//Lore & Story

In nu-Eden, the world's last megacity, seven mega-Seven Conglomerates wage a cold corporate war for dominance over Maborite — a reality-bending mineral that fuses magic and technology. Beneath the gleaming spires and neon-drenched corridors of corporate power, resistance cells plot, ancient forces stir, and a fractured sky threatens to consume everything.

This page provides a high-level overview of nu-Eden's world, its history, the forces that shape it, the characters who fight within it, and the story that unfolds across seven acts. For deeper detail, see the dedicated Characters, Factions, World, and Story pages.

▸The World of nu-Eden

nu-Eden is a hyper-capitalistic vertical megacity at the end of the world — a sprawling corporate labyrinth where seven mega-Seven Conglomerates control every facet of life. The city is built upward and downward from its original ground level, creating a stratified society where literal altitude maps to wealth, power, and freedom.

The city runs on Maborite, a volatile, reality-warping mineral that is both the source of its technological marvels and the cause of its deepest corruption. The conglomerates don't just trade in maborite — they weaponise it. From biotech augmentations to reality-folding transit systems, maborite is the lifeblood of power.

Above, the sky is shattered. The Sundering fractured reality itself centuries ago, leaving the heavens a kaleidoscopic wound of fractured light, void-rifts, and dimensional bleeding. A shimmering lunar ring — the pulverised remnants of the moon — orbits overhead, a constant reminder of catastrophe.

Beyond nu-Eden's fortified walls, the world is hostile and unstable. The Sundering's aftereffects ravaged the outlying territories, transforming them into the Interstice — a vast volcanic desert where reality becomes unreliable, maborite storms rage unpredictably, and only the desperate, exiled, or insane venture.

▸The Sundering

The Sundering is the foundational catastrophe of nu-Eden's world. Centuries ago, a catastrophic maborite event fractured the sky, shattered the moon, and rendered roughly 40% of the planet's surface uninhabitable. The Sundering didn't just reshape geography — it tore rifts in spacetime itself, leaving Scars (residual reality fractures) that persist to this day.

The Sundering created maborite in its current form: a reality-bending substance that erupted from the fractures. It also gave rise to Aberrants — creatures born from prolonged maborite exposure — and made the Hollows (the deep undercity) a place where physics itself is unreliable.

▸Maborite

Maborite is the single resource that drives all conflict. A reality-bending substance discovered in the deep strata beneath what would become nu-Eden, maborite can be refined into fuel, woven into circuitry, or consumed raw for unpredictable arcane effects.

• ▪Refined maborite powers the city's infrastructure — transit, energy grids, communication arrays
• ▪Raw maborite is volatile and dangerous, capable of tearing holes in local reality
• ▪Maborite gel is the most common form — a glowing liquid used in manufacturing and medicine
• ▪Weaponised maborite forms the basis of both corporate and resistance combat technology (mabtech)
• ▪Exposure can induce mutations on an atomic level — this is how Aberrants are born
• ▪The conglomerates control all legal maborite extraction and trade

The word "maborite" comes from Maboroshi Technologies, the corporation that first discovered and exploited it. "Maboroshi" (幻) is Japanese for "illusion" or "phantom."

▸The Four Forces

The world of nu-Eden is shaped by four competing powers whose collision drives the entire narrative:

1. ▪The Seven Conglomerates — seven corporate oligarchs fighting each other for maborite supremacy, governed by The Board
2. ▪The nERF — the nu-Eden Resistance Force, a decentralised insurgency of nine combat cells opposing corporate rule
3. ▪The Empire of Draconis — an external totalitarian empire ruled by the Red Emperor Xerxes XVI, seeking to subsume nu-Eden
4. ▪The Hollows — the chaotic underbelly of the city, with its own syndicates, black markets, and autonomous factions

▸The Seven Mega-Conglomerates & The Board

Seven mega-corporations control nu-Eden, each tied to a deadly sin and a domain of society. Their leaders — the Directors — sit on The Board, a corporate parliament that functions as nu-Eden's sovereign government. The Board is not a council — it is an emergent phenomenon, an algorithm disguised as alliance.

The Board is led by Ryutaro Shinoda (Regis), the President of nu-Eden — a former MabTech engineer turned city governor managing hacked city cores, power-debt crises, and splinter factions from the Presidential Spire.

Shared Corporate Infrastructure

The conglomerates jointly operate three interlocking control systems that enforce total dominance over nu-Eden's population:

• ▪Reflexio — an omnipresent, unskippable augmented reality overlay that delivers personalised propaganda. Citizens can't look anywhere without Reflexio feeding them tailored content designed to manipulate their emotions and behaviour.
• ▪Neumora — a nanite-based system distributed through the public water supply that regulates consciousness and productivity. During work hours, citizens are biologically optimised for performance; during off-hours, they can be forced into unconsciousness.
• ▪Credisys — a gamified social credit and currency system where every transaction, interaction, and life event is scored. Merit scores range from Transcendent (+XI) to Invalidated (-XI), determining what you eat, where you live, and whether you can fall in love.

