1 Retrofit -

Planet larger than earth with a tech level above ours - but only because of the integration of magic and technology. Biotech is extremely common, implants are relatively normal, and energy scarcity isn't a thing. The major issues of the world include high income inequality (boy, familiar much) and the rising tensions between two nations that occupy the major landmass of the planet, with smaller nations on the landmass allied to one side or the other. Neither is really good nor bad, but the enemy nation is notably fascist  whereas the nation the story occurs in is largely democratic with subtle fascist notes.

The story deals with a character that winds up selected by a major corporation being caught in a fatal accident and then reconstructed. They want to use him/her for a research program allegedly, and he/she is forced to sign confidentiality agreements and so on. However, his/her close friends notice weird shit about him - more than before - as does he - that hint that this reconstruction was far more invasive than thought.

Further, he/she quickly discovers that many bad things happening in the city seem to be tied to dreams he is having. Soon enough, it becomes obvious that he is straight up murdering people, doing illegal shit etc - being used by this company, with heavy ties to a foreign government (protip the fascist one) as both a spy and a sleeper, as well as a sort of... agent of chaos. Where it goes from there remains to be seen.


2 Body and Blood -

In a world similar to earth but with a much more industrial-revolution-but-also-magic level of technology, a character is driven by the unexplained need to save his village from an 'abomination.' Abominations plague this world, and the trio of moons that this world occupies. When a group of mysterious people show up claiming to be from 'The Bounty Office' a sheriff (in love with this character but keeping that quiet because they're dumb and cute) becomes frightened and attempts to conceal this person's identity and location.

After a terse chat and some light threats from the frightening female head of the team, he shamefully admits that he's known for a while but was scared of what the main character might become if they found out the truth - that they are, in fact, a Marked. Marked are special people, singled out at apparent random from the population. They often never awaken, but when awakened, the Mark of the Dead Goddess appears on their flesh. These beings have special and often disturbing powers, and were created to fight against the minions of a long dead Eldritch deity that actually killed the goddess - or rather, she suicided hardcore in order to kill this Eldritch god.

These mutated people, altered not by man but by the will of a decease deity, suffer a terrible hunger that is near impossible to sate - a desperate hunger for the flesh of the living, of the dead, and of the Dead Eldritch God's often horrifying minions.

This main character is eventually revealed to be Deathmarked, a seriously rare but awful elevation of a regular Mark - other such sub-types include the Verdantmarked, the Lightmarked, the Melodymarked and the Blackmarked.

The Marked, often in service of the Bounty Office, act as repellent to the monstrosities, wondering the land and killing them in search of food, with a terrible reputation for feeding on those already dead when they arrive. Some fugitive Marked are actually said to kill just to eat, and it is rumored that the Marked are more common than the monarchy lets on.

What happens from there remains to be seen.


3 Catching Gears -


In the darkness below the burnt black surface of the Earth, what is considered a rather small reality-simulator churns onward, powered by the still beating heart of of a dead god. This reality simulator has been allowed to run for over two hundred and fifty years, with no maintenance, no buffer clearance, nothing at all - and no one inside knows why.

In fact, no one inside knows they are inside. They languish in the black, in the Settlements of Salem, under the often not so watchful eyes of something... horrid. Is it omnipotent? Is it powerful at all? Is it mad?

Ronat doesn't know. All Ronat knows is pipes and water systems, machines and air conditioning units - and the terminal interface, the thing that no one is supposed to use for anything other than their assigned jobs...

But food is running low. Mutations are becoming common. The rule are bending. Crops are becoming harder to maintain. Stillbirths are at an all time high. Their population is... slowly, but surely, shrinking.

Ronat wants to find out - what is happening to their systems, and what happened to her mother, who mysteriously disappeared only two years before. However, as the mutant daughter of the priest, forced to hide her mutagenic nature, there seems little she can do - until one day, she decides to examine the water system via a different part of the terminal interface, and discovers a compound she's not familiar with that the "filtration system" is adding to their water.

After several days of intentionally distilling her own water, and with her close friend drinking the same, they decide the worst and most horrible thing is true - they've been drugged their entire lives. Nothing is as it seems.

Desperate to escape, desperate to find the truth about her mother, Ronat must find a way out before her eighteenth birthday - or face forced marriage to a man she loathes, face never getting to explore her feelings for her closest friend, and indeed, the potential death of their species.

However, when it all goes sideways and the dark god-like touches her father's mind yet again, Ronat is forced into the bitter black below. It seems... perhaps, the shelters are deeper than anyone knew... and it seems as if, perhaps, the answers do not lie above - but in the blackness far down below.

On the outside, a specialist attempting to breach the facility containing the micro-reality struggles to unravel what happened there, just after the bombs fell - and why everyone died.

When the specialist's path crosses with Ronat's, the very concept of reality will be threatened by darkness, madness, and a bitter, broken godform.


