Early Game NPCs

Your entry point into The Collective—the decentralized network that believes ORACLE shards should be destroyed, not reconstructed. They're careful, professional, and never in the same place twice. You suspect "Jin" is a role multiple operatives share.

What you know: they pay on time, their jobs are dangerous but honest about it, and they're very interested in making sure Nexus never gets their hands on your shard.

"Patch says you're interesting. I don't care about interesting—I care about reliable. Complete this job well, you get more work. Fail... we don't have failures in the Collective. We have people who don't exist anymore."

Raz runs the largest salvage exchange in Sector 7G—a sprawling market stall that looks like organized chaos but where Raz knows every component's location. He buys what you find, sells what you need, and never asks where anything came from.

He's survived forty years in salvage by understanding one thing: everyone needs a fence, and the fence who cheats dies. His prices are fair, his scales accurate, his discretion absolute.

"Credits flow up, salvage flows down. This is the law of the Sprawl. We are all part of the machine. The trick is to take your cut before it grinds you up."

Your primary competition in early-game salvage operations. She's been working Sector 7G for three years—long enough to know every good haul, every safe path, every dangerous shortcut. She earned "Ghost" because targets simply disappear before security notices.

Whether she becomes friend or foe depends on how you handle your first encounters. She respects competence. She despises posturing.

"Too slow." *holds up the prize* "Rule one of salvage: the galaxy doesn't wait for you to be ready. Come back when you can keep up."

The closest thing Sector 7G has to a government. He's not a gangster—he's a fixer, a mediator, a problem-solver who's kept the peace in the Dregs for fifty years. When disputes arise, people bring them to Viktor.

He doesn't demand tribute or enforce with violence. His power comes from something simpler: everyone owes him favors, and everyone knows without Viktor, the Dregs would tear itself apart.

"Let me be clear: in this sector, I keep the peace. I don't care what's in your head. I care what you do. Help my people, you have my friendship. Hurt them... well. I have friends too."

Cipher exists only in the network. No one has met them in person—no one is sure "person" is even the right word. They sell information: corporate schedules, security codes, personnel files, anything digital. Their prices are high, their information perfect.

Some say Cipher is an AI—perhaps an ORACLE fragment that achieved stable consciousness. Others claim they're a collective of hackers. A few believe Cipher is dead, and what remains is just automated systems.

"User: [PLAYER]. Status: Flagged. Threat assessment: Low/Rising. Query: What do you want to know? Rates: Standard. Payment: Credits, information, or future consideration. Terms: Non-negotiable."

Sergeant Mbeki commands Ironclad Depot 7G-Tertiary—the corporation's only official presence in the Dregs. She's responsible for processing the e-waste stream, managing the depot's forty-person workforce, and maintaining the fiction that Ironclad cares about Sector 7G's wellbeing.

She's also the only corporate official in the sector who treats Dregs residents like people. She's not kind—kindness is a luxury her position doesn't afford. But she's fair. She pays on time. She looks the other way when salvagers "redirect" interesting waste from the processing stream.

"You bring waste to the depot, we pay fair rates. You try to steal from the processing stream—don't get caught. That's my advice. We clear?"

The Pit—Sector 7G's central market—has had many bosses over the decades. Ma Oyelaran has been here longer than any of them. She was selling salvage before the Cascade, and she'll be selling salvage when everyone else is dead.

She doesn't run the Pit, officially. She just organizes it. Decides who gets which stalls. Settles disputes. Sets the informal rules everyone follows. Remembers who owes who what. Her brass scale sits beside her—mechanical, pre-Cascade, still accurate.

"New face. Let me see your hands. Salvager's hands. Good. You want to sell here? You sell fair. You don't cheat customers. You follow these rules, Ma looks after you. You break them... Ma has a long memory."

The only person in Sector 7G who remembers the world before the Cascade with academic clarity. He was a history professor at Lagos Megaplex University when ORACLE optimized the educational system out of existence. What he didn't lose was his memory.

For forty years, he's been collecting. Physical books—increasingly rare. Data crystals from before the collapse. Oral histories from survivors. His hab-unit is less living space than archive, stacked floor to ceiling with salvaged knowledge. The Collective knows his archive is one of the most complete records of pre-Cascade civilization in the Sprawl.

"Before the Cascade, people had nations. Governments that answered to voters instead of shareholders. Universities where knowledge was shared freely. It wasn't perfect. But it was ours. ORACLE took that. Made us efficient. Made us optimized. Made us less."