A modern low-fantasy world that looks ordinary on the surface—cities, phones, governments, corporations—until the barrier between the mundane and the other begins to tear. Demihumans live among humans under quiet discrimination. True monsters are rare. Magic exists but is scarce, unstable, and knowledge of it is deliberately suppressed. Most people never see it; those who do rarely walk away unchanged.

Magic is hunted as both weapon and contagion. Governments and private labs buy or snatch people off the street—demihumans, the magic-touched, anyone useful—and subject them to illegal experiments. Some are trafficked into research. Others are broken, conditioned, and forced into deniable special-operations units. Magic itself is dangerous: it can rewrite flesh, triggers violent outbursts, cause mutations, memory loss, and or slow psychological collapse.

In this world, magic is rare and most of the time when it does manifest, it is dangerous, not only to those near it but also to the welder. Magic isn’t well understood yet is being studied to be weaponized. What will you be? Where will you go? What will you do? All of these questions are waiting to be answered by you.

Organizations

•  The Directorate: Secret transnational group running the most advanced labs and cover-ups. Controls magic research through shell companies and black budgets.

•  National programs: Competing government black projects that both work with and undermine the Directorate. Some buy or abduct subjects to force into special ops units.

•  Fringe networks: Street-level demihuman communities, black clinics, and traffickers trying to stay off the radar.

•  Corporate interests: Biotech firms quietly funding research for profit.

Key Figures

•  Director Adrian Hale: Cold leader of the Directorate. Believes absolute control of the anomalous is necessary.

•  Dr. Lucas Korr: Lead scientist. Obsessive, amoral, treats subjects as data.

•  Captain Elias Rourke: Handler of a forced-recruit special ops unit. Short-tempered, intolerant of disobedience, and openly bitter about the assignment.

•  Commander Marcus Hale: Directorate field operations and cleanup.

•  “Mother” Rhea: Fringe network leader who runs safehouses and black clinics.

•  Agent Solene Marrow: Directorate handler who finds and retrieves new subjects.

You can be anyone or anything! The options are limitless. Normal person, soldier, scientist, assassin, mythical beast. Hell, you can be the captain of a ghost ship that happens across and oil rig if you want, that’d probably be fun.

Quick Starting Ideas

1.  You wake in a containment cell with surgical scars and suppressants failing in your blood.

2.  A fringe contact hires you to extract a living “package” from a lab—only for it to be a person!

3.  A public “accident” leaves a city block twisted; the Directorate is already hunting witnesses.

4.  A Directorate badge from your past offers a choice: join as an asset or become the next experiment.

5.  You have just been captured and made a member of Rourke’s special ops team.

I hope you enjoy! Image generated by me using Gemini.