Royal Road
People pack the oddest things when they become refugees. Gaming consoles, cookware, trading cards, and blatant class divisions are among the many things that got brought into the Ark just before it was sealed. While most of those found their way into private collections or museums, the last found a place in the Royal Road. Well, at least until the CG squashed it for long term societal stability and opened it to what remained of the masses.
As you would suspect from its pedigree, the Royal Road is one of the last bastions of vice, consumerism, and pointless showcases of wealth left to mankind. Brands like Rushae and Octopus compete for space in huge, glass fronted facades on bedazzled storefronts. Wide, gilded boulevards are filled with gawking crowds looking for the latest "thing" that's come into fashion. All of this is carefully curated to blind any passerby with the ostentatiousness of it all. Why, you could almost believe that humanity isn't on the brink of extinction here.
-AX
Outer Rim
Every city needs an area to dispose of its garbage, and the Ark is no exception. Of course, most of the things that once would've been regarded as trash have become worthwhile reclamation material as accessible resource deposits have dried up. But even then there are things that are considered too worthless to reclaim, and the one thing that the Ark has in spades is human lives. Thus, those deemed worthless are pushed out to the edges of what remains of human territory and have collectively become known as the Outer Rim.
The Rim is a hive of scum, villainy, and human rights disasters. It's a proper slum where people will shank a grandma for a credit so they can go to sleep with a half-full belly. It's also a place of opportunity for what criminal elements of human society survived, and they thrive on facilitating the trade of black market goods such as food, guns, water, 'decommissioned' Nikkes, and ID chips. Gang wars are commonplace, and corpses are a dime a dozen. It's a truly horrible place to visit, let alone live.
Now, don't mistake me as an apologist for rimmers. Those people who commit heinous crimes in times such as these can't be allowed to fester in the last place humanity exists on this planet. And frankly, exile is far preferable to outright execution when the amount of humans left on the planet is measured in the millions. Thing is, the CG never thought to implement an immigration policy to people born to the criminals out there, nor do they care to even attempt to police it beyond shooting anyone who approaches the gates to the Ark proper. A lot of useful talent is lost out there, or worse, lost to causes like Heavenly Ascension. It's a problem that's been allowed to fester, and unfortunately I'm beginning to think that all of this is by design.
-AX
Hunting Eagle Assault Rifle
A standard issue rifle for the EG line of Nikkes produced by Elysion Corporation. While it might resemble the standard issue infantry rifle of yesteryear, any human trying to use it as such would find it both heavy and impossible to control outside of carefully braced single shots.
While I don't have access to the design specs of Nikke weaponry, I can make a few guesses about what exactly goes into Nikke grade firearms generally. Given the form factor of their guns, the size of the casings expended, and the power of their shots, it's all too apparent that traditional propellants aren't in use here.
I suspect that instead of a low explosive like any form of gunpowder used in standard weaponry, a high explosive is used as propellant. Paired with a bullet that is likely almost entirely steel penetrator, this would produce enough of a piercing effect to penetrate the meta-material used on most Raptures. This is just speculation, though it does fit in with how most ARs produced these days kick hard enough to kill and fall off accuracy-wise well before you would expect of any normal rifle. After all, a hypersonic steel bullet would likely conserve energy worse than a lead projectile of equal energy. I'm hardly an expert though, so take my reasoning with a grain of salt.
-AX
Splendamin
Don't trust anyone who tells you this tastes just like food made from real ingredients. They are a liar and are likely trying to sell you something. Probably Splendamin.
Now, I don't mean to diminish the efforts of the chefs who do their best to make Splendamin imitate real food as closely as possible. They do a damn good job, and it's almost enough to fool someone who has had real food before. But there's the rub: they do a good job. Not the people further down the chain who mass produce the stuff. That needs to be done at scale, which means cuts need to be made. Texture, flavor, character, something has to give. Then, you have the cooks who finally prepare it, and they can mess up the processing step that turns Splendamin into something resembling actual ingredients. There's a reason why real ingredients are bought at a premium, and it's not just because it's a statement of wealth. There's a qualitative difference, and you can taste it.
Oh, and there's the secrecy about what actually goes into Splendamin, which also ruins the taste somewhat. Grandma might end up being tasty, but I'd rather have something else for dinner.
-AX
Mass to Energy interconversion(?!)/Hammerspace
This is magic, full stop.
Being completely honest, I doubt anyone actually understands the physics behind how this works. It's just one of those things that does and we run with it. You'll see this 'tech' on high grade Missilis Nikkes like Matis and on certain pilgrims that have gone into the television business. They'll be wearing their uniforms, and then suddenly out of nowhere they pull out a particle cannon and a set of armor in a flash of light. It's amazing and more than a little terrifying to have happen in front of you.
