Key Cast, Gangs & Factions
No spoilers below — just who's who behind the walls, and who's organising underneath them.
Who's Who
Elara Di Canti
Runs the machinery that keeps the Bulwark fed, and has never had reason to question it — until she does.
Becca Di Canti
Elara's younger sister, chasing something the vats can't give: real, soil-grown food, against odds she doesn't yet understand.
Gerrit Van De Klompe
Loyal, quietly brilliant, and about to become more useful to Elara than either of them expected.
Commodore Aline Rousseau
Thirty-one years commanding the Council's security forces, and increasingly alone in taking the movement below the waterline seriously.
Councillor Faur & Councillor Reyk
The chamber's two loudest voices on what to do about the Covenant — and they could not disagree more.
Abraham
Once a rising star in municipal infrastructure. Now the man an entire movement answers to.
Gangs & Factions
The Council
The elected body that governs the Bulwark and rations everyone inside it, one contract at a time.
The Directorate & the Corps
Built to keep the peace. Increasingly being asked to do more than that.
The Covenant of the First Breath
Started with a shared meal and a simple belief: synthetic food is a sin. It hasn't stayed small.
The Gleaners
More disciplined, and more feared, than any street gang — and considerably harder to say no to.
The Undertow
No ideology, no doctrine — just control of the water, and a toll for anyone who needs it.
The Verdant Exchange
The licensing body controlling everything real — soil-grown, animal-derived — that the vats don't make. Older than the Council itself.