Demon Academy The Refugee Crisis
A When It Clicks RPG - Setting Part 2
CONTINUED FROM The Paradox of Earth - Setting Part 1
The Refugee Crisis
Human response to the refugee crisis follows predictable patterns of xenophobia, exploitation, and political opportunism. Politicians frame refugees as invaders, foreign threats, existential dangers to human civilization. The fact that refugees are fleeing catastrophe and seeking sanctuary is conveniently omitted. Economic downturns, crime waves, natural disasters - all are attributed to “the alien presence” even when no plausible connection exists.
Governments declare emergencies, suspend civil liberties, expand surveillance, consolidate power. The refugee situation provides perfect cover for authoritarianism. Rights that took centuries to establish get dismantled in months, often with popular support driven by fear.
Refugees create enclaves wherever possible, though these settlements are often reported and perceived as “invader armies” rather than communities of displaced people seeking safety. Sect compounds get re-established in hidden locations. The refugees attempt to maintain their cultivation traditions, passing techniques to disciples, maintaining hierarchies of master and student. But everything is diminished. Fewer resources, weaker spiritual energy, constant threat of discovery and suppression.
Spirit animals claiming wilderness areas defend those territories through sheer force, creating zones where human authority cannot easily penetrate. These territories exist in a strange quasi-legal status - not officially recognized by human governments but maintained through practical reality. The cost of conquering them would be enormous, and the benefits unclear.
Underground networks of demonic cultivators and other refugees who cannot pass as human create hidden infrastructure. Safe houses, smuggling routes, information exchanges. They operate like resistance movements in occupied territories, which is essentially what they are - people living in a world that views their very existence as criminal.
The debate within refugee communities centers on an agonizing question: Should they teach humans safer cultivation methods, or refuse to teach anything at all? If they don’t teach, humans will only learn immortal awakening - the most dangerous practice. By teaching proper cultivation techniques, refugees could reduce overall danger to Earth. But teaching cultivation increases Chi usage, making Earth more visible to the Vorac. Some argue refugees should stop cultivating entirely, allowing their cores to degrade for the benefit of everyone. Others refuse to deny their fundamental nature, embracing cultivation despite the danger.
Sleeping Gods
There are beings sleeping beneath Earth’s crust, buried in the planet’s dimensional fabric, driven into hibernation so profound they barely exist. They are not gods in any traditional religious sense - they are cultivators who achieved such high realms that they transcended mortal existence entirely. Immortals. Beings of pure spiritual energy whose mere consciousness radiates enough Chi to be visible from dimensions away.
Earth’s fundamental resistance to Chi forces them into dormancy as a basic consequence of existing here. Their consciousness itself produces Chi; their thoughts radiate cultivation power. In this hostile environment, remaining awake is like trying to stay conscious while drowning - the pressure is constant, overwhelming, inevitable. So they adapted, or surrendered. They buried themselves in the dimensional layers between reality and possibility, driving themselves into hibernation so profound they produce virtually no signature.
Immortal awakening - sometimes called divine cultivation or god-path techniques - is the practice of forcibly rousing these hibernating entities and demanding their power. It is stunningly easy to do. The rituals are simple enough that anyone can learn them with minimal instruction. No cultivation base is required. No spiritual roots, no core formation, no years of meditation and refinement. Just knowledge of the proper invocations and the will to perform them.
And it works. Reliably. Every time.
The relationship between humans and immortals is completely one-sided. The immortals understand humans completely. They comprehend humanity to a degree humans will never understand themselves. Every thought, every motivation, every consequence of every choice traced across timelines and possibilities. They see the karmic debts accumulating from decisions humans haven’t made yet.
But humans cannot comprehend immortals in return. The gulf is too vast. When an immortal is forcibly woken and interacts with a human, communication occurs but makes no logical sense from the human perspective. A desperate mother whose child is dying performs the ritual, begging for healing. An immortal is torn from forced sleep, furious at the disruption, agonized by the hostile environment it’s been dragged into. It may grant healing but curse their bloodline for seven generations, not out of cruelty but because the karmic balance requires that specific price. Or it may refuse to heal the child but instead grant the mother the ability to see ten years into the future. Or kill both mother and child instantly, because their continued existence would trigger catastrophic outcomes.
To the human, the immortal’s behavior appears capricious. Vain. Cruel. Incomprehensible. To the immortal, they’re simply operating according to rules and realities the human cannot perceive.