These three systems create a self-reinforcing loop of psychological manipulation (Reflexio), physiological enforcement (Neumora), and social stratification (Credisys). Escape requires simultaneously rejecting all three.

▸The nERF (nu-Eden Resistance Force)

The nERF is a decentralised insurgency organised into nine combat cells, each led by a field operative and tied to a specific story arc. nERF opposes corporate rule through direct action, covert operations, and the liberation of exploited citizens.

nERF operates from the Hollows — the lawless undercity of black markets, underground settlements, and forgotten infrastructure beneath the corporate sectors. The resistance is led by Director General Aoi Matsuno (Aegis), a veteran of the Old Guard.

The Nine Teams

Key Characters

• ▪Conrad McGuire-Sun (Xenos) — Team Lumicon's leader and the primary protagonist. A time-fractured operative and the sixth surviving version of himself, Conrad is the player's main lens into nu-Eden. His temporal abilities (time loops, rewinding, alternate timeline summoning) define both his gameplay and his narrative arc. Conrad cameos in all subsequent acts after Act I.
• ▪Lyndsey Park — Commander of Team Tesserae and the deuteragonist. Lyndsey appears exclusively in odd-numbered arcs (I, III, V, VII), acting as a narrative throughline. Her dual Light/Dark polarity reflects emotional suppression and control.
• ▪Aoi Matsuno (Aegis) — Director General of nERF and mother of Alex and Brooke. A veteran of the Old Guard who leads the resistance from the shadows.

nERF Ideological Fractures

nERF is not a monolith. Six internal wings compete for influence, with player choices determining which wing dominates by endgame:

▸The Empire of Draconis

Beyond nu-Eden's borders lies the Empire of Draconis — a totalitarian theocracy that spans half the globe. Ruled by the non-human Red Emperor Xerxes XVI, Draconis embodies absolute order against nu-Eden's chaotic freedom.

The Empire operates on two doctrines: chaos is the enemy of order and humanity is a flawed experiment. Free will is treated as a defect. The faithful are promised ascension into something greater.

Draconis fields the Templars — heavily augmented clone soldiers who operate within nu-Eden as missionaries, infiltrators, and enforcers. Their increasing presence signals Draconis's intent to absorb nu-Eden rather than destroy it. Xerxes plans a second, controlled Sundering using maborite reserves.

▸Other Factions

▸Zones & Locations

nu-Eden is a vertical city where altitude equals status. The city exists in distinct layers, each representing a different stratum of society:

The city is divided into seven corporate sectors, each controlled by a conglomerate with its own aesthetic and culture:

Beyond the walls: the Interstice — a volcanic desert where maborite storms rage, Scars persist, Aberrants roam, and reality is unreliable. Draconis refugees huddle in scattered settlements in the lawless borderlands.

▸Story Overview

The narrative of nu-Eden: Sundered Skies unfolds across seven acts, each tied to a deadly sin, a broken seal, and a Director's fall. Each act features a different nERF team as protagonists and explores how its sin manifests as systemic oppression.

Key Story Beats

• ▪Act I establishes nu-Eden's corruption through Maboroshi's manufactured maborite scarcity. Conrad and Team Lumicon are the player's entry point.
• ▪Act III sees Syntera's Director Sumire begin questioning the system she built — she realises it doesn't want to end suffering, it wants to monetise it.
• ▪Act V is the major narrative pivot: Sumire defects from the corporate alliance to join the nERF, bringing intelligence about the final seals and recontextualising everything about the remaining Seven Conglomerates.
• ▪Act VI turns the mirror on nERF itself — as the resistance gains power, it starts sounding like a government, confronting its own authoritarian tendencies.
• ▪Act VII is apocalyptic. With Sumire gone, Tariq's Arcanis Industries unleashes raw maborite destruction. All four forces collide in a final confrontation.

Branching Paths & Endings

Player agency runs throughout the entire narrative. Choices determine which factions survive, which characters live or die, and what kind of nu-Eden emerges.

• ▪Faction reputation with each conglomerate, nERF wing, and independent group gates mission access, dialogue options, zone access, and ending branches
• ▪nERF's internal wings each have sub-reputation tracks — which wing dominates by endgame shapes the resistance's identity
• ▪Team Spektra (the rival team) can be unlocked to trigger the alternate ending
• ▪Missing certain optional NPC conversations locks specific endings — this is intentional

▸Timeline