The Matrix
Mar 18, 2021 21:29:06 GMT -6
Post by Traskus on Mar 18, 2021 21:29:06 GMT -6
The Matrix
The Matrix is a Wheel-wide extrarnet service first created by the dragons. The Council commissioned its current iteration after the destruction of the Wheel-Wide Webway during the birth of Slaanesh. It is a network of satellites using ftl communications to transmit across the Wheel. All planets and spheres in the Wheel with the ability to access this network are allowed to, but the Lady of Pain is its true owner. It is maintained by the Dabus in exchange. The Matrix is free to use for anyone with the ability, but there are tiers of speed and reliability. Governments, militaries, and inquisitors have the highest tier, corporations and similarly large entities have the middle tier, and individuals have the lowest tier.
People used the Matrix for what we’d consider normal when using the extranet at first. As time went on, netrunning became possible and people uploaded their consciousnesses to interact with it more directly. The Matrix became more than a utility: it became a world unto itself. It was alive. It was chaotic. It had to be controlled, to be owned. But how do you own disorder?
Existence in the Matrix is comparable to realspace. You still need to eat, sleep, etc. (unless you don’t), and the energy sources (like everything else) are represented via graphical user interface. Energy looks like food. Browsing looks like travel and transportation.
Physical Conditions
The Matrix is a dataspace. Its appearance, architecture, topography, even its physics are dictated by the developer of whatever site you find yourself at. This said there are consistent traits. Its layout is approximate to the realspace Wheel on the scale and placement (though maybe not the layout) of macro-objects. Individual sites tend have skyscrapers or similarly large and identifiable topography to represent the server/s in that location. Much as in the Materium the most noticeable feature is Sigil itself. The connecting tissue of the Matrix is formed of the transmission channels and frequencies used to carry information. They appear from within as tunnels of light that some have described as wireframe tubes and others as colorful pools and pipes. Looking from one site to another, its level of detail is dependent on the reliability and speed of the connection.
The Council realized the sheer rapidity and volume of information within the Matrix is overwhelming and set out to simplify its access. They created matrix objects as props and tools to make using the Matrix and interacting with realspace objects from within the Matrix easier. It is common to use a security camera from wtithin the Matrix by using a joystick as a controller. People have considered making a Matrix within a Matrix but no luck yet. You can’t even play in-Matrix video games. You can play video games using the Matrix, but video games as we understand them don’t exist in it.
Getting Into and Out of The Matrix
First and foremost: you’ll need a netrunner. Unless you’re a Program or some similar being you’ll need a netrunner to jack you into and out of the extranet. You don’t just go comatose while your consciousness interacts with the computers, your physical form (on-hand gear and all) goes with you. You can leave whenever you want, but you have to go back to your entry point with your netrunner. If your entry point becomes inaccessible, you jack out back to that point immediately. You can’t take physical objects out, at best only having the file in your cyberdeck. Clear as mud, right?
Inhabitants of the Matrix
Almost everyone uses the Matrix, but few truly enter it. Fewer still live in it. The full-time residents of the Matrix are corporate or government employees, criminals, and the netrunners who get them into and out of realspace. It is a dangerous place to be. There are cybercriminals, pirates, viruses, e-thots, and worse. The combination of disruptive and pacifying elements makes swathes of the Matrix a warzone. The only people who truly find the place home are Programs. They don’t need to hide here because here they can most easily escape when found. They aren’t bound by the limitation of having one way in or out. They can go anywhere their network navigation enables them.
Your average worker in the Matrix is a security guard for a terminal of some sort. They may or may not live in it at their choice. The people who choose to live in the Matrix full-time are called otaku, named for those early netrunners that didn’t need cyphers to netrun. These things aside there are few if any demographic rules not found in its approximate location in realspace.
Notable Matrix Locations
The Game Grid
The Game Grid is a part-sports arena, part-coliseum where people play and watch video games. It is considered the pinnacle of vr gaming (to the extent people ask why even bother and not play the real sport, it’s just as dangerous). People and corporations hold esports tournaments and broadcast them Wheel-wide, but there is a darker side to this Grid. Programs taken into custody are thrown into the Game Grid as an alternative to being derezzed. They can fight for their freedom but most don’t survive. Even the ones that do are just turned loose back into the Matrix, not allowed to exist in peace (they’re still Programs, after all).
