The Impossible Drive. An engine for a spaceship that could fold through three-dimensional space and travel across unlimited distances in an instant. No-one knew how it worked, only that it had been made by accident. You could replicate the same steps to get the same result but other than that, a mystery. No-one minded much. Overnight, the human commitment to explore the far reaches of space became reality.

Those first pilots were heroes, celebrities, legends. They stood on the launchpad, waving at the crowds, taking in the cheers, ushering in a new era of human peace and prosperity. Bunting, ticker-tape, firecrackers - all of humanity united to pierce that veil of infinite night and nigh-infinite distance. We would see other worlds and report back in real time; all the great questions of existence would be answered.

And how.

Every planet they found was dead. But that wasn’t the worst thing. The first ones were just dead, were merely dead, were dead in an ordinary way: devoid of life, dusty and dull. But the explorers discovered that there are more wretched ways to be lifeless. They found worlds with no geology - just solid rocks or empty clouds of gas, floating in space, in defiance of all physics, no core, no tectonics, no elements. They found planets whose surfaces were smooth and textureless… They found worlds that were nothing but unfinished polyhedral blocks. At the furthest reaches of their home planet’s visual range, they found worlds that were nothing at all - shapes in space with no mass or solidity, ghosts of worlds designed only to be seen from afar, through a telescope.

Naturally, society collapsed. The implications of that discovery have taken generations to unpack. A whole new system of ethics and philosophy has had to be built from the ground up.

It has now been… hundreds of years, since then, and we have come to terms with the truth. Our world is simulated, and we are simulated, and what we called “physics” is just the law of the simulation we live in, software running on some celestial iMac for the gratification of a higher observer. But what about those beings from a higher level of existence? We know they walk among us. We know they have avatars here, avatars connected directly to their own alien cognitive morphology. We have… Now, at least, we have the knowledge and the know-how to take that connection, to feed it back, to ride it.

In other words, to steal the bodies of the ones who made us, leaving their consciousnesses trapped in this existence, like they planned for us.

Who knows? Perhaps they live in a simulation as well, and there’s another even higher level of existence above that. But if they do, I’ll know. I know the signs now. And I’ll find more avatars and I’ll keep stealing bodies all the way up. I’ll ride this all the way up to the top. One way or another, I’ll get to the true reality.

Repeal all dynastic rules. Make the Special Case rules No Collaboration and Reinitialisation active. Change the term ‘City Architect’ to Mindjacker and the term Urbifex Maximus to Ascendant throughout the ruleset. Change the gamestate tracking page to Reality.