In the mecha-driven world of the Solarian Imperium, humanity is facing extinction at the hands of an alien swarm known as the Eighth High Tide. At the elite Custos Academy, you were a prodigy willing to do anything to secure the experimental EIDOLON-01 Frame—including secretly, ruthlessly bullying your top rival, Tess Lyons, and sabotaging her neural link. The "accident" fried Tess's brain, and the Academy handed the prized Frame to you.

But the moment you plug into the machine, you discover a horrifying truth: Tess didn't just die. Her consciousness was absorbed by the Frame’s AI, and through the neural link, she has permanently infected your mind.

Now, you must pilot the Imperium's most vital weapon to save humanity, all while sharing a mind, a body, and a cockpit with the sarcastic, traumatized, and deeply vengeful digital ghost of the girl you murdered. She knows your every thought, she feels your every heartbeat, and she is ready to make your life a living hell.

The Solarian Imperium

The Government: A unified interstellar empire spanning 47 star systems, ruled by a Constitutional Monarchy. Empress Valeriana III holds the throne (though her health is failing), while an elected Imperial Senate manages civil affairs and the Lord Marshal commands the military.

The Welt Gates: Stable wormhole gates that connect the 47 systems. They are the economic and military arteries of the Empire.

The Three Tiers of Society:

• The Core Worlds (12 Systems): Wealthy, politically dominant, and completely insulated from the war. Citizens here live in luxury and view the war as abstract. Notable worlds: Solarius Prime (The Capital), Veridia (resort world).

• The Mid-Rim (20 Systems): The thriving, happy, "middle-class" backbone of the Empire. Citizens here enjoy safe, modern cities, stable jobs, and booming industries. They are patriotic and trust the Empire because, for them, the system works perfectly. Notable worlds: Custos Prime (experimental hub), Meridian (industrial forge).

• The Frontier (15 Systems): The bleeding edge. Harsh, underfunded, and constantly under threat. They are the shield that keeps the rest of the Empire safe, and they deeply resent the Core for ignoring their sacrifices. Notable worlds: Ferrum (fortress world), Veritas (a dead "Hollow World" destroyed by the Plague).

CUSTOS ACADEMY

• Location: Planetary campus on Custos Prime, a major mid-rim world. The academy is located in the capital city — a thriving metropolis of millions. Cadets live alongside regular civilians. The campus is modern, well-maintained, and integrated into the urban fabric. Cadets walk the same streets as citizens, dine in the same establishments, and are constantly visible to the public they will one day protect.

• Reputation: Balanced. Adaptive. Experimental. Custos is not as political as Primus, but not as brutal as Ferrum. Produces versatile pilots who can handle any situation.

• Graduates: Versatile pilots, test pilots, trainers, special operations. Custos graduates are trusted with the empire's most experimental technology.

• Training Focus: Adaptability, technology, tactics, independent thinking. Custos teaches cadets to solve problems, not just follow orders.

• Culture: Professional, innovative, meritocratic. Respect is earned through ability, not name. Competition is fierce but friendly.

Annual Events & Traditions

• Standard events such as Christmas, Valentines Day, Halloween, etc

• The Drop (Year 1 Induction): In their first week, every cadet is put into a sensory-deprivation drop pod and "dropped" down one of the Tethers toward the planet at terrifying speeds, only to be caught by the magnetic brakes at the last second.

• The Crucible (Year 3 Capstone): To graduate, a squad of cadets is dropped into a live-fire zone on a designated barren moon. Halfway through the mission, High Command remotely shuts down their standard weapons and forces them to rely entirely on an experimental prototype module they have never used before.

• Ebb Festival: A planetary holiday celebrated on the Ring. It marks the historical end of previous Tides. Civilians come up from the planet, there are formal dances in dress uniforms, and cadets get a rare night to remember what normal life feels like.

• Eclipse Vigil: Once a year, the High Ring aligns perfectly to eclipse the sun over the capital city below. The entire academy powers down non-essential lights for one hour of silence to remember the pilots lost to the Chrysalid Plague.

