World Overview
A low-to-mid magic, post-industrial wasteland scarred by centuries of arcane pollution. Magic once powered civilization — now it poisons the air and mutates the land.
Technology scavenged from the ruins of the “High Age” mixes with unstable magitech; neon wards flicker beside rusted engines.
Cities float above the rot or burrow beneath it. The world is held together not by hope — but by necessity. Those who can’t climb the towers live in the gutters.
Magic level: Low and corruptive. Only few can safely wield it without deformity or madness.
Technology: Diesel-cyberpunk — think arcane reactors, rune circuitry, alchemical prosthetics, and scavenged automatons.
Tone: Decay, survival, redemption. Society persists through filth and fractured morals.
Geography & Nations
1. VERRAX SPIRE
Once a beacon of civilization — now a vertical megacity stretching miles into the smog. The rich live near the crystal-lit top, while the bottom levels, called The Drop, are near-feral.
Ruler: The Veil Council — faceless technomancers hidden behind mirrored masks.
Theme: Arcane pollution, class warfare, espionage.
2. THE RUST SEA
A vast desert of corroded metal, melted glass, and half-buried war machines from a forgotten age.
Inhabitants: Nomadic scavenger clans riding sandcrawlers powered by soul engines.
Secret: Something beneath the Rust — a buried god-machine still breathing.
3. THE BLEEDING FRONTIER
Where corrupted nature fights back — forests of flesh, rivers of mercury, beasts of bone and wire. Druids known as the Wyrd Shepherds worship the infection as rebirth.
Settlements: None stable. Outposts vanish overnight.
4. AEVORA
An airborne city drifting through the toxic clouds, run by merchant-kings and sky-pirates.
Economy: Fuel, relic trade, and slave markets.
Magic: Purest in the world, though hoarded by nobles.
5. THE PIT
A nation-sized landfill crater where exiles, mutants, and artificers dwell.
Capital: Scrapspire — built entirely from refuse.
Culture: Brutal honesty, invention born of desperation.
Races & Cultures
Humans: Survivors and traders; masters of adaptation. Most live in the Drop or as scavengers.
Tieflings: Common — often formed from magical fallout rather than infernal blood. Treated as radioactive outcasts.
Warforged (called “Scrapborn”): Repaired husks of old war machines with flickers of souls. Many form cults to rediscover purpose.
Mutants (“The Tainted”): Once every race, now changed by the smog — extra limbs, molten eyes, psychic whispers. Not playable in all societies but fascinating NPCs.
Elves: Nearly extinct, living in sealed biodomes above Aevora. Worship silence and purity.
Orcs: Tribal enforcers, mercenaries, or pit champions. In the Rust Sea they run mobile fortress-clans.
Society operates in fragments — city-gangs, cults, scavenger guilds, and syndicates. Loyalty is currency.
Current Conflicts
The Veil Crisis: The protective barrier over Verrak Spire flickers — exposing lower levels to magical storms. The Council blames saboteurs; rebels call it divine justice.
The Rust Awakening: Strange tremors under the Rust Sea suggest the God-Machine stirs. Whole caravans vanish into the sand.
The Warforged Rebirth: Scrapborn prophets preach the return of the First Spark — a signal awakening all constructs at once.
Drug of the Age: “Etherash,” a vaporized alchemical fluid that lets mortals glimpse past realities. Addictive, lethal, yet vital for spellcraft.
Magic & Religion
Magic: A decaying, radioactive force. Controlled only through magitech focus tools or runic prosthetics. Spellcasting without containment risks mutation.
Religions:
The Machine Saint: Belief that divinity resides in the remnants of old technology.
The Bleeding Mother: Worshipped by druids as the will of the living wasteland.
The Hollow: A nihilist faith believing the gods have already died — and mortals must replace them.
Divine magic still exists, but clerics are rare and often mistaken for lunatics.
Planar Influences
The Veil (once a barrier between planes) shattered centuries ago.
Now:
The Ethereal Plane bleeds into reality — ghosts are everywhere.
The Shadowfell leaks darkness into dreams.
Small rifts to the Elemental Chaos cause localized storms, magma veins, and gravity inversions.
Planar travel is possible — but unstable and feared.
Historical Ages
The High Age: The world’s golden age — magitech empires, bound gods, floating citadels. Ended with the Veil Implosion.
The Fall: Centuries of collapse. Magic storms, mutations, mass death.
The Ash Era (now): Fractured city-states, scavenged glory, fragile stability. Every step forward costs blood.
Ruins of the High Age lie buried under every wasteland dune — and every adventurer dreams of what they might find there.
Economy & Trade
Currency: “Shards” — crystallized mana fragments. Dangerous but valuable.
Trade:
Skyports (Aevora ↔ Spire) handle luxury goods.
Rust caravans trade fuel, relics, and scavenged arms.
Etherash dominates black markets.
Guilds: Most trade is run by semi-legal guilds protected by private militias.
Survival = barter, scrap, and nerve.
Law & Society
Justice: Decentralized and brutal. Each district enforces its own law. The higher you live, the more rights you have.
Adventurers: Viewed as disposable but necessary — scavengers for the city-states, mercs for the powerful, legends for the desperate.
Crime: Institutionalized. Every syndicate pays tribute to stay “legal.”
Monsters & Villains
The Rusted Choir: Cyberliches who sing code into reality; they seek to recompile the world.
The Wyrd Shepherds: Druidic cult merging human and nature into biomechanical horrors.
The Veil Council: A shadow government — might not even be human anymore.
The Forgotten Beasts: Mutant titans, remnants of godlike entities fused with machines.
Etherash Lords: Drug alchemists turned psionic tyrants, ruling through addiction and hallucination.