[INTEL BRIEFING: AURORA FOUNDATIONAL]
SUBJECT: Saint Silas, The Man Who Built Our Cage
You want to understand this city? You have to understand the man who built it. In the spires, they teach schoolkids that Silas Vance was a hero, the visionary founder of Aurora Industries who saved the last of humanity from the cold . A saint in a tailored suit.
That’s the official story. The one they etch onto monuments.
The gutter truth, the one whispered in the static between the corporate broadcasts, is a little different. Vance was a high-level suit on
Project Prometheus, the secret experiment that broke the world. He wasn’t a savior; he was an accomplice who was smart enough to have a lifeboat ready while the ship was sinking . He didn’t rescue humanity; he gathered up the survivors, locked them in a cage of his own design, and then put a meter on the heat. He was the ultimate opportunist, the man who turned the apocalypse into a business model that still runs today.
His story is over, but his ghost still haunts the system. Here are the legends you need to know.
- The Legend of the “Vance Keys” This is the big one, the score that every Mnemonic and corporate spy dreams of. The story goes that before he died, Vance encrypted his personal logs — the unaltered truth of The Riftfall, the real purpose of Aurora Industries, and the names of everyone involved. He then shattered the decryption key into multiple fragments, hiding them in the deepest, most secure corners of the Interlink. Finding even one “Vance Key” could make you rich enough to buy your way to the top. Finding all of them could give you the leverage to burn the entire corporate structure to the ground… or get you erased so completely no one will even remember your name.
- The Slang: “Pulling a Vance” On the street, his name means something else entirely. “Pulling a Vance” is slang for a high-stakes, successful betrayal for personal gain. It’s the ultimate compliment for a backstabbing maneuver that is both ruthless and brilliant. If someone accuses you of it, it’s an insult. If a Fixer says you did it, it’s a job offer.
- The Ghost in the Grid Some tech-heads who spend too long staring into the static swear that Vance never truly left. They believe he built hidden backdoors and secret protocols into the city’s foundational systems — the Warmth Grid, the Interlink itself. They whisper that a ghost of his personality, a set of automated directives, still watches from the deep code, ensuring his “business model” continues to run as intended. Whether it’s true or just cyber-paranoia, strange power fluctuations and ghost signals are often blamed on “Vance’s ghost” keeping an eye on his investment.
[TRANSMISSION END]