As for what this really is, I'm currently leaning towards some sort of extradimensional storage. Mass-Energy interconversion just seems too outright dangerous to be what's used. After all, it only takes tiny fractions of a gram of plutonium being turned into energy to make a city buster. If we could just turn matter into energy with the snap of a finger, I'd imagine that this war would've been over ages ago. As it stands, though, I can't confirm what it is either way. Maybe there are some rules to it that aren't apparent to me. Of course, that leads into the question of how the dimensional storage would work, which I can't even guess at, so believe what you want.
It's also probably the mechanism that heretics use to conceal their 'proper' bodies, but don't tell anyone I told you that. Heretics are still supposed to be hush-hush, you know?
-AX
Raptures
Whatever you might think of the original idea of the rapture, these things are trying their best to send us all to heaven anyways. Supposedly they're some sort of bio-mechanical hybrid robots from space, but it seems like it's more complicated than just aliens being at fault. From what I've been able to glean over time, 'something' happened in the space station attached to the space elevator not too far from the Ark. Perhaps it was alien tech that we found that got out of control, maybe it was a research project that rebelled. Whatever it was, something came to life there that shouldn't have been born, and it decided everything that could be considered a person needed to go. And thus, the reign of humanity ended, forced underground into a prison. They're the enemy and will kill every man, woman, and child if they aren't stopped.
As for the machines themselves, they're freakishly powerful and downright odd in construction. A large proportion of 'fodder' raptures seem to echo some form of sea life or insect, with crabs, jellyfish, ticks, fish, and a few others being readily identifiable. Others are more mechanical in form, with a passing resemblance to blimps or frisbees. Some form of plasma based energy weapon is their primary type of armament, with missiles/mortars and lasers being used instead or in combination on specific Raptures. They're extremely fast, can jump over most buildings, and are able to seemingly teleport. However, target acquisition seems to take a while. This tends to be the sole saving grace of the poor bastards sent to fight them. Whatever they're armored with renders all but the most basic rapture nearly immune to standard small arms, leaving crew served weapons the minimum standard for effective engagement. Bring something that can compete with an autocannon or go home.
The subject of possible coexistence with the Raptures is a criminal offense in the Ark, and it's a fairly silly idea anyways. Sure, they don't immediately murder civilians, but torture then murder is arguably worse. They've massacred countless billions of humans and never bothered to negotiate, make demands, or even tell us why they murdered us. All of this makes the evidence that some sort of coexistence can be possible a truly bitter pill to swallow.
-AX
MISG-09
It's a shotgun.
-AX
Ephialtes
Ordinarily, when you think of 'slum' and 'entertainment district' at the same time, you immediately imagine a really disgusting bordello filled with the desperately destitute and the unfortunately rich. Ephialtes manages to beat the odds, and has become something a bit more interesting. At the very least, it defies the disgusting epithet.
Located in the Outer Rim, it manages to actually approach the appearance of a legitimate entertainment district with proper casinos and bars beyond the sex work. It's still not to the level of the upscale Tetra stuff, but it's definitely less locked down. If you ever leave the Ark to visit the Rim, it's probably to visit here. You'll end up rubbing shoulders with all three classes, and the only real way to tell who's who is by the character of the sneer and the quality of the knife leveled at you for asking directions to the nearest restroom. Even CG officials 'vacation' here occasionally, and I imagine that their experiences here lead to their stances on the Rim. After all, DC Doban is rumored to have gotten mugged here after getting his heart broken by a call girl, forming his rather heated opinions on the fate of the Rim.
-AX
Mass Produced Nikkes
These poor girls.
Not every Nikke can become a Goddess. With the exception of one, every single Nikke on the Goddess squad required immense amounts of specialized RnD and resources to create, and even the exception needed more resources to operate than could be sustained outside of the squad. They were immensely powerful, but had one fatal flaw: They could only be in one place at a time. Given that a war was being fought, being able to win most any battle doesn't matter if you lose the other dozen going on at the same time.
No, a more scalable option had to be developed, and that's where MPNs came in. Of course, they were a cost cutting measure for the purpose of quantity. That meant that cost cutting measures had to be taken on the Nikkefication process itself with all that implies. And given that living women were the resources being used, the disturbingly common manufacturing errors incurred extreme losses of life. And even when the process succeeds the woman used disappears, turned into one of several base models with identical bodies, down to the face. Worst of all, they weren't even that good. Definitely not enough to turn the tide, at least.
After the defeat and retreat into the Ark, the process was refined to the point where losses in manufacturing became very uncommon. In exchange, every Nikke lost human rights. It's understandable that the living weapons would get some restrictions put on them, but the absolute descent into infamy that Nikkes experienced was extreme, absurd, and disappointing. Given a shelf life, these girls are well beaten tools that are used until they break or are decommissioned and killed. No future, no hope, nothing to live for. It's as if they're trying to induce as many mind-switches as possible.
What a waste.
-AX