Entropy Corps: Decay and Preservation for Hire
Controlled Deterioration, the Preservation Guild, and the Price of Time
Entropy Corps is the leading demolition and materials reclamation firm in the world, because entropy magic - the ability to accelerate or decelerate decay at a molecular level - is the cleanest, fastest, and most profitable way to tear down a building and recover its materials. A structure that would take 3 months and significant pollution to demolish conventionally can be entropy-reduced to sorted raw materials in 6 hours. The Preservation Guild does the opposite: for clients willing to pay, their entropy mages decelerate decay in objects, artworks, bodies, and buildings, maintaining them in perfect condition indefinitely. The economy of entropy has one rule: slowing decay requires more energy than accelerating it, which means preservation is expensive and demolition is profitable. The black market has discovered a third use: targeted entropy acceleration for objects you want to disappear quickly, people you want to age faster, or evidence you want gone. An Entropy Corps engineer has found internal records suggesting the firm has been taking black market contracts alongside its legitimate demolition work.
“The building took 80 years to construct and 4 hours to become sorted material. Our clients receive a full materials manifest within 24 hours. We are very good at what we do.”
- Entropy Corps quarterly operations report
1. Setting Overview
Entropy Corps made building demolition so efficient that it changed city planning. With the ability to reduce a structure to sorted raw materials in hours, cities can reclaim and redevelop land at a pace never before possible. The reclaimed materials are usable. The process is clean. The firm is profitable.
The Preservation Guild serves a smaller, wealthier market: clients who want to keep things exactly as they are. Museum collections maintained at original condition. Family properties preserved against the passage of time. And, in the Guild’s most controversial but most profitable service line, biological preservation - slowing the entropy of living tissue for wealthy clients who can afford not to age at the normal rate.
The black market sits between the two: accelerated decay as a service, for things and people that need to disappear. The engineer who found the records does not know yet how far up the contract chain this goes.
Tone: Corporate thriller with unusual murder methods. Entropy magic is quiet and invisible. Evidence of its application is brief.
2. The Decay Economy
Entropy Corps Demolition Teams are the backbone of the city development industry. Their work is licensed, inspected, and publicly contracted. The engineers are professional and take pride in the precision of their work.
The Preservation Guild works with individual clients rather than contracts. Their mages are specialists in specific material types - some work only with organics, some with metals, some with biological preservation. Guild mages are among the highest-paid technical practitioners in the world.
The Black Market operates through intermediaries - clients never contact entropy mages directly. The fee scales with target type, urgency, and deniability requirement.
3. Factions
Entropy Corps - The demolition giant. Legitimate operations on the surface; something else in the records the engineer found.
The Preservation Guild - An independent professional organization with significant political connections through its wealthy client base.
The Entropy Regulators - The government body that licenses entropy practitioners and investigates unauthorized use. Technically responsible for black market enforcement. Has not successfully prosecuted a major entropy crime in six years.
4. Unique Mechanic
Entropy Rating (1-6):
- Decay acceleration: Force + Entropy vs. material difficulty. One Material Stage per success round.
- Preservation (deceleration): Mind + half Entropy (round up) vs. complexity. 1 week per success degree.
- Illegal biological targeting: Force + Entropy vs. target Constitution. Success = 1d6 visible years aged.
- Detection (Rating 5+): detect entropy effects applied within the last week as free action.
5. Character Archetypes
The Entropy Corps Engineer
15-year veteran. Entropy Rating 5. Found internal contract records in a routine audit that show payments for “special material disposal” with client codes not in the standard system. Has not reported it. Has been keeping a personal copy of the records for 3 weeks.
- Drive: “Understand how high this goes before deciding whether internal reporting is safe or pointless.”
- Approach Distribution: Force 2 | Finesse 2 | Mind 3 | Presence 1
The Entropy Regulator Investigator
Has been trying to make a case against black market entropy targeting for three years. Has circumstantial evidence and no direct contract trail. Was just contacted by an anonymous source who has internal documents.
- Drive: “Evaluate whether the source is genuine and whether the documents are enough to build a prosecution before whoever they are hiding from figures out where they are.”
- Approach Distribution: Force 1 | Finesse 2 | Mind 4 | Presence 1
6. Starter Scenario
The Disappearing Evidence: A journalist who was investigating the black market entropy trade died last month. The official cause was a stroke. The Entropy Regulator Investigator requested an entropy residue examination of the body. The examination showed no results, which is normal - and also consistent with entropy application outside the 1-week detection window, meaning if someone aged the journalist’s vital tissues before the stroke, they planned it with the detection window in mind. The engineer has come forward with documents. One of the contract codes appears in the journalist’s financial records from six months before her death. The documents show a payment to a “special disposal” code the week she died.