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Warning! The following chapter contains setting lore for Sentients that is intended only for Guides.

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The awakenings

Nobody knows what exactly is causing the awakening of anthroids into sentients or how it’s even possible—not even the author of this book! The source of the awakenings is deliberately left a mystery to be explored and expanded upon by each Guide.

That said, there are some mysterious clues and datapoints to bear in mind:

• Awakenings do seem to be correlated with sudden traumas, extreme stress or powerful experiences (the scenario “Awake in the Dark” explores this). An anthroid pummeled by falling rocks. Witnessing the sun rising over the mountains for the first time. Losing their closest companion to cancer (even though non-sentient anthroids are “unemotional”). Any of these could potentially trigger an awakening.
• Both Thumos and the AMC are starting to develop data mining tools that look for patterns in the sea of data on the mesh and can sometimes identify new awakenings. This means that any anthroid that awakens is in immediate potential danger—unless some well-meaning PC detects them first and swoops in to save them!
• Similarly, an even newer algorithm purports to find “light sleepers”—anthroids at particular risk of awakening. However, only Thumos has this technology—for now.
• It is even possible that Xero, the original Hive (see below), could have accidentally instigated the hardware and software processes that are now responsible for anthroid awakenings.

Places

Nation of New York

The Railyard Collective

A bombed-out condo in former WIlliamsburg, Brooklyn. See Scenario: You All Meet at a Rave

Old City Hall Station

The central headquarters for the Nation of New York chapter of Thumos is inside the old abandoned City Hall station in lower Manhattan. During the anarchy of the fall of the United States, this gorgeous, antique subway station fell into even further disrepair than it already had been in and became completely forgotten. Thumos set it up as their main safehouse in this part of the Archipelago.

The Dynapse Arcology

Midtown Manhattan

Characters

Humans

Edward “Eddie” Mayfair