The Corporate Gauntlet
Mega-corporations control the governance of this world with a spellwoven and ironclad grasp. Every sector of business and every military operation is funded and operated by organizations with unimaginable wealth. They shift funds and disrupt the global economy across a web of shadowy organizations, always operating at the discretion of mysterious executives surrounded by abundant opulence.
These corporate executives are collectively referred to as Stiffs by those aware of their origins. They hide their ill intent through their near omnipotent control of magic. The Stiffs are powerful liches from a doomed reality, having fled to our world to avoid a catastrophe they had inadvertently caused. With great disdain for their opponents, the Stiffs now wage covert wars against one another to better control the nightmare they have woven.
While they each endeavor to gain total dominance, the power they wield is not as tightly controlled as they believe. More humans are awakening, their minds and bodies becoming transformed by the awareness and ability to harness arcane power.
The Fabric of Magic
Upon their arrival to this reality, the Stiffs severed this world from the greater multiverse, sealing humanity into their own pocket reality. After lulling humanity into this veiled state of dreaming and living, the Stiffs then cast the connection to other realities far out of reach to all those now under their enchantment.
But somewhere within those lost realities is the source of magic, a transformative and hidden power that enforces the boundary between realities and fuels the Stiffs’ power. This power still flows in and around the world but is kept hidden at all costs. Those that have not awakened to the presence of magic are called Dreamers, as they cannot perceive the metaphysical war waging all around them.
Ciphers
Through instability in the magics binding the world of Nihil to the Stiffs’ whims, some humans have gained awareness of magic and chosen to become rebellious battle-mages, known as Ciphers. With the shared goal of opposing the lich-lords, they act as agents of disruption to the dark machinations of the corporations. Only Ciphers can decode the boundaries of this dark reality and attempt to transform it into a new world.
In their pursuit of resistance and revolution, Ciphers often choose specific areas of study as they grow in their knowledge and gain magical power through their subterfuge. These areas of mystic structure and reality logic are called Protocols, and their study often leads Ciphers to new ways of casting spells to take control of reality.
Protocols
There are eight major arcana of magic in Nihil, each representing a different style of influencing reality. The names of mages that study these arcana are given different titles to reflect their aspect of magical expression.