In as Many Words [Octoberish Contest]

[limetom]

Oh god where did this come from I am not good with computers.

In as Many Words

Here at the CBG, we design settings.  It's in our name.  Literally.

Some people here have expansive, wonderfully detailed settings.  Other people, like myself, are lucky to get a setting longer than a couple of pages in a word processor.  There is often an implicit value judgment, moreso on the creator than on the viewer, that the setting could be better if only it was longer.

Well pooh to that, I say.

You task this time is to design a setting in 500 words or less.  That's right.  An entire setting.  Using only 500 words.  At most.

Keep in mind that settings need not be a full world or universe or whatever.  A town, or if you get really creative, something smaller, could be a "setting".

1 '" Some Things to Include
This is where I explain the catch(es).

At most, the entry should be 500 words long.
*Other than that, run wild.
*

RULE ADDENDUM: At least, the entry should be 150 words long.[/list]
3 - Necessary Disclaimer Stuff (Below in Spoiler Box)

[spoiler]Please read all these rules before entering. If you enter the contest, it is assumed that you have read and agree with all the rules presented below. Any entries/contesters found in contrast with these rules will be disqualified from the contest and will be ineligible for any prizes.
0. VERY IMPORTANT All entries must be original content, or if outside material is used, it must be used with the express written permission of the original creator. Anything that is the Product Identity (PI) of Wizards of the Coast can be used for submission, but will not be allowed to be published in the Guide, should it win.
1. No one under the age of seventeen (17) can enter a contest without the consent of a parent or a Legal Guardian.
2. Rules and guidelines will vary. Some restrictions may apply.
3. All winners will be contacted by e-mail within seven (7) days of the contest ending.
4. To claim your winning prize, simply follow the easy instructions in your e-mail notification.
5. If we do not hear from you within seven (7) days of notification, we'll select an alternate winner.
6. Read all the rules, entry requirements and deadlines of each contest before entering.
7. The Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG) reserves sole and final judgment as to all matters concerning its contests. All decisions are final.
8. Winners are responsible for all Federal, State and Local taxes, if applicable.
9. Void where prohibited and where all Federal, State and local laws and regulations apply.
10. Prizes cannot be exchanged, substituted or transferred, without the prior written consent of the contest sponsor if applicable or the Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG).
11. Odds of winning a prize depends on the number of eligible entries received and are determined by each contest's specific
criteria of awarding prizes.
12. If you are a contest winner you also authorize the Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG) and its affiliates to use your name and/or screen name for promotion purposes and publicity purposes without compensation, as well as for use in the Campaign Builder's Guide.
13. These rules are subject to change without notice.
14. Unless otherwise specified, only members 17 years of age and under as stated in rule number 1 above in the general guidelines, and 18 years of age and older can enter or become eligible to win any of the prizes with respect to any contests or make any submissions of any kind to the Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG).
15. The Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG) is not responsible for error, omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operation or transmission, communications line failure, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to, or alteration of your entry.
16. You agree that the Campaign Builders' Guild (the CBG) and its respective representatives shall have no Liability, in connection with the acceptance and use of prizes awarded, including liability for personal injury and property damage.[/spoiler]
The prize for the contest is a badge for your signature so you can show everyone your unwarranted self-importance.

The contest will run through 6:00 PM EST, November 7, 2009.  Only one entry per member, though an entry can be edited if need be. After which, a winner will be chosen by vote, and a new contest may or may not be presented for November.

[Elven Doritos]

OPERATION: AUGUST RETRIEVAL

[/size]
It was 1943. Hitler's most devious plot has succeeded: two gargantuan red-with-swastika rocket ships bound for outer space break Earth's orbit.  Verbannte-1, containing thirty of Germany's top scientists and military strategists in cryogenic stasis, has landed upon the moon, while Verbannte-2, containing cloned DNA of Hitler and his top advisors, remains in orbit of Mars in the event of Nazi defeat.

One century  later, the Nazi scientists have thawed, only to discover that the Third Reich has been defeated and Germany's name has been forever associated with humiliation. A more pressing concern has also become apparent--Hitler was not the only dictator to plan his resurrection! Josef Stalin's clone commands a clandestine array of spacefarers in the bowels of the International Space Station, and they have commandeered the contents of Verbannte-2.

The power groups of Operation: August Retrieval are as follows:

"Nozhing we do now is in vain, mein Fuhrer." -Johann Veicht
National Socialist Lunar Provisionary Council (Moon Nazis)- The scientists of Verbannte-1 have all of the technology available to the Third Reich elite-- that is, high-powered laser rifles, invisibility cloaks, translunar space flight, and a sophisticated cloning apparatus. They are led by Johann Veicht, the ranking SS officer, and are in contact with ODESSA and other terrestrial Nazi organizations. Their plots are manifold, and range from the Venezuelan jungles to the dusty reaches of metropolitan Mars.

