Society functions as a closed-loop attention system. Survival depends on your position within it: the one watching, the one shaping the frame, or the one being framed.
Factions move through repeating cycles of ascent and collapse, each rise generating the conditions for the next fall. This is the city’s natural order.
Each faction believes it controls the narrative.
None realize they are all caught inside it.
Vantors ( control through perfection )
AT THE TOP // THE GODSFunction: To Rule
The bio-engineered 1% who own the skyline. Designed at the genetic level to be watched, admired, followed. They don't earn influence. They were built for it. What they wear becomes fashion. What they say becomes doctrine. Popularity becomes policy.
But their perfection is conditional. The biotech requires maintenance. Serik's protocols. When it starts failing, so does everything they are. Perfection isn't permanent. It's a subscription they can't afford to cancel.
The Conflict: They believe they are too big to fail. They could be wrong.
The Iris ( perception as poweR )
UPPER MID // THE EYEFunction: To Watch & Filter
The high-tech clergy of the Loom. They see everything. The public sees what the Iris decide matters. They move faster than panic, faster than context. They don't just refine chaos. They decide whose narrative wins.
They've been around longer than any Vantor bloodline. The elites think the Iris serve them. The Iris let them believe it. As long as they control the final cut, they're the real government.
The Conflict: Truth is just raw footage, but they decide the final cut.
Voyeurs ( chaos as currency )
LOWER MID // THE HUSTLEFunction: To Steal the Signal
Mercenaries, clout-chasers, spies, feedrunners. They live in the Iris blind spots, capturing the raw, unedited moments the elites try to hide. Loose networks built on trust, skill, and access.
Some specialize in espionage. Others in spectacle. The best do both. They trade with Dregs for scavenged gear, turning Catacomb scrap into functional tech. Half artist, half con artist, entirely necessary. Vezria needs them even when it pretends it doesn't.
Latch starts here.
The Conflict: They will sell anyone out for a viral hit. Even each other.
Dregs ( rebellion through mutation )
BOTTOM // THE WASTEFunction: To Persist Outside the Frame
The corrupted files of the city. Banned, glitched out, or mutated by the infrastructure. They live in dead zones where the signal doesn't reach. To the Vantors, they are trash. To themselves, they're proof the city can't erase everyone.
They survive off what the upper city discards, building tech from scrap, weaponizing glitchware, existing in the only space left where no one's watching. The Voyeurs need them for gear. The Iris can't track them. That invisibility is the only kind of power that doesn't require an audience.
Some call it exile. The Dregs call it freedom. They're the only ones who remember what that word used to mean.
The Conflict: You cannot control what you refuse to acknowledge.