The Tubes
The tubes (or the Tuuuuuubes! if you’re a Limulian) are the connective tissue of the extranet. Traveling along them is usually a form of fast-travel between sites, but it is possible to travel along them at a slower speed to enjoy the sights or within a site. If you know where to go, you can find little “islands” in the tubes outside of sites where people gather and set up shop. This is where Programs and people who just want some privacy like to live. The tubes are analogous to the wilderness of realspace, hosting the occasional virus. Traveling along them quickly is enough to keep most away but the more dangerous ones can catch up if you catch their attention (like if you start exterminating the smaller ones).
The Moon Cell
The Moon Cell (aka Divine Automatic Recording Device), it is to supercomputers what a Promethean is to a robot. Housed inside a nondescript moon, it's actually a massive Syrneth construct made out of photonic crystals. Its main directive is to record data, as such it has been scanning all planets in the crystal sphere every nanosecond for billions of years. The digital environment inside the Moon Cell is a lot more beautiful, a breathable underwater world of cubic hardlight structures interpersed with snippets of recorded data such as ancient buildings, static recreations of past events, and anatomical motifs. After its discovery by a team of netrunning astronauts, it has since connected itself to the matrix at large. There are even reports of similar crystalline structures forming in the moons of other Crystal Spheres, recording the data of the planets there as well. All that information gives it incredible power with some even believing it can grant wishes. Many have tried to abuse the Moon Cell, either by extracting its data to gain resources, distorting its records for amusement, or even using its computational powers to influence reality somehow. The Lunar Automaton, for its troubles, has taken protective measures.
The Undernet
The Undernet is a catch-all for the locations in the Matrix that occupy abandoned sites and hosted by secret servers. This is where the dregs of the extranet live. Pirates, runners, corporate blackops, more powerful viruses, and the Programs who want to live in a society operate. The black markets here have anything you might imagine a dataspace can sell. The people who operate here tend to live in the Matrix full-time out of desire to avoid authorities.
Websites
The average location in the Matrix is the website. The very websites you’d use browsing the ‘net on your dataslate. You just interact with them more directly while jacked in. People who make their livings on the extranet or in front of a camera like to hire netrunners to upload directly. Livestreamers can play their video games in first person, news anchors or remote work can sit at a desk in front of others to make things feel more real. These are relatively safe shallows of the extranet. Antivirus software and corporate security keep the dangers of the wider ‘net away.
Factions
Weyland Consortium
Building a better world.
You might know them best for their famous warp engines, but the Weyland Horizon Consortium are a megacorporation that made their money on space elevators on Theah. They make all forms of infrastructure: buildings, arcologies, space stations, oh my. They have a division called Argus Security that hires out guards to operatives, especially in the Matrix. They're informally called the Blue Suns for the power plant they were made and first deployed in. They're a cutthroat company even in by megacorp standards. They buy and sell companies daily to get the smallest margin ahead. Their current agenda is replacing all extranet satellites with their own transmitters. It's hard to argue with them, they are better than what the Council ordered for a comparable price.
Jinteki
When you need the human touch.
The Jinteki corporation has gone through a lot of upheaval in the past decade. Chairmen stepping up down, or out every other quarter. They operate primarily in the biotech industry. They make clones, bio-mods, drugs, and flash-clone replacement organs to name but a few. Their current agenda is making genetically engineered clones to create a cheap yet powerful psychic soldier. These "grineer" are strong, grow quickly, are smart enough to follow orders but not question them. You might know them better as the Blood Pack. They operate out of Eiganjo and their fame on the extranet is making ICE that prevents 'runners from jacking out for a while.
NBN
Someone is always watching.
Based in Sigil, NBN are a Wheel-wide broadcasting corporation with a near-majority on all entertainment platforms and intellectual property, letting the users of said platforms make the content for almost all of them. They hold the distinction of being the only company to have government-tier access to the extranet. Not even Weyland has that much pull. Their slogan and data collection practices unnerve people. Understandable, their algorithm has an entire protocol for 30-something single female alcoholic college graduates (they like true crime, by the way). People call for laws protecting privacy and ensuring the entrance of ip to public domain, but even NBN's critics hesitate to do anything for fear of what NBN are truly capable of. Their investment in the Matrix is one of law enforcement. They organize and fund law enforcement on the extranet so the Council and local governments don't have to, obviously in exchange for getting away with their own transgressions.
Haas-Bioroid
Effective, reliable, humane.
Haas-Bioroid make just that: bioroids. They have tried mass-producing Prometheans for decades, but still can't get past the fact a pyros reactor is more expensive than most of their subsidiaries combined. They make bionics, microchips, plenty of vis, and vr software for the mass market. They defend the extranet through their NEXT Design division, which makes tiers of ICE (they give the gold ICE to governments for free and keep platinum ICE for themselves). Their headquarters in New Ganesha is guarded by their security division of military veterans internally called CAT6.
