Tantalus

The world of Tantalus is a vast city-planet that is the center of its solar system (economically, of course). The city-planet is a malicious cocktail of greed, lust and manipulation, all threatening to intoxicate you with the power that is promised, if you can attain it. The surface of the planet is a grey and neon hellscape, where corporatism and consumerism is the norm. Men and women drone back and forth between their jobs, avoiding the darker alleys, and trying to stay afloat. Down any street, you are as likely to find a brothel as a church, a soup kitchen or a drug den. No where is safe.   If you’re down on credits, you can spend time at the blood bank, or you can pull a robbery on the nearby clinic. Nothing is beyond the grasp of the people that have the courage (or wits) to reach out. The most wealthy find themselves in the upper echelons of UMBRA, the immense planet-wide corporation, owning everything but distinctly nothing. Look up from the squalor of the city floor and see the gargantuan name “UMBRA” blazing off the side of any building. Look at the hover-cars, weaving through the buildings themselves, and you would see “umbra” emblazoned on the rear bender. Lift up a bottle, take a train, go to a concert, you will find yourself in the shadow of UMBRA. Even the far-off satellites that provide service have UMBRA emblazoned upon their distant, titanium sides.   If you seek out guidance, perhaps you find yourself at the foot of the many monasteries that spot the cityscape. You can walk in and find a transcendental presence that seems to buzz in your senses like a television without signal. You may find yourself seeking the wisdom of people that pore over texts that are beyond your mind, words that seem to blur as you read them, or vacate your mind as soon as you move to the next sentence. There are people, however that understand the workings of the world and may be able to manipulate them to your advantage (for a small fee, insurance, if you will). And if the immense gothic buildings are too intimidating to enter for you, then you may find a soothsayer, a fortune teller in the dank back alley of some residential quarter, someone that seems otherworldly, but can find the answers you seek.   For some, the city can be too much. It can drain you, strangle you like a noose that has been placed without you remembering. There is solace, for those who know where to look. Deep in the sewers of this vast planet, if you take the right turn or go down the correct ladder, you may find yourself in a vast cave system. The Old World. Eventually, you will arrive in some clearing, where you will see a tree for the first time in your life, or look upon a waterfall, and not see the brown sludge that collects in pools at the city-floor, but clear, clear as glass. If you find these oases, it is not because you were sleuthy or wise, it’s because they let you. And they want you to do something for them, lest they lose the beauty of this oases forever.   Humanity, as it were, are the rats that scurry across the floors of the planet, not knowing what looms above them, or in the dreadful dark. It is a poor, drab existence for mortals, and for those who have freed themselves of the clinging muck of poverty and sorrow, they have seen the world for what it really is. The blinders have been removed and they have seen the horrors of UMBRA. They see the people that inhabit the monasteries and back-alleys, how they will say anything to make the masses believe in some power that is not actually to be controlled. They see through the alluring the mirages of the Old World, fly-traps that are carefully watched by creatures that only seem to be human. Yes, those who are conscious of this reality see it, and they are terrified.   There is hope though. Some are not fooled by these powers, some are not paralyzed by fear, and some will not succumb to the promise of power that may be found in this forsaken world (or so we hope). They have met in the bookstores, cafes, and bars. They sit at the back booth of diners and huddle in the corners of clubs. They can look onto the world they inhabit and see something that no one else wants to (or are able to) recognize. Things don’t have to be this way, and we can change them. It just takes discipline, courage, and more than a little luck.