44r0n7
0265afa054
Import the runnable game code, content, docs, scripts, and repo guidance while leaving local agent state, dependency installs, build output, and backup copies out of the published tree.
166 lines
7.4 KiB
Markdown
166 lines
7.4 KiB
Markdown
# Axiom Works — Company Lore Reference
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> For quest authors, dialogue writers, and ticket copy. Keep the tone dry and
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> believable. The company should feel real, slightly dysfunctional, and just
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> plausible enough that players recognise the type.
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---
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## Who They Are
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**Axiom Works** is a B2B enterprise software company founded in 2011. Headquarters
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is in a three-floor office park that is technically "downtown adjacent" depending
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on how charitable you are with the map. They have about 280 employees. The
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Glassdoor rating is 3.8 stars and management checks it obsessively.
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Their flagship product is **AxiomFlow** — a workflow automation platform aimed at
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mid-size manufacturers, logistics companies, and anyone who got a 90-minute demo
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and thought it looked easy. Most customers are still on the workflow they set up
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in 2019. The platform does what it says. Marketing says it does considerably more.
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---
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## Products
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| Product | Description | Status |
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|---------|-------------|--------|
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| **AxiomFlow** | Workflow automation platform | Active, main revenue |
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| **AxiomDash** | Reporting and analytics add-on | Active, profitable, under-resourced |
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| **AxiomSync** | Legacy data integration layer | End-of-sale since 2021, still maintained for 12 customers who refuse to migrate |
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The current marketing tagline is *"Streamline. Scale. Succeed."* It replaced
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*"Work smarter, not harder"* in Q3 of last year. The one before that mentioned
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AI. Nobody is sure what the AI was.
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---
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## Infrastructure
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The company runs a mix of on-prem servers (named after Greek gods — a choice made
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by a contractor in 2017 who left before documenting anything) and a handful of
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cloud instances that accounting keeps trying to consolidate.
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| Host | Role | Notes |
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|------|------|-------|
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| **ares** | Player workstation | XFCE desktop, where the player works |
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| **hermes** | Web/app server | nginx, staging and demo environment for AxiomFlow |
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| **vulcan** | Build machine | Arch Linux, compiles artifacts, runs scheduled jobs |
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### Planned future systems
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As the game grows, additional machines will be added. Candidates:
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| Proposed host | Role | Greek connection |
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|---|---|---|
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| **poseidon** | Database server | Foundation, depths, reliability |
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| **apollo** | Mail / notification server | Messenger, communication |
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| **athena** | Internal tooling (ticketing, wiki) | Wisdom, knowledge management |
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| **argus** | Monitoring / alerting | The hundred-eyed watcher |
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| **mnemosyne** | Backup / storage | Memory, persistence |
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---
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## Characters
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### Dave Kowalski — Director of IT Operations
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The player's skip-level manager. Has been at Axiom Works since 2015. Hired Marcus.
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Oversees three teams: systems (Marcus's domain), networking, and IT support. Background
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is originally networking — has Cisco certifications he won't bring up unless someone else
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brings up Cisco certifications first. Sends weekly status emails formatted in bullet
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points that never quite answer the question you were asking. When things go wrong he
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schedules a meeting to "talk through the situation," which everyone has learned is
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worse than an email. Maintains a calendar block from 2–3pm on Tuesdays that nobody
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has ever asked about. Has said "we should really document that" approximately 400 times.
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Describes the infrastructure as "mature."
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### Marcus Webb — Senior Sysadmin
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The player's manager and the person who assigned them the ticket. Has been at
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Axiom Works for six years. Knows where all the bodies are buried. Communicates
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primarily in terse Slack messages and occasionally very long emails sent at 11pm.
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Trusts competence over process. Gets irritated by people who confuse symptoms
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with root causes.
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### Priya Nair — Security / Compliance
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Runs security reviews and has opinions about everything. Usually right. Tends to
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frame concerns in terms of what will happen when things go wrong rather than
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whether they will. Was brought in after an incident nobody talks about in public.
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### Sarah Chen — Product Manager
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Represents the product team's perspective in the ticket queue. Cares about demo
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environments more than production ones because demos are what she can see. Not
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technically wrong about their importance. Emails at 8am on Mondays.
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### Derek Ashford — Financial Controller
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Does not appear in person. Appears on CC lines of emails where infrastructure
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costs are being discussed. Always replies-all. His full name is Derek Ashford.
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His manager is Rachel Brandt (CFO).
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---
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## Background Characters (non-interactive, for world texture)
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These characters exist on the company website and in lore but do not appear in
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quests or dialogue. Use them for verisimilitude — email headers, CC lines, internal
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wiki author credits, that sort of thing.
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### Ellen Marsh — CEO & Co-Founder
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Built AxiomFlow after a decade in operations. Not technical. Attends all-hands
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twice a year. Has final say on pricing and major customer commitments. Does not
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use Slack. The player will never interact with her.
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### David Park — CTO & Co-Founder
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Wrote the original rules engine. Now manages engineering managers. Still has
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opinions about the data model. Has a standing Thursday meeting with security
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that hasn't moved since 2017.
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### Karen Volkov — COO
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Joined 2014. Responsible for the fact that Axiom Works has documented processes
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for anything. Has opinions about infrastructure costs. Prefers decisions with
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clear owners and deadlines.
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### Rachel Brandt — CFO
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Joined 2016. Approves all capital expenditure over $5,000. Does not enjoy
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surprises in the infrastructure budget. Derek reports to her.
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### Phil Ruiz — VP of Sales
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Has been promising features to prospects since 2016. Has a warm relationship
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with the infrastructure team because Marcus once saved a demo with 20 minutes to
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spare. Expense reports submitted promptly.
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### Tanya Okafor — Head of Customer Success
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Manages all post-sale customer relationships including the twelve AxiomSync
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holdouts. Usually the first to know when something is wrong in production,
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because a customer has already called her.
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### Yusuf Halabi — Engineering Manager
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Reports to the CTO. Manages the core AxiomFlow platform team. Has opinions
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about test coverage. Runs the Thursday architecture review.
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### Mei Lin — Senior Software Engineer
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Has maintained AxiomSync's integration layer since 2018. Knows more about it
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than anyone would prefer.
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### Nikhil Sharma — Platform Engineer
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Owns the build and release pipeline and internal CI infrastructure. Occasionally
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sends Slack messages at 6am.
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### Sandra Wu — HR Manager
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Manages hiring, onboarding, and employee relations since 2016. Sends birthday
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emails on time, every time. Runs the new-hire onboarding process that takes
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three days.
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---
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## Tone Guidelines
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- **Dry, not sarcastic.** The company takes itself seriously. The humour comes
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from the gap between how they describe things and what's actually happening.
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- **Specific, not generic.** "The AxiomSync customer in Cincinnati keeps calling"
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is better than "a client is upset."
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- **Plausible dysfunction.** Problems happen because of reasonable decisions made
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under time pressure, not because people are incompetent. The player should feel
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like a real professional, not a janitor.
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- **No cartoon villains.** Derek from Finance is not evil. The product team is not
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stupid. They have different priorities.
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- **The infrastructure has history.** It was built over time. Some parts are good.
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Some parts were good in 2017. The player's job is to keep it working.
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