossessor, a titan in a Meridian repo-engine chassis.
Lattice defence
ICE
ROOT's Immune Countermeasure Engine: white blood cells that have forgotten the body they're defending is supposed to include them. Every type has a formal name and a diver's name: Gnat is the Chorus, Hound is the Kennel, Spitter is Sparkthroat, Phantom is Static Ghost, Colossus is the Foreman.
The margins
Plenty of Catena answers to nobody. The Warrens run an unlicensed market in the tunnels under Lowline, and the Pit hosts the fights Meridian won't license. Smaller groups like the Commons, the mural wardens and the Emberhold answer to none of the three, and none of them has a quest or a vendor in the build yet.