The Curriculum
Always Humane; Digital Forward, Analog First
1. Welcome to Adventure
In the 1970s, two people came together and created The World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game, fusing rules with storytelling. I would play it myself, for my very first time — with the 5th edition — in the early 2010s.
Years following, I would rack up numerous games, as both player and Dungeon Master, under my belt. There was always bad and good rolls. There was always scheduling conflicts and snack duties. And there was always rules rulings and house rules.
This game is an accumulation of all of these years and more to come. My focus is towards accessibility, camaraderie, and reliability. And of course, fun overall. The numerous house rules, homebrews, and memorable moments will have informed a vast majority of this game.
I hope to help recreate the moments that stirred the creation of this game and to develop them into new and memorable moments for you and your group. Thank you for taking the time to try my game, and take care.
— Andrew Nguyen
2. The Peaks University
We welcome you to our university, and we hope that your journey proves eventful, fruitful, and bears you the opportunities and the experiences to grow as a student of learning, teaching, and enhancing the quality of life for yourself and for your peers.
Established in 2051, The Peaks University strives to uphold, promote, and to improve the quality of life for all, through education, experience, and endurance. We hope to imbue the necessary lessons that will prepare students for the unpredictable future, with the vigor and vigilance for the care of life of their own and of theirs held closely.
Please enjoy your time at The Peaks, and we hope that hope will always find a way through.
— Amahia Mallea, President
3. LBRY 101 — Orientation
3.1 The Year is 2172
Our reach is terribly vast, though not without greatly scarred lengths. The journey-so-far has enabled us to draw upon the infinite energies of the universe. We have made our everyday extraordinary, underneath all of the materials and the manufacturing, and underneath all of the research and the development. Undeniably, we have also made our everyday quietly fragile. As united as we have ever been, the factions still dominate our allegiance and discourse. It is the hope that we continue to explore the unknown, without too much trouble.
3.2 The Wand is It
In 2077, a group of scientists at the United Stars and Planetary Systems, Materials Research Lab, developed what we call today: wandcraft. With breakthroughs in coherence, coupling, and constraint, we created the wand. An instrument with three distinct components: the aperture, the core, and the frame. This wand enabled local control of ambient energy using stored control routines.
Over time, we would scale up wands for use in industry, manufacturing, and as our crown-jewel as engines in spacefaring ships. Today, further development is being made towards miniaturizing the technology for use in delicate manufacturing, medicine, and other applications where being able to manipulate energies at smaller scales would prove assistive and enabling.
3.3 The Path You Choose
Peaks offers four primary schools for students, each with a distinct focus ascribed by an allegoric feature of the energies we study.
The Crossroads
Parallel, Perpendicular; No Progression Without Intersection
Prepares students to lead — not through authority, but through presence and precision. Where paths converge, Crossroads students learn to read the moment and move others with it.
The Estuaries
Theory, Trial; No Truth Without Contemplation
Prepares students to understand — to ask carefully, test rigorously, and hold conclusions until they are earned. Where fresh water meets salt, something new forms.
The Highlands
Effort, Endeavor; No Experience Without Dedication
Prepares students to endure — to carry weight, sustain pressure, and remain capable when the situation demands it most. The terrain is unforgiving by design. The oldest school at Peaks, it stands tall over campus.
The Lowlands
Practice, Patience; No Proficiency Without Exhaustion
Prepares students to sustain — to build, craft, and maintain what others depend on. Proficiency here is not given; it is accumulated, slowly and deliberately.
4. HIST 101 — Timeline
The Energy Problem
Humanity ran on combustion, fission, and early renewables — abundant but inefficient and ecologically costly. The problem was never generation; it was control, storage, and distribution. Energy was produced centrally and consumed passively.
The Fusion Breakthrough
Sustained net-energy fusion arrived mid-century, enabled by high-temperature superconducting magnets. By 2060 first-generation reactors ran in major population centers; by 2077 fusion was the dominant grid source across settled space.
