Mendicant Sea

ALETHEIA FOUNDATION // DIRECTOR OPERATING CONTRACT
The SOMNODYNE site has passed into your custody. Below the snowline, fifteen cells wait for subjects that should not exist.
Mendicant Sea is a real-time creature-containment management game, escape-defense strategy game, and tactical creature battler. Run a five-floor facility, manifest and study 200 PTF species, direct specialist staff, and prepare an external defense for the moment care becomes crisis.
ASSUME THE DIRECTIVE
Every ten-minute shift moves from morning into night while the facility continues around you. Purchase and configure containment cells, watch live needs through the PTF Tracker, assign Scientists and Keepers, fund wages and supplies, and decide which warnings can wait.

The facility and escape field are two live sides of the same site. Pause when you need to think; when the clock runs, staff, elevators, care jobs, weather, research, combat, and breach pressure all move with it.

MANIFEST THE UNKNOWN
Authorize sealed Nascent Memories without knowing exactly what they contain. Installation reconstructs a living PTF in your chosen cell, complete with individual Quotients, provenance, rare chromatics, care preferences, combat identity, and a record that persists through its life.

The searchable Codex begins with unknowns. Feeding, habitat changes, and research reveal what each species likes, hates, resists, and becomes. A living dossier tracks the individual; the Codex preserves what the Directorate has learned about the species.


CARE IS CONTAINMENT
Containment is not a health bar. Hunger, contentment, stress, sanitation, research readiness, habitat affinity, and Breach Pressure interact over time.

Keepers collect reserved food from storage, carry it through the facility, feed subjects, and clean cells. Scientists travel through the same halls and elevators, remain physically posted, and unlock one of six research procedures. Staff caught inside a cell when its subject breaches do not return.

BUILD THE LINE
Security lives on the external escape field. Position squads, equip distinct weapons, and construct six emplacements from five sidegrade turret families: Autocannon, Minigun, Energy Lance, Tesla Tower, and Biosprayer.

Upgrades improve survivability and output, but no tower solves every PTF. Read Biomic offense, Eidolic defense, routes, conditions, and your operating budget before committing the line.

WHEN CONTAINMENT FAILS
A breached PTF enters the escape field as an independent incident. It can fight Security, destroy turrets, break any one of three gate sections, and leave the site permanently. A breach also drives pressure through every occupied cell on the same floor, allowing one failure to become several.

FIGHT FOR ACCREDITATION
Take living PTFs into 1v1 or 3v3 Containment Combat. Their authored basic moves, special moves, passive abilities, conditions, Biomic offense, Eidolic defense, Quotients, and equipped relics all enter the arena. Victory pays. Defeat, recovery, and forfeiture follow your roster home.

Fight randomized local accreditation matches or open a friend-only Steam lobby. Steam PTF Trade lets two Directors browse eligible living rosters, mark interest, make one-for-one offers, and complete a custody transfer only after both sides confirm the final record.

EVERY SUBJECT LEAVES A RECORD
- 200 species, each with a combat kit, relic, preferences, research responses, and lore.
- Normal, Shiny, and SteamID-derived Manager Chromatic forms with permanent Codex discovery.
- Four visible relic slots per living PTF: Head, Left Shoulder, Right Shoulder, and Back.
- Fifteen containment positions across five immediately accessible floors.
- Dynamic surface and paranormal weather with operational effects and forecasts.
- Five turret families, tiered Security weapons.
- Six research minigames whose difficulty follows the relevant PTF and Scientist Quotients.
- Steam friend-lobby 1v1/3v3 Arena battles plus PTF trading.
- Three local save slots, account-bound Steam Cloud copies, and Steam achievements.
- A guided first directive and a complete in-universe Field Manual.
The Directorate does not promise safety. It promises a complete record.