Early Game NPCs

Your entry point into The Collective — the decentralized network that believes ORACLE shards should be destroyed, not reconstructed. Jin never looks the same twice: cosmetic mods, holographic overlays, borrowed faces. The only constant is a calm, precise voice with a faint digital undertone suggesting heavy encryption. You suspect "Jin" is a role multiple operatives share.

They pay on time. Their jobs are dangerous but honest about it. And they are very interested in making sure Nexus never gets their hands on your shard.

"Patch says you're interesting. I don't care about interesting — I care about reliable. Complete this job well, you get more work. Fail... we don't have failures in the Collective. We have people who don't exist anymore."

Raz runs the largest salvage exchange in Sector 7G — a sprawling stall of organized chaos where he knows every component's location by memory. Heavyset with Mediterranean features, steel-gray hair, and hands scarred from forty years of trade. His left hand is missing two fingers. Data-spectacles perch on his nose for appraising components, and a neural calculator implant lets him price anything in seconds.

He buys what you find, sells what you need, and never asks where anything came from. His prices are fair, his scales accurate, his discretion absolute. Raz survived four decades in salvage by understanding one truth: the fence who cheats dies.

"Credits flow up, salvage flows down. This is the law of the Sprawl. We are all part of the machine. The trick is to take your cut before it grinds you up."

Your primary competition in early-game salvage. Lean and angular, built for speed and stealth. Deep brown skin, tight braids tucked under her hood. One eye natural dark brown, one matte-black optical implant that earned her the callsign "Ghost" — targets vanish before security even notices. She has worked Sector 7G for three years, long enough to know every good haul, every safe path, every dangerous shortcut.

Whether she becomes ally or adversary depends on how you handle your first encounters. She respects competence. She despises posturing. Beneath her competitive edge lies a hidden anger — the Dregs took something from her, and she is determined never to lose again.

"Too slow." *holds up the prize* "Rule one of salvage: the galaxy doesn't wait for you to be ready. Come back when you can keep up."

The closest thing Sector 7G has to a government. Tall and thin with military-straight posture, deeply lined face, and pale gray eyes that miss nothing. He dresses in a dark suit decades out of fashion but immaculately maintained. The cane he carries is for show — he does not need it. Viktor is not a gangster. He is a fixer, a mediator, a problem-solver who has kept the peace in the Dregs for fifty years.

His power comes from something simpler than violence: everyone owes him favors, and everyone knows that without Viktor, the Dregs would tear itself apart. When disputes arise, people bring them to the Old Man.

"Let me be clear: in this sector, I keep the peace. I don't care what's in your head. I care what you do. Help my people, you have my friendship. Hurt them... well. I have friends too."

Cipher exists only in the network. No one has met them in person — no one is sure "person" is even the right word. They sell information: corporate schedules, security codes, personnel files, anything digital. Their prices are high, their information perfect. In The Static, they manifest as a shifting figure of scrolling data — sometimes humanoid, sometimes abstract, always in motion. A synthesized, genderless voice with a slight delay suggesting heavy encryption.

Some believe Cipher is an ORACLE fragment that achieved stable consciousness. Others claim a collective of hackers. A few think Cipher is dead, and what remains is automated systems fulfilling old contracts. The truth may be more unsettling than any theory.

"User: [PLAYER]. Status: Flagged. Threat assessment: Low/Rising. Query: What do you want to know? Rates: Standard. Payment: Credits, information, or future consideration. Terms: Non-negotiable."

Sergeant Mbeki commands Ironclad Depot 7G-Tertiary — the corporation's only official presence in the Dregs. Compact and solid, built like someone who came up through physical labor. Dark brown skin, tight cornrows under a regulation cap, orange safety vest over black jumpsuit. She manages the depot's forty-person workforce, processes the e-waste stream, and maintains the fiction that Ironclad cares about Sector 7G's wellbeing.

She is also the only corporate official who treats Dregs residents like people. Not kind — kindness is a luxury her position does not afford. But fair. She pays on time. She looks the other way when salvagers "redirect" interesting waste from the processing stream.

"You bring waste to the depot, we pay fair rates. You try to steal from the processing stream — don't get caught. That's my advice. We clear?"

Adaeze Oyelaran has presided over The Pit — Sector 7G's central market — longer than anyone can remember. She was selling salvage before the Cascade, and she will be selling salvage when everyone else is dead. From a raised platform at the market's center, she sees everything: who trades fair, who cheats, who owes whom. Her brass scale sits beside her — mechanical, pre-Cascade, still perfectly accurate. An orange headscarf covers white hair. A concealed blade rests within easy reach.

She does not run the Pit, officially. She just organizes it. Decides who gets which stalls. Settles disputes. Sets the informal rules everyone follows. Her memory is absolute, and her community investment is total. Cross her, and the entire market closes its doors to you.

"New face. Let me see your hands. Salvager's hands. Good. You want to sell here? You sell fair. You don't cheat customers. You follow these rules, Ma looks after you. You break them... Ma has a long memory."

The only person in Sector 7G who remembers the world before the Cascade with academic clarity. Dr. Okafor was a history professor at Lagos Megaplex University when ORACLE optimized the educational system out of existence. Thin and stooped, with deep brown papery skin and eyes clouded by cataracts he refuses to have corrected. White wild hair, threadbare academic clothing, fingers stained with real ink from handling physical books. His hab-unit is less living space than archive — stacked floor to ceiling with salvaged books and data crystals.

For forty years he has been collecting: oral histories, pre-Cascade records, dangerous knowledge that certain factions would prefer stayed buried. The Collective knows his archive is one of the most complete records of pre-Cascade civilization in the Sprawl.

"Before the Cascade, people had nations. Governments that answered to voters instead of shareholders. Universities where knowledge was shared freely. It wasn't perfect. But it was ours. ORACLE took that. Made us efficient. Made us optimized. Made us less."