The Campaign Builder's Guild

Not an active project per se, this is just a somewhat cohesive set of ideas that have manifested themselves in some text.
It is a dark modern existential apocalyptical setting. Or something like that.  

Hellscape

The Cure
The 23rd of december 2012 immortality was discovered on Earth. Humanity had found a substance that cured all diseases and even protected from old age. The drug was distributed to both rich and poor, and without the fear of death hanging over their heads people foresaw that the next many centuries would be centuries of peace. As always, they were wrong.

The Secret
Of course, they didn't know any better. Correctly forseeing what was about to happen would have required more than just insight; it would require knowledge of the human purpose and the reality beyond our own. Specifically, it would require knowledge of the Angels. In most religions you find a species serving the God or gods; the being that brought the quran to Mohammed, the angels who led the shepherds to Christ, the muses who brought inspiration to the greeks. These beings are real. God, though, is not.

The Purpose
 Angels are the consciousnesses of the Unreality, the place from which all universes originate. Angels require memories to live. Experiences. But they can't live off their own (if what they perceive can be called an experience at all). Instead, they must feed on living creatures and the ghostly matter they leave behind when they die; the souls or, more specifically, the 21 grams of soul marrow that holds the experiences of a life-time.
This is why the angels found Earth and gave life to it; so they could feed of it. The entire purpose of our existence is to experience so they can feed.

The War
So when we became immortal the immortals grew hungry. Hunger was their only fear. The only solution was to kill. Restore the balance. So the Angels opened the gates of Hell and made the dead raise from their graves. Hell was their dark palace, the place where they took the parts of the soul they didn't eat and stitch it together with the unborn flesh from miscarriages and abortions and rotten cadavers to create the many-faced Hellspawn. The Hellspawn were creatures of basic instinct; mere beasts hungering for the flesh the Angels could not eat. The reawakened were but shells of their former self, and drained of memory they were children in old corpses. Still, even children have to eat, and what the reawakened lacked in strength they clearly made up for in numbers.Together, the Hellspawn and the Reawakened laid waste to much of the Earth. Meanwhile, the Angels also took to Earth in stolen forms. They were few, and weakened by their fleshy guise. But they were still powerful and led their armies against the humans.

The Resistance
Humans finally realised what was happening and started to resist the incessant attacks. Their success was mixed. Now, in the year 2200, a 100 years after Hell was unleashed, only a few over-populated cities remain. Tokyo, New Orleans, Vancouver, Marrakesh, Venice, and Prague still stand along with a few others. The Vatican was spared, although Rome is in ruins. Humans can hold the line now. They have weapons that can make an Angel dissipate or make a hell-dragon retreat. But that doesn't mean they can win.

EDIT: Added Venice to list of cities

An intriguing mixture of shameless psuedo-science and mythology.  Looking forward to possible periodic updates.  The angels remind me very much of Kindling's (and I love Kindling's angels, so that's a good thing).

Angelic Beings
 
Killing an Angel
Angels are immortals and cannot die. Their physical shapes can though, and dying in this shape throws them into a realm they call Limbo. A year passes before they can return. It is theorised that if every Angel is in Limbo at any one time, there will be no one to guide them back and they will all be lost in space and time. Either that, or starvation might do them out. Either way, humans will have to make a stand, survive, and put an end to the threat any way possible.

The Legion of the 666
666 has always been considered an evil number, and although the devil isn't involved, humans were right to fear it.  
666 is the number of soldiers in the angelic host known as the Legion. The 666 are the lowest angels, but simple tools at the beck and call of the High Ones; but their army is still a force to be reckoned with.
The arrival of the Legion is signalled by a terrible lightning storm in the distance, and then the march begins. Every soldier is a being of pure swirling radiance in the shape of a tall faceless man, but don't let that fool you; the 666 are heartless creatures who'll murder anything standing in the way of their objective.They wear identical breastplates, helmets and swords made out of the silvery angelsteel, and wield their swords with great skill and efficiency. They are hard to kill, but can be harmed by mortal steel, although bullets and fragments are less effective than they should be. Going for the head seems to be remarkably effective.
It is said that the 666 were behind the biblical myth about the 10th plague; the death of the first born children of Egypt.

Leviathan
Lord of the sea, Leviathan is half-angel half-beast. He roams the Atlantic Ocean, killing and devouring the bones and soul-marrow of all who cross his path. The other Angels have abandoned him there, as he does not leave anything for them and has slept too long to recognize anyone as allies.  
 His chosen form is that of every terrible being of the sea combined; he has the sleek body of the muray eel, or a leech, the mouth of a lamprey, the size of a whale (perhaps even many whales), the tentacles of the octopi, and the ferocity of a shark.

