celebrate the burning masses
standing on top of traces
of civilization's ashes
celebrate the desert wastes
starved of rain but sunburns ache
on laboring back’s, they baste
celebrate the sorcerer
bringing liquid life for supper
cross them, meet the torturer
- Cratar children's 'rhyme'
It is a time of FLINT and FANG. The horizon stretches upward towards the last glittering black sun, SOLAS, on a black space empty of stars. The land is starved from a Dry Ice Age. Water and food are rare. Metal is nearly non-existent. Your life is cheap. Sorry. Welcome to Disc-Oh.
The world's gone to shit. Massive algal blooms cover the dead silt and salt seas. Magical radiation and radiation radiation. Across super-blooming fields of long-rooted grasses and woody shrubs, cheetah-fast axe-beaks rip and tear throats for their meals. Grey snow falls near constantly around the great glaciers, coating the petrified statues of dead gods and mammoth boneyards. The jungles and bogs are filled with polluted water, the hunting grounds of prowling owlbears. Radiation storms bring blood-red rain out on the wastes, awakening the dormant cazador eggs buried beneath.
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| Fog Harbor - Fallout 4 |
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| Oliver Ryan |
Human and mutant nomads gather water from cacti or cut from the bladder of giant frogs on their endless voyages. Water caravans travel between cities and outposts to trade for luxury obsidian and coral. Sandaled raiders hide just out of view, both on the seas and dusty roads.
The cities are ruled by the luminous-tattooed SORCERER-KINGS. From their garden-citadels surrounded by their armies and harems and magician cabals they allow clean water to drip into the city. A day's work is enough to buy a day's food or water. The corpulent wealthy adorn themselves with things from the sea or serpents or plant life.
Porcelain Poly-Bodies of the Grand Serai
The Ghoul Queen of Necropolis-on-Sea
Beggar Lord of the City that Crawls
Slug-Lord of Mezzanin, the Shell City
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| Pablo Ilyich |
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| Lena Pantyukhina |
Lucky for you, this isn't the first time the world has ended. Ruins of past civilizations, brought low by their own myriad calamities, lie buried in the strata of history.
A single clay tablet or parchment spell scroll is worth a year’s worth of water if sold to a SORCERER-KING’s court. Who knows how much they’d pay for a rifle-staff? When a court of magicians creates new tablets, they require large amounts of energy. Some keep cadres of lotus slaves, others channel life from plants. Casting too requires energy; most use their own blood as fuel or shatter the tablet if untrained. They search for another way that involves less screaming.
Weird
Places
Monastery of the Astral Dreamers
Ivory Tower of the Cyclone
Terracotta Battle-Ship of the Long-Ago
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| Dominic Zdenkovic |
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| Lucas Parolin |
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| Dominic Zdenkovic |
People or who the hell am I?
Folk of the Cities
1 – Former Slave
2 – Gong farmer
3 – Gladiator Contestant
4 – Shroom Farmer
5 – Slug Courier
6 – Black Glass Carver
Nomads
1 – Turkey Herder
2 – Ash-sailor
3 – Hunter
4 – Stilt-walker
5 – Bone Oracle
6 – Druid?
Caravanners or Raiders
1 – Porter
2 – Performer
3 – Bounty Hunter
4 – Slaver
5 – Cultist
6 – Merchant
Looks
1 – Carp Mouth w/ Whiskers
2 – Owl-esque eyebrows
3 – Pointy Ears
4 – Odd Hair Color (Pink, Dark Green, White, Dark Blue)
5 – Six spider eyes
6 – Tusked Canines
Creatures
Iconic Creatures:
Ancient Automatons, Axebeaks, Biomechanical Monstrosities, Camels, Cultists, Giant Amoebas, Cazadors, Hydras, Mammoths, Mummies, Mutated Crabs, Owlbears, Pterodactyls, Purple Worms, Radiation Ghouls, Sabre-tooth Tigers
Stuff
Items, Tools, and Weapons
Cheap – Bone breaks fast, easily found and carved by a Bone-smith
Normal – Flint, glass, leather, and wood
Sharp – Obsidian mined from volcanic farms
Tough – Ground stone lasts for a lifetime once chiseled out
Common Weapons – Slings, clubs, blowguns, spears, whips, knives, macahuitl, and hand-axes
Uncommon Weapons – Mauls, great-axes, staves, boomerangs, machetes, and bows
Shields and Armor
Heavy – Ceramic plates, layered sheets of wood, giant crab or tortoise shells
Light – Mantis-man chitin (seen as cannibalism in places), quilted leathers, or salt-soaked cotton
None – Layered silks,
ritual tattoos, feathered shawls, hooded leathers
Metal
Dread Bronze - dredged up from the seas, unearthed in tombs, or fallen to earth in meteor strikes. Looks like gold, strong as bronze, never rusts, and retains heat for centuries
Based on Dark Sun, Black Sands, The Ultraviolet Grasslands, Zothique, Hubris, Centerra, Fallout 3 + 4 + NV, Dark Souls, Borderlands 1, Rage 1 + 2, Discworld, and all the gonzo worlds of the OSR