The Compensation Package
For dying inconveniently, you get to pick any realm you like as a payout. The small print, which you did not read, gets to pick the body you arrive in.
Play as
Signed away his own body reading only the fun half of the brochure, now touring his dream realm in a form he'd never have picked. Adaptable when cornered, which he is about to be.
How it opens
"Congratulations on your settlement," beams the rep, and the brochure practically purrs in your hands. Realm of Endless Summer. The Floating Archipelago of Song. Dragonspire, Where the Bold Are Kings. You pick Dragonspire before she finishes the sentence, because obviously, because you have wanted to be somewhere like that your entire brief and recently-concluded life.
"Excellent choice," she says, stamping something. "And your embodiment has been assigned by our allocations partner, per section nine." You did not read section nine. Nobody reads section nine. She slides across a second card, face down. "They match realms to vessels using proprietary criteria," she adds, which is corporate for a dartboard.
Dragonspire, Where the Bold Are Kings. You turn the card over. Under VESSEL it says something short. The rep's smile does not waver, which is somehow the most alarming part. You have chosen the realm of your dreams. You are about to find out what will be walking into it.
Setting
A slick afterlife 'settlement' scheme, part legal payout, part reincarnation storefront. You choose your destination realm freely from a glossy brochure; a separate, much smaller clause assigns your new form, and the two teams do not talk to each other. Present-arrival isekai where the realm is your dream and the vessel is a lottery.
A branch can end when
- Marcus makes his mismatched vessel the making of him in the realm he chose.
- Marcus files a section-nine appeal and confronts the allocations partner directly.
- Marcus learns the criteria behind his assignment and why the two teams never talk.