Sunday 29 November 2015

Welcome






It was barely a pebble. In cosmic terms, it was a mote of dust, barely worth the notice. If it had been found in our time, in our world, it would have earned one of those long alphanumerical strings that only tell you on what catalogue to look for it.Only one thing made it unique. And the world found out about it on the 31st of December, 1858.

It would eventually be known by many names. But on that fateful dusk, as it ripped the sky, as it became the first big asteroid  to impact the Earth since men arose, its dark smoky tail hid the setting sun. The Night had come.

And then it hit.

And Humanity was still here.

The core of the asteroid was a dense crystal, dark, oily, the likes of which had never been seen. As it hit, it revealed it's greatest property, as it could store an almost infinite amount of energy in its matrix.

It should have destroyed the world. And it did. Sort of.

It absorbed 99.9999% of the impact energy. The place where it hit was now ground zero for mining the new rock, now know as NightGems. A grain of sand would heat a tea cup. A chunk the size of your fist would power a loom. 3 or 4, a locomotive. Some, of high purity, could punch holes in reality itself.

Magik is now real. It's all about energies, after all, and now we have it to spare.

Technology was transformed overnight. Victorian steam met the atomic age.

War followed.

For 30 years, the War of Sorrows burnt the Earth. It's now over, because there was little else left. NightGem mining has resumed. The main mining city is called Thyra. It is a beacon for all that wish to make a quick profit. 

It is also peppered with Passages into other Places caused by the fall of The Night. Some Places are empty. 


Some aren't.

It is the beginning of Spring, 1910, in an Earth you wouldn't recognise. Giant Mecha roam the streets, airships are run by analogical computers, steam machines are powered by crystals from the Stars. Magik is real. Deamons from other Places kill and maim.


Welcome to Thyra.




Thyra came about in a D&D game, I thought, wouldn't it be useful to have a hub, in the middle of the Multiverse, where you could access hundreds of different worlds, and have adventures in all possible environments. I know there are Savage Worlds supplements out there for all of this, but I find them.... Chunky. It's almost metaphysical, some of them, with Gods and Heroes.


I just want to have a City surrounded by gateways to other Places (with a capital P). So one week I can have my players wiping out cultists in a jungle temple and the next, fighting an invasion in an alien colony somewhere beyond the stars....


So in a word, simplicity. Not chunky rules, nothing too weird. Maybe some penalties if the characters try to interact with grossly different technology, but that's about it. I hope it goes well!

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