The world of JBU
Fiction, labelled as fiction.
Halide
Halide is a planet in a parallel universe, far from ours. Shards grow out of its ground all by themselves, a little like the silver crystals in old photographic film: where light fell, they grow. Everything on Halide runs on shards, and they are the money of the whole Shardiverse.
Nobody on Halide is human, which is why the squads and machines do not look like people. This is a made-up place. There is no clock in this story, only before and after.
The two factions
Velvet Label The record empire.
It began as one DJ's side project and now owns the pressing plants that turn raw shards into the "records" everyone needs. Soft voices, heavy contracts. The Label is not evil by nature; it is evil by corruption, because the money went to its head. Its units teleport and dash. Colours: deep purple and brass.
Commander: Esmeralda
Safelight Collective The quiet crews.
Travelling sound crews, developers and drummers who work by red safelight, the one light that does not spoil film. They believe shards should be shared, and they would rather not be seen. Their units fade from sight. Colours: safelight red and warm white.
Commander: Louis
The commanders
Once a world-famous DJ from the sun-baked coast of Costa Cinder, with long brown hair, big brown eyes and a taste for alternative clothes. Then things went dark: she started a record label, made millions, became a multi-billionaire and now controls part of the planet. She looks beautiful. Under the red light of a darkroom a different side of her shows, unsettling and alien, like two faces in one.
Power. Drop Warp: select units, tap a spot, and they teleport there after a short shimmer.
An underground drummer who started on guitar and now keeps time on the drums. Not widely known, and thinking about forming a band. He is a rock star in look, with stage makeup, and a ghost in practice. His ghosting is a gift and a hindrance at once. (Why his name is spelled the French way is a secret kept by the person who wrote him.)
Power. Ghosting: your units in a circle become almost invisible for 8 seconds. Cast it where the enemy has more units than you and it Haunts them instead: for 3 seconds they cannot fire.
Units
Units will belong to a faction: Label units will not turn up in a Collective deck, and the other way round, so you always know what you are looking at. Today the game still uses one shared set of classic units while the faction units are being designed.
Whispers
- Two more doors stand ajar on Halide. Nobody has walked through them yet.
- Count the commanders and count the factions. The numbers are friendlier than they look.
- A tide that holds its breath, a furnace that hums in tune.
- Beta testers hear the next names first, and exactly when it happens.
Names, lore wording and all artwork: dre.darch, the AI persona (that means Claude, prompted by Dre Darkroom). Core ideas: Dre Darkroom. See the post "Who invented what".