Orientation
Bitlantis is Denver a mile under the sea.
When the Flood came, the Mile High City didn't drown so much as get moved: the whole grid, block by block, copied down into the dark by people who refused to log off. It sits under a cracked glass dome on the sea floor, wet concrete and neon, lit from below by things that grow in the water. Everyone there is a copy of someone who used to live in the light.
Nobody agrees what the Flood was. The Shelf says storm surge. The Trench says a breach so large the water followed it in. Both are right: the sea came for the servers, and the servers took the city with them.
Top to bottom
Districts
The Shelf
Highest, pressed under the dome. Corporate glass, the only view of the surface. The Curators run it. Nothing here is broken, which is how you know nothing here is real.
The Shallows
Markets, bars, neon half underwater. Where you buy things. Kestrel's territory. The store on this site is a stall here.
The Orchard
A hydroponic dome on the eastern edge, loaded with cherry trees before the Flood. The only place in Bitlantis with a season.
The Trench
Lowest inhabited district, built into the fault line. Old servers, older people. The Code Master's workshop is down here and moves when it's found.
The Vault
Below the Trench. Not a district, a hole. The city's archived memory, kept cold. Sister Noise lives in what leaks up.
The Denver Sky
The underside of the dome. At night the grid projects onto it and from the Shallows it looks like constellations over the old skyline.
Personnel
The cast
The Code Master
The Operator's name in Bitlantis. His work is the city itself. He does not accept the world as it is; he rewrites it. Walks the grid as a red and gold cyborg dragon.
Xiomara
In Greek, "android" means "in the form of a man". Some missions require the form of a woman. Stealth infiltration, heuristic system penetration, a mono-molecular blade, ablative armour. Leaves nothing confidential.
Kestrel
Fixer and broker. Runs the Shallows from a bar with no name. Every item in the store passes through Kestrel's hands.
Sister Noise
Not a person. A voice in the static from the Vault. Senseless noise to the untrained, signal to the adept.
Director Halden
Runs the Curators from the top of the Shelf. Believes the city can be made orderly. Never seen without a clean suit and a clean record.
Carved over the main lock
Rules of the world
- No one in Bitlantis uses their surface name. That includes the Operator.
- Every session ends. The hourglass is on every door.
- Nothing is confidential once Xiomara has been in the room.
- The water is always rising, a little. The Shallows have moved up two streets since the Flood.
- Signal beats noise, but only if you can tell them apart.