- Deuterium fuel from seawater — effectively unlimited
- No carbon output
- Orders of magnitude more energy density than combustion
The Broadcast Grid
Fusion solved generation; distribution remained. The answer was wireless broadcast power — resonant frequency transmission scaled alongside fusion. Energy moved from reactor to receiver without physical connection, over licensed, regulated frequencies.
The Wand
At the United Stars and Planetary Systems Materials Research Lab, a team built the first functional wand — an instrument for local control of broadcast energy using stored control routines. Wands do not generate energy; they receive, store, shape, and deliver it.
Wand Development
Early wands were industrial — large, heavy, high-power. Miniaturization followed battery and aperture advances, bringing medical, manufacturing, and personal wands. Casting disciplines emerged — gesture mastery, voice mastery, and the rare combined masters — and sustained plasma constructs became an advanced application.
The Present
Fusion is infrastructure, as mundane as electrical grids once were. Wands are ubiquitous, licensed, and regulated; the broadcast grid spans settled space.
Antimatter is the current frontier. Total mass-energy conversion offers output that dwarfs fusion by orders of magnitude, but production costs and containment remain unsolved at scale. Research is active; deployment is not. The stakes of success — and failure — are significant.
The factions watch closely.
5. Wand Systems
Table 5.1 Hardware
| Component | Function |
|---|---|
| Frame | Metamaterial resonant structure; couples to the broadcast grid |
| Core | Solid-state high-density battery; stores and transduces energy |
| Aperture | Phased-array emitter; shapes and delivers output |
5.2 Founding Principles
Output is phase-aligned — focused, not scattered
Frame resonates with the grid frequency for efficient draw
Aperture bounds and shapes output precisely
Table 5.3 Input Methods
| Method | Controls | Ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| Voice | Routine loading, power presets, release triggers, command chaining | High |
| Gesture | Real-time parameter shaping, coherence profiles, draw modulation | High |
| Combined | Full simultaneous control — both spaces at once | Highest |
- Voice mastery — rapid chaining, complex conditionals, granular verbal precision, hands-free invocation.
- Gesture mastery — real-time shaping, sub-parameter control, hardware-limit efficiency, multi-wand technique.
- Combined mastery — both tracks at once: sustain a construct via gesture while voice-invoking a secondary routine.
Table 5.4 Gesture → Parameter
| Gesture | Effect |
|---|---|
| Wrist flick | Packet release |
| Slow arc | Wide dispersal |
| Tight jab | Focused beam |
| Throw + release | Ballistic + delayed detonation |
| Held still | Sustained output |
| Rotation speed | Draw-rate modulation |
| Grip pressure | Power scaling |
Table 5.5 Output Types
| Output | Mechanism |
|---|---|
| Projectile | High draw dump; coherence collapses on contact, dispersing as heat and pressure |
| Beam | Sustained output; high coherence maintained |
| Construct | Magnetically confined plasma held in shape; continuous core drain |
Constructs are not hard light but magnetically confined plasma — shaped by the aperture, held by the frame’s magnetic field, and sustained by continuous core draw. They collapse on depletion.
Table 5.6 Construct Forms
| Form | Notes |
|---|---|
| Blade | Flat, elongated, high-coherence edge |
| Shield | Wide, curved, higher drain |
| Spear | Narrow, tapered, efficient |
| Gauntlet | Wand-mounted or embedded |
| Net / web | Complex routine, high skill |
Table 5.7 Depletion States
| State | Visual | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Full | Bright, sharp, stable | Full effectiveness |
| Mid | Flicker, edge fuzz | Minor degradation |
| Low | Unstable, dimming | Reduced effectiveness |
| Depleted | Instant collapse | Construct gone, wand dead |
Depletion is visible to all — tactically significant.
Table 5.8 Licensing Tiers
| Tier | Access |
|---|---|
| Basic | Anyone; light, heat, simple tools |
| Intermediate | Licensed, school-specific; directed energy, field shaping |
| Advanced | Credentialed; high-output, area effect |
| Restricted | Military / research; weapons-grade, antimatter-adjacent |
6. Colophon
Densette — The Curriculum · Draft
Set in Cobalt Ink on Paper · Pixelite
The Peaks University Press, 2172