Echo

[Weave]

You could always start a new thread as the main setting post and use this one as discussion, or something, instead. Or just start a new thread, period. I don't think anyone would mind!

But anyway. I like the idea of pervasive nanomachines and I also like the idea of diverse technology, but I'd like to suggest that if nanotech is still going to be the basis of wizardry and such, it occupies a place in the setting that a lot of technology can ultimately be traced back to it or connected to it. I'm not suggesting this in any way that limits the ability to create weird and wonderful technomagical marvels (bring on the hydrocore engines and cerulean godsblood) but just to occupy the niche, of, say, "electricity." My fear is primarily that if you go full crazy town on the multiple different "sources" of technology, you may start to lose the sense that they actually had something coherent that could be called "technology" because too much different unrelated stuff and it starts to just seem like a bunch of one-off artifacts... which can be fun in a different way, but then it starts to not seem like it was a cohesive thing, anymore, and the sense I get from this setting is very much that it should be a cohesive thing.

Yeah, I agree with this. Some general level of technological cohesion would be nice, and so long as this underlying "electricity" remains somewhat mysterious to the vast majority (separation of player and PC knowledge might be important here) plenty of technologies could keep their mysteriousness. One of the things I've been struggling with is how much I actually tell in writing all this stuff. On the one hand, keeping the past mysterious and strange is my goal, but on the other I can't help but think that some of the things I introduce are only made better by knowing what bizarre circumstances created them. I'm not necessarily trying to keep a surprise from anyone, but I also want to tell the whole story.

Also, I'll start a proper setting thread if and when I ever get to hammering out the basics: finish up the races, important locations, faiths, and draw a map.

[sparkletwist]

What I'd do is paint the broad outlines but leave a lot of the specifics open. It seems like an individual game is almost always going to need or want to put in its own unique technological artifacts and other finds, so not being too ultra-specific here is probably actually helpful in the long run.

Have you thought any about what system you might use to run this, if you do run this? (I'm guessing Fate, but I'm not sure what else you might have had in mind...)

[Weave]

What I'd do is paint the broad outlines but leave a lot of the specifics open. It seems like an individual game is almost always going to need or want to put in its own unique technological artifacts and other finds, so not being too ultra-specific here is probably actually helpful in the long run.

Have you thought any about what system you might use to run this, if you do run this? (I'm guessing Fate, but I'm not sure what else you might have had in mind...)

I imagine something like FATE, but I also have a little PF version of it prepped for some of my players who wanted to try it out. I'm open to other systems, but I don't want to get tied down by anything too specific.

[Weave]

I've added a some info to a more prominent location in the setting.

Tol Ferox
The ancient ruins of Tol Ferox still operate as the most powerful city in the world. It has been long since the city was truly dry; the coasts have been chewed down to the bone, and what dry land the city may once have been built upon is a faraway memory. A series of dams and causeways trickle down through the depths of the city (well below the water level), to prevent the city from being flooded. Regardless, the lowest depths of Tol Ferox, often referred to as "Drowntown," are frequently flooded with ill-managed runoff, dams in poor repair, and the frequent coastal storms. Tol Ferox is, as such, built upon itself layer by layer; the sleek, hyperdense framework made for the city has kept it stable despite its ludicrous height, and at the tips of which reside the most important and powerful of the corpros, who control the city with an iron fist.

