//Act I — Avaritia (Greed)

"what the hell is wrong with everyone"

"The city feeds on what it cannot keep."

The tutorial arc. The opening salvo. The moment the player character — Conrad McGuire-Sun — steps into a world that isn't broken, just profitable. Maborite scarcity drives all conflict in nu-Eden, and Maboroshi Technologies hoards the supply, driving prices to breaking point. Conrad and the newly-formed nERF cell discover that maborite scarcity isn't natural — it's manufactured. Director Otis Goldman controls the flow to consolidate power, selling the world back to itself through hyper-commodification and unregulated tech monopolies.

▸Team Lumicon

Etymology: luminous + convergence, and Lydia, Yumiko and Conrad. "The lens that fractures time."

Conrad is the player's primary lens into nu-Eden. His temporal abilities — time loops, rewinding, alternate timeline summoning — define both his gameplay and his narrative arc. He is the sixth surviving version of himself; previous iterations died or diverged. His watch never shows remaining time. Uncertainty is the mechanic.

▸The Antagonist — Otis Goldman

Otis Goldman is the Director of Maboroshi Technologies, the conglomerate that first discovered and exploited maborite. The company's name itself comes from the Japanese word maboroshi (幻) — "illusion" or "phantom" — and Otis embodies the concept: a phantom of wealth that seems inescapable because it manufactures the conditions of its own necessity.

Otis doesn't believe in scarcity as a natural condition. He engineers it. By controlling maborite extraction, processing, and distribution, Maboroshi ensures that every other conglomerate, every citizen, and every resistance cell is dependent on a resource that could be abundant — but isn't. Prices fluctuate not by supply and demand, but by Otis's moods and strategic interests.

Maboroshi's technological arsenal includes:

• ▪AI drones — automated enforcement and supply-chain protection
• ▪Digital currency manipulation — controlling Credisys markets to destabilise competitors
• ▪Automated supply chains — algorithmic trade routes that lock out independent vendors
• ▪Maborite refineries — the only legal source of processed maborite in nu-Eden

▸The Artifact

The plot device for Act I is an Artifact — a piece of pre-Sundering mabtech whose origins predate the current conglomerate system. Whoever controls it controls the maborite market. The Artifact is not a weapon in the traditional sense; it's a key to maborite extraction technology that would make Maboroshi's monopoly obsolete.

The Artifact's existence proves that maborite was once accessible without corporate gatekeeping — that the entire scarcity economy is a lie built on suppressed knowledge. It becomes the focal point of the entire act: nERF wants to expose it, Maboroshi wants to bury it, and other conglomerates want to seize it for their own advantage.

▸Setting — Maboroshi District

The primary zone for Act I is the Maboroshi District, a high-tech research arcology with glowing Maborite conduits threaded through every structure. The district is a monument to technological excess — gleaming laboratories, automated factories, and corporate towers connected by mag-rail transit systems that move resources faster than people.

Beneath the surface, the District conceals extraction tunnels that reach into the Hollows, where raw Maborite surges destabilise local physics. Workers in these tunnels operate under hazardous conditions, monitored by Neumora nanites that suppress fatigue and pain — until the nanites wear off.

Key locations within the Maboroshi District:

• ▪The Spire — Maboroshi Technologies corporate headquarters, a crystalline tower of Maborite-infused glass
• ▪Refinery Row — the industrial heart where raw Maborite is processed into usable forms
• ▪The Vaults — deep-level storage facilities where the Artifact is held under automated guard
• ▪Transit Hub Alpha — the district's main mag-rail station, a choke point for all movement in and out

▸Narrative Structure

Opening

Conrad awakens into a nu-Eden he doesn't fully understand. The player is introduced to core mechanics — parkour traversal, combat basics, and the cell system — through missions that double as worldbuilding. The nERF cell is freshly formed, its members still testing each other's limits. Conrad's temporal abilities manifest early but are unstable, hinting at the deeper mystery of his fractured timeline.

The opening missions establish the economic realities of nu-Eden:

• ▪Maborite prices are at an all-time high
• ▪Workers in the lower levels can barely afford refined Maborite for basic utilities
• ▪Maboroshi Technologies automated supply chains cut out independent vendors and black-market traders
• ▪The Credisys merit system punishes anyone who challenges the pricing structure

Rising Action

Team Lumicon begins investigating the source of Maborite scarcity. Dakota's data analysis reveals anomalies — production records don't match distribution numbers. Maboroshi Technologies is producing enough Maborite to supply the entire city at reasonable prices, but artificial bottlenecks siphon surplus to the Vaults.

The team infiltrates Refinery Row, encounters Maboroshi Technologies AI drone security, and discovers shipping manifests that prove the scarcity is manufactured. But proof and exposure are different things — the manifests are encrypted with Maboroshi Technologies proprietary systems, and Reflexio media coverage paints the nERF as saboteurs threatening the city's energy supply.

Conrad's temporal abilities begin to reveal their cost: he experiences déjà vu during missions — flashes of timelines where he made different choices. These aren't cutscenes; they're gameplay moments where the player sees alternate paths briefly before being snapped back to the present.

Climax

The team raids the Vaults for the Artifact. Otis Goldman deploys Maboroshi Technologies full security apparatus — elite drones, mabtech barriers, and a personal confrontation where Otis makes his case: scarcity isn't cruelty, it's management. Without controlled distribution, Maborite would be weaponised by every faction simultaneously, triggering a second Sundering. He genuinely believes he's saving the world through economic control.

The Vault raid is a multi-phase encounter:

1. ▪Infiltration — parkour traversal through automated security grids
2. ▪Combat — drone waves and elite Maboroshi enforcers
3. ▪Confrontation — Otis Goldman face-to-face, dialogue choices that affect faction reputation
4. ▪Extraction — escaping with the Artifact as the Vaults lock down

Resolution — The First Seal Breaks

The nERF exposes Maboroshi Technologies artificial scarcity, broadcasting the evidence through hijacked Reflexio feeds. The economic shock destabilises the Maborite market — prices crash, then spike, then oscillate wildly as competing interests scramble for newly available resources.

The Seal of Conquest breaks when the monopoly is shattered — not through violence, but through the revelation that conquest was always economic, not military. The first seal's breaking is the first crack in The Board collective dominance.

▸Faction Dynamics

Maboroshi's grip on mabtech R&D made them essential to every other conglomerate. Destroying their monopoly forces the remaining six to vie for newly available resources — fragmenting the Board's unity for the first time.

▸Key Themes

• ▪Manufactured scarcity as a form of violence — Otis doesn't need weapons when he controls the resource everyone depends on
• ▪The commodification of survival — maborite is simultaneously fuel, medicine, currency, and weapon, and controlling its flow means controlling life itself
• ▪Moral ambiguity of exposure — breaking the monopoly helps people, but also destabilises the economic infrastructure millions depend on
• ▪Conrad's introduction as an unreliable anchor — the player's protagonist experiences timeline bleed from the very beginning, questioning what's "real" in a world already sundered

▸Connections

• ▪Conrad appears as a cameo in all subsequent acts (Lumicon's leader maintains presence across the full narrative)
• ▪The Artifact resurfaces in Act IV when Qroma Alliance attempts to leverage pre-Sundering technology for cultural monopoly
• ▪Otis's fall directly triggers the events of Act II — without Maboroshi's maborite control, Eos Broadcasting must find new leverage, accelerating their turn to media manipulation
• ▪The Board is introduced through Otis's relationship with the other Directors — revealing that the conglomerates compete with each other while maintaining collective dominance