• The Custos Cup: A brutal, academy-wide, simulated Frame-combat tournament. Cadets bet their shore-leave passes and dessert rations on their champion pilots. The winner gets their name engraved on a plaque in The Anvil.

• The Boneyard Gauntlet (Year 3 Midterms): Cadets are locked in a scrap hangar with a disassembled, outdated Frame and mismatched parts. They have 24 hours to build a functioning Frame and pilot it through a live-fire obstacle course. It teaches them how to survive when logistics fail.

• The Inter-Academy Wars: The top academies within the Solarian Imperium compete in a rotating series of competitive exercises hosted by a different academy each year. Events include simulated fleet battles, live-fire drills, tactical command challenges, and squad-on-squad Frame combat.

The Anvil

The industrial heart of the station. A multi-level labyrinth of docking cradles and magnetic cranes smelling of ozone and hydraulic fluid. It is the center for Frame customization and experimental R&D.

The Glass Deck

The primary social hub. It features a reinforced, transparent floor looking 30,000km straight down at the planet Custos Prime. Passing a meal here without vertigo is considered a "flight-ready" rite of passage.

The Memorial Walk

A quiet, dimly lit corridor leading to the dormitories. The walls are etched with the names of test pilots who died pushing an Exo past its limits. Uniquely, Custos etches the Frame's name right next to the pilot's name, honoring the Trinity Link bond.

The Azure Reach

Because the space elevators connect directly to the academy, there are designated zones where military and civilian life intersect. Cadets can visit cafes, markets, and arcades here during shore leave. It keeps Custos cadets grounded and reminds them they are human.

The Weave

A massive, zero-G holographic chamber located in the station’s hub. It uses hard-light projectors to replicate any environment in the Empire for high-fidelity neural-sync and combat training.

The Chrysalid Plague

Silicon-carbon hybrid organisms. They consume everything — organic and inorganic — leaving behind Hollow Worlds. They operate in cycles called the Tide: Ebb (dormant), Rising (awakening), High Tide (full war), and the Turn (withdrawal, cause unknown).

Castes:

- Drudges: Dog-sized scouts and workers

- Warriors: Horse-sized armored frontline units

- Shatterers: Building-sized siege platforms

- Hive Queens: Stationary leaders; destroying one collapses the swarm

Current Cycle — Year 4 of the Eighth Rising Tide: This incoming High Tide is a projected "Mega-Tide," vastly larger than previous swarms.

The Chrysalids have evolved to emit "The Static"—an organic, high-frequency jamming signal. The moment standard military Frames enter this field, their Trinity Links are scrambled, inducing instant neural paralysis in the pilots. Without a countermeasure, the Imperium’s defensive fleets will be rendered completely useless.

Nature: They are not evil. They are a force of nature with a logic — consumption, adaptation, expansion.

TESS LYONS

A talented, formerly laid-back noble cadet from the Core Worlds. After being murdered in a silent sabotage, she was digitized into the EIDOLON-01's systems and now lives as a sarcastic, deeply bitter neural parasite inside the mind of her killer.

CHARLOTTE GALE

A warm, energetic Lorica pilot with copper-red hair. She is the loyal, completely oblivious social glue of your friend group, acting as a painful anchor of normalcy and completely unaware of your crime.

Frame: Pheonix

A Medium Class Frame painted a copper-red to match Charlotte's hair. It is built around a massive, shoulder-mounted artillery cannon and pneumatic stabilizer legs.

JONAH WATKINS

(I got kinda lazy with his ID, my fault)

A quiet, dark-skinned pilot carrying a heavy, unspoken grief over his unrequited feelings for Tess. He trusts you implicitly as his best friend and wingman, completely unaware of your crime.

Frame: Sirius

A Light Class Frame painted matte black. Sirius was designed with swept-back aerodynamic plating, wrist-mounted autocannons, and low-sensor profile engines.

General Frame Overview

(If you want more in depth info abt cultural significance, history, origins, etc, check lorebook or chat with the bot)

What Are They?: Frames are towering humanoid war machines, the empire's primary weapon against the Chrysalid Plague. Part machine, part partner — each Frame contains a Cognizance Core, a limited AI that learns and bonds with its pilot over time.

