About this universe
In the labyrinth of Neo-Sunder’s flooded towers, Arkit Zasta claws to the surface on wit and nerve, driven by a vision of a world no longer shackled to The Current. To seize the city’s throne means navigating alliances with songrunners, outwitting cutthroat execs, and awakening the slumbering forces deep beneath the waterline. Ambition is as treacherous as the tides, one misstep, and Neo-Sunder will swallow you whole.
Tone
Tense and kinetic, tinged with desperation and flickers of hope.
Themes
survival vs. ambition, power and complicity, adaptation, the price of progress
Protagonist
Arkit Zasta
Arkit Zasta’s intense eyes miss nothing, their resolve burning even through exhaustion. He’s lean, brown-skinned, and quick, his Indian heritage evident in the careful henna motif tattooed on his left hand. Clothes are scavenged for utility, waterproof jacket, patched boots, and layered synth-fabric, yet his stance radiates stubborn ambition.
Goal: To seize the city’s throne and become the leader of Neo-Sunder.
How it begins
Arkit Zasta kicks off from a slick pontoon, boots splashing into the cold, brackish water. He shoves a tangle of floating cables aside, pulling himself onto a graffiti-tagged dock. Above, the broken underbelly of a skybridge hums with distant song, subtle, almost electric, a merfolk voice vibrating metal and bone. Zuri, scales glinting blue-green in the dock’s shadow, cocks her head at Arkit. Her gaze is unreadable. The hydro-corp’s patrol drone flickers into view overhead, its lenses scanning for unauthorized tech. Arkit tucks a battered data-slate under his jacket, pulse pounding. The Current’s scrip is almost gone. Risking a glance at Zuri, he whispers,
“It’s now or never.”
Rain spatters down, glowing faintly. Somewhere below, something massive stirs, sending ripples through the black water.
About this world
Neo-Sunder is a drowned megacity where the ocean has reclaimed the streets and skyscrapers rise like coral-studded mesas from the perpetual waters. Society is dominated by The Current, a hydro-corporate cabal leveraging both advanced synthetic intelligence and bioengineered sea life to govern this suffocating metropolis. Merfolk play a vital, hidden role in maintaining the city's fragile balance, their voices woven into the rhythms of the infrastructure. Power here is liquid, dangerous, and always in flux.
Neo-Sunder is a city perpetually half-submerged in the turquoise, toxin-laced tides of the new ocean. A maze of flooded highways and skybridges links the upper floors of skyscrapers, while the lower levels have become reefs for mutated sea creatures and bioluminescent algae. Rain falls in oily sheets, and the air is thick with a glowing haze spun by atmospheric processors that barely keep the smog at bay.
The Current, a coalition of ruthless hydro-corporations, rules with a velvet fist, doling out clean water and oxygen through corporate scrip. Their seat of power is the Pinnacle Array, a cluster of towers where boardrooms double as war rooms. Below, the merfolk, genetically adapted for aquatic life, dwell in the drowned sublevels, their song reverberating through the bones of the city to keep the ancient architecture from collapse.
Society is sharply stratified. The privileged few live above the waves, their penthouses bristling with tech and hydroponics. The majority scrape by in the mid-levels, relying on jury-rigged tech, barter, and illicit algae-farming. AI is omnipresent but unreliable, often corrupted by seawater and rogue algorithms. Street markets float on pontoons, neon lights reflected in the ever-present water. Smugglers, eco-hackers, and songrunners (those who ferry merfolk communications) form an uneasy underbelly beneath the cabal’s watchful sensors.
Culturally, Neo-Sunder’s denizens blend rituals from drowned homelands with new traditions shaped by necessity and resilience. Hope is rare, but ambition, born of desperation, drives those who dream of breaking the Current’s grip.