Tol Ferox, if stripped of the urban variegation that is so tenaciously barnacled to it, is a massive (over a mile in height) skeletal framework of several ancient, bluish-silver towers in various stages of ruin (or completion – while it's clear Tol Ferox is a construction of the Eld, it's unclear whether or not the city was ever finished or if the Dissension destroyed it). Whatever can be said for the epochal endurance of Tol Ferox's framework cannot be said for whatever may once have resided in the less destroyed/more complete parts of the towers. Time has scoured them clean, and whatever was left unscathed salvors and worse folk looted. The occasional architectural hints of a delineation of rooms, hallways, and gathering areas pervade and haunt the ruin, empty of life save the harrowing howl of the ever-raucous high wind that moans around its prodigious heights and the occasional leathern-winged raptor. At its base, Tol Ferox is submerged in almost 100 feet of coastal waters, the nearest shoreline connected by a massive, flooded bridge. A series of locks and dams still held in the position they were so many centuries ago prevents most of the water from flooding the lowest levels of the ruinous city, but the damp has given rise to tenacious species of mold and oversized vermin that eagerly feast on whatever falls to them. At this stage, Tol Ferox appears as a series of ancient, defiant fingers erupting from the sea and pointing accusingly to the sky, fraying into latticework towards its tips; some raggedly cut short, truncated by the apocalyptic weaponry of another time. The foundations for what might've been other towers sleep beneath the depths of the water around them, the coastal floor littered with debris the tides couldn't sweep away.

But Tol Ferox could not stay quiet for long. The archaically avant-garde framework Tol Ferox provides allowed the otherwise inferior architecture of the modern era to anchor itself to and build high alongside it, though more often within it. The sleek, synthetic towers were bloated with the comparatively antiquated construction of brick and concrete and metal, and thanks to the efforts of the corpros, the ruins were festooned with the vacuous slogans of the Eld that so often brand their relics. Brick and wooden roads, lifts, and stairways weave along dilapidated rooftops and ancient supports to carve their way within and between the towers, encrusted with the sprawl of urbanity. Even below, where the waters threaten to drown the foundations, shops and homes are constructed, carved from the ruin. Jury-rigging old batteries and power cores or through the use of considerable animal labor, the dams and floodgates are operated with surprising efficiency, allowing ships and trade from the sea to pass through and between the towers via a series of locks and dams. The busiest portion of the city remains the frenetic "ship level," where most of the trade and travel occurs. From there, the city stretches high and wild into the sky, the cacophonous sound of the city eventually giving way to the call of gulls and even further the howl of the higher winds, where only the richest reside. At such heights, there are no bridgeways connecting the towers; to brave the bare elements out there is to knock on death's door. But even higher do the towers stretch, whereupon they become devoid of urban life – the occasional hermit or daredevil might make their home there, but only the most foolhardy of folk would think to escape the deafening susurrus of the city by retreating to the maddening howl of the wind and the omnipresent threat of destructive storm systems. To exist on the highest possible level while still managing a comfortable residence free of the berserk weather is the goal of any city elite; one that has synonymously become a predatory means of thinning the avid pursuit of power amongst the rich. There exists a certain, nebulous threshold of architectural soundness that very few in power truly grasp, and news of a bad storm tearing down some of the more daring highlife residents isn't an uncommon tragedy.


It's a little stream-of-consciousness-y, so bear with me.

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Cool locale. I'd love to hear more, particularly about its denizens and/or their notable residences.

[Ghostman]

That's an impressive physical description of a city, I like it. What are the people who live in Tol Ferox like? How is their culture, government? Is there any kind of law enforcement?

[Rose-of-Vellum]

Yeah, what Ghostman said. :)

[Weave]

I'm sort of going through Echo and tweaking things. I'm not sure what it'll be on the other side, but I want to settle on something I'm satisfied with. Right now I've added this to the first post:

WHERE ARE YOU
From the sun-seared, desiccated hardpan of Vanlear, where the sky was blasted away by greater weaponry long ago and the sun bears down upon the land unrelentingly, to the maddening heights of the labyrinthine Omniopolis, where it is said the still-boisterous soirées of the Eld carry on deep within the half-lit depths of infra, unaware that the world ended eons ago; such is the New World, ripe with the variegated ruins and scars of the Eld.