"Send Hammer 1 to scout for signs of life. Should they even twitch, let their blood trickle from the people's hands." -Josef Stalin II
Soviet Socialist Republic of Space (SSRS)- Josef Stalin II has brainwashed the workers of the ISS and commands a state-of-the-art missile system. Knowing that Verbannte-2 is not the only Nazi craft the Third Reich had produced, Stalin II seeks to lure his enemies to the secret Communist strongholds and snuff any opposition to his dreams of a system-wide authoritarian state. Only then will the proletariat be free.

"This assembly strongly condemns the actions of all parties involved. To enforce our condemnation, we hereby withdraw all support for Earthling technology, including our ambassador, Steve Jobs."
Martian Delegation- Life on Mars was discovered in 2023, and brother, those blue-skinned telepaths were pissed. Since diplomatic relations have been shaky between the Martian people and the governments of Earth, the Delegation has shown some interest in the possibility of regime change; its sizable Jewish immigrant population prevents it from acknowledging either the pogrom-happy SSRS or the anti-Semitic Moon Nazis, however.

Will the Moon Nazis find Hitler's DNA? Will Josef Stalin succeed in his ultimate plot? Will the Martians end their long-standing policy of isolation and appeasment?

Find out, in the d20 Modern game OPERATION: AUGUST RETRIEVAL!

[Steerpike]

ABYSM

Perched on the edge of the colossal, ulcerous chasm known as Abysm '" the Great Rictus, the Lesion, the Hungry Void, the World-Wound '" teeter the precarious cities of the Lip, their tall, narrow structures spilling over the precipice itself and rambling down the cliff-sides, their arched windows shuttered against the fell mists and blasts of eerie, shrieking wind that emanate upwards from the black, sepulchral deep.  To the west sprawls the Crimson Emptiness across whose vast breadth trundle caravans from distant lands, bearing goods for trade; to the east lies only the void itself, though stories persist of a land beyond, on the other edge of Abysm.  Ruins along the Lip suggest great cities that were half subsumed by whatever cataclysm ruptured the world; a few reckless souls have struck out in airships for the other side, and the remnants of great bridges can be seen, crumbling over the darkness, which might once have spanned the yawning gap.

The cities of the Lip subsist on Abysm's peculiar bounty.  Miasma-harvesters concentrate the eldritch vapours of the chasm into glass globes, ingredients for all manner of alchemical devices; from the quarries of Erebh and Phanos comes onyx and obsidian and stranger minerals, and daily prospectors descend on rickety, chain-tethered lifts or in humming airships like iron insects, searching for the bizarre fossils and glowing, puissant crystals which sometimes protrude from Abysm's walls.  Fungi are cultivated in zigzagging farms that wind like stairs down the cliff-sides, the mushrooms nourished by the moist, mephitic breath of the pit.

Abysm itself is a subject of speculation, of wonder, of religious inspiration.  Scholars gaze upon it with their glyph-graved abyssoscopes; priests offer it sacrifices, hoping to appease whatever deity they claim resides in its fathomless depths '" Apollyon the angel of destruction, or the Grinning Beast, or Yaggathoth with her million flickering tongues.  Whether or not a god truly resides in Abysm's deepest reaches, it is widely believed that something does '" there are too many reports of gigantic appendages glimpsed in the black, or glimmering, cyclopean eyes peering up from the darkness, to wholly discount such legendry.

Certainly there are beings that dwell in Abysm, though whether they are its true progeny or have merely found a habitat along the Lip, none can truly say.  Whatever the case, Abysm's fauna are a common sight: the bat-like, gibbering phetorii are greatly beloved as pets (once their noxious scent-glands have been removed), while the coiled, nebulous umbragogs that flit like shadowy mantas through the middle-darks are used as mounts and beasts of burden.  Then of course there are the children of Abysm, the stygian gloomfolk, the woundspawn '" pallid and huge-eyed savages able to breathe the poisonous fumes of the deeper darks whose villages (built of bone and tunnelled into the living rock) cling to Abysm's walls.  Few from the Lip dare to venture into these tenebrous lower regions, save for a few half-mad souls '" fanatics, explorers, and outcasts, the desperate and the deranged'¦

[Gamer Printshop]

Heap is a class 9 disposal planet in the Charon system. A once colonized garden world whose neighboring star, went nova before collapsing into a black hole dooming it to eventual annihilation. For four decades Heap has become the dumping grounds for the galactic military industrial complex making it almost a completely uninhabitable place except to the those with the hardiest constitutions.

No one ever asked to go there. We didn't ask to go there, but as a military penal colony for the hard cases, it was a solution the general staff decided as ideal. Now a population of slighting over 5,000 have been air dropped onto its surface and allowed freedom of movement on world. Only the orbiting unmanned guardian satellites ensure that no one leaves the planet with plasma cannons pointed on any movement into the planets upper atmosphere.

