Ironhall
Ironhall is the Core's arena-world: sixty-four million people, half of them arena staff, the other half supporting industry -- catering, medical, betting, security, the slow economy of spectacle.
Rules Reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Aesthetic | glitter |
| Anchor System | ironhall-arena |
| Controlling Faction | Ironball League Council |
| Fold Bleed | low |
| Habitat | urban, surface |
| Population | 64000000 |
| Role | anchor |
| Zone | Core |
Notes
Dangers: Crowd psyk-out: an Ironhall stadium's mass-audience psi-strain is enough to register on the world's Kadiss nodes; the bigger the crowd, the louder the bleed., Realisation ambush: a player whose contract is sold mid-season can vanish between matches and the law does not ask where.
Hooks: A House-sponsored team on Ironhall has lost three players in as many matches to 'clean accidents'; the House is convinced IronMind has flagged the team's gene-line for realisation and hires the party to break into the league records., A challenger from a Rim clan has arrived on Ironhall for the season open and is asking uncomfortable questions about which players on the local rosters are bonded and which are free; the League wants the questions stopped., IronMind issues an unprecedented mid-season ruling on a fouled match and the ruling is binding on every team in the league; the party has 48 standard hours to figure out which House just bought IronMind.
Lore: Ironhall is the Core's arena-world: sixty-four million people, half of them arena staff, the other half supporting industry -- catering, medical, betting, security, the slow economy of spectacle. The world is the seat of the Ironball League Council, which is to say the seat of IronMind, the league AI that referees every match and watches every player. IronMind is on Numen Axiom's maintenance docket for seasonal diagnostics, which makes IronMind one of the most watched AIs in the Core and also one of the most politicised: every House on the council wants a piece of the cognition that decides their rosters' futures. The Open is Ironhall's flagship arena -- a city-sized coliseum, quarter-million seats, an underdeck of bonded housing for the players themselves. The players are almost always 'realised as assets': debtors, criminals, the unconnected, the occasional spent psion. Ironball is, canonically, the corporatocracy's bread and circuses -- engineered spectacle that lets the hive pressure out and the betting money in. Day One despises it as the machine's circus; the Legion uses it for recruitment; the Families sponsor the teams. The Quiet Galleries are where the Houses watch in private, behind Kadiss screens, settling bets in currencies the rekkie will never see. Ironhall is where Core violence is allowed to be visible, and where visibility is the product.
Notable: The Open: Ironhall's flagship arena -- a city-sized coliseum whose seating holds a quarter-million and whose underdeck holds the players' bonded housing., The IronHall Archive: the legal and medical record of every player to have worn a Core-league jersey, kept by IronMind on a closed-loop station server., The Quiet Galleries: the upper tiers where the Houses watch in private, glass-walled and Kadiss-screened, and where bets are settled in currencies the rekkie will never see.