On July 14, 1789, in the heat of the French Revolution, Bastille fell. Only the king and a handful of people knew about the thousands of secret documents stored in the king’s library. Robespierre decided to hide the documents in the catacombs.
Political enemies arrested and executed Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre on July 28, 1794. The librarians at the French National Library were the only ones left with full access to the secrets of the catacombs. They created a self-governing, intelligence agency to defend France against the enemy.
The librarians organized the spying operation as a stock exchange. It was called the Cent iki Exchange. Agent-owned stores traded all information like any other commodity. During the Roaring Twenties, the exchange began actively trading on all global stock markets, utilizing the information their spies had gathered. They formed and registered numerous corporate entities under their members’ names. These corporations became public and sold their stock on the open market after a few years of proven profitability.
Centiki is the computer program the board uses to control the world’s financial markets from its underground headquarters. The exchange uses ki as its digital currency. The librarians conspire to spend their ill-gotten gains to save the planet from desertification. They plan to cover the Sahara Desert with a solar mirror to lower the global temperature by five degrees Celsius. Climate change is not their only concern. The librarians argue that as long as we have war, disease, poverty, and extremism, the world will not be cool, even at temperatures below freezing.
The game closely follows the clues found in Jacques Persil’s book Centiki: Mirror of the State. When you work for a prestigious library, reading is a job requirement. Download and read the book. Buy options. Participate in forums. Your newfound riches are only worth what you believe, as well as what you helped them become.