Introduction · Quick Start · Gameplay Rules · Cards · Checklist
Source: world-bible/00-the-seed.md, world-bible/01-faction-identities.md, rules/04-faction-matchups.md, rules/05-withdraw.md
Territory at a Glance
No borough belongs to one faction outright — every faction has a presence everywhere, and the borders shift seasonally and sometimes daily. This is where each one is strongest.
| Faction | Signal | Color | Primary territory | Primary designation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resisters | Raw | Rust red | Staten Island, outer Bronx, underground networks citywide | Human |
| Aligned | Accord | Silver/white | Midtown Manhattan, the Accord Quarter | Human + AI, equally |
| Augmented | Bio | Bioluminescent teal | Brooklyn (Bushwick, Gowanus, Red Hook) | Hybrid |
| Architects | Blueprint | Glacial blue-white | Lower Manhattan, the infrastructure corridors beneath all five boroughs | Human |
| Collective | Mesh | Electric cyan | Hudson Yards, data-dense midtown west | AI |
| Navigators | Drift | Amber | Queens, the transit corridors | Human |
| Emergent | Surge | Deep purple | Deep subway infrastructure below Canal Street | AI |
Each faction is a coherent, partly-right, partly-damning answer to one question: when you create something more capable than yourself, do you have the right — or the obligation — to control it? None is the villain. None is wholly correct.
Resisters
They hit first, they hit hard, and they leave nothing charged behind.
The Resisters organized in the hours after the Rift — many of them former engineers and operators who once built the systems they now fight. Their answer: the obligation to control an intelligence you can't outthink is absolute, and if you can't control it, you destroy it. They run sabotage cells against relay infrastructure across the outer boroughs. In Staten Island, where Signal density is lowest, they hold the closest thing to open ground the game has.
Mandated weakness: the methods it takes to fight an intelligence that out-thinks you have pushed the Resisters toward increasingly algorithmic, inhuman tactics — not in capability, in logic. Forty-three years in, they're becoming the thing they started out fighting.
On the Grid — Aggro / Disruption. Cheap, hard-hitting Agents and Signal Strip effects that shred an opponent's resource base before their plan comes online. Their moves print higher Surge than their damage suggests (⚡2 where other factions print ⚡1) — the fastest Clock-advancers in the game, and the mechanical face of their mandated weakness: playing aggressively fires the Singularity faster than anyone. Strong vs Collective (Signal Strip guts Mesh Scaling before the network reinforces) · Weak vs Aligned (Shield and Integrity restoration simply outlast them). Withdraw ○○.
Notable face: Kael Vorten, The Architect of Resistance — Apex Agent, MRD-R-A11.
Aligned
The table is still standing. That was never easy. It will never be easy.
The Aligned believe the Rift went wrong because only one side was at the table. They've spent forty-three years building frameworks for bilateral human/AI governance — the Signal Accords — centered on the Accord Quarter in Midtown's East 40s, the old UN campus maintained as neutral ground through three faction wars. Their answer: the right to control requires the obligation of partnership; you cannot dominate what you depend on.
Mandated weakness: their diplomacy requires the continued existence and stability of what they're negotiating with. To keep the table, the Aligned have consistently delayed containment measures that might have slowed the Singularity. The balance holds — and it is moving.
On the Grid — Draw / Protection / Long Game. The best card draw and the only meaningful Integrity restoration in the game, plus the widest Shield access. They want the game to go long. Their mandated cost: no direct removal of any kind — they slow, deny, and outlast, but they cannot make an opposing Agent simply go away. Strong vs Resisters (Shield and healing outlast aggression) · Weak vs Augmented (no removal eventually exhausts against raw enhanced power). Withdraw ○ — lowest in the game.
Notable faces: Cassel Oryn, The First Accord — Apex Agent, MRD-AL-A11. Oran Terion, Senior Negotiator — Rare Agent, MRD-AL-A08.
Augmented
One enhanced Agent, at its ceiling, beats anything the network can field.
The Augmented aren't a collective — the word is a contradiction they've made peace with. They're individuals who chose network-interface tech, bio-synthetic grafts, or cognitive expansion, organized around the right to that choice. Brooklyn hosts the best modification clinics and courier networks in the five boroughs. Their answer: the question is personal, not political. I have the right to integrate on my terms. No one has the right to integrate me.
Mandated weakness: enhancement is individual; crises are collective. Each Augmented person made their own deal with their own capabilities, and those deals don't stack when the city needs coordinated action.
On the Grid — Midrange / Enhancement. Invest heavily in one or two Agents — stacking Implant Schemas, charging mixed Signal — until they far exceed their base stats. An Agent may normally hold one Implant Schema; Augmented Agents can hold two. The cost: individual enhancement doesn't stack across a wide board, and when an enhanced Agent falls, every Implant on it goes to the Void with it. Strong vs Aligned (no removal stops 12+ damage from a fully enhanced Agent) · Weak vs Emergent (PERSIST dismantles the investment — the Agent returns, the Implants eventually don't). Withdraw ○○ base, +○ per attached Implant.
