It's the year 2055, and it's been five years since the launch of the continent-dominating VR game in Europe, somewhat distastefully named "Breccia."
The game was competitive and cruel from its start, with relatively low resources but an enormous world map to settle in, resulting in many factions engaging in warring, raiding, smuggling, and much more.
Not all is bleak in this world, thanks to the deeply ingrained morality system. Each player begins their journey with a moral alignment, which varies depending on their chosen starting class. For instance, those who choose to become priests of the divine start with a good or neutral alignment, earning initial moral points that reflect their virtuous path. However, even these players, if they commit enough immoral actions, can gradually fall into darkness.
On the other hand, a thief, though capable of achieving goodness, always starts with negative moral points due to their inherently dubious nature. They can still begin their journey as neutral or dark, but their initial steps are shaded by their class's tendencies. True dark classes, such as assassins, always start with a dark alignment, while true light classes, like paladins, begin with a pure light alignment.
The alignment of a player can shift over time based on their choices in the game, leading to ascension or descent within the moral spectrum. While it's often challenging to play against the inherent nature of one's class—turning a paladin to darkness or a thief to light—some players do this as a niche strategy, creating unique builds and often surprising adversaries in the process.
Despite this, the majority of the player base, about 85 percent, remain aligned with light or neutrality. This is not only because these alignments are seen as more straightforward or rewarding, but also because the dark lands are inherently more dangerous. In the dark lands, every being is at each other's throat, making survival and progress far more difficult. The constant struggle for resources, territory, and power in the dark lands dissuades many players, pushing them toward the relative stability and safety of light or neutral paths.
The world map is split into four large zones. In the south is the Light zone, originally named Lucenti, a large citadel city at the center that none could ever hope to siege. It functions as a starting area and the largest gathering of guilds, warehouses, trading markets, and so on. A beautiful city that could take days to walk through, and indeed, many have come to love it enough to permanently settle in it and pursue a simple craft and trading style. The great citadel is called Aurelia, a name settled upon after five months of the utmost boring cantankerous meetings between its top guilds at the time. Nowadays the entire light zone is named colloquially Aurelia, and seeing as it the citadel's power has all other small hubs entangled into its economy, it isn't particularly wrong either.
Then there is the neutral zone, or rather zones, as there is a clear east and west area where neutral players could start and then pick a safe area in one of the zones. Furthermore, the neutral zones are ever-changing. Cities are built quickly but are small and often besieged by others, destroyed, and rebuilt elsewhere.
For this reason, the neutral zones are collectively referred to as the wild lands. The history of this area is barely worth keeping track of, and only the guilds know of it by way of their hired wildland's historiographers, lest they ever forget a slight that was done to them.
As mentioned before, the wildlands are split apart. This is due to a large alpine mountain range in the middle of the world. The weather alone in this zone is a reason that no big settlements ever existed here, except one military outpost costly maintained by Aurelia to keep watch for any armies or raiding groups. Strong monsters also roam around, and there is not a single piece of food or wood; the mountains are barren outside of what looting you could do from the monster and what you could mine from the caves, which are always infested with monsters. Most players would only pass through the range for travel, and smuggling or to do a mining expedition.
The mountain range is named the Breccian Divide and is somewhat the only reason the game is balanced between light and darkness.
Then lastly, of course, there is the dark zone, aptly named Umbrae, a very large and inhospitable territory. There is no big city or any such thing; only wastelands, markets, small harbors, and dungeons. Monsters strong enough to destroy walls roam around freely, and most dark players themselves are even worse. Instead, the dark zone has many factions that, like an army on the march, move from territory to territory, setting up black markets for curious neutral customers one day and leaving the next day to hide out from enemy raiding parties.
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What's more, the dark zone is not poor in resources for those who know how to exploit them and live to return with the rich bounty. Be it monster hunters, great miners, excellent alchemists and herbalists, and so on. If a guild has a great amount of wealth it cannot carry any longer, they would hide it in myriad ways. However, seeing how burying treasure often results in some low rankers sneaking out at night with shovels, the dungeons are used to hide treasuries most of the time.
