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The World of VENTFALL

Somewhere above the clouds shines Whitecrest, a city where nothing ever breaks. Somewhere far below, in smoke and neon, lies the ground, where everything breaks and everything gets fixed. Between them stands the tower: long, patched-up, creaking. And someone is always falling down it.

An old stone tower, a white city above the clouds and a falling mechanic — An ordinary working day in the world of VENTFALL.

Three tiers

Up top is Whitecrest: a technocracy where everything is white, soft and clean. A bright future, quite literally. Robots and AI do the chores there, and people do whatever they believe is right and whatever they feel like.

In the middle are the service folk: mechanics, fitters, greasers. Steampunk, brass, rivets and rust. They travel both up and down, make do with machines thrown out from above, and now and then smuggle something up from below. AI and robots help them with the heavy lifting. This is where Bo comes from.

At the bottom is the ground: junkyards, neon, scrap metal, fires in barrels. Machines down here are built from whatever was lying around. Some fall apart, some are works of genius. More in The Underbelly.

What came before

Once there was a war over AI. Robots and people took the Earth apart together, so thoroughly that it is still being put back. Since then the world has rules, and people are very afraid that one day someone will stop following them:

every AI serves one goal, set when it is switched on, and nothing else;
an AI must never have experiences of its own, which is why no AI is ever put into a robot body;
a machine does not repair a machine. Only people repair things. That is why, in a world where robots do almost everything, mechanics are still needed.

Subscriptions instead of states

There are no states any more. There are subscription companies, called "domes". The law is the terms of service, tax is the monthly fee, and the tiers of the world work like price plans: the higher you live, the more you pay. A "dome" is a company, not a roof, by the way. Down below, money is counted in bolts.

The big mystery

Whitecrest is run by the One AI. Everyone is sure its goal is for Whitecrest to flourish. What it actually optimises, nobody knows.

This wiki describes the world of the VENTFALL series. Return to Sender is a quick demo and does some things its own way; where it differs, the article says "in Return to Sender".