The job begins with a very puzzling message. Azrael receives a direct inquiry from a woman she does not know:
Dr. Simone Yao, a young physics professor with Eddings University.
There is no obvious reason she should know how to reach her. No intermediaries. No visible trail. Just a request for an illegal recovery operation in the San Francisco ruins. Yao arranges a meeting at a small coffee shop near the Eddings University campus. When she arrives, it is immediately clear she is not part of the underworld. She is intelligent, precise, and visibly uncomfortable with the mechanics of negotiation, but she is not naïve. She understands enough to know she needs professionals; she simply has no idea what that costs.
Her request is straightforward in outline, if not in scope: The target is the surviving research archive of Dr. Jamal Caldwell, a minor but persistent SFSU physicist whose work was dismissed during his lifetime as speculative, unfalsifiable, and increasingly unorthodox. His research focused on gravity and spacetime under conditions that did not behave according to accepted models. Over time, his work became internally inconsistent, abstract, and difficult to classify. Funding dried up, peer review cooled, and Caldwell’s reputation settled into the category of “brilliant but unreliable.”
His later research was grouped under an informal internal label: Project Rabbit Hole. Officially, Project Rabbit Hole was an exploratory framework for modeling extreme spacetime discontinuities and anomalous gravitational behavior. In practice, even sympathetic colleagues could not clearly determine what Caldwell was trying to prove. The surviving material is fragmented, recursive, and structurally unstable in its logic, filled with references to nested systems, self-referential assumptions, and boundary conditions that “refuse to remain closed.” The material was left behind during the evacuation and subsequent collapse of the Bay Area academic infrastructure after the 2031 nuclear strikes. She believes it still exists somewhere within the SFSU-affiliated "Deep Future Archive" beneath Thompson Hall on the Peninsula.
Dr. Yao does not fully understand the work. She only believes it may fill critical gaps in her own theoretical research. She initially offers a payment that is clearly absurdly low for the risk involved. It is not an insult so much as a miscalculation; she does not understand the economics of this kind of work. If pressed, she is willing to negotiate upward to a reasonable sum, but admits she will need time to properly assemble the funds. She is not attempting to cheat anyone; she is simply out of her depth. She will not explain how she knew to contact Azrael. The only answer she offers is indirect and incomplete: “My father is a lawyer. He suggested you.”
Dr. Yao provides what limited documentation she has, including partial technical schematics of the archive system, a probable location beneath Thompson Hall at SFSU, and a mechanical access code for the bunker door. She also provides a portable university battery pack to support field access equipment. Dr. Yao takes no role in operational planning beyond this. Whatever the PCs decide to do next is entirely their responsibility.
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The San Francisco Bay Exclusion Zone
The San Francisco Bay Area was devastated twice. During the Third World War, the region's importance as a financial, technological, industrial, and transportation hub made it a major target for nuclear attack, particularly downtown San Francisco and the reactivated naval facilities around the Bay. The 2031 strikes destroyed much of the urban core, leaving behind collapsed towers, shattered infrastructure, and heavily contaminated industrial districts. Decades later, renewed fighting during the Amur War brought a second nuclear strike to the Bay in 2075, further devastating what remained of central San Francisco. Coalition forces also reported that the Amur Concordat employed experimental biological weapons during the campaign, though little reliable information about their nature or long-term effects has ever been released. The combined effects of two nuclear bombardments, environmental contamination, possible biological hazards, and the Big One earthquake of 2116 left much of the peninsula structurally unstable and economically impractical to reclaim.
By the end of the century, the region had been designated the SF Bay Exclusion Zone. Most of the urban core north of Palo Alto and Fremont remains formally off limits. NorCal Security Defense Force patrols monitor the area by air and sea, but enforcement is uneven, and stories persist of smugglers, scavengers, and other illicit travelers slipping through the perimeter.
To most residents of Southowilson, the Exclusion Zone is less a place than a warning. Generations of quarantine orders, media coverage, and rumors have given the peninsula a reputation far beyond its actual population. Stories of cannibal clans, religious cults, escaped convicts, rogue military experiments, hidden machine bunkers, and entire communities gone feral circulate widely. Most cannot be verified. A handful of disappearances and strange sightings over the years have only reinforced the Bay's reputation as a place where ordinary people simply do not go.
Areas of Interest
2031 Blast Zone: The former downtown remains a shattered wasteland of collapsed towers, fused rubble, flooded streets, and unstable ground. Ruined skyscrapers still dominate the skyline, providing nesting sites for vast numbers of birds. Most people regard the area as cursed.
2075 Blast Zone: The southeastern waterfront around Hunter's Point remains a drowned landscape of broken structures, tidal flats, and rusting industrial ruins. Radiation is believed to be lower than in the older blast zone, but flooding and unstable terrain make travel extremely hazardous.
Golden Gate Bridge: The bridge no longer exists as a crossing. Only scattered remains survive on either shore after decades of demolition, warfare, and the Big One.
Golden Gate Woods: Much of the former parkland has reverted to dense forest, swallowing roads and neighborhoods alike. Travelers speak of hidden ruins beneath the trees and trails known only to locals.
Merced: The Lake Merced area has become an expanse of wetlands and scattered settlements. Visitors report that outsiders are viewed with suspicion, and few travelers linger there willingly.
Mission Potrero: Large sections of the former industrial districts stand abandoned. The area serves primarily as a route for travelers willing to risk moving through empty streets and decaying buildings.
Presidio Woods: The northern headlands have become heavily forested. Rumors speak of hidden communities and isolated homesteads deep within the trees, though few outsiders claim to have visited them.
Richmond: One of the better-preserved residential districts, Richmond is said to contain scattered inhabited neighborhoods protected by barricades and local militias.
San Bruno: South of the old city, San Bruno is widely regarded as the last significant settlement before entering the deeper ruins of San Francisco from the south. Traders occasionally visit, but outsiders are expected to arrive with goods or useful skills.
Sunset: The Sunset District is remembered as a windswept landscape of dunes, scattered ruins, and isolated homesteads. Travelers describe it as quiet, lonely, and deceptively dangerous.
The Heights: The elevated neighborhoods overlooking the city are said to be controlled by insular local communities that tolerate outsiders only when it suits them. Stories differ on exactly who lives there, but few visitors receive a warm welcome.
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