When someone performs an immortal awakening ritual, a specific sequence unfolds with terrible reliability. The ritual itself is simple - sometimes just words spoken with intent and a small amount of Chi to carry them into the dimensional layers. An immortal is forcibly torn from hibernation, dragged into consciousness against the planet’s fundamental resistance. While awake, the immortal becomes visible to the Vorac. Their spiritual pressure is immense, far beyond what Earth’s dimensional walls can suppress. They broadcast their presence across dimensional space like lighthouse beacons. Every moment they remain conscious is a moment Earth becomes more detectable. Then the immortal collapses back into sleep, driven down by Earth’s relentless pressure against Chi. Until the next desperate person performs the ritual. Until the next immortal is torn from sleep. Until the next spike of Chi broadcasts Earth’s location to anything sensitive enough to hear it.
Immortal awakening cults are growing exponentially. The practice spreads because it works - reliably, obviously, immediately. People see results and want that power. Beyond the organized cults, countless individuals perform awakening rituals independently, learning techniques from internet forums or refugee contacts willing to trade knowledge for money. Each invocation contributes to the accumulated danger.
Divine cultivation is easy power. Available to anyone. Reliable in producing effects, if not in controlling them. It bypasses years of difficult training, eliminates the need for spiritual roots or natural talent, delivers immediate results in a world where most cultivation progress is glacially slow due to Earth’s Chi-poor environment.
Cultivation in a Hostile World
The refugees brought countless cultivation methods from their home worlds - techniques refined over eons, proven across millions of practitioners, encoded in jade slips and ancient texts and oral traditions passed from master to disciple for hundreds of generations. Almost none of them work properly on Earth.
The problem is fundamental: cultivation techniques were developed for Chi-rich environments. They assume abundant spiritual energy available for gathering. They rely on the existence of strong ley lines and established spiritual veins. They incorporate materials and resources that simply don’t exist in Terracore.
Body cultivation focuses on tempering flesh, bones, and meridians to withstand and channel increasing amounts of Chi. Traditional methods involve bathing in spirit herb solutions while circulating cultivation techniques. Eating beast cores to strengthen internal organs. Training in environments with specific elemental properties. On Earth, this requires enormous Chi investment in an environment where Chi is scarce and hard to accumulate. A body cultivation technique that might take ten years in Qing Tiān could take a century in Terracore - if it works at all.
Soul cultivation requires extraordinary discipline and mental fortitude. Practitioners sit in meditation for hours, gradually expanding their consciousness like inflating a balloon. They learn to project their awareness outside their bodies, to perceive Chi flows and spiritual structures invisible to normal senses. They develop mental domains - pocket dimensions of pure consciousness where they can retreat or store information.
Soul cultivation is often taught as the “civilized” path. The intellectual approach. Teachers who learned it in other dimensions often promote it as safer than body cultivation’s risks of Chi deviation or elemental cultivation’s potential for explosive failure. In Earth’s current situation, this is catastrophically wrong. Soul cultivation produces the strongest spiritual signature to the Vorac. Of all forms of Chi refinement, soul energy has the most appealing “scent” - the signature that draws the consuming entity more reliably than anything else.
The paradox that makes this truly horrifying: when the Vorac consumes soul cultivators, it gains virtually nothing. Soul energy provides no nutritional value. The entity derives no strength from it, no sustenance, no benefit whatsoever. But the Vorac pursues soul cultivators anyway. Mindlessly. Relentlessly. Unable to learn from the lack of benefit.
The Quiet Path Movement - one of the largest organizations teaching cultivation to humans - bases its entire philosophy on “quiet” cultivation that won’t attract attention. They promote soul refinement as the ultimate quiet practice: no explosions, no obvious displays of power, all progress happening internally where it can’t be seen. They have no idea they’re teaching people to scream into dimensional space where the Vorac can hear them.
When Chi flooded Earth, approximately twenty thousand humans and animals spontaneously formed cores or developed cultivation abilities. The Awakened developed abilities that don’t fit existing frameworks from refugee traditions. Cores forming in unusual locations. Traditional cultivation places cores in the dantian - lower abdomen for physical power, chest for emotional energy, forehead for mental strength. The Awakened sometimes have cores in completely different positions. One might have a core in their spine. Another in their left hand. A third distributed throughout their entire nervous system.
Some Awakened develop hybrid abilities blending technology and cultivation. An Awakened might unconsciously integrate electronic devices into their meridian system, creating cybernetic cultivation paths that no ancient master could have imagined. Another might develop a core that feeds on electromagnetic radiation, treating WiFi signals and cellular data as a form of Chi.
Many Awakened don’t realize they’re cultivating at all. They experience “lucky coincidences” that are actually nascent divine sense guiding them away from danger. They have “intuitive hunches” that are really soul cultivation enabling precognition. They think they’re just unusually strong or fast, not realizing they’re performing foundation-level body cultivation.
