Charter gates
These are the front doors. Meridian's charter gates stand on the well terrace in the Junction and at the charter desk in Workshop Block. A dive queue is a line you physically stand in.
The Lattice
The sealed layer under Catena, and the one dive of it that exists.
What it is
The Deepworks is the structure Meridian dug under Catena. The Lattice is the sealed layer it grew into. Before the Seal it ran the world's ledgers, contracts and deeds, and the machinery is still down there.
A dive is a maintenance crew of one to four, licensed or not, walking into a section of the works that nobody has serviced since the door was locked. Down there the horizon is void-black, the floor is a grid, and the geometry is saturated neon with ICE drawn in light.
ROOT
Designed The ROOT Core stratum and whatever waits there are the game's design.
ROOT is the custodian the Deepworks was built around. Its whole mandate is to maintain the works. It has been sealed since 2081, and the divers say it is still listening.
The one voice anyone knows from ROOT's side of the door is its own interface, which the city calls the Remainder. It speaks only in maintenance tickets.
What lies under the city
The strata project upward onto what grew over them. Shallownet's plains run under the safe core. The Stacks' canyons run under the Yards and the valley. The Black Vault sits under the ridge, because Meridian built its house over the safe. ROOT Core lies under all of it.
The one place the projection breaks the surface is the Fracture, over the Deadband.
The strata
Four depths, shallow to deep. Only the first has a site in the development build.
Each stratum has a palette, a landform and a boss with two names: the one stencilled on the hardware and the one the divers use. The codex line under each is what the divers say of it.
| Stratum | What the divers say | Palette | Landform | Boss | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shallownet | The only depth Meridian charters advertise on a Junction poster without an asterisk. | Teal and magenta | Plains with wide sightlines. Jack-out is safe here. | CERBERUS Process, called the Turnstile. Three authorities, one threshold, and nothing above the three since 2081. It has not been told, and it is still counting. | Partly built One site runs. |
| The Stacks | Old server-farm architecture stood on end, cable trunks thick as highway overpasses climbing into a false sky. | Amber and violet | Canyons. Jack-out is safe, and falls are the danger. | The Actuary, called the Auditor. It prices what enters the stratum against what the stratum can carry. It has priced you, and it thinks you lean on one thing too hard. | Designed |
| The Black Vault | The depth where Meridian's charters stop pretending this is routine salvage and start calling it asset recovery, high-value. | Red and white | A fortress. The BLACKICE band begins here. | Hive Compiler, called the Quota. Last order received: maintain capacity. It has not been relieved, and it is not behind. | Designed |
| ROOT Core | The inverted white void and the room nobody dives into by accident. | Inverted white | A white void with nothing to map. | ROOT. The only thing down here with one name. It does not open by fighting. It opens by checking. | Designed |
BLACKICE
Designed The depth is the game's design. The threat gauge in the development build's dive uses the name for its top band.
BLACKICE is the depth at which jack-out stops being survivable.
Divers have words for it. Going past is the long drop, and a diver who went past and did not come back has gone under. Both are usually said about someone else, and quietly.
Below BLACKICE, the Lattice doesn't disconnect a nervous system on request; it keeps it, the way it keeps anything else useful.
Ways in
Designed The development build starts its one dive from a menu. These doors are the game's design.
The city grew up on top of the works, so access shafts are everywhere; Meridian charters the good ones and calls the rest illegal, but the street uses them anyway.
Wild breaches
The Uplinks out in the streets. A wild breach is free, unstable and open in the middle of a fight. A Legend who dives off a hot street makes the run harder and the payout larger.
The daily seed
The Lattice's own layout drifts nightly as ROOT's dormant maintenance routines reshuffle unused sections. The flip-board in the Junction is the first place the survey gets posted.
The defenders
The works defends itself with ICE, an autoimmune response that is still running. Every unit has two names, and the ICE page keeps both, with the escalations that harden the units and three stratum bosses, each with a codex line.
The dive that exists
Partly built One solo site runs in the development build. In the build, every Legend fights with SALVO's kit.
Substation 7's roof deck is a Shallownet site, and it is the one dive in the build. The deck is drawn as the rainy city for now, and the neon plains of the strata are still to come.
A crew of one clears the waves, holds the Uplink ring and breaks the CERBERUS Process before jacking out. Each wave opens with a lesson.
Hounds flank. Spitters anchor. Keep moving.
Bulwarks are 140° of wall. Surveyor fire owns the ground you stand on.
Vipers tether. Phantoms blink. Chaplains undo everything you did.
A Foreman roots. Stingers contest the air. Everything at once.
DIVE · SHALLOWNET
SUBSTATION 7 — ROOF DECK
Clear four waves, hold the Uplink ring for 30 seconds, then break the CERBERUS Process and jack out. Nine ICE archetypes are on this deck and none of them are answered the same way.