Nightcell
Rook
An American deep-cover operative, eighteen months inside Orison's logistics network, working for a program that officially does not exist. Speaks sparingly.
Cast
Two people, one manufactured night.
Each campaign is one person’s night, told from inside their institution. The people below are who they answer to, who they meet, and who is working against both of them. Pick who to be: four of them can be deployed in the free demo today.
Countersignal
Leila Farzan
An Iranian counterintelligence officer who noticed that a set of classified signatures are impossible. Skeptical, exact, and hunting the one operative who is trying to stop the same attack.
Around them
The people in the way.
Nobody here is decoration. Each of them changes what one of the protagonists believes, and none of them is who either side assumes at the start.
Nightcell Program
Jonas Vale
The only person in the theater who knows who Rook really is. Vale carries the first physical piece of MIRAGE to the meeting at Kaviran, and Orison reaches him before he can hand it over. His last words are a warning about the signal. Leila hears a fragment of it on an intercepted channel, without knowing whose voice it is.
- Role
- Rook's handler
- Met in
- Both campaigns
- In the yard
- Playable
Nightcell Program
Director Mara Vey
Rook's command voice. Vey's orders arrive over the radio, and they are always calm. She is certain that Leila is part of the plot. Whether she is right about that, or about anything else, is one of the questions the campaigns exist to answer.
- Role
- Nightcell authority
- Met in
- Rook's campaign
- In the yard
- Not an operator
Security Directorate
Colonel Arman Daryan
Leila's superior in the Directorate. He orders Rook's capture on evidence that looks conclusive, and as the night goes on his orders begin to contradict each other. Daryan is a professional being handed a lie, not a villain, and the player is never told what to make of him too early.
- Role
- Leila's commanding officer
- Met in
- Leila's campaign
- In the yard
- Playable
Orison Strategic
Silas Kade
Runs Orison's field teams and the cleanup that follows MIRAGE. To Kade a war is a supply chain with casualties in it, and he manages it the same way. Both protagonists end up in his way, and each campaign sees him from a different side.
- Role
- Orison tactical director
- Met in
- Both campaigns
- In the yard
- Not an operator
Institutions
Four factions. One of them wants the war.
Faction
Nightcell Program
A compartmented, American-led multinational special-activities structure. Officially it does not exist, which is what makes it useful to the people who run it, and dangerous to the people inside it.
Faction
Security Directorate
A fictional Iranian security service, and not a monolith. Some of its officers act on orders that have been poisoned, some hunt the protagonists, and some quietly work to stop the escalation.
Faction
Orison Strategic
A multinational defense, intelligence, logistics and data contractor, and the operational center of the conspiracy. Orison profits from emergency contracts, destroyed evidence and a wider war.
Faction
International Verification Mission
The small multinational mission monitoring a fragile de-escalation agreement. Most of its people know nothing about the plot. They are its intended victims.
The system
MIRAGE
A fictional system that manufactures battlefield attribution: forged transponder identities, altered command logs, manipulated sensor footage and synthetic voice orders. MIRAGE does not need to win a fight. It only needs each side to believe the other fired first.
NIGHTCELL 7 is fiction. Its organisations, facilities, operations and characters are invented, and it does not depict any real government, military operation or current event. MIRAGE is deliberately fictional and describes no real technique.