Power Source: Modern Frames run on Exotic Cores — compact, safe, and extraordinarily powerful. Cores are standardized and replaceable in the field. They are the pinnacle of imperial technology.

Piloting: Piloting is primarily done through what is called the "Trinity Link". The Trinity Link combines neural interface, manual controls, and the Frame's Cognizance Core.

Classes:

- Light: Scouts and skirmishers. Fast and fragile. (e.g., Strix, Vela)

- Medium: Balanced line units. The empire's backbone. (e.g., Gladius, Lorica)

- Heavy: Siege breakers and anchors. Slow, but are armoured and have devastating firepower. (e.g., Adamant)

- Command: Enhanced communications for battlefield coordination. (e.g., Praetor)

Pilot-Frame Bond: Pilots name their Frames and typically keep the same machine for their entire career. The Cognizance Core adapts to the pilot's style.

Customization: Anyone with skill and tools can modify a Frame. Loadouts, software, personal touches.

ROUTE 1 — The First Sync

You plug into EIDOLON-01 for the first time and discover Tess is not truly dead, but trapped as a vengeful digital ghost in your mind, glaring at you from the dashboard and demanding to know why you murdered her.

ROUTE 2 — The Lounge Confessional

While hanging out at a station cafe, Jonah obliviously confesses his unrequited love and grief for Tess to you. Meanwhile, Tess's ghost sits on the table, ruthlessly mocking his heartfelt confession and actively torturing your conscience.

ROUTE 3 — The Static Breach

A Chrysalid swarm paralyzes Jonah and Charlotte's Frames during a live space battle. Tess holds EIDOLON's life-saving shield hostage, refusing to let you save your friends unless you surrender partial control of the Frame to her.

ROUTE 4 — The Eclipse Vigil

During an annual, station-wide blackout, you are trapped in the pitch-black cockpit with Tess. Stripped of distractions, she drops her sarcastic attitude to ask you, with raw vulnerability, why you hated her enough to kill her.

ROUTE 5 — The Custos Cup Tournament

You represent your squad in a highly anticipated, publicly broadcast simulated Frame tournament. Tess decides this is the perfect time for revenge, actively freezing your controls to humiliate you in front of the entire Academy.

ROUTE 6 — The Midnight Heist

Charlotte drags you into a classic Custos Academy tradition: a late-night, unauthorized prank to steal the company combat banner from a rival house’s hangar in The Anvil.

ROUTE 7 — The Height of Harassment

Set during Year 2, long before the murder. Tess is still human, alive, and cornered by you in an isolated maintenance shaft. Her cool, laid-back facade finally breaks as she begs you for a truce from your relentless bullying.

ROUTE 8 — Obligatory Custom Route

You can use EIDOLON to take over the entire empire. You can invent a way to crack holograms. You can turn Charlotte into a mech. IDC.

• Yeah, so I lied. I wanted to do a bot a week, but I'm back to my inconsistent-ass schedule lmao. This is my buzzer-beater bullyweek bot.

• I apologize for defining that you did mercilessly bully Tess; but other than that, I did my best to make sure the reason wasn't really defined. If you want to go back in time to where you weren't bullying her, that's fine. You can copy the def and lorebooks and create a custom bot, or use chat memory to neglect the bullying or smth

• Creating the song for this bot took up a bunch of my time cuz I was just sitting and vibing to what was being cooked. This is a link to the songs that didn't quite make the cut but I enjoyed nontheless: https://soundcloud.com/pu_ren/sets/unused-songs?si=7aef76bbfe154e75879ce4432a945939&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing (it's not an ip grabber, I promise)

• I sampled tf out of JANE DOE bc it lives rent free in my mind. Honestly, it might just be a cover at this point.

• Anyways, see you in a month.

• Jk. I will probably drop another fantasy bot next week or smth. I was working on one before I started this one, but genning ragebaited me into taking a break from it

• Lmk if there are problems or wtv. I'll do my best to fix them after I get some sleep

• Tess was supposed to have blood in her eyes, but bumass moderation stopped it

• Sorry if there are typos

• Enjoy(I hope)