4 Wildcard


High tech world... relatively speaking, just past our own in technological advancement. On this world, three hundred years ago there was a grand experiment. All of the world came together believing they were about to witness the dawn of a golden age - but hubris is poison, all below it are fruit of that tainted tree.

This experiment was intended to coalesce magic itself, to give the living total control over reality. Lord Death, The Lucifer, and a dark being who few can say the name of... came together to throw a wrench in the works, because they knew it would destroy reality.

A dark shadow fell over the world. From fissures in reality, Corruption poured. Beasts and men alike were mutated, becoming as abominations. Their rage drove them to attack those unaffected. The walls came up quickly. Outside the wilds festered - the beasts could breed. For nearly a century, no one ventured out of the great cities - and no one knew just how much of the other cities were left. Communications were tightly controlled, the state controlled the news...

But overpopulation became a problem.

From darkness... emerged the mutats - ragtag bands of bounty hunters and heroes, often hired by settlements to deal with larger issues. In response to THAT darkness, the Holy Order of the Rose cropped up... and they began to turn the world against them. After all, it was a power they didn't control. Their lord, the Lord of Roses, had always been worshipped, and indeed seemed a real god - but their power grew and grew, until they controlled all of the mega city of Canline - all of the country of Anth.

There, Reen Varen is struggling her way through college. Injured as a child in a raid on her village not far outside of the city, she has little left to her name but her job and the man who cares for her - and a dead mother with a dark, mysterious past that she isn't allowed to ask about.

However, one day, the war comes to Canline. The darkness rains down. These abominations seem... different. They seem... intelligent. It seems like they've organized. Trapped in her apartment with her best friend and the abomination that WAS her adoptive father and boss, she discovers after the deaths of both of them that...

Something isn't right with her. Her adoptive father gasps out, with his dying breath, two words.

Wildcard.

Closet.

There, hidden beneath her adoptive father's things, she finds a hidden panel - and beneath that panel, a grim truth she isn't ready to accept.

The grim truth that she may already be a mutat, and worse... with the abominations so near, it's only going to get stronger. With a strange photograph, an odd syringe of dark liquid and the resurgence of synthetically suppressed memories at her back, Reen sets out to escape the city - the abominations in the streets and the Order of the Rose, hunting anyone mutated by the abominations' plagues.

Is there any truth out there to find? What really happened to her as a child? Who is she, really? Who was her mother, really? What has the order of the rose, and their isolationist state, been hiding out in the wilds?

And a last question, one that seems to haunt her, one that comes with a soft melody.

Have there always been three moons?

What else is out there, in the outside world, aside monsters? Is it really as dangerous as it seems?

Will there be anything left of her when she finally finds the truth?


5 Infernal Disturbance


The Lucifer is facing a major problem. The gates of Tartarus are creaking. Something on the other side is trying to get free. She can't get in contact with the Lilith of Tartarus, she can't even seem to contact Death. It seems as if Hell itself is coming unraveled. There are reports of rebellion and raiders in the farthest cities from the capital of Dis, the population of souls intended to be burnt clean is larger than ever and the Reapers seem to be unable to break through.

Somehow, someone is invoking an evil so ancient that even she doesn't know what it is - something from the implication of time before the mists of recorded history, something that could threaten not just the World of the Dead (a misnomer she's always disliked) but indeed, the world of the living.

There, in the darkness of Hell, a young (gender irrelevant, defaulting to female) woman, barely eighteen, is facing down her fate. She's been cast into the pit, and though she doesn't know it, her final and truest end will be a painless thing - they're not truly in the business of torture in Hades. Far from it. The majority of souls are simply kindly euthanized, their cores burnt hot in the fires of purity, until all darkness staining them is washed away. Few of them feel pain, save for the utmost depraved and tormented.

However, when things seem to be turning terribly dark for this poor soul, who believes (as most do) she was cast into the pit in error... when a guard attempts to take liberties as they are being marshaled to where their true deaths must occur to maintain the balance of living and dead and perpetuate the cycle...

This girl fights back. Despite that a soul should be a weak and frail thing by the time it makes it to hell, this one seems stronger than most - strong enough to manifest magic, even, of a kind not natural to the World of the Living, or that of the Dead.

Baffled, Lucifer has her tracked, hunted. She wants to know what this girl is, believing that somehow, she may be the key to whatever is happening - and to stopping it.

With political tensions rising as some think the Lucifer is simply making these events up trying to stave off handing the mantle over to her successor, and dark plots afoot, this girl must find her way to the devil herself, and in doing so, perhaps save all of Hell - and everything else in turn.

But, can anyone really close shut the jaws of Tartarus? Can anyone carve a new doorway for the Reapers? There are texts, miserable to read and opaque and flowery in language, that suggest that when threatened, reality itself has countermeasures - but knowledge of the deep mechanics of reality have been lost to the ages for... well, ages.

Ironically, only time will tell.