The world is dying. But, then again, it always has been. Only now, instead of the land being decimated in the name of gods and devils, the land is being decimated in the name of profits and advancement. The gods and devils turned out to be real. The gods and devils turned out to be us. Magic is in the air. Technology is pervasive. Invasive. The difference isn't as distinguishable as it once was. Spells or sprites, pixels or prestidigitation, it doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s just another way for the Guilds to control the Haves and further string along the Have Nots. The world was ours for the taking. So we took it. Now it barely feels like a world at all, after everything we've done to it. We treated the world like we treated our bodies, ripping out the parts we didn't like and replacing them with something we thought we did. And like our bodies, we had to constantly repair and replace and patch and update things just to keep chugging along, just to keep surviving. Thriving never crossed our minds. It was never an option we gave ourselves. The city has become a prison for the poor and a haven for the ultrarich. A haven from the wastes and the chaos of cyberspace, inside and outside the city walls. Fortunes are made here. Lives are ruined. An Elf moonlights as SecWatch in the Unders. An Orc paints a delicate, surrealist interpretation of the Bitlands. A Goblin couple spends their last credit on trauma care for their injured child. Human junkies sit under a bridge, sharing a trip, hallucinating themselves into Trolls. At the same time, a Troll scholar gives a lecture about megacorporative colonization at the Borg Institute. High tech, high magic, low culture. Sounds like home. Chapters will be posted as early access for my Substack Subscribers 2-4 weeks before Royal Road.