# A Letter to Newcomers
Hello, rookie:
Acme is now your home in the Shardverse. You can feel sadness, confusion, or even anger. Cheer up! Whether you came here voluntarily or were unceremoniously flung through a portal on the corner, you need to understand this lonely city, the small Shard we live in.
Acme used to be a great city, a place of crazy wealth! It was originally a massive artificial city located on the equator of Earth, established through a temporary cooperation by giant companies Kepler and Eastvale. (In case you don’t know what "Earth" is, it's the planet where Acme was located before the Smash-Up). You saw the Spire, the tall building in the middle of town? Used to be there was a skyhook that went up to an orbital satellite, so you could take an elevator up to orbit. Now it's just condos, offices and a big mall.
These companies intended to create a free city unregulated by the government, but they went too far. Who could have guessed, right? Some Kepler scientists played with catastrophe physics a little too hard, and the entire city was ripped off the planet and appeared here, in this lovely little void in the Shardverse.
Since the whole point of Acme was there was no real government, after the disaster, the companies came together to form an organization called the "Acme Committee," acting as the leader of the city. The Committee organized post-disaster reconstruction, ensured food and energy supplies for the entire city, and set up a series of special agencies to handle emergency affairs. Oh, the Lancer Association is not included in that; we are merely nominally under the Committee’s jurisdiction. You surely don’t know how many times we clashed with Kepler and Eastvale right after the Smash-Up. During those disputes, the Committee eventually compromised: they sent people to sign a pact with us to establish the Lancer Association. The Association will not restrict you from doing anything, nor will they make you wear any explosive neck collars; they will only ask you to register your information and then harmlessly track your movements. I know that doesn’t sound quite right, but hold on! Their aim is merely to ensure that Lancers don’t do anything too outrageous, like drill a hole in the city or something. They wanna make sure that if someone does something stupid, it's them.
Key point: Acme needs a continuous supply of glunite so our tiny Shard doesn't disintegrate. So they need a platform to contact the Lancers and dispatch those glunite collection missions.
All right, you now have a general idea of the city, so get ready for some missions! New portals are continually appearing across Acme, and the Lancers are the only ones who can safely explore them. Accept missions, join a squad, meet new faces from various Shards, and go collect glunite! There are many weird but fundamentally righteous Lancers in the Association, and I hope you all become good friends.
Cly Bradley
("Broker" to my friends, "Uh oh" to my enemies)
