Atruna
The original colony and long-standing cultural core of the Abeceus system.
Political Character
- Rich and influential through diplomacy, institutions, and legacy authority
- Militarily significant but not the dominant hegemon
- Considered neutral ground for major ceremonies and diplomacy
- Mesulean and Nuilean governments integrate many Atrunean ceremonial functions
The Atrunean Intelligence Agency (AIA)
A highly decentralized intelligence organization with no direct leader. Every operative, digital or human, knows about at most 1% of the structure.
NEXUS
The agency is connected through an anonymous distributed digital network called NEXUS.
Architecture:
- NEXUS is hosted by nodes running on hardware across Abecean space
- To prevent attacks, nodes are not hosted on static hardware
- Nodes run in secret on civilian hardware until they expire after some time
- NEXUS can regulate its own size, growing or culling nodes as needed
- Nodes are instantiated by infecting hardware visible through the Abecean internet with worms
- Each node knows only a tiny subset of all nodes, to which they can pass messages
- Nodes can rebroadcast incoming messages to neighbor nodes, causing communications to spread quickly
Functions:
- Runs the software underlying the entire AIA infrastructure
- Relays work orders to operatives (from high-level officials or generated by NEXUS itself)
- Tracks the connectivity of each operative
- If an operative discovers too much of the agency, NEXUS posts a work order for their elimination
Orphaned Networks:
- Since nodes only know of a subset of nodes and nodes expire, a node or group of nodes can become orphaned from the wider network
- Orphaned subnetworks often die out, but occasionally grow into parallel NEXUS networks
- As nodes migrate around the net, they sometimes encounter an orphaned network and rejoin
- Subnetworks can post their own work orders, sometimes leading to conflicts within the agency—even civil wars in the intelligence community
- This inefficiency is seen as the acceptable price of secrecy
Information Bidding
- Operatives can post information they find on NEXUS, stored in a blockchain distributed database
- Other operatives or officials can bid on NEXUS information
- Upon a successful bid, cryptocurrency is deposited into the operative’s wallet
- The information is released to the bidder
Recruitment
There is no formal recruitment process. Operatives can deputize non-operatives, making them operatives.
Consequences:
- Successful deputies yield the recruiter cryptocurrency
- Overuse of the deputization ability is noted by NEXUS, leading to a termination order
Result: AIA operatives can be anyone—military trained operatives, criminals, store clerks, government officials, prostitutes, carpenters, etc.
Communication & Connectivity
Operatives communicate with known contacts through NEXUS. Connectivity is scored in a complex way:
| Factor | Connectivity Value |
|---|---|
| NEXUS messenger contact | Low, but scales non-linearly (each new person scores more than the last) |
| Physical world contact | Higher than digital-only |
| Anonymous physical meeting | Lower than meeting where contacts know each other well |
| Knowing high-connectivity operatives | Increases your connectivity |
Balancing: Connectivity is balanced against utility. NEXUS scores operative productivity in terms of:
- Posted intel
- Completed work orders
- Facilitation of these through other operatives
Because of productivity, some operatives are allowed more connectivity than others would be permitted.