Scene: Draconid citizens overlook Cinderfall Bastion, a many-tiered city of black basalt, glowing foundries, bridges, and heat-shielded structures built into the volcanic cliffs of Draconis Major. Lava rivers branch through the ravines below while an immense volcano burns behind the city beneath a dark ash-filled sky.
Macrocosm: Build a Life Among the Stars
Quick Guide and Content Note
At a glance:
• Choose from six peoples and six starting worlds.
• Build a character through six attributes and thirty-five learned skills.
• Earn credits and reputation through professions, assignments, reports, and responsible decisions.
• Pursue social, civic, medical, technical, trade, combat, or spacecraft work.
• Use the section headings to skip directly to the information you want. There is no timer and no requirement to read the entire page at once.
Content note: the full details below mention combat, crime, coercion, the mature Torture skill, injury, death, body recovery, vermin, medical emergencies, and dangerous work. The descriptions are informational rather than graphic.
Macrocosm is an 18+ text-based science-fiction world for players who want more than a line of quests leading toward a finish screen. You create a person with a homeworld, physical and social strengths, practical skills, ambitions, loyalties, and room to change.
You may earn a living behind a counter, on civic patrol, in a clinic, beneath a damaged machine, aboard a working ship, or far from any safe route. Combat and spacecraft matter, but neither defines every life.
A diplomat, courier, medic, mechanic, merchant, scavenger, guard, host, explorer, or ordinary resident can build a consequential story. Because the game is expressed through text, imagination carries the visuals while accessibility remains part of the foundation rather than an afterthought.
Six Peoples, Six Starting Worlds
Your choice of people also chooses a culture, homeworld, starting city, and early difficulty. These tendencies influence a beginning; they do not dictate personality or forbid a career.
Solarians begin in Threshold Prime on Solaria and are the recommended first experience. They are adaptable, socially established, free of racial attribute penalties, and begin with a small reputation advantage.
Vaelari begin in Lysara Spire on Vael. They are perceptive, physically capable, and naturally influential, though complex technical reasoning is not their easiest path.
Ursai begin in Tharos Reach on Ursa Prime. They are powerful, agile hunters with exceptional awareness and endurance, with quieter social instincts and less natural affinity for abstract systems.
Draconids begin in Cinderfall Bastion on Draconis Major. Ash, heat, heavy industry, and volcanic stone have made them immensely strong and resilient, though less agile, socially fluid, or technically inclined.
Ravari begin in Karn Hollow on Ravax. Bitter air, scarce warmth, and salvage culture reward stamina, strength, perception, and patience in recovering value from what others abandon.
Nyxari begin in Gravewake on Nyx and are intended for experienced players. They are resilient, observant, and thoughtful, but physically less agile and socially difficult to read, shaped by a world where silence has texture and certainty is dangerous.
Stats, Skills, and Character Growth
Every new character begins with six core attributes. Strength measures power and leverage. Agility covers speed, reflexes, balance, and precision. Stamina represents endurance, resilience, and recovery. Perception governs awareness, tracking, detection, and reactions. Presence supports persuasion, intimidation, leadership, and first impressions. Logic supports reasoning, science, engineering, diagnosis, and complex systems.
Combat and physical skills include Dodge, Quickdraw, Fists, Whips, Clubs, Wrestle, Spears, Blades, Knives, Rifles, and Pistols. Survival and movement include Track, Scavenge, Climb, Swim, Fish, and Sneak.
Technical work includes Appraise, Chemistry, Medic, Repair, Craft, Science, and Locksmith. Social and professional life includes Persuade, Focus, Courier, Security, Service, and Trade. Space careers add Starship Piloting, Starship Engineering, and Gunnery, while Ride covers mounts and other rideable vehicles.
The thirty-fifth skill is Torture, a mature coercion skill in the 18+ ruleset. It is deliberately not presented as an ordinary profession. Related attributes support each skill, but advancement comes from understanding and using the skill—not from attributes alone. As reputation and competence rise, work asks for more judgment, reliability, and leadership.
Professions, Assignments, and Reputation
Work in Macrocosm is intended to feel like part of a life rather than a button that turns time into money. Job boards belong to real districts and organizations. A player reviews the postings, accepts an assignment, follows its developing thread, performs the work in the appropriate places, and returns a report to the listed contact.
Some duties are quiet and human: sorting crew forms, guiding a worried visitor through clinic intake, delivering a welcome packet, checking a housing directory, or calming a neighbor dispute before it becomes enforcement.
Other duties involve machinery, hazardous routes, disturbed cargo, damaged systems, vermin, medical emergencies, or threats to public safety. Completion can provide credits, skill practice, and local or corporate reputation. Careless abandonment, missed steps, and poor judgment may close opportunities inside ordinary play.
Early careers include waitstaff, cook, shop clerk, courier, civic helper, security officer, medic, and mechanic. More demanding paths can lead toward emergency coordination, technical leadership, high-trust trade, dangerous salvage, starship engineering, gunnery, or licensed piloting. During testing, not every advanced path or license is available at once, but progression is built around entry, intermediate, and advanced responsibility.