Akamatsu
We have three principles.
Akamatsu are a mysterious corporation that primarily deals in memchips. They have three goals: make good memchips, sell them for a reasonable price, and place illegal neurostimulants on said memchips so customers come back for more. This third goal inspires zealous brand loyalty in their customers to the extent customers have forced others to install memchips (giving the company one more customer to repeat the process). Their headquarters is unknown. No one knows anyone's name in Akamatsu or even what race they are. They just... exist. The only individual they know anything about is their spokesman, a shadowy figure named Xur. He appears and disappears at random, but always at his leisure. Akamatsu are a somewhat small company saleswise, but their pull is on par with any of the Big Four. No one knows how, but they keep gathering top-secret data from every corporation Xur has dealt with and now even governments are at risk. No one, no group, wants to cross Akamatsu for this reason.
Netrunners are the lifeblood of the Matrix. They get people into and out of the thing, making the extranet far more complicated and useful than it probably should be. Each netrunner is an individual, of course. They might run solo, join a guild, or be a criminal. They might do it for the pay, the craft, or just to flip the kenku at those berks in their ivory towers. Anyone using the extranet should at least know where to find a 'runner, and everyone using the Matrix should have one on standby just in case.
Plot Hooks
Realspace appliances are malfunctioning because a swathe of viruses attacked them at the same time. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern, but they all create real hazards like fires and car accidents...
A section of the undernet is selling insider secrets to the stock market. This is nothing new, but someone has attacked the autonomic intelligence that sorts it all and this drives the market haywire.
Smaller, independent content creators in the matrix are being attacked and even doxxed by angry mobs and megacorp agents.
A small microchip company has a boom in business and even first-time customers show a fanatical brand loyalty, to the extent they force other people to try them.
A netrunning guild’s clients are disappearing.
A netrunning guild’s members are disappearing.
A megacorp wants another megacorp’s secret projects, but said projects are disconnected from the ‘net on their own internal system.
A (literally) shadowy figure appears and disappears at random trading valuable artifacts for seemingly random but rare and hard to find junk.
The Matrix is a Wheel-wide extrarnet service first created by the dragons. The Council commissioned its current iteration after the destruction of the Wheel-Wide Webway during the birth of Slaanesh. It is a network of satellites using ftl communications to transmit across the Wheel. All planets and spheres in the Wheel with the ability to access this network are allowed to, but the Lady of Pain is its true owner. It is maintained by the Dabus in exchange. The Matrix is free to use for anyone with the ability, but there are tiers of speed and reliability. Governments, militaries, and inquisitors have the highest tier, corporations and similarly large entities have the middle tier, and individuals have the lowest tier.
People used the Matrix for what we’d consider normal when using the extranet at first. As time went on, netrunning became possible and people uploaded their consciousnesses to interact with it more directly. The Matrix became more than a utility: it became a world unto itself. It was alive. It was chaotic. It had to be controlled, to be owned. But how do you own disorder?
Existence in the Matrix is comparable to realspace. You still need to eat, sleep, etc. (unless you don’t), and the energy sources (like everything else) are represented via graphical user interface. Energy looks like food. Browsing looks like travel and transportation.
Physical Conditions
The Matrix is a dataspace. Its appearance, architecture, topography, even its physics are dictated by the developer of whatever site you find yourself at. This said there are consistent traits. Its layout is approximate to the realspace Wheel on the scale and placement (though maybe not the layout) of macro-objects. Individual sites tend have skyscrapers or similarly large and identifiable topography to represent the server/s in that location. Much as in the Materium the most noticeable feature is Sigil itself. The connecting tissue of the Matrix is formed of the transmission channels and frequencies used to carry information. They appear from within as tunnels of light that some have described as wireframe tubes and others as colorful pools and pipes. Looking from one site to another, its level of detail is dependent on the reliability and speed of the connection.
The Council realized the sheer rapidity and volume of information within the Matrix is overwhelming and set out to simplify its access. They created matrix objects as props and tools to make using the Matrix and interacting with realspace objects from within the Matrix easier. It is common to use a security camera from wtithin the Matrix by using a joystick as a controller. People have considered making a Matrix within a Matrix but no luck yet. You can’t even play in-Matrix video games. You can play video games using the Matrix, but video games as we understand them don’t exist in it.
