The Core - Powerclash HQ

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The Core | Narrators

The core premise of the Powerclash raises a bunch of questions about what’s going on behind the scenes:

What were the strange crystals that gave the original team captains their superpowers?
Who decided what powers each captain would get?
Who decided what method of recruitment each captain would get?
Who decided what powers their recruits would get?
Who/what is the Ringmaster?
Where has the Ringmaster come from?
Why has the Ringmaster decided to force the players to compete in the Powerclash?
How much influence and leeway does the Ringmaster have in how the rules of the Powerclash are enforced

All answers lead back to the Core, our mysterious society of god-like aliens.

A) So what do we know about the Core?

The Core is located at the center of the Universe.
It’s a society made up of thousands of different alien races. This includes people who started off as:
- naturally evolved organic species like us. These evolved on different planets and in all different forms – from lizard and bird analogs, through to plant or mollusk types – or more exotic forms such as sentient sea-sponges, blimp-creatures who live in gas giants, and space amoeba that never evolved on a planet, etc.
- artificially developed lifeforms – broadly covering all the different forms of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and AS (Artificial Sentience) that have been developed by the organic species.
- hybrids of organic and artificial life
The technology of the Core has reached incredibly advanced levels. The people of the core are functionally immortal, able to migrate between physical and non-physical forms as desired, manipulate the physical universe in incredible ways and leverage layers of the universe that we haven’t yet discovered. They are truly god-like in their powers.
The people of the Core are always keen to discover new sentient races that have arisen in the outskirts of the universe, and invite them to join their society – injecting some new blood into the mix. Anyone who fins and brings in a new race earns massive kudus within Core society.
The people of the Core are able to gift their technology to new races, uplifting them to an equal footing.
There is lively debate within the Core about how exactly new races should be introduced, and how that uplifting should happen. Over the eons various traditions, and factions which follow them, have emerged.

And we know that Ringmaster, the architect of the Powerclash, is from the Core.

B) So what do we know about Ringmaster?

Ringmaster was a ‘seeker’ – actively searching the lesser trodden neighborhoods of the universe for new races to bring into the Core. It had been searching for a long time before finding humanity.
Ringmaster is a member of a faction known as the ‘Delegators’ who believe that upon discovering a new race, it is the responsibility of the successful seeker to select an Ambassador to represent the new race. The Ambassador is ‘fully uplifted’ with Core powers. The Ambassador then gets to decide what happens to their people – does everyone get Core powers? Should the planet be relocated into the Core? Should they reject the Core and become isolationists? All of these types of decision should be made by the Ambassador without Core interference.
Ringmaster is also a member of a sub-faction known as the ‘Debutantes’. Because an Ambassador could decide to completely reject the Core, the process of selecting an Ambassador might be the only interaction the Core ever has with that Race. So the Debutantes believe in making that selection process into a grand event that serves as an introduction or elegy to the race.
Ringmaster discovered Hu in the 1300s, but kept it’s discovery secret, studying humanity and designing a process for selecting an Ambassador that was fitting to the race.
Ringmaster has transformed itself into a ‘world-mind’ for Hu, its consciousness distributed throughout the organic and inorganic matter of the planet. It is now omnipresent.

C) So why did Ringmaster design the Powerclash this way?

Humans are an aggressive species. Conflicts are common, and sometimes escalate into murders and wars. Ringmaster decided that some form of ritual combat would be an appropriate way to select their Ambassador.
Humans are a social and collaborative species. Ringmaster decided that any combat should begin with teams, and then evolve into solo combat when only one team remained.
Humans have an affinity for the number five. They have five digits on their hands, five toes on their feet, five protuberances from their trunk (four limbs and one neck) and five holes in their heads (two ears, two nostrils and one mouth). They grow through five life stages (infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and senescence). They have populated five continents. They are motivated by five primary emotions (happiness, sadness, anger, fear and disgust). Ringmaster decided there should be five teams, each comprised of twenty-five players (five times five).
As a Delegator, Ringmaster wanted to give humans as much say as possible in the selection of the contestants, so it decided that representatives of the Core would only select the Team Captains, and they would then have freedom to recruit their teams.
But as a Debutante, Ringmaster also wanted to introduce as much variety as possible to showcase different facets of human nature, so it gave each Team Captain a different method for recruiting their team (paternal procreation, maternal procreation, sexual transmission, blood transmission, and consumption).
Rather than have the humans compete in their natural state, and then uplift the eventual champion with full Core powers, Ringmaster decided to give every player a small fragment of the Core powers. It believed that observing which types of powers humans were able to use more effectively would give audiences in the Core greater insight into their new human friends.
To allow more members of the Core to engage with the election process, Ringmaster secretly recruited 125 of his fellow Delegators to ‘sponsor’ a human player. Each sponsor bonds with their human’s psyche, becoming the player’s subconscious interface to the powers they’ve been given.
The Delegator sponsors had to figure out which teams they’d be in, who would be their captains, and who would carry which power.
The Delegator team captains got to pick the individual human they would bond with to kick the whole thing off.