The Angel of Death
The assassin amongst angels, the Angel of Death is a connisseur when it comes to  souls. He only takes the best of the best, those who have experienced the most (the rich and celebrities are favorite targets, as well as adventurers) and then he gives them more. He knows all there is to know about pain, and he is glad to share his knowledge, letting his victims experience things that no man has ever experienced before. He keeps them alive for as long as possible while torturing them to breaking point, saturating their soul-marrow with the experiences he so craves. This makes him little more than a devout (and supernaturally powerful) serial killer, but he remains a constant nagging threat in the back of the minds of the human elite. He is rumored to have kept a victim alive for 2 years and 3 months and is said to keep a mansion somewhere where he keeps his many victims while he waits for them to die.

The Lurker on the Threshold
The Lurker was the first to arrive. Some say he was on Earth decades before the Angels were forced to attack. He is a disjunct creature, existing in many places at once and no places at all at the same time. He chose not to take a form, but instead possesses a place of much life, experience, and human folly; the internet. He once oversaw the decay of mortal bodies with his creations and slaves being bugs and worms. Now he watches the decay of mortal minds and their metal counterparts, his slaves being the same as before but in different incarnations.
No one knows how to kill the Lurker, but then again, he is only a problem if you let him into critical systems. When he discovers a stranger on his web, he mostly makes attempts at communication and intimidation, using pop-up messages and former commercial banners to make his will known. He is suspected to have some control over the weak-minded though, and the internet is mostly left to professionals nowadays. He is also known as the Ghost in the Machine.

The Tree of Life
Possessing a giant tree of prehistoric origin somewhere in the middle of the Amazon Forest, the Tree of Life. is the weakest of the Angels, but only because he gave part of his power to create life on Earth. He can hardly move now, and was guarded by hellspawn until the humans managed to claim control of the area. Refusing to burn the ancient creature immediately, the humans set to fortify the site and then question the immortal creature who was the source of their existence. The other Angels have cut the tree off from marrow, and its hunger drives it to beg humans to release it from existence so that it can move freely again and draw its sustenance from the sky. Humans have understandably chosen to make certain demands of information. The starving addict tree is a source of much information on the Unreality and its inhabitants and creations but the alien mindset of the creature makes much of the information it gives difficult to use. It doesn't want to divulge information on the destruction of its brethren though.

 [ooc]I'd like to implement the four horsemen as well. Maybe Charon. Ideas are welcome. Please keep posting here, I'll just post some stuff now and again.[/ooc]
 

Quote from: CC666 has always been considered an evil number, and although the devil isn't involved, humans were right to fear it.

Leqave my birthday out of this.  I always get the shaft.

I also am going to have to get more info on the idiots who didn't look at overpopulation and were helped along by the angelic killers.

this looks pretty awesome so far. have you heard of the movie "Legion"?

Quote from: Leetzthis looks pretty awesome so far. have you heard of the movie "Legion"?

I'm psyched for it. Saw a preview when I went to District 9. At first I thought they were remaking The Prophecy or something. I love angels.

And I guess I'm  :offtopic:

CC, I do like the incorporation of leviathan and other mythic ideas.

Yama and Kali might rock the ANgelic Crowd.
( in a Lord of Light type of way...)

On another note, I like the idea of the four horsemen, but not Charon.

Right now, you've got a strong Judeo-Christian mythic theme going. While you could add elements from every world mythology, you have to be careful not to dilute the flavor of the setting. In my opinion, some of the dark flavor might be lost by incorporating classical elements, in much the same way I don't recommend adding Zeus or Odin (to this particular setting; they're great for some settings!).

Well, it does have Yggdrassil, but admittedly the Tree of Life concept is hardly unique to nordic lore.
EDIT: But i understand your concerns about implementing them. If Charon is implemented he definitely won't be implemented directly.

Quote from: Cataclysmic CrowWell, it does have Yggdrassil, but admittedly the Tree of Life concept is hardly unique to nordic lore.
EDIT: But i understand your concerns about implementing them. If Charon is implemented he definitely won't be implemented directly.

Actually, you might consider just saying Tree of Life, instead of the Norse Yggdrasil.

He can't have a name? ^^
No, I hardly want to annoy the mythological fanbase, so I'll go ahead and remove it.