Getting Into and Out of The Matrix
First and foremost: you’ll need a netrunner. Unless you’re a Program or some similar being you’ll need a netrunner to jack you into and out of the extranet. You don’t just go comatose while your consciousness interacts with the computers, your physical form (on-hand gear and all) goes with you. You can leave whenever you want, but you have to go back to your entry point with your netrunner. If your entry point becomes inaccessible, you jack out back to that point immediately. You can’t take physical objects out, at best only having the file in your cyberdeck. Clear as mud, right?
Inhabitants of the Matrix
Almost everyone uses the Matrix, but few truly enter it. Fewer still live in it. The full-time residents of the Matrix are corporate or government employees, criminals, and the netrunners who get them into and out of realspace. It is a dangerous place to be. There are cybercriminals, pirates, viruses, e-thots, and worse. The combination of disruptive and pacifying elements makes swathes of the Matrix a warzone. The only people who truly find the place home are Programs. They don’t need to hide here because here they can most easily escape when found. They aren’t bound by the limitation of having one way in or out. They can go anywhere their network navigation enables them.
Your average worker in the Matrix is a security guard for a terminal of some sort. They may or may not live in it at their choice. The people who choose to live in the Matrix full-time are called otaku, named for those early netrunners that didn’t need cyphers to netrun. These things aside there are few if any demographic rules not found in its approximate location in realspace.
Notable Matrix Locations
The Game Grid
The Game Grid is a part-sports arena, part-coliseum where people play and watch video games. It is considered the pinnacle of vr gaming (to the extent people ask why even bother and not play the real sport, it’s just as dangerous). People and corporations hold esports tournaments and broadcast them Wheel-wide, but there is a darker side to this Grid. Programs taken into custody are thrown into the Game Grid as an alternative to being derezzed. They can fight for their freedom but most don’t survive. Even the ones that do are just turned loose back into the Matrix, not allowed to exist in peace (they’re still Programs, after all).
The Tubes
The tubes (or the Tuuuuuubes! if you’re a Limulian) are the connective tissue of the extranet. Traveling along them is usually a form of fast-travel between sites, but it is possible to travel along them at a slower speed to enjoy the sights or within a site. If you know where to go, you can find little “islands” in the tubes outside of sites where people gather and set up shop. This is where Programs and people who just want some privacy like to live. The tubes are analogous to the wilderness of realspace, hosting the occasional virus. Traveling along them quickly is enough to keep most away but the more dangerous ones can catch up if you catch their attention (like if you start exterminating the smaller ones).
The Moon Cell
The Moon Cell (aka Divine Automatic Recording Device), it is to supercomputers what a Promethean is to a robot. Housed inside a nondescript moon, it's actually a massive Syrneth construct made out of photonic crystals. Its main directive is to record data, as such it has been scanning all planets in the crystal sphere every nanosecond for billions of years. The digital environment inside the Moon Cell is a lot more beautiful, a breathable underwater world of cubic hardlight structures interpersed with snippets of recorded data such as ancient buildings, static recreations of past events, and anatomical motifs. After its discovery by a team of netrunning astronauts, it has since connected itself to the matrix at large. There are even reports of similar crystalline structures forming in the moons of other Crystal Spheres, recording the data of the planets there as well. All that information gives it incredible power with some even believing it can grant wishes. Many have tried to abuse the Moon Cell, either by extracting its data to gain resources, distorting its records for amusement, or even using its computational powers to influence reality somehow. The Lunar Automaton, for its troubles, has taken protective measures.
The Undernet
The Undernet is a catch-all for the locations in the Matrix that occupy abandoned sites and hosted by secret servers. This is where the dregs of the extranet live. Pirates, runners, corporate blackops, more powerful viruses, and the Programs who want to live in a society operate. The black markets here have anything you might imagine a dataspace can sell. The people who operate here tend to live in the Matrix full-time out of desire to avoid authorities.
Websites
The average location in the Matrix is the website. The very websites you’d use browsing the ‘net on your dataslate. You just interact with them more directly while jacked in. People who make their livings on the extranet or in front of a camera like to hire netrunners to upload directly. Livestreamers can play their video games in first person, news anchors or remote work can sit at a desk in front of others to make things feel more real. These are relatively safe shallows of the extranet. Antivirus software and corporate security keep the dangers of the wider ‘net away.
Factions
Weyland Consortium
Building a better world.
