Gazetteer: Nareeza

Planet Nerezza

"The City-Eater World"

Nerezza is a heavily urbanized industrial world located on the fringe of the Pact Worlds frontier. Nearly 82% of the planet’s population lives inside colossal mega-arcologies connected by maglev rails, subterranean transit tunnels, and decaying industrial sprawls called The Undercrawl.

The sky is permanently obscured by:

• refinery exhaust,

• atmospheric processors,

• orbital debris rings,

• and bioluminescent smog clouds caused by chemical runoff from centuries of corporate exploitation.

The planet rotates slowly, creating vast twilight zones where entire cities exist beneath eternal dusk. Most inhabitants have never seen natural sunlight.

Major Features

The Black Mantle

A planetwide toxic cloud layer suspended in the upper atmosphere. Electrical storms ripple through it constantly. Strange radio signals emerge during storm cycles. Signals that sometimes answer back.

The Hollow Sea

An oily black ocean where no life should survive.
Satellites detect impossible structures beneath the surface:

• cyclopean geometries,

• moving trenches,

• heat signatures the size of cities.

Ships vanish there regularly.

The Undercrawl

Miles-deep infrastructure beneath the major cities:

• abandoned transit tunnels,

• forgotten laboratories,

• failed AI vaults,

• cult sanctuaries,

• black-market cybernetic chop shops.

Entire generations live and die underground without legal identities.

The ShroudNet

Nerezza’s planetary infosphere.
Fast. Addictive. Omnipresent.
Also haunted.

People report:

• phantom users,

• impossible transmissions,

• recursive dreams,

• missing memories after deep-network dives.

Officially, these are “stress-related neural artifacts.”
Naturally that explanation is complete nonsense.

GRAVEMARK CITY

"Neon reflected in rainwater and blood."

Gravemark is the largest city on Nerezza and the campaign’s opening location. It is a vertical nightmare of:

• endless neon,

• overcrowded transit sectors,

• corporate towers,

• machine temples,

• and forgotten districts swallowed by infrastructure expansion.

The city is divided into layers.

THE SPIRES

Corporate luxury sectors high above the smog.
Artificial daylight.
Private security armies.
Designer cybernetics.
Executive cults pretending not to be cults.

THE MIDSTACK

Dense commercial zones packed with:

• bars,

• markets,

• bounty hunters,

• data brokers,

• gang enclaves,

• synth-noir entertainment dens.

Most citizens survive here.

THE GUTTER

The undercity beneath the infrastructure grid.
No law except what armed people can enforce.
Biohacker clinics operate beside occult shrines.
Children disappear here often enough that people stop mentioning it.

Important Factions

MORROW DYNAMICS

A mega-corporation specializing in AI, cybernetics, and neural interface systems.
Publicly benevolent.
Privately excavating things beneath the Hollow Sea.

THE ORDO VEIL

An occult black-ops organization tasked with containing cosmic threats.
Half intelligence agency.
Half religious order.
Entirely ruthless.

THE CHOIR OF THE DEEP SIGNAL

A techno-cult spreading through the ShroudNet.
Members hear “music” hidden in machine transmissions.
Victims eventually mutilate themselves into living antennae.

Humanity really looked at cosmic horror and said:
“You know what this needs? Wi-Fi.”