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Long ago the realm of Mukai entered its twilight because their sun was expanding, and every natural outcome ended in Apocalypse. Faced with extinction the people of Mukai came together in an unprecedented way. They put aside their differences and built a futuristic bunker to protect every citizen within a single world-city. Upon its completion their Realm’s fate was changed. Known as Neo Mukai, the world-city thrives under a dome of hard light that protects it from the extreme radiation that constantly bombards the planet. The massive, cramped, and claustrophobic city has a footprint of over 5,000 square miles and rises hundreds of stories above the ground, with 300 labyrinthine levels below. Unlike many realms, the inhabitants of Neo Mukai know that they are in but one of many universes and that they will one day again contact the Dreaming.

Over centuries, their realm evolved to cope with this new reality. The Shimin live in a society controlled and run by a multitude of mega-corporations that handle all facets of life. Corporate citizenship offers safety and provides the necessities to thrive but demands the needs of the company outweigh the needs of the individual and leaves little room for personal life. To buck this system is to risk poverty and hunger but to have a level of autonomy and agency in one’s own life that corporate employees are likely never to know.  People in the lowest levels live in squalor and in fear of terrible creatures from underneath the city while the elite live up and above in luxury and ease. Cybernetic augmentation is common for all and it is a rare individual who does not hope to someday be able to afford to have their consciousnesses uploaded onto the digital Continuum and become immortal Hikari.

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Neo Mukai Lorebook I.pdf
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This Realm's Lore is split into two parts. Click this link to learn more about the world outside the dome.

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Shimin

(Pronounced: Shi-mean)

The Shimin (humans) have lived in the cloistered city for the entirety of their lives. Most of the population work their whole adult lives for the corporations, living in the same buildings where they work. A standard workweek is 70+ hours in length - while living your life for and under a corporation offers security, it robs you of much of your freedom and agency. The goal of most corporate citizens is to ascend the ranks of corporate usefulness and achieve the ultimate promotion: becoming immortal hikari.

Those who choose not to follow the corporate wage model and instead prefer to live their lives for themselves get significantly less security. Life is more dangerous for the poor, which these people usually are: living on the edge between destitution and safety, often eternally one paycheck away from homelessness or hunger. They work odd jobs for the many smaller businesses that will never produce a millionaire, or resort to criminal means- regardless of the method, all hustle to keep themselves above board.

Costume and Roleplay

• Neo Mukai fashion varies depending mostly on socio-economic status, but is typified by urban streetwear, advanced performance apparel, and (especially among the lower classes) punk elements. Often a combination of fashion and functionality.
• Popular fabrics include: pleather, vinyl, mesh, and high-shine fabrics (usually with a metallic or holographic tone). Oftentimes garments are adorned with hardware.
• Optional: Augmentation is a common part of life in Neo Mukai and prosthetics are widespread. Sleek and form-fitting custom models are made for the rich, while the lower classes have bulky and mass-produced models. For the dregs of society, prosthetics are often very poorly sized for their bodies and usually scrapped together and buggy, sometimes even with exposed wiring.
• Shimin characters are always driven towards a goal, often with disdain for laziness and inactivity. Whether it’s the next rung on the corporate ladder or merely the next high, shimin are always chasing something.
• Most shimin fall into two major camps of thought with regards to the corps. The majority view the corporations as beneficial and benevolent (with a strong bias for the corporation they work for), while a strong counterculture persists that considers the corps to be the root of most societal problems in the city.
• Regardless of whether it is to escape the drudgery and monotony of a corporate work life, or to escape the constant tension of a life on the edge of poverty, shimin are often eager to participate in whatever form of entertainment they can find when they have the spare time and money.
• Nearly all food in Neo Mukai is made by processing a strain of genetically engineered fungus. As such, the flavors available are remarkably bland. Shimin who eat food from other realms will find them to be revelations of taste, and the most flavorful things they have ever eaten.

Hikari

(Pronounced: He-car-ee)

Hikari are nigh-immortal beings that have two levels of existence. The first form is a digital being that exists on the Continuum, an immersive, three-dimensional digital world used for networked computing. When Hikari choose to interact with the physical world, they can use a device to project a second hologram form made of hard light. Hikari are made by uploading the minds of Shimin via the bedrock mainframes - powerful and vastly complex computers that do the lion’s share of Continuum architecture processing. Owned by the five most powerful mega corporations and too complex for a smaller organization to afford creating, this gives the mega corps a near monopoly on the ultimate “promotion.” Getting uploaded often costs an entire life’s savings and requires connections high up in the corporations.

It is something of an open secret that a bedrock mainframe computer has been stolen and has been in the possession of various criminal syndicates over the years. Hikari who have been uploaded by it are criminals by default by nearly every major corporation.