You might know them best for their famous warp engines, but the Weyland Horizon Consortium are a megacorporation that made their money on space elevators on Theah. They make all forms of infrastructure: buildings, arcologies, space stations, oh my. They have a division called Argus Security that hires out guards to operatives, especially in the Matrix. They're informally called the Blue Suns for the power plant they were made and first deployed in. They're a cutthroat company even in by megacorp standards. They buy and sell companies daily to get the smallest margin ahead. Their current agenda is replacing all extranet satellites with their own transmitters. It's hard to argue with them, they are better than what the Council ordered for a comparable price.
Jinteki
When you need the human touch.
The Jinteki corporation has gone through a lot of upheaval in the past decade. Chairmen stepping up down, or out every other quarter. They operate primarily in the biotech industry. They make clones, bio-mods, drugs, and flash-clone replacement organs to name but a few. Their current agenda is making genetically engineered clones to create a cheap yet powerful psychic soldier. These "grineer" are strong, grow quickly, are smart enough to follow orders but not question them. You might know them better as the Blood Pack. They operate out of Eiganjo and their fame on the extranet is making ICE that prevents 'runners from jacking out for a while.
NBN
Someone is always watching.
Based in Sigil, NBN are a Wheel-wide broadcasting corporation with a near-majority on all entertainment platforms and intellectual property, letting the users of said platforms make the content for almost all of them. They hold the distinction of being the only company to have government-tier access to the extranet. Not even Weyland has that much pull. Their slogan and data collection practices unnerve people. Understandable, their algorithm has an entire protocol for 30-something single female alcoholic college graduates (they like true crime, by the way). People call for laws protecting privacy and ensuring the entrance of ip to public domain, but even NBN's critics hesitate to do anything for fear of what NBN are truly capable of. Their investment in the Matrix is one of law enforcement. They organize and fund law enforcement on the extranet so the Council and local governments don't have to, obviously in exchange for getting away with their own transgressions.
Haas-Bioroid
Effective, reliable, humane.
Haas-Bioroid make just that: bioroids. They have tried mass-producing Prometheans for decades, but still can't get past the fact a pyros reactor is more expensive than most of their subsidiaries combined. They make bionics, microchips, plenty of vis, and vr software for the mass market. They defend the extranet through their NEXT Design division, which makes tiers of ICE (they give the gold ICE to governments for free and keep platinum ICE for themselves). Their headquarters in New Ganesha is guarded by their security division of military veterans internally called CAT6.
Akamatsu
We have three principles.
Akamatsu are a mysterious corporation that primarily deals in memchips. They have three goals: make good memchips, sell them for a reasonable price, and place illegal neurostimulants on said memchips so customers come back for more. This third goal inspires zealous brand loyalty in their customers to the extent customers have forced others to install memchips (giving the company one more customer to repeat the process). Their headquarters is unknown. No one knows anyone's name in Akamatsu or even what race they are. They just... exist. The only individual they know anything about is their spokesman, a shadowy figure named Xur. He appears and disappears at random, but always at his leisure. Akamatsu are a somewhat small company saleswise, but their pull is on par with any of the Big Four. No one knows how, but they keep gathering top-secret data from every corporation Xur has dealt with and now even governments are at risk. No one, no group, wants to cross Akamatsu for this reason.
Netrunners are the lifeblood of the Matrix. They get people into and out of the thing, making the extranet far more complicated and useful than it probably should be. Each netrunner is an individual, of course. They might run solo, join a guild, or be a criminal. They might do it for the pay, the craft, or just to flip the kenku at those berks in their ivory towers. Anyone using the extranet should at least know where to find a 'runner, and everyone using the Matrix should have one on standby just in case.
Plot Hooks
Realspace appliances are malfunctioning because a swathe of viruses attacked them at the same time. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern, but they all create real hazards like fires and car accidents...
A section of the undernet is selling insider secrets to the stock market. This is nothing new, but someone has attacked the autonomic intelligence that sorts it all and this drives the market haywire.
Smaller, independent content creators in the matrix are being attacked and even doxxed by angry mobs and megacorp agents.
A small microchip company has a boom in business and even first-time customers show a fanatical brand loyalty, to the extent they force other people to try them.
A netrunning guild’s clients are disappearing.
A netrunning guild’s members are disappearing.
A megacorp wants another megacorp’s secret projects, but said projects are disconnected from the ‘net on their own internal system.
Sites are glitching out more than usual and VIs are turning into Programs at an alarming rate.
The textures of a matrix server have all disappeared, leaving avatars night-featureless and objects displaying nothing but a red glowing "ERROR" sign the size of the object's model.
A (literally) shadowy figure appears and disappears at random trading valuable artifacts for seemingly random but rare and hard to find junk.