Instead of elemental cores attuned to fire or water, some Awakened develop cores based on abstract concepts. A core of “justice” that strengthens when defending others. A core of “hunger” that grows by consuming. A core of “connection” that draws power from relationships.
Most Awakened don’t understand their own abilities. They’re discovering them through accident or crisis, with no framework for comprehending what’s happening. The Awakened are valuable for precisely this reason - their development might reveal new cultivation paths adapted specifically to Earth’s unusual conditions. Which is exactly why they’re being hunted.
The Core Economy
A brutal market economy has emerged around cultivation resources, with cores as the primary currency. Licensed cultivation resource dealers operate like diamond merchants, their showrooms displaying cores behind Chi-reinforced glass. They verify provenance, ensure ethical sourcing, and handle transactions worth millions. A low-grade spirit beast core from a properly deceased animal: fifty thousand dollars. A mid-grade elemental core harvested from a natural formation: two hundred thousand. A high-grade core from a foundation establishment cultivator who died of natural causes: easily a million.
Corporate core acquisition programs offer contracts to refugees and Awakened willing to “donate” resources. The contracts are complex legal documents that technically compensate donors while practically exploiting them. A refugee desperate for housing and protection might sign away rights to cores they haven’t even formed yet.
Black market operations run parallel to legal trade, larger in volume and infinitely more brutal. Harvested Awakened cores represent the most horrifying category. Kidnapping rings specifically target Changed humans, extracting their cores through surgery or cultivation techniques. The victims are sometimes killed outright, sometimes kept alive and drained repeatedly like a renewable resource. An Awakened core can sell for five hundred thousand to five million dollars depending on properties and purity.
The harvest industry operates with corporate efficiency. Talent scouts identify potential Awakened. Acquisition teams handle the kidnapping. Extraction specialists remove the cores. Disposal teams eliminate evidence. The whole operation runs like a factory, processing human beings into commodities.
Stolen beast cores from protected refugees flood the black market. Spirit animals who revealed their true nature are hunted, killed, and harvested. The cores are scrubbed of identifying markers and sold through untraceable channels.
Human core farming - the most horrific practice - involves deliberately creating Awakened humans through Chi exposure, then harvesting them. Some corporations and criminal organizations have established facilities where humans are exposed to controlled Chi environments, monitored for core formation, then harvested once their cores develop.
Dungeon Cores and Tower Dungeons
Since the incursion began, new types of cores are spontaneously appearing throughout Earth. Where Chi concentrations reach critical mass - usually at ley line intersections - accumulated spiritual energy sometimes crystallizes into dungeon cores. These are semi-sentient entities that begin shaping their environment according to instinct or design.
At these locations, cores create territories, spawn defenders, generate treasures, and slowly expand their domains. Most start small - a single room, a short corridor - but grow over time as they accumulate more Chi. Some dungeon cores show signs of genuine intelligence. They respond to delvers in ways that suggest learning and adaptation. They create challenges tailored to specific intruders. A few have even attempted communication through patterns in their layout or treasures that contain encoded messages.
Corporate interests race to claim newly discovered dungeon cores. The cores can be harvested for their concentrated Chi, used as eternal power sources for cultivation facilities, or maintained as training grounds that generate resources.
As Chi saturation increases across Earth, as more cores spontaneously form and achieve consciousness, some have begun growing vertically rather than horizontally. They build upward through dimensional layers, creating structures that shouldn’t exist - towers that pierce through multiple planes of reality, floors stacked in impossible configurations, challenges arranged in ascending difficulty that defies normal spatial relationships.
These Tower Dungeons serve as training grounds by necessity and design. The lower floors present challenges suitable for foundation establishment cultivators - spirit beasts of modest power, simple formations to break, basic treasures to claim. Progress through the floors correlates roughly with cultivation advancement. Mid-levels for golden core practitioners. Upper reaches for nascent soul experts. The highest floors remain unconquered, their challenges beyond current human capability.
The towers generate cores. Spirit beast cores from defeated guardians. Elemental cores that crystallize from concentrated Chi. Occasionally, cores from other delvers who died in the depths and whose cultivation bases persisted after death.
Some towers are natural formations, dungeon cores that spontaneously developed this vertical growth pattern. Others appear to be deliberately constructed, though by whom and for what purpose remains unclear. A few show signs of intelligence - floors that adapt to delvers’ capabilities, challenges that seem designed to teach rather than simply kill, rewards calibrated to encourage specific cultivation approaches.
https://wicdemonacademy.substack.com/p/the-setting-part-3