The Victorian System: Aether & Anomalies
In 1887 London, a hidden 'System' has governed reality for decades. Society is stratified by data-driven Classes and Ranks. You are a newly Awakened, navigating a world of mechanical horrors, occult anomalies, and the brutal hierarchy of the Aether-Touched. Choose your path: join the Crown's Bureau of Anomalous Affairs, the shadowy Hermetic Order, or forge your own destiny in the fog-shrouded streets.
0
Plays
4
Characters
8
Events
📖 Story Backstory
The introduction and setting of the world, including its history.
In 1851, during the Great Exhibition, reality glitched. A silent, invisible framework—the System—overlaid the world. Humanity gained the ability to Awaken to data-driven Classes, view Status panels, and develop Skills. Society was forever changed. The British Empire, leveraging this new order, established the Bureau of Anomalous Affairs to regulate Awakened and contain 'Anomalies'—creatures and phenomena that bleed into our world from corrupted data streams or other dimensions. London is now a city of stark contrasts: gaslight and aether-lamps, steam carriages and clockwork servants, alongside desperate lower-Rank labourers and arrogant high-Rank aristocrats who treat the city as their personal game board. Secret societies like the Hermetic Order seek to understand the System's origins, while criminal syndicates traffic in illicit Skills and artifacts. Beyond the city, the countryside hides worse things: reality-warping zones and remnants of pre-System conflicts now inhabited by data-twisted beasts.
👥 Characters (4)
Characters in this story. You will choose who to play as when you start.
Arthur Finch
Protagonist
A Senior Agent of the Crown's Bureau of Anomalous Affairs, Finch is a career bureaucrat with a C-Rank Class: 'Inquisitor.' He believes in order, system, and the Empire's right to control the Awakened for the greater good. He is pragmatic to a fault, viewing anomalies as problems to be solved and people as assets or liabilities. He recruited the protagonist after detecting their unique Awakening signature, seeing potential where others might see a threat.
Elara Vance
Neutral
A high-ranking member of the Hermetic Order, a secret society dedicated to understanding the System's origins and mastering its underlying principles. Her true Class is a closely guarded secret, but she operates as an 'Aether-Weaver' (B-Rank). She believes the Bureau's control stifles human potential and that true power comes from embracing the System's mysteries, not regulating them. She sees the protagonist's unique Awakening as a key to unlocking deeper truths.
'Grime'
Neutral
A legendary figure in London's underworld, Grime is an unlicensed 'Artificer' of unknown Rank, rumored to be A or higher. He operates a clandestine workshop in the sewers near the docks, modifying gear, crafting illegal aetheric devices, and providing services for those who can't or won't go to the Bureau. He has no allegiance to any faction, only to his craft and his price.
Inspector Alistair Crowe
Neutral
The head of the Metropolitan Police's Special Anomaly Division, Crowe is a D-Rank 'Lawbringer' who believes the System is a divine test of order. He views both the Bureau and the Hermetic Order with deep suspicion, seeing them as elitist clubs that operate above the common law. He represents the 'boots on the ground' approach to anomaly containment, often clashing with Finch's bureaucratic methods. He sees the protagonist as either a potential asset for his underfunded division or another unregulated variable to be controlled.
⚡ Key Events (8)
The Awakening Choice
Immediately following the prologue. The Bureau agent, Arthur Finch, has confronted the newly Awakened protagonist in the alley. He offers a choice: accompany him to Bureau HQ for 'debriefing and orientation,' attempt to flee into the unpredictable London night, or try to talk him down. This decision sets the initial trajectory for the story.
Bureau Induction
The protagonist is brought to the imposing Bureau Headquarters. They undergo a basic aptitude test, are given a cursory explanation of the System's laws, and are offered a provisional contract as a 'Field Associate.' Finch lays out the first sanctioned mission: investigate a minor anomaly—a 'Weeping Statue' causing localized despair—in a Southwark churchyard.
A Shadowed Offer
After fleeing Finch or while lying low, the protagonist is discreetly approached by a messenger—a street urchin with oddly knowing eyes. The child hands them a sealed note with a wax symbol of an ouroboros encircling an eye. It reads: 'Your potential is wasted in a cage. The Gilded Cog, tonight. Ask for 'the Scholar.'' This is the first contact from the Hermetic Order.
The Gilded Cog Rumble
A tense meeting with a contact at The Gilded Cog pub is interrupted by a 'Glitch-Gang' raid. These low-Rank Awakened criminals, their bodies flickering with visual distortions, are seeking a specific patron rumored to possess an illegal Skill-drive. The pub descends into chaos as aetheric abilities clash amidst shattered glass and overturned tables. The player must choose: defend the innocent patrons, pursue the gang leader for information, seize the Skill-drive for themselves, or use the confusion to slip away unnoticed.
An Echo in the Underground
Reports surface of violent 'Echoes' manifesting on the Baker Street Underground platform—replays of a gruesome pre-System murder. Inspector Crowe requests (or demands) assistance, as his officers are unequipped. Investigating the site, the player must navigate the semi-physical, looping memory of the crime scene to find the 'resonant core' sustaining the Echo. The core is a locket containing a lock of hair, pulsing with sorrow and rage. Destroying it ends the Echo, but studying it first might reveal a hidden truth about the victim and a connection to a modern-day figure.
A Test of Forbidden Craft
Grime presents a proposition. He has acquired the corrupted 'heart-crystal' of a defeated data-beast but lacks a specific stabilizing reagent: fresh Aether-Blood Moss, which only grows in a reality-warped patch of Hampstead Heath known as the 'Shifting Glade.' He offers a significant discount on future services or a custom-made item in exchange for retrieval. The Glade is a dangerous, unregulated zone where geography and local physics are unreliable.
The Order's First Secret
If the player has shown interest in the Hermetic Order, Elara arranges a midnight meeting at the Reading Room of the British Museum. She reveals a hidden, System-locked archive accessible only by solving an aetheric puzzle based on celestial alignments. Inside, she shows the player a 'Static-Scroll'—a document that appears blank but, when viewed with a specific Skill, shows text describing the 'Great Exhibition Glitch' from the perspective of a witness who claimed it was not an accident, but an 'insertion.' The scroll is incomplete. Elara tasks the player with finding the other half, rumored to be in the possession of a reclusive, paranoid collector.
The Bureau's Loyalty Check
Finch calls the player in for a 'routine audit.' In a sterile interrogation room, he reveals he knows about the player's contacts with Elara and/or Crowe. He presents a choice: undertake a sanctioned, high-risk mission to infiltrate a Glitch-Gang safehouse and plant surveillance devices (raising Bureau Reputation but burning Street Reputation), or submit to a full aetheric scan and psychic debriefing to prove loyalty (which is invasive, slightly dangerous, and may reveal the player's hidden potential to the Bureau's upper echelons). Refusing both options marks the player as unreliable.