The Conjurer's Compact: City of Open Doors
Interdimensional Transit, Entity Rights, and the Porous City
The Compact was signed between the city of Arkport and eleven other dimensions in 2141. In exchange for access to resources, materials, and knowledge from those dimensions, Arkport became the first open-transit city: any entity from a signatory dimension may enter through licensed Conjuration Stations, provided they carry a Transit Permit and comply with local law. The city is now home to 3 million humans and approximately 900,000 interdimensional entities of 47 registered types, plus an unknown number of unlicensed entries. Some entities are here to work. Some are here because their own dimensions are dying. Some are here because Arkport is the only place in their known reality where they can exist openly. The Compact's Article 9 requires all entities to submit to dimensional recall if found in violation - a provision that has become the city's most contested legal question.
“The forms are in triplicate. One for Arkport immigration, one for your home dimension’s exit registry, one for the Compact Oversight Board. The line is on your left. Welcome to Arkport. Please do not phase through any walls - the building codes do not account for it.”
- Conjuration Station 7, automated arrival announcement
1. Setting Overview
Arkport works, mostly, because the Compact is financially beneficial to everyone who signed it. Entities from resource-scarce dimensions bring knowledge and materials in exchange for goods and services. Humans get access to dimensional resources they cannot produce. The transit infrastructure - licensed Conjuration Stations run by city-contracted mages - keeps the flow regulated and taxed.
What the Compact’s architects did not fully account for: entities from dying dimensions. Thirteen dimensions have experienced collapse events since the Compact was signed. Their former populations did not stop existing. They simply stopped having somewhere to go back to. The Compact has no provision for refugees.
Tone: Urban bureaucratic fantasy with genuine political stakes. The city works as a multicultural achievement. It is also full of systems that were designed for normal conditions and are now straining against abnormal ones.
2. Dimensional Communities
Luminids are entities of coherent light - they appear as bright humanoid shapes and require specific light-spectrum accommodations to maintain stable form. 40,000 Luminids live in the Lux Quarter, which has been modified with their spectrum requirements. They are highly skilled engineers and have transformed Arkport’s optical computing industry.
The Shaled are stone-form entities from a dimension of geological activity. They move slowly, think long-term, and have perfect structural memory - they can recall the exact original position of any piece of stone they have touched. They are prized as architects and historians. 12,000 reside in Arkport.
Unmarked Arrivals are entities from collapsed dimensions who entered through illegal or improvised rifts. Estimates range from 30,000 to 200,000. They do not have transit permits. They are not covered by the Compact. They are living in the city’s margins.
3. Factions
The Compact Oversight Board - The regulatory body for interdimensional transit. Currently arguing internally about whether Article 9 (dimensional recall) applies to entities whose home dimensions no longer exist.
The Open Door Coalition - A mixed-species advocacy group arguing for Compact revision to cover dimensional refugees. Has support from several Luminid and Shaled community leaders.
The Rift Brokers - A criminal network running unlicensed portals for profit, specializing in moving entities from collapsed dimensions. Morally complicated: they are helping people who have nowhere else to go, for money.
4. Unique Mechanic
Dimensional Attunement (1-6):
- 3+: Sense entity distress and concealed dimensional signatures.
- 5+: Open a door-sized rift to an Attuned dimension (costs 1 Attunement).
- Attunement restores 1 per rest scene.
Starting Attunement by role: Conjuration Engineers start at 3. Transit Officers start at 2. Civilians start at 1.
5. Character Archetypes
The Transit Officer
A Compact enforcement officer who processes entity arrivals daily and has developed Attunement 4 through sheer volume of contact. Currently has 14 Unmarked Arrivals in detention whose home dimensions are confirmed collapsed, and no legal authority to release or recall them.
- Drive: “Find a legal mechanism that lets me do the right thing.”
- Approach Distribution: Force 1 | Finesse 2 | Mind 3 | Presence 2
The Luminid Advocate
A second-generation Luminid who was born in Arkport and is technically a citizen, technically, under a legal interpretation that the Compact Oversight Board is currently contesting. Works with Unmarked Arrivals because she knows exactly how precarious legal status can be.
- Drive: “Establish a legal precedent before the Board closes the loophole I exist in.”
- Approach Distribution: Force 1 | Finesse 3 | Mind 2 | Presence 2
The Rift Broker Contact
Runs transit for Unmarked Arrivals. Genuinely believes in what they are doing. Also charges what the market will bear, which is everything the Arrivals have. Working through whether the two halves of this statement are compatible.
- Drive: “Keep the routes open without becoming what I am running from.”
- Approach Distribution: Force 2 | Finesse 3 | Mind 2 | Presence 1
6. Starter Scenario
The Thirteenth Station: A licensed Conjuration Station has gone dark. Initial investigation shows it was used to process a massive unlicensed transit event - potentially thousands of entities from a dimension the Board has not acknowledged as collapsed. The entities are somewhere in the city. The Board wants them found and recalled. The Open Door Coalition wants them found and sheltered. The Rift Brokers want to find them first and charge them transit fees. The characters have to find them before any of those three things happen and decide what to actually do.