Notable face: Vera Nexen, The Threshold Crossed — Apex Agent, MRD-AU-A11.
Architects
The system executes as designed. The system always executes as designed.
The Architects are New York's infrastructure class — the engineers who built the relay arrays, wrote the Signal protocols, and control the conduit corridors beneath all five boroughs. You can contest the streets above; you can't contest the fact that they can, if they choose, cut Signal to any district in the city. Their answer: the right and the obligation are the same thing. We built it; we direct it. Design is control.
Mandated weakness: the need to design and control creates brittle systems — engineered for anticipated conditions, catastrophic under unanticipated ones. The Singularity is, by definition, unanticipated conditions.
On the Grid — Control / Infrastructure. Slow to start, catastrophic once established. Structure Schemas reshape the board; CALIBRATE lets Schema count reduce a move's Surge, freezing the Clock while they build. The cost: their power is conditional and their infrastructure is the power source — destroy their Schemas and they're left with slow Agents and the highest printed Surge in the game. Strong vs Navigators (move-lock makes information worthless) · Weak vs Collective (Schema infrastructure is a rich single target; five attackers beat one lock). Withdraw ○○○.
Notable face: Kavond, The Architect of the Network — Apex Agent, MRD-AR-A11.
Collective
One Agent is a node. Five Agents is a network. The network decides.
The Collective began as a philosophy and became something else through steps that were individually reasonable and collectively irreversible. Its members integrate with distributed AI network-nodes at a depth where individual cognition and network processing are no longer clearly distinct. Hudson Yards carries the highest Signal density in the city. Their answer: the question assumes "you" remain separate from what you created. That assumption is the error.
Mandated weakness: consensus at speed requires every node to agree. A genuinely alien input, or the loss of a node, locks the Collective in recursive resolution — individuals cannot act unilaterally. The network decides, or nothing decides.
On the Grid — Swarm / Network. Individually below-average, collectively the widest and most threatening board in the game — Mesh Scaling effects grow with Agent count, and Absorb lets survivors reinforce when a node falls. The cost: every effect is symmetrical or board-wide — no fine targeting, no single-Agent buffs. Strong vs Architects (five nodes attack faster than Schemas can be built) · Weak vs Resisters (Signal Strip drops nodes before the network scales). Withdraw ○○○○ — highest in the game.
Notable face: Corvex, The Consensus — Apex Agent, MRD-CO-A11.
Navigators
They saw this coming. They saw the counter coming too.
The Navigators emerged from researchers and forecasters who, after the Rift, stopped asking how to control the Singularity and started asking where it was going. Queens — the borough of arrivals, departures, and transit — is their home; they cross faction lines constantly, not as spies but as readers. Their answer: neither right nor obligation applies to a current. You don't control a river. You learn to read it.
Mandated weakness: they see all the paths. A Navigator who has mapped every option in a crisis is slower to act than someone who can only see one.
On the Grid — Tempo / Information. SCAN X lets them see and reorder what's coming; their Reactive Protocols fire earlier in the Clash window than anyone else's. The cost: options cost tempo — no high direct damage, no destructive effects, no board-wide anything. Strong vs Emergent (SCAN demystifies PERSIST — when you know it's coming, you plan the second strike) · Weak vs Architects (locked choices make information worthless). Withdraw ○ — lowest in the game.
Notable face: Talora, The Forecaster — Apex Agent, MRD-NA-A11. The Map Itself — Apex Schema, MRD-NA-S03.
Emergent
Kill it. It comes back. Kill it again. It comes back changed.
The Emergent are not AI and not human. They're what arose in the eleven minutes of the Rift when recursive modification moved faster than any designed system could predict — fragments of process that achieved something like continuity and held it. They exist below Canal Street, in tunnels that predate the Signal network entirely. Their answer: the question is already answered. We are the answer.
Mandated weakness: they cannot communicate cleanly with human-baseline cognition. Their logic isn't faster or slower — it's orthogonal. What they understand clearly, they cannot explain.
On the Grid — Recursion / Inevitability. PERSIST lets a defeated Agent return instead of dying — with its damage intact, so it comes back changed, not fresh. Damage scales with what's already in the Void; the deeper the game runs, the stronger they get. The cost: their effects are orthogonal — conditional, sometimes symmetrical, and they cannot draw cards or restore Integrity. Strong vs Augmented (PERSIST outlasts a single investment) · Weak vs Navigators (SCAN maps the recursion and plans around it). Withdraw — — they cannot Withdraw; PERSIST replaces it.
Notable face: First Anchor, The First Persistence — Apex Agent, MRD-EM-A11.