It is the 213rd year of the Imperial Calander, the 247th year of the new era ushered in by the catastrophe, the 3rd year of the reign of the XXXVI emperor of the Grand Nation of the Lupercalcia.
Over 200 years ago, the world was wracked by the catastrophe, the great Esperical Surge bought about by the hubris and ambition of a king to whom the world was not enough, the very land torn asunder as the air was saturated with Esperical energy, the air poisoned with the burning power of change. What people – what civilization – persisted did so through hiding in bunkers or fortifications, hastily sealed against the encroaching disaster in the hopes they might survive
When the surge passed, the world was left forever altered – the very landscape had been torn asunder, a wave of chaotic change that had reshaped it forever. Mountains ran like glass, seas churned and boiled as their waters turned to crystal while vast swathes of land bubbled and melted into new seas. In places where the surge hit strongest, around the Esperical Beacons that where the catalists, the natural order is replaced by deadly wonders; floating rocks and continents, places where time itself seems to overlap, and roving storms of esperical lightning. Yet the greatest change was how the esperical energies infused the flora and greenery, spurring it into a cycle of frenzied, unchecked growth, once tamed forests becoming a sea of green leaves that chocke out the sky, and within life flourishes, but changed by the energies; carnivorous plants of all kinds, trees that merged with old technology and now grow rife with circuitry, leaves of burnished metals, and in the shades of these boughs it can seem almost as if a new sentience links this great forest that covers most of the known world. Even today, so many years after the surge, the Green Tide continues to swell and flow, to crash and wake, ever growing outwards. The ruins of the old world now rest surrounded by roots of great trees, amidst flowers that glow with a rainbow biolumiescence, beneath canopies that blot out the sun. The very air itself is toxic, poisoned to creatures not spawned of the new world, and extended exposure without the use of a hazmat suit can prove fatal, and from the heart of the forest flows the King’s Miasma, the remnants of the esperical energy given physical form, a thick mist that brings with it change, corruption and madness that ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes with the seasons
But from destruction, comes recreation, and since the scars of the Esperical surge brought low the old world, rendering their great engines to ruin and their cities to dust, life has persisted, and a new era has been forged from the ruins. The new black gold, once sleeping beneath the crust but bought to the surface in the ripples is the fuel and the soul of a new era, one forged of chromed machinery and neon lights. Vast factories rise to forge technology equal to the arcane espercraft antiques of the past era. In great sealed cities – bastions of civilization within the green tide and safe havens from the toxic air of the miasma and the perils of the broken lands, wrapped safe within walls of forged steel and shield of ancient espercraft design, new and old intermingled – are forged new futures and new families, new lives and new legends to stamp their name upon the anals of history. From the ashes rose new lands, new nations, new hopes and dreams and the vision of a new future.
Yet with new opportunities came new needs, new thirsts, new conflict. The world is once again free to be claimed, and an empire and war machine always needs more resources, more fuel, and the Black Wolf of Lupercalcia’s fangs have sunk into many other fledgling nations and established states alike, the empire founded on the principles of militaristic power and ruthless expansionism. Since the empire was founded, it has grown to be the largest nation in the new world, a merciless warmachine that has set out to conquer and devour every other land, all in the name of progress and order. Within the empire’s borders, civilization flourishes, but peace and order are maintained at the but of a gun and the point of a blade. Any man with the will and skill can make themselves rich, but only by crushing their competitors under heel, and even in the strongest nation, the Green Tide and its beasts are ever a threat.
The new emperor looks inwards, to try and make peace with his neighbours, the old guard holds strong within the empire and a twisting web of intrigue just below the surface, ever plotting to claim the throne for themselves. The watchmen of the Inquisitors order seek to keep the peace and route out those that would break the empire’s laws or harm the innocent, and deep in shadows the revolutionary group Calamity Gear seeks to overthrow the corrupt millitary regime of the past and put control of the future in the hands of the people
and when a discovery of an ancient warmachine from before the catastrophe comes to light, the wheels begin to turn as pandora’s box begins to open and our heroes and villains take the stage to claim it for their own goals or ambitions, or to seal it away for good.
Creators Comments:
I’ve always had a fascination with the idea of the verdant apocalypse – the idea that after the end, rather than a barren wasteland the world will be left lush and green, with the ruins of the old civilization beneath a tide of nature. There’s something wondrous to me about the deepest parts of the forests and the wild parts of the world, just the beauty nature can take when it is indifferent, and how striking a merger of unchecked nature and carefully constructed civilization can be together
As such, when trying to come up with the world and after the idea of chasing lost technology of an ancient civilization came to mind for the game plot, the setting and the green tide followed somewhat naturally. In my first rough drafts, it had been a desert between the sealed cities, lifeless, bleak and barren but in my mind it was always… green, and so it grew into something different XD Riffing a bit on the settings of Enslaved and Zero Dawn with this, and setting up a place for a dieselpunk/science fantasy with the sealed cities and arcologies, while leaving a buncha ancient ruins to tie into exploration/pulp style storytelling 🙂
Also, hopefully sets up reasons for pretty stage backgrounds for folks to hit one another over the head on, and gives reasons for mutli-tier stages for the platform fighter elements. I like faux-realism in my silly fantasy worlds
Pandora Paradox 