Lore
The city, its factions and its people, in short entries.
Written by us from the heroes' intro texts. The game tells its story slowly; what is unclear, we do not claim.
The city
The Cursed Apple
The name the game's own texts use for New York: a 1920s metropolis where the supernatural is part of daily life and has laws of its own. Gangsters and monsters cross the same corners, and the heroes fight over this city.
The Maelstrom
The event that, per the game, made the supernatural public. Afterwards the government wrote rules for living alongside the mystic world, and spirits such as Vindicta returned to the mortal plane. Some characters insist the supernatural existed before, merely hidden.
Related hero: vindictaThe Central Park rift
A tear in space and time that opened in Central Park. Professor Dynamo rushed over to study it, and Warden's family realized there that their ancestors' warning of a mystic apocalypse was not folklore.
Related hero: dynamoAstral gates and shadowlines
Passages to other planes, scattered across the world. Kelvin was hunting an eighth gate in the Arctic; in Viscous's story the Bermuda Triangle is another, which released creatures from the deep.
Related hero: kelvinThe Patrons
Entities some characters try to summon for help: the Rat King for his conquest plan, Viscous to protect the ocean. The game says little about what they actually are.
Related hero: rat king
Factions and places
The Baxter Society
A worldwide brotherhood that hunts monsters. Grey Talon is a founder who spent nearly forty years at it; Shiv still hunts for them despite a criminal past; Calico left once she saw killing people paid better than killing monsters for free.
Related hero: grey talonThe OSIC
A secret government commission for supernatural threats beyond ordinary police reach. Haze works for it; the game text calls it more opaque than the CIA.
Related hero: hazeThe Tunnel Rats
A group running a tunnel network under the city for illicit trade between boroughs. Mo and Krill belong to it and clash with anyone who tries to exploit the network.
Related hero: mo krillFairfax Industries
A corporation riddled with power struggles. Pocket is its heir and hides after an attempt on their life; Deadman Danny works there as a safety-test subject, forever on the edge of death by trade.
Related hero: pocketThe Djinn
A powerful people who cannot keep a physical form beyond 48 minutes without resting in a vessel, so they hire human bodyguards. Mirage protects an ambassador trying to negotiate a Wyoming territory for a nation of their own.
Related hero: mirageThe Paradox guild
A thieves' guild known for elaborate heists against untouchable targets. The hero who carries the name is both a relic of time and the public face of the guild.
Related hero: paradoxBlackmore Academy
New York's elite school. Apollo, sent from North Ixia for his safety, arrived finding the place mediocre and threw himself into fencing, where he captains the team.
Related hero: apolloThe Coney Island Side Show
A Coney Island attraction where Celeste, a unicorn, hides in plain sight as a stage act. Her coworkers became the family she chose, and she fights for them.
Related hero: celeste
Characters
Detective Abrams
A veteran New York investigator, from art theft to ritual murders, known for solving what he takes on. He drinks hard and hits head-on, and the game hints his days of ordinary cases are over.
Related hero: abramsVindicta
A victim of the Salem witch trials, brought back as a spirit during the first Maelstrom. She now fights alone, as a ghost, against a group that persecutes the supernatural.
Related hero: vindictaIvy and the Arroyo family
A gargoyle that woke without knowing what it was, on seeing two humans attacked. The child named it Ivy, after the ivy covering it, and took it home.
Related hero: ivyThe Rat King
A cryptid ruling New York's underground who wants the surface. His plan is to take Long Island and found it as the nation of "Ratannia", with no room for humans who refuse to leave.
Related hero: rat kingNurse Harrow
A pillar of Marble Hill's possession ward, devoted to treating the possessed. Strict and pragmatic, some call her a saint and others a cruel governess, and she keeps her patients' pain in her medical bag.
Related hero: nurse harrowBebop
A scrap golem built by a widowed junkyard keeper who treated him as a son. The two worked by day and listened to jazz by night, a routine the game's plot interrupts.
Related hero: bebopRem
An accidental visitor out of the dream realm, stranded in New York. With his friends he wanders the five boroughs seeking a way home, and anyone dozing on the subway might cross paths with him.
Related hero: rem