Literature / Tower of Somnus

A LitRPG series by Cale Plamann.

Aliens visited humanity forty years ago, evaluating them for induction into the Galactic Consensus, the universe's government. Earth's megacorps proved themselves wholly unfit, and the aliens left in disgust. But not before leaving something behind: Access to a galaxy-wide game, the Tower of Somnus, which could be played during sleep. In the Tower, humanity can meet and interact with other races, eventually evolving to become worthy of joining.

Also, powers you earn in the game can be used in real life outside of it. The aliens didn't see a need to inform the megacorps of that ahead of time.

Katherine Debbs is a hereditary employee of Ike Holdings (a wholly-owned subsidiary of GroCorp), destined to never pay off the debt she was born with despite her impeccable grades and drive to succeed. To supplement her family's income, she acts as a runner for the Chrome Dogs, an "extralegal" organization that smuggles information between various wealthy clients.

Shortly after graduation from high school, Arnold, Kat's only friend and the son of a low-level manager, offers her a subscription to the Tower of Somnus so that she can help him in the game. This is an impossible opportunity that she would never have been able to afford. Players earn power and prestige that they would never be able to gain on their own, and even better this subscription comes without any of the normal responsibilities to a corporation. She just has to help her short-sighted friend make something of himself before his dad discovers he burned his college fund. Simple.

Meanwhile, one of Kat's standard runs turns into an ambush, and she barely escapes with her life. She soon discovers that she and the Chrome Dogs are being targeted for information they smuggled, and they are going to need to use every trick they can—including Kat's new powers—to survive.

There are currently four books in the series:

• Foundations
• Chiwaukee Nights
• Starfall
• Shareholder

This series provides examples of:

• Alien Non-Interference Clause: The Galactic Consensus is supposed to be "hands off" regarding Earth (except for the Tower, of course). Unfortunately, the Stallesp are doing everything they can to bend (or break) the rules, hoping to gain power by exploiting humanity.
• Bourgeois Bohemian: Jaspar Haught and his friends are supporters of the poor - in theory. They've never met any actual poor people and know nothing about them
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The default. The Earth is ruled by megacorporations, and while it's supposed to be a meritocracy, it's blatantly obvious that everything is heavily weighted in favor of the powerful. Even ignoring that, the highest levels only get where they are by breaking the already unbalanced laws, stealing from and assassinating each other.
• Cyborg: Cybernetic implants are fairly commonplace on Earth. Most of them are relatively low-visibility implants, allowing people to directly connect with computers, not just browsing via "Smartpanels" (small screens positioned directly over one eye, which have largely replaced smartphones and tablets). Limb and organ replacements (or "Chrome") are only regulated by how much the human nervous system can withstand (the "Wierzbicki limit"), and how much the Street Samurai are willing to pay.
• Evil Gloating: Anna constantly crows about how she's outmaneuvered Kat, how she's breaking the law so competently, and how Kat will never win. Kat keeps killing all her mercenaries and becoming more famous in the process.
  Kat: I tried to get her to stop explaining her plans. She didn't.
• Feudal Future: The cyberpunk earth's social structure, with it's indentured "employees" and hereditary management, is more like feudalism than anything else.
• Honor Among Thieves: To some extent. The professional criminals have, on average, much higher standards than the corporate managers and executives at least.
• Indentured Servitude: Standard for the typical employee.
• One-Man Army: Kat starts as an excellent runner, capable of outmaneuvering powerful mercenaries and samurai. Then she gets magic powers, and (nearly) every mission turns into "try to sneak around, get caught, kill everything."
• Our Clones Are Identical: Cloning is a problem, because alien technology allows "flash clones" to be grown in a matter of days or weeks, and essentially programmed with the originals' memories and personality. This means that "sleeper agents" can infiltrate almost any organization, and bring it down from within.
• Pragmatic Villainy: The higher-level executives are universally terrible people, but they also tend to be smart people—if they weren't, they'd be dead. Belle Donnst considers revenge a waste of resources, and refuses to entertain the possibility of selling off the planet to the highest bidder.
• Rags to Riches: Kat rises in social status. Starting out with buying out her corporate debt and taking Anna's place at university at the start of book two. Later she uses leverarge from captured Stallesp technology to become a shareholder.
• Red Baron: Once a street samurai gains enough renown, they are awarded a "name," a simple title. Traditionally, a samurai earns a name either by pulling off an extremely impressive mission or by killing another named samurai. After her first mission, Xander nominates Kat for the name "Erinyes." Everyone else scoffs at this... until they see the video of her killing her way through seven extremely famous named samurai.
• Slut-Shaming:
  • Anna claims Kat gets everything she wants by Sleeping Their Way to the Top. Accusing her of sleeping with Arnold, while incorrect, at least makes sense, since Arnold clearly has a crush on Kat. Accusing her of sleeping with Dorrik and Kaleek, on the other hand, makes so little sense that Kat can't even be offended. Their reproductive systems are completely incompatible, and Kaleek often jokes about how ugly Kat is to him.
  • Iris very specifically does not shame her friend Alicia for sleeping with famous musicians. Alicia doesn't help by insisting that she didn't sleep with all of them.
• Smug Snake: Anna Donnst thinks she is much, much more competent than she actually is, and lashes out whenever anyone proves better than her, even by accident. According to her mother, it took massive bribes to keep her grades at a reasonable level; despite all her advantages, Anna would have been headed for factory work otherwise.
• Square Race, Round Class: Classes in the Tower are based on random drops, though it is weighted towards an avatar's demonstrated skills. Dorrik recommends the footpad class for Kat, but when a relatively rare caster class drops, Arnold insists she take it. Kat does well with the gravity elementalist class, but Dorrik implies she would be doing better with footpad.
• Street Samurai: This is what the cybernetically enhanced Hired Guns are commonly called. They might lie, cheat, steal, or kill for a living, but their reputation is important. They might not be a Consummate Professional, but being recognized as reliable and Badass is important.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: None of the heroes like Belle Donnst, but since she's the highest level person they can find who isn't trying to sell the entire species into slavery, they know they have to work with her.
• Unwitting Pawn: Anna Donnst didn't realize until the literal last minute that she was just her mother's patsy. The whole time, when she thought her mother was "trusting her to get the job done," was just Belle distancing herself from a scapegoat.