The New World is harsh: the world was broken, and that which failed to adapt died out long ago. Extreme weather, berserk machines, and rampant mutation are in no shortage of supply, and life in the various habitable zones of the New World must be nothing if not determined. The world as a whole is a mystery; whatever lies beyond the airless peaks at the border of Vanlear is unknown, the constant blizzards at the Melori Terminals deter even the hardiest of travelers to the southernmost edge of the world, and the Omniopolis, thanks to its mindless, still-operating Architects, is so vast and dense that no one knows what might be on the other side of the city, but the New World can be more easily broken up into known parts.

Omniopolis
Though not truly all-encompassing, the Omniopolis spans thousands of miles, composed entirely of towers that reach high into the sky and penetrate deep into the ground – the fundamental concepts of "up" and "down" take new meaning when the city is layered with subskies and false bottoms, but one should not mistake the presence of architecture to mean anything civilized; certainly some sections of the city harbor inhabitants of their own, but in the often lightless depths of the city more sinister creatures dwell.

Travel across the Omniopolis is treacherous; it is as much a wilderness unto itself as a forest or mountain would be. The layout of the many bridges, rails, and walkways hints at a design once systematized, but the process has long become something random and chaotic, all thanks to the still operating and rarely seen Architects. The Architects come in many shapes, all machines of some sort, some large enough to fabricate entirely new towers within their eerily silent hulls, others smaller so as to service and construct smaller creations ("infra," as it is colloquially known) such as bridges and branching adornments to existing towers. In their mad pursuit of perfection, Architects have built sections of the city so dense and sprawling that only a contortionist would be able to fit through them, while other sections of the city remain mysteriously untouched and left to disrepair.

Vanlear
Perhaps the most spectacular of ruins, Vanlear sits beneath the Eaten Sky, where the clouds and blueness of the sky is smoothly ripped upwards and out into the open blackness of space, frozen in place. Clouds that drift to Vanlear are slowly and quietly stripped upwards and out, vanishing into the literally thin air. Mysteriously, the vastness of Vanlear is still breathable and even inhabitable, but under the glaring eye of the sun any unprotected skin burns and boils in minutes.  Mutation is frequent under the Eaten Sky, and nothing grows in the desolate hardpan but tenacious, alien weeds. Were it not for the ripe salvage spread across Vanlear, it would've remained an untouched frontier.

There is no weather beneath the Eaten Sky, just alternating periods of brutal, pressing radiance and deep, brilliantly crisp blackness cast amongst twinkling stars. Any settlements in Vanlear are on the edges – those that wander across it for salvage make do with heavy clothing, broad hats or helmets, and Okono-brand cooling canisters made by the local corpros. The law in Vanlear is tenuous and thin, making it an ideal place for vagabonds, criminals, and salvors looking to deal in more illicit parts.

Omnus Alks
Despite the level of artifice the Eld put into the world, nature remained undeterred. The Omnus Alks is a massive superforest that bleeds into the Omniopolis and spreads for many miles onwards. In a strange imitation of the very artifice it threatens to consume, each of the Omnus Alks' trees are massive, dense, and sprawling, layered with canopies and a deep, detritus-littered floor.

More to come.

None of it is done (is it ever?), but I hope to generate more content as I go. Eventually I'll add stuff under the WHO ARE YOU part of the main post.

[Ghostman]

I just want to say I LOVE that evocative text. It makes me want to play in this setting. I think Vanlear comes across as the most intriguing of those places. Do you reckon that the salvagers there should try to move about during the night and retreat to cover during daylight hours to avoid the worst of radiation?

[Weave]

I just want to say I LOVE that evocative text. It makes me want to play in this setting. I think Vanlear comes across as the most intriguing of those places. Do you reckon that the salvagers there should try to move about during the night and retreat to cover during daylight hours to avoid the worst of radiation?

Thanks, Ghost! This means a lot coming from someone who I quite admire when it comes to setting design. I think that, beneath the Eaten Sky, evening travel would be considerably more popular. I'm actually working on some sketches right now to try and flesh out Echo in more ways than just writing - I'm going to do one on what a particular salvor might look like traversing Vanlear.

