Reme
"In Rome, you look over your shoulder for Volkert’s enforcers. In Reme, you look over your shoulder for your colleagues. Here, science is the law—and competition is bloodsport."
The More “Normal” City
Reme sprawls across Eris’s eastern hemisphere, mirroring Rome’s ordered rings of neighborhoods and boroughs but with a looser grip on daily life. To an outsider, Reme feels almost like a proper city—cafés on the corners, students bickering in labs, citizens commuting through clean streets patrolled by Necroid workers. The horrors are present—ghouls rampaging, necroids bolted together from corpses—but they are treated as just another background hazard, no stranger than a traffic accident. Where Rome is defined by surveillance and control, Reme thrives on experimentation and apparent freedom.
The Laboratory-City
Reme is House Volkert’s experimental crucible. Laboratories here study everything from Deadjack craft to alien artifacts, psychic contamination, and the limits of human endurance. At any given time, thousands of ethically dubious or catastrophic projects are in motion. Entire boroughs are organized around research clusters, and breakthroughs—whether in biotech, weaponry, or Redspace manipulation—are measured not in years but in weeks. It is here that many of Eris’s most dangerous patents are born, later exported to the rest of the Solar Consortium through Volkert’s black channels.
Recruitment and Education
Reme is also the beating heart of Volkert’s recruitment. Its education pods are infamous across Eris: schools that raise children to prize mathematics, logic, and scientific reasoning above all else. Students are sorted algorithmically into “teams,” each tasked with a project chosen by Volkert handlers. The brightest become prodigies and are groomed for Volkert’s inner circles, while others are shaped into soldiers, spies, or expendable technicians. The process is relentless, and children grow up knowing that their every choice might determine whether they become a celebrated genius—or a disposable test subject.
The Mask of Normalcy
Compared to Rome, life in Reme feels deceptively ordinary. Citizens go to work, enjoy their downtime, and indulge in nightlife not unlike that of other worlds. Families celebrate birthdays, couples quarrel, and merchants haggle in markets. This normalcy is a deliberate mask, a carefully curated veneer maintained by Volkert. It encourages residents and visitors alike to believe that Eris can be civilized, that its terrors are contained. Yet the illusion is fragile. A single rampaging Ghoul or escaped experiment can shatter the pretense, reminding everyone that Reme is just as much a stage in Volkert’s theater of horrors as Rome.
Competition as Law
If Rome enforces obedience through surveillance, Reme enforces it through competition. Research teams rise and fall like gangs, devouring resources, staff, and recognition until another replaces them. Betrayals, data thefts, and sabotage are common, but officially tolerated as part of “healthy rivalry.” Volkert encourages this atmosphere, believing it hones the sharpest minds. For the citizens, it is both an opportunity and a curse. Advancement is possible, but always at someone else’s expense. In Reme, your allies today might be your rivals tomorrow, and failure often means reassignment to more expendable projects—or worse, to Dysnomia.
Role in Eris
Reme is Eris’s recruiting ground, proving ground, and mask. It supplies Volkert with fresh talent, keeps the illusion of urban “normalcy” alive, and generates a constant stream of dangerous discoveries. While Rome is feared, Reme is envied. Many criminals and exiles dream of living in Reme, believing it to be freer, safer, and more humane. The truth is more complicated: Reme is no less a laboratory than Rome—only here, the stick has a carrot hanging from it.
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