# Axiom Works — Company Lore Reference

> For quest authors, dialogue writers, and ticket copy. Keep the tone dry and
> believable. The company should feel real, slightly dysfunctional, and just
> plausible enough that players recognise the type.

---

## Who They Are

**Axiom Works** is a B2B enterprise software company founded in 2011. Headquarters
is in a three-floor office park that is technically "downtown adjacent" depending
on how charitable you are with the map. They have about 280 employees. The
Glassdoor rating is 3.8 stars and management checks it obsessively.

Their flagship product is **AxiomFlow** — a workflow automation platform aimed at
mid-size manufacturers, logistics companies, and anyone who got a 90-minute demo
and thought it looked easy. Most customers are still on the workflow they set up
in 2019. The platform does what it says. Marketing says it does considerably more.

---

## Products

| Product | Description | Status |
|---------|-------------|--------|
| **AxiomFlow** | Workflow automation platform | Active, main revenue |
| **AxiomDash** | Reporting and analytics add-on | Active, profitable, under-resourced |
| **AxiomSync** | Legacy data integration layer | End-of-sale since 2021, still maintained for 12 customers who refuse to migrate |

The current marketing tagline is *"Streamline. Scale. Succeed."* It replaced
*"Work smarter, not harder"* in Q3 of last year. The one before that mentioned
AI. Nobody is sure what the AI was.

---

## Infrastructure

The company runs a mix of on-prem servers (named after Greek gods — a choice made
by a contractor in 2017 who left before documenting anything) and a handful of
cloud instances that accounting keeps trying to consolidate.

| Host | Role | Notes |
|------|------|-------|
| **ares** | Player workstation | XFCE desktop, where the player works |
| **hermes** | Web/app server | nginx, staging and demo environment for AxiomFlow |
| **vulcan** | Build machine | Arch Linux, compiles artifacts, runs scheduled jobs |

### Planned future systems
As the game grows, additional machines will be added. Candidates:

| Proposed host | Role | Greek connection |
|---|---|---|
| **poseidon** | Database server | Foundation, depths, reliability |
| **apollo** | Mail / notification server | Messenger, communication |
| **athena** | Internal tooling (ticketing, wiki) | Wisdom, knowledge management |
| **argus** | Monitoring / alerting | The hundred-eyed watcher |
| **mnemosyne** | Backup / storage | Memory, persistence |

---

## Characters

### Dave Kowalski — Director of IT Operations
The player's skip-level manager. Has been at Axiom Works since 2015. Hired Marcus.
Oversees three teams: systems (Marcus's domain), networking, and IT support. Background
is originally networking — has Cisco certifications he won't bring up unless someone else
brings up Cisco certifications first. Sends weekly status emails formatted in bullet
points that never quite answer the question you were asking. When things go wrong he
schedules a meeting to "talk through the situation," which everyone has learned is
worse than an email. Maintains a calendar block from 2–3pm on Tuesdays that nobody
has ever asked about. Has said "we should really document that" approximately 400 times.
Describes the infrastructure as "mature."

### Marcus Webb — Senior Sysadmin
The player's manager and the person who assigned them the ticket. Has been at
Axiom Works for six years. Knows where all the bodies are buried. Communicates
primarily in terse Slack messages and occasionally very long emails sent at 11pm.
Trusts competence over process. Gets irritated by people who confuse symptoms
with root causes.

### Priya Nair — Security / Compliance
Runs security reviews and has opinions about everything. Usually right. Tends to
frame concerns in terms of what will happen when things go wrong rather than
whether they will. Was brought in after an incident nobody talks about in public.

### Sarah Chen — Product Manager
Represents the product team's perspective in the ticket queue. Cares about demo
environments more than production ones because demos are what she can see. Not
technically wrong about their importance. Emails at 8am on Mondays.

### Derek Ashford — Financial Controller
Does not appear in person. Appears on CC lines of emails where infrastructure
costs are being discussed. Always replies-all. His full name is Derek Ashford.
His manager is Rachel Brandt (CFO).

---

## Background Characters (non-interactive, for world texture)

These characters exist on the company website and in lore but do not appear in
quests or dialogue. Use them for verisimilitude — email headers, CC lines, internal
wiki author credits, that sort of thing.

### Ellen Marsh — CEO & Co-Founder
Built AxiomFlow after a decade in operations. Not technical. Attends all-hands
twice a year. Has final say on pricing and major customer commitments. Does not
use Slack. The player will never interact with her.

### David Park — CTO & Co-Founder
Wrote the original rules engine. Now manages engineering managers. Still has
opinions about the data model. Has a standing Thursday meeting with security
that hasn't moved since 2017.

### Karen Volkov — COO
Joined 2014. Responsible for the fact that Axiom Works has documented processes
for anything. Has opinions about infrastructure costs. Prefers decisions with
clear owners and deadlines.

### Rachel Brandt — CFO
Joined 2016. Approves all capital expenditure over $5,000. Does not enjoy
surprises in the infrastructure budget. Derek reports to her.

### Phil Ruiz — VP of Sales
Has been promising features to prospects since 2016. Has a warm relationship
with the infrastructure team because Marcus once saved a demo with 20 minutes to
spare. Expense reports submitted promptly.

### Tanya Okafor — Head of Customer Success
Manages all post-sale customer relationships including the twelve AxiomSync
holdouts. Usually the first to know when something is wrong in production,
because a customer has already called her.

### Yusuf Halabi — Engineering Manager
Reports to the CTO. Manages the core AxiomFlow platform team. Has opinions
about test coverage. Runs the Thursday architecture review.

### Mei Lin — Senior Software Engineer
Has maintained AxiomSync's integration layer since 2018. Knows more about it
than anyone would prefer.

### Nikhil Sharma — Platform Engineer
Owns the build and release pipeline and internal CI infrastructure. Occasionally
sends Slack messages at 6am.

### Sandra Wu — HR Manager
Manages hiring, onboarding, and employee relations since 2016. Sends birthday
emails on time, every time. Runs the new-hire onboarding process that takes
three days.

---

## Tone Guidelines

- **Dry, not sarcastic.** The company takes itself seriously. The humour comes
  from the gap between how they describe things and what's actually happening.
- **Specific, not generic.** "The AxiomSync customer in Cincinnati keeps calling"
  is better than "a client is upset."
- **Plausible dysfunction.** Problems happen because of reasonable decisions made
  under time pressure, not because people are incompetent. The player should feel
  like a real professional, not a janitor.
- **No cartoon villains.** Derek from Finance is not evil. The product team is not
  stupid. They have different priorities.
- **The infrastructure has history.** It was built over time. Some parts are good.
  Some parts were good in 2017. The player's job is to keep it working.