Right now though, I have an incomplete sketch of what a wanderer in Echo might be. She's going to be looking at some sort of overing robot/device/hologram, which is what that little floaty thing is. Also bear in mind I haven't put too much thought into what exactly the battery pack on her back does, and why it's plugged into her sword - I'm just exploring artistic concepts and sort of worrying about what it all actually means later with the hopes that it'll be made clearer as I go. I hope you like it (so far, at least):

[Ghostman]

It's a nice sketch, even if she's apparently wearing metal shoulder pads without any kind of body armor. :grin:

[Weave]

Hey now! Those are really good, protective shoulder pads! That's standard fantasy attire 101!

But actually the bottom is still unfinished - I haven't decided what clothing she's wearing, so I just gave her a shift as a base. And a belt, randomly. I thought it looked nice?

[Ghostman]

I'll be waiting to see a more finished drawing then :)

[Mason]

Just dropping by to say I enjoy reading this setting. I want to know more about Vanlear and the inhabitants. Are there any settlements? What led to the environmental conditions? And what sort of characters can I play-who are the power brokers in this world? More about corpros too please!

[Weave]

Thanks Mason! I've been running a campaign with some pals from my local group o' goons in Echo, so my work on the setting has been sporadic at best. I try to focus on developing things as the players come across them so they haven't always been very relevant (or important, honestly) towards presenting the overall setting as I am in this thread. So, sorry about that.

Vanlear is a bit out of the way from them, but I hope to bring them there in the future and unravel some details on it. The corpros, however, have been almost omnipresent since the start, and I've elaborated on them here:

[ic=The Corpros]
The corpros are a vestigial flicker of what they once were in the times of Eld - grand, empire-spanning organizations that, ostensibly, ruled the world. When that world broke so too did the corpros, but even now their fractured remnants hold a tight grip on the modern world. Old secrets of synthesis, duplication, and fabrication are at the core of the remaining corpros, nestled deep within the ancient factories and monolithic ordinators that serve to keep even the most antiquated technologies in some form of circulation. The productions of the corpros have long since drifted from carefully calculated understandings to something more arcane – the semi-autonomous monstrosities that churn and fabricate old technologies are lost on the folk who operate them; the act of inputting codes, deciphering the glowing hieroglyphics, and activating relays fosters a certain divinity through its own mysteriousness, though any corpros would prefer to act as if they alone understood the vast inner workings of their great machines (and to some extent, they probably do).

Each major corpros cannot be operated independently; time has seen to the demise of their autonomy via war and destruction. Even the most powerful corpros must maintain a series of subjugated workers to operate their machines, wrangled by roving press gangs either from their own personal armies or outsourced to one of the many mercenary companies looking for good pay (and the promise of corpros technology). Once captured, the subjugated are branded and then forced into labor. The most reliable and loyal of these have the opportunity to rise in the ranks and become official representatives of the corpros, known as the Prim, while those left behind remain part of the workforce until they die. Those subjugated might operate parts of the great machines that had fallen into disrepair ages ago. Worse still, some might have their bodies crudely augmented to serve better purposes: piston-like replacements for muscles, metallic integumental plating to protect them from high temperatures or chemicals, additional mechanical limbs to better operate complex devices, and so on.
[/ic]

Also, I drew up this locale eloquently called "Broken Earth." I don't have much on it besides this little blurb: [ic]The land is rent and sundered across the world, though nowhere is it more prominent than along the place simply known as Broken Earth. The landscape is one of preserved catastrophe: great swaths of land, some of them miles wide, are torn from the earth and left protruding like jagged spikes of geography pointing to the sky at harsh angles, as if the earth was heaved up from below and then slammed down on a titanic scale. [/ic]
[spoiler= Big Image Warning]
[/spoiler]