Real-time strategy In development
A materials company built nanobots to end mining. They got out. Now they turn everything living into crystal, and the crystal is the only thing left worth fighting over.
The world
Veyholt Materials built a swarm of self-replicating disassemblers to pull every useful element out of scrap and rock, and condense it into crystal. One harvester load of condensite replaces a mine, a smelter and a supply chain.
Then the swarm got out, and found that living matter is the easiest matter in the world to take apart. Forests went first, then livestock, then towns. Where it passes it leaves a bloom: a field of glowing blue spires where something used to grow.
The war is fought on the Verge, the moving edge where the Bloom meets living land. Fresh crystal is the richest there is, which means it is richest exactly where people still live.
Factions
Frontier
Frontier towns, ex-military units and salvage crews bound by a one-page pact.
They harvest condensite to buy wards, print their weapons and hold the line against the Bloom. They swear they will burn it back to Harrow one day. For now they can't even afford to stop harvesting it.
Corporate
The company that made the swarm, now a private army.
Its lawyers hold that every gram of crystal is Veyholt intellectual property, and Recovery Division enforces the claim with tanks. With enough crystal, the company says, it can switch the swarm off. Nobody outside the company has seen the evidence.
Executive
The UN Territorial Integrity and Defence Executive. Everyone outside the Curtain calls it Untidy.
Founded so that governments could say something was being done, it became the only thing that still works. It runs on forms, quotas and procurement, and its soldiers say they are holding the Tide.
Devlog