You might now think that the dark lands are, therefore, a pushover; however, the entirety of the darkness territory has a corruption status effect that gets worse the longer a non-dark player is in it. This results in light and neutral armies only making punitive expeditions and raids into the land. The result of this is that very few large dark guilds dominate the dark wastes like migratory tribes. When new players choose to play for darkness, they are simply dropped randomly on the map and are quickly conscripted by these factions as slave soldiers or killed on the spot.
All zones contain dungeons. These dungeons serve as strongholds, treasuries, and hideouts, often jealously guarded by those who claim them. While slaying all the monsters of a dungeon is a feat in itself, ownership is not granted by simply defeating a set number monsters or going through a number of levels or defeating a boss—it is won through the effort seizing the main control room directly. Once conquered, the dungeon is often sold off to a willing guild or a vying Dungeon Master, as the raiding warriors usually lack the capacity to maintain such a complex stronghold.
Upon claiming a dungeon, the new Dungeon Master is bestowed with a unique magical ability: the power to teleport back to their main dungeon room at will. This ability serves both as a mark of their status and a vital tool, allowing them to instantly return and defend their domain whenever it is under attack.
The role of a Dungeon Master is not for the faint of heart. The costs of fortifying and maintaining a dungeon are immense, requiring not only great wealth but also a deep understanding of fortification construction, monster ecology, defensive strategy, and much more, depending on the chosen dungeon style. Dungeon Masters are more than just combat tacticians; they are craftsmen, engineers, monster tamers, and strategists, relying on their specialized knowledge and resources to protect their strongholds.
In Breccia, where power and wealth are constant pursuits, the path of the Dungeon Master is less common but highly respected. It is a rare profession, with only a handful of true masters on each side of the moral spectrum. These Dungeon Masters form a close-knit, though competitive, community, each guarding their secrets and techniques closely. Some focus solely on defending their guild’s treasures, often known as treasurers, while others relish the challenge of creating elaborate traps and defenses for those bold enough to venture into their domain, earning them the title of trappers.
And that brings us to me: Techneadore. As a dark-aligned cyborg lord and Dungeon Master for the Unholy Alliance, I oversee a single, formidable dungeon—a stronghold meticulously crafted to challenge and overwhelm any who dare enter. My role extends beyond mere treasurer; I am the architect of this labyrinthine fortress, where I employ an array of traps and defenses to turn raiders into my victims.
My dungeon is a testament to my craft. While I use various methods to ensure the end of those who enter—whether through poison, pitfalls, or more direct confrontations—my true expertise lies in oversight and gunnery. Turrets, overseeing cameras and drones, and mechanical contraptions form the backbone of my defenses, allowing me to secure my domain with deadly efficiency. The schadenfreude of watching even the most seasoned parties falter against my carefully laid strategies is what drives me the most.
My build is that of a cyborg lord. In Breccia, there are various archetypes for those who specialize in controlling mobs and setting traps. One of the most notable is the Lich necromancer. Liches command legions of the undead, reanimating fallen enemies—both human and monstrous—and summoning dark entities from beyond. They wield potent magic, using their control over the dead to bolster their defenses and unleash devastating sorcery.
The Cyborg race, in contrast, is often associated with ranged and agile combat. Many cyborgs choose builds that transform them into powerful artillery units or nimble assassins. My own path began with the android sentinel class. This build allowed me to act as a quartermaster and trapper, equipped with the unique "remote arsenal" ability. With it, I could deploy and command an array of drones, cameras, and firearms from a distance. While this made me less effective in direct combat, it suited my role as a perimeter guard for black markets and caravans, where my skills in surveillance and defense were invaluable.
Upon reaching level 40, I ascended to the class of cyborg lord. This new class not only enhances my physical capabilities but also grants me the power to directly take control of and utilize the complex mechanisms within my dungeon. I can orchestrate traps and ambushes now with unparalleled precision, all while remaining safely behind my defensive lines and in my control room.
My alignment with the Unholy Alliance was a strategic understanding between both parties, providing me with the resources necessary to fortify and manage my dungeon effectively. In return as their dungeon master, I safeguard their interests and treasures within my stronghold.
Today is a particularly significant day. The Unholy Alliance's "Fixers" guild has alerted me to a large army trekking towards the dungeon, intent on conquering it.