Though we're only here to die, eventually, we haven't been left unprepared. Every Heap detainee wears power-assisted enviro-armor, a year's supply of protein packs, and the best in water filtration porta-pumps. Efforts have been made to ensure spaceflight technology debris is beyond repair, however left behind ornithopters that resemble giant, armored bot flies allow up to six passengers to attain low atmospheric flight. Repaired or "jerry-rigged" lift walkers, tracked vehicles and other conveyances allow some level of transport on Heap.

Left to govern ourselves, civility has devolved into gangs of inmate commandos that ceaselessly war on one another, each based within the mountains of detritus called heaps that makeup the landscape of the planets surface. Thus the name of our homeworld, Heap.

Life is cheap and hard. Those who aren't invited to join a Combat gang, a process known as "blooding in", become targets of every resident because their personal equipment and full protein pack supplies are the most valued commodities. When new inmates arrive, its called "dinner time". Every other moment is spent scrounging for alternative food supplies, maintaining methane retainers to fuel our converted transports, repairing equipment or raiding other Combat Gangs to take their food and equipment. Sleep, what is sleep?

Raids consist of Bot-flier command vehicles guiding ground support to specified targets and engaging in direct fire and vehicle melee combat, while commando squads of power armored infantry perform the actual raids. Such raids are often costly, but in the end it means more food and equipment to share among the survivors. Thus the intent of a raid is often as much taking the opposition's resources, as taking from your casualties.

There are probably 100 Combat Gangs of various size and strength hiding within the great piles of debris like rats in garbage, each governing a self-determined territory that often overlap and form a front line between gangs.

Life on the Heap is a death sentence, but its a life just the same, and if any one can survive before this rock gets sucked into a black hole, we'll commandeer a starship and bring revenge to the emperor himself.

[Mason]

Castle Halactor

  The greatest wizard who ever lived is dead.
 
  (Presumably.)
 
  Halactor was an enigmatic mage who had been banned from the Arcane college for calling the arch-mage an incompitant fool. Three days later his castle appeared in the wilderness on the site of the capital of a long fallen elven empire. This empire was said to have reached the pinnacle of arcane research, and it may be for this reason that Halactor chose this site. How he built an entire castle in three days is unknown-but it is testament to Halactors power.
   
 Subsequently, a township formed around the citadel, colloquially known as Wizards Mantle; the town was a necessity for the wizard, who required a vast network of resources and a sizeable workforce. Halactor used intermediaries to deal with the people that flocked to the city in hopes of finding great wealth and an adventurous lifestyle. Guild houses were established to ensure economic order in the quickly burgeoning city, and Halactor even minted his own coin.  
   
 Halactors wealth was endless.  

  Agents of the arcane college, that Halactor once slighted may have had a hand in the wizards demise, while others claim it was his own experiments that led to his end. Multitudes of adventurers have flocked to the city in the hopes of finding great wealth quickly. A religious sect has layed claim to Halactors wealth- The Church of Material Perishing; an order of militant paladins that believe all material wealth should be destroyed.  

 Brave the labyrinthine tunnels of the castles undercroft, reportedly filled with the wizards failed or rejected experiments; traverse the many dark towers of the castles walls, filled with the ghosts of the ancient elves that once dwelled their, roam the near-endless arboretum of bizarre flora and seek out great wealth, and Halactor himself.
 
  (about 320 words)

[LD]

Animal Farm

Pigs are corpulent and greedy- but smart.
Horses are noble and hardworking- but dumb.
Dogs are loyal and persistent- but are not independent.
Humans are... gone?

When the Synthetic Machines(c) created a virus to wipe human oppressors from the land, they did not realize that they would soon grow bored (within 900 years). In a land where machines could not receive orders or any sense of direction, the machines were saddened, so they decided to bring the spark of enlightenment to animals in order to have a respectable challenge.

And then the animals took over. (It was a poor idea to grant sentience to such a biodiverse lot. Although the poison dart frog was eliminated by the machines' virii they could not create strains of genetic plagues fast enough to deal with Earth's multifarious variety, the rush led by enlightened elephants, horrifying hippopottamai, devious dolphins, clever crustaceans, and manipulative monkeys was rapid as the machines were disabled and junked.

Now, animals rule the world, each with their own particular qualities and all able to speak languages. Now that animals are the only game in town-- How will you rule your world, your Animal Farm?

* Will you try to live in harmony with other species?
* How will you negotiate with carnivores?
* How will you prevent overgrazing?
* Will you try to overcome the lack of opposable thumbs.
* And what will you do about the allegations that some humans survived on another planet-- what if those humans return and see their race wiped out (!) You must prepare for the inevitable.
* And always... there are rumours that some dreadful machines survived the purge, hidden in the most anaerobic places of the sea, and floating in the exosphere far above the flight paths of avian species.

Will you thrive? Will you survive?

Animal Farm: Survival of the Fittest... Coming Summer 2010.