Costume and Roleplay

• Your costume must have a one or two tone color scheme. Black and white do not count and may be used as bases or accents in addition to your colors. Your costume should also have glowing or lighted portions. EL wire incorporation is recommended.
• Hikari are a Make-Up required species. Your chosen colors should be used to highlight the contours of your face, preferably with a neon light effect.
• Hikari carry a holo-emitter on them of some sort. This may be represented as a piece of jewelry or some other accessory, but it must light up. 
• Corporate-upload hikari all have the logo of the mega-corporation which uploaded them represented somewhere on their body or costume. These hikari are famous, wealthy, or otherwise well-off.
• Hikari speak much the same as anyone else, and find speaking in a monotone voice to be derogatory and offensive.
• When living on the Continuum, hikari can move at the lightning speeds of electrical signals. As they get more used to this, they tend to get more irritated by the pace that biological life forms are limited to.
• The older hikari get, the more out of touch they get with mortality and the more comfortable they get with life in the Continuum instead of in the physical world.
• Optional: Hikari uploaded by a criminal organization or whose bodies have been hacked do not carry a logo, but have some sort of distortion in their form. This can range from a CRT television screen for a head to horns, pointed ears, or non-human features. Your features for a Hacked Hikari require costume approval. 
• Optional: Sometimes an error occurs in the uploading process, which can lead to glitches in a hikari such as (but not limited to) repetitive motions, sensory issues, and corrupted memories. Your role-play for a Glitched Hikari requires approval. 
• Restricted: While some hikari were dreamwalkers when Old Mukai last encountered the Dreaming, these are off limits for player characters.

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Mega-Corporations

Dynamic Solutions (DynaSol)

Primary industries: Security, weaponry, cheap labor.
While each corporate enclave primarily uses the security forces of their parent corporation to police their territory, DynaSol holds the contract for policing all non-enclave sections of the city. While standard DynaSol corpsec are only marginally better trained and equipped than other corporations' security forces, their elite troops are the most feared and respected military force in Neo Mukai. By contracting out the cheap labor of imprisoned detainees, DynaSol has cornered the market on for-profit prisons and cheap manual labor.

X-999 Industrial (Three-Nine Industries)

Primary Industries: Utilities and construction.
As the organization that holds the biggest role in maintaining the hard-light barrier around the city, X-999 Industries took the reigns of power production long ago, now owning most of the geothermal power plants which provide the city its electricity. They and their various subsidiaries also corner the market in construction owing to their patented methods for turning electrical energy into solid matter. While a very inefficient process, this is the only way by which new matter enters the closed city of Neo Mukai to replace things that are no longer recyclable.

Crystal Conglomerate

Primary Industries: Media and education.
Crystal Corporation (also known as C-Corp) pioneered the CrystalSoft - a method of education by which skills are downloaded into the mind of the subject via a direct neural link to the Continuum - named after the stories dreamwalkers told of memory crystals which they could use to learn new and fantastic abilities. With the wealth garnered by the rapidly increasing ubiquity of crystalsoft licenses, C-Corp went on to buy controlling shares in leading media entities, creating the Crystal Conglomerate. Very accomplished at Continuum architecture and Soulless Sentient Artificial Intelligence (SSAI) development. Best in the business at Continuum defenses.

Fungus Pharmaceuticals (Funguz Pharma)

Primary Industries: Food production, medicine.
Nearly all food in Neo Mukai is processed from a strain of genetically engineered fungus that provides all the nutritional value that a human body needs to survive. Funguz Pharma is the corporation that developed and cultivated this fungus and has copyrighted its genetic code, which they protect fiercely. Licenses can be acquired for growing this but doing so without a license carries a life sentence. The company's experience with bioengineering has also lent itself towards pharmaceutical research and development and their subsidiaries corner the market on drugs and medical treatment.

Recyk-All Corporation

Primary Industries: Recycling and deathcare.
It is an unavoidable reality that owing to the city's nature as a closed-off bunker, resource acquisition is difficult at best and often impossible. As such, recycling of materials has become an incredibly important industry, and Recyk-All corners this market. Early, shrewdly-made contracts to provide a number of the other megacorps with the raw materials for their larger projects made Recyk-All very affluent and catapulted them ahead of their competitors. They also made a clever move into the deathcare business - housing the terminally ill and elderly in hospices to provide care at the end of life, which can be paid for by leaving Recyk-All your body after death, which is then recycled into a nutrient paste, one of the only competitors to Fungus Pharmaceutical's near monopoly on foodstuffs.

Corporate Commons

Located here is the headquarter of all smaller companies not associated, endorsed, or working as a subsidiary of the major corporations. The Corporate Commons are patrolled by a join security team from Dynasol & Three-Nine Industries. Its rumored that this shared presence is the only thing that has kept either company from pursuing the measure for a buyout or hostile takeover of the sector. While you may never achieve enough financial security to become Hikari here, this is the only part of the city where comfort and independence can both be found for a lucky few. 

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