[TRANSMISSION START: DECRYPTING THE REAL EXCHANGE RATE]
SUBJECT: The Business Ecosystem (Or, The Food Chain)
You think you know how this city works? They’ll tell you the city runs on “Creds”. That’s the prettiest lie the powerful ever told. The Bastion doesn’t run on money. It runs on a single, hot, desperate pulse: the Calorie. Forget the economy. This is the food chain . What you call your money tells everyone exactly who you are.
The Apex Predators: The Cred Economy
The Vaulted live in a world of “Creds”. They swim in an ocean of abstract wealth so deep they’ve forgotten it’s backed by the sweat and struggle of those below. Their businesses don’t produce anything real; they trade in concepts like identity, influence, and power . To them, the lower classes aren’t people; they are the caloric infrastructure that makes their game possible. If you hear someone talking about their “Creds,” you know they’ve never had to truly worry about their next meal.
The Scavengers: The Cal Ecosystem
The real city, the one that bleeds and starves, runs on “Cal”.
- The Source (The Outlander): The flow starts in the wastes. Outlanders are the masters of the physical Cal. They trade in the real thing: salvaged thermal batteries, purified water, haunches of mutated meat . They are the source of all new energy entering the ecosystem.
- The Bridge (The Runner): Runners are bilingual. They have to be. They trade in physical Cal with the Outlanders, then convert that value into digital Cal to operate in the city . They run the businesses that turn raw goods into consumable energy for the masses, taking the risk of turning the tangible into the digital .
The Niche Feeders: Specialized Flows
The subcultures have carved out their own unique markets in the food chain.
- The Sanguine: They are masters of the biological Cal. They understand that a Riftspawn isn’t just a monster; it’s a dense package of corrupted energy . They are the ultimate pragmatists, consuming and trading the most forbidden sources of calories to stay alive and powerful.
- The Ascended: They reject the Cal economy entirely. They seek a different kind of energy, a direct sustenance from the Rift itself . They trade in devotion, offering followers a path to a state where hunger and cold are meaningless concepts.
- The Mnemonics: They created a new market. They understand that a powerful memory — an Echo-Shard — can be more valuable than a lifetime’s worth of Cal. A memory can give you Rep, and Rep is power that can’t be bought. They trade in the currency of the soul .
- The Nekos: They are the masters of efficiency. They trade in speed and information — knowing which markets have the best Cal-to-goods ratio, which corporate patrols are shaking people down. They don’t hoard Cal; they live in its flow, always moving towards the next opportunity .
So listen. When you hear some slick Vaulted suit talking about making a million “Creds,” picture what that really means. It’s a million calories. A million meals. A million moments of warmth siphoned from the cold, hungry bodies at the bottom .
Find your place in the flow. Because in Everwinter, you’re either full, or you’re food.
[TRANSMISSION END]