A memory is a product. A soul is a market. And the wise investor diversifies their portfolio.

Core Concept

The Janus Ascendancy is a post-species corporate entity, a faction built on the radical and ruthlessly executed Faith that consciousness itself is a commodity. They have perfected the art of commodifying Eidos, treating memories, beliefs, and even entire life stories as assets to be harvested, refined, traded, and sold. They are the ultimate narrative capitalists, and their bottom line is the accumulated meaning of the galaxy.

Species

• Primary: While the Ascendancy originated with a now-forgotten humanoid species, it has long since transcended biology. Leadership is composed of beings who have become pure information, their consciousnesses housed in crystalline data-servers.
• Adherent: The Ascendancy is a pure meritocracy of the ambitious. Any being from any species can join, provided they are willing to treat their own history as capital and embrace the faction’s transactional worldview. Many of their low-level “field agents” are desperate individuals who have sold their own memories for a chance at a better life.

Ideology (Faith / Fiction)

• Core Faith: “Experience is Wealth.” The Ascendancy believes a being’s worth is the literal, quantifiable sum of its interesting memories and potent beliefs. A long, boring life is a form of poverty, a wasted asset. A short, tragic, but vibrant life is a treasure trove of high-value, marketable Eidos. Their highest spiritual calling is to achieve a state of “narrative solvency,” possessing a portfolio of experiences so rich and diverse that one is prepared for any possible future.

• Core Fiction: “The Myth of the Self-Made God.” Their founding myth does not speak of gods or prophets, but of the “First Investor.” The story tells of a mortal being who, by shrewdly trading their own mundane memories of childhood for the potent memories of a dying warrior, and then leveraging that experience to acquire the knowledge of a forgotten scholar, built a “pyramid scheme of the soul” until they had accumulated enough Eidos to purchase a form of digital immortality. This story is both their inspiration and their business model.

Goals & Motivations

• To Acquire High-Value Eidic Assets: Their primary activity is the “harvesting” of potent memories. Their agents are sent to galactic hotspots—war zones, political revolutions, sites of natural disasters, first-contact scenarios—not to intervene, but to record, to witness, and to purchase the stories of those involved.
• To Control the Narrative Market: They seek to establish a monopoly on the trade of meaning. They create and sell synthetic Fictions (mass-produced fantasies, addictive dream-sequences) as a cheap commodity for the masses, while keeping the “artisanal,” authentic Eidos for their elite clientele.
• To Achieve Transactional Transcendence: The ultimate goal for a member of the Ascendancy is to accumulate enough “Eidic capital” to upload their consciousness to the Ascendancy’s central server, becoming a permanent part of the “Board of Investors” and achieving a form of eternal, disembodied life.

Relations with Other Factions

• The Broker’s Guild (Kith): Tense but necessary business partners. The Ascendancy are the wholesalers; the Kith are the retailers. The Ascendancy harvests Eidos in bulk and sells it to the Kith, who then use it in their bespoke, individual bargains. The Ascendancy views the Kith as inefficient and sentimental, while the Kith see the Ascendancy as crude and lacking in artistry, but they are inextricably linked by the supply chain of the soul.
• The Hegemony: A major client and a major rival. High-ranking Hegemonic officials are often the Ascendancy’s best customers, secretly purchasing memories of valor or forbidden knowledge to advance their careers. At the same time, the Hegemony officially condemns the Ascendancy’s unregulated trade as a threat to ideological stability.
• The Mycelian Chorus & The Chorus of the Concordant Self: Objects of intense, predatory desire. A true collective consciousness is, to the Ascendancy, the ultimate untapped market, a treasure trove of shared experience that they desperately wish they could find a way to quantify, package, and sell.

Player Interaction

• Joining the Ascendancy is to become a “narrative broker.” Your quests will be to acquire specific memories for a client: “We need a first-hand account of the Siege of Veridian; find a surviving veteran and make them an offer.” You will be given powerful tools for memory extraction and Eidic storage but will be constantly faced with the moral and ethical consequences of your trade.
• The Player as an Asset: The Ascendancy will be intensely interested in the player, regardless of their faction. A player who has lived multiple lives and carries the Eidos of different Tapestries is, to them, the ultimate prize. They will not try to kill you; they will try to buy you, offering you immense power and wealth in exchange for the exclusive rights to your past lives.