Career in Focus: Threshold Prime Civic Security
Entry Duty: Presence and Procedure
A new security character learns the unglamorous work that keeps people alive: watching a doorway without harassing everyone who passes, checking identification against access rules, walking a complete patrol route, noticing hazards before they become emergencies, keeping a tense public space calm, and writing a report the next shift can actually use. Current Threshold assignments include pad-safety checks, transit and housing support, loose-cargo marker sweeps, and port-vermin patrols.
Advanced Duty: Judgment Under Pressure
Intermediate security work asks the player to investigate disturbances, separate rumor from evidence, protect bystanders, and de-escalate trouble without turning every disagreement into an arrest. High-reputation duty can grow into coordinating a multi-room response, assigning priorities, preserving evidence, communicating with other services, and choosing the least violent solution that still protects the public.
Threshold Prime civic security is the confirmed current role. Its boards already support patrol, safety, transit, housing, vermin-control, staged assignments, and report-driven work. A formal Threshold Prime Police career can grow from this structure if that faction is introduced later; this page does not pretend it is already live.
Career Concept: Civic Recovery and Sanitation
Sewer and Tunnel Work
A sanitation shift could begin with protective gear, a route map, and a hazard brief. The worker identifies the correct infestation, avoids live utilities and uninvolved residents, clears only the assigned danger, watches for contamination or damaged infrastructure, and calls for medical or engineering help when the scene exceeds the contract. The challenge is safe civic work, not indiscriminate combat.
Proof, Recovery, and Reports
Completion may require tagged remains, bodies recovered before decay, contaminated materials, or another form of proof. A useful report records the location, creature or variant, number recovered, public risk, damaged systems, found property, and unresolved hazards. Credits and reputation belong to the person who completes the whole responsibility, including the paperwork and handoff.
Macrocosm already supports civic work boards, sewer-dwelling creatures, bodies, recovery, decay, loot, and reporting. That makes civic recovery a credible career direction. The specific corpse-turn-in profession described here remains a player-facing concept, not a promise that every form of this contract is currently live.
When a Career Becomes a Calling
Senior Medical and Technical Work
An advanced medic may triage several patients after an industrial accident, ration limited supplies, stabilize the most urgent cases, keep frightened families informed, and document every handoff. A senior mechanic may trace a cascading power failure through inhabited rooms, isolate the dangerous section, coordinate a repair team, and restore essential systems without creating a second disaster.
Spacecraft Responsibility
A starship specialist begins with checklists, supervised component inspection, routine docking support, and straightforward repairs. Later work may demand a difficult route under traffic control, a critical system overhaul under pressure, or a hazardous approach where the ship, crew, passengers, and cargo all depend on the player’s judgment. Licensed piloting remains a limited higher-tier path while ships and routes are stabilized.
At the high end, progression is meant to change responsibility rather than merely inflate rewards. Trusted professionals are asked to protect patients, residents, crews, cargo, contracts, and organizational reputation while making decisions under pressure. Trade can grow into authenticated cargo, disputed ledgers, and negotiated contracts; licensed piloting remains limited during development while ships and routes are stabilized.
The Numbers Behind Your Beginning
Solarian, Vaelari, and Ursai
Solarians have no attribute adjustments and begin with a small +2 reputation advantage. Vaelari receive +1 Strength, Agility, and Stamina; +2 Perception and Presence; and −1 Logic. Ursai receive +2 Strength and Perception; +1 Agility and Stamina; −2 Presence; and −1 Logic.
Draconid, Ravari, and Nyxari
Draconids receive +2 Strength and +3 Stamina, with −2 Agility and Presence and −1 Logic; Perception is unchanged. Ravari receive +1 Strength and Perception and +2 Stamina, with −1 Presence and Logic; Agility is unchanged. Nyxari receive +2 Stamina and +1 Perception and Logic, with −2 Agility and Presence; Strength is unchanged.
For players who want the mechanical details before choosing a people, a plus raises an attribute during creation and a minus lowers it. The starting adjustments are shown above. They describe an initial physical and cultural baseline—not a moral alignment, personality, intelligence, or predetermined profession.
What Players Can Expect During Testing
Available in the Current Build
The current database includes character creation, six starting peoples, six core attributes, thirty-five skills, Firstlight orientation, shops and wallets, NPCs and combat, work boards, staged assignments, reports, reputation, housing, weather, planetary time, ships, salvage, and several inhabited districts. Individual boards, licenses, routes, and advanced jobs may still be opened or restricted as testing requires.
What May Change During Testing
Availability and balance will change when play reveals something unfair, confusing, repetitive, or unexpectedly fun. A career example may arrive in stages, and an advanced duty may be temporarily limited while the systems around it are repaired or balanced. Testers are not expected to praise unfinished work. Honest answers, including criticism, are what help the universe improve.
Macrocosm is already a substantial working world, but it is still growing. The sections above separate what exists in the current database from content whose availability or balance may change. Where this page says “career concept,” it means a supported direction rather than a promise that every version of that assignment is live today.